Anomaly (4)
Evan's plan was sound. Mille would draw the attention of the mini slimes by clubbing them with her trusty staff while Evan played the role of a safety net, ensuring that no slime snuck up from behind while she pulled aggro.
This was an interesting twist of events. In most games, a tank would pull the aggro while ranged and damage type classes would DPS down the mobs from a distance.
Now, a Priest was running around thrashing a hoard of slime in a game of whack-a-mole while a Warrior was picking up strays with a boomerang of all weapons.
What mattered was that it worked. Once Mille had pulled enough mini slimes, she would lead them toward a location where Evan had set up an Unstable Mine in advance.
The tricky part was to lead the slimes to Evan's marked locations before the mines blew up on their own because of the innate timers. The maximum time limit was 30 seconds, and after the timer hit zero, the mine would automatically explode.
The Unstable Mines could also be triggered remotely, but Evan had to be within a certain distance. Fortunately for them, they were in an enclosed area and a few dozen of meters was certainly within remote detonation range. But how did they overcome the 30 seconds time limit? Certainly, 30 seconds might sound like plenty of time, but in reality, it would be inefficient and wasteful to spend one mine just to screw over a couple of slimes.
That's where Evan's D-ranked 'Rest in Pieces' came into play. The proficiency extended the timer of any Static explosives by 30 seconds, offering enough time for Mille to kite a large number of slimes between each remote detonation. It also provided a +2 to the number of Static explosives Evan could deploy at a time.
This essentially meant that before Evan detonated the first mine, he had already laid the groundwork for a second or even a third mine on an open patch of space in the boss room.
The boss slime itself couldn't stop them. It was just as static as Evan's mines and thus no threat unless someone moved too close. Its timely end was finally foreseeable! The mines and the boss slime had that in common.
"It's only a third or something of its original size now, ain't it?" Evan questioned? "We've got one problem, though. I'm out of mines."
"What about your grenades?" Mille sardonically asked.
"Um, only three left."
"Well, screw me diagonally. That's not enough to kill the big fellah, right?"
"Not unless we perform something more risky."
"Like what?"
"Go all out...?"
Mille frowned at the idea.
Sadly, they were out of options and resources. The only resources left were their HP and mana. And what further irked the duo to no end was that the Anomaly had no visible HP bar.
What they saw was that the boss slime was slowly regenerating HP while they were busy dealing with the trash mobs.
[+2 HP]
[+2 HP]
[+2 HP]
Staying idle would put them back to square one.
"Whatever, it's not like we have options here. It's do or be done." Mille finalized.
In preparation for a last-ditch effort, Evan looked up to the sky beyond the crevasse where sunlight entered and heaved a final breath. That's when he remembered Raphael's words.
"Weaknesses. Does the slime have weaknesses?"
"Huh?"
"We know that the Anomaly has low resistance to water magic, ice in particular. What else?"
"Well, you can probably squish the small ones by leaping on them a few times, but it's risky if you get sucked in. I definitely wouldn't try that on the big guy."
"So we need something big, right?"
Mille's thoughts aligned with Evan's as they both stared at the ceiling above.
Mille fired an Ice Bolt at a stalactite formed directly above the Anomaly Slime.
"I need to get closer. It won't reach from here," she said as her spell lost effect after traveling two-thirds of the way toward the stalactite.
"Alright. I'll try to get its attention."
As Evan entered the fray yet again, Mille followed.
After a good mix of evading tendrils, getting jabbed by needles like a piece of cloth and almost dying by said tendrils, and finally getting caught by a tendril, Evan could finally see death and the 24-hour login restriction looming over him.
—
—
[-5 HP]
[-5 HP]
[-5 HP]
[-5 HP]
"Any time now, Mille!"
Crack!
Mille's MP bar was falling steadily. She'd already fired more than 30 Ice Bolts and had already entered the 10% threshold two or three spells ago. Most of the Ice Bolts had landed on the stalactites on the ceiling, but the damage done to them was too spread out due to her low accuracy and the far distance.
Crack!
"Meh, what a shitty way to go out," Mille said as she grit her teeth and cast what would be her last Ice Bolt.
—
—
As Mille fell over, knees first, followed by a solid thud to the ground, her last Ice Bolt hit its mark one last time.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Several stalactites had finally loosened from the ceiling they had rested upon for centuries! A stalactite finally left the ceiling and let gravity guide it downward, running right through the boss slime with enough force to make it lose hold of Evan.
Having been flung around like a ragdoll, the constricted Evan finally fell to the ground with a thwack.
[-6 HP]
"Hah! How does it feel being the receiving end of getting penetrated?" Evan disdained.
Though he wouldn't receive the best choice of words award, at least it calmed his frustration somewhat.
The pesky boss slime was suddenly on a slow retreat for the first time since the commencement of the battle as it tried to evade newly incoming stalactites.
"Oh no, you don't!"
Evan passed his boomerang to his Inventory, vacating both of his arms.
"Soul Blitz!" Evan yelled at the top of his lungs.
Streams of light shot out of Evan's palm like a cyborg releasing multiple energy projectiles in quick succession. The recoil was brutal and thus required one hand to steady the power unleashed from the other.
[-20 HP]
[-22 HP]
[-21 HP]
...
As the magic-infused Soul Blitz kept striking the piece of jelly, as if being caught between a rock and hard place, it slowly retreated to its original location in an attempt to use the sunlight to regenerate the damage inflicted upon it.
[-21 HP]
[+2 HP]
[-20 HP]
[+2 HP]
[-22 HP]
[+2 HP]
"Retreat all you want," said a smirking Evan as Soul Blitz ended its barrage.
Due to its neglect, Evan's quick thinking came to fruition when the second and third pieces of stalactites pierced the Anomaly!
[Critical! -153 HP]
[Critical! -158 HP]
The Anomaly, now much smaller than before, had been pinned down by two large stalactites, its tendrils working to extract two foreign objects. It was a futile effort as the large stalactites had firmly dug themselves into the ground beneath.
Evan impatiently rid the surroundings of newly spawned mini slimes with his boomerang while the boss slime thrashed its tendrils around, occasionally killing its ilk.
As a final gift, three Makeshift Grenades got sucked into the Anomaly, its current size only a shadow of its former self.
Muffled explosions rang out.
Wobble, wobble, wobble.
[Critical! 75 HP]
[-32 HP]
[Critical! -77 HP]
—
[+400 EXP!]
—