Lunadea - Syl: Chapter 453 [6-72]

Wow, this Urist guy is pretty good; who knew warriors could do that much damage just by swinging their weapon?

I was very impressed by the dwarf, as the single blow he landed on the medusa caused a visible chunk of its lifeforce to vanish right before my eyes. I wasn't the only one impressed; I could sense Sylbera's frustration, since she couldn't replicate the feat with her trusty hammer. Was it his weapon, a skill, his class, or his traits? Or was this something only an actual dwarf could achieve?

Maybe we can ask him after the fact; he might be more open to giving Sylbera advice since he thinks she is a dwarf too.

I was also impressed by how he kept the monster's attention, even though he kept his eyes shut to avoid meeting her gaze. The medusa herself was pretty interesting-looking, and as suspected, we were all immune to her petrification. Considering normal slimes couldn't even stop looking at something, it would have meant instant death, unless they had [Chroma Shift] to become opaque and intentionally blind themselves.

As for the monster itself, honestly I had to say it might have been one of the weakest bosses I'd fought recently. The Hollow Monarch, the shadowy octopus, and even Traz-whatever were much stronger, but considering normal people had to fight this creature while blinded, maybe that made up for it.

I suppose I shouldn't be too judgmental; it's like someone with acid immunity saying they don't understand why green slimes are dangerous.

With Urist grabbing the main body's attention, the rest of us took other action. Sylvester had his golems pin down the massive tail so it wouldn't cause damage, and Sylvain helped by freezing it to the ground while dishing out damage with various water spells. Sylbera tried her best to help Urist, but the medusa almost refused to attack her, her ire directed toward the warrior.

Sylthaeryn, meanwhile, was having a field day with slime arrows, and thanks to Urist's timely hint, many of them were infused with Bloodrot. With [Primordial Slime LV 20], our [Poison Slime] ability was clearly on a whole new level, so I wasn't sure whether the legendary regeneration was exaggerated or perfectly countered. Either way, with such large targets held or frozen in place, it was like shooting fish in a barrel for the elf princess.

As for me, since I had my [Coordicore] doing most of the heavy lifting for number crunching, I decided to grind out some skill levels. I wanted to move on to my next phase after I was done here, and I couldn't do that if my skills were still on the verge of their final level before I used [Skill Deconstruct].

Using what I had learned from [Folded Geometry], and with some help from my [Coordicore], I quickly reproduced a spell version of the skill and began using it on the end of the pinned tail. I wanted to try cutting it off, turn it into slime food, and see if I could earn a skill level for my trouble.

<Spell [Fold] discovered.>

As I had expected, there was an official spell version of this ability, but discovering it didn't push my [Dimension Magic] to the next level. I wondered whether it was seen as a lesser ability, or if I was somehow being punished for using [Skill Deconstruct] to discover it.

I mean, you gave me this skill. You can't be mad that I'm using it.

I was partially joking, since I assumed getting to level eight in such an advanced magical skill was probably harder than I was giving it credit for, but that wasn't going to stop me from whining when I was annoyed. Anyway, I moved on and began folding the space around the tail, then rotating between [Spatial Severing] and [Rift Rend] to see if I could cut it off. It took some effort, but I eventually managed it, and a big chunk of snake meat was sliced and waiting to be eaten.

During this, I pulled Urist out to give him a break, and he seemed partially disoriented from the teleport. I couldn't blame him, as I remembered my first time teleporting and nearly falling over myself.

Nu, come grab this meal for me!

I had my [Sub-Core] open the rift and start pulling it in, since I couldn't eat it directly no matter how much I wanted to. High-tier monster meat was always the best, and this was a significant portion, so it was going to be a flood of fresh slime mass. We had to combine all my apertures together to make the hole big enough to drag it through, but eventually it was pulled in, and Nu closed up the spatial tear.

You know… [Consuming Osmosis] is stupid. Like, I just ate a ton of monster meat, but I didn't get the profile; yet if I ate a mouse, I would. If I needed to eat the entire monster, maybe I'd understand, but I'm pretty sure some of the creatures I've consumed have been missing a part or two, especially if we were battling beforehand. Like… What determines that I've eaten enough to get the profile?

Unlike my earlier whining about [Fold], I knew this was intentionally limiting me. If I could snack on a finger or leg and get the profile, that would be too much; otherwise, I could ask Vee to donate a leg, and then I could be a Riftweaver Arachne. It was likely tied in some way to the creature dying with me present and then being eaten, since that was the only thing that sounded somewhat reasonable.

Ugh… Whatever, I'm pretty sure I've had this rant before, but this time it was just too insane because of the sheer quantity of medusa I just ate.

"Syl, could you please teleport me above its head?" Urist asked, with a shocking level of politeness.

I had to resist shouting "a polite dwarf!?" at him, and simply nodded in confirmation. Urist gripped his axe tightly and took a deep breath, as if readying himself. I could sense his Mana fluctuating inside him, what I assumed was some kind of skill activation.

"Ready!" he shouted, and I instantly teleported him, since [Coordicore] had already given me the necessary coordinates.

What would I do without you…

Urist took his second teleportation much better than the first and came crashing down against the unsuspecting medusa, taking out another chunk of its lifeforce. It immediately turned on him, but his eyes were shut, and he seemed to be in that battle trance again.

