Chapter 258 – Behold Fortress Ocelot Alpha!

John stood atop the gate of his mighty fortress, which sat at the heart of a sea of liquid fire. The fortress was a hastily cobbled together structure. Even calling it a fortress was actually a bit of a stretch. It was more of a ring formed by a tall, thick wall on which the group could stand. The gate in the front was guarded by Aclysia, with Momo and Sylph acting as air support.

Around this ring was a trench filled with lava. This trench was the lesser of two reasons why the forest of the Feral I.D. was currently on fire. The major reason was that John had sent out Salamander to burn whatever she wanted, without engaging the enemies.

After arriving in the I.D. John had done what he did last time and created a ring of lava. This time, however, he went all out on that. A deeper moat, a wall behind it, and a chokepoint to invite the mindless enemies to their own demise. With all of his and Momo’s mana, the creation of Fortress Ocelot Alpha was child’s play.

They had left the gate open for the Bugpanthers to be able to attack them. Which they did, despite their disadvantageous position. In a manner true to NPC logic, they followed their instinct to attack John relentlessly, no matter how badly the odds were stacked against them.

With the one bridge of stone that crossed over the trench guarded by the fire immune tank that was Aclysia, the Bugpanthers were quite handily defeated by a simple strategy: throw them into the lava. As the lava was technically part of Gnome’s and Salamander’s toolkit, the panthers that were burnt to death counted as kills for John.

Sylph saw this whole thing as sort of a minigame, like fruit ninja. Swipe left or right to toss the panther into a flaming pit of death.

For the reason why they were burning the forest though, it was because the Bugpanthers weren’t smart, but they still had some helpful instincts. One of which was to climb into the trees and jump from there.

Very few of them made it onto the fortress wall that way. Most of them hit the wall, yes, but climbing it was a whole different thing when Gnome could push them away by having a stone spike form underneath them, consequently following the core strategy of this encounter.

Whenever one DID make it on top of the wall, John had Sylph and Gnome take care of it with his mana. Not that this was a problem at this stage, the forest fire had consumed all of the trees that had been jumping points. They had been in here an hour already.

Now John was waiting for a boss to spawn. The kill count was currently at 97, something that he knew thanks to a little window he could summon that told him how much longer he was going to be in here as well.

He first had anticipated it to spawn with a timer, but now he was pretty certain that it would come after they had killed 100 basic enemies. With a roar, a Bugpanther stormed out of the burning forest, accompanied by three more of its kin.

Another advantage of the fire was that it got rid of the monster’s stealth advantage. Their chitin bodies were coloured to be nigh invisible in the dim green of the rainforest, but in the bright light of fire, it was like someone was pointing a flashlight at a dull metal plate. They also couldn’t wait for optimal opportunities to strike, as their natural habitat was vanishing around them.

John had thoroughly eliminated each and every single one of their home advantages and had created his own. ‘Manipulating the landscape is so unfair,’ he thought, having not done a single thing, aside from distributing mana and acting as the group’s planner, for the past twenty minutes.

The first Bugpanther of the current wave pounced at Aclysia. A horrible mistake, as he was now in the air. “And whooooosh,” Sylph giggled, and the monster was thrown completely off course, landing in the lava. It roared in anger and pain.

‘Being scorched by and drowning in molten rock is probably one of the least enjoyable deaths,’ John admitted. ‘I’d feel bad if they were real… then again, if they were real and coming at me like this, I’d probably still do this. I’d feel worse if I was the one dying.’

A red firefly hit Aclysia shortly before she raised the giant claymore, Vol’jin’Zul, and swung it from left to right. Honestly, the sword could have been an oversized pan for this motion. It barely cut into the flesh of the Bugpanther, their exoskeleton was extremely durable, but the force of the strike made it fly into the designated killing ground. Two more attackers were left to go.

The narrow bridge barely allowed the two monsters to run next to each other. One pounced at Aclysia. The guardian was still recovering from her last strike and thus couldn’t raise her sword into parrying position in time. Recognizing this, Aclysia changed to the considerably lighter Ashkandi at the speed of a thought.

She blocked the attack with her bare arm. Given that she wasn’t just made out of magical metals (the material that Refined Body II currently generated was called Zertztin) but also had the Steelskin attribute, the limb was harder than most shields.

The fangs and mandibles of the insectoid feline gnawed on her arm, but it had next to no impact. Aclysia had figured out the monsters’ weak spots a while ago and aimed for a gap in the panther’s chest plate. As its last act, insides getting cut apart methodically, the panther spat his acid onto Aclysia’s arm.

She had little defences against this kind of attack, and so her arm started melting even as this panther became ash. ‘Undine, get down there!’ John instructed. Aclysia would have no problem healing by herself. Like yesterday with himself, however, the healing wouldn’t come through as long as the acid kept eating away at her. Therefore, Undine was needed to neutralize the liquid, at a minimum, and to top Aclysia’s health up again, optimally.

The mending elemental went into action as Sylph, who had been keeping the last panther busy, received a boost from John to get that problem cleared with quickly. ‘We have the big one coming in!’ John warned everyone.

The boss that spawned was the spitting image of the Bugpanthers they had fought thus far, with two key difference: A, he had a mane like a lion (albeit it wasn’t made out of hair but looked more like thin spider legs twitching around his head) and B, he was about three times bigger, meaning that its shoulders were at the same height as Aclysia’s head.

As the description threatened, at the roar of this nightmarish creature, a dozen of the normal Bugpanthers rallied to him. ‘Okay, so it seems like they keep spawning even when the boss is there,’ John thought as he saw another Bugpanther pop into existence through Jack. ‘Salamander?’ he reached out to the fire elemental.

