Accidental Reaver

Chapter 226 - 225: Meric's Purpose

The Reaver clashed against the raid boss, gauging its capabilities with each exchange. Luke channeled the limited portion of the Greed concept he understood into elemental ice. Like an infection, strands of golden frost spread, attaching precisely where Vorpal Touch had been inflicted earlier.

As Infusion flared, Siphon latched onto the boss, feeding back health empowered by the building negative effects Luke and Sooty had already applied. The crow's magic exacerbated the afflictions, dark energy pulsing from her shadowed form.

Lightning arced over Luke again as he dodged with Triple Step, but even then, a mandible managed to clip his side, tearing off a chunk of living ice. The creature teleported, reappearing exactly where the Reaver had been a breath earlier. Reflexively, he swung Xera across his body, blocking the worst of the mandible's strike before arcing backward, jettisoning through the air, and freezing the water as he flew.

He twisted midair, using the flexibility he still hadn't fully mastered, pressing his feet against the newly solid ice. In one smooth motion, he kicked off the frozen surface and launched himself back toward the boss, cutting into its momentum before it could regain control. Pressurized mist hissed from the soles of his feet.

Sooty harried Meric from one side to another, hopping through shadows like it was a playground. Tendrils of blackish rot from Vorpal Touch infected the boss from multiple wounds. Its nether-born void seemed to battle against the spreading corruption.

With the fight in full swing, Luke took advantage of Polar South, applying its insight to examine the boss and its patterns. It had been waiting up until now on purpose, as if toying with him. But now, after he had proven himself a real threat by severing a wing, any sense of hesitation vanished from either side.

The shallow waterbank increasingly came under Luke's control. Gliding water upward, the chitinous shell of Meric froze over. He spun around, adjusting to the boss's incredible speed. More than once, he barely avoided being pierced by its mandibles.

They entered an increasingly rapid exchange. With each strike, the Reaver chipped away at the attribute disadvantage. Withering Echo lowered the attack power difference between them. Sooty and Luke worked together in tandem to split the boss's attention.

While this made its emotions boil, screech, and roar in fury, it also had the effect of dividing its focus, crippling its ability to bring the full brunt of its power against either Sooty or Luke.

To add fuel to the fire, Luke occasionally let Xera go free from his hand. He used ice gauntlets to rip into Meric's flesh, while Xera would stab from another angle or turn into a wand, blasting Elemental Essence from afar. Detonations of ice pinpricked all along Meric's underbelly.

Using this improvised tri-layer of assault, the Reaver's team played Meric like a puppet, but he was a raid boss, not something to take lightly. Twisters of water broke through the frozen field, vying for control once more.

Meric left afterimages, porting itself from one edge of Luke's vision to another. He could hardly keep up. His pupils darted across the battlefield to follow its movements. Straining information synthesis and beginning to overburden his brain.

Xera rotated back into his right palm, and he brandished her toward a mandible trying to impale him from the side. An ice-clad Xera met the strike, and two catastrophic forces struggled to overpower one another.

While Luke had effectively maximized his strength attribute for his tier, it still wasn't enough to overcome what Meric had through sheer size and inherent advantage. He created a counterforce, detonating ice along his body to force an equalizer.

Changing tactics, Luke went for minor cuts rather than devastating blows. By this point, he understood he needed to grow mid-fight, and he happened to have the exact class required to do so.

He focused on maintaining the debilitating effects of Siphon, Essence Bond, Withering Echo, and Sooty's own curses. The golden frost he controlled was concentrated on Meric's skull and underside, leeching away at its core, countering its own void energy, and festering at the crippled wing site.

As the battle continued, meteorites from the void zones above belched down in greater numbers. Luke struggled to keep track, relying more and more on Mist Shroud and reflexive instinct rather than conscious thought.

He widened the gap as Sooty tried once again to rip away another wing. Compared to when it had four wings, the Reaver noticed a distinct drop in speed. He formulated a new strategy based on that information. Meric also seemed incredibly wary whenever either Sooty or Luke approached the base of its remaining three insectile wings.

Leaning into the pattern recognition ability of Polar South, Luke adapted better as time went on. With each clash, his agility, intellect, HP, and several other attributes climbed continually. If nothing else, this boss was a treasure trove.

He applied strands of the Greed Concept into hyper-condensed ice and thrust them into the center of the water twisters. They devoured one another like an ouroboros. Water fed into ice, ice froze the water, and cracked apart before Greed Strands expanded again, consuming it. An endless cycle of eternal self-destruction.

Since Meric wouldn't reveal an opening, Luked created one.

Predicting where the boss would teleport next, he jutted out his hand, summoning Essence Fissure exactly where he expected it to appear. The moment it did, he made a snap decision, activating Temporal North.

Another Essence Fissure shimmered into existence on the opposite side of Meric, pinning it completely. Its snaking tail distorted, reducing its mobility and reaction speed.

