Jacob crouched low into the tall, tawny grass. He pulled the party into a tight, hidden circle just outside the chimera's line of sight, keeping his voice to a low whisper.
"We're not going to charge this thing blindly," Jacob instructed, meeting the eyes of every party member. "I'm going to hit it first with a combination of air and fire magic, pushing both spells to their third enhancement level. It'll create a massive, concussive explosion right in its face."
Oren nodded, quickly grasping the tactical advantage. "A flashbang, then, my master has mentioned this type of tactic. You want to blind and deafen it."
"Exactly," Jacob confirmed. "It should lose its primary senses, for a time, and the explosion should also hurt it quite a bit. The moment the blast clears, Mira needs to strike. Hit its back legs and sever or at least damage the tendons to kill its mobility."
Mira just spun a dagger in her hand, her dark eyes locked on the pacing beast through the grass. "Consider it done."
Jacob looked at the heavy fighters. "Once Mira strikes, I'm switching entirely to crowd control. I'll hit it with a pure force restraint to crush it downward, and I'll use earth magic to lock its paws into the dirt as much as possible. Thomas, you take the front center. Oren, you take the left flank. Bran, you take the right."
"And the backline?" Sera asked softly.
"You and I will stay well out of its physical reach," Jacob assured her. "We'll anchor the rear."
Turning back to the rest of the group, he made one last address, "We're going to systematically dismantle this Gatekeeper, piece by piece. Does everyone understand the general idea of my plan?"
Everyone in the group confirmed their agreement with the plan and indicated that they understood how Jacob wanted to handle this gatekeeper.
The plan was set.
Jacob stood up from the grass, stepping out into the open clearing, leaving the cover of the tall grasses behind.
The Chimera snapped its massive, armored boar head toward him and let out a guttural, vibrating roar that shook the loose pebbles that had begun to litter the ground near the gate. The beast bunched its thick, lion-like muscles, preparing for a lethal charge.
Jacob didn't give it a chance to do as it pleased.
He raised both hands and channeled his tier 1 mana, simultaneously casting two distinct, highly compressed spheres. In his left hand, a swirling vortex of third-enhancement air magic silently vibrated. In his right hand, a blindingly bright blue orb of third-enhancement fire ignited.
He thrust the spells forward and combined them right as they reached the face of the gatekeeper, which was already trying to backpedal instead of launching itself forward after feeling the sheer intensity of the magic flying towards its face.
The combined spells erupted in a devastating explosion directly against the left side of the beast's armored face. It had managed to shift its face slightly so the blast was unable to fully affect both eyes and ears.
A shockwave of superheated air blasted outward, flattening the surrounding grass and kicking up a massive cloud of dust. The deafening BOOM echoed violently against the high hills surrounding this flat area in the grasslands.
The chimera shrieked as it thrashed its heavy head wildly from side to side. Its yellow eyes squeezed shut against the blinding flash, and thick blood leaked from its ears. The explosion had completely shattered its equilibrium.
Jacob could see that the left side of its face took the brunt of the damage, with the fur in pieces and parts of the thick, scaled skin blasted away, exposing the charred muscle underneath. He thought the left eye looked squinted from the blast at first, but upon closer examination, he realized that it had been melted shut.
Before the dust could even begin to settle, a dark blur shot out from the grass.
Mira quickly slid just underneath the chimera's thrashing bulk. Her enchanted steel flashed twice in the dim light as she sliced deeply into the thick tendons of the beast's hind legs.
The attack caused the monster to roar once more in fresh agony, its back half buckling as its structural support gave out. Mira rolled safely away, melding back into the shadows before she could get squashed by the massive beast.
"Now!" Jacob shouted, dropping his offensive stance.
He slammed his palms toward the dirt and visualized a crushing weight as he formed his next spell. A heavy, shimmering pillar of pure force slammed down onto the chimera's spine, pinning it closer to the ground.
Jacob followed up his pinning spell by shifting his mana into the earth. Thick, jagged clamps of solid rock erupted from the soil, locking tightly over the beast's front paws to root it in place.
The vanguard rushed in.
Thomas charged directly at the front of the monster. The chimera snapped its massive tusks blindly, fighting through the restraints. He stepped inside the wild swing instead of falling back. Then, he delivered a brutal uppercut with his hardened leather gauntlets directly beneath the monster's jaw, unleashing another enchantment that Jacob had added to the gauntlets.
His kinetic force was amplified through the connection from his armor to his gauntlets, in the reverse of their first enchantment, causing a much greater force to hit the beast on the chin, snapping its head back and keeping its deadly teeth pointed away from the group.
