Despite the air of discomfort that descended over the party, they continued their delving without issue, though the stretches between fights were filled mostly with awkward silence. Astrid couldn't help but notice every time somebody's face shifted, every time their minds drifted elsewhere, nor could she stop letting her own mind run through dozens of possibilities of how this party, this group of people that she loved delving alongside, would move forward or apart. Would the inevitable march of Class progression lead her to be an untouchable existence to her allies? Would she just grow more and more impressive every day as they struggled to keep up and failed to match her own growth? She knew she wasn't going to take a lower quality Class just to stay near these friends, she'd left older friends behind in pursuit of this dream already. She never wanted to have to do so again, but if the Great One and fate itself dictated that she be alone once again, then Astrid would curse fate and then be alone for a time.
Fortunately, Astrid gained no small measure of comfort from Muti's overwhelming determination. As she had sworn, she pushed herself even harder than before, practicing with her swords and knives in every break, and that on top of obviously straining herself to hear, to smell, to even taste more than she was able to before. Muti had always been a creature of passion, but it was almost frightening to see her single-minded focus on self–improvement. Astrid watched as, as was so often the case, one person's attitude influenced others.
Skandr, the first to embrace and then to attempt to push away the hopelessness of impending change, didn't display quite the same level of dogged persistence as Muti. Even so, Astrid couldn't help but notice how he pushed more of himself into every one of his spells, that he focused entirely on his spellcraft, neglecting to use either of his Skills. Instead, the Lightningmage strove to be a wizard in every moment, creating a spell that was a touch more powerful and a touch slower to cast than Lightning Bolt. That he'd nearly immediately started to use the spell with just a couple hours' notice displayed to Astrid that he'd already been thinking about the sigils and steps he'd need to take and use to cast the adjusted spell. Given how the man always spent days and weeks experimenting with every change he made, Astrid was proud of how he, instead of continuing to experiment and plan, threw himself into active use of the spell. He pushed himself harder, but Skandr also retained much of his same general joy for life, something that Astrid had worried he would forget in this newfound determination.
Felix, like Muti, pushed himself to practice forms between each hunt. His Axemanship had improved for the past month, but evidently, the Bodyguard refused to sit on his haunches and consider it good enough. It had only been a couple hours since the argument that it made everything uncomfortable, so if his newfound rededication to practicing with the axe would continue to be manifested moving forward wasn't guaranteed. Fortunately, his face continued to be cracked into a smile most of the time, and it served as a small respite from the uncomfortable air shared by the party when not embroiled in a fight.
The cause of much of this discomfort, Benedict, refused to make a single joke. The Bard could be serious when the situation called for it, and though he was always willing to bring levity to any situation, he distinctly refused to make a single joke, to tease anybody, or to do anything other than exactly what was needed of him to be a member of the party. Twice, Astrid had tried to engage in conversation, and twice she'd receive grunts and single word answers in response until she stalked off. If he was going to act that way, she refused to put herself through discomfort to possibly bring him into a better mood. Despite this, as the primary source of levity and jokes in the party, Benedict's silence weighed heavily on the party.
"The question of what to do now can't be avoided." Astrid said after the elimination of one of the warbands, making every face of her party members whip towards her in differing mixes of anticipation, dread, excitement, and resignation. She quickly understood her mistake and corrected herself, saying, "I was only trying to say that we should choose if we're going to the Boss floor right now. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."
Looking around the party, Astrid could see the moment in which, despite his own wishes, Benedict's face twisted, and he joked, "You'd think that somebody who qualified for a boon would know how to choose their words carefully. I guess only if the words have to do with the Great One you pay attention?"
Despite the joke being more mean–spirited than they usually were, Astrid felt herself smile at the break of much of the tension the party had been suffering from. "I mean, those ones are important. The words that come out of my mouth? They're worth less than what they weigh."
Benedict scoffed and bowed his head in concession. Then, before anybody could speak about what Astrid had actually asked, he continued, "Sorry for being a bit of a sourpuss. I think that what I said needs to be remembered, that we should continue to think about the future, but just know this: I don't want to split up from you four. If one of you ends up needing to leave the rest of us behind, I'll miss you, but I'll support you. Got it?"