Sooty materialized beneath the boss, applying Gigantification, aided by Wings of Reaver, into a Talon Strike that shattered its soft carapace.

The unexpected pain stole away the creature's focus for a brief instant. Lightning arced across the living ice on the Reaver's body as he Triple Stepped, stopping right above a rotting wing. Gold oscillated at the edges of Xera's blade.

He cut into the wing in a single, precise strike. It severed at the base, and ice froze into the exposed flesh, fulminating immediately afterward. The wound expanded into a grievous injury.

A latticework of spatial voids appeared as Meric tried to crush him apart with ether pressure. Its misted tail lashed toward him. Luke conjured two Essence Lances, concentrating them both to his right, stabilizing the space. He then applied pressure from one Fissure behind him, using it to cannonball out of the unfavorable position.

Bracing with a splayed hand, he connected with the ice on the opposite side of the waterbed, redirecting back toward the boss. Now out of harm's way, he acted like a guided missile, targeting exposed limbs and further limiting Meric's mobility.

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Sooty aimed for its short neck, tendrils of rot and expert shadowcraft plagued its vitals. One of its gangly quadruped limbs clipped Sooty, forcing the avian to disperse into shadow, injured but unbroken.

Guided by arctic winds, Luke danced around the boss, avoiding the worst of its counterattacks. Frost crept along Meric's body, and the speed difference between them reversed. Reaver now held the speed advantage. If he could find a way to take out the remaining two rotting wings, he was certain the fight would be over.

An arcane hiss sprang forth from Meric's soul. Starlight died. Voids expanded, waters roiled, and ice fragmented. Luke instinctively extended the Mist Shroud, but even as he poured essence into his eyes, he couldn't see a thing. His ability to perceive was simply denied. A lack of desire.

Relying on the sixth sense, he barely avoided the stinger that would have taken his right arm clean off. Even so, corrosive drips of nether poison fed into his core from a glancing blow to the chest.

He veered away, forcing the infection out with ice, cutting off the damaged piece of flesh and regenerating quickly. But this new issue with his vision felt more permanent in nature.

Luke began to form a mental feedback from the Mist Shroud's information network. It was blurry despite the strengthening connection. Whatever Meric had done clearly affected even this sensory source. He ended up closing his eyes, unable to see any longer.

"Xera, my vision's out. Don't be afraid to guide my blows if I'm slightly off."

Xera responded, "Absolutely. I've been adjusting your blows all the time anyway. This is nothing. Insect guts go squish!"

Wayfinder broke his uncharacteristic silence. "Lad, the bugger you're facing has put his own Concept into the air. If you want to handle the issue, break its concentration. I'll bet my shiny exterior it can't keep something like this up forever."

Diving to the side, Luke managed to avoid one of the misshapen quadruped limbs Meric sent his way. He gave a short response. "I'll keep it in mind."

He continued to fight Meric based on what he could parse through the Mist Shroud. It seemed the sight denial affected Sooty as well. She became less direct, and the injury from before hadn't fully healed.

But vision or not, all of their effects continued to plague the boss. He played this game, in it to win it. He connected to the golden frost surrounding the boss, feeding the Greed Concept into it strongly, like an endless wave of golden radiance. The Golden Stigama blazed on the Reaver's lower nape.

Meric broke apart one snow-capped hill of golden ice, only for another to form right back, freezing the very waters it tried to control.

Still, it wasn't as if its new phase had no effect. Luke took increasing amounts of damage from their exchanges. The extra sensory burden of having to translate the information the Mist Shroud fed caused his overall bodily control to drop. Finesse plummeted, and his effectiveness waned.

Poison from within his veins continually flushed out through his own elemental efforts, putting the two in a kind of stalemate. At one point, one of Meric's insectile fingers crushed his kneecap. Luke concentrated living ice there to regenerate it.

Luckily, through armor set bonuses, his bone durability was practically always at full functionality unless he lost the limb entirely. He kept the majority of his speed, focusing ever more on the Mist Shroud.

Luke formed a mental image. He could see the motes of attributes and everything else continually stolen from Meric feeding back into him. A feedback loop that not only healed but also increased his power over time.

Sooty and Luke adjusted to the new obstacle. Xera more than once corrected Luke's miscalculations, preventing disaster. It all came at a price. Wounds stacked up, and with the poison fighting against his elemental abilities, it began to outpace any healing over time.

Then he had an idea. He applied the Greed Concept to the internal ice rather than the external. Before long, the poison that had plagued him was consumed bit by bit, crushed—and to add insult to injury, at least for Meric—it began regenerating him, turning into high-quality fuel.

What a concept can do. Musai really should've given a guidebook for all this.

The two forces clashed, but the Reaver adapted quickly. Sooty wasn't as lucky; she took another direct blow, snapping back into the lakebed they fought on. She had Iron Feather active at that moment, preventing the worst.

