It Doesn't Flow Away (9)
Climbing that high turned out easier than I'd expected.
Each jump of ours covered roughly twenty meters, and after repeating the process a little over two hundred times we reached the same altitude in no time.
"Mere humans...!"
By simple arithmetic that put us at about four thousand meters up.
Considering Mount Everest's summit sat around eighty-eight hundred, it wasn't a height that would kill a human just for being there.
"We've finally, finally arrived...! I'll widen the footholds!"
"How dare you climb into the heavens with your petty tricks!"
Of course, the fierce winds that whipped through at intervals, the altitude sickness flaring from thin oxygen, and the flesh-biting cold all hammered us along the way.
But the Inquisitor patched things up somehow with her Holy Power, and I simply gritted my teeth and endured.
Altitude sickness was ultimately a pressure problem, so wrapping my body in mana to create a barrier effect ought to help, right? Trying that out under that half-baked logic actually seemed to make a difference.
As for body heat, the medicine the Archmage had given us kept us from bottoming out completely.
"Hahaha! At last I get to see that expensive face of yours!"
The Berserker... the Berserker I just didn't get. Was that the perfect specimen of "It's fine! I just bounced it off!"? Or was she even human to begin with?
Pressure was one thing, but she was tanking temperatures that froze your breath solid with nothing but a single layer of clothes.
She'd taken the same medicine as me, yet she still seemed completely unhinged. I wanted to shake my head at someone who so thoroughly ignored the laws of the universe, but I held back.
Instead I stepped onto the surface of Holy Power that had swollen from a single pyeong to dozens of square meters.
Beneath the faint golden veil the land lay thousands of meters below, yet it looked so unreal it might as well have been CGI.
And right in front of us floated a whale draped in clouds like silk.
Its white underbelly was that of an ordinary whale, but the hide above was made of waves. Light motes studded those waves so densely it felt like staring at the night sky one moment and the deep sea the next.
If you hadn't known the thing was a Great Demon, worshipping it as some mythic being wouldn't have seemed strange at all.
"I'll knock you down again!"
Buuuuuu!
That was when Moby Dick bellowed. The maw it opened was pitch-black, as though it had just bitten into coal, utterly at odds with its elegant exterior. The final proof that this creature was pure evil.
"Here it comes!"
Even so, the thing didn't flee. Judging by how it moved, its main body was simply too sluggish—whether from its bulk or something else—to put escape on the table.
"Hahat! Now that we're on the same ground, I've got nothing left to fear!"
"Just in case, I'll lay down a few more footholds every meter!"
But there was no longer any need to force a block.
The Berserker simply leapt clear of the water-attribute beam that came sweeping across the entire horizontal plane as if it meant to scour the sky clean.
I, on the other hand, grabbed the Inquisitor by the nape of her neck with my left hand while she raised her shield.
The sheer thickness of the water column meant the topmost foothold—the one we were standing on—was going to shatter no matter what. But a meter below sat a new platform, and more waited two and three meters down.
Clang!
I felt the foothold under my feet break and my body drop at the same time.
When the second barrier touched my soles, I deliberately kicked through it myself.
"Why..."
My body sank another level. Now a slight crouch was enough to duck under the water stream.
Pooong!
"Such a trick...!"
I released the hand that had been pinning the Inquisitor's head the moment I felt the water column skim past just overhead.
I trusted that Kimchi Mandu—unlike the Berserker—wouldn't lift her head in a situation like this.
Naturally she repaid that trust, and we slipped the attack with ease. A cheap exploit you could only pull off because the space wasn't neatly boxed in the way most games were.
Kwagagagak!
Anyway, the fan-shaped beam that had been raking the front lines finally passed me by. That meant it was damage time.
The instant I climbed onto the barrier I shot forward like a charge. The Berserker must have dodged the water column cleanly too; I could see her already racing at the whale from the far side.
"Die."
Careful not to strike the membrane under my feet, I swung my sword.
In a normal game you couldn't pull the back-dodge exploit, but at least you never had to worry about the platform itself shattering. A little sadness came free with the package.
Seogeok!
Still, damage was damage. I felt reasonably pleased watching the single sword scar that should have been there multiply into three.
It was the effect of the skill Three Claws, something I rarely used because most problems solved themselves without it, but which I'd activated once I remembered this was a raid—raid bosses tended to have absurd health pools.
Buuuuuu!
Three attacks meant triple the damage! And that was before adding the Berserker's output.
Moby Dick twisted its body and bellowed. Water droplets gathered in midair, flash-froze, and shot at us. A few of them skipped freezing altogether, taking the shape of snakes that homed in on me instead.
