Chapter 80: "LUC! You’ve Been Hiding Your Strength This Entire Time?!"

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: "LUC! You’ve Been Hiding Your Strength This Entire Time?!"

Lucien pulled up his status.

[Lucien Dracul Aethernis]

[Race: Vampire]

[Bloodline: Crimson Origin Bloodline (Mythical)]

[Talent: Sanguine Genesis Crucible (Divine)]

[Cultivation Rank: B (High)]

[Stats: —]

[ Strength: 925

Agility: 960

Constitution: 925

Intelligence: 720

Vitality: 1000

Mana: 815 / 815

Blood: 999 / 1750 ]

[Technique Comprehension: 2 days ]

He stared at the numbers for a long moment.

’Finaly, I’m at B Rank, and high B Rank to boot.’

He flexed his fingers slowly.

’And I’m still pretending to be a Beginner C Rank.’

He briefly imagined telling Rika and party the truth, then imagined Kael’s face.

"LUC! You’ve been hiding your strength this entire time?!"

"Nope," he murmured aloud. "I’m keeping the disguise on."

He scrolled through his traits, the list now genuinely absurd, dozens of entries, most sitting at Level 10, categories bleeding into each other until they barely resembled a coherent creature anymore.

’I probably have enough traits to qualify as several different species,’ he thought. ’At this point I’m less vampire and more walking monster chimera.’

His eyes caught on Technique Comprehension.

’Two days left.’

’When I get back I’m cooking until even Eve can’t eat anymore.’

He closed the interface, filled the blood storage and headed back to camp.

A few hours had passed. Rika, Vex, and Zalor sat clustered near the fire, deep in discussion, while Kael demolished a mountain of roasted meat beside them.

"You’re back," Rika said.

"Did you miss me?"

"No."

"That was too fast."

"You were gone for hours," Vex said.

"Time moves differently while cultivating."

"You look quite happy, was being away from Kael that good?" Zalor asked.

"Maybe."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It’s the one I’m giving."

Rika cut in before Zalor could press further. "The boss slots should be open by now, so we move in thirty minutes."

"The other parties cleared it?" Lucien asked.

"Probably, the entrance has been open a while, and the waiting groups already started shifting."

Kael swallowed an entire skewer in one motion. "Finally, I was starting to think we’d have to fight the other adventurers for entertainment."

"We are not fighting other adventurers."

"What if they start it?"

"Then we leave."

"What if they insult my cooking?"

"Then you go cry quietly in some corner at their brutal honesty."

They packed everything from the camp into storage rings, sleeping bags, monster detection crystals, cookware, any extra food that Kael didn’t girlish yet, array plates, etc.

Vex checked his inventory of arrows. "Piercing, binding, burst, tracking, and three Rare emergency arrows."

"You actually carry real arrows?" Lucien asked. "I thought you just used mana arrows?"

"Real ones, especially high rank, cost a fortune, and they’re mlstly one time use, mana arrows on the other hand are free since I’ve got the talent for it and some skills."

"So your talent’s archery-based?"

"Yes basically," Vex said but didn’t elaborate further.

Kael eyed the emergency arrows. "What do those do?"

"Emergency things."

"That sounds hella suspicious."

"They’re for saving your ass."

Lucien checked the twin scythe’s and his light armor one final time.

’If it’s the spider boss, the new traits should help a lot, but I guess we’ll find out.’

The other C-Rank party approached the sealed door at the same time as them.

Their leader nodded at Rika. "You made it here too."

"Looks like it."

He glanced at Lucien and the others then back to Rika. "Going in together?"

"No, we’ll do our own attempt."

He looked visibly relieved. "Good luck, then."

Kael whispered, "Why’d he look relieved?"

"Because you look like you’d eat their loot of you joined them," Vex said.

Kael pressed a hand to his chest, wounded. "I only eat the edible loot."

The runes on the door flared to life.

"Do a final check," Rika said, scanning each of them. "Stay together and don’t chase the boss alone."

Lucien nodded.

The door opened onto something entirely different from the corridor beyond.

They stepped through into a vast marsh beneath a vaulted, ruined ceiling, a corroded Gothic cathedral, pillars cracked and half-swallowed by crimson growth, stained-glass windows long shattered and replaced with hanging red roots.

Shallow pools of thick, bubbling liquid covered most of the ground as chunks of black stone jutted up like broken pews.