She flew back, retreating outside Meric's range, while manipulating shadows to slow it. One wing hung at a strange angle, forcibly righted by liquid shadow.

Luke saw cracks trail along the Meric's chitinous shell, spreading as icy frost to pried into it. Gold leaked in, and he could sense Meric's pain levels rising. His breath grew heavy. The Reaver took crippling amounts of damage up to this point.

He had been playing the long game this entire time and could continue to, but Meric grew incredibly agitated. Pinning it down became harder as the fight dragged on. Even though its speed wasn't greater than Luke's, its mobility absolutely was.

If Luke tried to corner it in one unfavorable situation, it could simply teleport away, reappearing in another section of the lakebed. Meteorites constantly showered the terrain, and whenever one hit Meric instead of Luke, the damn thing healed from it.

Further attuning to the Mist Shroud, the denial of sight became less of a burden. The golden frost crept into a critical area of Meric's insectile body. Along the underside of its chest lay a completely exposed section.

The issue was, Luke lacked the speed to create an opening like that again as long as Meric kept teleporting. It was possible the golden frost would eventually act like a virulent plague and kill Meric on its own, but with the meteorites capable of healing it, he doubted it.

The influx of attributes had already begun to slow. Clearly, whatever he could steal from this boss was reaching its limit.

But it was to his luck that, at that very moment, new conceptual knowledge crammed itself into his mind. Connecting to the Greed Concept became less burdensome than before.

He was confused for a moment, until he recalled similar situations during the Tide. He assumed Spectral Bloom must have taken something from this creature that he needed.

With that boon, he saw things coming to a close far faster than expected. Bits of gold spiraled around him. Lightning arced over living ice. The plague afflicting Meric intensified, spreading to every limb, specifically targeting its joints.

At the exact moment he anticipated it teleporting again, the Sin obliterated one of its ankle joints through mental control of the golden frosts. It worked well enough that when Meric teleported, the raid boss immediately crashed on its side, causing the lakebed water to surge outward like a tsunami.

Luke Triple Stepped, positioning above the exposed wound. Golden ice-enhanced runes settled along Xera's blade as he stabbed downward. A Twin Essence Lance was summoned at the sword tip, exploding internally before rearing the blade upward and through, sliding across the creature's neck.

Sooty was already on the other side, rotating her abilities to nearly complete the cut. They came within an inch of beheading the beast.

Screeching again, a burst of pressure ineffectively blasted both man and bird back. But enough to give the raid boss breathing room once again.

As Wayfinder anticipated, being pushed this far shattered whatever concept Meric had been using in the area. Sight returned to Luke. He no longer needed to rely on instinct, Xera, or the Mist Shroud to orient himself.

Gouts of blood spilled from Luke's partially crushed midsection and missing right lower forearm, torn away during the unexpected burst of pressure. Meric had used its tail to gouge deep into his flesh. Xera orbited around the Reaver.

Choosing to eviscerate Meric before it could recover, rather than heal himself, Luke applied a thin layer of ice to stanch the bleeding. He reared Xera to the side using his left arm and charged again.

Sooty summoned her Shadow Wing to make way, its manipulated screeches and dark projections forestalling the boss from teleporting yet again.

Luke pinpointed the intersection where the golden frost and brown rot of Vorpal Touch were most potent—right at the connection between neck and spine.

Jumping above the limbs by half a foot, Luke came nearly face to face with the creature. It opened its maniables, about to screech. A final card up its sleeve.

"Silence."

Silent Domain unfurled from Whispering Tome, cutting the auditory desperation before it truly began.

In a furious half-arc, connecting precisely at the intended point, he commanded the ice within himself and in the environment to converge on that spot. The critical area detonated like a bomb, the sheer pressure and kinetic force literally ripping the head off Meric.

Luke was thrown back, plastered against the transparent barrier separating the twentieth and nineteenth floors. He had commanded too much of the Greed Concept at once, drawing on nearly all the ice in the zone. Mental fatigue washed over him. Behind him, the Greed Skull that started to form shimmered and melded back into the void.

Sooty positioned between her Reaver and the boss. The insectoid tumbled about headlessly, its tail thrashing wildly and losing all control.

It bled profusely. Silver and poisonous purple blood spilled from the gaping neck wound. Luke had punctured the poison sacs within its body, inadvertently causing the boss to poison its own flesh.

For several tense minutes, Sooty stayed on guard, but it proved needless. The boss helplessly teleported from corner to corner, but its condition catastrophically worsened.

When it finally appeared within striking distance, Luke and Sooty acted in tandem without a word. A full-strength strike with Xera and a Talon Strike from Sooty gouged out the creature's heart, front and back. Luke kept Xera embedded, using her as a frost conduit. Bit by bit, the Reaver turned a raid boss into an ice sculpture.

When it finally stopped moving, he calmly placed a palm at the base of the connection between the tail and its body.

"Shatter."

Flipping common sense on its head, a newborn tier 2 obliterated a tier 3 raid boss.