Heart of the Void: Sosaku Online - Book 2

by J. Arthur Klein

  There was nothing I could do to prevent it either. The frenzied attack happened too quickly for me to get off a spell.

  It paid the price for that fury though. Mika and Kjara tore into its unprotected back, creating veritable geysers of black mist with their attacks and dropping its health down to half.

  That was when things got really weird.

  The manifestation reared up and slammed all four of its fists into the ground, creating a shock wave that sent us all flying.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Repulse! ***

  Even Amenhotep’s normally unmovable self wasn’t immune from its effects. The only ones still standing after the fact, somehow harnessing their high stats to do some sort of midair cat-fu, were Mika and Kjara.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Voidwave II ***

  I cursed and looked down to see that the entire network of veins was pulsing. There were several gaps in the web where the sarcophagi had once stood. I spotted one just a few feet to my left and ran for it.

  “Get to the clean spots!” Kjara yelled, beating me to it.

  I turned back to order the NPCs to safety, but they had already charged back in and resumed their battle against the now unguarded boss, dropping its health even further. A second later they were all consumed as the room was plunged into darkness.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Voidseeker ***

  Amenhotep must have been slow on his feet. His health bar dropped down to ten percent as the darkness ate away at his form.

  When the darkness subsided, the four armed, squid headed Manifestation of the Devourer was gone and in its place was a massive shadowy storm surrounding an inky black heart. Tendrils of deep purple and black energy pulsed out from the heart and formed long, tentacle like appendages that began to creep across the tomb floor towards us.

  Wondering what kind of insanity we were in for now, I moved towards my companions and used a large portion of my remaining mana getting Amenhotep back into fighting shape before turning back to consider the boss’ new phase.

  The tendrils were about a foot in diameter and spread outwards from the central cloud. One of the tendrils snaked into Kjara’s range, quickening as if sensing her proximity. She lashed out with her swords, the blades passing clean through the smoke-like appendage and severing the last two feet of tendril.

  A sound reminiscent of static filled the air and my mind as the rest of the tendril was sucked back into the main body of the cloud.

  Seconds later, a massive spear of darkness erupted from the central mass, barely missing Kjara as she rolled to the side. The boss’ health bar hadn’t even budged from her attack.

  Mika moved over to another tendril and drove his daggers into it, resulting in a similar static scream and follow up shadow spear which was dodged as well.

  Having discovered its prey, more and more tendrils began to crawl in our direction. Every attack on the smokey appendages was answered with a strike from the core and the same lack of impact on the boss’ health bar.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do? Nothing seems to be damaging the damned thing.” Mika yelled. “All this dodging isn’t doing wonders for my stamina either, especially with no regen.”

  “Let me try something,” Kjara said, moving back and swapping her swords for her bow.

  She knocked an arrow and took aim at something in the boss’ central mass and let fly, her arrow disappearing into the cloud and hitting something solid with a meaty thunk.

  The enemy’s health dropped a full two percent and the tendrils started to go crazy, whipping around like the nightmare version of an excited Kermit the Frog.

  One of the tentacles slammed into my back and sent me sprawling. The attack’s icy touch pierced through my armor and froze the flesh beneath, dropping my health by a good chunk. A second flailing tendril smashed me while I was down, and I barely rolled out of the way of a third that would probably have sent me to respawn.

  Channeling Soothing Touch to take care of the frostbite on my back, I looked around to take stock.

  Mika had dodged the flailing tendrils near him, but Amenhotep had been caught in the thick of it. I don’t know how many of the things had connected before I regained my feet, but I saw the last one as it slammed into his prone form, dropping his health to zero and sending him on a trip back to the underworld.

  After about twenty seconds or so the tendrils settled back to the floor and returned to their more sedate meandering.

  Kjara drew another arrow and called out, “Keep hitting the tentacles. Every time we get rid of one, the smoke in the center clears a bit and I can see the heart better. Last time I hit it through the smoke, but I think if we time it right, I might be able to get a direct hit.”

  “Great. I’ll get a spell ready and-” I began.

  “No!” Kjara and Mika screamed simultaneously, and I sighed.

  Kjara continued much more gently, “No regen remember, we need every drop of your mana for healing. How many potions do you have left?”

  I did a quick check of my pouches. “Two more moderates and one minor,” I respond.

  “Good,” she said and gestured towards the tentacle that had almost snuck up on me while I was checking my inventory. “Play it smart. We beat this guy and you can rain holy fire down on whatever we fight next time, I promise.”

  Chuckling, I turned and slashed my spear through the smokey tentacle and jumped to the side, deflecting the boss’ answering spike with my shield.

  Meanwhile, Mika was having a field day. His high Agility allowed him to bob and weave through the monster’s web of feelers, cutting and dodging as he went.

  Being much less nimble myself, I kept to the outskirts of the fight, using my spear to circumcise the tendrils that were approaching where Kjara was readying her shot.

  I was far enough from the boss’ main body that the answering blows were weak enough for my shield to handle, and blocking them had the added benefit of occasionally triggering my combat caster boon for some free healing.

