Live Dungeon!

The Bomb Golems’ detonations pulverized many of the other Golems in the area, turning them into light particles. Lava burst from the cracked ground, limiting the foothold one could take. Daryl and Amira flew up after Hannah, and Diniel crouched down on the narrowed solid ground to stabilize her shooting.

And then, after the Mount Golem spawned fifteen more of the smaller Golems and dropped them to the ground, it did not spawn any more of them. However, in exchange for it losing its refilling supply of minions, the Mount Golem received a dramatic boost to its own abilities.

“[[Combat Cry]]!”

Hannah, with a speed boost from [[Haste]], pulled the Mount Golem’s aggro to her and moved in to attack. The now-red surface of the monster’s body was so hot that she felt like burning up just from getting close to it; she did not even think she could touch it with her bare hands. Hannah tightly gripped the brass knuckles in her hands and laid out a barrage of blows on the enemy’s rocky body.

The redder its body turned, the faster the Mount Golem’s movements became. It was so fast now, in fact, that Daryl could barely dodge its attacks — though it still could not catch Hannah just yet.

“[[Stream Arrow]].”

The spots hit by Diniel’s powerful ice-elemental attack turned back to black. Hannah focused on repeatedly striking those spots. The Mount Golem’s body was large, so she technically could land her attacks anywhere she wanted, constantly sustaining her skill combo count. Thanks to that, she could build up the power of her [[Count Buster]] to ridiculous levels, in turn easily pulling the enemy’s aggro. As long as the Mount Golem was not hit by [[Stream Arrow]] multiple times in quick succession, it was sure not to turn its attention to Diniel.

“[[Warrior Howl]]!”

The number of Golems that Daryl and Amira had to distract had greatly reduced from before — now there were only about fifteen of them left, making things quite easy for them. In the current situation, Hannah was able to face the Mount Golem head-on without a need to worry about projectile attacks.

And as the battle raged on, the number of Golems further decreased one by one, increasing the Mount Golem’s speed more and more. By now, it had been boosted so high that Daryl could no longer dodge all its blows.

“[[Medic]].”

Tsutomu, no longer having to pay so much attention to supporting and healing Daryl and Amira, shifted his focus to casting [[Haste]] and [[Medic]] for Hannah as she flew all over the place. While Hannah’s stamina was extraordinarily high by women’s standards, constant intense movement in such a high-temperature environment was bound to exhaust her in no time.

A way to circumvent that was to cast [[Medic]] for Hannah more often, alleviating her workload. Tsutomu predicted the paths of her movements and placed pick-ups of skills like [[Medic]] and [[Haste]] for her, reliably supporting and healing her without her even needing to be aware of it.

“Hah hah…”

Currently, Hannah was somewhat out of breath, but she had yet to lose even a shred of concentration. She was by herself in dealing with the Mount Golem’s attacks as it waved around both its arms as if trying to catch a house fly buzzing in front of its face, but there was no sign of her getting caught by it anytime soon.

Confirming that a sound-emitting arrow had flown past above her head, Hannah got ready to retreat while also distracting the Mount Golem so that it moved as little as possible from its current position.

“[[Stream Arrow]].”

Diniel, with her mental energy replenished, unleashed a powerful skill, then Hannah sensed it coming and dashed out of the way. This routine was slowly but surely shaving away at the Mount Golem’s integrity. If the team could keep things going like this, they could practically stun-lock the Mount Golem until it was finished off.

At this point, however, the Mount Golem was no longer simply trying to catch Hannah with its hands. After more than half of its life force had been depleted, new moves had been added to its arsenal.

The red bright spots on the Mount Golem’s face — which seemed to be its eyes — started glowing intensely. Tsutomu, seeing that, shouted out,

“It’s about to shoot out light beams! Get ready to dodge!”

After Tsutomu’s warning, the Mount Golem shot out red beams of light from both its eyes. Hannah’s reflex prompted her to sway out of the way, successfully avoiding them. The boss monster tried to exploit this opening by swinging its hands at her, but then she performed evasive maneuvers by flapping the wings on her back, dodging them as well.

