Chapter 88: Solo Boss Raid
Tyler finally arrived at the Hexhorn territory, the ground shifting beneath his boots from soft grass into a wide stretch of barren earth, cracked and sun-hardened, packed everywhere with the deep prints of Hexhorn hooves pressed into the dried soil.
He walked slowly across it, turning his head from side to side as he searched for the flowers he needed, and the further forward he pushed, the more patches of green grass began breaking up through the barren ground beneath him, growing thicker and more frequent the deeper he went.
He remembered this place. This was where the Crimson Wolves had invaded, where he'd fought with the Crimson Alpha. The memory closed cold around his chest at the thought of it, his pulse ticking up hard enough to feel it beat once against his throat.
He had no wish to walk through something like that again, and yet here he was regardless, heading straight for another wolf pack, intent on ending another alpha the same way.
Something caught at the edge of his vision, and he turned hard to the left. His mouth fell open, eyebrows climbing as whatever he'd spotted came into full view somewhere off in the distance, and he quickened his stride toward it without a second thought.
"Wow." The word left him on a breath he hadn't meant to release, his eyes fixed wide and unmoving on what stretched out ahead of him. Patch after patch of vital flowers spread across the ground in front of him, clustered close together, no more than a single meter separating one bundle from the next, the whole field of them stretching out until the patches blurred together somewhere in the distance. It looked like there could be hundreds of them.
"That's a lot of them," he said, turning slowly to take in the full scope of it. Small system panels floated above each patch scattered through the field, every one of them reading the same two words: [vital flowers]. He muttered, "Extract," and every last flower shimmered a faint blue at once, a ripple of pale blue light sweeping across the whole field before all of them disappeared into his inventory together.
He opened the inventory panel, and a short laugh broke out of him, something warm spreading fast behind his ribs at the number waiting there: 348 flowers. *Awesome,* he thought. *System, craft 12 health potions.* The panel shifted in front of him: [CRAFTING]. A thin bar of blue light crept slowly across the display, filling in degree by degree. "Great, with this, I will be able to stand a chance against an entire pack on my own."
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL].
"Great," he said, already moving again. He tipped his head back to study the trees around him, searching out whichever one stood tallest, wanting a clear vantage point to spot where the other territories lay.
He remembered the black pillars of dark mana particles he'd seen from up high before, certain that was exactly where those territories would be marked out again. He pushed on a few steps further.
A small system panel floated into view above the bushes just ahead of him.
[Emerald Tree]
"An emerald tree," he read out loud. As he reached the bushes, he found behind them a low, dense shrub thick with neon green leaves, their color intense against the duller green surrounding it. "Wow, how did I get so lucky?" The words left him fast, his hand already reaching out for the leaves before he'd fully registered deciding to move it.
He closed his fingers around a handful, the texture soft and slightly cool against his skin, giving gently under the press of his fingers without tearing. *If I remember correctly, these are one of the main ingredients of making a mana potion. I should take them quickly.*
"Extract!" Every leaf on the bush shimmered blue at once and vanished into his inventory in a single breath of light. He straightened and checked the panel, the new total glowing back at him: 184 emerald leaves.
*Today's just my lucky day.* The instant the thought finished forming, he frowned at it, some old instinct warning him against getting too comfortable, he still had a mission ahead of him he hadn't finished, and there was no telling yet what waited on the other side of it.
He turned toward the tallest tree he could find and started climbing, catching the lowest branch and hauling himself up, working higher and higher until he broke through into open air at the very peak. Hundreds of monster zone trees rolled out beneath him from up there, a canopy thick enough to swallow the ground completely from view, and he activated Mana Sight.
And then he saw them, the huge, wide pillars of dark mana rising up out of the green below, thick columns of churning black particles thinning and fading until they disappeared somewhere close to a hundred feet up. But something was wrong with the sight of it. *Wait, this isn't right. There were more pillars last time. Is it because those bosses are dead? Now that I think about it,* he looked around, scanning the horizon for anything he might have missed.
*Since I'm in the monster territory, there should be dark mana forming a pillar, but there's not.* He looked down instead, and caught sight of dark particles drifting slowly downward through the air below him, sinking soft and steady like ash after a fire, dissolving into the canopy before they ever climbed.
