Chapter 69

Chapter 69 - The Hidden Enemy

Adam wasn't a combat mage. His only effective method of attacking something was to trap it until Mei or another ally could finish it off.

[Vacuum Shield] was one such trapping spell. The [Reverse Shield] spell he had devised during his first boss battle was another.

But the spell he was about to cast was nothing like either of those.

“I call upon the forefather of math's greatest equation, E=Mc²!” Adam chanted with his half-regenerated mouth, his voice sounding like a heavy smoker suffering from a throat full of broken glass. “Embue my spell with energy, mass, and speed!”

The spell he envisioned was a tiny shield that moved at a speed beyond even light itself, carrying enough energy to detonate a star.

Technically, it was still a shield.

That meant it wasn't an offensive spell, so it shouldn't be affected by the penalty placed on his class that reduced the power of offensive magic. And even if the system classified it as an attack, the overwhelming bonus granted to his shield spells should be enough to compensate.

At least, that was the theory.

[Unknown Spell] (Mythic)

An unknown spell which seems to possess power beyond ordinary Mythic-grade limits, bordering on Universal. 

Effects: Unknown, likely extreme damage

A tiny shield, invisible to the naked eye, appeared at the tip of Adam's finger. He aimed it like a gun and fired.

The spell shot forward.

The sea monkey immediately sensed danger and attempted to dodge. His speed had reached the point where he could move as if he were teleporting through space and time, but even that was meaningless against something moving at a speed beyond comprehension.

The tiny shield passed by his shoulder.

For a brief moment, nothing happened.

The sea monkey looked down, expecting to see a wound.

There was nothing.

Then his expression changed. There should have been something, his body.

Instead half of his body was missing.

It was simply gone.

The attack had happened so quickly that neither his brain nor the rest of his body had even realized the damage had occurred.

“[Perfect Heal].”

Adam immediately cast a powerful healing spell, restoring the sea monkey's missing flesh before flipping through his spell book.

A new page had appeared.

The unknown spell was written there, still unnamed and incomplete, as if the system itself couldn't properly categorize what Adam had created.

Using the spell book as a medium, Adam cast it again.

This time, the mana cost was slightly higher.

The tiny shield shot forward.

Once again, half of the sea monkey's body vanished.

Once again, Adam healed him.

The process repeated.

Again and again.

The roles between attacker and defender had completely reversed.

The sea monkey, who had once been an unstoppable monster chasing Adam down, was now forced to endure a barrage of attacks he couldn't block, dodge, or even understand.

Normally, Adam wouldn't have even been capable of casting a weakened version of the unknown spell.

However, with all of his current buffs combined with the mana battery he had charged but never used, his mana reserves were practically limitless.

Practically.

Even with his ridiculous regeneration and endless supply of energy, the spell was draining his mana at an alarming rate.

Every cast consumed an absurd amount of power, and every time he restored his mana, his body suffered further strain.

“Chat, tell Mei she better hurry up,” Adam said, his voice becoming increasingly hoarse as his regeneration struggled to keep up. “If I don't die from mana exhaustion, the strain from constantly forcing my mana back to full is going to kill me.”

SweetSarah (mod): Um, that's going to be kinda difficult. Mei can't find the last Treasure Guardian...

— — —

Mei searched the empty white room twice and found nothing both times.

Then she ran back through every corridor and treasure room she had already cleared. She looted everything she could find, from scraps of clothing to treasure-holding pedestals, and double-tapped every Treasure Guardian corpse just to make sure they were truly dead.

Yet despite searching every inch of the hidden realm, she still couldn't find the one hundredth Treasure Guardian.

And without defeating it, she remained trapped.

With no other choice, Mei made her way back to the empty room while keeping one eye on the chat, watching for updates about Adam's condition.

She was relieved to hear that he wasn't dying anymore, but that didn't mean she could relax. He was still pushing himself far beyond his limits, and if she didn't find a way out soon, he could still end up killing himself.

When she reached the intricately carved door leading into the empty room, she paused.

For the third time, she examined it, searching for anything she might have missed.

Then a thought suddenly struck her.

“Wait… this is a giant treasure vault. In a lot of games, treasure vaults have mimics mixed in with the treasure, right?”

The chat immediately agreed.

Mei narrowed her eyes.

“So, where are the mimics?”

SeeCuteGirl-iClick: The door!

“Right. The door…”

Mei slowly raised a hand and covered her face.

“Why didn't I think of that sooner?”

She swapped out her blundervolver for her tactical shotgun and activated its exclusive skill.

[Dragon's Breath]

A stream of flames erupted from the shotgun's barrel, instantly setting the wooden door ablaze.

“Aah!!”

The door released a piercing scream.

The sound was so sharp and powerful that Mei's eardrums burst instantly. Blood poured from her ears, dripping down the sides of her face as the horrific shriek echoed through the room.

Even with her ridiculous endurance, she was forced to stumble backward from the pain.

However, she refused to drop her weapon.

Switching the shotgun into slug mode, she pulled the trigger and fired a high-damage piercing round directly into the screaming door.

The shriek abruptly stopped.

Mei blinked.

The burning wooden door twisted and warped before transforming into a massive creature covered from head to toe in gleaming gold coins.

Treasure Warden (Legendary BOSS) - Lv. 150

The Treasure Warden was somehow an even higher level than the two bosses Adam was facing on the outside.

Unlike the fish-monkey Treasure Guardians, which resembled the Sea Monkey whose ability they originated from, this creature looked like a massive three-legged toad. Its skin was covered in countless gold coins instead of warts, giving it the appearance of a walking pile of treasure.

Long_Aotian: Oh, a Money Toad! I keep a few of those as pets. They have an interesting ability to cough up large amounts of money and rare treasures occasionally. Though you have to feed them a small amount of money and treasures every day, so they're a bit more expensive than they're worth. Mine don't have a mimic skill though. Probably because they're only Elite Bosses.

