Chapter 166: Defeating The Boss Monster(2K Words)
Both werewolves were able to avoid the boss monster in the nick of time, their bodies blurring as they landed at different sections of the chamber.
Hayley arrived in a sudden dash before the monster, having chased after it the moment it went for her brother.
Her fist lunged forward, releasing a devastating shockwave cannon directly at the Aranchras. The force of the attack made the entire chamber rumble, with cracks spreading across the floor and walls.
But the creature avoided it all by going intangible once more, and phasing into the ground.
"Tch." Hayley clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Ethan, suspended mid-air by the Ars Levitas spell, reacted the instant the boss vanished.
He stretched both hands in different directions toward the members of his team and cast another space element spell.
Since Percival, Aliyah, and Wilson were all within the effective range of the Ars Levavius spell, an invisible force took hold of them. Their feet lifted off the ground as they were pulled upward into the air against their will.
Arael, acting in perfect sync with Ethan’s command, separated portions of Runic Chroma from her skin, solidifying the ink into three circular platforms that appeared below each of the raised Clustervayne members, granting them stable footing.
Percival landed on his platform and immediately looked down at his feet. "Okay, this is weird."
Aliyah crouched on hers, testing its stability with careful shifts of her weight. Although the platform still held firm.
Wilson landed with perfect balance, with no expression on his face as he glanced down at the ink quietly.
The Aranchras re-emerged at another point in the chamber. And waiting for it were Hayley in her full white wolf form and all of Ethan’s legendary summons.
With everyone at potential risk now lifted to an unreachable height, Ethan focused his attention on the battle about to unfold below.
Then, the combined assault began.
Five assailants moved as one, coordinating their strikes against the boss monster. The Aranchras responded by moving continuously throughout the chamber, traveling toward different points through the ground or walls and re-emerging in unpredictable locations.
It could even surface on vertical walls, maintaining its hold on those surfaces as though gravity meant nothing to it.
Ethan followed the battle’s pace and every minute detail with the Eyes of the Sage active, reading meaning into every outcome.
He had also mentally directed his summons to be careful with their engagement, ensuring that a repeat of the earlier cross-fire incident, where Bierzim had taken Joe’s bullet, would not happen again.
This was why no two summons attacked the creature from opposing sides at the same time.
Already, Ethan had developed a working understanding of the creature’s ability. It could put its body into a state where it could not interact with any form of matter.
This was exactly why his Stillbind spell had failed against it earlier as the spell could only bind movement for things that had physical form.
Ethan knew the boss monster definitely regained a solid state when it wanted to land an attack, but he still had to figure out the exact nature of its intangibility and predict where it would resurface next.
However, after watching the battle unfold for about three minutes, he had begun to deduce a pattern.
The creature became tangible after a certain amount of time before hitting a cooldown period where it was forced to remain solid.
There had been one moment when they nearly got lucky.
The monster had resurfaced at a distant point on the ground, far away from its attackers. But from her aerial vantage point, Arael had a clear view of the entire battlefield.
She spotted where it would resurface instantly and launched a projectile toward it.
The Aranchras still possessed incredibly high reactive speed and had leaped out of position just in time to avoid the ink projectile.
By the time Joe’s bullet traveled through the air to strike at it while it was mid-air, the phasing ability had returned. And the bullet sailed past through its translucent form.
This reasoning about a set duration and a cooldown period seemed correct, especially when Ethan remembered the creature doing the same thing with Bierzim earlier. It had tilted its head to physically dodge the demon’s punch, and only after that motion had its phasing ability returned, allowing Joe’s bullet to pass through.
Ethan made mental timestamps between how long the creature could maintain an intangible state before being forced to go solid again during its cooldown.
He narrowed it down to roughly a fifteen-second window from when it let attacks phase through it, to slipping into the ground and resurfacing at a completely unexpected point.
Then he narrowed the cooldown duration to about a single second. No more than that.
Additionally, he noted that within this fifteen-second window, the Aranchras could choose to go solid and attack voluntarily. But after doing so, it would still obey the same one-second cooldown before phasing again.
The first attack the monster had launched on Ethan himself was proof. The time between when it dashed toward him and when it attacked had not covered the full fifteen-second timeframe.
But whether the creature chose to exit its phased state only when it wanted to attack, or if it was intentionally resetting its ability timer early, remained unknown.
Which meant the only timeframe that could be trusted with certainty was that one-second cooldown.
With the timings potentially figured out, what remained largely uncertain was where the Aranchras would resurface. It emerged in the most unexpected places every single time.
In fact, after surviving Arael’s earlier attacks, the creature had reduced how often it resurfaced from the ground or from any angle that could fall within the angel’s immediate line of sight.
It was a smart creature.
