Chapter 81: Splitting It’s Soft Mass Wide Open!?

Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Splitting It’s Soft Mass Wide Open!?

The chamber flooded with crimson liquid as the Bloodmother’s fifteen-meter mass rapidly contracted.

Its body compressed into something far denser, barely three meters tall now, surface hardening into overlapping crimson plates like segmented armor with smaller cores orbiting the central one like blood-red moons, and the corrosive liquid across the marsh began moving with it, obedient and hungry.

"Everyone spread out!" Rika shouted. "It sacrificed it’s size for more speed!"

The Bloodmother vanished from where it stood.

BOOM.

A crimson blur slammed into Rika’s shield, sending her skidding across the platform, her boots carving trenches through stone.

A tendril lashed toward Vex, as Zalor’s Shadow Step yanked him clear, but the tip still clipped his shoulder the corrosive blood hissing across his armor.

"Yeah," Vex said through gritted teeth. "It’s way faster now."

"Then we hit it harder!" Kael raised all four arms.

’It’s not fighting like a monster anymore,’ Lucien thought, watching it reposition in a blur. ’It’s fighting like an armored assassin, but what am I if not the assassins nightmare?’ He thought, smiling g at just own joke.

The Bloodmother stopped summoning weak smaller slimes entirely. Instead it produced compressed blood blades, spiked projectiles, explosive spheres, and razor-thin wire every attack faster it made was more lethal than in its first phase.

Rika absorbed hit after hit, her arms trembling under her shield. "Kael! Stop chasing it and instead keep it off Vex!"

Vex fired Tracking Arrows that couldn’t hold a lock as the internal cores kept shifting position. "They’re moving too fast to mark!"

Zalor’s shadows dissolved on contact with the creeping corrosive fluid. "My shadows are being eaten!"

Kael charged anyway, catching a tendril with two hands while driving his greatsword into the armored torso with the other two.

The blade sank a few inches as The Bloodmother’s body bulged around the wound.

"Uh oh."

The blast threw him across the chamber into a pillar.

"KAEL!" Rika shouted.

"I’m fine!" He said while coughing. "...Mostly!"

’He treats every fight like a personal argument,’ Lucien thought.

The boss lunged for Rika againal and this time, Lucien decided to move.

His twin scythes chains snapped forward, one hook catching a compressed tendril, the other biting into the armored shoulder as he pulled hard, dragging the attack off course into an empty platform instead of Rika.

"Lucien?"

"Keep your shield up."

He used the recoil to swing himself sideways, boots touching a pillar before launching back toward the boss. A blood blade thrust for his chest as he tilted, letting it scrape harmlessly across his light armored coat instead, Impact Resistance and Shockless Frame soaking the force as it flowed through and out of him harmlessly as Dense Musculature and his other strength related traits kept his balance perfect through the twist.

He landed on the slime’s back.

The Bloodmother tried compressing itself around him but Lucien reached into it with Blood Manipulation, disrupting the internal flow for half a second, enough to attack.

He drove one scythe into the seam between two plates.

"Found one."

He tore a core loose as Vex’s arrow shot put and finished it instantly.

CRACK.

The Bloodmother shrieked.

"Attack the exposed side!" Rika ordered.

What followed moved fast, Rika absorbing frontal strikes and cracking openings, Vex marking cores the instant they slowed, Zalor destabilizing footing whenever the boss touched stone as he kept attacking ot using his shadows, Kael smashing through exposed hard slime plates with brute repetition and Lucien threading through the chaos with his scythes and blood manipulation, hooking and tearing and redirecting.

He used nothing beyond his traits, physical stats, Blood Manipulation, and the scythes, no Overdrive, no bloodline abilities, no skills, nothing as just what he was using was already overkill.

At one point three compressed tendrils caught his chains at once, dragging him several meters, cracking the stone beneath his boots before he swung the momentum around and cut through another core mid-arc.

"How are you doing that?" Kael demanded.

"Good footwork."

"That wasn’t footwork! That was nonsense!"

As the fight went on everyone took damage with it only increasing now that the slime went into its second phase, Rika’s shield arm was bleeding as she was paying heavily, on top of the previous injuries she had which healed slightly after the healing potion.

Vex’s armor was partially dissolved along one side as he ran from one end to the other releasing arrows, his mana dropping with every arrow as he downed mana potions, Zalor’s cloak was torn qith some of his armor melted and a leg bleeding from the blood spikes as he appeared just as the slime attacked.

Kael was worst off, armor melted through in patches as his skin started burning, his gauntlets barely looked like gauntlets from the amount of corrosive blood on it, and he still kept charging in and attacking.

The Bloodmother caught him in two tendrils and slammed him flat.

BOOM.

He coughed blood.

"KAEL!"

He forced himself upright on two arms as he raised his greatsword. "I’m still standing!"

It rushed him again but Lucien’s chains flashed, one hooking its upper mass, the other slicing a forming bllood blade and dragging its attack a full meter off target.

"Try not to die before we split the loot, otherwise there’ll be more fo us!" Lucien said.

Kael spat blood. "You’re worried about the loot?"

"I’m worried about your share becoming inconvenient to carry."

Around he ten minute mark, only a handful of cores remained.

"It’s rotating clockwise every time it regenerates armor!" Vex called, finally cracking the pattern.

"Zalor, slow it!"

Every remaining shadow spread across the platform, sluggish and burning at the edges but holding for a second.

"Only a moment!"

"Kael, break the armor!"

Kael’s greatsword and both gauntlets hammered the same spot until the plating cracked. Rika’s axe followed into the fracture and Vex’s Piercing Arrow found the opening but didn’t finish it.

A massive blade of compressed blood rose overhead.

