Chapter 12: Chapter 12: …And a Hard Place

The light once again vanished as soon as it swallowed them up, depositing Monica and Silk into a room that dwarfed any of the other chambers they’d found earlier in the dungeon.

It stretched far enough in each direction that it was hard see the farthest edged of the room, with the walls curving into a perfect circle as they stretched around the perimeter. Massive, towering columns loomed over here, symmetrically spaced through out the room, making a clear passage from this side of the room to the other end.

The floor was covered in a deep red carpet, lush and regal, and looked like something you’d see in a palace… or at least, it had at some point, as now it was all ripped and torn to shreds, moss and cobwebs covering it in giant patches as it had clearly been left to rot for as long as the rest of these ruins.

And as it currently stood, the room was totally empty, save for the two of them.

The fox was on edge, the silence heavy enough to crush her as she peered slowly around the room, scanning for anything that looked like a boss fight. But there was nothing here, save for the moss and stone.

The moment she took a single step forward was when this very quickly changed.

The earth shook under her, stone cracking and the pillars barely staying upright something massive boomed through the hollow space, enough to blow her backwards towards the door again.

The double doors on the opposite side of the chamber were thrown open, crashing like thunder as they were blown through all at once.

And from the other side of the door, crawled an entity massive enough that they could only be the boss they’d come here for.

The size of the doors suddenly made perfect sense, the beast striding out from behind the easily reaching 15 feet tall, cascading white hair pouring from their head and draping over their entire body like an ornate cloak. Her eyes were pale and hazy, glossy like opals, the entity holding themselves like nobility as she looked down upon the adventurers intruding upon her abode.

However, her upper body was not what held the kitsune’s attention. Rather, it was what was under that.

The boss’s humanoid body, lithe and frail looking as it was, ended abruptly at their waist. Past that point, it melded seamlessly into a massive, spider-like body that loomed well over twice her height on its own, covered in that same glossy, black carapace the mantises had been covered in earlier. Eight limbs protruded off of her lower half, each one as thick as a tree trunk as they hefted her massive form out from the other entrance to the arena.

“Ooooooh…?~ My my, my babies are so inconsiderate… not even telling me that we had a guest visiting my humble little manse…”

“Guest…? R-Right, we’re just, er, guests! Not, um… adventurers or anything like that, no no no. See I’m actually a huge friend to spiders and… spider-adjacent creatures?”

Silk peeked out from behind her legs, waving timidly.

“Aaaaaaah, it’s been too long since I had company to entertain me. You will be staying, yessss?~.”

“Er, actually we really shouldn’t impose, right Silk? I-It wouldn’t be polite of us!”

The spider-woman leered down at them, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, observing the duo that had wandered into her nesting ground.

“Nooooo, I insist you keep me company. I’ll make sure myself and my babies keep you company while you’re here, it’s always a delight being able to treat new guests as dinner…~”

“...D-Don’t you mean to dinner…?”

She did not dignify her with a reply, only licking her lips hungrily as she finally started to advance towards them, a health bar and title populating her screen as the fight began proper.

[Ariale, Scuttling Empress] Lv. 20

“Silk, I have a plan this time.”

She turned around, pulling at the door they’d entered through. It did not budge.

“Silk, I no longer have a plan.”

The pair paused for a moment, before quickly making a break for it and diving for cover, right as a mass of purple flame cratered where she’d been standing just a moment before, leaving a smoking hole in the stone flooring below.

The fox weaved and slipped through a barrage of violet flames as sparks landed on parts of her robes, lightly singing them as she dove for cover behind one of the columns standing freely in the room. The fireballs kept pelting after her, striking against the thick stone pillar, slowly carving away at it, limiting the time she could stay hidden, her brain going into overdrive.

The constant fire attacks were massive and devastating, and she definitely couldn’t take one of them head on, but… as she bided her time, two things became clear about them.

They were very slow, and very telegraphed.

She wasn’t fighting a player here. This was an enemy in the game, given a limited pool of moves to draw from, and a strict pattern of how and when to use them.

Wanting to test this, Monica closed her eyes, listening to the cascade of flame. And sure enough, the more she focused on it, the clearer it was that they were being fired off at an almost metronome-perfect rate. Like clockwork as the beat upon the stonework behind her.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Tapping her foot in time with the blasts, internalizing the rhythm of it, feeling the heat burn closer and closer each time.

Finally, waiting for the space between shots, she dove out from behind the pillar in a sprint, turning to get a better look at the boss as she ran past them. Sure enough, the next fireball they threw out also went at the pillar she’d been behind, instead of towards where she was now. Meaning that they had a cast time as well, which would slow down the aiming even further against someone as annoyingly fast as Monica was.

Unfortunately however, the roughly two second gap between shots wasn’t quite enough to cross from pillar to pillar, and the next shot was launched in her direction this time.

