BOOM!
Even when standing an entire radius of his base away from where the shells struck, Theo could still feel the small tug of the aftershock wave shaking the tower.
The combined might of close to eighty percent of his guns shooting all in one direction, all at specific intervals to compensate for the pre-calculated shell-travel time — all so that all the shots would strike at the same time...
It was truly enormous, especially given the purely kinetic nature of the bombardment, deprived of any sort of explosive, incendiary, or even scatter-shot effect.
And yet...
[1]
[0]
[Third Wave (Boss): Begins!]
[Defeat: Chief Voiderling (Level 1420)]
’So it is you,’ Theo thought, squinting his eyes and clenching his teeth at the sight of a familiar name.
Finally, the familiar overlay of a boss fight returned, now putting all of the focus of its interface on just the single boss Theo challenged.
A single boss whose health bar barely twitched even when all those shells connected at the same time.
’It’s not too late to try to escape, huh?’ Theo thought, his resolve wavering in the face of his full barrage barely making a dent on the boss’ health bar.
Somehow, even this ungodly pummeling only amounted to scratching the boss’ back rather than properly turning it into minced meat. And for how impossible, illogical — despite how wrong it felt to have a World War III-suited artillery amount to pretty much nothing...
What was Theo going to do about it?
’It’s not like protesting about the fairness of it all would work,’ he thought, only to then allow himself just a single iota of humor. ’And if anything, it should be those monsters protesting on just how overpowered I am with this system of mine!’
By now, with the third and last wave going on, Theo lost his original means of tracking the passage of time. And yet, as if to keep things convenient for the young man, the Chief Voiderling just... crushed the wall underneath its massive spider-like legs, easily towering above the wall even before deciding to just make its way through it.
It was bigger than anything Theo had seen before in his life. Bigger than the laws of biology he once researched out of interest would supposedly allow for any living organism to become.
After all, once a living being grew massive enough, how was its heart supposed to deliver freshly oxygenated blood to vessels that were a considerable distance away? Or how was this being supposed to hold its insides together, given how insanely fast their weight would grow as the scale of the living being increased?
’There’s at least a dozen or two reasons for why something that big shouldn’t exist, for if it did, it should collapse under its own weight. And yet...’
Theo gulped his saliva down, easily picking up the outline of the monster towering above the trees as it slowly loomed in his direction.
Still, with every step that creature made, the ground would shake. And given its leisurely, almost relaxed pace, it just happened to make a step roughly every second, turning the shaking of the ground beneath Theo’s feet into a more-or-less accurate means for measuring the passage of time.
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Six steps.
That’s how far the Chief Voiderling went when Theo’s guns spoke again.
’Maybe it took decreased damage because I attacked it before the fight supposedly started?’ Theo held on to the hope, waiting the fraction of a second it took the shells to travel the distance to their target.
BO-CLANG!
At first, Theo nearly closed his eyes when he saw the second barrage only progress the decay of the boss’ health bar by pretty much the same amount as the first barrage.
When the unexpected sound of a weirdly metallic noise reached his ears, however, he couldn’t help but perk up and throw a hopeful glance toward the approaching monster.
For just a moment, no more than a few seconds, the Chief Voiderling... stopped.
And then, as if nothing had happened at all, it suddenly rose up even higher above the trees before...
Thud.
Before taking another step.
’Is it just me, or was that extremely distinctive sound... exactly the same as stance-breaking enemies in the souls-like games?’
Theo gritted his teeth, refusing to let out a peep about what he just discovered.
His system never really treated him all that badly. It rarely appeared to push him toward dangers while actively supplying him with all the means and tools he needed to actually survive in this hellish place.
In other words, Theo had no practical reason to believe that spelling his hopes out loud would only invite the system’s retaliation.
And yet?
And yet, he instinctively held back on doing so, as if giving tangible shape to his thoughts by spelling them out would dispel the momentary illusion of hope he now enjoyed.
