Lisa’s flames struck the fossilized wooden face with overwhelming force, but this monster wasn’t as resilient as it seemed.
Even though it was now a more tangible challenge for the Level 15 and 14 group compared to the Elite monster they had fought earlier, this monster still had dangerous tricks up its sleeve.
The monster roared, making a sound reminiscent of trees being split in half, and the cave floor began to vibrate violently.
Thick roots, drenched in emerald-green slime, burst from the ground, trying to entangle Lisa’s legs.
At the same time, the Boss extended its wooden arms, shaping the air around them to create small spherical cocoons. Lohan, through [Instinctive Perception], sensed the danger emanating from those spheres and caught the acrid, corrosive smell of a rapid chemical reaction taking place inside the wood.
The monster was fermenting concentrated acid inside the wooden cocoons, creating pressurized bombs.
"Watch out! The cocoons are going to explode!" Halon’s mental voice echoed to everyone, while his Parallel Processing Core calculated the dispersion trajectories.
BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions sent shards of petrified wood and jets of acid flying in all directions.
The group of Players moved with a fluidity that demonstrated the exhaustive training of the past few days. Dee raised her reinforced obsidian shield, deflecting an acid blast that would have melted ordinary metal, while Tunder and Palana used mana barriers to disperse the toxic fumes.
However, the Sentinel of Rot coordinated a pincer attack with the roots beneath the ground, causing VonB and Ascalon, who were on the front lines pressing the left flank, to be caught in a point-blank detonation.
The cocoons exploded beneath their feet.
The impact hurled both warriors against the cave wall, and the acid began to sizzle on their layers of leather and flesh.
’Shit, I shouldn’t have reassembled my clones again...’ Lohan looked at the wounds forming on his guildmates and blamed himself for the terrible decision he’d made.
Lohan acted instantly.
He created dozens of clones again and channeled a surge of vitality through the clones that had just attached themselves to them, but the damage was too extensive for an immediate cure.
VonB tried to stand up, but his leg gave way under the corrosive effect; Ascalon, though conscious, had his attack arm seriously compromised.
"Grant! Get them out of the line of fire! Alice, cover the gap!" Lohan commanded with icy authority.
The two wounded Players staggered back, pulling the health potions from their belts that the guild had stockpiled in Thalendor.
They downed the reddish liquid, but, as Lohan sensed through the symbiotic connection, the potion did not produce an instant miracle.
These potions merely accelerated their natural biological recovery rate, requiring them to stay out of combat while their muscle tissue and skin slowly regenerated, though still much faster than without the potions, under their gentle glow.
The frontline battle now depended almost entirely on Lohan and Lisa, who took it upon themselves to keep the Boss occupied with a frenzied dance of ice and fire while the rest of the team looked for opportunities to attack and provide support.
Lisa leaped among the roots, each of her kicks leaving scorch marks on the plant’s husk, while Lohan projected ice spikes that pierced the creature’s joints, preventing it from moving freely.
However, Lohan wasn’t just fighting on autopilot; he was observing everything around him at the same time.
With his mental processing divided into separate streams, he noticed that Alice was moving through the shadows and finding an opening.
The fighter, taking advantage of the distraction created by Lisa’s golden fire, found a blind spot in the Sentinel’s defense pattern: an open slit in the lower thorax, exactly where the green slime seemed to converge in a rhythmic flow.
With perfect vision despite the chaotic environment, Lohan sensed her intention and made a bold tactical decision.
He retracted one of the remaining large clones enveloping Lisa’s back, causing the fox’s armor to become slightly thinner, and subtly launched that bluish mass toward Alice, using his camouflage abilities to the fullest so as not to alert the monster.
His biomass crept slowly across the cave floor until it reached Alice, fusing with her body instantly.
Under Lohan’s command, the gelatin intensified Threshold Mimicry, causing the layer of darkness that already camouflaged the clones to render Alice’s silhouette nearly invisible against the damp cave walls, while reinforcing her fists with hexagonal obsidian plates.
