Tower of Souls

Without the highly mobile mount keeping the Boss constantly out of reach, Cam’s first real clash with the monster was... educational.

Letting his clone take the lead, as Eron was the one with the shield- and the complete lack of fear of dying-, Cam studied the mob carefully, searching for its pattern; With the mount taken out, the fight had effectively entered what climbers called the ’second phase’, and that meant the Boss’s tactics would change.

At higher Floors, it was possible to encounter Bosses with even more phases; One story in particular mentioned a Boss with six different phases, each stronger and more challenging than the ones before!

Seeing the whipcord muscles of the Shaman’s arm bunch with each thrust and sweep of its spear, Cam finally understood why the mob did so much damage with its earlier attacks; Despite being a ’Caster’ with a control spell, it looked like Strength was the monster’s highest Stat... And, while obviously slower than its mount was, the Boss wasn’t exactly slow, leading Cam to think that it was a more physical heavy monster...

Which also explained why it had barely used its Root spell; Low mental stats meant a smaller mana pool... Still, it should have had enough for at least a couple casts, right?

”Shit, poison!” Eron exclaimed just as Cam began to circle the Boss to attack it from behind, the spear having just slipped past the edge of the shield to graze across the clone’s shoulder, causing Cam’s eyes to flicker briefly to the Combat Log for more information.

Kawe Shaman(Boss) stabbed your clone(Eron) for 11 damage.

Kawe Shaman’s(Boss) Poison Edge inflicted 2 damage(Nature) to your clone(Eron).

While the Combat Log only gave a bare bones description of what happened, it was more than enough to tell Cam quite a lot. For starters, the Boss’s strength had to be insane for what looked like a small graze- but clearly wasn’t- to inflict so much damage... But, more importantly, the Boss had saved some of its mana for this Ability- whether the fight was scripted like that by the Tower, or just because it didn’t find an opportunity to cast Root again, Cam didn’t know. And it didn’t really matter.

Cam had never heard of Poison Edge before, but he had heard of similar Abilities. The examples were numerous: Flame Edge, Ice Edge, Thunder Edge... even the somewhat adjacent Earthen Empowerment and GravityCrusher that were specific to blunt weapons...

All of them had a similar purpose: temporarily empowering a weapon to add more damage, whether it be fire, ice, lightning, raw physical... or, apparently, poison damage... And, despite how low the damage looked, for Floor 2, where most non-tanks would barely have over 100 HP... an extra 2 or 3 damage was huge!

Though... from Cam’s perspective, it was also a bit wasted on the Boss. After all, the mob clearly had enough Strength to take out nearly a third of his HP with one solid hit; Losing a couple more barely registered as a threat by comparison.

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Continuing his move to flank the Boss, Cam kept out of range of its spear... and was glad he did, as the Boss quickly drove back his clone before spinning to lunge at him, coming up just short. Seeing his target still out of reach, the Boss showed the smallest glimmer of intellect as it shifted, trying to move from between them.

Rather than the brutal exchange of blows that many envision, the fight quickly devolved... into a dance. The Boss moved to escape their encirclement, and Cam and his clone moved to keep it hemmed in. Eron would move forward to engage it, pulling its attention in the hopes Cam could strike from behind... And the Boss, displaying his immense Strength, would slam the clone’s shield with his spear, sending him stumbling away again, before hurriedly spinning to drive Cam back out of reach once more...

”For a short shit, his damn spear has too much reach!” Eron complained- loudly- even as he panted from exertion. ”I’m going to Iron Skin and push in!”

Not giving Cam a chance to counter his plan- not that Cam had a better plan-, Eron darted forward, his skin taking on the distinctive metallic luster... and dropped his shield. Tilting his body just enough for the spear to scrape past his chest- taking another dozen HP from him in the process-, the clone wrapped his arm around the spear and held on.

And was nearly jerked off his feet as the Boss yanked back on the spear, trying to dislodge him.

Seeing his chance, Cam rushed forward, a hint of amusement in his eyes as the Boss tried once more to turn to drive him off, only for the entire process to be dragged down- quite literally- by the clone clinging to the spear and digging in his heels.

The greatsword rose and fell, the mob barely able to hunch forward and avoid taking the blow on its head... but, despite its burly physique, the Kawe Boss was still roughly the same size as all the others on the Floor, and the heavy strike drove the small creature to its knees...

Which was helped along by the clone practically hanging off its weapon.

Hammering down blow after blow, Cam was amazed by the Boss’s resilience; Clearly its Vitality had to be high, but, more than that, the mob just kept trying to climb back to its feet, its immense strength pushing back against the punishment he was delivering. Still it persisted, making progress in regaining its feet, and, after several hard blows to its back, the Boss seemed to come to a decision, resolutely dropping its spear to lunge barehanded at the man that kept hurting it.

Which, despite the brief moment of terror at having those burly, hairy hands coming for him, was possibly the best result Cam could ask for- other than the Boss just falling over dead already.

Backing rapidly away from the frantic Boss, Cam worked to buy time for Eron to untangle himself from the dropped spear and reclaim his shield...

With the mount dead, and the Boss now unarmed, the fight was basically over as far as he was concerned... Though the Boss quickly reminded him not to get overconfident.

Kawe Shaman(Boss) punched you for 20 damage.

”Fucking hell!” He shouted, now practically sprinting away from the Boss. ”His punch still does twenty damage!”

”Seriously!?” Eron gaped, staring after the running duo- and trying not to laugh at how ridiculous it looked. ”That... is just wrong.” Sighing to himself at the fact that the fight had at least gotten easier, the clone quickly chased after them...

And just as quickly was thrown, the Boss having grabbed him by the shield when he tried to block one its punches... Both man and clone thinking the same thing: was this a three phase Boss? Weren’t the different phases of a Boss supposed to be distinct, with some sort of weird transformation or something?

They didn’t know the answers to that... only that this Boss was a pain.