CA Chapter Thirty-four

The thing was enormous. From a distance, it was shaped something like a person, with a main ‘body’, and five protrusions that were generally arm, leg, and head-shaped. The ‘head’ even looked like it was wearing a hat. As it drew nearer, however, they saw that the face was completely smooth and featureless, and while it had a pattern on its surface that was reminiscent of blue overalls, a long-sleeved red shirt, and brown boots, that was all it was… a pattern. It held a pitchfork that had to be at least twelve feet long, with the handle clutched in a blunt, fingerless pseudopod that served as its ‘arm’.

Alpha looked around at the rest of the party. They had suspected - even hoped - this would happen. After all, there couldn’t be a farm if there was no farmer, and a farmer wouldn’t allow someone to just kill his livestock without at least trying to stop them. They had reasoned that the farmer was probably the final boss of the level, and if they could pull him out of his farmhouse, he might be easier to kill. On the other hand, if they managed to kill all the pig, cow, and chicken cubes without the farmer coming out to chase them off, then there either wasn’t a farmer after all, or the farmhouse was a sort of boss chamber, and they would have to go in to face him.

Somehow, in the midst of the acid rain and the lightning storm, Alpha, at least, had forgotten they were still waiting for one more monster. She’d managed to melt all but two of the swords in her inventory, and they were common iron swords dropped by kobolds in the Distant Caves dungeon. As the fourteen-foot-tall boss stomped toward them, Alpha focused on Vexxx.

“Can you kill him?”

He grimaced. “I, um, kind of used the last of my mana on that [Tempest], and I don’t have any mana potions left. My bad.”

Drawing in a calming breath, Alpha turned to Tess. “What’ve you got?”

Tess shrugged, looking apologetic. “Flaming axe. We haven’t tried fire on them yet. It might work. I don’t have a lot of mana, though, and I don’t have any mana potions, either. I do have something called [Axe Blender], but if I use it, I’ll probably die, and I might accidentally kill you guys, too. It’s kind of a last-ditch skill. Honestly, I’m a better tank than a damage dealer.”

Unexpectedly, a warm, rich voice intruded into their conversation. It was Wep, and he had one of his epically bushy eyebrows raised as he looked at them. “May I help? Unless you need the experience.” His eyes grew calculating. “If it drops rare loot, I’d also like the first opportunity to buy it. At a fair price, of course.” White teeth flashed in the depths of his beard, and Alpha remembered that George Short had been a brilliant businessman before he’d decided to enter politics.

The earth was shaking beneath their feet now, as the farmer approached. Fortunately, he seemed to be almost as slow as the cube animals, but his long strides still covered a lot of ground, and he would be on them in just a few more steps.

“Yes,” Alpha said.

“That’d be great!” Tess looked relieved.

Vexxx hesitated, but as another pseudopod thudded against the ground, he shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Wonderful,” Wep said, and pulled a hammer as large as he was from a sheath across his back. He looked from Alpha to Tess. “Who has the highest Strength stat?”

Alpha… actually didn’t know what her Strength was, though she thought it was approaching three hundred. Definitely over two fifty. She hadn’t looked at her own stat sheet since before they entered the dungeon. Which reminded her, she actually had some stat points to allocate, since she’d leveled up after killing the golem on the maze level.

“Mine is just over two hundred,” Tess said, proudly. Alpha was impressed. Tess seemed like a well-rounded character, so Tess must have some stat-boosting items or skills to balance her out. Of course, Alpha had two extra skill points per level, and got an extra Strength for every five she put into the stat, so hers was still higher.

She eyed the oncoming behemoth. It had lifted its huge pitchfork, and the glistening tines were now pointed straight at them.

Cube Farmer - Corrosive/Poison. Level 100.

“Mine is better,” she said quickly, without even bothering to check on the exact number. “What do you want me to do?”

Wep grinned. “Nobody expects an attack from above.” He pointed to the air over the farmer’s head. “Throw me up there as soon as it stops.”

