Godsforsaken

Chapter 20: Adam

The next morning our plan was pretty clear. There was a pond not far from our rest spot where all the monsters came to drink. That was also the place Anna had mentioned before, where the big monsters would often come out of the underbrush. She'd explained that most monsters were too busy drinking their fill to attack adventurers but the big ones would attack regardless. But even so, fighting them there was preferable to fighting them in the woods, where they could subtly manipulate the roots to trip up their enemies.

So we decided to not even attempt to sneak past the pond. We'd fight whatever the dungeon threw at us there and then make a filling dinner before facing the boss the following day. If we needed to gather food in anticipation of the third floor anyway then killing a huge beast like that would be a boon rather than a bother.

On our way to the pond we encountered our first elite variant of the moss golems. Thankfully, unlike the spriggans the crystals were very visible on the golems, which meant we had plenty of time to prepare.

The golems were normally easy enough to kill... Did one 'kill' a golem? Or would it be more accurate to call it 'destroying' a golem? They weren't really alive the way other creatures were. They had no heartbeat and no need for air or sustenance and no drive to procreate. The thing that gave them life was a single brown gemstone in the center of their chests, not an organ that pumped something through their bodies. For normal golems I didn't even consider this question since they were usually created by mages but these ones were moving around on their own. Or did the dungeon create them and they truly were just mindless automatons?

I shook the thought off. In the end it was only of academic relevance.

So, the golems were easy enough to... eliminate. Yeah, that sounded alright. They were easy enough to eliminate normally since a few good slashes were enough to dismember them and from there it was easy enough to either destroy or remove the gem that animated them. The elite variant meanwhile was tougher, stronger and faster, but in the end that didn't mean much. A sped-up golem was still too slow to hit a nimble fighter and against our enchanted weapons its tougher body was no obstacle either. It could have done some impressive damage if it hit us but that's why our strategy involved dismembering them as fast as possible.

The only real problem the elite variant presented was that the crystal growths made it a bit more difficult to place clean cuts since the crystals themselves were impossible to slice through. Thus, we had to place our cuts carefully to avoid them, making the fight slightly harder. Thankfully the elite variants weren't any smarter or more perceptive, so it was only a minor obstacle.

Finally, after multiple hours of continued marching and fighting we came across the pond. It really was little more than a watering hole. A knee-deep pond that all the animals on the dungeon floor came to drink at. I saw some perfectly normal forest critters like rabbits and small boars, even a young doe or two, and also some critters that were not perfectly normal, like six-legged squirrels and a small monkeys with deer antlers. I would never understand dungeons, what with the juxtaposition of the mundane and the completely bizarre.

More importantly, there was also one of the big monsters Annabella had warned us about. It was at least twelve feet tall and quadrupedal, with the forward-bent legs of a humanoid or ape, making me think it could stand on two legs if it wanted to, though if it did it would easily reach twenty feet in height. The hind legs ended in the paired hooves of a deer, except they looked to be razor-sharp. Its front legs instead ended in claws that looked like they were carved from black stone and, like an ape, the claws had opposable thumbs. Except for the stone claws and the head the beast was covered in a layer of soft brown fur with occasional white spots. The two most incongruous aspects of its anatomy were the head and the tail. For reasons that were beyond me the beast had the adorable stubby tail of a doe, which just looked wrong on such a fearsome creature. The head meanwhile wasn't so much a head as a rectangular slab of stone with a sketch of a beast's face carved into it and a hole in the stone where the maw would be. I wanted to ambush it immediately but then I got the sudden urge to find out how a monster like this drank, so I kept watching a moment longer as it dipped its head down. A moment later there was a loud slurping sound as water was sucked into the hole in the slab.

“How the fuck do these things eat?" I asked quietly.

“I'm not sure you want to know," Annabella said.

“I kind of do, now," I said.

“Behind that mask they have a whole mess of spine-covered tentacles," Annabella said, turning away in disgust. “The tentacles shoot out, stab into their prey, then wrap around and crush it up. Then the mask splits down the middle and the tentacles drag their broken prey down its gullet before the mask seals back up.”

I blinked. “Wow, that is...”

“Disgusting, horrifying, unnerving and really not good for one's sanity," Annabella listed calmly.

“So, I guess we're not supposed to stand directly in front of it, then?" I asked.

“Pretty much," the princess said. “Also, since they don't have eyes, they feel out their surroundings, but according to my ancestor they also have spirit sight.”

My lips quirked up into a smile. “Is that so? In that case I have a plan...”

