And then there was one.
Having dispatched the eater of worlds earlier through the combined efforts of the other two bosses and taking advantage of the previous boss monsters revealed weakness.
They exploded into a mess of red flesh and blue leather all around.
Quickly stuffing everything into my inventory lest they fall into the wrong hands that weren't mine, I was faced with the final boss.
Skeletron.
The other two bosses, being of flesh, they were at least able to bleed.
And although Skeletron quite literally appeared charred as blood poured unceasingly out of its extremities.
I was pretty sure that the blood coming out of it like jet streams just served the purpose of lifting it up if nothing else.
So what was I supposed to do against this bony foe?
Well what any other sane person would do in the face of blood spewing skeletons.
Beat it up until it couldn't move anymore.
Bringing out my weapons, I mentally prepped myself as I continued to fall from the sky.
Now, in a battle of the skies I would be the one on the defensive because I was in essence a land based person.
I was honestly disadvantaged.
But that was what made things so exciting.
Staring at Skeletron staring right back at me with black holes for eyes, its jaw full of human teeth opened up to reveal a black darkness deep within its gullet.
That was until a mass of red filled my vision.
'Holy!'
Charging out of the way, I stared at Skeletron who's body was mostly charged on the left side.
Holding the Flint in my hand, the flaming end of the hammer struck the blood, causing the augmented blade to burn the blood with crimson fire.
Sneaking through the cracks of the flames, the ram rune activated increasing ht eamount of gravity on my body.
Dragging me to the ground, my arms splayed outwards as twin daggers appeared in my hands.
Stabbing them into the charred hands of the giant skeleton, Skeletron formed a fist before striking me at where I hung.
But bad luck for them, I wasn't exactly planning on getting hit.
Pulling on the daggers, I twisted through the air before landing on the outstretched hands of Skeletron.
Now as Skeletron was, well a giant skeleton, I had more than enough room to run on his arm albeit the amount of space I had was kind of tight.
Not that Skeletron would allow me to do so in the first place.
Using the Claw to hang onto the shaking ar, I brought it back right before leaping to the sky and unleashing a flurry of icy arrows that struck Skeletron.
Frozen mist formed platforms on the body of the skeleton all the while I used Valmont's whip to grip onto the bony arm.
Swinging from it, a balanced blade lodged into Skeletrons arm as I stepped onto the green blade and leapt from it.
Twisting in the sky, I looked at Skeletron which tried biting down on me with its skull.
Something that I countered with a spite dagger, lodging it into the gaps of its teeth, I narrowly escaped the death of being chewed again as the blade soon broke under the biting force.
Sweeat poured down my forehead as the Tentacle whipped outwards to the charred surface of Skeletron and I brought down my Nutcracker.
'Its time to do what you were named.'
Smashing the nutcracker down, like nuts underneath a nutcracker, the black charred bone of Skeletron cracked and instantly started to form a network of crevices in its body.
A silent roar of rage.
Feeling my arm nearly get ripped off by the punch aiming at my side, i twisted through the air before recovering from the attack and using another whip to drag myself to their body.
If I got off now, I don't know when I could get back on.
Jumping up, a whip snapped forwards to the skull right as a finger the size of my head whiffed right past me at wind pressuring speeds.
Feeling my body tense, my arms crackled with tension all the while blood leaked out of my left arm.
A potion to fix it right would've been nice, but I kind of hadn't had the time to stock up on them and now I was regretting my actions.
So I did the only other conceivable thing that I could do.
Destroy Skeletron before he could do even more damage.
And to do that I would have to get rid of his core.
The large floating head that only tried biting at me and doing nothing else but control the hands to kill me.
So getting rid of the plan of getting rid of the arms and just bashing at the defenceless skull, I now would solely aim for the head.
And to do that, I think I'll bet it on the spatial cutter I learnt from the Queen.
And now why wasn't I using the air cutter to grind down Skeletron?
Now the difference between spatial slicing and air cutting are two extremely different things.
The first thing to note is that the Spatial cutter only worked with certain blade types like a rapier as it focused all on slicing space itself.
The second thing to note is that most weapons wouldn't be able to withstand the destructive power of spatial slicing as all the power was focused on the blade so unless they were made of special material.
Most blades would usually be destroyed before they could unleash the spatial cutter.
