John dismissed the window with a simple thought and teleported two metres back. “IT’S COMING!” he shouted, backing up a mental call that on its own might have gone unheard in the hasty battlefield. On every side, they were surrounded by a thick mist of spores. The spores themselves must have had some animating, hostile will behind them, given that they never settled and always came creeping back in, no matter how far Sylph blew them away.

This was about to change.

John heard the soft stomping of massive feet on squishy ground and the squeaking sound of spores getting pressed out of the thin slits left behind by spider legs. A long, deep exhale in the mist was the final warning the group got to pick which windshield they were hiding behind. Made in haste, it was hardly large enough for all of them, and the arachnids were still coming for them. Even Momo had to resort to physical combat, just to cover everyone else while the enveloping mist slowly started to move.

Slowly, then faster and faster, until the group had to hold onto each other to not be taken by the vortex, the sucking draft pulled in the spores. Although they would have been safe from the suction on the other side of the windshield, it was truly the massive amounts of spores, now getting pulled over the previously safe stone platform, that the group had to look out for. The speed of the wind created a safe slipstream.

After about half a minute of intense inhale, the cloud thinned enough that the boss monster was clearly visible. The Paradevi was a five-metre-tall, gorilla-esque creature. Its head was a bump, as red furred as the rest of it, marked by a large, flat nose, two small, black buttons that were its eyes, and a mouth that had opened to an obscene degree. Whatever muscles and bones were responsible for the direct view John had on the monster’s gums and sharp, humanlike teeth, they were set deep enough into the creature that the entire chest of it was pushed outwards.

As the monster absorbed the spores, pieces of fungal matter pushed out between its red fur. Sharing the colour, but by no means the texture, it gave the Paradevi a sick look, as if it was covered in pustules. Only its hands and feet, practically the same in their layout as arboreal monkeys’ limbs tended to be, with their light brown colour were spared.

When the monster finally finished its ‘meal’, the pieces of mushroom had grown large enough to form something resembling armour. It wasn’t pleasant to the eyes, like a carapace stapled together of bulbous growths, but it was armour regardless.

The jaw closed, leaving the various gashes around to let out thin, slowly rising pillars of spores that vaguely drifted in the group’s direction. It wasn’t enough in quantity or speed for the group to be worried about it. Not any more worried than they were about the massive ape now starting to move in their direction with steady, large steps, anyway.

‘4-type, Smlere,’ John gave the mental instruction. Huddled together as they were, the necessary elementals (Gnome, Salamander, Siena and Stirwin) found each other quickly. Stirwin would lose all the mana John had spent so far, but that was a necessary sacrifice to deal with the Paradevi.

Radiating heat, the Amazonian woman with her hair like braided strands of lava charged forwards. As she ran, the heat only intensified on John’s face, despite the growing distance. The grey metal plates attached to her yellow dress, effectively making up a knee-high skirt, turned incandescent from the heat. The stone under her started to melt.

Smlere had Unleashed, which halved the time she could be active but enveloped her with a fiery aura that could be dangerous even to allies - had it not been for the Guild Perk. The Paradevi and the combined elemental clashed with hurling fists, both coming to a standstill. Shattering, the ground under Smlere’s feet was quickly smelted back into one unit by her presence, while the fur and mycelium covering of the monster’s arm caught fire.

‘Four minutes, fifty seconds,’ John counted their time. If they did everything right, that would be ample time to kill the boss. ‘Aclysia, Momo, Sylph, you three help me with the spiders. Beatrice, you support Smlere. Undine, you help out where you feel best.’

There was still a tide of Spoleas Spiders coming for them from all directions. John was a little more useful; at this point Purgatory’s Rising Annihilation had maxed out, boosting his Strength and Agility by 190, but that only meant he had a fighting chance in a melee against one of the spiders. He wouldn’t have bet on himself, if it came down to it.

Luckily, he had one ace up his sleeve. Rather than taking advantage of the Stat boost of Rising Annihilation, he used Arcane Ascension. The former being maxed out meant that the latter had its cooldown shortened from one day to thirty minutes, which made it a perfect tool in this situation – although in an unusual way.