**

Syr calmly walked forward, away from our group, and into the clearing, then went even further. Not affected by the natural rules she was able to walk atop the water instead of sinking into the knee-deep sludge at the bottom of the pond. Once she stood in the middle of the drinking forest critters, I drew my Qi up into my arms and used a Qi Burst to throw a fist-sized rock with the speed of the metal balls fired by dwarven muskets. The rock hit the monster in the shoulder, the sound monstrously loud in the quiet clearing, speaking of broken bones even as blood and pieces of meat flew from the wound. Dwarven muskets could do a lot of damage but the projectile I'd used had been about fifty times as big and heavy as what came out of their contraptions and the force made even a beast as big as this take notice.

The beast let out a sound that... Imagine the weird whistling sounds that deer sometimes make. Now imagine that sound coming from a significantly bigger beast with a much bigger ribcage. Now imagine that very loud whistling sound being forced through a narrow hole in a slab of stone. That's what the beast sounded like. A weirdly voluminous whistling sound that spoke of terrible pain and even more terrible anger.

We held perfectly still so that it wouldn't be able to feel our vibrations and thus the beast needed to rely on its spirit sight, which pointed it straight at Syr standing in the water.

The thing went mad with rage and charged at Syr, who stood calmly in the middle of the pond. For a moment I was worried it would just swing one of its claws straight through her, breaking the illusion instantly, but instead it planted both claws into the sludge at the bottom of the pond to either side of Syr and then the stone mask split down the middle.

I was very glad Annabella had warned us what was about to happen because otherwise I'm sure at least some of us would have screamed. Honestly, I felt like screaming despite the warning.

Behind that mask there was a huge chasm leading right down its ribcage and half a dozen tentacles were flailing wildly, about to shoot out and wrap around Syr, not knowing that she wasn't actually there in the flesh.

Before the tentacles could lash out though, Selene cast her ice storm miracle, centered right on the beast which had sunk into the pond with all four of its extremities. There was a slight delay between her casting and the miracle actually beginning to freeze things and the delay lasted just long enough for the tentacles to lash out, pass through Syr's astral bodies, and smack into the water, so when the miracle hit it not only froze both its arms and legs in place but also its nasty face tentacles.

Once the beast was properly stuck in the pond and covered in a thin coating of rime we charged in, swords drawn, Alisha standing back to heal as needed.

I charged up a Qi Burst and carved through the beast's left arm, the shoulder of which I'd already maimed, while Selene accidentally hit the stony claw of its right arm, making her sword ping off. Annabella sent a flurry of crystal pinions into its gullet and Yume hacked at its tentacles, chopping through four of the six in a single Qi technique, the Swallow Cutter trick she'd used back in Calice.

The beast roared as best it could despite the tentacles it had for a tongue having gotten cut off or stuck, then tore its remaining claw out of the ice and swiped at Selene and Yume. The fox girl managed to jump away in time but Selene took the brunt of it. The stone claws couldn't pierce her armor, but the beast still picked her up and flung her at Alisha. Instead of pressing the attack I Qi Dashed to Alisha's side, shoved the elf out of the way and then attempted to catch the thrown paladin. The end result was that we both went flying, then tumbled across the ground until we came to lay in front of a tree. If I hadn't grabbed her, she would have hit that tree hard, probably breaking her spine in the process.

Alisha was already chanting her minor healing miracle by the time we got up and Yume was doing her best to distract the beast. It had torn its hind legs out of the ice as well and was swinging around wildly with its claw while trying to use the sharpened hooves on its hind legs to free its tongues that were still frozen in place. But Yume danced around in front of it, nicking it with her blade while narrowly avoiding its attacks, keeping the beast's attention while Selene and I got back into the fight.

So once I got up I Qi Dashed towards the beast and lunged with my sword in front of me, the enchantment creating a lance of fire that washed over its fur, creating a noxious smell of burnt hair and body oils. That distracted the beast, alright. It distracted it so hard it slammed its claw into the ice to free its tongues and then came storming towards me, all but falling over as it tried to gallop at me on all fours and then remembering that it was missing a limb. So what should have been a savage charge and grapple turned into a terribly ungraceful sliding tackle that I only just managed to avoid by gathering Qi in my feet and jumping over the beast. When I landed I was behind the monster and thrust forward with Helios Edge, sending another lance of fire into its exposed back.

Yume and Annabella took advantage of the distraction, the fox projecting a wide slash over its back and the princess sending a flurry of sapphire pinions at it. Even with all the abuse, the beast kept coming and I wondered how much more punishment it would take to put it down when something flew past me.

