Chapter Seventeen #3
“Yeah. I’ve got enough potions to heal through it.
Plus, once the fight is actually over, my natural regen will kick in to counteract some of the damage.
My natural regen is up to three a second, and I’ve got over two hundred health now, so…
the baby flower should bleed me for about fifteen a tick—five per second, it’ll take about eighty seconds for me to bleed out from full.
I’ll drink a potion every thirty seconds while we run over to Otto.
Then we’ll speedrun him, I’ll go through the portal, and take the flower off as soon as I’m on the other side.
I promise not to let my health drop below 50% in case you’re worried about the bleeding. ”
“Are you sure you have enough potions?”
“I’m sure. If we run at full speed, then…
it shouldn’t take us more than five minutes to reach Otto from here, and I’ve got about thirty potions in my inventory.
Most of them are pretty weak since they’re just what I picked up from all those dungeon runs the other day, but still.
I’ve got enough. Plus there’s a special potion I’ve got that’ll absolutely keep me safe if I need it.
Also, even in the absolute worst-case scenario, if I somehow let my HP get too low and I’m out of healing options, I can just take the flower off me to get rid of the effect. This is safe. I promise.”
“And you’re just as confident we can defeat this boss?”
“If we can’t, we just have to run away,” I said and winked. “But I know we won’t lose to this. It’s a beautiful fight with this really nice piano song playing during it, but—wait. Just to confirm… I’m not the only one who can hear music while we’re in the dungeons and during boss fights, right?”
Lupa tilted her head while Rosie raised her eyebrows.
“Sev,” Rosie said. “Do you… hear music playing in your head during dungeons? Like it’s a video game?”
“… don’t you?” I asked.
“I think you might have gone a little crazy. We don’t hear music.”
“Seriously?!”
“I mean… where would it even come from? It’s not like every boss room is equipped with a live band or speakers…”
“Does this mean… I’ve played the game so much and listened to the soundtrack for so many thousands of hours that my head automatically plays background music everywhere I go? What—what about last night?! You didn’t hear music while we had sex?!”
“You did?!”
“Of course I did! It was the 73rd track in the album! The heart-warming song, To Fly Freely, that plays during emotional moments of companion quests!”
“Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“I didn’t say anything because I thought everyone heard it! Have I been listening to music on my own this entire time?!”
“Yes!”
“Wait, does this mean… as proof of how much I love Custom Dungeon World, my brain has adapted to automatically playing its soundtrack all the time? Isn’t that really impressive?” I started feeling pretty smug. “Just goes to show how I’m the number one fan of the greatest game in the world.”
“… it’s something alright.”
“I feel sorry that you can’t hear the soundtrack I love so much, but—”
“You know, now that you know it’s not real, there’s a chance you’ll stop hearing it. Kind of like that effect where, once you become aware you’re blinking or breathing, you start manually doing it since it’s like your body goes off autopilot.”
“Don’t you dare put that—no! The music is fading away!” I dropped to my knees and held my hands up to the air. “I’m sorry! Come back! I promise I’ll—”
“You’re totally screwing with me, aren’t you?”
I winked and stuck my tongue out at Rosie. “Yep. There’s no way you could override my brain’s—no, my soul’s obsession with Custom Dungeon World. I’ll delusionally hear the soundtrack playing in my head until the day I die, which will be never since I’m becoming a vampire.”
“… if you’re able to fool around like this, then I guess there really is nothing to worry about with this boss.”
“I mean, it could still kill us if we mess up. Just because it doesn’t deal that much damage doesn’t mean we’re not in serious danger, plus we are underleveled and undergeared.
Still, I believe in us.” I looked at Lupa.
“You’ve got the worst gear and HP out of us, so you’re the one most at risk…
is what I would say if only levels and stats mattered.
Don’t get hit or else it’s going to seriously hurt you.
If you do get hit, immediately disengage and go heal with the potions we gave you. ”
“Mm. Got it,” Lupa said. “I’ll be careful. Promise.”
“Good. You’ll get unlimited pettings and scratches for life if you get through this without getting hurt.”
“What about… belly rubs?”
“Belly rubs, too.”
Lupa turned to look at the boss arena with her daggers drawn. “I won’t get hit.”
“That’s my puppy.”
Lupa’s tail really wagged after hearing that.
