Level 1 Fallen

After we cleared out the three battlefield zones, and retrieved the chests, Diane led us to a marble staircase descending tens of meters, dimly lit by scattered torches. "Remember, only use your fireballs for the first stage of the fight, and be careful not to let the boss be caught in the area of attack. I'll support where I can, but this will mostly be up to you for the first stage. I'll stay in stealth to attack as soon as the king stands up."

I gave a nod of my head at that, and the staircase soon opened up to a small room, one with a stone door on the far side. Upon opening the door, we saw a throne room that was more than a hundred meters across. Sitting on the raised throne on the far side of the room was an undead with a black skeleton, a fog-like substance clinging to its bones. In its right hand, it held a scepter, and its body was covered in regal armor.

The two of us looked at each other, and Diane nodded her head, slipping into the shadows to wait as I entered the room. The fog around the skeleton twitched, the throne letting out an ominous howl. Sure enough, more and more ghosts and black knights began to rise up from the floor.

This dungeon is definitely made for mostly mages to clear. I thought to myself, holding my hands out and once more releasing blasts of fire towards the approaching ghosts. I was still not used to controlling the blast radius of my fireballs, but this was a rather large throne room so I wasn't too worried.

The shrieks of the damned echoed out with the roar of explosions, and I grit my teeth as I pushed beyond the once-per-second rule. I could feel the muscles in my arms starting to tear, but immediately began to heal them. After all, the ghosts were moving closer faster than my fireballs were launching, so I had to increase the pace.

After two minutes, the ghosts had pushed through my constant fireball barrage, and forced me to start moving defensively to avoid them while casting. After five minutes, the first wave had finally ended. I had taken a few scrapes from the black knights, but nothing that I couldn't fix.

Stage two was… right, the shadows. I thought as I saw the king's shadow extending, forming four shadow clones. I lifted my left hand, focusing and summoning the Fire Snake from the ring that Ella had given me, while at the same time conjuring my own animated shadow. Flames licked up and wrapped around one of the clones, binding and burning it in place as my shadow engaged with another, and I was left to deal with the last two.

Thanks to this, at least, I was able to learn the king's attack patterns. The clones fought mostly by launching shadow spikes at me, or swinging their scepters like clubs. While they were strong, I didn't feel like they were too much of a threat to me. But, that could just be because these were simply shadow clones.

Once the four clones were slain, the king himself shifted. His eyes began to glow red as he rose from the throne, teeth clattering beneath the foggy membrane. I saw a flash of black and dark purple as Diane appeared behind the boss's head, daggers primed to deliver a critical strike.

My Killing Stare swept out to grab the boss's attention just as her attack landed, causing the boss to stumble forward. However, that hadn't been enough to kill it. And so, I charged forward, leaping up at the boss and bringing my sword to cleavage into its body.

What I wasn't expecting was its speed. Just as quickly as I had attacked, I was launched back, slamming into the wall. Erebus's words echoed in my mind. The fact that a raid boss was expected to be able to defeat opponents fifty levels higher than itself. Given that this was a level forty dungeon, that meant that the boss had a true difficulty of at least level ninety.

I coughed out a mouthful of blood, pulling myself off of the wall. My taunt was still in effect, at least, though I wasn't sure that was a good thing. The boss had already reached me by the time I got off the wall, its scepter smashing against my body. Now this… this I felt. I groaned in pain, being thrown several steps to the side as I tried to regain my balance.

With a hiss, I summoned the fire snake again, but was shocked to find the boss simply tearing it in half. "Now that's just not fair." I muttered, suddenly reconsidering my choice of magic skill in this fight. The only opponent of this difficulty that I had fought before was Wisteria, and I had overpowered her through sheer numbers.

"Diane! This is going to hurt. A lot. Me. It's going to hurt me a lot!" I said, and Diane's eyes went wide at the realization of what I was going to do. When the boss monster charged at me again, I jumped up to meet it. With its scepter swinging at me, I used one arm to grab the scepter, the other grabbing the skeleton's armor.

I felt the bones in my arm crack from the impact of the scepter, but forced out a healing skill, an eerie grin on my face. "Fire!"

My arms erupted with flames, and I was now casting as quickly as I could, just as I had done with Wisteria. Only, this time I was alternating between casting Fireball and Internal Recovery-X… after all, I was not just in the blast zone. I was the blast zone. Scorching pain flooded my body as I was repeatedly burned, mended, and burned again. The boss roared in pain, and I felt powerful impacts on my shoulder and back, sure that bones had broken at one point or another.

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"I was right! This hurts a lot!" I screamed through the self-made inferno. At the same time, I made up my mind that I was not using fireball for the rest of these boss fights. Even if my other skills weren't as good for area attacks, I was not going to be a living grenade.

Off to the side, when I could occasionally see through the flames engulfing me, I was able to make out Diane, a worried look in her eyes as she watched. Understandably, she wasn't able to get involved in the fight anymore, so she could only watch me immolate both the boss and I, clinging to it as I scorched it again and again.