Usually, John used Arcane Ascension to cast Arc Lance. The fully stacked variant of the Attribute used five times his Max Mana, about 77’000 MP in total, to repeatedly cast the 1000 mana spell. That was great for burst damage, but what John needed right now wasn’t burst, it was sustained area of effect coverage.

And so he cast Unstable Arcana. The mana invested equaled 385 pulses over the course of about 3 minutes. Casting it with Arcane Ascension did nothing to boost the damage of each pulse, but that longevity would cover the majority of their relatively secure stone platform. Each pulse was also accompanied by a Mana Chain, shackling a random Spoleas Spider in range to the Unstable Arcana.

Neither the damaging wave nor the shackling were of any direct benefit to John, as he was once more toppled over by one of the monsters. Aclysia was there to help him this time, executing an enraged uppercut with Tiemarath that missed her Master and half lifted, half cleaved apart the spider. Quickly, she helped him up. It was clear she wanted to say something, likely something worried and loving. A spider coming their way interrupted and incurred the weaponized maid’s wrath. With an expression worthy of a serial killer, she switched to Eclys and let the spider sail through her incorporeal form. The katana sliced two legs off the monster before it could turn around.

A couple metres away, Sylph used the Mana Chain to her advantage. The Spoleas Spiders chasing her, two of them, tried to jump after her, but were yanked back violently by the chains. Sylph giggled amusedly, before electrocuting both of them. Momo was doing the same, keeping her distance, since she was even more useless in melee than John was. The Mandala Sphere hovered above and kept supplying information. That was more valuable to John than an extra combatant.

While they fended off the spiders and did their best to pull the attention of any newcomers towards them, Smlere and Beatrice went after the boss monster. That John had sent Beatrice as support had been a decision based on one single variable: when it came to killing big boss monsters, she was probably the best they had.

While Smlere matched the offensive might of the boss with her Endurance, Beatrice ran circles around the boss and repeatedly stabbed them with her spear, Perfect. Each thrust was aimed at a weak spot in the biological armour, invisible to John but apparent to Beatrice, benefiting from the Forever Fall Attribute of her weapon. Every two seconds, she used a fully charged Needle Assault, blasting off chunks of hardened mycelium with the Crescendo explosions. Any attempts to hit her with a backswing were countered by Twist Position, teleporting her several metres into any unoccupied direction. Paired with Beatrice’s environmental perception, even more acute than John’s when it came to enemy movement, she had an almost uncanny ability to perceive enemy attacks.

Because she kept on one target, Crescendo also boosted her Agility by 100% - 10% for every 12 consecutive successful hits. With Needle Assault and her general speed, it was incredibly difficult to miss such a large opponent. Each dodge enabled her to take three steps on air as if it was solid matter, courtesy of the Endless Step enchantment. She used that effect sparingly.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

‘Request: Let me do this on my own,’ Beatrice suddenly interjected. John hesitated. They had one more minute until the spheres would die and about three before Smlere was gone. The boss monster, with its massive amount of armour, was extremely resilient. Leaving it to Beatrice alone might not fit in their time constraint. They were getting slowly overwhelmed by spiders, but that was a problem they could deal with after the boss was dead. ‘John, please.’ The request suddenly got urgent.

‘Fine,’ John caved immediately, trusting in Beatrice’s conviction.

The boss seemed confused for a moment when Smlere backed off to instead smash one of the pony sized spiders into charcoal. Her presence over at the spider-fighting side was immediately appreciated. Between her burning aura and the regular arcane pulses, the spiders lost enough health each second that John and Momo could kill them by just waiting them out. It wasn’t a quick process, but it was effective in a sizable area.

Focused on dodging, he had enough time to follow Beatrice’s duel with the boss monster.

With her massively boosted Agility, the passive maid weaved between the wide swings of the creature. Previously she could spend all of her Swing on Needle Assault, now she had to use Unsteady Assault to do flips, turns and jabs that were almost physically impossible for a humanoid. Her focus on battle was absolute, each step a work of art.