  “Okay, that’s good!” Kjara called out. “Now clear out of there before it turns into the whacky flailing inflatable tube man on you!”

  Mika immediately made a break for it as Kjara began to mutter something under her breath. The tip of her arrow started to pulse with a pure, golden glow.

  The arrow shot across the room, leaving a trail of light in its wake. It pierced the dark mist of the boss’ body and sank into the heart at the center of its mass. When it made contact, the entire cloud lit up from the inside, like lightning in a thunderstorm and the enemy’s health dropped down to thirty percent.

  “Holy shit!” I gasped. “Do it again!”

  The boss went full on berserk, flailing its tendrils once again. Luckily, we were all far enough away to avoid most of its fury, and those tendrils that did reach us were weak enough to deflect.

  “Did you learn a new skill or something?” I asked.

  Kjara shook her head. “No. I just used aimed shot and my Ahn’ep skill to pump the damage with my divine favor. That used up a big chunk of my pool. I can only do one more shot like that before I’m tapped.”

  Mika smiled at that. “Definitely worth it. I say do it.”

  The boss’s flailing mode ended, its rolling clouds looking patchy and incomplete as they swirled and spread through the area.

  “Okay,” Kjara said and knocked another arrow. “Go give Squidward a trim and I’ll give him another dose of god juice.”

  “God juice? Really?” I said, giving her a look.

  She shrugged and smiled. “Too much?”

  I just shook my head and went back to culling any of the tendrils that got close while Mika danced and slashed his way through the battle.

  As soon as the cooldown was up, I drank my last moderate rejuvenation potion and grimaced at my mana pool, which was still running low. Hopefully it would be enough to keep us alive without a tank.

  “Okay Mika! Get out of there!” she cried when the rolling
clouds had reached their low point.

  As soon as the dýrafólk was clear, she made the shot. The arrow thudded into the creature and dropped its health all the way down to twenty-two percent. “Critical Hit!” she cheered!

  Instead of the anticipated shift to flailing tentacle mode, the creature exploded in a nova of black spheres.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Void Nova! ***

  Mika nimbly dodged to the side, but Kjara and I weren’t as quick and were knocked backwards as the balls of dark energy slammed into us.

  The ball scalded me with its icy, shadowy touch, and I screamed in agony as I felt the flesh along my entire right side freeze and crack from the cold. My hit points dropped down to twenty percent, and a slow debuff took hold as I stumbled to the side.

  I glanced at the party window and saw Kjara was much better off than I and was still over half health.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Void-rain! ***

  Mika was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear him through the pain and strange static sound that was permeating the room.

  Letting the healing energy of Soothing Touch flow through me, I used up some of my dwindling mana supply to wash away my pain enough that I could focus on what was going on around me.

  The form of the boss had shifted once again. Floating in the center of the room was a pitch black heart surrounded by a translucent shield of glowing purple energy. A pillar of rolling blackness extended upwards to a massive, swirling cloud of void stuff that covered the entire ceiling.

  From that cloud of shadows, pure black spheres were falling like an unholy rain.

  I lurched to the side just in time to dodge one of the falling spheres. It hit the ground and burst, splattering some void-stuff onto my legs. Each spot of contact froze my armor and flesh and sent sharp spikes of pain through my body.

  A small puddle of the liquid remained on the ground, creating a small no-man's-land that slowly started to shrink. Very slowly.

  I glanced up and saw more of the spheres falling from the clouds overhead, creating more and more areas where it was no longer safe to stand.

  I quickly cleansed the slow debuff off of myself and Kjara. The mana cost dropped my pool to just over ten percent, but being able to move freely and dodge the rain of shadowy death was more important than the mana at that point.

  Mika was making his way towards the floating heart at the center of the room, daggers gleaming, while Kjara was trying to both dodge the deadly raindrops and aim her bow.

  “Arrg! Screw it!” she yelled and swapped out her bow for her blades after her third arrow glanced off of the shimmering shield around the heart.

  I followed behind, playing a deadly hybrid game of hopscotch and dodgeball as we moved closer to the juicy center.

  A quick look around showed spots where the AOE’s had disappeared, leaving the stone floor pitted and cracked. At least the entire floor won’t end up as a pool of shadowy death, I thought as I hopped over yet another puddle to a safe spot.

  Mika reached the center first and looked over at me. “Hey Kheph,” he said smiling. “How many stabs does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?”

  “What?” I said, missing my stride and taking another nasty cold burn as I was forced to use my shield to deflect one of the raindrops.

  “One!” Mika yelled, and drove his dagger into the purple shield, causing a few small cracks to appear. He drove the second dagger, “Two,” and the cracks widened. “Three!” he yelled, and the sphere shattered under his blow, sending the dýrafólk stumbling backwards right into the path of a blob of falling death.

  He screamed as the shadowy liquid covered most of his body and dropped his health down to almost nothing.

  Kjara dashed in and sank her blades into the exposed heart while I used a good chunk of my remaining mana to cleanse and heal Mika enough to function.