Chaeng, chaechaechaeng!
That put an end to any plan of leaping onto the whale's back.
I smashed the ice chunks that had chosen the worst possible moment to rain down and dismantled the water snakes.
Even while all this was happening, the platforms we stood on kept layering under the Inquisitor's power until they formed an extremely solid surface dozens of sheets thick.
Still, there was nothing good about damaging the floor.
After pulverizing every incoming attack I unleashed another volley of sword strikes, closing the distance as much as possible because mana cost dropped and power rose the nearer you got.
Kungkung!
But the iron rule of raid bosses was that if the DPS and tank got too close they would start swinging melee, and Moby Dick thrashed its body as if it meant to crush us flat under that massive bulk.
The platform that took the accidental—or maybe intentional—hit creaked and cracked, but the Inquisitor held firm.
The Berserker and I did the same. We slipped the thrashing, carved into that white flesh, and severed the fins hanging on either side.
Unfortunately there was no sign it was about to fall. Whatever kept the thing aloft, it clearly wasn't something we were cutting right now.
"Mere humans!"
Why was it that non-human bosses only ever seemed to have lines like "mere humans," "you humans dare," or "how dare a human"...?
Ah, maybe the guy who treated demons like insects and was always confident of victory shouldn't talk.
Cheap garbage bastard.
I cleared my head, stepped back, then swung again the moment the creature paused.
From bottom to top. The whale, carved open from the corner of its mouth all the way to the eye, flinched and recoiled. Black Demon Energy lingered like an afterimage before vanishing in an instant.
"I've endured enough of this!"
Yet true to its status as a Great Demon—even though it really didn't need to keep playing along—it stopped just taking hits and unveiled a new pattern.
It shed the water scales that made up its body along with the clouds around it.
Kwagwagwagwang!
Three-meter waves began sweeping the light barriers away.
There wasn't even room left to jump or run. In a normal game this was the gimmick where you had to use an invincibility frame or hide behind the tank.
"Uwaak!"
The Berserker, who had been cheerfully wailing on the whale from the front line while ignoring every pattern, got caught first.
"Idiot."
I, on the other hand, used my gamer instincts to avoid getting swept up somehow. Reading the motion and pulling my feet free in time did the trick.
But if I only kept retreating I'd eventually hit the edge. My brow furrowed in front of the invisible wall as I ran backward.
"Gather to me!"
Thankfully the solution came from the Inquisitor behind us. The moment Kimchi Mandu saw the raging torrent she raised a hemispherical barrier and turned it into a shelter.
Whether she had mana to spare because the floor was already layered thick, or whether she was pushing herself just to carve out an escape route, I couldn't tell.
What mattered was that we suddenly had somewhere to hide, and that was good enough.
I slid inside the Inquisitor's barrier like I was surfing the tide, a tail of seawater still clinging to me.
Watching my HP drop in a long streak made me wonder whether I'd actually reached shelter or simply taken the hit, but this had to hurt less. Probably.
Cheolssok!
When the waves struck the barrier they threw up something like steam. Looking closely you could see the surface endlessly cracking and regenerating.
The Inquisitor's praying face grew even more resolute.
Kwareureureuk.
"Don't act like a fool."
And look at that—the Berserker had managed to stay alive after all.
I sent a silent cheer to the woman who had still managed to turn this way even while being swept by the current, then thrust my hand outside the barrier.
I grabbed the Berserker by the collar and hauled her inside.
"Puha! I made it!"
These weren't ordinary waves. Just sticking my arm out for a second had shredded my collar and left a scattering of shallow cuts. The Berserker looked much the same; her skin was covered in fine white and red lines.
Blood and water mixed as they dripped onto the golden membrane.
"Hahaha! I almost fell just now!"
Still, as long as we were breathing it was fine. The Inquisitor, who had been kneeling and pouring out prayer amid a fierce glow, offered a small smile.
Perhaps because she was carrying every condition that kept this battlefield possible—the floor barriers and the shelter both—sweat beaded on her brow only to dry in an instant.
"Go!"
Even after the torrent had passed us by once, we still couldn't afford to relax.
While the Inquisitor was patching the floor that Demon Energy had clawed to the brink of collapse, and while we were still resetting our stances to close on the whale again, Moby Dick made its move.
Bugeulbugeulbugeul.
The upper hide that had looked like a piece of the deep sea itself began to boil, then vomited something out.
It was stars and it was shadows. It was evil.
Keureureureu.
