Through the air-shaking roar, Leo got a clear look at the giant creature's full form.
It was a skeletal monster, pitch-black all over, its lower body buried underground and its upper body nearly ten meters tall, like a gigantic Spartoi. Along its hunched, curving spine, countless vertebrae trembled, rising and falling in waves as if they had a will of their own. Its head bore two demon-like horns, and just looking at the black bone gave the feeling of being pulled into it, its whole body carrying a sharp gleam both eerie and dangerous.
At the center of that massive skeletal body, an unreasonably large magic stone lay exposed in its chest, guarded by a thick sternum and ribs. That enormous crystal radiated a dazzling blue-violet light like a heart, yet it couldn't outshine the small crimson flames of ghostly fire burning deep in its dark eye sockets.
This was the Floor Boss of Floor 37, Udaeus.
Opening its upper and lower jawbones, the skeletal monster let out a wailing howl at its surroundings like a newborn coming into the world, and before long it turned the swaying crimson ghost-fire in its eye sockets toward the figure standing not far from it.
Its gaze held a killing intent and malice that anyone could sense.
"Ngh...!"
The girls standing at the chamber's entrance tensed despite themselves, as if those monstrous eyes had locked onto them.
Ais drew her silver saber and glared hard at the giant skeletal monster, while Lefiya took a step back without meaning to, her face going slightly pale.
About a month earlier, they'd done the same thing, watching Leo challenge a newly respawned Floor Boss and standing ready to support him.
But unlike last time, this time Leo was facing Udaeus, classified as Lv.6, and not Goliath, classified as Lv.4.
When Leo challenged Goliath, the girls still had the confidence to back him up, watching the fight with composure, sure they could step in at the right moment under any circumstances and protect Leo.
But when the opponent was Udaeus, they didn't have that confidence.
This was an enemy even they didn't dare face alone, a terrifying being they couldn't guarantee they'd be able to stop in time even if they did step in.
So Ais, Tiona, and Tione alike now gripped their weapons tightly and settled into battle stances.
But Udaeus hadn't locked onto the girls outside the chamber. It had eyes only for the tiny ant that dared to stand before it.
A roar shook the air as Udaeus slowly raised a gleaming black, crooked bone arm and unleashed a ferocious strike at Leo, standing right before it.
The instant the huge, twisted bone arm came down, a sonic boom rang out.
"Race onward like a comet."
Facing this air-crushing killing blow, Leo chanted his flight magic without hesitation.
His opponent was Udaeus, the Floor Boss of Floor 37, whose latent abilities could even surpass Lv.6. A single hit could leave a Lv.5 first-class adventurer critically wounded and dying. Against such a being, if a mere Lv.4 like Leo didn't bring out every last trump card from the very start, then forget fighting, even lasting a little longer would be next to impossible.
So Leo activated his flight magic without hesitation, his whole body wrapped in brilliant starlight, shooting into the sky like a comet to dodge that terrifying blow.
The giant skeletal monster's palm slammed into the ground, smashing it to fragments in an instant.
With a thunderous crash, the ground threw up dense dust and caved in, countless cracks spreading out all around.
Having dodged the strike, Leo climbed into the air and turned into a comet again, hurtling toward Udaeus fast enough to tear through the air.
His target was that giant magic stone exposed to the air.
Ordinary monsters kept their magic stones buried deep inside their bodies, but Udaeus, because of how its body was built, had no flesh or organs to hide its magic stone, and could only protect it within its sternum.
The magic stone was the core of a monster's existence. Even though Udaeus was a terrifyingly strong Floor Boss, once it lost its magic stone, it would still die.
So against a powerful enemy like Udaeus, almost every adventurer would do the same thing: attack its chest cavity, break through its sternum, and destroy the magic stone within to bring the monster down.
With the weakness already exposed, anyone who could hold back from making it their target could hardly be called a qualified adventurer at all.
As for the fact that if that giant magic stone were taken up to the surface and sold, it would surely fetch an astronomical price, in a Floor Boss fight where you could die at any moment, that was actually nothing worth careful consideration.
Against a Floor Boss with latent abilities that even towered above Lv.6, anyone who could still stop to consider whether to preserve its magic stone and haul it up to the surface for a huge profit was either genuinely so strong they didn't take Udaeus seriously, or just a greed-blinded idiot.
