Chapter 324: Solo |
In the center of that Boss’s room, Lohan controlled the clone as if it were his own body.
He avoided using the new acidic fluid he’d obtained from the Sentinel of Rot, since he knew, from his previous analysis, that beings made purely of dense, fossilized wood possessed extremely high resistance to the skill he’d stolen from them.
If he used it now, it would be a waste of Mana and biomass. Instead, he decided to focus on the fighting style that made him a mythical predator: the insane digestion and the precision of the Rupture Marks he could form.
The battle inside the room turned bloody in seconds.
The first beetle lunged at the clone, trying to crush it with its front legs, while Lohan used the malleable agility of a Slime to flatten himself against the ground, allowing the monster to pass over him.
In the millisecond that the beetle’s belly was exposed, Lohan projected a thin but extremely dense tentacle.
He applied a Level 5 Rupture Mark to the central joint of the insect’s thorax, and immediately afterward, Lohan’s Mana penetrated the monster’s chitin like a high-frequency drill, creating an instant fissure.
Without giving the beetle time to react, Lohan expanded his membrane over the wound and began accelerated digestion. His hemolymphatic tissue, operating at peak capacity after suffering subtle damage from the roots that had dragged him here, corroded the beetle’s internal organs at a terrifying pace.
The second and third insects advanced simultaneously, but Lohan, sensing the vibration of the ground, used his non-Newtonian resilience to harden the clone’s base while pulling himself along with his tentacle to latch onto the beetle’s body.
Lohan didn’t stop attacking.
He was fighting alone against multiple max-level dungeon enemies and demonstrating a level of independence that the group outside couldn’t even imagine.
After so many weeks of practice in Elysium as a Slime, he was already so accustomed to controlling this body that he spun across the battlefield like a blue-and-black sphere of destruction, inflicting rupture marks on the beetles’ limbs to strip them of their mobility, while every touch of his membrane resulted in chunks of the monsters’ flesh being torn away and assimilated.
Within minutes, the battle inside the Boss’s chamber reached a new level of violence.
Lohan, through his clone’s perception, saw the world at a different speed.
While the beetles were fast by human standards, to the mythical Slime they were predictable targets.
He had already killed the first insect, reducing the creature to a dry, empty shell in less than three minutes of direct combat.
The biomass he extracted during the fight served to keep the clone operating beyond normal limits, growing ever larger with the excess of digested energy, even though it was separated from the main core by a wall of roots.
The Tree Boss, realizing that his minions were failing to eliminate the small intruder, let out another roar that made the cave ceiling tremble.
He began moving his massive wooden arms, trying to grab and strangle the Slime.
Lohan saw the movements coming with a slowness that was almost comical to his parallel processing, but the sheer scale of the attacks was the real problem. When one of the tree’s arms struck the ground, the floor cracked and a shockwave rippled through the room.
Lohan dodged frantically, leaping over the branches that tried to surround him, using his slime to run up the vertical walls and drop onto the neck of the second Level 15 beetle.
This time, he concentrated his Mana on a single point and activated the rupture mark directly on the insect’s brain.
CRACK!
The beetle’s petrified wooden shell exploded under the internal pressure of Lohan’s Mana, sending shards flying throughout the room.
The third insect, a praying mantis, attempted a decapitation strike, but Lohan partially split himself, letting the blow pass through the void between the masses before merging again and engulfing the attacker’s head, without regard for his own safety.
The blue Slime was proving that, alone and without fear of death, he was a force of nature capable of single-handedly killing three powerful monsters from a Level 15 dungeon.
He felt no remorse whatsoever for killing monsters like this, and he realized that the Tree Boss, despite its immense physical strength, relied entirely on the insects for close-range defense.
Without its scouts, the wooden monster was just a large, slow target waiting to be taken down.
However, the clone’s endurance was nearing its end.
Lohan had killed three of the most powerful insects in the room, but the Tree Boss finally managed to coordinate a network of underground roots that surrounded the clone within a three-meter radius.
Thousands of tiny wooden thorns sprouted from the ground simultaneously, piercing the membrane of Lohan’s fragment from every angle.
Lohan felt the sharp pain of his biomass being dispersed, but he remained calm.
He already had what he needed. Through the mental connection, he sent all the images, the attack trajectories, and the analysis of the wood’s resistance to the main group waiting on the other side of the barrier.
"The clone’s fun is over..." Lohan thought with a smile, feeling invigorated after a battle like that. "I think it’s time for me to start letting loose a little more..."
His fragment was finally shattered by the roots of the master tree, turning into puddles of jelly that the Boss promptly tried to absorb back into the ground.
Lohan, back in his main body on Lisa’s back, vibrated his membrane, feeling his biomass reservoir slightly depleted, but the satisfaction from the information he’d obtained far outweighed the loss.
Lohan didn’t feel bad about the clone’s destruction.
He looked at Alice, Dylan, and the other Players, who now had their weapons drawn, staring at him with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation, waiting for the command to launch the final attack.
"Guys, the reconnaissance was a success," Halon’s mental voice resonated with authority, instantly calming the group’s nervousness. "Inside this room is a Level 15 Elite Arboreal Guardian. It possesses physical strength capable of shattering standard armor with a single blow, but its reflexes are slow. The real danger lies in the symbiotic insects he carries on his trunk."
Lohan began sketching a mental map in everyone’s perception, highlighting the positions from which the next beetles would emerge and the areas of the ground infested with trap roots.
"We’re not going in blindly. Dee and VonB, you’ll focus on drawing the tree’s main arms toward us. Don’t try to block, just parry and keep it occupied. Alice and Ascalon, you’re our strike force against the wooden scouts. They’re quite resilient, so focus on impact and piercing attacks on the joints I’ll mark for you."
The blue Slime began to glow with an inner golden light, activating the Sacred Light Core to purify the aura of fear that was still trying to infiltrate the group.
"Tunder and Palana, don’t waste area-of-effect spells on the boss. It looks like he has an absorption ability. Use short electrical discharges to overload the insects’ nervous systems. Lisa and I will take care of the tree’s central core. When we open the slit in its chest, Justin and Samantha should fire everything they’ve got at that specific spot. Understood?"
The group nodded in unison.
The nervousness that had previously paralyzed them had been replaced by determination. Knowing exactly what they would face and having a plan coordinated by Halon’s mind transformed frightened Players into a far more dangerous unit.
"Great. Let’s show this old log what happens when Astralis decides to collect firewood, haha," Lohan joked, drawing a growl of approval from Lisa.
With a mental command, Lohan activated his mass expansion from behind Lisa, covering the main group with a new layer of obsidian armor, this time reinforced with the resistance frequency he’d learned during the battle with the clone.
Lisa leaped toward the wall of roots, unleashing a kick of white flames, and the plant barrier, which had previously seemed impenetrable, shattered under the impact.
The group stormed into the boss’s chamber like a bolt of lightning.
The Arbor Guardian let out a roar of agony and fury upon seeing the very same "monsters" that had killed his scouts now pouring in en masse to claim the throne of that dungeon.
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