Chapter 359 Volume V - Chapter 77: The Boss Room
The boss room... was really big. In fact, it was the biggest I've ever been in in my life.
Although... was it right to simply call it a 'room'? It was more like... an extremely big place.
As I passed through the opening in the door, I continued to examine inside.
Everything was pitch black. My vision... was limited to three or four meters, beyond which it seemed to disappear into infinity.
Yet there was one thing I could see quite clearly. Somewhere up ahead, really far ahead... there were lights that kept moving.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on the only bright spot in the room, but then paused. My eyes moved slightly down to my feet.
The floor was... wet. And the moment I realized that, I felt the drop that fell on my hair.
This time, I turned my eyes upward. I tried to perceive where the drops of water were coming from, but... the only thing above was endless darkness.
I gripped my spear tightly. I don't know why, but... something didn't feel right here. I had an ominous feeling.
"Lucia, come with distance between us. And, needless to say... be careful."
I didn't receive any reply, but I didn't feel the need to check her with the sound of footsteps behind me.
My focus turned again toward the bright field in the distance. This time, I looked at it with a little mana in my eyes.
"Huh...?"
I couldn't help but make that sound, so much so that Lucia became slightly agitated. But I didn't care, or rather... couldn't care.
Because... all I could see when I looked there was a large, abnormal blur.
Slightly confused, I examined it more generally.
I can see a lot of chains, literally a lot. Chains from all sides, moving toward the center of this place and meeting there.
And the things that seem to be moving are like tiny balls of light floating down from above. They are also... being drawn toward a point.
But... I can see neither where the chains nor the balls of light are gathering, it's just... blurry.
An unnatural blur for sure.
My brows furrowed, the fingers holding my spear tightened. Yet... despite all this strangeness, I began to move forward slowly.
Each step was slow but careful.
I was ready for attacks from anywhere, even in a position to grab Lucia and run away if the need arose.
Nevertheless, I kept moving forward, getting closer to that abnormal blur.
Lucia was following me from behind. Just as I had told her, she had put a slight distance between us, but not too far. Even if I didn't turn around and look at her face, I was sure that she was checking here and there, that she was nervous even if she tried to look calm.
And, so, the distance between me and the blur went from half a kilometer to four hundred meters.
Still, nothing had happened, everything was quiet. Too quiet, in fact... All we could hear was the sound of our own footsteps.
And... it also felt like it was getting colder. I had been struggling with the uncomfortable heat for days because we were who knows how deep underground, but here... it was getting cooler as we moved forward.
Finally... the abnormal blur that we were approaching was getting bigger and bigger. It wasn't really getting bigger, of course... it seemed that way because of the distance between us. But it was getting truly gigantic.
If I had to take a guess... I would say it was somewhere between twenty and thirty meters long.
And so, we went on for another hundred meters. Again, there was no change except that the air was getting cooler and cooler...
But then... I realized that the sound of footsteps behind me had slowed down, or even stopped completely.
I turned around slowly, a little scared... but Lucia was still in front of me. There was no danger in the surroundings.
"Luc-"
I paused when I saw the expression on her face. She looked surprised, even too surprised... almost shocked. Her eyes were on the floor, looking slightly to our left.
I slowly turned toward the same place, looking down.
What I saw... was the first different thing in this huge place where there was nothing but darkness and water.
It was blood. A lot of blood.
It was mixed with the thin layer of water on the floor and... it was spread over quite a large area. It was scattered in such a way that... whoever it belonged to must have stuck to the floor like a fly.
But that wasn't the only thing about it.
The owner of this blood had either survived or had been dragged... by something. Because the blood, which was scattered randomly around, became a straight line at one point and continued on. And where it was moving... was where the abnormal blur was.
I swallowed involuntarily, tore my eyes away from the blood trail, and turned them back toward the blur. No matter how much I examined it, no matter how hard I tried, it was the same. I could never grasp or perceive what it was.
"Let's keep moving forward."
Lucia finally took her eyes off the bloodstains and looked at me. I don't know why, but... she seemed distracted. As if she had something on her mind.
She waited a short while without answering me. When her eyes finally left me, they drifted upward, toward the ceiling. More precisely into the endless darkness... and she looked there for a while. But, then, she sighed lightly, closed her eyes, and shook her head from side to side.
"Okay..."
When she opened her eyes again, she seemed more determined.
For a moment, I wondered what she was thinking. I couldn't understand what was going through her mind. But I didn't dwell on it too much. After all, we had to move on. And so we did.
