The boss giant mist snake, oddly enough, isn't as giant as its cousins. Rather than being around two meters thick, it is only a meter thick, and the roar it lets out as it spots them is a bit more pitiful, leaving the group entirely confused.
The water in the pool is quickly changed into a mist, and the group uses their usual ways to get rid of it, only to see that the distance the boss can keep its mist from dissipating is far greater than that of the lesser variants.
Even with all of the group using their skills, the mist spreads out a good five meters from the boss, and as the group sits back, waiting for Julie to let out her array of images. This time, Sen notes that when he goes to sense where they are with the wind, the air flows around them the same way it would around a real human.
Sen nods, so she has fewer images, but they won't be sensed by things like mist or wind. Julie had probably learned this array after the wind bears had simply ignored her images. The group follows after the images, cutting into the snake as it snaps at the fakes.
Their blades barely pierce the scales with their normal strikes, and everyone is forced to start using their abilities, only to grimace as even empowered, the blows only cut a bit through them. Sen realizes he needs to get a decent B ranked skill at this point if he doesn't want to start relying on his combination skill.
While the combination skill he's decided to call Bloody Peak may be powerful, it also requires him to go back to the mental state he'd had for so long in his past life. Wanting nothing but death for something would be going completely against his determination to live a good life as Sen, and he has no intentions of living his current life the way he'd spent his past.
The group continues their barrage of attacks on the monster, but they can't seem to hit the same spot in a consistent fashion, the boss moving in a slippery manner to keep them facing undamaged scales. It constantly whips at them with its tail, or snaps at either them or the images with its teeth.
The group is doing ok, until the mist starts to condense, dozens of balls of water appearing around the boss instead of the white mist. Everyone is instantly put on guard, when a stream of water streaks towards Lynna making a high pitched sound.
Sen wonders how she manages to get her shield in place in time until he realizes she is probably just sensing the water, but even as she blocks it, it pierces her shield. Even with the force reduced by that, her shoulder gets a blue line in it, and her shield arm starts to sag.
The group starts running all over trying to dodge the constant barrage of water attacks that follow, everyone ending up with a few cuts. They start to worry as the barrage of attacks continue, but let out a deep breath when the blobs of water around the snake fall to the floor, and the boss itself seems to collapse a little bit, clearly out of energy.
The group takes advantage of the opening and goes in with all their power. The boss in its lethargic state is no longer able to keep up its quick twisting motions that had stopped them from focusing on a certain part of its scales, and the group soon gets through them and into its flesh.
The boss seems to regain a bit of its vigor as the first blue line actually gets into it, and lets out another of its small roars. Its energy seems to continually grow as it becomes wounded, and the group is soon having trouble hitting the snake in the parts with broken scales again.
They aren't able to kill it by the time that the blobs of water start to reform around the boss, and this time, everyone is quite exhausted from fighting the boss. Their dodging this time has a lot less energy, and Jennifer and Lynna take major wounds, Lynna gaining a hole in her calf, and Jennifer one in her shoulder, the blue light denoting wounds showing through their bodies.
Eventually, Lynna gets absolutely sick of dodging and waiting for it to run out of energy.
"Sen! Can you use that skill you used on the last boss?"
Sen grimaces, but yells in the affirmative, his voice barely above the sound of the water streams that impact on the floors around them. Lynna signals Sen to get behind her, and simply charges at the boss as Sen sets his mindset.
Sen stays behind her a she blocks the beams of water coming at her, taking deep wounds in order for Sen to get close. Once they get close to the boss, it focuses multiple beams towards her and Sen, and she goes to block all of them.
She can only block a couple with her shield though, and as she tries to block the last with her sword, she loses her hand at the wrist. Sen is enraged by this, it may be a game, but his sister just lost her hand. Sen howls as he brings his sword down with a desire to kill the monster, the bloody peak and clouds forming a deathly image as his sword slams into the spine of the monster just beneath its neck. The sword goes through half its body, and the snake falls limp.
Sen stabs it a few times in the wound, more to get out some of his rage rather than to check that it's dead, but as its body disappears into blue sparkles, he turns to Lynna, to see her smiling.
"The hell are you smiling for?"
"We beat it!"
"And you lost your hand."
She waves her stub around. "It'll be back in six hours. I'll just log off for a while."
Sen shakes his head, his rage dissipating in front of his cheerful sister. "I'll log off as well once we get out. I think we could all use a break."
The rest of the group nods in agreement. They limp over to the teleportation array, and Xue drives the vehicle to the road. Lynna spends the entire time pouting she doesn't get to drive due to her missing a hand, making light of the situation. Once they reach the road they fast travel to Falan and log off.