NOVEL WEB Chapter 10 Boss Battle!
We stepped out into the cold. The blast of ice crystals pelting my everything nearly knocked me down.
Before I even had time to shiver, a prompt flashed
Warning: The Wendigo has sighted you. Boss fight imminent.
The thing that came out of the snow was… okay bear with me a second here. The short description is going to sound lame. The main reason for that is the Wendigo wasn’t visually impressive, like at all. The Wendigo was a skeletally thin person. Their arms and legs looked like twigs. Their ribs and collar bone stuck out past their too-tight skin. Their face was a skull with hollow sunken eyes. The eyes were the worst part. They gazed at me with an almost soul deep hunger.
It stumbled toward us, “I’m sorry. I am just so hungry. Run! Run!” There was a level of desperation in its voice that shook me to the very core.
“Do we actually have a chance?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” Angelica admitted. “Honestly, I was really hoping you would chicken out. This is a terrible idea. We really should have just had sex like Adora wanted.”
“Wait, what?” I managed.
When it happened, it happened fast. The Wendigo stopped stumbling toward us for a brief moment. They stared at us. The storm even lulled. The wind almost stopped like the eye of a storm.
Attack from Wendigo Blocked!
Attack from Wendigo Blocked!
Attack from Wendigo Blocked!
Attack from Wendigo Blocked!
Attack from Wendigo Blocked!
Attack from Wendigo Successful!
You take 8 points of damage
Attack from Wendigo Successful!
You take 5 points of damage
HP 167/180
Titanic Regeneration plus 10 hit points,
HP 177/180
Class of styles!
All-consuming Blizzard vs Unrelenting Glacier
No conflict observed. No benefits or penalties assigned.
Block skill is now expert level
The Wendigo came at me… well like a blizzard. The Damned thing could throw seven attacks a second. That was insane. Now it looked like I was able to handle the brunt of the damage, but that still meant that I was less than 2 minutes from this thing killing me.
Angelica struck a split second later despite literally moving like lighting, crackle of electricity and everything,but she missed. The Wendigo looked like a frail skeleton, but it moved like mist on the wind. It bent at unnatural angles and just sort of shot away like a snowflake in the blizzard.
It came at me a second time. It tried to claw my face, my neck, my stomach, my groin, my legs, and then it managed to catch my arm. The cuts were deep and the cold made the pain sang across my nerves. The damn things nails were pointed but the edges were dull. They could pierce my flesh easily, but they tore rather than cut my skin. It was much worse than the feeling of the lion claws cutting into me. The sheer pain of it caused me to miss the window to counter attack, at least the first time.
Condensed prompt summary
Attack from Wendigo Blocked x6
Attack from Wendigo Successful!
You take 7 points of damage.
Titanic Regeneration plus 10 points
HP: 180/180
You are now bloodied. You have the blood-soaked condition.
Counter attack successful! Wendigo takes 14 points of damage.
My fist collided with the creature and knocked it back a step. A hit like that crushed a snow lion’s skull and sent the corpse flying. All it did to this thing was knock loose the rust. It glared at me with a malicious hunger. I actually took a step back just from the glint in its eyes. If it wasn’t for the Wendigo ignoring the opportunity to attack me to devour the pound of flesh it tore from me, that could have been the end of the fight.
That was when Angelica hit it like a goddamn train. With a flash of lightning and explosion of thunder the spear collided with the Wendigo’s ribs. It let out a scream that no human or animal could produce. It sounded almost like metal tearing. The storm surged.
You are immune to cold effects of rare Scale.
From there the fight took on a sort of running battle. For whatever reason, the Wendigo had focused me, to the exclusion of everything. Upon realizing that I had gotten lucky on the first few rounds the damn thing was going to be hitting me roughly three to four times a round and each hit dealt 5 to 8 damage. I realized I needed a better strategy. That strategy became: run away.
The Wendigo while capable of a flurry of attacks, and it had a pounce similar to the lions it was actually a noticeable amount slower than me. So, by running I was able to turn certain death into prolonged agony.
Attack from Wendigo blocked x 6
Attack from Wendigo successful!
You take 5 points of damage.