The Mount Golem’s hands clapped together as if it was trying to squash a bug; after confirming that it had not managed to catch anything, it immediately proceeded to prowl after Hannah once again. Due to it frequently shooting out beams of light from its eyes, Hannah was required to move around more than before.

“Hannah! If you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, go ahead and switch with Daryl — just give him the signal!”

“Got it!”

Daryl was not a match against the Mount Golem due to its now-wide array of powerful attacks, but he could take it on as long as he avoided three particular things: being trampled under its feet, being crushed in its hands, and being knocked into the lava. If anything, he was sure to last long enough to buy time for Hannah to rest up.

On Amira and Daryl’s side, things seemed to be going with relatively little difficulty due to the gradually decreasing number of Golem minions. If the pair could get their numbers down to less than ten, Amira could go join in on attacking the boss, and simply spare some time to sweep out the rest of the minions whenever Diniel shot out her [[Stream Arrow]].

As things were now, though, Hannah was still dealing with the Mount Golem by herself as it gained more and more speed, carrying out her Tank role by avoiding all of its attacks and pulling its aggro by hitting it consistently. The ability to deal damage while pulling the targets’ attention away from her allies — such were the advantages of an ideal evasion-based Tank.

For a good while, the team had a relatively smooth time shaving away at the Mount Golem — save for the fact that its eye beams were being shot all over the place, posing a potential threat to everyone if they did not pay attention.

In fact, Amira had been grazed on her arm once as she had her full focus on the group of Golem minions. Moreover, Tsutomu was staying close to her so that he could provide her with healing and support; he failed to avoid the beam attacks one time, taking the full brunt of it.

[All right, I’m still safe.]

However, thanks to him wearing the Scorchstone Robe that he had obtained from a treasure chest dropped by the Bolseyer, the heat rays were rendered ineffective on him. Technically, he did not even need to pay attention to the beam attacks at all; this enabled him to stay reasonably close to his allies as he supported them, which was especially helpful with keeping Hannah’s [[Haste]] buff constant.

As long as Hannah’s speed boost persisted, she was sure to not be caught by the Mount Golem. Receiving consistent support via [[Haste]] and [[Medic]], she seemed to be having fun pelting the boss monster with punches and kicks. Eventually, Diniel’s signal arrow came flying once again, prompting her to get ready to retreat.

Following that, Diniel unleashed her [[Stream Arrow]], racking up tons of damage. After a few more repeats of the routine, Diniel shot a signal arrow toward Tsutomu as the latter levitated above everyone.

Tsutomu approached Diniel while also taking care to keep up his healing and support. Diniel took her mouth off the Blue Potion vial that she had been sipping from and said to him,

“Hannah’s probably getting tired. We should have her switch out soon.”

“Huh? You think so?”

From Tsutomu’s point of view, Hannah’s movements had not yet slowed down and her face showed no signs of fatigue — if anything, she seemed to be having a good time. He figured that Hannah would still be good to keep fighting, but Diniel quietly shook her head.

“Her reaction to my signal was a bit too slow. I think she’s just about to get exhausted now.”

“…I see. Got it. I’ll have Daryl go in instead.”

Diniel, having trained together with Hannah in the Volcano layers for quite some time, was well aware of the latter’s signs of exhaustion. Tsutomu agreed to her suggestion; after giving her an extra vial of Blue Potion, he went over to Daryl to tell the latter about the change of strategy.

“Daryl, go switch with Hannah.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Daryl nodded to Tsutomu’s command and roared out a spear-like focused blast of [[Combat Cry]] at the Mount Golem. He proceeded to rack up even more aggro by adding on to that with [[Warrior Howl]] and [[Shield Throw]].

Being a Heavy Knight, Daryl was superior to Hannah in terms of the list of skills he had access to. With the help of Blue Potions, he would be able to pull the aggro off of Hannah without much difficulty.