As long as she kept running perpendicularly to Ariale, she could definitely keep outrunning the blasts aimed at her. But… just dodging wasn’t going to do anything to get her out of this fight, and her cover all had an endurance limit she’d run out of if she dragged things out too long.

Luckily, she had a plan to get this fight finished very fast.

Skidding to a halt, she paused right in the open, equally far from either the next or previous pillar.

And the roaring inferno lobbed at her drew closer and closer, the miniature sun close enough now to make it hard to keep her eyes open as she drew her staff, holding her ground against it.

“Blowback!”

A force like strong wind erupted from the end of her staff on command, almost knocking herself down as it blasted directly towards the molten death headed for her.

She’d never tested this spell before now, and had no idea if this frantic idea she’d spawned in a panic would even work. If anything, the spell could have fizzled right through it as she was turned into soot on the carpet under it.

But as many doubts as she had spinning through her mind while she shivered in place before her foe, fate seemed to finally be taking her side on something today.

And as her gusts of wind reached the opposing fireball, they stopped it right in it’s tracks, leaving it floating motionless in the air… if only for a moment. Because in the next instant, the magical force had accomplished what she’d been praying for.

The massive ball of flame was sent right back where it came from, its speed fully restored as it struck hard against the spider queen herself, leaving her screaming in pain and surprise as she was set aflame by her own explosive spell.

The admittedly extremely surprised kitsune couldn’t hold back from cheering as she watched her counter attack succeed, a massive 15% of the bosses health ripped away in that one returned fire.

With how much damage that had done, she realized something else very important.

Even if any damage she dealt herself would be below a tenth of what it should be, that only applied to damage she did. A reflected spell was never hers to begin with, meaning her skills couldn’t lower the damage of it at all.

What started as a desperate attempt at defense had now become her best offense.

But even as she reveled in her tiny victory, the boss remained very much alive, and very angry now. Another slew of flaming projectiles came flying after her, more frantically aimed than before as she dove out of the way, scrambling frantically across the floor as she clumsily dodged around the firestorm.

The mage duo traded spells, Blowback returning fireball after fireball back at them as they were forced to dodge their own attacks while they, Silk cowering for dear life behind one of the pillars as hellfire engulfed the chamber amidst their firefight.

Sweat poured off of Monica as she ran, every muscle in her body tensed like steel fibers as she moved on instinct, half dodging and half reflecting, stealing Saps in amidst the chaos to keep her perilous defenses online as she clung to raw adrenaline for survival.

Torn carpets and webs burst into flames, the room becoming a hellscape as the empress furiously lashed out in pure wrath, her own HP being ripped away from her, bathed in her own flames as they drained her life force rapidly.

The tides slowly, inexorably shifted in Monica’s favor as they both kept up their assaults, neither one budging so much as a single centimeter while they put every ounce of effort into concentration.

Eventually, the boss was rendered to a measly 6% left, both sides left panting as they could barely keep up their attacks any longer.

The fox wasn’t faring much better however, as her robes smoldered, torn and burnt as she’d managed to lose most of her own health from the raw heat emanating from the blasts burning her down.

And they both saw their foe, barely clinging to life, bringing the last their strength to bare as they both charged forward-

“FLAMES…!”

“Blowback…!!”

…

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………

But nothing came from either party.

And as they both sat, completely tapped out of energy, only now did they realize they’d both completely depleted every single point of mana they had, leaving the two magic users completely helpless to do anything more than stare at each other.

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They both sat in place, waiting.

Neither really had the energy to keep going after their massive surges of energy had burned through both their MP and their actual stamina itself, Ariale slumped down with her legs unable to hold her body up from exhaustion, and Monica laying limply on her back, sprawled out and gasping for air.

She wanted to finish this fight off before she started her flame barrage once more, but… try as she might, she still had no way to hurt her without Blowback’s reflects.

So instead, she waited.

Her mana slowly inched upwards, the bar gathering more blue pips at an agonizingly slow rate.

Silk peeked out from their hiding spot, only slightly charred as they rushed over to their fox friend, trying to help them up again.

“Nnnnn… you can't just… go finish her off, could you?”

“C-Chk…”

They peered nervously at the much larger spider, pausing for a second. It took them a while, but they mustered enough courage to gingerly edge over to one of their legs. Gathering every ounce of bravery in them, they leaning, biting down as hard as they could on it.

...Amazingly, it actually worked for once. Red particle effects slowly leaked out as the boss took minuscule amounts of damage, Silk realizing they were actually doing it and immediately intensifying their vicious nibbles as they ate away at the drained boss.

“Wait, that worked? Good… Good job?”

Silk turned away from the boss as they were praised, flexing and posing smugly for their adoring fan.

“Chhhhk chk!! Chkchk… chk?”

