Chapter 124: Sly-rak!
The tension hung in the air as the group stood at the edge of the boss’s territory. No one moved at first, and the massive wooden T-Rex loomed in the center.
It stood there at the heart of its graveyard clearing, hollow green eyes tracking each of them in slow succession, and the ground vibrated beneath its weight with each exhale.
From its large nostrils, spores drifted in lazy clouds, catching the light of the two suns before dissolving into the air.
Zoro, however, was a different matter entirely.
Whatever composure he’d maintained across three days of shepherding two humans through a hell gate dungeon dissolved the moment his eyes landed on the Sly-rak.
His patterns flared bright, and the calmness he’d carried was gone, replaced by anger. He pointed at the creature and the word that came out of him wasn’t a battle cry so much as an accusation.
"Veth’ra koss!" He said in his native tongue, and he was already moving before the sound finished leaving his mouth.
Roots erupted from the earth in thick coiling ropes, driving toward the Sly-rak from three directions simultaneously.
The creature looked at them. Then snapped through every single one without slowing, the wood splintering against its trunk-muscle frame like dry kindling.
Its massive body advanced on Zoro, each step shaking the ground. When it brought its gigantic foot down, Zoro leapt out of the way at the last second.
Refusing to retreat, he transformed both his hands into trees that grew out and slammed upward, driving into the Sly-rak’s chest and jaw with the force of battering rams.
The creature caught his wooden limbs in its wide jaws, bit down, and pulled, lifting Zoro off the ground in the process, before flinging him sideways into the ribcage of a long-dead monster skeleton.
He hit it hard, scattering the bones. Then he slid down between two enormous ribs and when he looked up, a curved rib the length of a building was already collapsing toward him.
A force field immediately manifested around him, absorbing the crash. The rib bounced off it and the field held.
Sam stood thirty meters back with both arms raised, one star burning in each eye, visibly straining from the output.
Zoro blinked at the shield around him. Then at Sam. And immediately, he was on his feet, charging the Sly-rak again before anyone could suggest otherwise.
This time, the tail of the monster caught him mid-run. The T-Rex barely registered the threat before its massive tail whipped around in a blur, slamming him sideways into the dirt once more.
""...Yeah. This one’s personal," Kurt observed from the sidelines, and moved.
He and Cassandra entered from opposite sides simultaneously, because they’d stopped needing to discuss that kind of thing somewhere around the second month of working together.
Kurt came in low, Cassandra came in high, and the Sly-rak had to decide which one to address first.
It chose none of them. It went after Zoro who could barely stand and with a clear intent to pulverize him, it brought its foot down on him.
Sam saw this just in time and threw up another telekinetic forcefield around Zoro, and the barrier immediately crackled under the immense pressure of the gigantic foot pressing down.
Sam’s face twisted with visible strain with sweat beading on her forehead as the field began to spiderweb with cracks. But because of her desperate hold, the foot hovered a heartbeat longer than it should have.
The instant the shield shattered, Kurt blurred in at superhuman speed, snatching Zoro clear of the descending stomp, and the ground exploded where the foot landed, sending shockwaves rippling outward.
In that same chaotic moment, Cassandra hung at the apex with her sword pointed skyward, then brought it slashing down.
While the T-Rex remained distracted by the narrow escape below, a gigantic, meteor-sized ball of ice manifested instantly, plummeting toward the beast.
Cassandra descended with it, arms spread, smiling the way she always smiled when something was actually worth her attention.
The Sly-rak looked up and tried to lurch aside, but its leg was already encased in a thick sheath of Cassandra’s ice, rooting it in place.
It roared in fury, and the shockwave alone shattered the icy restraint on its foot while pulverizing the incoming meteor into harmless shards.
Yet the roar did not stop. It flared outward in visible waves, shoving aside debris and hurling Cassandra backward through the air.
She crossed her arms over her chest to cushion the blast, laughing even as she was driven backwards across the sky.
"Yes!" she said, eyes bright, adjusting mid-air. "This is good!" She shouted, her voice ringing with pure exhilaration.
Kurt ducked the shrapnel, felt the shockwave roll over him, and rejoined the fight properly after that.
What followed was series of actions designed to press the dungeon boss into a corner as Zoro charged the creature a third time, bleeding from his temple and not caring.
