NOVEL NEXT Chapter 115 - Wisdom's End
The pool at the far end of the arena started roiling. On reflex, he ducked behind his Light Tower Shield and poured as much mana as he could into the [Reflect] enchantment before he jammed his helmet back on his head. Peeking around the side, he saw large, white tentacles shoot forth from the water, rising to the clouds above before slamming down randomly around, kicking up sand. The tentacles looked to be about thirty yards long, absolutely massive.
And they were between James and safety. The water around the tentacles was churned and splashed in all directions but James saw a series of water spears shot out towards him. Most struck in front of him or to the sides, but several struck true.
Ping!
Ping!
Ping!
The water spears were reflected, with only minor effect on his overall mana, but they weren't just reflected. They rebounded with twice the speed, and twice the force, from his lux-essence-saturated Light Tower Shield.
BOOM BOOM BOOM
The tentacles exploded when struck by the spears, in a shower of gore and blood that coated the ground around the pool of water.
For a moment the tentacles writhed in pain in the air and swept the ground around the pool, and then they withdrew into the water and disappeared. The water remained churned, and James remained hunkered down behind his shield, and eventually the water settled and so did James' breathing.
He had never seen anything like that before!
Carefully, he switched his [Silence] amulet for the amulet that strengthened [Water Resistance] enchantments. He wasn't sure if it would help wearing his Dark Armor, but he figured it couldn't hurt, and he didn't need silence.
He needed to figure out a way to kill this monster.
He stood, and started walking towards the pool, shield held at the ready in front of him, and he switched his hammer for his Earth War Hammer. He needed to do raw damage, and there was no obvious elemental weakness to exploit.
Two of the tentacles slowly rose above the water's surface, poised to strike, waiting for the Smith to come into range. And once he did, one whipped at him—fast, but not so fast he couldn't track it. He dug in with his tower shield, and with a wet slap the tentacle was stopped.
And in that moment, he countered.
[Hammer Strike]
[Heavy Blow]
Whap!
The sound was odd, but the tentacle spasmed reflexively, and a faint pulse of brown essence poured into the creature in the area around where he had struck.
Then the second tentacle whipped around as well, from the other direction. It crashed into the Smith's armor, sandwiching him between the foul smelling tentacle-flesh and his shield.
But his armor was proof against the strike.
It just rattled him somewhat, against a few more spots in his armor that needed better padding.
The tentacle rebounded slightly, freeing the Smith's arm, and he struck again.
[Hammer Strike]
[Heavy Blow]
Whap!
This repeated several more times. The monster struck at James, to little effect. James struck back, also to little effect.
Eventually, instead of striking James, a tentacle wrapped around him and lifted him into the air and pulled him towards the pool.
The rush was upon James in that moment.
It was going to try to drown him!
His hand clenched the handle of his war hammer.
But no, the tentacle monster held him just above the water, and hauled the central mass of its body close enough to the surface that James could see it.
It was hideous, nothing but a beak, like a bird, in the center of a radial spread of nearly a dozen tentacles, several of which were blown off and still leaking blood into the water. The beak clacked at him, not large enough to swallow him whole.
Which meant it would need to tear or snap him into pieces to eat him.
It drew him closer to the beaked mouth—
But his hammer-wielding left arm was free.
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[Hammer Strike]
[Heavy Blow]
Crunch!
The monster shrieked, and every tentacle writhed as James' strike obliterated the beaked mouth. Pieces of the beak broke off and floated away, and more blood poured from the central orifice.
The tentacle holding James aloft threw him at the wall.
Bam!
He struck the wall, his cuirass and helmet absorbing most of the impact, and he slid to the ground, landing on his feet and still holding his tower shield and hammer mostly due to dumb luck more than skill.
The tentacle creature, however, didn't stick around to witness his lucky landing.
The tentacles withdrew into the pink-tinted water, and it showed itself no more.
James, once steady on his feet, readied his shield for more strikes, but none ever came.
Still, he didn't let down his guard, not even when the intrusive thought came.
Smith Class Skill [Tough] has reached level 3.
For a time the only sound and motion in the room was the water pouring into the pool from above, gradually lessening the pink tint of the water in the pool.
James stood upright, and nothing happened.
He walked to the pool, ready for a strike and counter-strike, and nothing happened.
He walked around the pool, to the treasure chest, and nothing happened.
No traps, and he opened it.
Inside was a pile of silvery ingots. A neat stack of twelve, weighing roughly one pound each.
[Material Identification]: Pure Silver Ingots
James almost let himself be distracted before refocusing—
But nothing happened.