Lucien threw both scythes, one hooking the central core, one wrapping the boss’s upper body and pulled with everything he had.

The core dragged sideways as the blade crashed past the party into the platform behind them instead.

Lucien hit the ground on one knee, forcing a thin stream of blood around the exposed core with Blood Manipulation.

"Now!"

Rika’s axe slashed, Kael’s fists punched out, Vex’s final arrow shot out and Zalor’s shadow blades flashed.

The core fractured completely.

CRACK.

The armor shattered outward and the smaller orbiting cores burst one after another. The condensed body collapsed into a massive pool of red slime and jelly.

Silence filled the chamber.

"Don’t lower your guard," Rika warned with her shield still up.

Nobody moved as the pool bubbled once. A small wave rolled across the stone and settled.

Ten seconds passed then twenty but nothing happened.

Finally Rika lowered her shield. "Seems like we won."

Kael collapsed instantly. "Wonderful."

Everyone else followed within seconds.

They were in bad shape, injured, drained, poisoned by corrosion and their armor and equipment ruined.

Kael was worst, burns covering half his body, armor melted into scrap.

"Drink," Rika ordered, busy passing potions around. "Take the antidote potions first, then the healing ones, don’t forget about mana regen potions too."

Kael downed three bottles in a row. "Why does everything in this dungeon have to be wet and sticky?"

"Because you keep punching everything, when you’re not supposed too." Vex said.

"It’s an effective strategy!"

"It is not."

Lucien, meanwhile stood neat them without a scratch worth mentioning.

He popped a few blood candies and activated Sanguine Rebirth anyway, purely for the audience as some cuts healed and his stamina recovered.

Rika noticed. "You don’t need any potions?"

"I’m not as injured as you all, so this is enough for me."

"Of course he isn’t," Kael groaned from the ground.

’That was a Beginner B-Rank monster?’ Lucien thought, glancing at the dead boss. ’I expected phase two to be much worse, considering this is a boss monster, but I guess not?’

’It barely touched me, even with me holding back completely.’

’Is every High B Rank actually this much stronger ger compared to Beginner B Ranks?’

He dismissed the thought immediately. ’No, that can’t be right, this is likely what happens when you stack a Mythical bloodline, a Divine talent, and dozens of traits at Level 10, I’m not a normal High B Rank, I’m a special case.’

While the others recovered, Lucien gathered the remaining blood an blood jelly of the boss, compressing it steadily into a mountain of small blood jelly candies before it all vanished into his storage ring.

Then he gathered the various small cores and the main core, then the corrosive slime, then the party’s scattered loot.

Rika watched, saying nothing at first.

Then watched another pile disappear.

Then another.

"Lucien."

"Hmm?"

"How large is that ring of yours?"

’Inevitable question, should have expected she’d ask it sooner or later.’

"It’s Rare rank." He said, not telling its actual rank.

"Rare?"

"Yeah around four hundred cubic meters."

Silence.

Kael turned his head slowly. "Four hundred what?"

"Cubic Meters, approximately."

"That’s not a storage ring," Kael said. "That’s a freaking private dimension, you couod stuff an entire house and then some in it."

Rika was already doing math, her own ring of Uncommon Rank and 150m³ was nearly full, and the two extra uncommon storage pouches she carried, which she needed just for this floor’s haul alone.

"My ring would’ve filled twice over," she muttered. "Maybe three times."

"Are you secretly loaded, how about some charity for your broke bro here?" Kael asked.

"The normal Rare rank storage rings usually cap much lower than that," Vex said, frowning. "Only the really expensive ones reach that size, and the max I’ve seen or heard for Rare rank is 500 cubic meters, and that sold for nearly a million gold coins."

"Fuck?! A million just for a storage ring?" Kael gasped.

"Mine’s just slightly larger than average."

"Four hundred meters is not jusy slightly larger than average," Rika said flatly.

"400 cubic meters should cost anywhere from 500,000 to 700,000, depending on the quality and who made it."

Lucien smiled, entirely unbothered as they carried on talking and healing.

They divided the smaller cores and common materials on the spot, agreeing to hold the Bosses main core until they could get it properly appraised at the Guild, and then decide if they want to sell it or keep it from there.

"Does this include hazard pay?" Kael asked, inspecting his share of loot.

"No," Rika said.

"Compensation for being thrown into a wall?"

"No."

"Emotional trauma?"

"You volunteered for most of that," Vex said.

Kael looked genuinely betrayed. "From my own party."

Silver light bloomed from the spot where the Bloodmother Slime had died.

Everyone turned.

A chest suddenly appeared as the excess corrosive liquid in the chamber started dissappearing as the chamber becomes clear, it was silver-plated and silver in colour with dark crimson lines etched into the surface.

Exhaustion evaporated instantly as they saw the trrasure chest.

Kael sat bolt upright. "Silver!"

"Its better than Iron," Vex said his face brightening.

"That it is," Zalor confirmed.

Kael suddenly turned to Lucien. "Look like your beginner’s luck is running out buddy, we never even got to squeeze it out for its worth." He said with sadness.

"Excuse me?"

"We got hold last time, and that too from an E Rank Dungeon, but now we only got Silver and in a A Rank Dungeon, that’s a downward trend."

"Silver is still excellent," Rika said.

"Sure, but where’s the gold?"

"You sound ungrateful."

"I’m concerned about my friends luck running out."

’He might actually have a point,’ Lucien thought jokingly eyeing the chest.

They all gathered around it, their exhaustion forgotten.

"So, you guy’s ready to see our real loot?" Rika asked.

"Wait! Who’s going to open it?" Kael asked.

"What does it matter who opens it?" She asked back as she pressed her palm to the lid as silver light burst put.