When she's about to die, I'll teleport both him and Sylbera away and get Nu to finish the job. That way I can make sure I get the profile. If Urist complains, I'll just say I heard it had a powerful ability it uses as a last resort, or in its death throes.

The fight continued, and the medusa was clearly getting desperate as she kept trying to better position herself. Still, with her massive snake portion locked down, she was effectively stuck and could only somewhat reposition by wiggling around her waist. Things were fully under our control, and with all the damage being dealt, our victory was inevitable.

What was interesting about this fight, though, was that I got to witness something rather interesting in the way lifeforce was seemingly calculated. Damage to the medusa's humanoid torso was extreme, yet the damage we dealt to the tail, despite being significantly more, was almost disregarded. The best way I could describe it was like using a "fricken nuke," as Vee called it, to destroy only a finger. Even though it was a "fricken nuke," destroying just a finger wouldn't kill anyone, and it seemed that for this medusa, her entire snake tail was the equivalent of a finger.

Of course, the medusa's weakest part was also its deadliest: the four arms, weapons, snake hair, and, of course, the petrifying gaze. It was like the opposite of us slimes, where our most dangerous part was the slime, and our cores could do pretty much nothing.

Well… Except explode. But only if Vee has no way of finding out about that…

Vee had begged and pleaded that I never do that again, unless absolutely necessary; a genuine life-or-death situation. I had noncommittally agreed, which got her off my back, but I was determined to find some way to harness this power.

By now, victory seemed at hand, and I began preparing to claim the corpse, since I wasn't going to let a legendary monster profile slip through my tendrils. Nu was ready to emerge, and I'd already told my personas what I was about to do; now it was time to put it into action.

"Watch out!" Sylvester cried out.

"Shit, Syl, stop it!" Sylvain shouted.

Nu tore open space above the medusa, making her gaze upward in horror. I then teleported both Sylbera and Urist away as tendrils began to restrain her arms and secure her torso.

"What's going on?" Urist asked, clearly not expecting to suddenly be teleported.

"The medusa was on the verge of death; it looked like it was about to do something as it was building up massive amounts of Mana," Sylthaeryn replied.

Whether Urist saw through the lie or not, he didn't say, but he didn't seem to be complaining as he watched the rest of my plan unfold. Obviously, I couldn't pull in the entire damn snake; that was too much, so we needed to separate her from the torso.

With Nu and the rest of us helping through [Slime Puppetry], we wrestled the medusa into an unmoving restraint. Then I folded the space around her lower torso and, with the largest casting of [Rift Rend] to date, made my cut. The humanoid was separated from the serpent, and she let out a screech of pain, fury, and humiliation, as her now much lighter torso was being dragged up into the aperture.

With her still fully restrained and unable to flail around thanks to the relentless slime tendrils, I proceeded to disarm her in a very literal sense. Nu tried to remove the weapons from her grip, but she held on like a vice, so the only option left was to remove her arms too.

We could have had the slime eat them, but that might have revealed too much to Urist; it was better to keep up the tentacle-monster excuse than start showing something like [Acid Slime]. So I made four more cuts, not even needing to fold the space this time, and watched as the four limbs still clutching the three armaments fell and clattered to the ground.

"Good job, you managed to secure the loot," Sylbera replied positively.

"Barely; that was cutting it close," I joked as the remains of the medusa were pulled through the rift. Now sealed from prying eyes, the slimy truth was revealed to the monster, and we claimed our prize.

We all got the kill notification, and the group let out a breath of relief, though Urist was probably the only one truly relieved.

"Gods… I can't believe what just happened," Urist muttered.

"Sorry about pulling you out there; it looked dangerous," I replied.

"I'm not going to complain," Urist chuckled before taking a swig. "The monster is defeated, its weapons are left behind, and we can finally get out of this godforsaken maze."

"Don't forget our prizes too," Sylvester quickly pointed out.

"Ah, right, there should be a treasury somewhere here… Probably in her lair if I had to take a guess," Urist replied.

"I hope this place is more generous than the last one," Sylvain grumbled.

"So this isn't your first labyrinth?" Urist asked, although it looked like he had already confirmed something.

"This is hopefully our third and final one," I answered.

"Well, bloody congrats!" Urist cheered, raising his flask. "I suppose that means you'll be joining the diamond-rankers soon enough then. I look forward to the official announcement."

"Knowing Keldenar, he will make it a big deal," I sighed.

"Can you blame him? You'll be the first diamond-rank elf in the guild's history as far as I'm aware. Although if more of you were willing to join, that would obviously change, but still!"

I offered a half-smile, then took a closer look at the notifications, with two particular standouts forcing me to smile fully.

<Profile [Medusa] completed.>

<Your class has revealed the following skill: [Spatial Erosion].>

Today was indeed a good day, but before I looked at the summary of everything I had gained, we needed to claim the rest of our prizes and get out of here.

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Author's Note:

Hey all, we are probably going to be wrapping up book 6 very soon.

I'd guess next week so in the next 2-4 chapters and then I'll be taking my usual 2 week break before jumping into book 7. Just thought I'd give a heads-up/warning.

In case you missed the quip or discord ping, the Syl 5 audiobook is finally out! Sorry again for the wait: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0HJY6TBTM

Also I posted this on discord, but here is the updated cover for Syl 6!

Thanks as always for the support!

~Lunadea.