In all the excitement I had forgotten about Alisha. Sure she had been busy healing Selene but her miracles didn't take that long to cast, so she'd had a good long while to charge her spell up. And clearly whatever technique for mana channeling her and Yume had been studying had been a doozy because the effect was spectacular. It was one of her air lances, except not. Where her air lances were usually about the size of short spears, this one was the size of a jousting lance. She'd been playing with Qi use to turn the air lances into tornado lances, but the wind raging inside that lance made all the previous tornado lances look like summer breezes by comparison.

At first I thought she had sent the lance straight at the beast's heart, trying to bore through its flesh and pierce deep, but instead the lance curved impossibly and flew straight into the monster's open maw, shredding through the remaining tongues and then... To say the effect was devastating would have been an understatement. There was an instant where it felt like all the air on the dungeon floor was being sucked into the monster's maw before all the accumulated air burst in a torrent of shredding winds that tore the beast up from within. The beast's torso blew apart into ribbons, blossoming like some sort of obscene flower from the monster's hind legs and all but turning it inside out before the spell finally petered out.

I turned from the shredded monster to Alisha, who stared at the beast a moment longer with fury in her eyes before her knees buckled and Selene had to catch her before she could fall.

Knowing that the paladin had her, I turned from the elf back to the shredded monster and dug in my bag for a dismantling gem. Normally I'd butcher the monster myself, but these gems could recover a lot of meat even after a monster was devastated by magic and Alisha had gone ever-so-slightly overboard. After all, according to Annabella we were going to need the meat from this monster.

**

“I'm sorry," Alisha muttered into my chest. “I overdid it.”

“It's alright," I said, stroking her hair. “No harm done.”

After fighting the monster the way to the next rest spot had been mostly clear and once we got there the elf had wasted no time preparing a stew with some choice cuts from the beast.

Combined with some wine and some mushrooms Alisha and Annabella had collected along the way the meat made for some pretty good stewing, but Alisha seemed ashamed by what she'd done. After dinner she sat down next to me.

“It's just... I saw red there," she said. “That thing had hurt Selene, had tried to hurt you, and it just wouldn't die. I knew that magic is amplified in dungeons. I knew that the new mana channeling technique was scary powerful. But I still sent the strongest air lance I could make at that thing. It was stupid.”

I kept stroking her hair. “You still saved us," I said. “Even I was starting to get worried about how much abuse that thing could take. But you took it down no problem.”

“Sure, and if you hadn't had those gems with you we would have lost most of the meat and might have had to fight another one," she grumbled. I pushed her back a little, looked into her eyes and then flicked my finger against her forehead. “What was that for?”

“Stop beating yourself up," I said. “Did you go overboard? Maybe a little. But I did have those gems and you did kill a monster we were all struggling with. And if we're fighting for our lives, I'd rather you err on the side of overkill.”

“Have you finally convinced her that saving our asses wasn't a bad thing?" Selene asked as she came up behind us.

“I almost had her there, yes," I said, mock irritation in my voice. “Something wrong?”

“Annabella said she's going to tell us what we can expect from the boss, thought you might want to hear that.”

I looked over to Alisha and cupped her cheek. “You good?”

She smiled at me. “Yeah.”

**

The next morning we stood in front of the boss door, well rested and prepared. As Annabella had said, the floor was very short, although that was apparently only because she knew exactly where to go. The floor wasn't actually that small, it was just that it had a lot of dead ends she skillfully avoided to lead us down the mandatory path, which was pretty much a beeline from the start of the floor.

The woods had continued onward, with strange ruins jutting out of the earth at random intervals, but getting more frequent as we approached the boss room. And then finally a huge arena like a Colosseum overgrown by vines had appeared before us. The only entrance had been a tall iron gate with the dungeon's runes inscribed upon it. Some helpful soul had scrawled a translation underneath them, same as with the last boss door. This one read:

Adam, The Sinning Soil.

“Ready?" I asked and when I got a chorus of “Yes”es in return I pushed open the gate, which swung open far more easily than it looked, which seemed to be normal in this dungeon.

The inside of the Colosseum was overgrown with grass and vines, making it look as if nature had reclaimed what people had abandoned long ago. If it weren't for the boss the place would have looked amazingly peaceful.

But with the boss there, the place looked more ominous than serene.

Adam looked a lot like a dragon. Four clawed legs, a long neck ending in a long reptilian head, a long tail and a pair of wings. Except where a dragon was a being of flesh and blood and scales, this beast wasn't. Right now it merely looked like the dragon had been overgrown with vines and moss, but thanks to Annabella's story we knew exactly what we were facing.

