Chapter 38 - Castle in the Sand, The Shifting Throne - Part 2
A deafening roar and a familiar, defiant cry reached her back. Kicking up sand, Sora suppressed her rising panic and focused her eyes.
This battle was fundamentally different from any boss monster she had faced before. Haru had called it a "gimmick fight," and the simple plan he'd laid out, easy enough for a game novice like Sora to understand, was firmly in her mind.
The roles were extremely simple—while Haru distracted the [Dusty Worm], Sora would destroy something.
"Near the sand wall… a conspicuous blue color…!"
Repeating the description she'd been given, she scanned along the wall of flowing sand, searching for the object that she was told she would "recognize in a single glance." And then—
"...! Found it!"
A clear anomaly on the sandy ground—a distorted, diamond-shaped object dyed the same blue as the great serpent. It was a massive scale, as large as a person.
Its overwhelming presence made it obvious that it wasn't just part of the background. Seeing it faintly glowing and wreathed in swirling dust, she knew that even a complete gaming novice would spot it immediately.
"One down!"
Gripping the straight sword in both hands, Sora charged forward without hesitation and unleashed a strike. It rang out with a hard clang, as if striking iron, and her sword was deflected as if repelled—
"…Hah!"
Instead of fighting the rebound, she twisted her body, using her heel as a pivot to kick up sand and spin with great force.
The second blow, powered by momentum and centrifugal force, lashed out—and was met with a loud shattering sound.
Struck twice in the exact same spot, the scale cracked spectacularly. As light and the surrounding dust scattered, Sora confirmed the destruction of her first target. At that moment—
"—RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
"Ah, ugh…?!"
A deafening roar that shook the desert tore through the air, and a forced stun seized Sora's body. She dropped her sword and instinctively covered her ears, her gaze snapping toward the great serpent Haru was distracting. It had changed.
Not its form, but its surroundings. As if the dust had transferred from the shattered scale to its master—no, that's probably exactly what happened. The dust that had been clinging to the scale until Sora destroyed it was now swirling around the great serpent's massive body.
The transformation was just as she had been told… but seeing its already otherworldly majesty amplified even further, her attention was momentarily captured. In that instant, a flash of gunmetal grey shot up from the ground with incredible force.
A great axe, spinning with a vicious whir, tore through the dust cloud and, with the sheer violence of its mass, smashed into the serpent's lower jaw.
A shriek, clearly different from its earlier roar of anger. Before Sora's stunned eyes, a small shadow leaped into the air, as if chasing the very axe it had thrown.
Passing the freely falling axe, he kicked it, and then, using a technique Sora still couldn't comprehend, summoned a weapon to his hand and used it as a foothold to race higher into the air.
Three leaps, a total of about fifteen meters—unbelievably, Haru was now above the great serpent's head. In his hands was a massive iron lump, too crude to be called a proper weapon.
"—DAAARRAAAAAAGH!!"
A roar, then a crash. The force of his fall, the weapon's outrageous weight, and the fastest possible swing achieved through a certain trick. The synergy of it all culminated in a full-force blow that slammed into the great serpent's head, sending its colossal body flying back as if it were a joke.
Sora, who had stopped in her tracks, utterly dumbfounded, found her eyes meeting Haru's as he was thrown back by the recoil.
"…!"
Spurred on by the mischievous V-sign from her partner, Sora kicked her frozen legs back into motion and started running.
This was no time to be standing around in a daze. Despite Haru's relaxed demeanor, it was their side that was being cornered with every passing second.
That last blow would have sent any normal boss monster flying, yet the great serpent's HP had barely budged. In contrast, Haru's HP bar, despite him not having taken a single hit, had already lost about ten percent… and even now, it was slowly, steadily decreasing.
"There, the second one…!"
That depleting HP bar in the corner of her vision was the time limit for this boss fight.
The gimmick for the battle against the [Great Serpent of Dust], the task the players had to complete, was a single, straightforward objective: "Destroy all the scales placed within the battle area."
A total of seven scales were randomly placed within the circular arena of flowing sand. With the two clues of "placed near the wall" and "they glow and are easy to spot," finding them wasn't particularly difficult.
However, with each one destroyed, the pressure placed on the player increased exponentially, starting with the great serpent's transformation just now.
The first scale caused a persistent damage-over-time dust cloud to form around the serpent. And the second—
"Hah!"
As Sora shattered the second scale, familiar bubbles of sand erupted at her feet. She instinctively back-stepped just as the vicious jaws of a piranha-like creature snapped through the air in front of her.
It wasn't just one. The next moment, the sand all around Sora began to boil.
Sora reflexively fled the spot, nearly screaming at the countless presences leaping from the ground behind her, and kicked off the sand in search of her next target.
The already-unmanageable boss was growing stronger, and now a swarm of fangs pursued the one destroying the scales. The battle, growing more intense with every step, had only just begun.
Good morning. It's time for another post.