’Do I just run?’
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Seeing the monster shed away its outer shell and all of its injuries with it, only to then grow twice as fast as it was before as it rushed up against Theo’s walls…
For a moment, Theo allowed a seed of doubt into his mind.
A seed he nearly instantly squashed down, but not before it grew some shoots, rooting itself deeply into Theo’s psyche.
Boom!
His guns spoke as usual, unleashing a concentrated salvo to break the boss’ stance, only for the rest of the guns to follow soon after, readying the atmospheric bombardment for when the monster would be at its most vulnerable.
And just like it happened before, when the barrage reached its target...
BO-CLANG!
The distinctive, familiar sound reached Theo’s ears again.
Quite noticeably, however, now from much closer than before.
And then…
BOOM!
The refreshed health bar of the boss finally decreased, falling by a whopping fifty percent more than whenever the rain of shells would reach it before the shedding.
’So it’s faster… but also less durable!’
Taking note of this point, Theo didn’t miss how even the breaking of the boss’ stance now came with some damage that, while minimal, would continue to stack up with time.
Still.
The guns shot, while the monster continued across Theo’s land, only stopping for when the barrages would reach it. Even then, the Chief Voiderling only needed about two seconds to recover and pick up its charge, while Theo’s guns needed six seconds to recharge.
It was within those four seconds of difference between the two that the monster progressed, soon reaching the edge of the woods and then stepping into the clear perimeter between the forest stuck on the inside of Theo’s claim and the electrified moat he prepared.
’Too slow,’ Theo gritted his teeth, watching how the monster’s health hung just above fifty percent, with the salvo damage of the three barrages only ever reaching just below the total of five percent of the monster’s health points.
The moment the monster fully emerged from behind the trees, however…
It stopped.
For but a single moment, it ceased to move, its eyes scanning the second layer of the walls and then locking in on the tower that perked up and above the walls.
For this single moment, Theo could swear he locked glares with the monster, each determined to bring about the end of the other.
And thankfully, because of this momentary stop, the monster gave Theo and his guns just enough time to reload.
BANG!
The sound made by the huge number of guns shooting all at the same time… had decreased in intensity, likely with how the decreasing distance between the guns and the target meant only a much smaller number of them could find the right angle to aim at the target.
And while this meant the salvo grew too weak to break the stance of the monster again…
CLANG!
Pretty much as soon as a rain of iron — now much more intense than before, with most of the guns switching from one firing mode to the other — fell down upon it, the characteristic sound reached Theo’s ears, only for him to then watch how his shells showered down upon the monster.
And what a sight it was!
With its chitinous armor already cracked all over, when a series of powerful explosions started to go off directly on its shell, it appeared as if it was only a matter of time before the whole thing would just… give in.
A matter of time shorter than it would take for the artillery Theo rained down to finish running its course. Continue your adventure with freewebnovel
One… no, two of the monster’s spider-like legs suddenly fell off, their joints shattered away from where they were nested, first crushed by one shell only to be then torn away by another.
How the other leg fell off, Theo failed to track.
And in the end, did it even matter?
’Now, it should slow down a bit,’ Theo thought, clenching the edge of his viewing spot as he watched the monster’s shell continue to deteriorate while its health points continued to sink faster and faster than before.
By the time the health bar reached just above thirty percent, though…
Crack!
’Wait, don’t tell me…’ Leaning out of his window so far he started to lose his sense of balance, Theo saw the chitinous armor of the monster... crack and then split open again, releasing the creature hidden inside for the second time.
"Are you fucking serious?!"
’Even in the Souls games, three-stage bosses were one hell of a rarity!’
Gritting his teeth, Theo could do nothing but watch how the now even smaller version of the Chief Voiderling emerged from the scraps of what used to be its body, only to then take the full brunt of the last few shells of the iron rain.
’At least now even a single shot does proper damage,’ Theo thought, watching how just two shells managed to chip away a whopping five percent of the boss’s health!
But…
’But, seeing how it went so far, it’s only going to drop half its size and grow twice as fast once I damage it enough, huh?’