The two other men ribbed him more fiercely than Astrid and Muti, both of whom accepted his apology with nods and smiles. Then, Benedict waved off the joking from the others and said, "I think we're pretty close to top form right now, right? So let's give it a try, shall we?"
Astrid, Muti, and Felix nodded, looking at Skandr. The Lightningmage pursed his lips and closed his eyes before replying, "I'm at about 80%. With a solid 10 minutes of meditating or twice that of walking without needing to cast any spells, I can get back to full and be ready for the Boss. I think I'm the only one who's got to recover anything, right?"
"I think Benedict has a little bit of recovery left, but about the same timeline as you." Astrid said, looking at the Bard. "Is that right?"
"Leaving aside any and all questions about how you managed to keep track of that, yes." Benedict's eyes narrowed as he looked over at the party leader, who shrugged.
"That's always been my job? I planned on being party leader back when I was a kid, so I just kind of trained myself to keep track of about how much each person can do and how long it takes for them to recover. You've been using Quicken Step pretty consistently, but that doesn't draw on you anywhere near as much of your mana as Song of Healing or Scathing Scream do, so while you're focused on just buffing the party like that, you usually need about one minute of recovery for every two minutes per minute of Skill uptime."
Benedict leaned back and half squinted, half glared at the Warrior. "I said we shouldn't trust you with any important mathematics, and I stand by that, but I guess you're good for memorization of inane facts."
"This isn't inane! This is important information that I, as the party leader, need to know! If you're running low on mana and are busy with something else, it's my job to know your general state. If I don't, I might give commands for people to do things in accordance with an assumption that you have more mana than you do, assuming you can help people out with a heal, so I might suggest something riskier, putting us all in danger. How was this inane?"
"Petition to start calling her captain stalkerpants?"
Skandr smirked, while Felix seemed to be taking the suggestion seriously. Muti simply laughed and didn't deign to give the question a response, and Astrid turned the attention back to the task at hand.
"So we're going to the seventh floor right now? Going to fight the level 20 Boss?" Astrid repeated, making sure that the rest of the party was, in fact, saying what she thought they were. She wouldn't mind pulling the attention off of that weird nickname attempt from Benedict while she was at it.
When the whole party nodded and granted their approval, Astrid turned to Muti. "Lead the way. We have a troll to slay."
***
Once they reached the doorway leading down to the final floor, the party took just a few minutes to make sure that they were all ready for this upcoming Boss fight. Nobody had forgotten the difficulties they faced in the fight against the gnoll chieftain, especially the irregular version, and they didn't want a repeat of that. Maybe they still suffered from some measure of overconfidence, given that they were ready to go up against a solo Boss while being a level lower than it, but the party strode forward, all of their skills off of cooldown and their mana full.
Muti led the way, though not by much. The five had all agreed that they wouldn't allow anybody to be even a little bit far away from the rest, because if they were ambushed by the troll, the separated and isolated party member would die before the rest of the party could save them. That reminder brought the party closer together, ready to support each other no matter what happened. Astrid especially reminded herself again and again that, if she was dumb enough to challenge the Boss one against one, she would lose against the stroll. Maybe she could exhaust her mana and draw on its connection to her Fortitude and Power, which would allow her to survive for a minute, but she could not kill this thing alone. As she took the place of a frontliner against it, she didn't want to take any direct attacks, and would need to use every trick she'd ever learned to redirect the force of the blows that fell on her.
Then, they were on the floor proper, ready to fight against the Boos. The party had worried about the troll sneaking up on them. They needn't have.
It was at least a kilometer away when the troll seemed to detect their existence and began roaring. Fortunately, the peak of the mountain, which was almost perfectly flat, was less than 100 meters away, and the party didn't need to say anything to each other as they all sprinted uphill to seize a more favorable terrain before the fight began. With the additional speed granted by Quickened Step, Felix was the first to reach the top, and as he did so, he shouted back, "Hurry! We've got maybe 20 seconds until contact!"