“At first glance it looks like a dragon," she'd told us around the campfire, “but that's not the case, thankfully. In truth it's a huge golem in the shape of a dragon. Its body is made of clay, which is hidden under a layer of stone, which is in turn hidden under a layer of plant matter.”

So we knew what lay beneath the moss and vines and thus we knew how to attack it.

First we had to carve and burn off the plant matter, then we had to shatter the stone and only then could we carve apart its actual body. That meant the beast had more than enough time to attack us while we were busy disassembling it layer by layer.

But at least we knew what to expect and had planned ahead. Selene and I advanced, holding shields in our left hands and swords in our rights, maces tied to our belts. Alisha and Yume stood back while Annabella stood between the two groups, ready to reinforce whichever group needed her the most, her crystal wing ready to cut or defend as needed.

Yume started us off by casting Phantom Step, but only on herself, Alisha and Annabella. Messing with Selene and my silhouettes would have been counter-productive. We wanted the beast to hit us. After all, we held shields aloft so we could defend the others. At the same time Alisha began by throwing cutting winds at the beast, waking it from its rest and making it stomp towards us, the ground trembling under its heavy body.

Had it been a living thing I was sure its eyes would have narrowed, but the blue lights we could faintly see under a carpet of vines didn't even flicker as the beast reared back its head and then struck like a snake. I didn't know whether it had intended to headbutt or bite, but either way my shield stopped it. I felt something in my shield arm give and it hurt like a motherfucker but I didn't fall over and that was all that mattered as I could already hear Alisha chanting her minor healing miracle as both Selene and I dropped our shields and began swinging at the monster with our swords, trying to cut through the thick plant matter covering its body.

Good gods but those vines were tough. Selene only managed to hack two inches deep while I fared a good bit better, mostly thanks to my sword having a fire enchantment. Still, it'd be difficult to get anything done without Qi techniques.

Just as I thought that the golem caught itself and swung its right claw, which Selene blocked, again with a loud crack, but she too held her ground and soon enough Alisha's healing miracle fixed the damage. As we started swinging I heard Yume's voice.

“Raking flames.”

She didn't speak in a loud voice but it still reverberated and I knew something big was coming. Clearly Selene did, too, because we took a step back as one.

We had only just cleared the area when four light blue slashes appeared in the air, the air around them shimmering with heat as burning cuts as if from a giant claw carved through the golem's plant shield, shredding through it. Yume's knowledge of Qi techniques was so far beyond mine that usually with her strongest moves I could only barely hazard a guess at what she was doing but this time, to my surprise, I knew what she had done. She had used the magic channeling enchantment on her sword to infuse it with fire and had then used four simultaneous instances of Qi Projection to place four slashes into the air in front of her, right where her target was. I chanced a glance back and saw her stumble for a moment. Yeah, that would have knocked me on my ass, but she only looked a little winded. Much more importantly, thanks to the supernatural way Qi Projection worked, she had just placed cuts on the beast that went all the way down to the rock layer and so we could begin really carving into it.

We needed to brace for a third attack, this one a tail swipe that I was pretty sure managed to break my arm when I blocked it, but that only took me out of the fight a second longer than the other block had, with Alisha's miracle fixing me up good as new in seconds. Was it just my imagination or had that miracle gotten stronger lately? Well, she was due for another boost from her goddess, so maybe this was an early sign.

Either way when I was whole again I pushed Qi into my blade and then went for a horizontal strike. The harder Helios Edge was swung the more heat it generated and amplified by a Qi Burst the blade got damn hot, slicing through the vines and moss like a knife through butter. Before this wouldn't have done much, but combined with Yume's diagonal slices we finally started to see results, with large patches of plant matter coming loose. When Yume sent a blue fire snake at its chest it burned away even more, exposing parts of its neck, its chest and its left forelimb.

When Selene blocked another claw swipe I put away my sword, pulled out my mace and charged up a Qi Burst that crashed through the rock covering the golem's limb, shattering it in a single blow. These continuous Qi Bursts were taxing, but there was no better way to damage a beast like this.

When the armor around its limb shattered the dragon roared in pain, its vine-covered head rearing back and the roar coming out of it got higher and higher pitched. If we had fought the beast blind what happened next might have been bad, but thankfully we had Annabella along, who had warned us of this particular trick. Selene and I backed off and huddled close to the others as Alisha rapidly recited the words for one of her miracles.

