Chapter 136: The Dungeon that is a Puzzle in Itself Part 5

The cloud of poison was going to be a huge problem if it kept all of their close range fighters from being able to get inside the scorpions guard. At the moment they all had to stay away and outside of Aito and Lilly that meant that the Scorpion had a distinct advantage as long as it was able to keep them at bay. Lilly's attack even if empowered would only annoy the heavily armored creature and since the poison gas that it was emitting didn't blow up the second it met some of Cinder's fireballs, Joshua was certain that the gas was not flammable. Aito had no way of piercing through the creature's armor with any of his bullets even when empowered. The best he could do was aim for the creatures other eye, but if the creature could feel and control the crystals around it then Joshua was certain that it didn't rely on eyesight all that much in the first place.

"Don't worry about the poison I'll take care of it." Henry said before he casted another spell that created a blue haze that surrounded each of them. "This will protect you from the poison for a certain time period. When the poison is done eating through the blue haze around your body you need to back away so that it can't take effect on you."

"Good, Aito go ahead and take out its other eye. It may not rely on its sight all that much but the pain can give us another opening while it thinks it safe hiding behind its poison. We have to be in and out while fighting it from now on so don't be reckless." Joshua said getting a nod from everyone before Aito fired off a shot directly at the scorpions remaining eye that cause the giant creature to flinch back in pain. The poison did cover their sight a bit, but it wasn't all that dense so they were able to get a good view of the scorpion and that was especially the case for someone that had amazingly enhanced eye sight like Aito.

The opening that was created allowed them to start their next barrage of attacks and Joshua already knew what to look for when going into the fight after his first engagement with the creature. It was easy to upset so he smashed his scale blade directly into the crystal that formed around its skull. The crystal was much thicker and would take several attacks to break through, but that wasn't his intentions at the moment. He just wanted the creature to direct all of its anger at him. It worked liked he expected as the beast tried to skewer him with its stinger, but Joshua parried it while stepping back. The block brought Henry's enchantment into effect and the overgrown bug was paralyzed for a split second which was long enough for Joshua to counter and smash his aura covered scale blade into the creature's tail. It was covered in crystal, but the blow cracked a few places along its tail which was a good start.

Meanwhile Adrian used his shadow steps to close in on the giant creature's legs, but this scorpion wasn't different from the rest and had its joints covered in crystal which made it hard for Henry to cut any of its legs off. The creature didn't rely on speed or movement so it didn't have to have unprotected legs so that it could move around faster. Instead it seemed to relish in staying in one spot and being for all intents and purposes a turtle. So Henry was forced to crack through the crystal before he could cut off any of its legs and go for its weak spots. He had to dive out of the way whenever the crystal on the ground around him tried to defend the sub- boss and kill him. Joshua may have had the boss's main attention, but it was still able to react slightly to the others' attacks.

Amy on the other hand was leaping around and smashing her fist directly into the sides of the scorpion. Each of her blows did damage to the creatures insides, but do to its size and high vitality the damage was minimal and the large scorpion would occasionally swing its tail towards her to get her to back away. Lilly on the other hand had switched over to Mr. Hoppy and used his poison dart ability on the exposed part of the creature's body from where its claw had been broken off. It would take a while for the poison to take serious effect since the dart was nowhere near any vital portion of its body, but it would be better than nothing. She then switched back to Cinder and empowered her fireball attacks which started blowing off chunks of crystal from the powerful explosions. It was in small amounts, but it would eventually add up. Not to mention all of the bubble traps that were blowing up every time they touched the scorpion. The constant damage was racking up on its armor.

With all this going on Aito made sure to fire off explosive rounds into any crack he could find on the creature's crystal armor. The constant explosions slowly tore off its outer armor and allowed Henry and Amy to do more damage to the creature up close. By the ten minute mark Joshua had its other claw torn off and had to back away do to the poison eating through Henry's protection spells. He recasted the spells on the entire group and they went back to work slowly, but surely tearing the poor scorpion apart. The creature was tough, but not very hard to deal with as long as you handled things carefully.