Astrid scrambled up the mountain, her heart thumping hard enough that she heard it in her ears. The troll approached, its roars growing in volume as it galloped towards them. Strangely, the monster was almost more quadrupedal than its counterparts found on lower floors. Near as Astrid could tell, the general story of this Dungeon branch was that orcs came into the mountains, captured some trolls, and then the trolls escaped, killed the orcs, and got stronger for it. The Boss that they were about to face? The formerly enslaved troll that escaped.
Thick chains decorated its arms, and, although they'd been told as much by the people they asked, it was obvious that the monster knew how to wield them as a weapon. Before the chains, though, the troll hefted a rock and threw it in their direction.
"Spread out! It's coming right down the center!" Astrid called out as she followed her own command and dodged to the left. When the stone smashed against the ground and exploded into shrapnel, Astrid realized that, contrary to what she'd thought from afar, this troll was not like those she fought on the earlier floors. Those were maybe 3 meters tall, and she'd foolishly thought that this one would be the same or maybe a little larger. The rock that it'd hurled so casually was nearly a full meter across. Following in the path of its projectile, the troll threw itself into the air and smashed down towards Felix. When it landed and threw its arms wide in challenge, Astrid saw that the Boss was at least 5 meters tall, and its skin reddened as it activated its rage Skill.
Felix rushed into melee, swinging his axe into the monster's knee. It swung a chain in a sweeping horizontal arc at him, and he leapt over the weapon. The Bodyguard took the opportunity to yank the blade of his axe through the monster's groin and lower belly as he did so. Thick purple blood seeped out of the cut and nearly immediately congealed as the troll turned both fists towards the man who'd wounded it. Its chains flashed through the air, and Felix dodged the first two before being forced to take the third. The chains smashed painfully into his waist and wrapped around him twice. Even with the use of his mana to strengthen and fortify himself, Felix grunted low in pain as the monster yanked him forward and towards its gaping maw.
"Not today!" Astrid screamed as she lunged forward and flared her mana into the edge of her shield as she smashed it into the troll's jaw. Bone crunched in its jaw and neck as its head twisted, and its grip slackened just enough for Felix to extract himself. The Bodyguard stumbled a couple steps away, trying to catch his breath as Astrid pressed the attack.
The broken neck held the monster back for less than five seconds, and its head twisted back into position as it started flailing its arms once again in a tornado of flashing steel and destroyed stone. Astrid retreated with quick, steady steps, and when she couldn't avoid a hit outright, she used her shield to turn away the majority of the force from the blows. She felt the mana–blessed iron of her shield deform slightly under the attacks, and she hissed a breath through her teeth.
"The cuffs and chains are mana–blessed iron!" That didn't matter as much to everyone else as it did for her, but the information was valuable. The only answer she received was the first of Skandr's lightning javelins smashing into the monster's chest. Lightning danced through its body, but it was only barely slowed by the attack, and the Lightningmage cursed behind her. Astrid could see as Benedict's Scathing Scream affected the troll as well, causing a faint trail of blood to leak from its nostrils and ears. Despite swaying for a brief moment, the monster shrugged both attacks off and continued attacking Astrid and Felix. Both stepped back to keep from being pasted against the ground, but that'd been the monster's intent. It lowered itself completely to all fours to leap towards their back line.
"Over here you giant bastard!" Felix shouted, using Draw Anger. The monster's attention flickered towards him for just a second before its skin glowed a darker red, and it turned back towards Skandr and Benedict.
It threw itself forward, nearly landing directly on top of Skandr, who only barely dodged out of the way with the help of Lightning Reflexes. It swung its fist towards the mage, long chain flying through the air to cripple or kill the man in a single blow. Felix rushed to interpose himself, Guardian's Rush bringing him the nearly 20 meters between where he stood and where he needed to be. The chain smashed into his left arm, breaking it with a cracking audible even to Astrid where she stood. Felix stumbled a dozen steps away from the force of the blow he sustained, but he stayed standing and Skandr remained breathing, though he remained in a dire position.