Jerry offered what little support he could by spitting goo at the creature’s eyes and buying three seconds of blindness that Kurt and Cassandra used to drive it back twenty meters.
Multiple fists of ice formed above Cassandra and shot forward, while Kurt came around its flank with electromagnetic force pulling at the metal deposits in its woody bones to slow its rotation.
Morra, throughout all of this, conjured a flat rock from the earth, sat on it with her legs crossed, and watched with the detached interest of someone who wasn’t necessarily invested in the outcome.
Then the Sly-rak retaliated with a slow exhale. A sustained release of green mist poured from its mouth and nostrils in a continuous stream that spread outward and didn’t dissipate.
It hung in the air and thickened, coating everything within thirty meters in a slow rolling fog.
Jerry went down first, mid-sentence. Then Cassandra swayed, her sword wavering as drowsiness clawed at her. "What... is this?" she murmured, fighting to stay upright.
Zoro, however, had already succumbed, dropping to one knee, then both as his patterns dimmed.
Next was Kurt. He staggered as the spores pressed down, but the system’s knockout protocol kicked in like a stubborn override, keeping him groggy yet awake.
Sam too was still standing. Her Heavenly Resistance did what it was supposed to, causing the spores to drift around her without effect.
Across the clearing, Morra sat on her rock, unaffected and unbothered amid the haze.
Due to the spores’ relentless spread, only Kurt, Sam, and Morra remained fully conscious. His eyes darted across the fallen team and he yelled towards Morra, "a little help!"
"Nah, I’m good" she said, giving them a thumbs up. "You guys got this."
It fell to Kurt and Sam now to shield the rest, and Kurt, ever the improviser, figured the creature would also have the same weakness to fire just as Zoro’s trees did.
So he channeled a burst of methane gas and ignited it into an immense inferno that roared down upon the T-Rex like hell itself.
To his surprise, the creature answered in kind, unleashing a breath of its own flames that collided with his in a massive explosion and kept advancing towards Kurt.
The blast enveloped him, sending him tumbling backward, and the shockwave only scattered the spores farther, thickening the poisonous veil.
"What, no wings?" Kurt said to the T-Rex from the ground, body smoking as he struggled to get back up.
The T-Rex pressed its advantage, swinging its tail in a devastating arc aimed squarely at the cluster of downed allies, but its tail suddenly glowed blue and stopped its descent.
Sam had put everything she had into holding back the attack of the Sly-rak, extending her influence towards the rest of its body as the whole of the creature was now glowing as well.
All she could do was hold the creature back, and even that was faltering. The Sly-rak pushed through, roaring in defiance.
The blue glow flickered, then vanished, and Sam collapsed to the floor on her ass. The boss monster loomed closer and Cassandra struggled to rise, limbs still heavy with drowsiness.
She attempted to put up a dome of ice but failed. The tension coiled tighter as the monster’s jaws parted for what promised to be a finishing blow.
"Looks like they made it just in time," Morra said, folding her arms, and in that exact instant, two things unfolded in perfect unison.
A soothing green aura bloomed outward, enveloping every fighter in its gentle radiance. The sleeping effects of the spores dissolved instantly, restoring clarity and vigor while forming a protective barrier against further exposure.
And at the same moment, taking the Sly-rak by surprise, a figure plummeted from above, wielding a gigantic sword forged entirely of swirling, crimson blood.
The blood-forged blade slammed into the T-Rex’s skull with earth-shaking force, driving the monster’s head straight into the ground and leaving it dazed, stunned, and momentarily helpless.
Dust settled, revealing the newcomers straightened amid the chaos. It was Lizzy and Eli, finally present and ready to turn the tide.
"Took us a bit," she said cheerfully while breathing hard. "But we’re here now!"
Beside her, Eli slammed his gigantic red blade into the ground in order to adjust his cuffs. And not just green but also a yellow aura surrounded the edges of his coat.
"My... such weakness is unbecoming of a Masquerade," Eli said, glancing at Lizzie with appreciation.
Wherever the hell they had been, their arrival marked the turning point. Kurt exhaled a shaky laugh, flicking ash from his cigarette as he watched the Sly-rak begin to rise again slowly.