When Tsutomu felt that Daryl was almost done pulling the Mount Golem’s aggro, he circled around behind the latter and talked to him while refilling his armor’s Ice Magic Stones. Meanwhile, Daryl drank from a vial of Blue Potion.

“I think you’ll be able to hold on for pretty long, as long as you don’t get grabbed or knocked into the lava. And if you do die, I can revive you right away, so just take it easy.”

“Yes!”

“All right, go get ’em!”

After he was done refilling Daryl’s armor’s Ice Magic Stone supply, Tsutomu patted the latter on the back, nudging him toward the Mount Golem. Daryl flew up close to it and used his best aggro-generating move, the [[Taunt Swing]], to get the monster to look away from Hannah.

“Hannah!” Tsutomu shouted through his megaphone. “Get back here! And Amira, take a little break if you need to!”

In response to her instruction, Hannah flew as fast as she could toward Tsutomu, reaching him in no time at all. She looked grumpy, however, like a child at a playground being picked up by her parents.

“But Teach! I can still go on!”

“No, you can’t. Diniel said you have to stop — so take a break. No buts.”

“…Tch.”

Hannah seemed like she still wanted more action, and she grew even more dissatisfied upon seeing Daryl being kicked around by the Mount Golem. Unlike Hannah, Daryl had to also deal with the projectile attacks from the few remaining Throw Golems on the ground, but he stayed calm and took everything on with his tower shield.

Tsutomu cast a healing spell for Daryl, and then passed Hannah a piece of salted candy and a canteen of cooled water. Hannah rolled the candy around in her mouth and kept an eye on Daryl as the latter did his thing, while also positioning herself so that she would not be hit by a stray heat ray.

Due to Daryl’s lower mobility, he could not avoid all of the Mount Golem’s attacks like Hannah had. There were a good number of hits that he had no choice but to take head-on.

Thanks to his high VIT, however, he could prevent severe damage as long as he took them with his shield. The custom armor from Dorren Workshop also provided some decent mitigation of damage from the heat rays.

Moreover, while his dog ears were droopy, they provided him with a strong sense of hearing all the same; he could sense monsters’ movements and had a wide range of awareness of what was going on behind him, which helped him greatly in carrying out his role. As such, the other combatants were exposed to fewer stray eye beams compared to whenever Hannah was Tanking.

“Believe in yourself, Hannah. Without you, we wouldn’t even stand a chance against this Mount Golem.”

“…Why’re you bringing this up all of a sudden?”

“Well, you look like you’re not very confident in yourself… Like you’re about to say, ‘man, Daryl’s waaayyy better at this Tank thing than me,’ you know?”

“Teach, you really suck at imitating how I talk, you know that?” Hannah responded with a straight face to Tsutomu’s failed attempt at sounding like her.

“……”

In turn, Tsutomu was rendered speechless — and his expression caused Hannah to burst out laughing.

“Ahahaha! This is the first time I’ve seen you make that face, Teach!”

“…I’ll just get back to work now.”

“O-oh, c’mon! Don’t be so grumpy, Teach~~!”

Tsutomu turned away and started casting support spells for everyone else. Hannah approached him and shook him by his shoulders, but he kept on his supporting work until he was done for the moment, only turning back to her after confirming Daryl’s situation one more time.

“Well, looks like you’re in a good enough mood, then.”

“Oh, I sure am! I’m not about to lose to Daryl, you know!”

“Then how about I put you right back to work when Daryl is about to lose his aggro pull, hmm?”

“…You’re still salty about what I just said or what, Teach?”

“I’ll remember it till the next time I die.”

Tsutomu cracked a grin with a visibly evil undertone, causing Hannah to pull a wry face.

“When’s that even gonna happen!?”

“Heh, hopefully never.”

Hannah was in fact itching to go, though, so after a while, Tsutomu instructed Daryl to stop pulling aggro and sent Hannah on her way.