The beast's roar reached a crescendo and it leaned forward, its maw opening wide and a noxious green cloud coming out of it just as Alisha's voice rang out:

“Protective Warmth!”

A gently glowing orange dome shimmered into existence all around us a heartbeat before the green cloud reached it and though the gas flowed around unnaturally, almost consciously, it couldn't find purchase and thus it flowed around us, withering the grass on the ground and, more interestingly, even withering some of the more damaged plant matter on the beast's own body.

“After pissing it off enough, it will try to use a poison breath attack," Annabella had told us around the campfire last night. “It can kill in seconds if you don't defend against it, but if you have trouble cutting down the plant shield, you can try to bait that attack as the breath is so noxious it even rots the plants covering the boss.”

Apparently the normal way to deal with the breath attack was to scatter and use air magic to keep it away, but Alisha's miracle was a much safer option, especially since we had a way to deal with the plant shield without needing to resort to using the breath attack against it, so we had decided to hide behind the miracle and then resume our attack.

Of course, the moment the breath attack ended and we wanted to attack again the golem pulled the next trick. The wings on its back beat, creating a gust that pushed us back a little. There was no way those stone wings would allow the stone dragon to fly, but that wasn't their purpose. The vines covering the beast were thick around it and as it beat its wings the vines extended and shot out towards us, trying to wrap around us. But that's why Annabella had been holding herself back so much.

Her sapphire wing shot out, slashing through the vines on her right as her sword flicked out and cut through those on her left. Her weapons were way too light and thin to do much damage to the plant matter coating the monster, but these thin vines she had no issue slicing through, keeping us safe from what would otherwise have been a very dangerous situation, tangled up and immobilized so the beast could crush, bite or poison us.

To my surprise, the golem rocked back and howled in pain when she cut the vines, making me think they might have actually been part of it rather than just something growing on its body, but I didn't really care about that, I just cared about pressing the advantage. Selene clearly had the same idea and soon enough we were both hammering away at the stone covering its chest and neck, huge chunks flying off in all directions as Alisha used air magic to bat away any that flew her way and Annabella kept herself ready in case the beast decided to send another flurry of vines at us. I had expected her to be annoyed at having to hold back so much, but she had accepted her position in the fight gracefully, accepting that the success of the group was more important than the success of the individual. Shame she was last in line to the throne, honestly, because that attitude would have made her an amazing queen.

Either way, by the time the golem stopped reeling we had managed to lay bare the clay body around its neck. Of course, being a construct cutting off its head wouldn't be enough to kill the beast, but it would incapacitate it and, more importantly, the big hole in its body would make it much easier to hit the core of its body which actually animated it. The next attack was coming and we needed to block it, so instead of rushing things and getting hurt we backed off.

Sure enough, Adam threw a tantrum, stomping the ground, sending out vines and sending out more of that poison breath, but between Alisha's miracle and Annabella's powers none of the attack came close to reaching us.

Just as the poison mist dissipated I Qi Dashed forward and cleaved its left forelimb clean off, cutting through the clay we'd bared before. The golem fell over, no longer able to support its own weight, and Selene was there to cut through its bared neck with a two-handed overhead slash. It lay on the ground from the massive shock to its system, the animating spell temporarily hobbled as it tried to work around the missing limbs, and Yume and Alisha pooled their power to send a huge fire-infused tornado lance into its neck stump, digging deep into its body and cracking the gem that animated it.

We gave it to a count of ten to make sure the beast wasn't going to get up before we relaxed. Just then a mass of vines in the back of the arena withered and sloughed off the stone, revealing a pathway leading down.

“That was... weirdly easy," Alisha commented as I chucked a dismantling gem at the golem.

The beast fell apart into a pile of clay, a pile of rocks, a mass of plant matter and a massive amber gemstone and thanks to the magic of the dismantling gem the gemstone was entirely pristine again. That thing would fetch a staggering price, though I suspected I'd have to go through Martin to find a buyer rich enough for it.

“Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," I said. “I'll take an easy win any day over a desperate struggle.”

“It wasn't actually that easy," Selene cut in. “Without your healing miracle we would have had our arms shattered halfway through the fight, without your protective miracle we would be a pile of rotting mush and without our Qi techniques breaking the stone layer would have taken hours. It wasn't easy, we just knew what to expect and had the skills to make it work.” She had said that with a meaningful nod to Annabella and Yume, both of whom smiled back at her.

She was right of course. Any other party would have struggled with this boss even with how easy it had felt to us. And I had a bad feeling the next one wouldn't be as easy.