For instance, it could resurface from a point along the distant walls of the chamber so far off that by the time anyone’s eyes adjusted to that location and directed a follow-up attack, its cooldown would have already ended.
Joe, the sniper summon, had come close a few times. But having to constantly refocus and adjust his aim to different points caused a lag time that the boss exploited.
Then something happened.
Or rather, almost happened.
The Aranchras saw an opportunity with Nina.
The half-dragon summon had moved some distance apart from the main group of assailants, creating just enough separation.
The boss monster then surfaced from a section of wall to Nina’s right, launching a thrust attack aimed directly at her torso.
She caught the movement at the very edge of her vision and stepped back at the last possible moment, letting the blade slicing through empty air where she had just been.
However, in the same instant that she stepped back, Nina had also swung her longsword at the Aranchras in a counter-attack.
Unfortunately, her blade passed right through its translucent form without resistance.
The monster slipped back into the wall surface immediately and traveled out of sight again.
That counter-swing would have been the perfect response on any other day against any other opponent. But against this creature, it revealed something important.
That the Aranchras would not actually exit its phased state until the very last moment, when it was certain its attack would connect.
It also meant the monster would only ever attack when it had openings like the one it had just attempted with Nina.
Ethan’s eyes then widened as an idea formed in his mind. He knew exactly how to catch this thing.
-
In that moment, all of Ethan’s summons received an instruction directly into their minds through the bond connection.
And immediately after that, Ethan vanished into stealth, concealing both his magical signature and physical presence entirely.
Percival was the first to notice, with his eyes widening slightly. Then he smiled and turned his attention back to the battlefield below.
"Where did he suddenly go?" Aliyah asked, looking around in confusion.
Percival still kept his gaze fixed on the chamber when he said, "Let him."
He knew his best friend had just worked something out.
Down below, the legendary summons began moving in the most subtle way possible. All of them except Bierzim started separating and clustering toward that specific section of the chamber where the Aranchras had just attempted its attack on Nina.
But they did so carefully, turning their heads toward different corners and sections of the walls as though they were still actively searching for the monster.
The movements looked natural, uncoordinated.
Even Arael shifted her position in the air, angling herself toward the same general direction while her eyes scanned other areas.
Hayley was about to walk away from her current position and head in a different direction when Joe raised his hand slightly in front of her and shook his head.
"There’s a plan in motion," the hitman said quietly. "Stay close."
Hayley still looked puzzled, but she slowed her pace and remained near Joe’s position.
The Aranchras watched from a distant corner on the surface of the wall, positioned almost at the point where the wall met what could be considered the ceiling of the chamber. Its clawed feet maintained perfect grip on the vertical surface.
It observed its attackers with that same tilted, mocking posture. They were searching in the direction it had just left. Most of them, anyway.
But one summon remained apart from the group, looking in a completely different direction.
Bierzim.
And ofcourse, it saw a new opening that had just presented itself.
The Aranchras then phased into the wall’s surface and traveled through it, moving silently toward its target.
It re-emerged directly behind Bierzim’s hulking form, rising from the wall in a smooth, fluid motion. Its sword was already thrust forward in perfect synchronization, aimed straight at the demon’s back.
The swords sank into Bierzim’s body while still in their intangible state, passing the summon’s flesh without resistance.
But it was in that split second after the blades had entered Bierzim’s torso that the Aranchras undid its phasing ability.
The swords became solid and Bierzim roared in absolute agony as the creature’s weapons manifested inside its body, tearing through internal organs and muscle tissue from within.
The Aranchras grinned and moved to pull its swords free and phase back into the wall.
But then it felt something.
A tight grip closed around its right wrist, holding it in place with absolute strength.
The creature turned its head to the right, only to find Ethan had materialized from stealth. His hand was clamped around the Aranchras’s wrist as he whispered coldly, "Bind."
The Stillbind spell activated at point-blank range.
And this time, with the creature in its solid, physical form during the one-second cooldown period, the spell took hold.
The Aranchras froze completely in place, and even its head could not turn.
Ragnarok was then called out of the inventory in the same instant, materializing in a flash of light beside Ethan.
Then it moved on its own, cleaved through the air in a single, clean arc, guided by its Sentience feature and Ethan’s will acting in perfect unison.
It cut through the Aranchras’s neck without resistance, and the creature’s head separated from its body cleanly.
It rolled across the floor, coming to a stop several meters away.
But the headless body remained frozen in place for one more second, held upright by the Stillbind spell.
Then the spell’s duration ended, and the corpse collapsed backward, crashing onto the ground with a heavy thud.
—-
A/N: Well guys, tell me if Ethan did well.
I will continue with bonus Chapters soon after for PS Goal. I just need to take a short break today.