  I moved forward and into position to strike the heart as well, using all but a sliver of my mana to heal Kjara to full, barely keeping myself from hitting zero and revisiting that hell that was mana burn.

  Mika drank a healing potion, jumping his health all the way back into the green and then leapt back onto the heart and began performing a rogue’s special version of a triple bypass on the primordial mass.

  Its hit points plummeted with each thunk of blade into meat, dropping to twenty, then seventeen percent as Kjara and Mika laid into it while dodging the ever falling spheres.

  Not having enough mana left to cast any more Cure Wounds spells, I moved in and added my own melee attacks to the mix, ever mindful of the liquid death falling from above.

  I activated Precision Strike, using my as-of-yet barely touched endurance pool to do the most damage possible.

  My initial strike dropped its health by another percent, and my follow up attack sank deep into the shadowy organ.

  A wash of power flowed into me as my Combat Caster skill triggered, and borrowing a page out of Kjara’s playbook, I shunted that free spell, and a full third of my total divine favor pool into a Sunstrike that I channeled through my spear which was still buried deep within the heart.

  My Sunspear lit up like a supernova as the spell pulsed down its length and exploded within the shadowy heart, sending all three of us flying backwards.

  I quickly rolled out of the dark puddle I had landed in, hissing in pain as the liquid flash froze my skin on contact, even through my armor, and dropped my health below fifty percent.

  Kjara and Mika had managed to ninja their way around landing in any of the ick, and were now standing staring at the boss’s heart as it began to shift once again.

  *** Manifestation of the Devourer uses Voidbringer! ***

  The clouds above and puddles below all turned to mist and swelled to fill the entire room, draining all color and heat from the room.

  My health began to drain slowly, and I saw a similar, yet slower effect on the health bars of my companions.

  The black heart was in awful shape, dripping black ichor from the myriad of wounds covering its surface. Its health bar was at five percent.

  “Burn phase!” Kjara yelled and sprinted back in to finish off the boss.

  Mika and I ran in as well, racing against the constant drain upon our life forces. I thrust my spear in again and again, hoping for another critical to fuel my spells.

  My health dropped to ten percent, and my arms started shivering too hard to continue to attack. Kjara gave me a concerned look.

  “K… k… keep attacking!” I stammered and grabbed the one major healing potion I’d held onto for emergency situations. I downed it in a single gulp, saving me from imminent death and putting some strength back into my limbs.

  Fighting against the cold, I cursed at myself and activated my awakened racial special ability, igniting my inner fire and coating my entire body with glowing golden flames.

  The flames didn’t provide any warmth, but the increased damage would at least be of use. Concentrating on every attack, I spammed Precisions Strike, but still no crits.

  The boss’ health dropped from three percent, to two, and when it hit one percent, I felt the drain on my life force intensify. The shivering grew as well, and with the last of my strength I thrust my spear into the heart one last time and left it there, hoping the shroud of holy fire would continue to damage the boss even if I could no longer effectively wield the weapon.

  I collapsed to my knees as my health dropped below ten percent and saw that Kjara wasn’t doing much better.

  Mika’s health bar winked out, and I heard a dull thud as the dýrafólk’s body hit the floor.

  *** Mika has been killed! ***

  My eyes locked onto Kjara’s health bar as it dropped to ten and then five percent. It was all up to her at that point so I made a decision I would not live to regret.

  Knowing the consequences, I reached out and laid my hands on Kjara’s foot, shoving all of my remaining mana into Soothing Touch and adding all but ten of my divine favor, for
ty points as well.

  I felt the magic take shape and heard a yelp from her as her health bar surged, but then the mana burn hit and my world became blackness and pain, and then the darkness of death.

  *** You have exceeded your current spell casting limits! ***

  *** You suffer massive Stamina damage from Mana Burn. ***

  *** You are Exhausted. ***

  *** You have become Incapacitated. ***

  *** Aspect of the Light I is no longer active. ***

  *** You have been killed ***

  As I materialized in the afterlife, I collapsed as the aftershocks of the mana burn hit me. The condition and debuff were gone, but the memory of having someone drill a hole into your skull and fill it with ornery fire ants is a hard one to shake.

  Seconds later, another wall of messages scrolled by and I found that there was something that could take away the sting: Victory.

  *** Your party has defeated the Manifestation of the Devourer (Boss)! Your party gains 6298xp. ***

  *** You have gained 20 Divine Favor! ***

  *** Your party has killed 3 Corrupted Bodyguards! Your party gains 900xp ***

  *** Your party has cleansed 5 Corrupted Bodyguards! Your party gains 375xp ***

  *** Your party has cleansed 4 Corrupted Soulguards! Your party gains 812xp ***

  *** You have gained 24 Divine Favor! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Combat Caster! Rank 12 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Spear! Rank 13 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Endurance! Rank 8 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Endurance! Rank 9 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Precision Strike! Rank 11 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have gained a better understanding of the Soothing Touch spell! Rank 7 Achieved! ***

  *** Congratulations! You have become more proficient in Aura of the Underworld! Rank 4 Achieved! ***

  *** Mika has reached level 13! ***

  *** Kjara has reached level 14! ***