The Territory Boss Pt2

"It sounds provocative but your words hold no meaning to me," the lich lord says directly in my mind as everyone else in the area starts giving me funny looks after my outburst.

Realizing something was wrong from the way everyone was looking at me, I turn to Go and hesitantly ask, "Can you guys not hear him?" Proving my worries to be as real as my own hands, Go give me a single brief shake of his head in answer to my question.

Worse, still, was the fact that nobody else knew I was actually having a conversation with the raid boss so it simply looked like I was crying for its attention by introducing myself and dropping famous anime lines on its head. Instead of a brave warrior about the face their arch enemy in life, I simply looked like an over excited nerd. I could have cried just then but no tears would come to wash away my shame.

Unaware of or uncaring for the predicament I found myself in, Lich Lord Trollbone says, "I am left wondering how an entity of parasite and plague such as yourself would receive the acknowledgment of Lady Fate. I can sense only a single mind in you which means you are not the Origin. How did you come to be?"

A single mind? Origin? What the hell are you talking about?

"I'm just lucky, I guess," I reply instead, trying not to show that I had no idea what they were talking about. "What about you, Trollbone, how did YOU come to be?"

Looking up to the sky as if searching the heavens for answers that had long since left his mind, the giant bone monster says almost wistfully in a voice that was only half as tense as previously, "Luck may have played a part in me, as well. I was once the chieftain of all trolls in the mountains until humans and demons crossed paths here. We trolls serve nature while demons consume it, making them our natural enemies. When I brought my people here to face the threat and punish the humans who caused it… the Ancestor Cairn had crumbled and laid waste the everything in the middle of this forest."

Continuing to sound pensive as they turn their empty sockets back toward me, a small white pinprick of flickering light appeared in the depths of those abysmal eye sockets. "Despite the actions of our ancestral guardians, there still exists a great darkness in this land and the ancestors would not allow us to leave. Thus, I sacrificed myself to the great spirits to help in whatever way they needed. The bones of the ancestors arose from the ground and came to be, blessing me with ancient powers that should no longer exist in this world while cursing me with the blessing of immortality…

"This is why I am here," he says after letting his words trail off for but a single breath of time. "You, why have you come to this place? Are you here to attempt consuming the darkness below or do you simply seek to free it?"

"End it," I state briskly with zero hesitation whatsoever. "Once I get passed you, I am going down that hole and destroying everything that threatens the safety and balance of this world. If not, I would not be able to collect the prize at the end. To an extent, you're right, I am here to simply eat and grow stronger. However, my growth serves this world."

Then, drawing this short exchange to a close, I bring out and eat whole an entire mana regen potion before asking, "Are you going to do your job of protecting this world or are you going to stand in my way?"

"You say that as though keeping you from entering does not protect my people," Trollbone counters almost lazily. "In order to reach this place, you must have not only killed untold numbers of my people but even my direct descendant. If you were truly here for a just cause, would it have been necessary to slaughter my people?!"

The laziness was gone from its telepathic voice at that point and the light in its eyes grew, forming into a visible ball of white fire that looked as though it was ready to consume the world. Considering the size of its eye sockets, those little balls of flames were probably as big as I was at this point. Still, I could not give ground at this point.

This raid boss was now fully sentient and its restrictions were removed, which means its original fight pattern and skill uses or cools were now completely different. I had never seen it do more than throw transformed darkness at Duality and Thirteenth, but I could already imagine what would happen to me while I held all of its attention in a fight. It would NOT be pretty!

As long as I could make some headway with its sentience, there was a chance that nobody would have to die and I needed to take that chance.

Giving the giant skeleton a bland and unimpressed look, I counter, "And you say that as though it is as simple as walking up and explaining ourselves! You're the only troll related THING I have ever met that could communicate. Do all of your trolls speak the human languages? If so, why were THEY the ones who attacked us as soon as we got here without any warning or reasoning? Humans caused this mess and now humans are coming to clean up after themselves, but you and your people have taken it upon yourselves to be nothing but an obstinate obstacle! Tell me, what should I have done? Go home and let the darkness below continue to fester and grow until it can one day overwhelm you? BULLSHIT!"

The flames in its eyes constricted like actual pupils, returning to tiny pinpricks of light like they had been before. The skeleton seems to nod to itself as if realization were dawning before saying, "It is true our species cannot communicate, few trolls have higher thought which would allow them to communicate with other species. Even myself have been incapable of speaking to anyone but you for several hundred years. Do you mean to say that we should have done the same thing, stayed home and turned our backs on the Outsiders trying to enter our realm?"

Outsiders… is this future content? Origin, at least, was obviously related to my cordyceps. Outsiders sounds a lot worse that the gateway to hell and demons that I was told had been opened here!

"Not at all," I say quickly and softly, switching gears to try appealing to the lich lord emotionally. "Without you and your people, this world would have seen war the likes of which has not existed for entire eras. You and your people have safeguarded the entire world from darkness and never once did you receive or require acknowledgment. If not for the situation right now, I could almost honestly say that it is an honor just to have this conversation with you. However, the times have changed… we no longer need a guardian to act as a wall between them and us but instead we need you to open the gate and let us protect ourselves."