There was no time to ask questions, so Alpha just nodded and crouched so the dwarf could step into her clasped hands. Tess, seeing that talking time was over, summoned her tower shield and ran out in front of the rest of the party. Lifting the shield, she brought it down directly in the path of the pitchfork, slamming it into the ground with so much force that the bottom edge vanished into the dirt. A flash rippled out from the shield as she used a skill, and when the pitchfork impacted the shield with a tremendous CLANG, her feet dug deeper into the ground, but she didn’t budge an inch. The Cube Farmer came to a halt, its entire body shuddering and rippling with the force of the blow, and Alpha tossed the dwarf.

Wep flew through the air, raising the him-sized hammer as he did so. For a moment, it almost looked like Alpha had thrown him too hard, and he would fly right over the farmer’s head, but he somehow twisted in mid-air, reorienting himself so he began to fall directly toward the blobby brown mass that sat on top of the column of gelatin. He brought the hammer down, and it was like watching someone play an epic game of whack-a-mole. The farmer’s head merged with its torso, which melted into its legs and then became one with its booted ‘feet’. This left Wep standing on top of something that was much closer to cube-shaped than people-shaped, except for the two arm-tentacles, which were now too close to the ground to properly wield the four-meter long pitchfork.

The boss screamed, a terrible sound that combined the spine-chilling yowl of an embattled feline with what Alpha could only describe as a series of wet squelches and dropped its weapon. It turned, tentacles swinging wildly as it struck out at them all, the sinuous limbs easily avoiding Tess’ shield and reaching out to hit Vexxx, who had been watching the battle from behind Tess, on the shoulder, spinning him around as blood flew. The mage collapsed, and Alpha inspected him as she darted past, lifting her iron longsword, which she had once again dipped in her dwindling supply of ashes.

Pulling up the party list, Alpha saw that the single blow had taken Vexxx down to about a third of his health. She wasn’t sure where he’d been when he started, but she was sure that if he’d been badly injured, he would have been complaining about that, too, so she assumed he’d started either at full health or close to it.

This thing was strong!

Then Wep hit the monstrosity again. The hammer blow caused rippling waves to travel down through the jiggling body of the thing, and it screamed again. Ponderously, it began to spin. Its pseudopods flattened into sharp planes, and smacked into Tess’ shield with a rapidly increasing sound of thud thud thud thud thudthudthudth-

The shield broke, sending Tess sprawling in the dirt in front of the inexorably approaching mass of goo. It rolled over her foot, and Tess spasmed, screaming in pain.

Alpha leaped forward, raising her sword like a child poking a stick into the spinning spokes of a bicycle. The sheer force of the impact of spinning tentacle on sword was enough to nearly tear her weapon from her hand, but she hung on through sheer force of will and two hundred and however-many points of Strength, even as she was dragged around, heels dragging through the dirt. Then she saw the ‘flesh’ of the gelatinous arm-blade begin to tear, and soon the whole chunk of severed arm flew away through the air, which unfortunately meant there was also nothing left keeping her attached to the monster, so she, too, went tumbling through the air.

As she flopped end over end, she saw that somehow, Wep was still standing on the spinning Cube Farmer’s top surface, though he now looked like he was standing knee deep in it, rather than being perched on top. He brought his hammer down, over and over, and an arcing halo of sparks flew around the metal hammer-head, indicating he was using some kind of lightning-based skill to boost his attacks. Alpha landed in the dirt with a grunt, and swiped away the message telling her she’d lost another hundred drops of Blood.

Rolling over, she gathered her arms and legs under her, pushing herself up into a stand in a single smooth movement. She might not be the best fighter, but she would not be put down by a gelatinous cube wearing blue overalls!

Her sword had been lost or broken when she was flung away from the spinning cube, so she summoned her last one from her inventory, doused it in more oil and shoved it into the bag of ash, the tip creating a small hole in the bottom of the sack, not for the first time. A small cloud of ash puffed out of the bottom as she closed the bag, coating her feet and lower legs in a fresh layer of soot. As she was about to put the ash back into her inventory, she hesitated. Instead, she returned the sword back into her inventory, and lifted the holey sack so she could use it like a basketball-sized powder puff, covering herself in black ash.

Looking back at the battle, she saw that the now one-armed Cube Farmer had Tess pinned down, though the half-dwarf had somehow gotten her leg out from under it. Tess was crouching over Vexxx’s prone body, protecting him with two shields held in a tent-shape over them, much as she had once done for Toggle. Alpha pulled up the party list again, and saw that Vexxx’s health was still dropping, in spite of the fact that he was no longer taking blows, and Tess wasn’t in much better shape.