At the same time, Oren arrived on the left flank. The swordsman moved with more grace than the brawler, utilizing techniques honed through countless hours of swordplay. His steel blade found the unprotected gaps between the creature's thick fur and heavy scales, delivering deep, bleeding lacerations to its ribs.
On the right flank, Bran moved in. The tinkerer swung his heavy steel mace in a wide but devastating arc. The blunt weapon collided against the beast's shoulder joint with a sickening crack, causing multiple scales to fall off its thick hide, exposing the soft flesh underneath to additional attacks.
Sera stood still beside Jacob in the back line. She channeled a steady stream of soothing green light through her magical notes, alternating tones and songs depending on the situation. The stamina regeneration spell washed over the three frontline fighters, keeping their muscles fueled and their strikes relentlessly fast.
The chimera fought fiercely, but the party gave it little room to breathe. Jacob maintained the crushing force magic, completely draining his mana reserves to keep the beast anchored.
Thomas absorbed the frantic, thrashing impacts. Bran delivered crushing blows to its right side while Oren poked holes in its left.
Once the beast seemed to be on its last leg, it started glowing red before bursting through its magical restraints, treating its injuries as little more than inconvenient paper cuts.
"Pull back!" Jacob managed to yell before forcing the earth in front of the beast to explode upward with two pillars blocking the newly liberated paws, which were coming down from different angles to flatten Thomas into paste.
The front line retreated to the back line as they waited for Jacob to restrain the beast, with Oren pointing out the problem.
"It's enraged," He stated flatly.
Everyone was breathing heavily, and Jacob had his arms thrust forward, trying to maneuver force and earth to pin the monster down before it made its way to the group.
It seemed the monster was intent on ignoring the spells, though, as everything Jacob threw at the monster was swatted away or shrugged off.
Finally, after hitting the beast with a particularly large pillar square in the chest, he managed to launch it into the sky, where he caused a few blasts of enhanced air and fire to injure the beast.
It landed with a dull thud, but it was quickly scrambling to get up and kill the puny humans that dared singe its hide.
"Oren, Thomas, I need a moment," Jacob stated quickly as he started to spin up a powerful spell. "This one takes a while, but it's worth it. I just need an attack or two blocked."
"Lets try this first!" Bran shouted as he pressed a button on his toolbelt.
What sounded like a spring-loaded contraption pushed a chain through the air at blinding speeds. It rattled as it spun, hooking around the feet of the gatekeeper.
Instead of locking its feet together and snapping, the chains seemed to shift and trip the beast with its own strength, which slowed it considerably.
"That won't hold it for long." Bran stated with narrowed eyes, "But it should help you two stay out of harm's way."
The two boys were already in motion, fists and sword at the ready. They both attacked from the front, forcing the monster to swipe at them.
Sera started singing an upbeat tune, which seemed to invigorate the boys but not the monster, helping to push their speed and reaction times up a notch to keep up with any unexpected attacks.
Oren managed a parry which launched him backwards a few feet behind Thomas, who crossed his arms and activated a system skill. The claws of the beasts' next strike hit his crossed arms, but the enchantments of his armor and gloves flared brightly as his system skill shimmered a faint red around his body.
The attack was seemingly negated, but it caused Thomas to drop to one knee in exhaustion. The difference in mass and strength between him and the gatekeeper was too great to negate entirely, even with a highly developed system skill and the strange stretchy chains keeping it slightly subdued.
Oren was back before Thomas could take an additional strike, blocking the beast's fangs with his sword once more, and getting thrown back a second time, but this time he took Thomas with him as they were launched to relative safety.
At that moment, Jacob took the distance between his friends and the beast to activate his new spell, causing lava to erupt between them.
The group could feel the sheer heat coming from the lava as it warmed the surrounding area, even causing nearby grass to burst into flames.
For a moment, it seemed as if the lava eruption would hurt both friend and foe, but Jacob quickly directed the blast onto the Chimera, which had been taken by surprise.
It let out a horrific, high-pitched screech as its scales and exposed skin were burned and melted under the intense heat of the lava. It thrashed about, wildly, trying to get the burning earth off its body.
Jacob manipulated the lava to squeeze the monster, like a giant hand, which pinned it back down to the ground. He then utilized a water spell to quickly cool the lava around the beast, exposing its vital areas while leaving room for it to be attacked.
The beast was still struggling, but it was futile, as the hardened lava surrounding the beast was too thick to burst out of after having its strength sapped by the heat.
Jacob was about to order the attack when a dark shadow once again flashed out of the brush.
Mira was coated in blood, but Jacob was unsure if it was her blood or the blood of the things she had been killing while they fought the monster.
Regardless, a flash of blades and another spray of blood coming from the neck of the chimera put an end to its savage growls and cries.
