NOVEL WEB Chapter 37 - A Rough Fight
The blood and guts from the previous clash between the sharks and the frog warriors slowly settled at the bottom of the lake floor. However, the lake's waters were still muddied by chunks of green plant flesh and their green ichor. Thankfully, not all octo-lilies were dead and could still fight even if they were heavily injured. And as much as Dan hated to admit it, they were going to be the cannon fodder against the shard. Dan knew they needed the shard to spend as much energy as possible, and he couldn’t hesitate to use his monsters.
Honestly, Dan wished he had made more monsters, but after the first fight with that the first shard, he had been getting a little bit cocky, and thus this fight was looking to be rather close. There was a small chance that they could even lose, and he would have to retry the whole thing again. Losing was the worst scenario, though, as that meant that the shard could escape and possibly go to another area of the zone. So, to avoid the worst-case scenario, Dan had nudged Lory to properly join the fight. Surprising Dan, the large plant fought back against the decision, implying it knew better. As annoying as it was, it was a good learning moment for Dan as he realized that nudging one of his monsters to do something didn't necessarily mean they had to do it. While outside his dungeon area, the monsters were compelled to act in a manner that helped Dan the most. This meant that if disobeying his nudges would help him, they wouldn't need to follow through.
So, letting Lory do her thing, Dan watched as all the remaining octo-lilies slowly made their way to the open cave mouth. He wasn't sure why the shard hadn’t come out yet, but the longer it took, the better. While the lilies did their thing, Billy the Gator moved away from the cave and into the lake to prepare for the incoming fight. In turn, Jaws began swimming towards the cave entrance, staying above and a bit further back than the octo-lilies. On the other hand, Lory was floating above Jaws, and the octo-lilies as her tentacles were long enough to reach deep down. Having stayed with Lory the whole time, Dena got ready to act as soon as the shard came out.
Having finished whatever preparations it had been making, a large, jagged shard the size of a refrigerator and a deep blue color shot out of the cave mouth. It abruptly stopped in front of the octo-lilies, examining the scene in front of it. Of course, seeing their query, all the octo-lilies moved forward, attempting to grasp the thing with their tentacles. The octo-lilies didn't last long as, after a few seconds of examination, a pink wave of energy rushed out of the shard, obliterating the octo-lilies and splitting them into multiple pieces. Their sacrifice hadn’t been in vain, and it allowed Billy to activate Stalker while Jaws activated her metal enhancement and resilience body enhancement.
Not wanting to give the shard a chance, Jaws shot forward, her metal body slamming into the shield of the shard. For its part, the shard seemed to regard the large shark for a second before releasing a blast of energy, sending Jaws tumbling outwards. Still, Jaws recovered quickly, not being hit with anywhere near enough power to kill her. Shaking off the feeling of being blasted away, Dan felt as Jaws imbued some energy into her Water Jet skill and shot forward once again. Meanwhile, as the large shark covered the distance, Dan saw the druid's hands glow green as a blast of energy similar to the one that had killed Eagle the Hawk shot towards the shard, striking a second later. The blast took Dan by surprise as it actually pierced the shards barrier and hit it directly. Effortlessly, the shard's shield was knit together again, and the shard turned its attention to the druid.
With the attention on her, Dan saw a light blue shield appear all around the druid right before a blast of pink energy struck it and dissipated against it. Honestly, Dan had forgotten entirely that the druid was D rank and that the energy blast from the shard would not be enough to pierce through Dena's defenses. Dena also seemed to understand this and swam away from the large lily pad she had been floating near. Following the druid were more blasts of pink energy that dissipated against the light blue shield. However, that interaction made Dan wonder if the shard did not realize that the large lily pad was a monster. Hopefully, it didn't, as it would be very nice for Lory to do a surprise attack when they most needed it.
Back with Jaws, the shark rushed the shard again, slamming into it before swimming away, making a U-turn, and slamming into it again. Dan wished that the shark would use its offensive abilities, but it also understood what it was trying to accomplish. The battle was going to be a battle of attrition, and all they had to do was make sure that the shard lost as much mana as possible. And the best way to do that was for the shark to spend all of her mana enhancing herself.
The shard finally brought its attention back to the shark, which was a good thing, as it let Dena rest for a bit. Well, it was a good thing until the shard started glowing a deeper pink, and a deep slash of energy struck jaws, finally piercing through her enhancement and tearing a chunk off her side. It was made even worse as two more energy blasts followed the first. The first one jaws managed to dodge by activating Water Jet and moving out of the way, but the second changed direction at the last second and managed to strike the shark, tearing another chunk of her off.
