Aiden tilted his head back, staring up at the colossal monolith of pure, crystallized malice towering over him.
It looked exactly like a Spartoi, violently scaled up to apocalyptic proportions. The Monster Rex, Udaeus, was dyed completely pitch-black. Just looking at its dark, polished skeletal frame felt as if it were trying to suck the soul right out of his body, radiating an ominous, lethal sharpness.
Its lower half remained buried beneath the bedrock. Even so, the portion of its torso exposed above the pelvis stood nearly thirty meters tall, looming like a jagged black mountain in the center of the hall.
Its arched, segmented spine vibrated continuously, the vertebrae expanding and contracting as if breathing with a terrible, sentient will.
Its skull resembled a mythical demon, crowned with two jagged, horrifying horns. Deep within its hollow, cavernous eye sockets, twin orbs of crimson ghost-fire flickered erratically, burning with a cold, tyrannical intellect.
Deep within its chest cavity, heavily protected behind a cage of massive, interlocking ribs and a reinforced sternum, sat a magic stone of unprecedented scale.
It was the only source of light within the monster's hollow, organ-less body—a massive crystal radiating a blinding, deep-purple glow. It was the heart of the Floor Boss.
"It's been a while since I felt my fighting spirit run this hot," Aiden murmured, rolling his neck until the joints popped sharply. "Finally, a real chance to stretch my legs."
He raised the Godslayer: Surtr, aiming the tip of the massive blade directly at Udaeus's mountainous frame.
The next second, blistering flames erupted from beneath his feet, instantly engulfing his entire body.
The raging fire reflected in his blue eyes, burning alongside an irrepressible thrill.
Staring down the Monster Rex as it unhinged its massive jaw to unleash another apocalyptic roar, Aiden's voice was dead calm and crystal clear.
"Bring it on," he grinned. "This will be over soon."
The colossal black skeleton moved.
The instant Aiden stepped solo into its attack range, it unleashed its vicious bloodlust without holding a single ounce back, bearing down on him with a physical pressure that ground against his bones.
Facing the strongest enemy in its peak combat state, Aiden didn't retreat; he advanced.
He stomped his boot violently into the floor.
BOOM!
The solid bedrock cratered instantly under his foot, a spiderweb of violent fractures exploding outward.
Riding the massive recoil, his body blurred into a crimson streak, launching himself straight at the mountain-sized opponent.
Gripping the Godslayer: Surtr in his right hand, he viciously swung the blade from dozens of meters away, launching a colossal, flying slash of pure fire.
The blade aura tore through the air with an ear-piercing sonic boom. Shaped like a crimson crescent moon, it screamed toward Udaeus's chest.
Facing the incoming strike, Udaeus unleashed a roar that shook the very atmosphere.
The flickering crimson ghost-fire in its eyes locked onto the blazing red figure. Its exposed, elongated arm bones swung its warped, black-shining left arm high into the air, drawing it back like a gargantuan blunt weapon.
The air shrieked. A hurricane-force gale exploded.
With a devastating horizontal sweep, the pitch-black skeletal arm collided head-on with the crimson sword aura.
Impact. Collision. Detonation.
Amidst a deafening, eardrum-shattering explosion, violent energy ripped in every direction. The crimson slash was instantly obliterated, shattering into countless fragments of fire that rained down, further devastating the already ruined floor as a massive cloud of dust erupted.
"—By this blade's glow I grasp."
From within the blinding dust cloud, Aiden's second incantation rang out.
The Godslayer: Surtr ignited with a terrifying new intensity, the physical blade vanishing entirely into a blinding, hyper-condensed lightsaber of pure, incandescent fire.
Fueled by Everlasting Flames, Aiden's speed shattered his previous limits.
The ground beneath him detonated once more. He transformed into a beam of searing light, piercing straight through the dust cloud in a single breath, arriving directly inside Udaeus's guard.
His logic-defying speed completely broke the massive skeletal monster's tracking.
Entering point-blank range, Aiden vanished into its blind spot. For a split second, Udaeus completely lost its target.
In that same microsecond, Aiden arrived right in front of its exposed ribcage and vaulted into the air.
Shooting upward like a cannonball, he aimed directly for the middle of its left armpit. The massive, sweeping attack Udaeus had just performed had left a gaping opening—a direct, unobstructed path straight to its core magic stone.
He raised the sword high. The flames coating the blade surged violently, pushing its destructive power and reach to their absolute maximum.
Twisting his waist, he briefly chambered the Godslayer: Surtr over his left shoulder before unleashing a supersonic horizontal slash that tore the air apart.
"WROOOOOOOOOAR?!"
However, the guaranteed fatal blow didn't land.
The blade of fire, aimed flawlessly at the gap in the ribs, was violently parried by the monster's fifth rib, which aggressively shifted up to intercept the strike.
Against all logic, Udaeus had instantly tracked his position during the mid-air ambush. Reacting with impossible speed, it used its own shifting skeletal structure as a dynamic shield, executing the perfect defensive maneuver.
The crimson blade clashed against the pitch-black bone, generating a horrific, ear-splitting screech of grinding metal.
"Damn it," Aiden muttered, glaring at the scorched black bone that had parried his fiery sword. The extreme heat had melted the surface, leaving a deep, glowing red scar.
The slash had simply been too shallow. He hadn't managed to shatter Udaeus's absolute defense in a single blow.
Refusing to get bogged down in a deadlock, Aiden used the recoil to launch himself out from under Udaeus's left arm, reappearing behind the monster and landing flawlessly on his feet.
Flipping around instantly, Aiden prepared to unleash a devastating strike right into the monster's fully exposed, undefended spine—
But in the very next second.
From the ground directly beneath his feet, a pillar of pitch-black bone—like a spear thrust straight out of hell—shot up without a single warning.
The lethal thrust aimed squarely at his jaw was incomprehensibly fast.
Relying entirely on sheer combat instinct, Aiden violently twisted his upper body, narrowly avoiding decapitation by a hair's breadth. The gale generated by the black pillar whipped past his ear, wildly blowing back his silver hair.
Before he could even regain his footing, five more bone spears violently erupted from the bedrock, perfectly sealing off his escape routes from multiple lethal angles.
Aiden nimbly rolled to the side, throwing himself out of the line of fire.
Yet the forest of spears—the mountain of blades erupting from the earth—seemed to possess a malicious will of its own. It stubbornly tracked his movements, continuously launching unpredictable, fatal strikes from below his field of vision.
—So that's how it is. Amidst his frantic, rapid-fire evasions, absolute clarity struck Aiden.
This was what made the Floor Boss truly terrifying. This was why a massive, heavily armed, multi-party Expeditionary force could never overwhelm it in a single rush, despite its massive size and slow turning speed.
It was because of this endless, unrelenting barrage of underground bone spikes, an omnidirectional area-denial attack that made it physically impossible for anyone to maintain close quarters.
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