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Meliadol hurried toward the marker on his map that represented Darlia, frantically watching her health bar the entire time. It hovered steadily in the yellow, only slightly below half-health, but a cross-shaped buff icon next to her name indicated a regeneration potion hard at work.
Just a little longer, he pleaded silently.
Just a bit more time.
As he neared, he couldn't help but to be impressed by the destruction wrought by the beast. Massive tracts of land were uprooted, as if a bulldozer had run rampant, pushing over trees and gouging deep scars into the ground.
The current trail broke out into an expansive clearing and on the opposite end a massive pine toppled as a bellow of pain rang out in the still forest air. Meliadol had just started toward it when Darlia came barreling out of the forest, slingshot propelled by her bandages, barely ahead of the boss.
"I'm here!"
"Glad you could make it." She greeted Meliadol, strikingly calm as the boss opened its cavernous maw and plunged forward, trying to engulf the Blade Dancer.
One of her living bandages wrapped around a tree, pulling her out of the way at the last moment. The beast twisted and a long tail came screaming around, narrowly clipping her, sending the Blade Dancer skipping along the ground.
But Darlia recovered magnificently, spiking her katana into the soil, slowing her momentum as another ribbon-like bandage shot out, catching a nearby tree to yank her out of the boss's followup attack. The change of direction was so abrupt that the beast slid past, and there was a brilliant flash of light as Darlia activated a sword skill, cutting a deep gash into its flank.
The blood curdling roar that followed stalled Meliadol in his tracks, his boots skidding on the soft forest loam as he came to a complete stop. The beast loomed over him like a mountain, and the misshapen head tilted inward, its one amber eye now focused directly on him, narrowing.
"Don't just fucking stand there!" Darlia yelled as the she dropped to the ground, two swords at the ready.
But Meliadol was frozen in this monster's shadow, his sword halfway out of its sheath. Every instinct in his body was screaming, telling him to run. His legs shook, yet his feet remained rooted to the ground, torn with indecision.
This was a game, wasn't it?
Every sense rebelled against the simple logic of truth. It is one thing to state it calmly, and it is another to stare into the eyes of a monster, to see the pupils dilate in recognition, to smell the fetid stench of rotted flesh from its breath, and claim it wasn't real.
He had little doubt that if he laid his head upon that muscled chest, that he could hear the heart beating underneath.
But one thought pushed its way to the forefront of his mind: 'Darlia was depending on him'.
He didn't want to let his guildmate down.
Meliadol took a trembling step forward, slogging through the terror that made him inanimate, fighting despite every cell of his body demanding otherwise. This was a fucking game, damn it! The first step soon became a second, then a third, and in a perfect moment he broke free of the shackles, his sword out and a wild cry of battle on his lips.
Out of the corner of his sight, he saw the Blade Dancer respond to his challenge, throwing her two katanas in the air and unsheathing her last remaining pair, the red-haired woman taking up a familiar stance that made his heart skip a beat.
Darlia, no longer stalling for his arrival, began her graceful dance alongside Meliadol's offensive, and, for lack of a better term, she was brilliant. Always in the right place, at the right time, her spinning, almost hypnotic, swords leading the way.
She was a joy to work with, but doing so revealed his own painfully obvious shortcomings. No matter the action he took, Darlia was there to support him, weaving in and out of his clumsy attacks to shore up any weaknesses. With her guidance the pair was far more than the sum of their parts.
But even with her aid, a deviously angled tailswipe finally caught Meliadol, slamming into his chest and bouncing him off the trunk of a nearby oak. Stars spun around his head, the stun status flashing in the corner of his vision, and he could only watch his own fate unfold as the boss reared up high on its hind legs, intent on crushing and killing him where he lay.
Shink!
A blinding flash of light, and when his vision cleared, Darlia was standing in front of him, hair wild, a savior in the truest sense of the word as the boss rocked back, landing hard on its rear. Meliadol recognized the skill she had used from her duel with Dethgargar. Disengage, a long cooldown skill that allowed for a perfect parry against most attacks.
"Drink a potion!" Darlia growled before rushing back in.
With the stun debuff wearing off, Meliadol didn't need to be told twice, rolling to his feet and quick-grabbing a regeneration potion from his inventory. As the familiar light-green glow took effect, he gave silent thanks to Bast for drilling into him the importance of learning the system.
A couple ticks of healing and he was up to fighting strength, jumping back into the fight to help Darlia. Working together, they slowly wore down the boss, and even though the enrage timer at ten percent threw a small wrench into their rhythm, with the boss sprouting two poisonous tentacles on its shoulders, they managed to continue whittling down the beast's hitpoints, picking away at it like two sparrows harrowing a hawk.
