C83: Nicolash
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That great danger is a crow with the head of a dog.
It died in one hit. But still. It's a crow with a fucking doghead. The area in front of me doesnt have anything else. Though around the corner, I find three more of these monstrosities eating a dog…seems to be a regular one though. I take out the birds only for the dog to rise and I end it too.
Going up the stairs from here, I spot a cage like the one which held the first crow, going up the stairs reveals the signature shine of loot. I hop across, take out the crow and then get my blood gemstone (5). Going back up the stairs as I just let myself fall down to them. I spot another cage and bird, I take out the one on the same floor as me while the other tries to jump on my head only to be torn asunder midair by wind blades and then having it's own blood pushing it forward so it falls behind me with barely a glance from me.
Here the path splits in three ways, the first is the lower path on the left, the middle is the obvious shortcut back down to the lamp I got access to in the beginning. While the right leads back inside the castle.
Naturally, i go left and encounter an even worse monster, a dog with a crow head. As crazed as ever but with the piercing power of a bird beak. I slay the vicious monsters that crossed 3 feet in 1 second before doing the same to the other. I get a blood chunk and kin coldblood (10) for my troubles.
I then activate the lift before going back up and reentering the building.
….Firstly there is a large bridge before me with a side path on the left. My wind senses don't show anything is bad with either path. As I touch the bridge, I realize that it's only purpose is to brought upwards rather than down like my gamers senses say would somehow drop me.
It's a conflicting feeling of something being an obvious trap yet not being one. So I just keep my sense of self alive by taking the side route and lo and behold, nothing happens to me.
Though I am confused on the next section, a fog wall is in my way.
"Hmmm, that's a boss arena. I already reached Nicoshit?" I analyze the situation and decide to open up my system only for it to remain closed as im met with the same message as before.
[Perish and Die]
"Lovely. I feel your gracious heartfelt emotions even from here. Don't worry system, ill make sure to keep you company longer"
[fjuw.a…..afksew….hjst….]
"Hmm, yea, I cant speak eldritch yet. Better luck next time" I say as I wave away the fog wall.
"Ah Kos, or some say Kosm. Lend us your blessing, just as you did the vacuous Rom. Grant us the Cosmos. AHHHHHHHHH" A voice calls out from a distance in this misty library before just outright moaning.
"Thats not weird at all." i say as I soon find the fog around me clearing. "Ah, a hunter. A virulent one at that. It is not often that our lord would genuinely seek us out. Yet they have to inform us of someone like you. The voice calls out, his voice echoing through the library like a ghost.
"Someone who should suffer and die" The voice appears beside me like a snarl in the ear as I find a floating ball of blue white expand before exploding. I who could recognize the magical energy already stepped away from it but now I'm just trying to find out where my enemy is. My wind senses feel stifled as if someone is also using it against me.
I take a few steps forward only to find spikes lined up in a row in front of me. I roll out of the way as they fire into the wall behind me. Outright tearing apart the doll creature that was sprouting up as I was walking by when I entered the boss arena.
Boom BANG SHOOO WOOP
I begin to dodge one magical set of projectiles after another, essentially rolling up the stairs rather than down them. They came in the forms of more blades, either single types like my wind blades or saws as they go swiping by and nearly taking my ankles off. Alternatively there are more projectiles that either work like the first bomb spawning behind me or how im pretty sure the first step on the stairs would just collapse and have me fall into a magical pitfall trap if I wasnt careful. Yet it still triggers even when I don't touch that step. Thats dumb.
I finally climb up the first set of stairs to see him, Nicolash.
Dressed in his stupid Mensis Cage headpiece but rather than being dressed in casual student robes, he wears colorful and exquisite robes that denigrate his higher status amongst the members of Mensis.
"So, Archwizard Nicolash, i, the handsome moon scented hunter, has come here to put you back to sleep. Preferably a knife in your chest as you doze off but I'm just discussing semantics at this point." I monologue a bit and he seems interested enough as I activate the astral cloak and bum rush his ass with Astral movement only for my blades to hit a cloud as Nicolash seemed to expect this and already teleported away.
"Fuck, I hate teleporting enemies" "oh I fully agree with you, but from up here, it feels amazing to know that your completely useless against me." I curse and Nicolash talks to me from who knows where as his voice continues to echo around.
'Up here?' I think to myself as I lift my head, There are winding staircases floating above me as I see Nicolash get off one set only to get onto another that could either go up or down.