Just as the shard was starting to get ready to send even more slashes of kinetic energy, Dena struck it once again as another beam of green energy pierced its shield, striking it directly. However, unlike before, where the shard had switched attention to Dena and had left jaws alone. This time around, it did no such thing, and it sent out even more blades of energy to both opponents. Jaws managed to dodge one, but the other two struck it, and more chunks were torn off it as the shark was starting to look rough. Even so, Dan knew that the shark still had plenty of fight left as that regeneration ability was beginning to do its job.
Meanwhile, the slashes of energy that had gone after Dena struck her shield, but this time around, they left tiny cracks on it. The cracks mended themselves rather quickly, but it was still mana the druid was spending.
The battle was beginning to get more problematic as the shard was now targeting both Jaws and the druid with constant barrages of kinetic energy. Even if Jaws was regenerating, she was taking too much damage too fast. And Dena was even more preoccupied as she had to be careful to keep regenerating her shield while tanking those attacks. Thankfully, the druid hadn't stopped her attacks, and every so often, a green beam of energy would strike their shard. The main problem was that Dan wasn't sure how much mana the damn thing still had, as he couldn't tell at all from its glow. He was very tempted to go ahead and nudge Lory again but was saved from doing so as he finally felt Billy start his thing.
The gator hadn't been wasting mana going invisible and had swam off a bit of a distance as he watched the fight. However, now he was spending a bit of mana as he went invisible and began approaching the battle. Most of his mana, however, was going into his enhancement. Dan felt as the gator turned his jaw, skull, and many teeth into metal. Additionally, instead of enhancing his entire body, all of his enhancement power went to the muscles around his jaw and tail.
Slowly but surely, the gator started picking up speed without even using his Water Jet ability, and soon enough, he was a blur through the water as he approached the fight. The shard, still preoccupied with trying to tear off chunks from Jaws and remove the druid from the battle, did not even notice as the gator approached. Finally, with a last burst of power, Billy infused even more strength to his tail as he rushed forward even faster. Then, all of his mana went into his Iron Clamp move as his jaws opened, and he bit down into the shard appearing next to it in a flash of speed.
The gator had put so much power into his bite that it broke through the shard’s shield, and he bit directly into the crystal, which even caused cracks to appear. Quickly responding to the threat, the shard glowed a deep pink and unleashed a wave of kinetic energy outward in a flash of power, with much of the power being directed at the gator. Once the light cleared, all that was left behind from Billy was his metal skull still holding onto the shard.
The sight made Dan smile inwardly at the absolute badassness of his gator. He also hoped that the clear display of rage had caused the shard to use more energy than it wanted to. Nonetheless, Billy’s involvement had allowed for Jaws and Dena to recuperate. Dena specifically had used a healing spell on Jaws causing the shark to be ready once again.
So, as soon as the flash of light disappeared, Jaws rushed in and bit into the shard, whose shield was still down. Following Jaws was another beam of green energy, stronger than any that the druid had unleashed before. And once again, the energy struck the shard directly, pulsating all around it and sending even more cracks across its surface. Apparently, that had been Dena's last contribution to the fight, as once the beam disappeared, she turned into an eel and swam away. Dan couldn't blame her as she was probably out of mana, and without mana, she was dead meat.
Unsurprisingly, being struck again and so directly had pissed off the shard once again, and another bright flash occurred, and once that cleared, there was no more Jaws. Sadly, the second wave of energy had been so strong that it also destroyed the skull of Billy. And Dan hoped that having used so much energy in so quickly had depleted the shard's mana by a lot. Otherwise, things did not look very good.
However, now that the other two bosses were dead, Lory had no choice but to finally move into action. The lily pad had somehow managed to stay out of the shard’s radar the whole time and was close enough that her tentacles moved and quickly clasped around the shard. The shard was definitely surprised by the sudden attack and tried to move out of the tentacles but could not find the power to do such a thing. So, naturally, it did the one thing that had worked so far, except this time around, instead of releasing one quick burst of power, Dan could see the power accumulating.
The shard began to slowly increase in brightness as it accumulated more power. However, Dan was in Lory’s mind, and he knew exactly what the plant was planning. She waited until the very last second before activating her Dominating Aura and pumping as much mana as she could into it. The stunning mental attack against the shard caught it off guard, and all the power that it had built up burst outward harmlessly. Dan, seeing the power disperse harmlessly, sighed in relief as the shard simply stopped struggling in Lory’s tentacles. Obviously, the thing was not dead, but it didn't have much mana left, so it couldn't move around with its telekinesis. Additionally, the still ongoing Dominating Aura from Lory kept its mind subdued, so it would not even be able to try to take over nearby creatures' minds.
And just like that, Lory began moving towards Dan’s location with a large blue refrigerator-sized shard firmly grasped by her tentacles.