Back into the action, Hannah unleashed a barrage of attacks to pull the aggro away from Daryl, causing the Mount Golem to focus on her instead. Daryl proceeded to maintain the aggro of all the other Golems in the area, and then he flew back toward Tsutomu with his battered armor.

“Amira! Take care of the ones on the ground!”

“YEAH!”

Amira had been resting while Daryl took on both the boss and its minions, so now she had more than enough energy to deal with the smaller Golems. Meanwhile, as soon as Daryl got back to Tsutomu, the latter helped him remove his armor, dropping the pieces onto the ground and pulling a brand new set out of his Magic Bag for him to put on.

“It seems like such a waste to switch my armor now… considering that Sir Dorren hand-crafted everything.”

“Your last set WAS all busted up, though — surely he’s happy to see it get used as much as it could be, don’t you think? …Anddd you’re all set. [[Haste]], [[Protect]].”

After equipping Daryl with the spare set of armor and confirming that there was no problem with it, Tsutomu returned to his post and continued providing support for his team. As he cast buffing and healing spells for everyone, he also kept a careful watch on the Mount Golem, the movements of which were completely different from what it had started the battle with.

――▽▽――

Tsutomu looked on as Hannah and Amira did their things, with the former racking up her skill combo count from zero again to boost the power of her [[Count Buster]], and the latter joining in on attacking the Mount Golem. At this point, the Mount Golem was starting to show signs of it preparing a powerful special move. For this particular one, the telegraph was in its eyes, which were turning upward instead of staying locked on to Hannah.

“It’s about to use a wide-area attack! You three, move away as fast as you can! Daryl, get over here!”

This particular move was naturally of the fire element, and it was so much more powerful than the Fire Dragon’s breath attacks that even the Red-thread Fire Coat could not defend against it. Despite its power and the wide area it covered, however, it took the monster only thirty seconds to wind up, so it was difficult for an Explorer to escape out of its range unless their AGI rating was B or higher.

Other Clans had faced great difficulties dealing with the wide-area attack, too. Ealdred Crow had used specialized equipment for defense and managed to survive by the skin of their teeth. Silver Beast had relied on Lorena using her Conykin speed to dash out of its range, then having her revive the fallen teammates while the other surviving members tried their best to pull aggro away from her.

As for Absolute Helix, Diniel and Hannah’s high AGI ratings meant they could get out of range just fine, and Amira could also make it as long as she put away her greatsword. Tsutomu and Daryl’s AGI ratings were too low for them to escape, however. Without taking any countermeasures, they were sure to both die — and Tsutomu’s death would mean they could not be revived, making it virtually impossible for the team to achieve victory from that point on.

The former three, after being buffed with [[Haste]], started to retreat. Tsutomu and Daryl moved away together as far as they could, luring the handful of remaining Golems along with them. Tsutomu then spread out his Scorchstone Robe and called Daryl over to him.

“Come on, huddle up!”

“It smells… kinda stinky, Sir Tsutomu,” Daryl said after sniffing the sweat-damped Scorchstone Robe.

“Say that again and I’m not letting you in,” Tsutomu lashed back without skipping a beat.

“Aw, don’t be so stingy.”

Daryl lowered his brows, having wanted the banter to go on a bit longer so that he could crack jokes back at Tsutomu. He proceeded to hold his own knees, curling up into a ball before moving behind Tsutomu’s robe.

Daryl’s heavy armor may be resistant against heat beams, but it had been shown beforehand that even Ealdred Crow’s specialized equipment was not enough to completely defend against this move, with Stephanie being on the verge of death by the end of it due to her low VIT. As such, just to be perfectly safe, Tsutomu wrapped Daryl along with himself in his Scorchstone Robe and waited for the enemy to unleash its attack.

Eventually, the Mount Golem let loose the heat beam that it had been condensing within its red upturned eyes. It turned into a heat wave that spread out all around the boss monster, burning and breaking apart even its Golem minions down on the ground.