Astrid screamed as she ran forward, hammer and shield ready to smash into the monster, but Muti got there first. The Rogue appeared out of Stealth from between Skandr and Benedict, and, with both of her blades glowing with her mana, buried them nearly up to the hilt between the Boss's ribs. Its ichor dripped from the wounds as the troll turned and whipped its chain towards the ambushing Rogue. She yanked both blades free as she jumped back, pushing off the monster's side like a springboard. Her timely reaction kept her clear of the berserk monster's chains. Blood continued to seep down its side, but the thick liquid's flow slowed due to the monster's prodigious regeneration. Astrid cursed herself for her pride, having thought that, because the troll didn't have as many Skills as the gnoll chieftain, it wouldn't be too difficult of a foe. Obviously, that opinion had come from her own stupidity more than anything.
Astrid rushed forward, jumping to smash her hammer into the troll's wounded side. She pushed as much mana into the strike as she could, the hit cracking through ribs and bruising the organs underneath in one hit. It roared, contemplating turning its attention away from the one who struck a real wound on it to the one who hit that wound, but seemed to decide that Muti was the greater current threat, only sending a casual hit towards Astrid. She flared mana into her greaves and her arm as she weathered the blow with her shield and reached up to again smash into the troll's wounded ribs with another mana–reinforced strike.
It seemed to decide that now, she was the more pressing threat, and smashed both fist down towards her in one overhead blow. Far from stupid enough to just take a killing blow, she dodged, only taking a painful, but not crippling hit in exchange, making her shoulder ache fiercely. Already, she'd used half of her mana, and the fight was far from over. That didn't matter, and Astrid now had the monster's attention again. She lost herself in a series of near misses and painful parries that kept its attention on her as it continued to build momentum.
Between two of its hits, a larger, more powerful lightning javelin smashed into its open mouth. Realizing that it was a lightning spear, Astrid cheered as the troll went limp and fell to its hands and knees. There was no time like the present, and Astrid activated Quick Recovery to get back to near top condition to get into position to slow or cripple the Boss.
With mana strengthening the edge, Astrid raised her shield and smashed it down into the back of the troll's grounded knee. The mountaintop kept the joint from moving and reducing the force of the blow, and bone pulverized under the hit. The troll roared in pain as it tried to shake off the stunning effect of the lightning spear, to limited effect. It swung its chain at Astrid, and she raised her shield to take the worst of the hit as she dropped her hammer two more times on the injured knee. As she expanded all but the last 10% of her mana, Astrid smiled as she felt everything that could support the trolls weight give out. It was down one limb, and though it could hold itself on one knee and one hand while whipping its chain dangerously through the air, it wouldn't have enough time to recover its crippled leg.
Muti dodged past the chain and jumped onto the monster's face, both swords piercing through its eyes. It roared in agony and rage, fangs nearly catching her leg in its mouth. The Rogue managed to twist her body out of the way as she wrenched her messer sword out and left the short straight blade lodged in the monster's other eye. With only a single weapon, she pushed an incandescent amount of mana into the blade and chopped it down at the troll's spine. Flesh and bone gave way as the monster fell forward, but even though Muti had exhausted herself with that strike, the Boss didn't die.
Felix rushed forward alongside Astrid, and both of the melee fighters still in the fight swung their weapons again and again at the base of the monster's neck, bone crunching, then slowly reforming. Both too exhausted or incapable of using mana to strengthen their attacks, they used pure physical force to swing dozens of times each. Muti's attack had severed its spinal cord, and though it fought to recover the ability to move, the series of brutal, smashing attacks kept it from retaliating in any meaningful way, and finally, after at least a minute of feverish, exhausting attacks, the troll fell and the party rejoiced, seeing the kill notification flashing in their eyes.
Escaped Mountain Troll Boss slain. 132 Experience gained, split among party.
Astrid smiled at the party as she looked down at the massive, hulking corpse.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?"