Kael stepped down and immediately regretted it. A bubble popped beside his boot and splashing it.

It began to smoke.

"Fuck! I hate this place already."

"Stay on the stone," Rika ordered. "Don’t touch the liquid."

Lucien activated Mana Sense as the whole chamber pulsed with mana, dense and heavy.

Then the marsh began to move.

Liquid gathered at the center, rising, coalescing ten meters of semi-transparent crimson jelly, dozens of glowing cores drifting inside it like trapped stars, and one massive pulsing core at its heart.

Lucien ran Appraisal on it using 100 mana.

[Bloodmother Matriarch (Rare)]

[Rank: Peak C]

[Classification: Dungeon Boss]

’That’s all?’

A deep, wet rumble shook the chamber as dozens of smaller slimes split off from its mass, bouncing eagerly toward them.

"Formation!" Rika snapped.

The Bloodmother compressed itself and launched into the air.

"Scatter!"

Everyone leapt clear as it crashed down, corrosive liquid rippling across the stone in a wide wave.

​Kael threw himself sideways a split second before the mass of corrosive liquid obliterated the platform, stone shattered, sending hot droplets of acid flying.

​He scrambled to his feet as he drew his massive greatsword. "That damn blob is faster than it looks!"

The main body spread wide across the ground, swallowing the platform where they’d stood a second ago, while dozens of smaller slimes bounced in from every direction, the boss keeping its distance and letting its offspring do the work.

Kael swung at one, blade sinking in then it split apart around the blades edge as a tendril whipped around his forearm.

"Oh, come on!"

Rika smashed her shield into the tendril as he axe cut it freeing him.

Vex fired three mana arrows in rapid succession one piercing a small exposed core, one exploding inside the mass and one binding a section to the ground.

Zalor’s shadows spread beneath the smaller slime’s, pinning several in place while he cut a path between platforms using his twin daggers and shadows, letting the others focus on the main slime.

Lucien’s scythes snapped forward, cutting into the Bloodmother Slime, slashing the jeely away and exposing a core..

"Core exposed!"

Rika’s axe found it instantly, cracking the surface.

The Bloodmother shuddered violently, a wave of its own body bursting outward and forcing everyone back.

It shifted shape, long tendrils stretching out, each tipped in a hardened blood claw, more smaller-slimes peeling off to swarm the party.

One landed near a stone pillar and burst on contact as the pillar began dissolving instantly.

"That one explodes!"

"Stop punching them!" Vex shouted.

"I didn’t know!"

"You never know anyhting!"

Rika cut down two before they reached Zalor as Zalor stepped through shadow, appearing behind a third, both daggers driving into its core.

Lucien caught one mid-leap with Blood Manipulation, the creature stretching and resisting like living rubber before he compressed it into a dense sphere and hurled it into the bigger slime.

It burst harmlessly onto it as it was absorbed back.

"This is surprisingly difficult," he muttered. "And surprisingly annoying."

Rika took the brunt of a tendril strike, boots carving trenches through stone as she skidded back.

"It’s absorbing blood from the surroundings," she called. "Don’t attack the body unless you can reach a core!"

"Otherwise you just wasting mana and energy!"

A tendril slashed at her as she raised her shield mana coating it and blocked the strike, another appeared behind and slashed at her back opening a gash on her shoulder, the Bloodmother’s attention snapped toward her instantly, more tendrils lashing out.

’Dammit!’

She braced, shield and axe flaring with more mana.

The impacts cracked the mana barrier, as she cut down the tendrils lashing at her.

​"Its attention is on me!" Rika roared, her axe glowing with mana as she parried three rapid fire thrusts. "Target the cores!"

Meanwhile from a higher platform, Vex tracked the shifting cores through the semi-transparent mass.

"Its got multiple cores and the main one’s constantly moving inside it!"

He aimed his bow as a mana Arrow formed and shot it out, the arrows splitting mid fire as they stabed into the boss, making it gargle and distracting it.

A Binding Arrow followed right after and bound it in a mana net, as a Burst Arrow tore its body apart for one crucial second, exposing the central core.

"NOW!"

Lucien moved before Vex finished shouting.

Kael charged as Rika followed.

The Bloodmother liquefied instantly, every attack passing through empty space, and reformed behind them.