“Eh? Isn't that the auspicious toad from Chinese mythology?” Mei muttered. “You can keep bosses as pets?”

Mei didn't even have time to read the answer.

The massive toad opened its mouth, and a giant tongue covered in sticky saliva shot toward her.

She immediately dove out of the way, rolling across the stone floor before bringing her shotgun up into a crouched firing stance.

She switched to pellet mode and pulled the trigger.

Ten explosive magic pellets slammed into the toad, blasting chunks of golden coins from its body. The coins bounced across the stone floor with a series of metallic clinks.

“Damn! This thing is a tank.”

Despite the attack, the damage was almost nonexistent.

The pellets hadn't even broken through its skin.

Long_Aotian: Money Toads' defense scales with the amount of undigested wealth they possess inside their stomachs. However, every time a gold coin is knocked off its body, it digests some of that wealth to regrow the missing coins. Oh, and if you don't defeat it quickly enough, all of those dropped coins will explode. In an enclosed space like the one you're trapped in, that is basically a guaranteed death.

With the removal of the door, the empty room had transformed into a sealed chamber with solid walls and no exit.

Mei stared at the Treasure Warden.

Apparently, she was now trapped inside with a boss that carried a stomach full of explosives.

“So it's a DPS check?”

Long_Aotian: Basically :shrug:

“Okay, so lots of weak attacks to knock its defense down, followed by one strong attack to finish it off,” Mei said as she quickly formulated a plan. “Sounds easy enough.”

She had only just finished speaking when a loud explosion rocked the room.

A gold coin that had rolled beneath her foot at some point detonated without warning.

The blast launched Mei through the air, sending her crashing into one of the solid white walls behind her. Her body left a streak of blood across the surface, painting the pristine wall an eerie crimson.

She had slammed her head against the wall hard enough to blur her vision. Because of that, she couldn't react in time when the Treasure Warden's tongue shot toward her immediately after the explosion.

The massive tongue stuck to her bulletproof vest and dragged her across the room at the speed of a runaway car.

The shotgun had been knocked from her hands during the blast, though it probably wouldn't have helped much against this thing's ridiculous defense anyway.

Instead, Mei pulled the Bloodletting Dagger from her inventory and drove its chipped, half-destroyed blade into the section of tongue stuck to her chest.

With a sharp yank, she sliced through the tip.

The severed tongue released her, sending her sliding across the floor and away from the Treasure Warden's cavernous mouth.

Unfortunately, the sticky tongue tip remained attached to her vest.

“Ugh.”

Not wanting to spend the rest of the battle covered in the toad's disgusting saliva, Mei removed the vest and summoned her blundervolver again.

She immediately activated [Dual Wielding].

With a pistol in each hand, she began firing both weapons simultaneously.

Gold coins scattered through the air like fireworks.

This time, however, Mei paid close attention to where they landed and avoided stepping into those areas. She had already learned, physically, that every single coin on the ground could become a deadly landmine.

The Treasure Warden wasn't idle either.

Its healed tongue swung above its head like a lasso, building momentum before it whipped forward.

The wild attack came at Mei like a derailed freight train.

She dropped flat onto the ground, pressing her stomach against the floor as the tongue passed over her.

A split second later, she realized how close she had come to disaster.

If she hadn't dodged, the tongue could have either bisected her at the waist or wrapped around her body and dragged her straight into the monster's mouth.

The Treasure Warden didn't let its attack go to waste.

After missing Mei, its tongue swept across the floor, collecting handfuls of scattered gold coins.

“Eh? Don't tell me it can reabsorb those coins.”

Her concern turned out to be unfounded.

The Treasure Warden didn't absorb the coins.

However, that didn't mean she was safe.

The toad launched its tongue forward again, except this time the entire surface was covered in gold coins.

Mei rolled to the side.

She barely avoided the attack, but the coins attached to the tongue exploded the moment it struck the ground.

The blast sent her flying backward once again, slamming her into the wall.

The Treasure Warden had turned its own tongue into a bomb.

Individually, the explosions from the gold coins were dangerous but manageable. However, when dozens of them detonated at once, the combined force was on an entirely different level.

Mei coughed up a mouthful of blood, feeling as though her internal organs had been shaken out of place.

She didn't even have time to recover.

Acting purely on instinct, she rolled away from the wall just as a sticky, blackened tongue slammed into the spot where she had been lying.

The Treasure Warden retracted its charred tongue, but not before collecting the remaining scattered coins.

“Ugh… I really wish I could use that assault rifle right now.”

Mei struggled back onto her feet.

Both of her current weapons were semi-automatic, and her only fully automatic weapon was unusable until she could create physical ammunition for it.

Luckily, she had landed close to her discarded shotgun.

She grabbed it and used the ability from her magic closet to alter its form.

Surprisingly, the magic closet didn't actually need to be summoned for her to use its abilities.

Though she still preferred summoning it because it looked cool.

The Benelli M4-like design shifted instantly, transforming into something resembling a compact Striker-12 Street Sweeper that could be wielded with one hand.

The new weapon had a revolving cylinder capable of holding twelve 12-gauge rounds.

Not that she had any physical ammunition for it.

Since [Dual Wielding] was still active, a phantom copy of the shotgun appeared in her left hand.

The first thing Mei did was activate [Dragon's Breath].

Both Street Sweepers unleashed streams of dragon fire.

The flames twisted together in midair, forming the head of a roaring dragon before it bit into the Treasure Warden's golden flesh.

Fire spread across the creature's entire body, melting the gold coins covering it before they could fall to the ground and create more explosive hazards.

“Turns out fire counters it.”