Eventually, the boss stopped struggling, falling to the ground. Not that I noticed right away, too lost in the cycle of burning and healing, only able to keep myself sane by focusing on this one thing. However, when I heard Diane screaming at me, yelling that it was over, I finally stopped.

The flames kept roaring for several moments, Diane using her Create Water skill to douse them. Once I was free from the fire, I looked up at her, eyes half-lidded. "Ow."

"That was reckless, and stupid, and completely, utterly reckless!" Diane glared at me, and I lifted a finger. "I know I said reckless twice, I felt the need to emphasize it!"

"Sorry. We may have underestimated the difficulty level of this guy. Had to pull out all the stops to take him down." I said, focusing on healing the remaining damage to my body. My armor was cracked and dented in various places, not to mention scorched. And unfortunately, there were no monsters nearby with blood that I could use to repair the armor.

Diane groaned for a moment, before bringing a hand up to her head. She took long, deep breaths, calming herself down to return to her normal, stoic character. "You're not using fireball for boss fights anymore." She said, to which I nodded my head in agreement. Fireball could be reserved for taking out groups, rather than more durable bosses. "What spell are you going to use next time?"

"It depends on what we get as a drop here. Probably… probably Arcane Arrow. It's not as useful against groups, but I can just take longer to clear the first stage." As I said that, I let out a groan, reaching down to loot the scorched boss.

The first thing that I noticed dropping was a set of crystals, then two large skulls, and a few bones. After that, a pair of cloth boots for Diane, and a ring that increased the effectiveness of shadow skills, also for Diane. Lastly, there was a trait scroll, one with six golden stars on the front.

Diane's eyes widened at the scroll, leaning down to pick it up. "This is Child of Darkness, right? It dropped on the first kill?"

"Probably just luck, but… it sure looks that way." When I said that, Diane chewed on her lip. I could tell that she wanted to give this trait to me, so I shook my head. "This is yours. I'm not specializing in shadow skills like you are, they're just one of my tricks. If we get a second one, I'll use it."

Diane gave a slow nod of her head, and the two of us moved to the chest. There was another ring, as well as another invisibility potion when I opened it. Since I had a free ring slot, I went ahead and equipped the ring, since it was better than having nothing. When Diane opened the chest, she received a pair of medium armor leggings, which she gave to me. I didn't strictly need to equip them permanently, but doing so briefly allowed me to save them for my Camouflage skill.

With that done, we left the boss room, starting to wait for the boss to respawn. In the second round of fighting, I alternated between Fire Snake and spamming Arcane Arrow to take down the first two wave, and then focused on fighting the boss with that same arrow spam. It was… certainly slower than the human grenade tactic, but it hurt my entire body significantly less.

The next attempt, I tried the Animate Shadow skill, only to find that the boss was able to hijack my animated shadow for himself. The two of us had to flee that battle, coming back after I swapped my skills around. For the sake of safely clearing, I just stuck with Arcane Arrow.

In total, we managed to clear the raid ten times, settling into a rhythm of fighting the boss and waiting. Both Diane and I completely updated our appearances throughout these raids. She now wore a black trench coat, low hood, black pants, and fingerless gloves, all giving off a ghostly, ominous fog whenever she stepped into darkness. As for me, I had a similar trench coat, but most of my equipment was made of black leather, so I had leather pants, leather gloves, boots, and a black skull cap. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a sword to drop, but I did get a shield.

However, there were more gains to be had. We received three copies of the Hidden Shadow trait, Diane immediately using one for herself. The two of us talked about it, and agreed that it wasn't good for me to use one of the other two. After all, I was aiming to be a tank for the time being, so reducing my presence would defeat the purpose. Instead, she stored the two traits in her inventory.

Aside from the traits, we also got a few skill books. There was one copy of each of the dungeon's skills, so Diane immediately learned both Dark Embrace and Lesser Darkness. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a second copy of Child of Darkness, though that only convinced me that I was right to let Diane take the first one for herself. It was far more important for her to have that trait than myself.

After we cleared the boss for the last time, I changed my appearance with Camouflage, becoming a rugged-looking human with dark eyes. I couldn't completely get rid of the pointed ears, but it was enough to make it look like I was only half elven. For the time being, I would be going by the name Lester, and Diane would be Wendy.

Nearing the entrance of the dungeon, the two of us drank the invisibility potions that we had obtained as an added measure of security. I could use Ghost-X for a likely stronger effect, but we agreed that it would be better if we used the method from the dungeon. After all, if Diane was caught alone by someone able to see through invisibility, it would be more suspicious than the two of us together.

Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any extra people guarding the dungeon, so we slipped past and began to make our way to the western road. It was… quite something to watch Diane explain to Wyr why we looked so different after bringing him out of the pet inventory.