"It went liquid!" Vex shouted, disbelieving.

Meanwhile Zalor held up most of the smaller slimes as they carried on multiplying, a smaller slime suddenly landed on his shoulder, dissolving through his cloak before he could fling it away.

"Fuck they’re ability to split is disgusting, despite them being so cute looking."

It bounced, bounced again and immediately leapt back toward him with countless others.

His eyes narrowed. "You’re persistent bastards, I’ll give you that."

A shadow blade formed and cut it clean through the core, as another two formed behind it.

Kael’s sword kept passing through empty jelly, his gauntlets slowly corroding under repeated splash contact.

"How am I supposed to hit something that won’t stay hit?!"

"Target the cores!" Rika shouted.

"Which one, there are literally dozens?!"

"The glowing ones!"

"THEY ALL GLOW!"

A tendril slammed him sideways. He caught it on two gauntlets, gripping the greatsword with the others, sliding hard across the stone before spotting a core exposed near the mass’s lower body.

"Found one!"

He surged forward, all four arms driving the blade home as he activated a sword skill, the core shattered as the slime let out a loud gurgling shriek.

"HA! I can hit you!"

A second tendril immediately swatted him into a pillar.

BAM!

"I regret saying that." Kael coughed from the rubble.

Lucien worked the edges of the fight, hooking cores, redirecting damage, letting his newer traits carry the load, Corrosion Resistance shrugging off all the splashes that would’ve eaten through anyone else’s skin, Threadstep keeping his footing perfect on the shifting stone, Eight-Point Focus tracking every core moving inside the boss’s translucent mass at once.

He fired a blood thread around a core and yanked it out of the slime and toward Rika. "Your turn!"

Her axe finished it clean.

"It’s easier when everyone works together," he said, satisfied.

"​You keep doing that!" Vex shouted down from his perch, firing arrow after arrow. "How are you pulling those out so effortlessly?!"

"It’s all natural talent." Lucien lied smoothly, dodging another corrosive splash, his Corrosion Resistance trait making these splashes harmless.

"Natural my ass."

Piece by piece, the Bloodmother shrank as its cores shattered, its movements slowing, smaller slimes appearing less frequently.

"It’s weakening!" Rika called.

Vex’s Tracking Arrow finally pinned the main core, now visible just beneath the surface.

"Main core’s exposed!"

Zalor bound the surrounding slimes as Kael charged from the left, mana crackling along his greatsword as his muscles increased in size, Rika struck from the front, her axe letting out a slash of mana as Vex loosed a Piercing Arrow dead center.

Lucien’s scythes crossed through the same spot a heartbeat later.

"​EVERYONE! ALL AT ONCE!"

Kael charged from the left, muscles bulging under a green buff aura. Rika lunged from the front, axe ablaze. Vex’s arrow flew straight down the middle, and Lucien crossed his twin scythes, matching their speed perfectly, careful not to accidentally let out to much strength and obliterate the slime.

​

Their attacks converged on the single point.

CRACK!

The central core shattered. A massive wave of crimson goo exploded outward, drenching the cathedral before melting harmlessly into the floor pools.

​Silence fell over the room, save for heavy breathing.

Kael dropped to one knee, breathing hard. "...Did we win?"

Vex lowered his bow. "I think so."

Rika didn’t relax as she downed a healing potion. "Don’t celebrate yet, it still has it’s second phase."

The cracked core pulsed once, then twice.

The scattered slime began flowing back toward it.

​"It’s not dead," Lucien said, his tone entirely too casual for the situation.

The remains rose from the marsh, fragments streaming toward the central core, fusing and compressing back into one.

Instead of growing, the mass shrank, condensing itself and becoming more and more denser, until it stood barely three meters tall, several smaller cores now orbiting the compressed main one.

Lucien ran Appraisal again.

[-100 Mana]

[Rank: Beginner B]

"It got smaller," Kael said, confused.

"And a lot stronger," Vex said grimly.

A terrifying pressure washed over the room, the dense B-Rank aura washing over them, Rika raised her shield, her face pale, while Zalor’s shadows coated his daggers as they lengthened.

Lucien allowed himself a small, sharp smile.

’Finally,’ he thought. ’Something I don’t have to break my neck trying not to crush, but it’s still not strong enough.’

The Bloodmother released a deep, wet gurgle before it vanished from sight.