"Alice, the acid reservoir is in the center of his chest! If you strike with full force, the internal pressure will do the rest, attack now!" Lohan transmitted, injecting a massive charge of Natural Energy directly into the girl’s tendons.
Alice emerged from the shadows like a vengeful ghost, propelled by the kinetic force that Lohan’s clone had added to her leap; she prepared an upward punch charged with all the fury of her boxer class.
Her fist, now a dense mass of obsidian and mana, struck the exact spot of the crack.
KRA-KOOOM!!
The impact was devastating.
Alice’s fist not only shattered the wood but also blew apart the inner chamber where the Sentinel stored the fermented acid.
The sound of shattering echoed throughout the cave as the monster’s chest collapsed inward.
In the millisecond that the green glow of the acid began to leak out under pressure, Lohan sensed the impending catastrophic detonation.
"EVERYONE! FALL BACK NOW! GET OUT OF THE CENTRAL CHAMBER!" Halon’s mental roar was so powerful that it made the Players obey out of pure reflex, leaping backward without question.
Lohan didn’t hesitate.
He expanded his main mass from behind Lisa, creating a dome of black biomass that enveloped the fox, and repeated the same for Alice, who was still too close to the monster.
He activated [Non-Newtonian Resilience] at maximum level, anchoring himself to the ground with gravitational density while bolstering every defense he could activate to the absolute maximum.
KRA-KOOOM!!
A colossal explosion of corrosive slime and shards of petrified wood swept through the chamber.
The shockwave was so powerful that the cave walls cracked, and acidic vapor filled the air.
Lohan’s barrier boiled, and the obsidian scales shattered under the pressure, but he maintained his cohesion, absorbing every ounce of damage that would otherwise have struck his companions.
The amount of biomass consumed to withstand that explosion was greater than he had imagined, but strangely, even though it seemed like an extremely catastrophic and dangerous attack, the damage it caused was less than that of the spider’s attacks they had fought earlier that week.
Even though he had grown stronger and invested a large amount of biomass into his own abilities, considering the damage caused by the spider in the last battle, an attack like this from a Level 15 Elite Monster should be more powerful, shouldn’t it?
They hadn’t even used the reward they’d received yet, shouldn’t this battle be more difficult?
"Why does this monster seem so much weaker than the spider we faced earlier?" Lohan wondered, confused. "Could it be because of that energy so similar to my Holy Light?"
Realizing this came as a shock to Lohan.
Ever since that battle, he’d assumed that all Level 15 Elite monsters were that powerful, but apparently, the bar was actually set lower?
The more he thought about it, the more he realized it made perfect sense, after all, he was a Player with a Double Mythic Base; why would he have such a hard time dealing with monsters of his own level bearing the Elite Title?! Wouldn’t that be like simply underestimating the title of a Mythic Monster?!
Thinking about the shock it must have been for the other Players to learn that Astralis had killed a Level 15 Elite monster a few days ago, Lohan chuckled to himself as he imagined what their reaction would be if they knew that monster was even more powerful?!
When the dust and steam cleared, the remains of the Sentinel of Decay were scattered everywhere, reduced to inert biomass.
In the center of the crater, Lohan retracted his form, revealing Lisa and Alice unharmed, though panting.
[You have killed the Sentinel of Decay!]
[Experience Gained: +20,000!]
Lohan returned to the form of a small blue sphere, feeling his biomass reserve drop dramatically, but his mental smile was absolute.
Without a second thought, Lohan didn’t hesitate to digest the corpse and the Mana Stone of this Level 15 Elite monster!
Even though he thought this monster was weaker than he’d imagined, Lohan didn’t underestimate the creature, thinking he wouldn’t be able to get anything useful from its corpse.
As a professional devourer, he knew full well that it was from these corpses that he would gain the abilities that would make invading this dungeon easier and easier, making each new confrontation simpler the more he managed to digest and devour.
And the guild members knew the same thing, watching the Slime digest the corpse of that "valuable" boss without a trace of guilt or regret... in fact, most of them were even more excited than Lohan, curious to see what Evolution he would gain from such a powerful monster!