You Want Squares?! I'll Give You Squares!

”By the Light of the Lady, may you be burned back to the shadows you came from!”

Golden light descended on the undead monster, along with the weighty hammer of a furious Warden. Rotted flesh and haphazard circuitry met zealous fury, sparks flying from both ends as the creature vainly tried to defend itself from Moira’s onslaught.

LQ TYR-1-1
Level 74 Ultimate Life-Form
HP: 3,586 / 4,290
Relationship: -100
Alignment: -80
Status Effects: N/A

”It still has a long way to go before it falls… but together we can handle this.”

“Sophia, to me!”

John’s words rang out with urgency, but there was little need for a commanding tone – merely calling her name out already had Sophia meeting his gaze, and as their eyes met, John’s ability activated.

Twin Soul Resonance: Body – Form, Sophia.

Sophia vanished in a scattering of sparks and light, her essence transferred to John in an instant. John’s body remained mostly unchanged, but his outfit took one drastic turn – the back of his armor and shirt exploded, metal and cloth scattering across the tiled floor of the underground lab. The rest of it, whether by magic or miracle, hung together around the glistening flesh of his back, now engraved with a magnificent carving of an angelic woman carrying a man upwards along his spine while the fires of hell glistened just below the tips of their feet. At the top of his back, where the angel seemed to be reaching toward, was a sentence inscribed in bright white ink.

”Through the Darkest Hells, Past the Blinding Heavens, I Will Carry You Home.”

Though John’s body had not changed aside from a rather **** increase in tone and muscle mass, his movements made the change far more blatant. While the necrophiliac science project was still reeling from Moira’s blow, John crossed the distance separating them in a flash. His blade carved apart metal and meat with equal ease, steel glistening in the flickering fluorescent bulbs of the lab. The creature’s body seemed to reform rather quickly once injured, but not without a good deal of blood and rotted flesh arcing out of it with each blow.

29 DMG!
18 DMG!
42 DMG!

”Are the cybernetic parts functioning as armor, or are my damage numbers compensating for the regeneration?” John mentally grumbled as he was finally **** away from the beast, a fleshy arm slamming into the floor a moment after he threw himself backward to avoid it. He wasn’t sure which answer was true, or even if it mattered, but thankfully the Tyrant rip-off’s health wasn’t regenerating along with its wounds, so at least it seemed his powers were accounting for it one way or the other.

As John leaped free of the abomination’s reach, the faint sound of air splitting reached his ears. Another barrage of daggers struck fiercely, thrown from high above where Shishun had used Lightning Jump to position herself atop a containment vat. Lightning jolted between the handles of the blades, and from the creature’s screams and the smell of singed flesh that rose from its smoking skin, clearly flowed through the creature as well. In a flash of light, another bolt struck, warping Shishun across the room where she wrapped her tail around one of the room’s pillars. With a snap of her fingers, the daggers tore themselves free from the beast, flying back to Shishun’s hands and ready for another volley.

While John was recovering his balance, Moira and Kim took up the fight from the other side, each approaching at a slight angle to give themselves enough room to properly swing their weapons. Blade and hammer arced around the distracted creature’s flanks, cleaving and bashing through the abomination’s unprotected rear. When the fleshy amalgamation turned its attention away from John and toward Moira, her shield was already prepared to take the **** without yielding; by the time it turned its vengeful strikes toward Kim, she had already danced away expertly, only inches between herself and the striking claws while Moira was now back within striking range.

”They’ve been practicing together.”

The realization was sudden but quite certain as John noticed how smoothly Moira and Kim seemed able to transition between offense and defense. His coordination with his usual party members was decent, but they were constantly rotating which of them were in each group – Moira and Kim didn’t just look like they were familiar with each other’s fighting style and techniques, they looked like they’d been practicing fighting strange technec monstrosities the entire year he’d been gone.

”No wonder they sass so well together,” John mused as he made quick strides to close the distance and rejoin the fight.