I looked at Rosie and said, “I’ll give you a kiss for every attack you dodge or block.”
Rosie readied her mace and shield. “I’ve got this.”
“That’s my first wife.”
Just like with Lupa, Rosie’s tail swished around and her ears did their happy flapping upon hearing that.
“Let’s get this fight started.”
Yeah, I was nervous about going up against a monster that wasn’t meant to be fought until after I had a class and more levels, but that made it all the more exciting.
How was I going to improve and grow stronger if I wasn’t willing to punch above my weight?
Besides, going after stronger-than-intended monsters was how I spent most of my thousands of hours in Custom Dungeon World. I liked the challenge.
This fight was also one of the easiest to run from since the boss’s body was stationary and its vines were only so long.
It was still dangerous. There was no denying that.
But every single dungeon was potentially deadly, and there were going to be far, far stronger enemies to go up against. The world was full of dungeons and most of them had bosses who had never been defeated before, meaning those bosses were the equivalent of invaders who could leave whenever they wanted to and go cause problems outside their dungeons…
as far as I knew, anyways. I still wasn’t entirely sure on how that worked.
In the game, each boss had a convenient excuse for why they didn’t leave before getting killed the first time, but still.
Eventually, if we were going to be real adventurers risking our lives for glory and to protect others, this was absolutely nothing in comparison to the challenges ahead.
I took a deep breath.
“Whenever you’re ready, Rosie,” I said. “And Lupa, don’t hold back. Go all out as long as you’re careful.”
The girls nodded, and Rosie led the way.
We stepped into the patch of flowers and, once Rosie stepped into the fog, it dispersed as the ground shook beneath us.
Rosie jumped back from the center as the ground burst up in front of her.
A massive spider lily the size of a car, with an especially bulbous stem that connected its petals to the ground, rose from the ground while its vines twisting up the trees descended toward us.
Surely enough, the piano song I was so used to began to play in the background, even if it was only in my head.
It was a sad, but beautiful song. Just like the enemy we were fighting.
[Lycoris, The Mourning]
[Level 20 | Boss Aspirant]
An enchanted flower, once the favorite of the same princess Otto pledged himself to. A flower that was not as sentient as a human, but far more intelligent than a normal flower. One capable of truly feeling the love its princess cared for it with.
Twisted by grief, the same magic that brought it to life transformed it into a monster.
Delivering slow, painful death became its only purpose for living.
Silently, it swung its vines toward us like whips.
Lupa and I only dodged at first so that Rosie had time to build up some aggro by blocking the first vine and retaliating with her mace.
If we were level twenty with appropriate gear, the blocked attack would deal almost zero damage, but it took a fifth of Rosie’s health out.
Still nowhere near as bad as that hyena which went to show just how much of a monster it truly was.
I wanted to meet whoever killed it.
I also wanted to know what “Boss Aspirant” meant. The game only had bosses labeled as—well, as “Boss.” I never saw “Boss Aspirant” before.
But it was no time to think about that.
Rosie activated Power Bash and swung her mace straight into the bulbous stem of the boss’s main body. We let her get another couple of attacks in before we got to work, and I started off with a poison-infused Spark targeting the main body.
Lupa and I then targeted the same vine, her cutting it with her daggers while I sliced it with my sickle, being careful to dodge any attacks from the remaining vines as we focused this one.
I also made sure to use my torch as an offhand weapon to light the boss on fire every now and then.
I hadn’t been using it much since upgrading my sickle since it was more worthwhile to simply attack more with the sickle, but the boss was a plant.
Of course it was weak to fire. Each one of those DoT ticks from the Burning status did twice as much damage thanks to that.
Rosie blocked another attack, but then another vine struck her to make her bleed while she was already hurt.
Just as planned, she immediately chugged a potion to top off her health before doing anything else.
Meanwhile, the vines couldn’t get anywhere close to Lupa. Whether it was by jumping, dodging, or rolling away, she was absolutely untouchable, and I was starting to believe she could have soloed the boss from level one if she truly wanted to.
But that made me curious about who it was she wanted to get stronger than. I knew it was probably whoever was responsible for those scars, but… if she still didn’t believe she was strong enough to defeat them in her current state, then I was worried about just how strong they were.
That was all the more reason to test ourselves against this boss.