Titanic regeneration plus 10 points
HP 137/180
Counter attack successful! Wendigo takes 17 points of damage.
I had to just keep moving. I blocked every attack I could. Time lost meaning. At some point, we wandered into a wooded area. The attacks from the Wendigo and Angelica splintered tree trunks and the crashing boom of falling lumber drowned out the howling of the wind. At one point I tried using a heavy branch to fend off the monster, but it did two points of damage and broke immediately from the Wendigo’s attacks.
The pain was starting to get to me. At some point, the thing had clawed my face, and my vision had tinted red afterward from the blood in my eyes. I wanted to try and wipe my face, but I needed my hands free to ward off freezing, tearing death. At least whenever the damned thing would get a truly solid hit in, and take a chunk out of me, it would then spend the next second or so eating the meat. Fuck that is morbid. Eh, at least it kept me alive to have those sorts of realizations.
When my health dipped below fifty the damn monster’s eyes began to glow. They reminded me of the stars in the night sky during winter. Distant and cold.
You have been marked by the hungering spirit of winter. You are its prey. All others can leave and the Wendigo will not follow until it has devoured you completely. Wendigo speed increased in pursuit of you. Your Scale allows you to resist healing suppression.
I shivered again. The relentless cannibal seemed to meld with the storm. The unnatural chill of the air bit through my clothes and titanic physique. It wasn’t much but this effect was causing damage.
Attack from Wendigo blocked x 3
Attack from Wendigo Successful x 4!
You take 26 points of damage
Chilled by the Hungering spirit of winter!
You take 2 points of damage
Titanic Regeneration plus 10
HP 31/180
Counter attack successful! Wendigo takes 10 points of damage.
This was bad. Even as panic crept into my mind, part of me had to appreciate how effective this boss was. It would wander into a group, focus on one of them. Bring the target to low health and trigger the hungering spirit of winter effect. It would damage the target even faster, and encourage their party to leave them for dead to hopefully get away. A cynical part of me also realized that the time this bought was probably minuscule if the Wendigo ate as fast as it attacked. This would set it up to reengage a now crippled party and sweep those remaining one target at a time.
That was when Celeste stepped in. Angelica struck with the speed of lightning. Celeste struck with the speed of light, which is a lot faster than four letters' difference would imply. Angelica’s body burned with the harsh white light. When they hit, it was like standing next to a bomb. The spear pierced the Wendigo's heart. Six more shards of light appeared and further perforated the wretched thing. It didn’t scream. Instead, the thing slumped and I received a prompt that made me scream in frustration.
Wendigo is a narratively important boss. It cannot die without narrator approval.
Arbitration begins in:
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
“Angel! Kid! Look at you! Do you know what kind of ratings this is pulling?” Wilson called. I looked up to find him standing a short distance from us in his immaculate suit, shark grin twisting his face.
I spat out a mouthful of blood, “Wilson, do we have to bargain with you to kill a boss?”
“Nah kid, you got this all wrong. I am here on your behalf. I am your white knight. This Wendigo storyline has been going on for almost a hundred years. Paul is not going to be happy to see it go. So, he is going to hem and hah about this. If not for me, he would spitefully kill you both with some emersion-breaking bullshit like that prompt you read.”
“Really Wilson, bad-mouthing a coworking in front of the talent?” a bear of a man asked. He wore a collared shirt and business slack. He was pulling a thin naked woman along with him. The guy had the same gray hair and blue skin as Wilson. He even seemed to have the same casual apathy as Wilson. The woman was desperately clawing at the man’s wrist and gnawing on his fingers franticly. That said this Paul guy seemed to not give a fuck about it.
“I believe in speaking the truth,” Wilson said. He waved an arm to another meeting table. “Shall we talk through this?”
Paul stomped off to the far side of the table and tossed the woman into a chair. “Sit there!” he roared.
The woman shrieked in pain as she collided with the table as he pushed the chair tight against it. She started sobbing. Looking at her more carefully I saw her face was pulped and her chest had multiple deep stab wounds. She had a lot of other injuries that match up with the Wendigo we had been fighting.
“Quiet!” Paul shouted.
The woman, despite being wracked with sobs, bit down on her left hand to muffle the sound.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked.
