Chapter 80
Chapter 80
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 80
Chapter Title: Lucia's Prayer
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I rolled aside just enough to dodge the right arm trying to crush me flat, then darted inside her reach before Lucia could close in.
Paradoxically, with a boss this grotesquely designed, burrowing right up close like this was way easier than keeping my distance.
Her body's core had lower defense than the rest, so damage landed better, and I could outright skip a few of those right-arm swing patterns.
I'd died countless times before from getting spooked by Lucia's visuals, backing off awkwardly, and eating a swing with a deceptively massive hitbox.
—Thud!
Of course, even in nude mod, sticking close was never easy.
I deflected her arm's flurry of swings in succession, landed a basic attack, then pulled back. A tentacle bursting from her split abdomen stabbed right where I'd been a second ago.
That was a new check pattern added in nude mod. I had to keep crap like that in the back of my mind at all times. If I couldn't react, what came next was obvious.
Lucia's shoulder twitched violently. That meant the combo overhead smash was coming up. No need to dodge or roll—just deflect them all.
I eyed the two arms prepping their downward strikes, then swung my sword right on cue.
A series of heavy thunks rang out. My body inched backward as she stepped forward to match, but that was it. Nothing special to watch out for.
The seven-hit combo ended, and I swung once more to parry her right-arm attack. The massive hunk of flesh swept up the entire floor nearby, and I barely halted my backward skid from the recoil.
Lucia's rag-like clothes billowed out dramatically for a moment.
‘...Goddamn, it's impossible to focus.’
The real issue wasn't Lucia's difficulty or patterns. It was how her near-naked body kept dragging my thoughts and eyes to all the wrong places.
Her skin being coated in black goo didn't matter. Her shape was still human, complete with all the physical traits from her human days.
And that damn mod was playing a huge role here.
Lucia had been a woman in vanilla too, but she hadn't worn rags like that. The original battle priests—who the battle nuns were based on—wore fully covered monastic robes, just torn up a bit.
But once the mod kicked in, every battle priest turned female, and their outfits became absurdly revealing. With those clothes shredded, the result was obvious.
Her fully exposed breasts jiggled wildly with every movement, and her posture seemed designed to flaunt her chest and hips for maximum effect.
No point describing that killer figure—it'd just hurt my mouth.
She wasn't even wearing underwear, so her crotch was barely decent too. Thank god for the black liquid slathered all over her, really.
Her main body's left arm clashed with my bloodied sword and bounced back hard. The recoil sent the fatty masses on her chest jiggling again.
‘Think pure thoughts. Pure thoughts.’
It'd been a similar situation during the Arachnaira boss fight. Except Arachnaira—unlike Lucia's vaguely human form—was a perfect human from the waist up.
So why was I only fixating on this stuff in Lucia's fight? Probably because of Stella and her battle nuns' "heresy detection" strip show.
They'd stripped naked right in front of me as a group, and the Heresy Inquisitor had even forced me to grope her breasts at the end. No way that didn't burn into my brain.
Because of that, everything kept overlapping with those memories—and Lucia's outfit matched the battle nuns' exactly, making it worse.
‘Was the shock that bad?’
The ones trying the heresy check, the one receiving it, and the one watching—all of us had frozen solid, none in our right minds. Different reasons, sure.
‘No, just stop thinking about it.’
I finally calmed my mind, assumed a defensive stance to lower my combat fatigue gauge, and caught my breath for a bit.
Stupid distraction. Right now, focusing on the fight was priority one. No way I'd drop dead from zoning out on nonsense.
I stared hard at Lucia's patterns to clear my head. Better to fill it with pattern focus than vague "don't think about that" nonsense.
‘This attack's off-beat.’
I saw her right arm swing awkwardly wide, counted a beat inside, then rolled. Right on cue, I heard the whoosh of her arm cutting air.
Lucia used her right arm slamming the floor as a pivot and launched into the air. The arm on her back writhed and split into multiple tendrils. Each split tentacle sharpened into a needle-like spike.
I confirmed it, then positioned myself just right. Dodge properly, and this pattern handed me a guaranteed damage window.
It started from the boss's right side. I stepped right, and a tentacle slammed down right beside me with a boom.
Next, I twisted left. Another tentacle speared straight down next to me with a boom. The margin was barely a finger-width.
I kept dodging the barrage of downward spikes just by stepping or twisting my body.
It was doable in-game too. The infamous "hitbox porn" situation—search it out, and plenty of bosses had at least one pattern like this.
No real reason to risk it over rolling or parrying unless you were hunting thrills.
After dodging about twelve tendrils that way, the assault stopped. Lucia's body began slowly descending after the pattern ended.
I didn't wait and swung my sword immediately. Until her main body hit the ground fully, I could whale on her without retaliation.
Lucia took nearly seven hits before starting her next attack. Blink—the Blessing enchant on my bloodied sword wore off right on time.
Instead of rolling toward her, I backed off to create space, preventing the leap-into-body-press follow-up. I kept a safe distance and pulled out a sacred catalyst.
The bloodied blade once more gained its ashen solar glow.
“Aaahhh... ngh, urgh...”
Lucia staggered backward. The arm on her back couldn't handle the accumulated damage and melted into black liquid. A pained groan leaked from her lips.
The fight was one-sided. Hell, if it wasn't, I wouldn't be standing here unscathed.
Lucia tried gathering power to regenerate her back arm, but once damaged and crumbling, her body wouldn't recover easily. It'd start regenerating, then shatter again.
Suddenly, a small object tumbled from her neck.
I saw her head bow and lowered my sword. It was the phase 2 entry cutscene—no attacks incoming.
Lucia's blackened eyes stared at the fallen object. A necklace. Somehow still looped around her neck amid the rags.
It bore the symbol of the Sun God's Holy Kingdom.
“O, ooooooh...”
Lucia let out a beastly wail, slowly dropping to her knees and carefully picking up the necklace with her still-unmutated left hand. Her fingers trembled as she grasped it.
It was stained and filthy, but the carved symbol stood out clearly. As she stroked it gently, black liquid dripped from her eyes like tears.
Lucia clutched the necklace to her chest and shakily rose. The mouth that had only growled like a beast now formed human words.
“Sun God... merciful light that watches over all creation...”
She stared blankly at her right arm—now several times larger than her body—then gripped her shoulder with her other hand as she recited the prayer.
—Crack!
Her left hand seized her right shoulder and began ripping it clean off.
Flesh tore, joints twisted, black liquid poured—yet her left hand didn't stop. Sickening sounds of meat and bone separating echoed through the boss room.
Finally, Lucia tore off her mutated right arm completely. The massive rotten flesh pile slumped wetly, decayed to mush, and absorbed into the floor.
“Hear the prayer of this pitiful lamb...”
Her left hand, soaked in black liquid, snatched another sacred catalyst from her waist.
A brilliant golden light erupted instantly. Far more radiant and dazzling than the Blessing enchant on my bloodied sword.
Her skin—still tainted by the Abyss—burned bright red like severe burns and began charring away, but she showed no concern for her body's destruction.
Lucia pressed the sacred catalyst to her right shoulder, where black liquid was pooling again. White flames ignited where they touched.
Her clothes were still rags, and her right shoulder burned in white fire, but the aura felt entirely different. Her body was no longer coated in black liquid.
A spark of life returned to her blackened eyes.
“...Grant me the strength to rise once more.”
No longer the fallen priestess Lucia, but the Sun Priestess Lucia—a single woman reborn—ignited golden radiance from the sacred catalyst.