Chapter 17: Chapter 16: a pile of abomital goop

Jools took out his best armor from his inventory. He didn’t manage to equip it directly even with my spells and trying to explain the exact thing he needed to do with his mana. Didn’t help that his armor was a two man job to put on. He also took out his best sword, which didn’t have a scabbard and put away his daily use sword. Running towards the abomination, we stop close to it. Not close enough for it to attack us though. As we got close the both of us starts to feel an intense need to help the world in it’s effort to get rid of it. Why do the gods even allow it to exist? Actually I know why, Danielle absolutely adores the things and has spent way too much time on them to simply erase them. Even with all that effort they were forever riddled with bugs. Sometimes they would use non-existent body parts, which she quickly fixed by defaulting to a magenta cube. Someone in the community then suggested making it into a crystal that they use to store mana, effectively acting as a force multiplier for the other body parts. These crystals then became a new end game material. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how I look at it, this one doesn’t have such a crystal. 

Not wasting any more time, I start to cast my buffs on me and him. When I start de-buffing the abomination, it immediately counterattack by flinging a fireball from one of the 12 meter long tentacles, revealing its first spell. We both move out of the way in opposite directions, with me continuing my debuffing and Jools running towards it. Its foot still hasn’t stopped dragging it forward, though this was common behavior back in the game. They would continue to move towards their unstate goal until they reached about half health. 

Immediately after the first attack, the smaller hands start to fling a myriad of mana bullets at me. I continue to dodge them, but they seems almost pitifully weak. A lot weaker than my ‘efficient’ mana bullets. I guess this was the default strength of mana bullet in the game. I would love to let one hit me to get a feel for it, but my sense of combat that I inherited from Zena, won’t allow me to get distracted during combat. 

As Jools reaches the body with a large slash, chopping off numerous smaller hands, the second tentacle reveals its power by slamming into the ground where Jools stood just a fraction of a second ago, leaving an elongated crater. I guess the second tentacle had a stamina ability. As I cast the final debuff spell, I join in on the offensive with a barrage of mana bullets of my own, finding that when I don’t focus on the specifics, I end up with the ‘efficient’ size. Each of my bullets tears up a chunk of black flesh, some of them starting to dig into the root of the first tentacle. While I keep moving around, it continues to fire its mana bullets scattershot style and a few become unavoidable. Luckily they hit a mana barrier that lies slightly above my skin. My passive mana barrier might not be all that strong, but basic mana bullets are manageable.

Its third tentacle appears to have some form of area of effect ice spell, which it casts on Jools, which is close enough that it catches itself with the spell making it easier for him to smash the frozen arms. 

We continue hacking away at it for a while, until at some point the melee tentacle swipes Jools away. In a surprise moment of coordination, both of the magic tentacles cast their spell at him just as he lands. Despite it being a coordinated effort, the spells counteract each other, making the combined effort less than their individual counterpart. I cast a healing spell at him anyway, and he returns to the fight.

After a while, Jools manages to sever the first tentacle at the base. All the tentacle had significant damage around the bases at this point thanks to our efforts. In response, it slams its primary leg into the ground and sends its body straight into Jools, sending him and his sword flying in different directions. At least we know we are halfway, and that the leg’s ability is ramming. 

Not giving me time to respond, it fires its frost spell at me at the same time it tries to ram me. I manage to dodge the ram, but the spell catches me. It hurt. I cast a healing spell on myself, and meet up with Jools who has retrieved his sword. I heal him as well and we start fighting more defensively. Jumping around it, avoiding most of its spells and its massive body. The number of hands flinging mana bullets have drastically decreased, making them easier to dodge, but the ground is covered in piles of blackened flesh and pools of blood. We bait it away from the previous battlefield to make it easier to move around it. Having an idea, I put more mana into a bullet and flatten it to a blade and fire it at the base of the most damaged tentacle, which is the one flinging the ice spell. It was a success as the tentacle is severed. It probably would not have worked had the tentacle not already been damaged, but it sped up the process.

Since the abomination is now relegated to mostly melee, we start the final slow process of grinding it down. First we focus on destroying the foot, with me debuffing every step of the way. After a while, Jools manages to cleave the leg just between the first and second knee. This leaves it stationary. Destroying the final hands leaves it immobile and without any ranged attacks. The twelve meter melee tentacle still has significant reach, but at this point we have already won. Feeling safe in our victory, I dump most of my remaining half of mana into a single mana bullet. It thrums with power and is a solid green color, as opposed to the normally nearly clear color. Flinging it at the center of the remaining mass of the abominations causes a big boom and the abomination is splatted into a few moderately sized chunks. The tentacle still moves, so Jools finishes it off.

Finally having won, and being nearly out of mana, I simply let myself fall backwards onto the ground. Not having enough mana to cast clease is annoying since both me and Jools are covered in abomital goop. That finishing move was probably a big waste of mana, but now at least I know the result of using that much mana in a single attack. Jools strolls over to me and sit down next to me and says

“That was way more exciting than when it was a game.” and I have to agree with him.