‘Burn, baby, burn,’ a singing voice filled his thoughts, ‘Burn, baby, buuurrn.’

‘Salamander!’ John shouted louder.

‘Whaaaat?!’ came the annoyed voice; ‘I am singing Disco Inferno and burning stuff. Why the fuck do you interrupt my happiness?’

‘The forest is pretty much ash, help me with this boss instead!’ he informed her.

‘Oh shit, new target?’ Salamander said and started her journey back.

In the meantime, the enemy monsters formed a neat little line and sat down. John was immediately alarmed, as he realized what they were planning. ‘Aclysia, get inside!’ he told his artificial guardian, everyone else either flying away or searching for some other form of cover. His prediction came true a moment later.

Like a row of biological artillery, the monsters vomited forth a wall of acid. A single one wouldn’t be concerning, as the reason why the insectoid felines got close to spray their acid was because it spread in a large cone over a big distance. Singular drops were painful but not dangerous.

An acid shower of more than a dozen of these bastards? That was a different story. Their range was limited, but the dissolving cocktail hit where Aclysia had been a moment earlier, eating holes into the ground with a hissing sound.

The Tropico Highmane growled something that John interpreted as orders in animal speak. Through Jack, he saw them advance their firing line. He looked at his glove, ‘Last resort time? No, there are still two hours. Maybe I should bombard them with Arcane Explosion to cause some confusion?’

“I am back, what did I miss?” Salamander said, now right next to him.

“Thank God for incorporeal movement,” John sighed in relief. With Salamander here, the fight just turned into something very easy. “Do the usual, please,” he said, giving her and Gnome mana as he saw fit, investing some of Momo’s as well.

Salamander flew over to Gnome to conduct the spawning of another lava pool underneath the firing line. A second shower of acid made its way downward. Some of it ate through John’s cover, a heightened part of the wall, and dissolved on his Mana Protection. Thankfully, that thing was overcharged right now, but even if it hadn’t…

…the price slowly crept into the ‘acceptable’ range. Especially, if he finally got his hands on another Wisdom efficiency upgrade.

The ground under the enemy block broke away, and the Bugpanthers fell into the newly opened pit and the fiery demise therein. Only the boss could save itself, senses being keener than the ones of its lesser kin. Now that it was on its own, and no one left to provide suppressing fire, Aclysia, with her arm restored during the short time she had to take cover, could charge out again.

‘You better make this work!’ Momo told Sylph as she sent a white firefly her way and two more towards Aclysia. The support disliked using them. Although she always prepared as many of them in the breaks between fights as possible (killing the unwanted ones and rolling for a new one worked), it was a resource she kept prepared for as long as possible.

Aclysia crossed the partially corroded bridge, then charged around the new pool, where some Bugpanthers still struggled for their lives, and then at the boss. While the Tropico Highmane’s main strength was to organize the other enemies, he was no push-over by any means.

A giant paw with chitinaceous claws came for Aclysia. The white firefly hit her back at that moment, and she took the attack head-on, the impact hitting the flat side of Vol’Jin’Zul. Aclysia never meant to make the lethal blow.

With stupendous speed and the appearance of a literal bolt of lightning, Sylph entered the nightmarish lion’s maw and tore through as a spiral of cutting winds. “Bluargh,” Sylph chirped. “Do not know why I think that was a good idea, that was positively disgusting. Like, it stinks, really, bah, bah, I wanna bathe in Undine!”

Despite the fist sized hole that had been drilled through its body, the boss was still not done. Its struggle with Aclysia would stay without a victor. In due time, the Tropico Highmane would die. It seemed to realize as much and just threw the entirety of its weight at the first maid.

Before he could make contact, a cascade of dark purple blades erupted from Aclysia’s shadow. “Sylph, you need to learn how to finish people off,” Siena, buffed by the last firefly, purred in her oversexed voice as she slowly ripped apart the boss. As it roared in the pain of having its internal organs penetrated, the blade twisting and turning, the nightmare elemental let out an amused sigh, “Ahhh, I love it when they scream for me.”

Real or not, John was not one who wanted things to suffer more than necessary. ‘Just kill it already, Siena,’ John instructed.

‘I went as far as to obey you this time, let me have this one thing,’ Siena bargained, retracting one of her blades and ramming her incredibly sharp hands into the wound.

John took a deep breath. ‘No more bargains, Siena. You are my elemental, you get rewards how I see fit. Torturing creatures that just follow their instinct, however bad it may be, is not a reward I am going to give you.’ He took a pause, to let his words sink in. ‘Now kill it.’

‘Tsk,’ she clicked her tongue, the sound echoing over their connection before the slow ripping became a swift execution; ‘You have no sense of ecstasy.’

‘I don’t want your sense of ecstasy,’ John told her. The sexual sadism he could share, it was largely pretty tame. That was the line he drew for himself. There was no reason to draw enjoyment out of others’ genuine misery.

‘Y-yeah!’ Gnome, using the short moment of relaxation they had, chimed in, ‘Stop being so creepy!’

There was only amusement from Siena’s side of things, but John forced himself a bit deeper and found annoyance at the fact that she couldn’t corrupt John to see it like her. Apparently, her modus operandi had switched from ‘wanting to kill him’ to ‘wanting him to be like her’.

That was a step, but John wasn’t sure if he liked the direction.

“There come the next ones!” Momo warned all of them, and the fighting continued for more than two hours.

He could only salivate at how good the rewards were going to be.