::Tess, if I hit your shield, will it hold?:: Alpha asked over party chat.

::Yes?:: Tess answered, uncertainly. ::The skill I’m using will keep the shields from breaking until I run out of Stamina, and I have a lot of Stamina. But if I do anything  else, the skill will break, and it has a stupidly long cooldown.:: She hesitated, then added, ::Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it quickly. Vexxx and I are both poisoned, and I had to cut off my foot to get free, so I’m Bleeding.:: The last words were tight with pain, and Alpha began to move.

First, she hopped back a few more paces, then she started to run. She had long legs, and she’d run track in high school, so she knew exactly how to set her feet and use her muscles to speed up as much as possible over a short distance. When she reached the ramp created by Tess’ backward-facing shield, she ran up it with springing steps until she reached the peak. It wasn’t very high, but now she was traveling at something steeper than a forty-five degree angle, and she pushed, leaping up and over the sweeping arm as it slammed into the shield beneath her feet.

She landed against the side of the cube boss with an oomph, her torso and arms suddenly drenched in the pool of acidic chunks created by Wep’s hammer. Her legs dangled off the side, but they spun out straight behind her as she was caught up in the speed of the cube’s spin. Then a strong hand grasped her upper arm and hauled her the rest of the way onto the top of the cube, or at least what remained of it.

You have lost 50 Drops of Blood due to Acid. Damage halved due to Base Coat.

You have resisted Poison.

Alpha remembered going to an amusement park with her mother, Molly, when she was younger. Against Molly’s better judgment, she had allowed Alpha to ride the Gravitron, which pinned you up against the wall while it spun so quickly your feet actually left the floor. As soon as it was over, Alpha had staggered to the closest trash bin and vomited up everything she’d eaten that day, and she and Molly had left the park soon after.

This was worse. So much worse.

“Look at me, lass,” a deep voice said from somewhere near her ribcage, and she looked down into Wep’s concerned face. He smiled as her eyes met his. “There you are. Don’t look out there. Now, what’re you doing up here? Didn’t you know this damned thing is filled with acid?” He held up his flickering hammer, and she could see that one side of it had been eaten away to a nub, while the other side was already half-melted.

Alpha lifted her leaky sack of ash in a shaky hand. “Secret weapon,” she said, and dropped the bag into the hole created by Wep’s hammer blows. Opening her inventory, she followed that up with three more perforated pouches of varying sizes.

The spinning cube… staggered. Ripples began to travel outwards through its undulating flesh as its spinning slowed, then stopped. She heard a sort of gloop as acid and other unidentifiable chunks burbled up from the hole between the two players. Alpha looked at Wep.

“I really think we should-”

The cube erupted like she’d poured baking soda into vinegar. Which she had, in a way. Waves of grayish-pink foam fountained out of the hole, flooding the area with acid and ash, swirling in a tsunami of corrosive fluid and other, much worse, things. One of the blobs that seemed to serve as the cube’s internal organs popped out, whole, and jiggled near Alpha’s feet, and she swallowed back bile.

Wep, who was now just as covered in slime and offal as everyone else, vanished his hammer into his inventory and ran to the edge of the rapidly melting cube, leaping off into midair, arms and legs windmilling as he jumped. Alpha was right behind him, tucking into a tumbling roll that took the edge off the impact and reduced the amount of damage she took from the fall. ::Tess,:: she sent, ::Can you grab Vexxx and run?::

::I’m all right,:: the young mage said, though he sounded weak and woozy.

::On it,:: Tess replied, and as Alpha regained her feet, she saw the half-Dwarf running away from the now madly-jittering Cube Farmer, with Vexxx thrown over her shoulder, his arms dragging behind them. Tess was missing one foot, and she noticeably limped each time the stump hit the ground.

Wep ran, too, easily outstripping Tess, and as he passed the taller half-dwarf, he grabbed her and Vexxx without even breaking stride.

Which left only Alpha, and she used every point of Strength and Dexterity she had to race toward her friends, leaving the now rapidly-expanding boss behind.

It blew.