With one final stab the boss gave a half-hearted swipe at Meliadol and flopped over, dead, blood pouring from countless wounds.
"Holy shit!? We did it! We actually did it! " Meliadol allowed elation to take over, dropping to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut.
Even Darlia looked relieved, letting her swords fall to the ground mid-dance. "You did good." she said simply, coming to a stop beside him.
Meliadol laughed weakly at that. It wasn't true in the slightest, but it was kind of her to humor him. Still, he didn't correct her. He couldn't, really. His body just felt so damn drained, his limbs heavy, weighed down to the point where it was a struggle just to hold himself upright. With all the adrenaline flowing through him, he had to consciously suppress the shakes from taking over now that they had beaten the boss.
Darlia, on the other hand, was her typical stoic self, walking around and picking up her swords now that the fight was over. There wasn't the slightest tremble in her movements. Nothing at all to prove how backs-against-the-wall they had been seconds prior.
Still, Meliadol couldn't tear his eyes away from the spectacle of this massive monster dead in front of him, taken down, in part, with his own hands. It wasn't the first boss he had fought. That honor belonged to the Halloween event boss, but this was the first one that felt like a boss fight and unlike the zone boss, he wasn't just a bystander.
After getting her swords, Darlia made her way over to the boss, walking around it contemplatively. Meliadol now watched her with a raised eyebrow. The Blade Dancer seemed really interested in it for whatever reason, occasionally poking the corpse with the sheath of one of her swords.
"What's up?" With a grunt of effort, he shakily stood up and joined her.
"I've never seen this boss before." Darlia said, "I like it a lot. Solid design. Lost a lot of HP learning its attack patterns though."
Solid design? Meliadol looked down and wondered if he was seeing the same thing she was. While alive, it was terrifying, but now that it was dead, it looked like a weird amalgamation of a boar, a shark, and a bear all rolled into one creature. The mouth was the most unnerving thing about it, the slit running further back than what was natural, almost bisecting the body to the midway point.
Maybe she meant game design.
"You've never fought this boss? Like at all?"
Darlia shook her head, "No, but that's how it is with a lot of secret bosses. Sometimes you have to trigger certain conditions to get them to appear, like doing a big combo on a normal boss or finding a hidden room. Stuff like that. Other times its just random."
Meliadol kicked the corpse, "Lucky us, I guess."
"I hope they'll maybe do a special event and reuse the monster model again. Seems a shame to put this much work on something just to use it once." Darlia turned back to him, "Well, are you gonna check the loot? I want to see what dropped."
Oh, right. The loot. Meliadol had forgotten that since he was the party leader, it was up to him to distribute the boss loot. "Let me see here…" He opened up his UI, a window popping up. Meliadol frowned.
"Well?"
"Only a single thing dropped." Meliadol screenshared it with Darlia.
Corrupted Scarf of the Banished Beast
Darlia rolled her eye, "I figured it'd be something like this. This secret boss is too random to make spawn reliably, so the reward would just be an aesthetic item. I pass on it."
"You sure?"
"I don't really care about items with no combat stats."
Meliadol nodded, clicking 'distribute loot' and selecting his own name in the drop-down menu. The scarf appeared in his arm. Rubbing the forest green fabric between his fingertips revealed the craftsmanship that went into its make, yet the edges were frayed, as if pock marked by acid. Holding it out before him, he found the item name also slightly misleading. It had a built-in hood two-thirds of the way up the main body of the scarf.
"Well, try it on." Darlia prompted.
He did just that, putting on the hood and wrapping the rest around himself before striking up a pose. "What do you think?"
She looked at him critically, "Not bad, but the color doesn't really match. I'd take it to a tailor when we get back and change it."
As the pair walked away, back to the entrance of the scenario, the corpse of the now looted boss began to break down into motes of light, fading back into the aether. Meliadol noticed Darlia looking back occasionally.
"Did you really like the boss design that much?"
She looked surprised at his question, her one visible eye widening, "Eh, just reminded me of a Japanese urban legend."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. It's called Kuchisake-onna. Basically an attractive woman with a slitted mouth. She'll ask if she's pretty and no matter the answer you give, she'll kill you in the end."
Meliadol grinned, "Sounds like you have a thing for horror."
"You could say that." Darlia gave a small laugh, "There's nothing like curling up in the dark with your cat and a cup of coffee and watching a monster flick."
"I'll take that as a yes, then."
The two continued to chat, wearily making their way back to the portal to Arendall.
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