With a final, desperate heave, the chimera pulled on its restraints in vain. Seeing its final moments arrive, Jacob released the hold he had on the beast, allowing the dark rocks he had created with the lava to retreat underground.
The Random Gatekeeper let out one last, bubbling gasp. Its massive body slumped forward, crashing heavily into the earth, completely lifeless.
The party stood victorious around the massive corpse, after ensuring it was fully dead, breathing heavily in the silence left after the battle.
"That felt like a close one," Jacob said after the group awkwardly breathed heavily around the boss for a moment. Each person in the group looked at the other with wide eyes, showing their excitement but also the realization that this battle had nearly gone in the wrong direction.
Jacob felt like his mana wouldn't have held up much longer, and he could tell that everyone else was feeling similarly. Sera, especially, looked like she was pushing things as she hummed a low tune that he could tell was a mix of regenerative and restorative magic to heal up the wounds taken in this encounter.
"I think this shows our limits," Oren said, voicing what everyone was thinking, "while we managed to overcome the challenge, I felt like we were on the knife's edge at the end there. One wrong step, and someone could have gotten seriously injured."
"Or worse," Thomas stepped in to agree with Oren. "I was barely able to take one direct attack from the beast, and that's with the newly enchanted gear I received from Jacob and my Inpenetrable Stance skill."
While there were murmurs of agreement around the group, Jacob stepped up to the dissolving monster carcass and used his inspect skill.
Inspect Used (4/10):
Identified: Dissolving Random Gatekeeper Remains
Variant: Lesser Heavy Boar Chimera
Rank: F+
Estimated Combat Level: 5
Status: Defeated
Dungeon Dissolution: Active
Remaining Harvestable Materials:
Cracked Earth Core, Rank F+
Lesser Heavy Boar Tusk, Rank F+
Dense Gatekeeper Hide, Rank F
Miasma-Stained Bone Fragments, Rank F
Residual Affinities:
Earth
Minor miasma corruption
Cause of Death:
Multiple-party damage contribution detected.
Structural collapse caused by joint failure, internal trauma, and mana disruption.
Warning:
Harvestable materials will fully dissolve if not collected soon.
Inspect Skill Level Up: 4 -> 5
After using his skill, it was like the system had finally woken up and realized that the unassuming party had actually killed this random gatekeeper that most seasoned parties would have trouble dealing with.
System Notice: Random Gatekeeper Defeated (Anomaly) Party contribution calculated. Combat XP awarded.
The follow-up notification surprised him the most, and made him realize why any party that could challenge a random gatekeeper would want to do so.
Combat XP based on fight contribution: 530
After getting the hefty burst of combat XP, Jacob took another look at his current progress to a combat level of two.
Combat Level 1 (XP: 783/1000)
The mobs they cleared out, coupled with the gatekeeper kill, seemed to push him near the threshold to level up his combat level for the first time, but it looked like another floor or two would be required to make it happen.
Looking around, he realized that everyone else had also gotten the notification of their experience drops.
Without wasting time, Jacob reached down and started harvesting what he could, directed by his inspect skill, before the monster completely dissolved. When he was done, he had managed to pocket the Rank F+ Cracked Earth Core, Rank F+ Lesser Heavy Boar Tusk, and the Rank F Dense Gatekeeper Hide.
The bone shards had been in the worst shape when he started, so he opted for the more valuable items first, which resulted in losing the bone shards completely. He felt like it was a good trade, though.
"What did it drop?" Oren asked, walking over to inspect the haul.
Jacob held up the items. "A cracked earth core, a lesser tusk, and some thick hide. Nothing monumental, but solid materials for Bran and me to work with later."
He was especially thinking about the cracked earth core, as it seemed different than the normal earth cores he could get from the dungeon mobs.
Thomas nudged the heavy carcass with his boot, which caused part of it to break away under the pressure as it was in the later stages of dissolving back into the dungeon. "This was just a random anomaly, and it took our entire formation to pin it down. If this is what a random spawn feels like, the actual floor boss is going to be a nightmare."
"Thomas is right," Jacob agreed, looking past the corpse toward the shimmering portal stones leading to the second floor. "We executed the plan perfectly, but my mana reserves were heavily drained to maintain that force restraint. We proved we can handle a major threat together."
Oren sheathed his sword with a decisive click. "But we're not ready for a true dungeon boss yet. We need better gear and higher combat levels before we push into the real depths. Each level we gain in our respective classes will help increase our base stats, but each level gained in our combat skills will really help."
"Agreed," Jacob nodded, securing the loot in his leather pouch. "Let's take the direct path straight to the surface so we can limit our exposure for the rest of the day. I think we all need some rest from combat after this delve, and we have a lot of crafting and planning to do before we come back."