They retreated toward a narrow tunnel and the bats aggressively followed.
The elf continuously fired magic arrows into the swarm.
-10
-10
-9
The Wolfkin carved anything that slipped through.
Jake stepped into the choke point, blade rising and falling in tight, efficient arcs, each swing ending with something dead.
-11
-10
-12
Within minutes the swarm thinned and corpses piled up at their feet.
The last few bats hesitated, screeching weakly as they tried to retreat.
Jake threw his sword.
-14
It skewered one through the chest and pinned it to the wall.
Damon leaned against a rock,
Chest heaving, skin burning everywhere the acid had touched.
"That's the last of them." Jake announced, piercing his sword into a bat's chest on the ground. "Anyone hit?"
Jake looked around. The Hellion and Wolfkin were hit in a few places with the bats acid saliva, but were being attended to by the Bunny healer. In a few minutes, their wounds were healed as though they were never there.
"What about me?" Damon breathed.
The only part of his body free from the burns of the acid was his face. He had been hit so many times he lost count.
No one even bothered to look at him.
"Let's keep moving. The Boss shouldn't be far."
F-Rank dungeons were popular for having two rooms; one for mob the other for the boss.
As soon as they entered the second room, they saw the boss and his guardians.
The boss chamber opened into a wide cavern. Hanging from the ceiling was a two-headed bat ten times larger than the others. Three massive guardians clung to the walls around it.
One guard saw them enter the room and with a screech, alerted the others and the boss.
The Bat King let go of the ceiling and dropped.
The impact cracked the ground.
Two heads lifted at once and four eyes locked onto the group.
The scream that followed was more than sound. It carried pressure.
Each hunter received an alert on their HP.
-5
-5
Damon's ears rang. His vision swam as he stumbled backward.
The guardians detached from the walls and hit the ground running.
"Take the guardians. I'll handle the king!" Jake shouted.
The Wolfkin and Hellion split without thinking, each taking a side.
The Wolfkin slammed into his target, daggers tearing into thick hide.
-7
-6
The guardian snapped back, jaws closing around the Wolfkin's forearm, causing blood to spray out.
-12
He tore free and headbutted the creature, breaking its grip.
Jake ran straight up the cavern wall, boots finding holds where there shouldn't have been any, then kicked off into open air and slashed across the Bat King's wing joint.
-22
Black blood fountained out. The Bat King convulsed and smashed its wing down. The impact missed Jake by a breath, then landed on the Hellion.
-18
I would've called these mofos by their names but they were too proud to tell Damon.
Seeing one of the Bat King's heads inhale, Jake skidded backward, boots carving lines in the stone as he braced himself.
Its throat bulged.
"Doji, move!" Jake yelled.
Acid poured from the king's mouth in a wide, sweeping arc. It didn't hit any of them, but dissolved the stone floor it landed on.
Damon threw himself behind a large rock. Unlike the swarm, the king and his guardians were only focused on those attacking them. He couldn't risk getting hit by an acid spray.
The stone sizzled as the acid ate into it. The edge of the splash caught his arm.
-4
Heat crawled under his skin as the poison from the acid sank deeper.
One guardian broke through the frontline. It moved low and fast.
Damon turned just in time to see claws filling his vision. He hit the ground hard, breath exploding out of him. Pain tore through his side. His fingers went numb.
The fight continued above him.
The Hellion grabbed a guardians jaws with both hands and forced it shut. Flames burst from his arms, searing flesh.
-21
The guardian thrashed, smashing him into the cavern wall.
The elf focused fire on the king's wounded wing.
-10
-13
-11
Its massive body lost balance and crashed into the floor, shaking the entire dungeon.
One guardian tried to retreat. A Wolfkin leapt onto its back, daggers furiously stabbing without end.
-8
-8
-8
Its spine parted.
The last guardian shrieked as it fell to the ground. Jake appeared in front of it and drove his blade up through its skull.
-27
The Hellion climbed onto the king's back, raised both flaming fists, and brought them down hard.
-31
Bone cracked. In seconds, the body went still.
Damon lay on the ground, poison burning through his veins, staring at the cavern ceiling as the battle finally ended.
'If only I wasn't so weak. I won't be this pained and afraid.' Damon thought to himself, clenching his fists in anger.
Once again he found himself hating why he had no power over his fate and all he could do was try to survive the pain.
"That was intense," the Hellion laughed, flexing his shoulder joint. "Too bad the fucker didn't leave any drops."
"Non of them did."
Damon sat on the ground. Pain teaming through every part of his body. He was only hit twice by one of the Bat King's guardian but that was enough to put him down as the acid contained poison.
"Can we go now?" Damon asked, trying to catch his breath. The poison had started to affect his lungs.
Jake looked at him with digust in his eyes.
"Lila heal the maggot," he ordered turning to the Bunny with the healing class. "You're only going to die after I beat the living shit out of you."
While Lila healed those wounded and Damon, the team waited for the exit portal to open.
"Something's not right," noted the B-Rank Hellion. "It's been a while. The exit portal should've opened by now."
"Could the Bat King had been a false boss?"
"False bosses don't have guards and besides, there's no other monster in the Dungeon. We're the only ones here so let's just wait a little longer." The Elf spoke up.
"I was going to wait till the portal shows, but I'm starting to get a little bored," Jake said, flexing his knuckles as he approached Damon. He thought Morgan was intentionally delaying the exit portal.
Damon took off the backpack and dropped the equipment he was holding and got up in a fighting position.
Jake lunged at Damon with a punch, but Damon dodged and responded with a fist to Jake's face, forcing him to the ground.
"If that's all you got, I'm afraid this just isn't going to end well for you," Damon smiled.
In the blink of an eye, Jake used his leg to sweep Damon, forcing him to fall. As soon as his head touched the ground, Jake watched Damon fall through a portal.
"What the hell."
Jake looked around to find out he was alone, and just as he was trying to make sense of things, he noticed a portal with Black-aura surround his feet. Dread instantly appeared in his eyes.
Before he could move his body, the portal swallowed him whole.