"Hehe" Nicolash chuckles to himself as he seems to spot my gaze. It's amusing to him but annoying to me. "Ahhhhhhhhh, grant us the cosmos dear Kosm" He repeats every so often in a loop as I use my new astral movement to continue zipping around, avoiding all the traps as best I can as the cloak drains mana and even more so if it's damaged while the rest use stamina unless I want to fly.
Bypassing the first phase entirely, I encounter the tower that leads up and down. I actually pause for a moment because my wind senses tell me that there is an item at the bottom which has a relatively strong presence in my mind. I feel one of the Caryll runes bored into my skin that vibrates in response to feeling this presence. It's the moon rune.
I rush downstairs where I encounter a few mergo servants but not many as I just take them out quick along with the scurrying beast which has a few more blood chunks for me. I get the new moon rune at the very bottom. My journey down had not been entirely uneventful as many magical traps had crossed my path as well.
It's reached a point where I less believe these are standalone traps and more so set up as Nicolash predicts my path. I don't like that. I definitely don't like that. I gotta screw with him now. It's a must.
I start off by naruto running back up the stairs only to wall around randomly around a portion. I use the natural portion of my liftoff speed from Astral Movement which is my previous Jump skill to cross great distances. I even stall for a second to sing a special song (Yakuza Bakamitai/Dame na me, dame na yo)
The foreign laughter has stopped every since I started my own antics. Eventually I reach the second floor area and nicolash starts speaking again. Though there is a sharpness to his tone now.
"I see now, there truly is no more heinous a-creature than you, to call you a hunter is a crime in itself. Come, allow me to bestow the greatest torment known to all upon you."
"You mean, you're gonna end this dumb ass dream that a gay elder god created to kill a baby for?" I retort and I hear something collapse which I rush towards as I find the idiotic boss fallen over. He is banging his head on the floor. His eyes red and bloodshot as he stares at me. Energy gathers in his hands before he fires it off at me without even bothering to talk.
I jumped back down the stairs I climbed up to see him, unharmed. I then hear him get up and stomp over as he reins at the top of the stairs. His glare only intensifies upon seeing me unharmed.
I activate the Eldritch Arm and wave him over. "Come on, take a lick at this. It's your favorite. A nice soft and squishy tentacle, nice and ready to shove up your ass. I can tell you'll like it a lot there. Fucking retard."
I actually see one of his veins pop, causing blood to partially coat his face in it. "You besmirch the very blessing bestowed upon you. Droll insults, strange movements. You show not a single sign of humanity, what could you be fighting for, a monster such as you".
"Funny you should say that, Im not fighting for myself. Im fighting for everyone else. To give them a chance to finally be free of this stupid nonsense. Ill kill every single being in Yharnam to ensure the curse of this city falls to ash and rests eternally on the ground, never to rise up from the moronic footsteps of others."
"I was recruited into this bullshit war as a child. I didn't want this, but you were probably different. You were indoctrinated by a priest who used you as a boytoy and you liked it. So you in turn used him to gape your asshole to fit in bigger cocks until a tentacle from an Amygdala found itself inside you and you came. You busted your lungs out and now we're here."
"You, stroking off the tentacle in your ass even as you face me which gives you ethereal powers but I chop the tentacles off of everyone. The Hunter and the huntee. Prepare your asshole for this."
I annoyingly rant before using chaos steps combined with Astral movement to create an unexpected combination as a mirage of the cosmos unfolds behind my every step until I slash my blade across the Mensis cage which nearly breaks in half if Nico-shit didn't teleport away.
While the fucker is possibly more annoying than even the game since he is now specialized against me in particular. He also gained a wide foray of abilities that I just barely match but my endurance is likely less than his in terms of mana. Granted i've never seen a boss run out of mana before in any game ever….so im kinda fucked.
On the other hand, he is paper. I'm not even using intensive terminology here. I nicked his shitty cage and he lost an 8th of his health. If I get a proper hit in then I could probably kill him in one hit.
Though for now, I have to chase him again as the hallways stretch unnaturally. This also applies to Nicolash himself as his body morphs and stretches until I just lose sight of him. I activate Lunar Moon again and see the illusion fall as the spacing, while still distorted, was not stretched as much as the illusion seemed so. Though there is one thing I noticed that I don't like.
