Chapter 145
When Do-Jin ducked behind cover, two familiar silhouettes came into view. One of the tanks at the very front, Theresa, was bracing against the shockwave. Right behind her, Soso was pressed close and maintaining her healing range.
They’re still holding on.
He had told everyone that the only thing that mattered was surviving until the end. Easier said than done. If simply wanting to live were enough to guarantee survival in this kind of hell, everyone here would have been immortal by now.
I guess being a half-tank worked out for her. Having to fall back during the worst phases probably saved her life.
With Soso stuck to her like a personal healing drone, it made sense that she had survived this long. The girl’s equipment alone was worth a fortune, S-rank, maybe even SSS-rank if her accessories counted. Whatever the reason, the important thing was that they were still alive.
When the shockwave passed, Do-Jin tapped Theresa on the shoulder and said, “Stick with me from now on.”
If she was alive, she was useful. He planned to use her as his personal shield. With a tank assigned to him at all times, his movement options would open up, and it would be easier to find clear angles for his spells.
“Alright!” Her jaw trembled as she spoke, her voice tight with adrenaline.
Meanwhile, Soso, looking as calm as ever, gave Do-Jin a short glance before turning her focus back to the front. She cast a series of buffs on him, then chimed in, “Finish it fast. I want to go home.”
Do-Jin let out a short laugh. Even here, in the middle of what looked like the end of the world with death lasers firing from sixteen eyes and shockwaves flattening everything in sight, this pampered heiress still treated it like overtime keeping her from clocking out.
He gave Theresa’s shoulder one last pat and approached the monster from a wide flank, unleashing a stream of spells along the boss’s side. One of its eyes tracked him immediately. The pupil shrank, then widened again.
Do-Jin kicked up his speed, leaving the ground scorched where he had just been standing. Similar flashes streaked across the battlefield. Each of the sixteen eyes had locked onto its own target, slicing the field apart with sweeping beams of energy.
To make things worse, the intervals between the creature’s shockwaves were getting shorter. Near or far, there was no safe zone left on the field. It was a living nightmare.
We’re getting another shockwave already? Do-Jin scowled as the creature’s left arm began to rise again mid-cast.
He turned to find Theresa, ready to duck behind her shield, but before he could move, she was already charging forward, planting herself in front of him. She raised her shield high and took point.
Then, without warning, the giant’s raised arm faltered. It hesitated mid-motion, as if the simple act of lifting it had become too heavy to bear. Through the sight of Silent Night, Do-Jin saw it clearly. The mana pooling in the creature’s palm flickered erratically, unstable and distorted, like it was on the verge of collapsing.
Do-Jin reacted on instinct. “Lightning Spear!”
He aimed directly at the monster’s left arm, striking the exact spot where the mana flow had broken down. A brief flash rippled through the air, barely audible over the chaos of battle, before the real explosion hit. The shockwave that had been forming backfired, detonating from within. The arm burst apart from the elbow down, torn open in a rain of molten flesh and shattered bone. The monstrous baby screamed in agony, its enormous body twisting before crashing face-first into the ground.
When everyone saw what had happened, they began charging in. As soon as Do-Jin saw the torn flesh beginning to knit itself together, he blasted the wound with fire, searing it black.
“Hit the arm! Don’t let it regenerate!” he yelled.
All other players with anti-healing or regeneration-suppression abilities followed his lead, focusing their attacks on the mangled limb. The creature thrashed violently, its remaining legs scraping against the ground as it tried to snatch the nearest players. But the tanks and melee fighters had already learned how to handle that. They formed up around its movements, cutting at its joints and pinning its limbs before it could recover.
The tide of the battle had finally begun to turn. They rolled and dashed just ahead of its reach, dodging each sweeping grab with perfect timing.
And then there was Tanto. He sprinted up the fallen creature’s massive body like a parkour expert scaling a skyscraper, vaulting from limb to limb until he reached its back. One of the monster’s eyes snapped toward him. Its pupil constricted just before a light mark flared across the surface. A burst of flame erupted, and the eye exploded in a spray of blood and smoke.
So that works too, huh. Do-Jin had been waiting for that. He had timed his spell to hit just as the boss began channeling its laser attack.
No matter what had hit this stubborn creature, it’d always managed to form either a shockwave or a beam. But now, it was running on fumes. Every time it tried to channel mana, the energy collapsed on itself. Half of the beams it attempted to fire detonated before they even left its body.
The creature’s enormous head became a ruined mass of open wounds, bursting apart from its own unstable energy again and again.
If this keeps up, we’ll kill it clean. But this can’t be the end. Do-Jin frowned, thinking back to how bosses like this always had something left.
As the thought crossed his mind, the baby’s massive body began to shrink. Its flesh rippled and warped, and countless new limbs sprouted from its sides, all of them thin, twitching arms and legs like those of an enormous centipede.
Everyone fell back before they even realized it, instinctively bracing for a new attack phase. But the monster didn’t attack. It lifted its smaller, lighter body on those countless limbs and began sprinting toward the clusters of lesser monsters still lingering in the distance.