At the thirty minute mark the creature let out its last wail as Henry had cut off all of its legs and the damage that Amy was able to deal to its inside had shown from the blood leaking from its mouth and out of the cracks of its exoskeleton. Joshua put the creature out of its misery with a combination of skills to its skull followed by a reset which allowed him to do his echo strike twice and tear the poor things skull apart. At that moment it finally collapsed and they all could feel a surge of strength feel them. It wasn't enough for Adrian, Aito, or Henry to level up, but the rest were able to. It was surprising to Joshua that it took so long for them to just gain one level from the dungeon and he was starting to see why higher level players took so long to gain levels.

This dungeon wasn't first discovered by them so they didn't get the bonus experience boost at the moment, but a level was a level and any gain in strength was much appreciated. "Well that wasn't too bad, but I can tell why groups would be tired out at this point." Joshua said getting nods from the others after they caught their breaths from the long intensive fight.

"It wasn't all that complicated, but it took so long to get through its armor let alone kill it." Amy said with a big smile as she was still running on adrenaline. "Even my penetrative force was having little effect on it since it had so much vitality. The thing was basically a punching bag meant to outlast you."

"Yeah imagine doing that fight with just three people and one of the main damage dealers being forced to keep the creatures attention the entire time without dying from poison." Adrian said as he whistled at the size of the corpse left behind. "When you think of that you can understand why it took us so long to put this thing down."

"Plus we didn't know how it would fight the first time around." Aito replied.

"Do you think there's any difference in this fight if you have a far larger group of people to take it on?" Joshua asked as he turned to Henry. He remembered how banged up Martin's group looked earlier when they met them and it made him wonder why they struggled with it so much.

"I doubt it, the creature might summon a couple of scorpions to help it or something, but nothing major considering the size of the room." Henry said after thinking over Joshua's question. "Most of its damaging abilities have a wide area of effect so larger groups would have trouble dealing with it even if they had more people around. The poison would affect them all the same if not worse considering it's rare to have someone like me in the group that can enhance everyone against certain conditions."

"Stop praising yourself so much man, it doesn't look good." Adrian said as he patted Henry on the shoulder. "Anyways why don't you collect it Joshua so that we can split it up when we get back."

"Is there anything special about the materials from this thing? You guys said this dungeon had some amazing raw materials, but I haven't seen any chest since we came in here." Joshua asked as he put the large beast in his inventory.

"Well that sub-boss alone is a gold mine. The chitin in its exoskeleton is abnormally strong yet when used with other agents becomes fairly flexible. It makes great armor and has a few special properties of its own." Adrian said thinking back on some of the things they had figured out after they had the stuff appraised.

"What kind of properties?" Lilly asked she got back onto the back of Cinder after the large spider had shrunk back down in size after the fight.

"Well it is highly poison resistant so if you're wearing this armor it actually will pull in the poison around you and absorb it. It will slowly purify it. Plus if you use it to make a weapon it can hold poisons extremely well all though it would work best with a dagger since a sword would probably break apart if it was made with this stuff after to many hits. As long as you aren't directly injected with the poison or forced to breathe it in then the armor could protect you from it. It is also fairly resistant to earth based spells with all of its connections to crystals and such. The material is good for specific stuff." Adrian explained.

"This isn't the only material in this place though. Although no one has seen what the boss will give you the materials you gain from just clearing the place are fairly amazing as well. The first party that came to this place got a list of the raw materials since the dungeon told them of what they could gain, but they weren't able to clear the place. Now everyone is rushing to be the first ones to clear the dungeon so they can be a step ahead and get a shot at those materials." Henry explained.

"Well even if that wasn't the case it would still be a fairly good dungeon for grinding as long as you know the quickest path through it. From what I can tell so far it might take us less than a day to clear this place and we'd be able to gain a ton of experience in doing so instead of being lost for days on end." Joshua said before they all turned to look at a platform on the other side of the room where the giant scorpion had been resting beforehand. Joshua also noticed a smaller platform to the side that was glowing and just sitting there without seeming like it could be moved from the spot.

"Well now we just need to follow the proper pattern that will lead us to the boss room." Henry said as he started moving towards the platform. The group had rested long enough to catch their breaths and the time it would take for the platform to move around would give them even more time to rest. They needed to catch up to the other group before the place was cleared so they didn't have time to sit around. "We'll have to watch out for any ambushes that the other group may have left behind from now on. They were able to injure Martin's group by surprising them and we can't afford to let that happen." They all nodded before following Henry on to the platform and made their way to the last section of the dungeon.