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’If it can have its stance broken, then I may be able to do proper damage,’ Theo thought, having nothing other to do but to then sit back and wait a few more seconds, survive through a few more thuds, before his guns spoke again.
This time, however, more of them did than before.
For all the guns that were originally positioned on the other side of Theo’s inner circle of walls — all the guns that originally had no possible angle to aim anywhere near the enemy...
Now that the boss stepped within Theo’s domain, those guns could simply shoot up and then behind, sending the shells at a steep angle into the air, only for them to reach the very highest point of their aerial path before turning down and raining upon the monster with all the kinetic energy they could gather during the descent.
Those shots, lobbed over the entire length of Theo’s inner circle and then still shot out at the least practical angle of attack... They needed two actual seconds to reach their marks.
Thankfully, an exact second after the rear guns of Theo’s camp spoke up, Theo gritted his teeth and opened his eyes.
’Now!’
The rest of Theo’s gun encampments spoke out in one shared voice, sending their full load all in a single direction, all at a slightly different angle, all aimed to arrive at the same time.
And again...
BOO-CLANG!
For the second time, Theo’s barrage managed to break the Chief Voiderling’s stance.
This time, however, there was a proper follow-up designed to exploit the vulnerable state a stance-break supposedly left the boss in!
BANG!
Within a single second from the main barrage, the air-aimed shells started to come down, showering the massive monster with all the kinetic energy their weight managed to pick up during the descent.
It was a shower that easily ended up dealing several times more damage than both of the barrages from before did, even when combined together!
Still, for all the three attacks Theo sent out, the boss’s health bar decreased... by a measly ten percent!
"Just how tough are you, you big fucker?"
Looking out of his window, Theo clenched his hands against the edges of the lookout’s frame, staring off into the distance at the monster that now woke up and managed to take a total of four steps before the next barrage came.
This time, however, it didn’t result in the breaking of the stance, allowing the Chief Voiderling to take five more steps before yet another barrage came, finally resulting in the familiar CLANG!
A clang that was then followed up with another outpour of metal raining down from the skies, showering the massive beast as it slowly chipped away at its chitinous armor and then directly at its health.
’Wait, now that I think about it...’
Faced with a sudden realization, Theo froze.
’What are the chances two different monsters would have the same name and level?’
Theo could still vividly remember what happened when he went out to establish a Richstone mine, a project he ended up abandoning in favor of a much simpler, although slightly manual, solution.
Back then, the Chief Voiderling was capable of moving through a rather narrow tunnel, either by expanding it as it burrowed deeper or... by some other means Theo simply couldn’t predict or otherwise figure out.
Still, for it to be able to dig into the stone as fast as it did... There was no way for it to be as massive as Theo could see it be right now!
’That means either there can be two monsters with exactly the same name and of exactly the same level, or...’ He then gulped his saliva, ’or this is the Chief Voiderling I’ve met back then. But... why is it so big now?’
As much as Theo wanted to get the answer to this question, however, the world didn’t seem all that keen to just give it to him. Because of that, he could do nothing but watch how this massive monster continued to cross through the outer reaches of his claim, soon passing by the halfway point between the two walls.
By now, Theo needed a whole three concentrated salvos just to break its stance, a number that would only continue to increase the more time his guns managed to stop it in this way. Yet, as he finally did it for the fourth time and then watched how the boss monster’s health bar dropped down to the whopping seventy percent...
Something changed.
The monster’s massive shell suddenly cracked... only to then split cleanly in half, revealing a monster that was merely half the size of the original, but without a single scratch, a single blemish on its shell.
[Chief Voiderling (Level 1420) > Chief Voiderling (Level 1119)]
In a single instant, all the progress Theo made on damaging the boss just... vanished, with its seventy-percent-full health bar suddenly filling up to the brim again...
Only for the monster to then start moving ahead with over twice the speed that it had before, rushing straight in the direction of Theo’s control tower with a complete disregard for all the shells rushing to squash him against the ground like a bug.