We kept approaching the blur, just like the trail of blood right next to us. Another hundred meters, then another...
Finally, when there were only about ten to fifteen meters between us... some things could be seen more clearly.
The water here seemed to have receded a bit, first of all. The drops of water falling from above were not absent, nor had they diminished in number... But for some reason, the ground was not as wet as before. And the blur had become... very strange. Even though we were almost standing right next to it, we still couldn't make out anything. It was just tall, with chains and balls of light being pulled toward it, and... huge. And that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.
But, strange as it was, there was now something even more noticeable than that at this point.
The trail of blood had continued uninterrupted up to here. So much so that I had begun to question how its owner could have so much blood. It seemed almost impossible... it was absurd even for gigantic creatures to have so much blood.
But the truth was right in front of my eyes. And these tracks finally stopped when they came in front of the gigantic blur. On top of that... it was no longer simply a 'trail'.
"What... is this...?"
Lucia's voice echoed in my ears. She was more agitated than usual, but at the same time careful. It was understandable. But I was as bewildered as she was.
"I... don't know..."
In front of us was a... sphere that looked like it was made of vines. No, it was wrong to call it a sphere exactly... it was shaped like an egg, 'ellipsoid' would probably be a better word, as I remember from the academy.
It stood slightly above the ground, like a blur, pulling some of the balls of light around it toward itself. Vines were attached to it on all sides, just like... blood vessels.
It was like a cocoon. A cocoon made only of... vines.
Without letting my guard down, I took my eyes off the mass of vines and looked around. There didn't seem to be any danger, it was as if we were alone in this huge place. Even when I spread my mana around me, there was no reaction or movement.
Narrowing my eyes, I looked at the trail of blood, how it had been cut just below the cocoon of vines. When I looked again... I was now sure.
Whoever the owner of these bloodstains was... inside those vines.
"But... aren't we in a boss room?"
The only sign of any living thing was the cocoon in front of us.
And we were in a boss room.
So... the most likely option was quite obvious.
"Maybe the boss is inside this?"
I pointed my spear at the cocoon, but waited before acting immediately.
Lucia didn't say anything, she was silent. But that didn't last long either.
"What about this... blur?"
"We can't even perceive what it is... doesn't it make more sense to try the more likely option first? I'm pretty sure that something capable of bleeding to this degree in a B grade dungeon is dangerous."
Lucia said nothing more. She couldn't. But, even then... she was worried a little.
"You're sure you can kill it, right? I... I don't know why, but I have a bad feeling
about this."
I contracted the fingers holding my spear, I started to swirl my mana inside me. That was my answer to Lucia, rather than any words... and she understood it as she started to back away. At the same time, I began to approach the cocoon.
The mana continued to gather in my body, in my spear. But I didn't stop there, I also reached for the ordea, as I always do. And as always, it responded to my desires.
Eventually, there was only one meter between me and the cocoon.
I positioned myself for Qilsak's first movement. With a single, lethal attack, I was going to kill the thing inside the cocoon before it had a chance to react, so I poured most of what I had into this moment, even if I wasn't using everything I had because I was still uneasy with the blur.
I didn't see any reaction from the cocoon until this moment, it just stayed where it was. But, after a short time, as if realizing the mana I had concentrated on myself... the surface of the vines suddenly rippled.
I spun my spear in a slow motion, continuing to gather strength for my attack. The vines began to recede, the shell of the cocoon slowly opening. A liquid that looked like water flowed out of it.
But such things were unimportant.
Because I was going to kill it before it even realized what was happening.
I let go of the breath I was holding, and with the amount of mana I had gathered, I swung my spear, which weighed tons thanks to my style, at the cocoon with one intention... to kill it.
However...
"H- huh?!"
The balls of light that had been hovering around us suddenly stopped, then just as quickly retreated in front of the vine. The huge room in darkness was suddenly illuminated with a brilliant light, the source of which was... the cocoon in front of me.
I gritted my teeth, I put even more weight on my spear than I already had. I didn't give up.
And, in the midst of all this chaos, the spear met the vines.
No, rather... it didn't.
Instead of the vines, it met the wall of light gathering just in front of them.
My eyes widened. My spear, despite the enormous force I had put into it, slipped through my fingers as if... it had bounced off an overly durable elastic material.
"I- imposs-!"
I didn't even have time to finish my sentence. As the spear bounced back, my body was subjected to the same force, and my feet were suddenly knocked off the ground.
An ear-splitting explosion echoed through the room, the brilliant light grew brighter... and then everything went black.
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