The sound it made was pitiful, almost like a starving infant crying for food. Do-Jin understood immediately. It was trying to absorb more of the slimes again, just as it had done when it was first born.
Now!
As the creature scrambled across the battlefield, desperate to feed, Do-Jin realized what this meant. A monster that had been fighting purely on instinct had now abandoned offense entirely. It had shrunk its body and thrown itself toward its prey in panic. That could only mean one thing: it was afraid of dying.
If I don’t kill it now, it’s over.
Everyone was exhausted. Their supplies were gone, their strength nearly spent. They had passed the breaking point long ago. This had to end here.
“Now’s the time,” Do-Jin muttered to Theresa, then broke into a sprint. He dashed straight past the safety line, running headlong toward the boss.
Several of the monster’s eyes snapped to him. For a split second, hesitation flickered in those wet, bloodshot pupils. It remembered the pain, the fire, and the countless times it had been struck down. But then the fear vanished, replaced by rage. Four eyes glowed all at once, their light intensifying as they locked onto him.
“I’m dodging this!” Do-Jin raised his staff and fired a spell at one of the glowing eyes.
The projectile landed, rupturing the orb and disrupting the beam’s formation. With haste, he sprinted through the small gap that opened. A beam sliced the ground behind him, scorching everything in its path, but he never looked back.
Do-Jin was already casting again, every circuit in his body burning red-hot. Six more eyes turned toward him, their pupils tightening in unison. They were ready to fire. Do-Jin didn’t stop. He couldn’t afford to. His circuits were already overloaded as they prepared his final spell. He had no way to defend or counter. Still, he kept running.
“Now!”
He trusted Theresa completely. He remembered what he had told her earlier.
“Just like everything else, this boss is going to lose its mind when it’s about to die. I’m not backing off. I’m going in for the kill. When that happens, I need you to block it. Just once. One turn. That’s all. Can you do that?”
Theresa had carried those words with her from the very start.
She screamed and triggered Sacrificial Charge. Her sprint exploded into a burst of speed, launching her behind the monster in an instant. At that same moment, its pupils flared and it fired a beam straight at her. Even with her shield raised, every defensive skill active, and the last of her mana poured into survival, the blast tore through her. The light swallowed her whole, vaporizing her on the spot.
However, her charge had done enough. The impact twisted the beam’s path, bending it just enough to open a narrow gap. Do-Jin ran straight through it. He reached the monster before it could react. The monster, now smaller and flailing its many arms, tried to strike.
Do-Jin struck faster with his spell. “Shadow Thorns.”
He’d cast it at point-blank range, hitting the monster with devastating precision. Black spikes burst from his outstretched hand and pierced straight through the monster’s chest, causing it to let out a distorted cry, its voice twisting into an unearthly chorus of pain.
Do-Jin didn’t stop there. He clenched his fist until his knuckles cracked, then uncurled. The shadow thorns buried in the creature’s torso erupted outward, each tendril splitting into dozens of branches that tore through its flesh from within. Every one of those spikes pulsed with the power of a fully charged Destruction Rune. The combined detonations ripped through the monster’s core, every blast landing like a critical strike.
The dying colossus convulsed violently, its body writhing in its final death spasms. Do-Jin was caught in the storm of movement and thrown into the air. At the last instant, he released a burst of Psychokinesis to soften the blow, but it wasn’t enough. His head slammed back, his vision spun, and his mind rang with white noise. Blood trailed down his chin as he gritted his teeth and forced his eyes to focus. Through the haze of his fading sight, he looked up at the monster still twitching in the distance.
That was a full-power strike, enough to fry my circuits... How the fuck is it still not dead? Though it was hanging on by a thread, Do-Jin still found it ridiculous.
Others rushed in, hurling everything they had left at its half-destroyed body. Spells, blades, and arrows tore through its hide, while in the distance, the smaller slime monsters began to scatter. They slithered away from the dying boss, afraid of being consumed by their own progenitor.
Okay... finally... Do-Jin thought with relief.
A mix of relief and disappointment filled his chest. He had expected that last blow to finish it, but perhaps the final strike was not his to take this time. He exhaled slowly, the static sting of burned-out Magic Circuits crawling along his veins.
When the colossal Primal Humanity was felled, its enormous body crashed against the ground with a shuddering impact and black-red ichor poured from the gaping hole in its chest. Its remaining eyes rolled toward Do-Jin one last time before its head tilted back and a final, guttural cry echoed across the field. One by one, all sixteen eyes closed.
[You have dealt the final blow to the World Boss Primal Humanity.]
What?
Do-Jin blinked in disbelief. He had already given up on claiming the kill. For a few seconds, he could only stare at the message hovering in front of him, too stunned to move.
Then, he gasped in realization. “Ah.”
The lingering curse from Executor of Ruin had drained the boss’s final sliver of life. While everyone else unleashed their attacks, it was that one slow-burning effect he cast earlier that quietly finished the job.
He was not sure whether to call it luck or cruelty. Stealing the kill with a ticking curse felt absurd, even for him. Still, one thing was undeniable: from the first strike to the last, everything had gone exactly as he had planned. It was all perfect.
