Elijah hadn’t even realized that Bitter Bat could take anyone with him. Ideas spiralled in his head: how he could use that to his advantage in the future.
He turned and caught the Librarian with his ‘Reality Warp’ skill just as it rushed forward to slam into Nicholas’ shield.
[DEBUG VIEW: The Librarian]
The Librarian{
Entity_ID: BOSS_INKLIB
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: UNDYING_LIBRARY_BOSS
Faction_Tag: NPC_FOE
XP_Multiplier: (Ultra_20.0)
Stats[
Level: 50 (NULL/NULL XP)
Health: 350 / 350
Mana: 200 / 200
Strength: 40 (Master)
Intelligence: 40 (Master)
Dexterity: 50 (Master)
Constitution: 70 (Legendary)
]
}
That wasn’t great; none of its stats were low enough for Elijah to change. He shouted out a warning about the Librarian’s stats to his team as Nicholas shoved the creature hard to give himself room. Nicholas lunged forward with his spear, but the weapon passed right through the ephemeral boss.
It flew backwards, laughing its low, menacing laugh, then raised its hands into the air. The ink seeping out of the floor rose higher, about a third of the way up the bookshelves, and tendrils sprouted from the oily substance.
The boss’ laughter filled the room as the tendrils whipped about, but cut off when a bolt of dark energy slammed him square in the chest. Benjamin’s ‘Dark Blast’ took off a respectable chunk of the monster’s health and left a gaping hole in its form.
It screeched in outrage, and the tendrils thrashed more violently, slamming hard into the bookshelves. Elijah nearly lost his balance as the one he and Benjamin were standing on tilted violently.
It was time for him to get into this fight instead of standing around gawking. He held his hand out and summoned a pair of Dragontooth Bombs. They flew directly at the Librarian crackling with dangerous energies, but the moment they got close his red eyes flared brightly and Elijah’s bats halted in midair. Their wings weren’t flapping or hovering; they’d been frozen in mid-air.
Their bodies twisted and warped, their furry skin smoothed and stretched. Every other time Elijah had ever summoned the bats, they’d been quiet, solely focused and determined to blow themselves up on whatever target Elijah had set.
Now they screeched.
They were in pain as the Librarian twisted them into something different. The boss’ eyes dimmed once more, and the bombs, now shaped as books, dropped into the ink flooding the room. That at least revealed to Elijah how the bats within the fort had become books. What was worse was that he could feel the bombs still pulling mana from his pool.
He had to end this fight quickly, or he’d be fighting against Mana Drain and the boss.
The Librarian turned towards him and held his own hand up. From his palms sprouted winged birds made of ink and flew directly at Elijah. Benjamin hit him with a Fortify spell just before the ink birds made contact. Elijah and Benjamin were blasted backwards as the birds exploded into fireballs, the Librarian’s own version of his bombs.
Elijah barely caught the edge of a bookshelf, but he heard the sound of something splashing hard into the ink. Benjamin hadn’t managed to save himself. He looked back, but the Mage was already gone, sunken beneath the black liquid. He couldn’t worry about him now; Benjamin would have to save himself. That he could allow himself to do so spoke volumes of Rose’s work on his mind. He turned back, trying to pull himself up, but couldn’t get enough of a grip on the edge.
A flash of motion caught Elijah’s eye, and Bitter Dryad and Bitter Root jumped from their bookshelf onto the one Elijah was dangling from. They reached down and helped to haul him back up onto the top. He looked; between all the attacks, they had taken down nearly seventy health points, but if this boss was anything like the Acolyte had been, something major would happen when it finally reached half health.
He looked to the left where Sasha was carefully managing the health of the party and guarding herself from the Librarian’s attacks with bunker spells. She looked over to him and threw a healing spell at him—he hadn’t even realized he was getting low. Her head twisted back further, staring at where Benjamin had fallen. She shouted something to Bitter Bat, who was still standing right there behind him. Elijah couldn’t hear them, but saw Bitter Bat arguing back to her. She gave him a stern warning and Bitter Bat took off running. He jumped off the end of the bookshelf and dropped into the ink.
Had Sasha just convinced him to kill himself?
No. The link to Bat was still there, still solid. He was going in after Benjamin.
He needed to focus; Sasha and Bitter Bat could take care of Benjamin—take care of the party. He had to focus on his duty to kill the Librarian. Rushing forward, he jumped directly at the Librarian, his Batwing Blade shimmering in the air.
Elijah didn’t know for certain that his weapon would be able to hit the boss; after all, Nicholas’ spear had passed right through it. To his utter surprise, his blade made contact.
The weapon didn’t just pass through, or slash into the monster. It broke apart. The bats within the weapon—the shadows that made up its physical form—burst forth within the ethereal form of the Librarian. He could see they were being torn apart by the magic within, but they were dealing an equal amount of damage.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
He teleported back to the bookshelf, thankful the bats distracted the Librarian by ravaging his body so that it could not pull its little transformation trick on his spell.
Nicholas had backed up closer to where Sasha was, monitoring the enemy’s health. He turned to face Elijah, who nodded. They were thinking the same thing about a phase change.
As the last of the bats within its form vanished into sparks of mana, Elijah felt them return to him; he could re-summon his blade. If he hit him hard enough, maybe he could kill it before the phase change.
His attention was pulled away from the Librarian by the sound of popping a few shelves away. Bitter Bat had found Benjamin in the pool of ink and teleported him back up to safety. He let out a breath of relief; his friend wouldn’t experience drowning in that black void.
Unfortunately for Elijah and his team, that momentary distraction was enough to allow the Librarian to unleash a new ability.
The sound of rustling pages came from below as several dozen books leapt off the shelves and began hovering in the air.