Air cutter on the other hand was much more broad minded as all the attacks of the blade were basically an extension of the blade itself.
That was because the air cutter leveraged the basic force of a blade to send its power through the air itself.
Slightly complicated to think about, but in essence the air cutter was just extending the blade.
But also in essence, it was just air in the shape of a blade.
Definitely able to grind the boss monster down, but most of the lethality is lost in the attack as such that the myriad of attacks would take to long to grind him down.
So the next step of the process was to make sure that I get some armor later to extend my so far short battle times.
Battles of attrition weren't very favorable in the face of such dangerous fights with boss monsters.
I wouldn't have to worry about the hordes of monsters that seemed to swamp me constantly as well.
So bringing out the rapier gifted to me by the queen, Skeletron seemed to have sensed something as the fist flying towards me paused in the air.
Allowing me to whip out a few moves where I neared the head of the beast.
And perhaps sensing that it couldn't escape this attack. the head of Skeletron suddenly started barrelling towards me, mouth wide open and all as the canines bit at the flesh of a human body.
Or at least tried to.
If I was going to be truthful, this was a partially suicidal endeavor as the face of the skull neared me.
Since this beast was much... weaker than I thought, it's probably overkill to pour an attack of this calibre right into it.
But I was honestly curious.
When faced with the spatial attacks unleashed by the Queen, I felt like she was holding back as most of the time, the spatial cuts were defensive in nature while the only attacks performed were those of fire.
So what would it look like if I used this attack violently and aggresively?
'It'll probably take everything out of me so should I use it now?'
Recalling how the blade mark seemed to linger in a fold of space, the space itself tearing apart.
I also recalled how the blade mark seemed to never leave its position in space.
So unless I was able to get up close and personal to Skeletron and unleash a blow, I don't think that the Spatial cutter would do anything much to it.
Swinging around from its arm, like someone trying to get rid of a piece of food stuck to their body, the head of Skeletron moved to bite at the location I was stuck to.
Swinging my legs in the air, the malaise burst out from beneath me propelling me forwards all the while I used the lingering momentum to swing the heaviest nutcracker attack in a while.
Slamming into the skull of Skeletron, it was akin to someone punching someone in the chin.
Except in this case it was from the top and in hammer form.
Hearing a few cracks coming from Skeletron.
I turned my attention to the arm nearing my face and let it instead grab the Nutcracker.
Sadly it was destroyed underneath Skeletron's grip but before I left it to be destroyed, I left behind a few presents.
Presents in circular shape and carrying the grenade prefix to their name.
Yeah, I left behind grenades.
Exploding into a flurry of ice, fire and electric currents, a soundless scream seemed to leave Skeletron's mouth causing a ripple to run through my malaise.
Throwing in a few arrows of various strengths into the fray as an extra matter.
Suddenly I saw myself plummeting through the air as I got rid of the only other surface I could hang off of without falling from the air.
'In hindsight, getting rid of the arm before the head wasn't a good idea.'
Lashing out a whip to Skeletron's head, now that there was no other place to escape to, sweat beaded onto my head as the skull came barrelling straight towards me with a vengeance.
And instead of doing it normally like with a mouth wide open aijming to crush me between its teeth.
I guess Skeletron had enough of me and now is choosing to turn me into meat paste.
Coming at me like a bull that had wings a smile rose on my face as I fell to the ground.
Unsheathing the rapier, I held it in my hands and pointed it at the rapidly approaching Skeletron accompanied only by the bone fragments of its other destroyed arm.
Then I struck.
Burning the malaise in my body and using to give my arms, legs and body incredible strength far past normal limits, I swung my arm.
Swinging the blade, the blade seemed to phase through existence as it touched the fabric of reality and quickly tore it apart revealing a black void of nothingness before it.
By leveraging all of my muscles related to the swing, I felt my muscles tear apart as the incredible strength beyond my limits took its toll on me, raising my respect for the Queen using it like a common attack.
But nevertheless, since it hadn't finished, I had to follow through.
Before the black void drawn by the rapier could disappear upon natural healing, I dragged the mana through the tip of the blade clinging onto the edges of the folds.
Piercing the folds in place, it was if they were pinned to space as the black tear in reality was now forcefully kept open if only for a few moments longer.
And where Skeletron went, nothing returned.
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