Tsutomu and Daryl, huddling together and holding on to the Scorchstone Robe, were hit by the heat wave and subsequently blown away by the wind pressure. They braced against the impact while keeping themselves airborne, and after the wind subsided, Tsutomu waited a few moments before letting go of his robe.

“All right, we’re both safe.” He then let out a sigh of relief.

“Whoa…” Daryl held his mouth shut in horror upon seeing the aftermath: absolutely everything in the blast area melted into burning mush.

The blast had not only caused the Mount Golem’s whole body to turn molten red, but also rendered it permanently unable to spawn additional Golems.

Of the three others who had moved away far enough to be out of range, Hannah and Amira were shocked by the resulting scenery, while Diniel looked on with great interest. The Mount Golem currently had its head down and was immobile, as if it had expended too much energy. This was in fact due to the recoil from unleashing its attack, and it would stay this way for a decent amount of time. The next time it unleashed its heat wave, however, it would not be stunned like this again. This was the last moment of the whole battle during which the team could take a break.

And so Tsutomu let everyone rest; he passed them cooled water, salted candy, and some snacks as he talked to them,

“First of all, we’re in the final stretch now. There aren’t any smaller Golems to worry about anymore — just the Mount Golem itself. When it moves again, it’ll be much faster than before, and may even whip out moves that we never knew it could do. We all need to keep our guard up — especially you, Hannah.”

“Got it, Teach.”

“Going forward from this point, always assume that you won’t have much solid ground to stand on. Everyone except Diniel, keep yourselves airborne with [[Fly]]. Diniel, you can use your ice arrows to secure some better foothold if you need to.”

“Mm-hm.”

Water and ice-elemental arrows could be shot at the molten ground to create a temporarily solid foothold, but most other Clans would not count it as an option due to the high costs doing so would incur. Diniel could also shoot arrows while using [[Fly]], of course, but she wanted to prioritize accuracy — which was naturally higher when she was standing on the ground.

“Amira, you can go ahead and use [[Dragon Form]], but don’t push yourself too hard. Daryl, I’m counting on you to assist Hannah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, sir!”

“All right, I think that’s about it. If we can get past this phase, victory is pretty much ours. Hang in there.”

“Hell yeah!”

“Ohh…”

Hannah answered cheerfully, while Diniel pumped up her fist, her voice lacking in motivation. The Mount Golem started running toward the team, swinging its arms like a marathon runner; Tsutomu prompted everyone to disperse to their respective positions.

Diniel began shooting ice arrows all over the ground to secure herself some foothold, while Hannah went ahead to pull the Mount Golem’s aggro. The monster’s now-molten red body was much more susceptible to damage than before, but the heat it radiated made it quite difficult to even get close to, so Hannah would have to wait until it was hit by some ice-elemental ranged attacks first.

Furthermore, the Mount Golem’s speed was now extraordinarily high. The way it moved was almost no different from those of a human putting all their strength into swatting some flying ants. Hannah proceeded to dodge all its attacks, albeit sweating bullets all the while due to how much faster they were compared to the previous phase.

The swings of the monster’s arms blasted out wind pressure at Hannah, but she was largely unaffected, flying backward without an issue. The Mount Golem then tried shooting its eye beams at her, but then she controlled her evasive movements with the wings on her back, successfully dodging them and flying up above the enemy’s head.

“[[Feather Dance]]!”

The skill she used caused the soft feathers on her back to scatter all over the place, clinging to the bodies of the enemies upon contact. The aim was to block the Mount Golem’s eyes, limiting its vision, and in turn preventing it from attacking accurately.

This skill worked well against the Mount Golem; in fact, it had been used by the Birdkin members of Silver Beast as well. Since Hannah was an evasion-based Tank with a wide range of other skills in her rotation, however, she could not use it too often due to mental energy cost concerns. As such, she had been saving it until the later phases of the battle.

