The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1254: As Expected

The three Shamans gave a matching war cry as they followed the War Cleric up onto the platform, then were nearly thrown back off when the boss stomped on the ground, and suddenly duplicated.

{3 Minutes Remaining on Timer} Bonus Difficulty activated.

Everyone stared at the floating words of the System Message, then at the second Immortal Demonic Ape.

“Oh, this is some bullshit.” The War Cleric sighed.

Cara landed beside him and patted him on the leg, as if consoling him after a loss, but with a toothy grin on her face and making her happy chainsaw purring noise.

The dragon gave the badger a curious look. “The chaos badger has a good point. It is new knowledge, even if it’s knowledge that we would rather not have gotten firsthand.

We now know what happens when you reach the final boss under the time limit on level six difficulty.”

“Alright, we will split up. I will tank one, the Epic Golems will tank the other. Everyone, focus damage on the one that the Golems are holding, and then come for mine when it’s down.” Karl instructed.

That was just what Rae wanted. A good boss to fight, and no Karl to mess up her data collection. He was the only other one that would hit as hard as she did, and having his strikes in there made it impossible to tell just how much she was doing.

Now, if there was some sort of chart, listing damage per hit, that would be perfect, but it didn’t appear that the System was going to give them that sort of detailed analytics data.

Was that because the Gods didn’t like math? She wouldn’t blame them.

The only things that math was good for was counting bodies and calculating blood volumes. Anything more than that was just unnecessary.

Hawk disagreed. He was learning math lately so that he could make better roasted meat. The measurements were precise, and needed to be adjusted to the amount of meat that you were roasting.

It was all very mathematical.

Tian laughed as he placed his [Consecrated Ground] spell, and then retreated to a comfortable spot on Thor’s back, next to Cara.

There was plenty of room for them both, and the boss was so busy with the Golems that it wasn’t even facing their direction. If he had to retreat, he could rely on his sister to fly them both away, but Thor’s barrier was pretty good. It could take at least one hit, even from the boss.

Thor wasn’t so sure about that, as this boss had massive physical strength and was two ranks stronger than him. But his brother’s encouragement helped him focus on working with the others.

[Happy, Happy Happy… Stabby, Stabby Spider] Rae sang as she got to work on the boss, punching the ape full of holes as Predation optimized her damage output.

There was just one factor that she had forgotten to account for.

A ten-metre tall ape held a lot of blood, and the floor was getting slippery for everyone who didn’t have spiked legs.

That wasn’t even a factor that the others had considered a possibility, but the enhancement to her bleeding effects, as well as [Blood Destruction] which was constantly trying to make the ape explode, had combined to turn the Immortal Rank ape into a veritable fountain.

Hawk considered burning it off to restore their footing, but Rae was using a skill to absorb it off the ground to improve her strength, so he just left it alone until one of the shamans actually tripped while moving out of the way of a giant fist.

Thor had to intervene to avoid having the fallen shaman smashed to a pulp, and the fists easily beat their way through his barrier before the pair of Elven Kings could draw the beast’s attention back.

Then, Hawk finally intervened and burned the floor clean again.

Sister Rae could live with a bit less blood to absorb.

While they were fighting against time to kill the boss before it did anything unexpected, Karl was focused on simply trying to damage the boss faster than it could heal.

He had the Haint Claw merged with him, and the Sword of Champions active under his Draconic transformation. But the beast’s health had hardly moved.

The first boss was down to a quarter life, but the one that he was fighting was still close to ninety percent health, and Karl had already put out a [Mana Pylon] so that he could dump extra mana into [Void Blast] attacks layered over [Holy Blasts] in an attempt to get ahead of the healing factor.

He really needed some more powerful attack skills.

Cara laughed at his annoyance. [Now you understand my pain. Think of it this way: If you were Immortal, you would have the boss dead by now, because of the difference in damage reduction. But Predation also reduces their damage reduction, so both you and Rae are already doing three times what anyone else is to the bosses.]

The badger made a good argument. Predation really was an overpowered skill. Without it, he wouldn’t even be damaging the boss faster than it healed.

But that reminded Karl that the badger was slacking.

She was Mythic, as of halfway through the Dungeon when his constitution had advanced. And, that meant that she was also one of their primary damage dealers, not just a Totem Ranked spectator like Tian, who was sitting beside her on Thor’s back.

Karl considered changing tactics, and using the amulet to make the Epic Golems Immortal Rank so that they would bypass the damage reduction like any other spell. But that would mean that he would drop back down to Mythic Rank, and take an increased amount of damage for Tian to heal.

It was a dilemma, but the timer was gone, so they weren’t against the clock for the final fight.

He would save that tactic for next time.

When he didn’t have to share the loot and crafting materials with members from other Guild Alliances.

Remi wholeheartedly agreed with that logic. She needed all the Immortal Ranked materials she could get, especially if it gave plants as crafting materials.