His movements weren’t as well-rehearsed as theirs, but together the three of them began a dance of **** around the TYR-1-1, alternating offense and defense as the creature continually shifted its focus. Moira’s strikes seemed to deal the most lasting damage, whether that was due to her blessed magic or her mighty arm, but the brief flashes of text before his eyes with every strike told John that they were all doing their parts.

“Squares!”

As its health neared the halfway mark, the boss slammed one arm down into the ground, while raising the other high above its head. The arm it had slammed into the floor liquified entirely, forming a mass of decay and glistening liquid metal that expanded across the floor at an alarming speed. John leaped into the air and had just enough presence of mind to use his Elemental Infusion to create a gale under his body before he touched down. He still wasn’t entirely safe – tendrils of flesh and steel rose up from the creeping mass to grasp at him, but they were slow even compared to John’s awkward aerial control.

Kim had dashed away but was being **** to stay on the move as the fleshy wave chased after her. Moira had either gotten caught off-guard or chosen to stand her ground, and either way, the flesh had oozed up her legs and was now holding her in place, with only a glistening light that surrounded her calves keeping it from crawling any higher. That might have been bad enough, if the creature’s other arm hadn’t begun to reform itself into what appeared to be some kind of cannon, one it was now moving into position to point directly at Moira, an orange glow forming in the barrel. Shishun’s daggers struck home on the grotesque creation’s head, shoulder, and arm, but weren’t enough to **** its aim to go awry. Moira had been lashing out at the tall undead’s legs even as it held her in place, but now she was **** to stand with her shield at the ready, a golden orb of light surrounding her.

”Cool technique, but I have no desire to see which of them is stronger.”

John activated the Rune of Puppeteering on his sword and tossed it into the air over the creature’s arm, darting ahead of it in a more direct path to the cannon. His hands now freed, John wrapped his arms around the cannon, its barrel so wide his hands just barely touched on the other side. He started to heave, but with the only thing providing leverage being his still-awkward control over his Elemental Infusion flight, he couldn’t muster enough **** to throw it off course on his own. The barrel was so hot against John’s skin that damage notifications were starting to pop up, but he held on, focusing not on his grip, but on his sword.

With the creature’s other arm creating the surge of flesh and metal that sought to hold them in place, it had to improvise as John’s sword approached. The enormous creature tried to manifest another limb to stop the oncoming sword, but John managed to weave the blade around the swarm of newly formed tendrils, cutting through the few he could not fully evade. The blade was slowed by the impacts, but still struck home with enough **** to drive itself through most of the horror’s thick, sinewy arm, cleaving flesh and metal and bone until finally halting with only a few inches of meat yet connecting.

”Now pull!”

Before the undead rip-off’s regeneration could reconnect the severed tissue, John gave an almighty heave, planting his legs on the monster’s shoulder for a little extra leverage and yanking with all of his power. The sound of metal and flesh tearing filled the air, a sound so horrendous that it echoed in John’s mind long after it stopped. But the limb was severed at last, pulled entirely free – and just in the nick of time. John whirled in the air, turning the cannon back on its former wielder just as a massive discharge erupted from the front of it.

387 DMG!

“Fuck this thing kicks like a-”

Without the weight of a gargantuan undead to tether it, the cannon’s release whipped John around in a frenzy, sending him spiraling toward the ceiling. If there was a small silver lining, it was that the cannon itself had begun to deform and attempt to wrap around his arms and body after it fired, but the **** of them both impacting on the metal ceiling overhead was so tremendous that the cannon was ripped from its fragile hold on his body.

-102 HP!

“Fuckin’ ow!” John growled, catching himself with a gust of wind as the cannon fell away. The creature was already reforming despite the massive hole in its upper torso, but with one arm completely removed and the other partially incinerated, it had left itself wide open – something the women below were eager to exploit.

"The Lady marks this land as her own!"

As John was re-orienting himself, the golden light protecting Moira's legs exploded downward, showering the floor in a cascade of golden light that burned away the creeping blight, leaving most of the lab's floor cleared save for a few scraps of burning flesh.