The Mount Golem, quite annoyed by the blue feathers blocking its eyes, used both its hands to pick them out. Meanwhile, a blue arrow flew into the air and burst apart above its head, creating countless smaller arrows that rained down on the monster like a meteor shower. The ice-elemental arrows cooled down and hardened spots of its body, which Hannah proceeded to strike repeatedly. Amira followed Hannah’s lead, flying in with her greatsword on her shoulder, then bashing on the exposed spots with all her might.

Buffetted by all the attacks, the Mount Golem flailed around, shooting out eye beams all over the place, but everyone stayed calm and dodged them. Tsutomu had his Scorchstone Robe on, so he would not die even if he were to get hit. Daryl was slower than the others and did get hit a handful of times, but he did block all of those hits with his armor, taking care not to get shot in the head.

All in all, the beginning of this phase was going quite smoothly. The Mount Golem’s life force should be down to below thirty percent by now, and Tsutomu figured that victory was not far ahead — But as he thought that, the Mount Golem suddenly spread out its arms.

Having never seen this move before, Tsutomu narrowed his eyes in suspicion, while the Mount Golem jumped up with its arms and legs spread out wide.

“Wah-!”

Hannah, seeing the move as the Mount Golem trying to press its whole weight down on her, flew backward so quickly that one would think she had kicked away the air itself. The boss monster’s colossal body crashed onto the ground, raising a thunderous impact and blasting a great gust of wind, ultimately blowing Hannah away and causing her to spin uncontrollably in the air.

“OOOHHH!?”

Amira, despite being nearby, was not burned by the resulting lava splash — but she did also get blown away by the combination of wind pressure and sheer impact. Tsutomu had not gotten too close to it, so all he had to do was block the wind with his arms over his face. After that, he looked at the Mount Golem again and saw that it was lying face-down, flat on the ground.

“Damn, that thing really went apesh*t all of a sudden…” Tsutomu grumbled.

He had never seen this particular monster do this move before, both back in Live Dungeon and on this world’s God Pedestals. The Mount Golem pushed its hands on the ground to help itself quickly get up. Black rocks and traces of lava could be seen adhering to the front side of its red body.

“OOOHHH! HERE I GOOOOOO!”

“Ah, wait-“

Diniel grabbed Hannah’s arm to stop her, but she shook Diniel’s hands off and rushed toward the Mount Golem. She was worried that if she did not hurry, she would lose her skill combo streak and have to build it up all over again. As Hannah unleashed a [[Combat Cry]] and moved in closer to the monster, Tsutomu called out to her, commanding her to get away, but she seemed to be too engrossed in the action to hear him.

[It’s… soaking up the smaller rocks? Is that how it heals itself?]

The black rocks were sinking into the Mount Golem’s body, as if they were melting away. As Tsutomu speculated on the effects of this never-before-seen action, the Mount Golem pushed out its chest and folded its hands together over its eyes — a stance reminiscent of martial artists psyching themselves up.

“It’s doing something! Everyone, retreat now!” Tsutomu spoke up and rushed over to Daryl. At almost the same time, the Mount Golem swung down its arms and unfolded its hands.

Immediately following that, rocks — from gigantic boulders to little pebbles — shot out of the front side of its body like shotgun pellets, flying at everyone that it was currently facing.

“[[Barrier]]!”

Tsutomu managed to avoid the larger ones that came his way, then he cast [[Barrier]] to block the smaller ones. Fortunately, the buckshot neither lasted long nor unleashed too many pellets, so Tsutomu came out of it completely unharmed.

Near him, Daryl was also unharmed by the rock bullets thanks to the [[Barrier]] spell. Tsutomu quickly ascended higher into the sky to get a clear view of the situation. Diniel and Amira had been blown quite far away by the wind blast, and they seemed to have suffered some scratches, perhaps from being hit by the smaller rocks.

Hannah had been last seen moving in to pull the Mount Golem’s aggro. Near the spot in the air where she should have been, there was a dispersing mass of light particles; Hannah herself was nowhere to be found.