Three pillars stood out clearly in front of him even so, one off to the right, one off to the left, and one directly in the middle, sitting slightly closer than the other two. He let out a slow breath. "I don't even know if that's the right one. I just ran into an entirely different boss monster." He decided on the middle pillar anyway and started climbing back down the tree, slow and careful, branch by branch, until only the lowest one remained above him.
He let go from there and dropped the rest of the way, landing hard enough that the ground gave slightly under the impact, dust kicking up faintly around his boots before settling.
The system panel appeared without him saying a word to prompt it:
[CRAFTING]
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
Five vials, finished and waiting in his inventory. Another panel followed right behind it:
[MIXING COMPONENTS]
[CRAFTING]
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
Five mana potions, ready alongside them. *I need full mana to win this fight,* he thought.
Leather gloves materialized around his hands as he kept walking, and the thought of what he discovered earlier kept turning over and over in the back of his mind no matter how many times he tried pushing it aside to focus on the mission ahead of him instead.
His footsteps quickened on their own, some pull low in his gut telling him with a certainty he couldn't explain that he was closing in now, closer than he'd been all day.
His pace slowed again soon after. Movement broke out through the bushes Infront of him, several distinct sources of it crashing through the underbrush at once, and a low growl rolled out from somewhere close by, followed almost immediately by a short, pained cry that cut off far too fast to have ended naturally.
He circled wide and activated Mana Sight again, his eyebrows lifting at what came into view.
A whole cluster of mana cores scattered through the trees ahead of him, more of them than he'd expected to find in one place.
His heart picked up speed at the sight.
He counted around twenty-something of them glowing through the brush. He stepped back a half pace, breath catching hard in his throat at the sight of one core far larger than the rest.
He could see it clearly through the Mana Sight, dark mana coursing through the creature's entire body, feeding out from a core swollen far past what any of the others carried. It matched the Crimson Alpha almost exactly in size. This had to be the Gloomfang Alpha.
*This is the right place,* he thought grimly.
The silver bow materialized in his hands, an arrow already resting notched against the string. He drew it back, sighting down the shaft toward one of the lesser wolves, before a new thought cut through the motion.
*No, I should probably deal damage to the boss first.* The bow and arrow vanished on the thought, and the spear took their place in his grip instead. He pulled his arm back hard, tightening his hold on the shaft until his hand bulged with the strain, veins standing out stark and visible across the back of his skin. He activated his skill.
[RUSH]
His eyes lit with a deep blue glow, the light behind them swelling brighter as energy surged hard through every vein in his body, building like a volcano cracking open from somewhere far beneath the surface. He triggered the weapon's own skill next.
[Seven Strikes]
He clenched his jaw and drove the spear forward with everything he had, hurling it toward the Alpha in one single, committed motion. The force of the throw alone was enough to tear through the air around him, whipping his hair back hard against his skull and ripping a wide gust straight through the grass at his feet, uprooting it in a spray that scattered outward, tearing through the hidden bushes nearby with a violent rush of wind strong enough to bend their branches flat before letting them snap back upright.
The Alpha stood turned to the side, caught with no warning at all, no time to react before the spear closed the distance and struck it hard into the meat of its shoulder, the tip driving clean through and breaking out the other side in one unbroken motion. A deep, growling howl of pain tore loose from the creature, rolling out across the trees and echoing back through the whole stretch of the monster zone before it finally faded.
The system panel appeared in front of Tyler: [Silver Spear has suffered too much damage. Durability, 0%]
The silver spear disintegrated into a scatter of fine blue dust right where it stood lodged in the wound, and blood welled up fast from the open gash left behind, running dark down the Alpha's shoulder. Before the rest of the pack could fully process what had just happened, they broke into open panic all around it, scattering in every direction at once, barking and snapping, some already turning to charge back toward the exact spot the spear had been thrown from.
Then an arrow cut through the air, driving hard and fast, dead straight for the Alpha.
Just inches from its side, the arrow burst in
to a blinding flash of white light, tearing through the sight of every last creature caught within it.