"Now, Kim! The head!" Kim's lithe body twisted through the air, her blade carving a path through the air, accompanied by the sound of whistling steel.

The creature had enough awareness to raise a half-arm, still stubby from the loss of its cannon, but the gesture was futile. Kim's blade had begun glowing a deep red color, and it split the regenerator's arm down the middle with no visible struggle on Kim's part. The blow didn't stop until her sword had cleaved to the shoulder, at which point the nimble Slayer tugged her blade free and swung herself around toward the creature’s cranium.

A wordless cry rang out as Kim struck, sheathing her blade in the eye socket of the undead terror. The beast roared and lifted up its remaining arm, still burning with golden flames from Moira's spell, Kim leapt clear of the creature’s nape, leaving her sword embedded in its skull.

"Moira, go!" Kim called out before she had even landed.

Moira rumbled forward with little of the grace Kim had shown, but twice the imposing presence. She carried herself up to the creature’s full height in a leap, hammer raised and a hymn on her lips, "The Lady smites the wicked!"

"Not one of her more eloquent incantations," John mused. What the verbiage lacked, the results most certainly did not. Moira directly struck the pommel of Kim's blade, driving it the rest of the way in, and then yet further as the creature's skull crumpled under the blow. Red and golden light mixed as the two weapons struck, sending a spire of mana and light erupting toward the heavens.

Party Member: 1,287 DMG!

An inhuman howl of pain and rage filled the air, made all the more grotesque by the deformed mouth that was emitting it. But the creature was still clinging to life – even now, its body was attempting to knit itself back together, to bring enough cohesion to its form to strike back. Everywhere, John noted, except the arm that Kim had carved open, as well as the hole still left in its skull where the blade was lodged.

“Shishun, with me, we’re finishing it!” John roared, hurtling toward the reforming boss. That was all he had to say for a bolt of lightning to appear beside him, a pair of lithe hands to wrap around his waist, and for another bolt to whisk them both away.

They appeared high in the air, near one of the support pillars of the room. As they teleported into place, Shishun clung to the pillar with her arms this time, saving her tail to wrap around John’s waist and skillfully fling him directly toward the beast.

John's blade flew from his hand, twirling through the air with a mental flick, skewering one of the abominations arm’s and pinning it to a nearby chemical tank. Green fluid poured out around the puncture, sizzling and smoking as it burned into the monster's flesh.

87 DMG!

With his hands free, John wove two spells in tandem. Three Fire Orbs blazed over his right hand while crackling electricity danced in his left. Both spells shot forth in unison, taking a good chunk of John's mana bar with them. White Lightning arced to the hilt of Kim's blade and traveled into the creature’s body, sparks flying from the metal portions of its body while the fleshier bits sizzled and charred. The blazing spheres coalesced in the shrinking cavity of its chest a moment later, exploding with nearly as much **** as the cannon had.

192 DMG!
148 DMG!
155 DMG!
139 DMG!

The undead's chest was blown fully open, tearing bone and sinew apart at the shoulder and leaving its upper torso awkwardly hanging in two directions. Its unpinned arm went limp, the severed halves flopping awkwardly when they lost even more leverage as they sagged away from the rest of the body.

Rather than trying to reform itself around John's sword to break free of the pin, the reanimated nightmare reconstituted the other half of its body. Seemingly giving up on regenerating the limb that Kim had sundered entirely, it instead split both halves of its former arm into a mass of tendrils to encircle John as he approached.

”Come on, come on… starting to get the hang of this flying thing now, so it’s as simple as adding a little more wind,” John thought, trying to encourage himself as he worked to keep his flight path on track while surging more wind in a protective sphere around him. It was just ordinary wind, but John’s ears were overwhelmed with the sound of the gale now raging around him, strong enough to throw even an Abyssal off their feet. The tendrils the monster sent toward him collided with the wall of wind and oscillated as they struggled to overcome the gales. But keeping enough wind to hold back a foe like this was a strain on John’s casting ability and mind, even as weak as the fleshy tentacles were compared to the beast overall. They were already starting to encroach on the protective zone he had created.