The pure-white pupils I had taken for light began to fix on us with fierce intensity.
"Ha, trash mobs!"
"We will never fall...!"
"Insects."
Ah, for fuck's sake. A trash-mob phase? This is overtuned.
I tightened my grip on my sword as monsters erupted from the sky whale's back.
True to their origin in some marine creature's body, every last one of them was a grotesque twist on sea life.
Octopus, snake, merman, crocodile, crab, seal—each warped into something nightmarish.
But appearance wasn't the real problem.
Watching the endless stream of monsters pour out, I wondered whether this was a finite wave we could clear in one go, or whether they would keep spawning until the fight ended.
If the former, we just wiped them all at once. If the latter, we had to ration mana and stamina even more carefully.
"Kill them!"
"Small fry aren't any fun! Clear out before I get rid of every last one of you!"
I would have to wait a little longer before deciding.
"...! They're trying to break the floor!"
What was crystal clear, though, was that we had to kill them right now.
"You—can you hold?"
"...Yes!"
They were trying to smash the platforms, but the Inquisitor said she could endure, so I would conserve a bit more mana. No telling how the situation might shift.
Instead of simply dumping sword strikes to bisect them, I chose to take a proper two-handed grip on the greatsword.
After that my blade took the head of the first snake that came at me. Wearing its blood I stepped on the severed neck and leapt past.
The merman that appeared next I dodged by spinning my body in midair.
Using the force of the kick-off I flipped my legs up and my head down; the change in surface area made the merman's spear miss me cleanly.
Chwaak.
The body that had slipped the spear landed behind the merman.
Standing on its fish tail I stabbed the back of the creature before it could fully turn. The long blade of the greatsword punched straight through from spine to sternum.
Next I fed a little mana into the greatsword to sharpen its edge.
Rather than pull it free I dragged the blade out in a circle, carving through the merman's flesh. With a grinding sound it emerged spraying meat and blood and immediately cut down another monster that had been about to pounce on me.
Kwajijik!
The carapace of a crab-like creature shattered; flesh and organs sprayed everywhere.
I wiped the blood from my face with the back of my hand, steadied my sword, and charged forward again.
This time the thing blocking my path was an octopus-type monster thrashing all eight of its legs every which way.
Predicting and dodging all eight was a mild annoyance. I activated the skill Survival Instinct for the first time in a while and checked the most efficient route.
Stinger. The blade that had been held like a lance merged with Survival Instinct, slipped every tentacle, and buried itself in the octopus's brow.
The crocodile that came next I handled by planting the greatsword in the floor, stepping on the lower jaw with my foot, and bracing the upper jaw with my arm. Then I yanked free a longsword and sliced the upper jaw sideways, severing part of the snout.
The crocodile, not even realizing it had lost part of its mouth, clamped its jaws shut with a wet snap and immediately bulged its eyes.
Kwak.
Too late. My longsword punched through its brain and finished it in one shot.
Ting!
Right after that I kicked the greatsword up with my foot and caught it. Then I tossed the longsword skyward to free a hand, gripped the greatsword firmly with that empty hand, and swung it horizontally.
Two mermen charging from the front were cut in half at the waist and died.
The greatsword that now pointed right I left entirely to my right hand, and with the newly empty left I caught the falling longsword.
Chwaak.
A slightly off-angle horizontal slash took a snake's head clean off its neck; the head rolled across the floor. Tak. A few sharp flicks cleaned the blood from the longsword before it slid neatly back into its sheath.
"Kwahahaha, die, die!!"
Good. This side was more or less cleaned up.
Watching the Berserker rack up an even higher kill count than me let me relax a little more.
As long as she was rampaging, no monster would reach the Inquisitor. And with her speed the creatures wouldn't live long enough to put real pressure on our healer either.
That meant I could turn my attention back to the boss.
I adjusted my grip on the greatsword, stepped on the head of a merman that thrust its spear at me, and leapt even higher.
Thousands of meters up, the ice-crusted hem of my coat fluttered in the white wind.
And when even my breath froze white, I stood before the whale that was gathering water into its maw and raised the greatsword.
Hair so cold it had sprouted ice crystals gently pricked my eyes.
Kill it.
Sensing something ominous, Moby Dick spat water snakes at me, but it didn't matter.
Three Claws dismantled the snakes, and the blade that stretched in a straight line roared out a pillar of black mana.
Tear that fucking bastard to pieces.
Kwaaaaaang!
Before the water-form Demon Energy Moby Dick had been holding could spill from its mouth, it collided with my mana and detonated.