“Arbitration,” Wilson almost sang. “The precious few times when I get to kick someone’s ass and have to try. Please sit down.”
I sat down. Angelica sat down on my left, and Wilson sat down on my right. Paul and the woman sat across from us. Paul glowered as Wilson grinned. I bled profusely.
“Are you okay, Doug?” Angelica asked.
“Honestly, I am in incredible pain,” I answered. “Why am I not healing?”
“Time Stop, Kid. It maintains continuity. The audience hates seeing any breaks in continuity. Try and tough it out the best you can.” He tapped his hands on the table. “Okay, Paul, why are you being a bitch about this?”
Paul’s glower intensified, “My client has been the highest-rated player in the wastes for the last eighty years. To have her killed off with no preamble or build-up is unacceptable. I should have been given a chance to construct the narrative that would be satisfying to the audience.”
“Interesting, no wait, boring. Also, wrong. Your client was the highest rated. The kid here is pulling numbers twice what Mina there has collected. Plus, she lost despite home field and level advantages. So, pushing for a continuity break is unwise.”
Paul glared at me, “then perhaps a greatest nightmare plot with a rematch is in order.”
“Nah,” Wilson said snottily.
“The way the spirit of the Wendigo works is when the body dies it goes to possess another. One of those two should be possessed.”
“Three players there, and mmmmmmmm-no.” Wilson said as he leaned forward on the table, “These are my clients and nothing will pry them from my clutches. If they die out in the world to firestorms or unlucky dice roll, so be it, but I refuse to let another narrator’s negligent mismanagement of a plot hurt my clients.”
Paul’s fist pounded the table, “Don’t mock me!”
“Don’t mock me,” Wilson repeated, blatantly mocking him.
“Please just let me die,” the woman, Mina, said.
“No one asked you!” Paul roared.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Mina looked at me with eyes that were sad beyond description, “I fucked up. Eighty years ago. I killed someone, and rather than starve I ate them. I have suffered every day since. The hunger never ends. I just keep killing. I just want it to stop. Please let me…”
“Shut up!” Paul snarled. He struck Mina across the face hard and then slammed her head into the table twice.
“Crude as that display is Paul, let’s just go to the standard percentage breakdown chance and move on…”
I lost focus on everything else. Paul and Wilson kept sniping back and forth like it was some game or shitty job to them. This was our lives. Mina was staring at me. I could meet her gaze, but couldn’t hold it. It all hit me at once. The callousness of it all. The fucking indignity. I didn’t know if it would work but I had to try. God, I hope I am doing the right thing.
Activate “empowered critical”?
Yes/No
Mentally, I punched yes as hard as I could. It took a lot of force to trigger, but it did.
The world glitched and suddenly I was back in the frozen field watching Celeste pincushion Mina. I didn’t hesitate. For the first time in the battle, I charged. A split second before the Wendigo could strike my fist collided with its -her- chest.
Attack against Wendigo… Critical Success
Wendigo takes 50 damage
Wendigo Slain!
Level Up!
Name:
Doug
Race:
Titan Spawn
Class
Left Hand of The Titan
Level:
4
HP:
240
Power:
14
Mobility:
14
Body:
14
Mind:
14
Face:
14
Magic:
14
I dismissed the prompts for now. Celeste and I stood over Mina’s body. Some terrible wave of frigid hunger washed over us as something dark rose up from the body and fled into the darkness.
“Should we chase that,” I asked.
“No,” Celeste said. “It is too fast, and we don’t have whatever it is that kills it.”
“Thank you,” Mina’s voice said. A gray outline of the woman stood in front of me. The shade hugged me, and then Celeste. “I don’t know what’s on the other side, but I hope it’s warm.” She turned and started to walk away.
“Wait,” I called after her. “I have so many questions?”
She didn’t look back, “That’s just part of life. So, is not getting the answer. If you get to the other side look me up. I will do whatever I can.”
I blinked and she was gone.
Angelica patted me on the shoulder, “Don’t worry too much. there is almost nowhere she can go that is any worse than where she was. Let’s see if we can find another safe zone.”
I fell into step with her and was immediately tackled by a snow lion.