Chapter 2015: Plague Matriarch

Waiting was overrated, Hawk decided. Why did they have to count every time? He already knew how to count to three.

He knew they were going, they knew they were going, why wait?

Was it a lucky charm thing?

What if he didn’t?

The thought took all three seconds before Karl gave him the go ahead, and the phoenix began to douse the boss fight area in fire, setting the entire swampy area alight, but leaving two small ponds in the corners uncovered.

The boss sprayed something that immediately put the Ghostflame Fire out, so it couldn’t be simple water, but the fight had started, and the plague zombies spawned at every pool, including the two that were not burning.

At least most of those were burning.

The group engaged the boss, while the Cerro type Greater Golems rampaged through the burning zombies, simply smashing them aside and trampling the corpses.

A good time for any Cerro.

Carnage chased down the boss, who fended him off with surprising agility, using a staff to turn aside the blows from his axe. It might have even been a close fight, if it wasn’t for the fact that Carnage was not alone.

Hawk worked with Karl’s golems to take care of the zombies, which left the entire group free to engage the boss. And the boss was not nearly as durable as the first one. Every skill that landed cleanly left noticeable damage, and Karl’s healing allowed them to stand in the toxic fog while enduring the waves of plague magic that the Matriarch used.

You could almost call it a textbook strategy for the fight, if it weren’t for the fact that you normally needed at least half the group to eliminate the zombies.

Then, the Plague Matriarch dove into a pool and came up on the far side of the fight, right next to a newly spawned zombie.

She placed a hand on it, and her health came up by a sliver, but before she could consume more of them the other Carnage was on her, driving her away from the puddles and any chance of recovery.

The group rushed across the battlefield, hacking their way through the undead, until they could engage the boss again.

Its health was dropping fast, and Hawk was in his full glory, with the entire swamp set on fire, to the point that the toxic puddles were boiling and actually adding to the toxic fog effect that the boss created.

Hawk didn’t mind.

The fog was all the way down there, and he was up here, away from the entire problem.

Karl chuckled at his bird brained companion, who failed to realize that there was any sort of concern for the rest of the group. The toxins still applied to the group with [Eternal Lightning] up, though the swamp water’s effect did not.

That was good enough for Karl. Adding a barrier that filtered the air effectively enough to block magical effects would be much more of a pain.

There was no physical poison in the air that made it to their lungs, the barrier blocked that much. It even blocked the taste of Plague Toxin that should have been in the fog. But it didn’t block the magical effect of standing within the radius.

Curiously, Karl noticed that the Dryads did not get affected by the toxin.

They were standing closer to the fight than he was, within the fog, but they were not showing the effect before the waves of curing magic. Perhaps, because it was fog in the swamp?

They were nature elemental creatures. So, they might have some sort of resistance?

Karl pelted the boss with [Spatial Quake] attacks, and watched its health plummet. The Plague Matriarch had no real defence against the attack at all, and it was doing full damage to her, while the team did their best to get the boss down before it could escape again.

Even with the fire, the zombies were starting to overwhelm the golems, but not fast enough that they needed to switch their targets yet.

The boss only had a sliver of health left, and it was dropping fast.

Once it was gone, there would be no new zombies, and the existing ones would lose most of their buffs. Once that happened, it was all over. ℯ

With an overhand swing of Carnage’s axe, the Plague Matriarch was felled, and the miasma around the swamp immediately faded, while the zombies crumbled to the ground. The magic reanimating them was gone, and they were no more than plague ridden corpses now.

Karl clapped one of the Clan Leaders on the shoulder. "Well, that was fun. I thought that she would be jumping around more, trying to dodge, or finding a way around the fires. But no, she just moved once, and then took it.

Much easier than usual. Now, do you want to move on immediately, or should we take a short break?"

The Immortal just shook his head. That was what Karl called an easy fight? Well, perhaps from his standpoint it was, but they had all been extremely tense about the frequency of the cleansing, as they were taking constant toxin stacks from the fog.

That fight was tense enough that they were going to have to visit a green dragon cleric for a smoke after, and they hadn’t even taken major injuries.

"Let’s get this fight over and done with. Plague Dungeons aren’t anyone’s favourites, and the sooner that we can finish in here and get back out, the better."

The others nodded in agreement. They didn’t want to be in this place one minute longer than necessary. Their enthusiasm encouraged Carnage, who rushed off to start more fights, and Hawk, who landed on the big demon’s shoulder, to add more fire to the trash pulls.

There could never be enough fire in a plague dungeon.

While he couldn’t prove it, going by the evidence of the dungeon settings, Hawk was quite convinced that plague demons were actually water element creatures. It was always swampy, damp or gooey wherever they were spawned.

If that wasn’t an evil creature, Hawk didn’t know what was.