He frowned. Was that it? Did the monster die? He hadn't leveled up.
Still wary, he walked back to the steps at the far end of the arena, and up them and to the door and he pushed—
But nothing happened.
He was still trapped, and the boss monster wasn't dead.
But it wasn't coming out, either.
Several hours later, none of James' taunting or attempts to throw stones in the water brought the boss monster back out to fight.
This was something he was entirely unprepared for. In all his mother's teachings, she had never taught him how to pursue a fleeing enemy. Rather, the lessons had mainly been about how he could flee pursuers.
And none of what she taught him had included hiding at the bottom of a pool of water, out of reach of an attacker.
James ate half of his remaining meat, to quiet his stomach, and spent the rest of the day thinking, but nothing came to mind. Nothing he tried worked, and the monster remained out of reach.
He went to sleep in the staircase, wards at the ready, but when he woke the only thing that had changed was that he was hungry again.
He stayed his hand. He could endure some hunger while he thought. He needed to save the last of his food for when he had an idea, so that he would have the energy to execute on his plan.
Idly, the Smith pulled out most of what he had in his magic bag, to assess his options. Plenty of colored and regular iron. Plenty of materials to make a smithy—a forge and smelter, at least. Plenty of magic stones.
Nothing but a small bit of salt, and a handful of meat left in terms of food.
All his hammers and forging and enchanting tools. His shields. His armor pieces. His smoked hides. His cooling and heating strips.
His Ice War Hammer.
He handled this one with his blue iron tongs, unwilling to touch it even with his gloved hands.
It still made him shiver even now, remembering the frostbi—
And then, an idea struck him.
He looked up the stairs, in the direction of the pool of water.
If he froze it—
But then he remembered the waterfall pouring into the pool, and how it had been lightening the pink tint from the monster's blood as he watched.
No, even his Ice War Hammer wouldn't be enough.
Not unless he found some way to block the waterfall.
He spent another hour thinking about it, and came to a decision.
Not ice. Not cold. The risk of injuring himself was too much, and it made his right hand hurt to even consider it.
But he had plenty of [Heat Resistance].
The first step was building a smithy. At the bottom of the stairs, at the beginning of the lower floor in the forest, James constructed a full forge and smelter, although he didn't need the high temperatures just yet.
The first step was to prove that the waterfall could be blocked or disrupted.
This actually wasn't so difficult. A plate of metal a yard across, lipped to divert the flow of water, and anchored into the stone with metal spikes was enough to cause the waterfall, instead of falling out and forward into the pool below, pour straight down into the staircase and flood it out.
A mistake.
But James diverted the flow of water back into the boss arena with his Blue Iron Round Shield, and the boss monster never once left its lair, even when the water supply was cut off.
The hunger pains set in, and James spent the next day forging components for a metal sluice, to divert the water safely down the staircase, away from the boss arena entirely. Once complete, he put away his Blue Iron Round Shield and the water poured down the sluice before spilling out into the floor below, forming a stream that wound its way into the trees.
Tired and hungry, James observed for several hours. Water had been going into the pool at a steady rate, so it stood to reason that water must be exiting somehow. Maybe the pool would just empty and reveal the boss monster.
No such luck.
The next morning, he even took a walk to the iron door to see if maybe the boss had died, but no, the door was still locked.
The pool was nearly entirely still, but occasionally the surface would ripple, as the monster below moved.
With a sigh, and still refusing to eat, James began the next stage of his plan.
He pulled out his salamander essence saturated Red Iron, and forged several ingots into several dozen metal strips. These he etched with the [Heated Blade] enchantment on both sides, used a good amount of Red Magic Dust and Aqua Magia, and enchanted.
[Appraisal]: Heating Strip, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 2/2, Enchantment: Heated Blade (35)
He carefully made sure not to touch them bare handed once complete, even when not activated. Instead, he set one inside a bucket of water he had collected from the sluice, and activated it at a distance, counting how long it took to boil the water.
The answer was a bit of a mixed bag. The strip, at full strength, flash boiled water as it came in contact with the strip causing small explosions of steam and much splashing. James toned it down until that stopped, somewhere around half strength, and counted from there. Not the best experiment, but it took about a minute.
The bucket was maybe two cubic feet of water.
The pool was a half circle with a ten yard radius. And who knew how deep.
But James had nearly forty of these new heating strips.
He went to sleep after finishing his craft, tired and hungry. Stomach cramps were setting in, but he resisted the urge to eat. That would be in the morning.
He prayed to all the gods he knew that the tentacle-flesh was edible.