”One last push, then.”

The wind stopped for a moment, going still and silent. The tendrils reached for John, but before they touched on his skin, there came a single, powerful burst of air, effectively an explosion of wind that scattered most of the monster’s fleshy appendages and sent John rocketing forward even faster than he had been flying. He successfully threaded himself between two of the tendrils and landed firmly on the large creature’s upper body. John planted his feet, gripped the hilt of Kim’s sword with both hands, and gave a sharp yank. The blade slid free with almost no resistance, blood spraying freshly from the wound as the sword cut its way free.

Critical Hit! 298 DMG!

John whirled the glowing blade around, his grip a bit awkward on the unfamiliar design, but effective enough for its purpose. Kim’s blade twirled and filled the air with the sickening sound of flesh splitting apart as the Tyrant’s head was cleaved cleanly from its shoulders. The body twitched, but did not fall – though John had grown wary enough of the undead to be prepared for this. Already he was adjusting his balance after the swing, shifting the sword into a downward position in his grip before plunging it directly into the open neck of the creature, driving the blade through meat, metal, and the monster’s spine.

Critical Hit! 312 DMG!

With a last groan, the creature fell to its knees, then toppled over – aided in part by a final smack from behind as Moira drove her hammer into its back. The look in the Warden’s eyes said she was as much annoyed with their foe as she was trying to ensure it stayed down.

With the mini-boss down, it and the dungeon alike began to fade away. John was worried for a moment, wondering if they’d wind up in the Manor’s basement, but breathed a deep sigh of relief when they reformed back in the same room they had departed from.

Mini-Boss defeated, Dungeon complete [Level 70]!
+8750 EXP [+50 EXP from Perks]
+$35,000 ($17,500 + 100% from Perks)
+37 Distilled Undeath
+48 Potion of Regeneration

John has Leveled Up!
John has reached levels 46 and 47!
+20 to all stats

“Not a bad first dungeon. It gave us a few surprises… and even a bit of a challenge near the end. Well done, John Newman,” Kim said, striding up to where her blade rested on the floor to retrieve it. “Keen of you to notice the effect my blade had on our foe as well. Did one of your creations tell you precisely what it does?”

“Nah, but I saw how it stopped regenerating after you cut it. Pretty cool technique – was it an enchantment like the runes you had Koharu forge onto my sword?”

“No, this is a Slayer technique of my clan. It can halt most healing magic, or innate biological regeneration abilities, at least for a time. Even when it originates from magics as foul as those creatures were made from. We are quite adept at killing that which does not truly live, even if our magic is not as diametrically opposed to the undead as the Order’s may be.”

“Indeed, and one day you might even learn how to maintain it longer than a few minutes at a time,” Moira said, her tone innocent but the slight smirk on her face giving away how much she enjoyed the rib. Kim’s eyes narrowed in annoyance at the Warden.

“For a moment I thought we might continue our alliance from before… I see it’s back to business as usual,” Kim said, snorting as she tossed her ebony locks.

“How often have you two been training together, anyway? I was surprised to see you two… uh, ‘getting along’ so well,” John mused, still not quite sure how the two frenemies had developed over the last year.

“Whenever we weren’t busy leading, learning our own family’s techniques, or dealing with whatever crisis had struck that day… so not nearly as often as we would have liked,” Moira grumbled with only a hint of sarcasm.

“Not as effective as your dungeons, but still a good exercise and a chance to work our bodies together,” Kim noted. “Now, hurry up and conjure us another dungeon, John Newman!”

“No breather? Even after that?” John chuckled as he spoke, not bothering to wait for a response as he was already opening the menu to start another Dungeon Barrier. “That’s fine, but I’m lowering the level for the next one a little. Don’t want to burn through all our mana in just two dungeons.”

“Do as you feel necessary… we will slay whatever foes lay before us,” Kim assured.