Dungeons Online

Chapter 106: Anticlimatic fight

The cuts of the girl bore the weight of her rank as the last boss of the dungeon. Every time she would swing her sword, she would cause a sharp gust of wind to cut through the room, leaving a small mark on the walls of this circular arena. 

'That was close,' Tom thought, swapping places with one of the spears in the back. 'If I were to be a second later,' he thought, looking at the crater that was left where he stood previously. 

'Is this sword really a sword, or some Warhammer shielded with illusion?" Tom thought, unable to believe his own eyes. 

He was pretty powerful all on his own. With all the levels he obtained, he could easily stand against an entire army of average humans. In fact, he approached the barrier between still being a human and reaching a point when even modern firearms wouldn't be able to hurt him.

For someone born and raised in the modern era of civilization without even a single hint of magic outside of how magical science could be at times, this was Tom's distinction. The difference between being a human and an entity that was way too strong to be considered a human anymore.

"Why are you running?" The girl shouted with a joyous expression on her face. She then brought her hand up, raising the massive sword on her shoulder. 

"Pff..." Tom made a mistake. He released a small chuckle. 'I know this is rude,' he thought, covering his mouth with his hand. 'But it's just too funny!' Tom screamed in his mind, forcing his eyes away from the ridiculous picture. 

The girl's sword was the biggest piece of personal weaponry that Tom had ever seen with his own eyes. Yet, the girl wasn't a giant herself. The disparity between her lacking height and overall petite body build and the ridiculously big clunk of metal on her shoulder was just too impossible for Tom to ignore. 

"What are you laughing at?!" The girl screamed, throwing herself with yet another attack of hers. There was absolutely no finesse to her attacks as if she believed that she was strong enough to overcome any adversary with just her raw power alone. 

'Well,' Tom thought, lowering his eyes at the many craters the last floor boss left in her wake. 'I guess she would be the first to actually have the strenght to back her behavior,' Tom thought. 'I guess the reality is a lot less forgiving than all those novels I read back in the days,' the young man made a notice in his mind, swapping his position once again.

The mana costs of swapping places with his spears was so minuscule that he didn't even need to worry about it. Sadly, that wasn't the case with his magical spears. 

On their own, once created, Tom's magical weapons acted just like any other physical object. Without outside interference, once Tom would distance himself far enough or if the spear were to sustain critical damage, recovering its magic would be no longer possible. In most the cases like that, the mana used to create the spear would be simply lost. 

'At this rate, I will only last a few more moments,' Tom thought, tightening his teeth as he continued to dance all over the place. 

"I asked you!" The girl shouted, cleaving the sidewall of the floor in half. For a mere moment, Tom could gaze into the true form of the dungeon rather than the skin that it covered its insides with. For a moment, he could stare right into a nearly endless pool of mana. 

Mana so thick that it turned material. Yet, even in its material form, it was still too thick for the laws of magicless physic to handle them. 

For a mere moment, before the dungeon regenerated, everything stopped. The small watch on Tom's wrist came to a stop as a terribly powerful wave of gravity broke into the room.

If the situation were to last even a microsecond longer, everyone inside the room would turn into a flat pancake of matter hotter than the surface of the sun. 

Thankfully, the speed at which the dungeon recovered from having a rift opened up in one of its walls appeared to be a factor of the same magic that Tom observed. 

In other words, just like that thick mana could break the laws of physic in a single instant, it also continued to push the dungeon's regenerative abilities.

"What was that?" Tom muttered under his nose, directing his eyes to where the dungeon's boss left her mark a moment earlier. 

"What's wrong with you!" The girl continued her screams, ignoring Tom's baffled state. "First you are running and running, and now you are standing and standing!" the boss's body shook in place as if she broke down in weeps. "This isn't fun anymore!" she screamed through her now visible tears, proving that the situation wasn't as simple as Tom expected it to be... just ten minutes ago. 

'I knew this would be strange ever since the first boss went missing,' Tom thought, moving his eyes back on the girl while raising his hand towards where the wall was ruptured a moment earlier. "I will play with you," the young man said, gripping the handle of his sword a little tighter as a wave of distant fear shook his flesh. "But tell me, what was that force?" Tom asked. 

"Huh?" The girl raised her tiny head before putting her thumb into her mouth. For a moment, she remained motionless, with both of her eyes directed somewhere in the upper-left corner. "What power?" she asked obediently, looking at Top with a face full of expectation and curiosity. 

"You broke through the dungeon's wall," Tom said, shaking his extended hand. "If I could detect that overwhelming might that seeped inside, then you surely noticed it as well," Tom said as his face darkened. 'Is she going to play the dumb now?' he asked himself while constantly trying to analyze the situation as far ahead as he could. 

"I did?!" The girl jumped in surprise, forcibly turning her head towards the wall behind her. "Huh?" She added after a moment, turning her eyes back at Tom as her expression darkened. "There isn't even the slightest smudge on it! You tricked me!" she shouted, clearly not welcoming the situation she found herself in.

"Say what?" Tom could only respond in this alogical manner to this illogical situation. "Are you trying to pretend right now? Because you are not going to fool me into believing, I just oversaw this!" Tom shouted back at the girl, calling for his true spear for the very first time since the start of this fight. 

"Whatever," the girl shrugged her shoulders before violently kicking at the edge of one of the craters she made earlier. Crumbling apart, a sizeable piece of floor separated from the rest, allowing the girl to kick it up and then kick it Claudia's way. 

During the entire battle, Tom's partner was lagging pretty badly. It wasn't that she was weak on her own, but her fighting style didn't suit the rapid exchanges that happened between Tom and the boss. In fact, if not for Tom's ability to move around the place instantaneously, even he would have a lot of trouble avoiding one of two attacks of this monstrous loli. 

And that was with all the bonuses from having his level already in three digits and with his haste spell on!

"What the hell are you..." the girl started, raising her sword to bash it down from overhead into the floor. 

Back before the fight started for real, the girl somehow infused herself with a vast amount of energy. Yet, all the way to this point, she didn't make any use of it at all or did it in a way that Tom failed to notice. 

But this next attack wasn't such a case. 

'I will die,' Tom thought, looking at the dense mana circulating around the sharp edge of the girl's weapon. As Tom found out already, one could thicken his own mana almost indefinitely at the cost of increasing hardship of keeping the spell in such a withheld state. In exchange, once one would release this thickened mana, it would, for some reason, follow the natural physical laws of pressure, adding the momentum of its explosive spread to the power of the spell itself. 

And right now, Tom felt like a convict with his neck already on the cutting block. In this single moment, as he stared at the descending sword, he couldn't find a single way out. Not a single way to dodge the attack. 

Because the area that would be annihilated once the energy of the sword would be set free.

But the attack never came. The girl simply froze in place, with her massive sword perfectly in line with her perfectly flat body. 

And then, her eyes dimmed out before turning completely dark. 

And then the boss of the room simply fell lifelessly to the ground.