"Interesting words… from one without a soul bound to this world," Trollbone seems to muse more to himself than to me. "You say things like 'us' and 'we', but you cannot claim such things. I can see it as clearly as Melpomene's Mark upon your cheek, you do not belong to this world, Traveler!"

Oh, man, my biggest card against NPC was just used against me!

Pushing forward without giving myself or the enemy time to think and formulate, I ask, "So, what? My body might not be anymore, but my soul is still that of a human! I might not have been born on this world but when I see happiness I still feel happiness, when I see tragedy I still feel sorrow. When I see injustice, I even feel rage! In every world I have been to, they are all the same. The people, the places, the monsters, nothing has ever truly been new. Just like you.

"A being that sacrificed itself for the greater good to protect the things it holds dear," I carry on vehemently, doing my best to initially describe the lich lord in a righteous light. "I have not only seen but I have fought countless beings just like you and all of them were the same. At first, they were the embodiment of righteousness but their own power poisoned them! Do you live for as long as you guard this place? Has your vision been blinded by the curse of a new mortality so that you fear the destruction of the darkness you guard against?"

There was a brief moment of silence after those words, one pungently filled with expectation. However, I continued to push the same point without allowing the lich lord a chance to retort.

"Lich Lord Trollbone," I say with a gentle seriousness that was hard to pull off, "you are a being of incredible power and I would much more prefer for you to support my sword than to clash against it. However, if you are intent on preserving the gateway below then I have no choice but to have you support my sword in a different way. Just like I can consume the flesh and power of most anything in this world, my sword can devour the restless souls of the undead. Either stand aside so that I can fulfill my duty to this new world or become nothing more than my stepping stone!"

The flames in Trollbone's eyes flared to life at my provocation, growing until they filled a full third of the lich lord's empty eye sockets. A pressure unlike anything I had ever experienced descended upon not only me but everybody here, pushing down on my body as if a mountain had been placed on my shoulders. From my periphery I could see that dozens if not over a hundred people were forced to the ground in the face of this intangible force.

"You dare to presume that you can threaten me?!" Lich Lord Trollbone roars, throwing back its head and loosing a hellish wail that cases the ground and air to tremor, making many who fought to stay standing collapse to the ground.

My body was shaking uncontrollably and the air around me felt as if the temperature had dropped into the negatives. I could feel intense pains blossoming all about my body as blood vessels and muscles started to burst from the strain of remaining upright. Despite this, though, I never let my eyes waver from Trollbone's burning gaze.

"If I have the power to threaten the Outsiders and cut off their path of entry to this world, how dare YOU presume to stop me?!" I yell back in a challenge, unleashing my mana on my own body to grow into my basic hulk form before opening up my head and shoulders to roar with almost a thousand different 'voices'.

Seeing that this was only going to continue back and forth until I finally enraged the raid boss into fighting me, I go all in and defiantly cry out, "I will never forget and will always appreciate the curse you took upon yourself to protect this world, but your time is over! Come! Climb down from your high horse and let me show you the power the end this darkness once and for all, the same power you lack!"

"So be it!" Lich Lord Trollbone roars in my mind with so much power that one of my knees almost buckled from the pressure on my brain, causing something dark and hot to trickle from my eyes, ears, and nose.

Then, as I was throwing on my numerous layers of defenses, a giant skeletal leg taller than most castles rose up from the pit of darkness and stepped up onto the edge. As the foot found purchase on solid ground, it and the leg above began to shrink and condense into more normal sizes. Following suit as the lich lord bears its weight down on that leg to raise the other, Trollbone himself began to shrink down in size as it left behind the pit it protected.

Now, the lich lord stood as tall as the Troll Commander but its ivory colored bones were now solid black as gaseous darkness wafted out from its body like a cloak of shadows to make its form seem ethereal and vague. Reaching into his own chest, Lich Lord Trollbone draws forth a sword of some black crystalline substance that I immediately recognized. The sword itself was nearly as tall as Trollbone and a third as broad as his shoulders!

Responding in kind, I overlay my current defenses with a dense layer of soul bone scales while reaching over my shoulder to grasp Hauntings' hilt in a single giant hand while slimming down its claws to properly grasp my sword.

The sight of its own soul bone armoring my body was enough to cause the flames filling Trollbone's eyes to flicker, almost giving them the appearance of a flash of uncertainty. "So it is true," Trollbone murmurs in the back of my mind. "You truly have already eaten me. However, I was already dead centuries ago!"

"That's what I already said!" I cry out suddenly, casting Flash Step to appear right in front of the raid boss while chopping my Hauntings straight down on its body. Even though I moved near instantaneously, Trollbone's own sword was already raised up in front of its face so that only his brightly blazing eyes were visible as Hauntings was stopped inches away from meeting its neck and shoulder.

"THIS is the power you are so proud of?" Trollbone asks with a laughing voice as sparks and shadows dance from our crossed swords, repelling one another with energies trying to consume each other. "THIS IS NOTHING!"

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