The former might exist, but Leo, currently only Lv.4, definitely wasn't among them. And the latter usually ended up paying for their own greed, not making the money and quite possibly dying on the spot too. Naturally, Leo had no wish to become such a fool.
So Leo not only brought out his full power from the start, he attacked the magic stone weak point with everything he had, without the slightest hesitation.
Unfortunately, if Udaeus's magic stone were so easy to hit, it wouldn't strike terror into everyone who heard its name.
Just as Leo shot toward Udaeus's chest cavity as a comet, the ground it had smashed into countless cracks suddenly heaved up again, one section after another.
The next second, a giant pitch-black pillar broke through the surface, bursting up from underground.
That pitch-black pillar was like a spear thrust upward, like a black sword-mountain, or rather, black stakes, and the disturbance it kicked up as it swept through the darkness was considerable. With a thunderous crash it broke through the air, shooting toward Leo.
Without a moment's thought, Leo jerked his body to a halt, freezing the racing comet in midair to dodge the sword-mountain that had shot up at him.
The sword-mountain slammed heavily into the wall on the other side of the chamber, smashing it to pieces.
The power of that strike was not one bit weaker than the force Udaeus had unleashed earlier when its palm slammed into the ground.
After dodging the deadly strike, Leo's expression turned even graver.
These black stakes, fired endlessly from the ground, were Udaeus's greatest weapon.
When Udaeus was born, it would generally let only its upper body appear on the surface, with its lower body buried underground, looking as if it hadn't fully broken free of the "eggshell" it had hatched from. This left it basically unable to move, and even a movement like turning around wasn't very easy for it, yet its lower body wasn't buried underground for nothing.
Strictly speaking, Udaeus actually had no lower body.
It was like a great tree that had driven enormous roots deep into the earth, its roots intertwined and gnarled. Its lower body had long since split into countless parts, spreading beneath the Hall of the Throne, ready at any moment to shoot up from underground as black stakes.
The black stakes covered the entire chamber, their attack range spanning the whole battlefield, so even though the boss itself couldn't move, it could easily attack an enemy in any corner of this room.
You could say this entire vast "chamber" was Udaeus's territory, a minefield strewn with countless landmines.
Once you came before Udaeus, even the entrances and exits might be blocked off by the black sword-mountains. The Skeleton King wouldn't let its enemies escape from here until the slaughter was over, so that even a large raid team couldn't storm this inflexible Floor Boss in one push, and might instead end up toyed with in the palm of its hand.
Drawing on the power of the black stakes, it could keep enemies from getting close and keep them from escaping freely too. Anyone who dared approach it carelessly would suffer this kind of relentless sword-mountain assault.
Now Leo faced the terrifying weapon that served both attack and defense and had made Udaeus famous throughout the Lower World.
Explosions kept booming through the air as black stakes combined one after another into sharp sword-mountains, breaking through the ground in succession and shooting out at a horrifying speed toward Leo. The comet Leo had become could only weave left and right in midair, dodging this endless barrage, while the black sword-mountains slammed into the walls all around and tore them apart.
The comet moved like a shooting star in pursuit, turning left and right, rising and diving, its brilliant starlight streaking back and forth through the air and trailing a long tail of light.
All the while, the comet kept accelerating and changing direction, so the pursuing black sword-mountains could never quite land a hit.
Udaeus loosed an enraged roar and swung its giant bone arms, driving whistling gusts of wind as it slapped again and again at the dancing comet. Leo's nimble changes of direction evaded every blow.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
Weaving back and forth among the countless sword-mountains, Leo also performed Concurrent Chanting and fired off his prized attack magic.
"Meteor Dance!"
A thick meteor burst out of the spinning magic circle and shot straight at Udaeus.
The ghost-fire burned in Udaeus's eye sockets, and without the slightest fear it swung out a fist, striking the incoming meteor with a thunderous crash and colliding fiercely with it.
Amid the surging shockwave, the thick meteor was blown apart by Udaeus's fist, scattering into a sky full of star-dust without a trace left.
This Floor Boss's raw power was already enough to overpower even Leo's firepower.
"Meteor Dance!"
"Meteor Dance!"
"Meteor Dance!"
But Leo calmly chanted the magic again, firing off meteors one after another, each thicker than the last, displaying overwhelming firepower.
Udaeus turned nothing away. Without a trace of fear, it swung both fists and blew apart the incoming meteors one punch after another, utterly dominant.
This made Leo understand one thing.
"This fight's going to be a rough one."
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