A Spoleas Spider jumped at her from behind. Beatrice dodged by bowing forwards. The skirt of her maid outfit fluttered when she rapidly twisted sideways, narrowly escaping a straight punch. Angered, the Paradevi opened its massive jaws and howled, the high-pitched shouts resembling that of a regular monkey. Then it started to violently thrash and flail, swiping at Beatrice like an annoyed drunk would have at a particularly obnoxious fly.

Beatrice’s grace and beauty, as she managed narrow dodge after narrow dodge, could not be compared to any such annoying insect. Although she was focused exclusively on dodging, John could feel her mounting excitement. Some of the steps she had to take on the air in order to allow her to escape encirclement, most hits she escaped without relying on that tool. With each avoided hit, the number of steps she could take on the air was buffered further. Then it finally hit 30, the maximum. For the next five minutes, she would be able to walk on air or water however she pleased, unless she got hit. More importantly, Crescendo, Forever Fall and Endless Step were now all active and maxed out.

The lips of the passive maid turned into the slightest smile as the hollow core of her diamond-shaped spear tip was illuminated by silver light.

With all of her boosted speed and even utilizing Twisted Position, Beatrice skipped backwards. The Paradevi was quick to set after her. First it swiped at the ground in front of it, then the space before its chest, and finally the air above its head. With each jump, Beatrice gained altitude, until the boss had to jump to reach her. The argent glow drew trails like blood in water as she moved.

With more than twenty metres between them, Beatrice aimed her spear and thrust. A lance of light extended from the point of her weapon, more intense than any of the regular shockwaves many of the melee combatants were capable of. It hit the boss monster between the eyes with the full force of a direct hit. That was because, as per Perfect by Design’s description, that was exactly what it did. While the last enchantment on the weapon was active, in turn only the case if all others were fully stacked, the spear had a range of 100 metres and all resource generation was quadrupled.

Which meant that Beatrice could use Needle Assault every 0,5 seconds.

The testing thrust was immediately followed by an absolute hail of other strikes, cutting and slicing the boss, who still tried to catch Beatrice. Narrow as her dodges had been before, she now had the advantage of flight and Twist Position let her teleport to anywhere she could stand – which was everywhere at the moment. The only breaks Beatrice took in her constant barrage of attacks were when she used that teleport to get out of the way of a jumping attack. She would have gotten completely out of range if she hadn’t had to keep the boss from keeping his attention elsewhere.

Not that this was an issue for a lot longer. Soon the Needle Assault was no longer cutting into hardened mushroom, but flesh and blood. From there, things developed rapidly. Beatrice’s entire attention was turned towards that successfully broken spot, and she continuously adjusted her angle to hit it. Within twenty seconds, she was scratching away at the ribcage. After another thirty, she was through. After another five, the entirety of the internal organs in the path had been turned into mincemeat. The streaks of Crescendo, blue, straight lines of light, penetrated through the inside of the monster’s skin and emerged from the back.

In the middle of the air, halfway through its final attempt at landing a hit, the boss started to disintegrate. Beatrice lost no time, skipped around the boss, ran through the air as if there was an invisible slope and tossed her spear.

Perfect skewered a Spoleas Spider that had been just about to jump at the four elementals that had been one a second earlier. Beatrice landed next to John, extended her arm towards her spear, and caught it by the shaft when it obediently flew towards her. “Thank you for the opportunity, Master,” the passive maid purred, clearly satisfied with her accomplishment. Her other arm slung around John’s neck. There was no doubt on what her verdant eyes demanded.

“The middle was a bit too risky for me,” the Gamer told her and leaned in. “You could have at least waited until Perfect by Design was actually active.”

“Denial: it would not have been the same,” Beatrice whispered, before the two of them kissed.

With the boss defeated the gashes in the mushroom floor all around shut closed, touched by some potent regenerative effect. Although that did set up the spiders for renewed explosions, it also meant they had a couple minutes of clear air.

“Okay, enough of that!” Momo bonked John on the head with her staff, as if he had initiated the kiss. “Beatrice, we need you. Master can sit on his physically useless ass.”

“Did we not have the whole glasshouse conversation recently?” the Gamer asked, even while Beatrice dashed to the frontlines. Perfect by Design was now disabled, as Crescendo was reset whenever she struck a different opponent.

“I’m doing my job!” Momo responded swiftly, flying off before John could contradict her.