Sasha threw up a magical bunker around herself and Nicholas as the books flew at the party. When they contacted anything, they exploded as they had done when Bitter Bat had dropped one. The bunker protected Nicholas and Sasha, though it was obvious that the blasts were straining her ability to keep the dome active. Benjamin had the luxury of Bitter Bat’s free teleport spell to hop him out of the way quickly, causing the books to explode harmlessly on empty shelves. Bo still remained hidden somewhere in the shadows, awaiting his chance to inflict maximum damage.
Elijah, however, was less lucky. His mana was getting low, being constantly drained from his two bomb summons trapped below the black ink. He couldn’t risk overusing his teleport spell.
He ran. Using his increased agility, he managed to avoid several of the fast-flying books, but his familiars were less lucky. A book slammed into Bitter Dryad, sending both of his familiars careening into the pool of ink and knocking Elijah down flat onto his stomach. For a moment, he lost the ability to breathe as the fall forced the air from his lungs. He closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the pain of being blasted apart by the book.
But it never came.
The sounds of explosions cascaded through the air. He forced himself to breathe, pushing himself onto his knees. Turning back, he saw the black outline of Bo. The rogue—though not just a rogue anymore—had reappeared and was standing his ground against the swarm of exploding books.
Elijah watched Bo, his skin shimmering with the same ink that was filling the room. He whipped his arms around, his movements even more fluid than normal for him, and spikes of black material flew from him. Each strike met a flying book, detonating it before it could reach them.
Something in the back of Elijah’s mind told him to be afraid, but all he felt in the moment was gratitude for his friend’s timely save.
One blade veered off course, missing the book that Elijah had assumed Bo targeted. Surprise filled Elijah for a split second that the man had missed the target, but that surprise paid off when the blade plunged into the ethereal form of the Librarian.
It didn’t just do damage; it spread through the boss’s body.
“Nicholas, now!” Bo yelled.
It took a second, but finally the rest of the party caught up to speed with Bo. Realizing what he was talking about, Sasha dropped her bunker. Nicholas reared back and launched his spear; the tip penetrated the black mass within the Librarian’s body. It wasn’t enough to kill the boss monster, but it was severely wounded now.
“Bat, over here bring Benjamin,” Elijah called to his familiar. Bat’s ears perked up at the sound of Elijah’s voice and did as asked, teleporting Benjamin to the safety of Bo’s thrown daggers.
He quickly relayed his instructions to the familiar, and they took off at a run back towards the Librarian.
Bitter Bat teleported first, reappearing high above the Librarian and dropping on it with claws extended. Just like with the Wraith, the Dragontooth familiar’s claws dealt massive damage. Elijah followed up by teleporting above the boss monster, bringing his blade down in a slash as he fell.
The sword sliced through the Librarian just as Elijah’s mana drained completely. He felt nausea wash over him as he fell, flipping in the air. The Librarian was still alive—just barely—and had managed to dislodge Bitter Bat. He’d failed to kill the boss.
Thankfully, Benjamin took the initiative; firing a ‘Dark Blast’ at it, finishing the last of the boss’ health.
Elijah splashed into the frigid cold of the oily blackness. He thrashed about trying to keep his head above the liquid. It was no use; a strong current seemed to pull him deeper, and the grasping tendrils wrapped around his body. The boss was dead, but the dungeon was still fighting them.
His head dipped beneath the ink, and he could suddenly sense the Dungeon Core, as if the ink was working as a conduit. The Core was trying to fight back, trying to re-summon the Librarian, but was being stopped by the party’s presence within the boss room. It wanted them gone, wanted them dead, and was destroying itself in the process of attempting to do so.
He reached out with his Core Guardian class, his will brushing over the intelligence hosted within the dungeon. He assumed it would be angry; instead, it felt scared.
It feared Elijah, and by extension, feared the entire party. Elijah pulled at it, forcing it free from the confines of its dungeon wall. It tried to protect itself. The pool of ink receded back into the floor and filled the walls, surging towards the core to hold it in place. This wasn’t a normal mechanic; this was something the Core had come up with in order to kill them faster.
But it couldn’t stop Elijah. Elijah ripped it free from the protective shell of ink it had formed around itself and then out into the open.
“What is that?” Nicholas yelled, readying himself for another fight.
“It’s the dungeon core. Elijah, I sure hope you have a good reason for pulling that out,” Bo responded. There was no accusation in his voice, just concern.
Elijah grunted as he picked himself up off the ground and walked over to the glowing red orb. “It’s scared of us for some reason. More specifically, scared of me. I’m going to find out why.”
He didn’t need to touch objects anymore for his ‘Reality Warp’ skill to activate, but somehow it felt more correct to do so with the core. He laid his hand on the sleek surface and focused his mind.
[Core Interface]
Core: The Undying Library
Options:
- Defenses
- Monsters
- Traps
- Bosses
- Spawn Points
- Core Playback
(Status:
Allies Present: 0
Enemies Present: 5
Neutrals Present: 3
Monsters Present: 0
Core Stability: 22%
)
It killed itself trying to kill them. According to the first core he’d ever interacted with, fifty percent was the threshold for their ability to self-repair. He had to find out why this core was so scared of him.
“Bo, I’m diving into the memory. Watch my back.” He knew the entire team could be trusted to watch after him, but only the former developer really understood what he was doing.
He clicked onto the sixth option and braced himself for what he would see.
When he finished, he couldn’t hold back his tears. He knew what he had to do—kill the core, as it had asked him to do—but he accepted that with a stoic sense of responsibility. The tears were from what he had learned while in the memories.
“Bo,” he choked out. “There’s an admin online.”