Their gloating was cut short, as Monica was ignoring them and staring wide-eyed past them in fear.

The nibbling had done just enough damage to the boss to lower her to 5% HP.

And as soon as it had fallen that one percent lower, it started to stand up again, energy restored as it rose to its feet, poison fumes pouring from its wounded body as it limped towards her.

Monica scrambled to her feet, trying to keep space between herself and the putrid cloud advancing on her, still panting and out of breath as she retreated away, no plan left on what to do anymore.

She could Blowback the cloud, but it would just fill the space back in, and the boss wasn’t vulnerable to its own attack this time, as it was already fully engulfed in it.

Barely able to outrun it, she almost gave up, her legs getting heavier…

...until something sticky struck right in the center of her back, and she was ripped off to the side, skidding past the death cloud as she felt herself being reeled upwards.

Behind her, the tiniest of spiderlings grunted from exertion, straining as hard as they could as the dragged a kitsune up the pillar they’d escaped to the top of. She did her best to cling and crawl up it as she was wound up, collapsing in a pile once she was safely on top of it, Silk flopping next to her deflated.

“I… take back… every bad thing I’ve ever said about spiders. Thanks, lil buddy…”

“Chk… chhhhhk…”

She rolled onto her side, watching the cloud finish filling the room below them both, roiling green clouds singeing the scorched stone, leaving no safe space to stand outside of the tops of the pillars.

Safe… but once again totally helpless.

The boss simply sat there, waiting. It was clearly a final enrage-style mechanic, meant to just build tension at the end of a long fight when it was fought normally. They hadn’t really thought to account for a situation in which someone would be left with no way to fight after it happened.

But she hadn’t gotten this far to give up now.

If she could get them this low all by herself, she could finish them off. She just needed anything. So she sat down, and opening her menu, she dug through every last option in her toolbox.

The pillar they were situated was still extremely warm to the touch, having been the one that took the brunt of the initial firestorm barrage when she’d entered into the fight. It teetered slightly when they both moved too much, but mostly held steady despite it all.

Sadist and Tormentor did nothing here, as none of her statuses would deal damage regardless of their strength. Ripping parts of the boss off might have counted for Gathering, but she had no way of getting close enough to touch them without dying to poison. And Fire Endurance seemed like it had already done its part here, without providing much assistance now that they were in stage two of the fight.

She bounced up and down her skill list, nothing there seemingly helpful in any capacity, the pillar leaning more and more as she rocked back and forth, eliciting more than a few worried complaints from Silk.

Not a single one looked like it would help…

...but one had planted an idea firmly in her head, that could work.

She scooted over to the spider, once more whispering them a plan, the tower moving with her as the foundation holding it got less and less secure.

Silk was less than confident about the idea, but eventually conceded to it.

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Monica took up her spot on the end of the pillar’s top closest to their enemy, looking over them as they sat, motionless, in the room’s center, spewing more and more poison.

No way to get in close enough to finish them from here.

But she didn’t need to be the one getting close.

And with a leap she ran, from one side of the pillar to the other, reaching the edge and leaping with all her might, every point of AGI going into her massive jump forward as she cleared the pillar by a good ten feet.

The poison roiled under her, and as her burst of speed faded, she slowly began to plummet down towards it, with nothing else below her to stop her fall as she spun in the air, facing the column she’d just leapt from.

Luckily, this plan didn’t need anything for her to land on.

Once again, a familiar globule of webbing struck her chest, Silk hanging on for dear life as they held fast, a mountain of webbing under themselves to keep their grip immovable.

And with that single bit of redirected momentum, her directly downwards fall was now aimed diagonally, sending her swinging towards the base of the pillar.

She was moving too fast to stop now, her fall accelerating faster every millisecond.

There was no thinking at this point.

Only intuition, poor impulse control, a total lack of common sense, and an unsuppressed chuuni streak, demanding to be let free.

The stone face of the pillar rushed towards her, racing as fast as she swung back towards it, the stone barely standing, chipped and broken and broken at the very foundation… with every bit of that damage making it lean towards the center of the room.

A fist reared back. Her staff wouldn’t do for this.

And as the pillar, close to toppling already, was inches away from her as she swung-

“ULTIMATE...”

“BLOW…”

“BACK…!”

Fist met stone, and behind it, the full force of the final spell she had the energy to cast, winds blasting her forth even faster as she crashed her entire body against the massive stone tower.

And with a deafening CRACK, the last bits holding the column up were snapped, and following the earlier destruction as well as the momentum that had broken it, the entire stone structure plummeted directly forward, atop of a boss no longer capable of moving.

The were crushed utterly, and as she was sent flying, battered and burned and worn down to her very bones, Monica could not have smiled any wider.

Ariale had been killed, utterly and inarguably as they were crushed into particle effects, leaving her the victor of her first ever boss fight.

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