There are 30 Nicolashes now.
"This really is a nightmare realm. How is there this many of you? Did you hijack a ride to Naruto or something?" I complain audibly and each of them gets a pompous look on their faces before a third are impaled by shadow spikes. I could hear the impact the spikes made which implies that these guys actually have substance. From the 10 I hit, I didn't see the health drop so It's a guessing game to find the real one now.
"My, you're trying so hard, don't you know all your effort up till now is futile?" Nicolash keeps trying to shit talk me but after what I just said, it all falls short, like a limp dick.
The remaining 20, now alert, rush off in all directions. Some climb up the book shelves, others run while a smaller number fly away. My wind senses alerts me that they all have substance. For now though, I try to use a few more shadow spikes to kill off a few more running around or the ones climbing but only get 2 as the rest are wary and unlike when I first did it, they now realize that even their own shadows can be used against them.
Positioning themselves near any and all light sources, they create zones where they can predict from where the spikes come from while the flying ones don't have these troubles unless they enter pitch black darkness as their shadows are too spread out to properly condense into spikes or other weapons.
I'm in quite a pickle, so I get to theorizing. Of course, I don't just have the luxury of doing this as various explosives and other magic traps still spawn around me while I'm standing still.
During one of my reflexive dodges, I find myself momentarily blinded by the explosive blast of magical energy.
"Thats it." I state as I reach an intrinsic understanding of a new technique I need which should help me even the playing field.
Expending a large amount of my mana, roughly 400 of my remaining 760. I gather light around myself. Specifically into my lunar moon. Darkness encompass' the entire extended room. From here, the lower levels and even the giant elevator leading even higher, all are accosted in darkness. Yet that is not the final verdict even yet.
I remain where I am, acting as the one true beacon of light in the world as the darkness itself shifts around me. More explosions occur around me but I face-tank them with my astral cloak combined with my chaos step barrier.
Of course, walking is not required to activate the chaos step barrier, but it is to activate the random chaos events. But since i've already 'comprehended' a ton about Chaos, i can fairly easily develop new techniques for it. One such is the current situation here.
Starting from the point of getting blinded, I realized that I only needed to create a powerful zone of darkness to block out all light so that my darkness powers could outright smother Nicolash and his clones but then I realized while unleashing this that with my mana seeped out everywhere, touching everything and everyone. I could 'link' my own abilities to others.
So I do this, I link myself to every single one of these retarded Nicolash's, not mentally of course, I could never recover from that level of retardation. But I do share one skill in particular with them all. Not knowledge or anything like that, but just to automatically activate the specific skill with their very movement.
That skill was Chaos Step. or in this case it would be the variant, chaos action.
Through this skill, their every action unleashes a blast of random chaotic energy around them. The kicker here, is that there can only ever be ONE chaos barrier. And I just so happen to be using that.
So if they so much as sneeze, itch their ass, get a cramp, twitch, or move in any direction or reason, then boom, chaos, even shitting themselves is not allowed.
While mana intensive, I still have a bit over 300 left, which I can use to reinforce the darkness should they try to get out of my new spells range.
Ah right, the name is Chaos Eclipse.
Feels like something that Shadow the hedgehog would copyright if he had a Chaos Emerald to use, but it's fine. I like it, it's certainly working as one by one, the numerous nicolashes die out.
The few last attempt to unleash a variety of attacks that would appear near me or blow me up yet I simply dispel them by using the basic version of chaos step which actually bestows me with something I've never seen before.
My mana regenerated from these attacks, rocketing me back up to 900, just a bit off from my current max of 1,005. Which immediately then rises by an additional 24 points to 1,029 as my physique levels up to level 2 finally. My whole body feels rejuvenated and while im not at full mana, just a bit over 900, it still feels amazing.
Since I immediately noticed the sensation of my mana rising, I studied the chaos phenomena that caused this. A few runic symbols floating in midair to turn foreign mana into taintless which my body itself then absorbed to refuel myself.
I did not get down the whole details but i got about 50% of it, which is incredible as I could make the strongest anti-magic shield now. Ill need to work on that later though.
"AGGGGGGHHHHHH" Nicolash's scream echoes throughout the arena. I see his health drop to about half, he is too far for my wind senses to spot him, must have been one of the fliers, but regardless, he is hurt and that means.
"Sounds like it's time for part 2. " I rush into the air, trying to find his exact position.
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