The time for the monster’s opening came when Theo’s guns finally went silent, all stuck in the reloading loop.
Wasting not this great opportunity, the monster rushed forth, conquering the open area within just three short seconds!
Yet, despite losing three-quarters of its mass by now… Chief Voiderling now reached the size of just a school bus, making it way too heavy and too clumsy to even attempt jumping over Theo’s moat.
’And here I thought it was wide enough.’ On the other hand, stuck in his tower, Theo couldn’t help but shake his head over his own naivete.
The several meters of width of his moat looked impressive back when he stood over its edge, but now that he came to face monsters many times bigger than any living organism Theo actually got to see in his life, those few meters…
Those few meters actually forced the oversized bug to do the unthinkable and freeze right on the moat’s edge.
’What is it…’
Puzzled, Theo bit down on his lips, rushing his mind with all his might to solve this puzzle, to figure out what this voiderling was doing before it could actually… well, do it.
’Wait, could it be…’
Theo’s eyes went open, only for his guns to speak out with their usual roar!
’Shit! Too late!’
Right now, the Chief Voiderling became just a nine-hundred-levels-strong monster. Still, despite shedding half its mass twice by now, it was still too big and too slow to just… jump over the moat or think about crossing it.
And as the last encounter proved, there was no specific rule for when it would shed its shell, with it happening for the first time at roughly seventy percent of its health and then at as little as just above thirty percent!
Now, however, the monster was in perfect health, with not a single crack or bruise marking its new layer of chitinous shell.
Or so one could claim before the barrage of Theo’s shells reached it. And even with the number of guns capable of firing decreasing even further, even just a third of the usual amount of shells in the barrage proved to be enough for the voiderling’s purposes.
With Theo no longer able to do anything about it… the monster just stood in place, patiently waiting for the time to pass. Even when the wave of attacks came, all it did was just stand in place, bravely taking the onslaught of shells as if unbothered by it in the slightest.
Only when the barrage came to an end did a massive crack form all across its chitinous armor… only for it to then split open and fall off to the sides, revealing a level 764 Chief Voiderling hidden within.
"REEEE…"
Raising two of its front legs like some sort of praying mantis, the monster uttered a bone-chilling cry before throwing itself forward, plunging into the waters of Theo’s moat without even the slightest bit of hesitation.
This time, however, with its size decreasing to that of just a sizeable car… it actually could jump over the moat, getting directly into the dead zone of Theo’s circle of guns, forcing him to either abandon the defense… or shoot some of the guns directly at the guns it would approach.
Such was a worry Theo would have… if not for the now even more intense rain of shells that came through, with several shells finding the monster in the middle of its leap and not only heavily cracking its fresh, much weaker shell but also pushing it down, forcing it into the water as it fell short roughly half the length of Theo’s moat.
’Perfect.’
After getting a fair scare of watching the monster just… leap over his defenses, Theo wasted no time and pulled the lever responsible for the sector the monster dipped in.
For but a fraction of a second, the air itself appeared to grow tense as a powerful burst of electricity shot through Theo’s thick wires, connecting to the contraption he constructed all around the moat and now pushing all the electricity provided by Theo’s factory engine directly into the area it was in!
And regardless of how Theo’s system affected reality or just how the hell was this biological lifeform just a few meters away from Theo capable of ignoring every biological law that made it impossible for it to be alive to begin with…
Regardless of it all, the electric current behaved as usual. And by behaving as usual, it merely found the path of the least resistance leading from one positively charged electrode to the other negatively set one.
And within the entire width of the moat sector Theo activated, it was precisely the spot where the unlucky monster fell in that offered the easiest path for the electricity to travel from the electrode on one edge to the electrode on the moat’s other edge!
CLANG!
For just one more time, the familiar sound filled the air, now coming from uncomfortably close.
And then, all the guns that turned to mortar-like operation mode finally showered the moat with their shells, rapidly dropping the hit points of the now greatly weakened monster almost all the way to zero!