As they reached the end of the recently destroyed overpass, they stepped over the half-collapsed guardrail and gazed out over the devastation below.
The city square had become a warzone, far more so than when Deacon first saw it on Day One. He saw columns of black smoke curling upwards from the smoldering corpses of both cadets and mutants alike that littered the streets below him – along with the smoke he could smell the acrid stench of piss, vomit, and blood.
Floor one of fifty, Deacon mentally reminded himself.
Even from where they stood, they could hear everything: the crackling of the flames atop the smoldering corpses of cadets, the screams of their fellow cadets getting pinned and surrounded, the shrieks of mutants, and the groaning collapse of buildings torn apart by the chaos.
And at the center of it all stood the Floor Boss.
"…There it is," Jass grumbled.
It was huge, two stories tall at least, its body a patchwork of blackened bone, red sinew exposed beneath, and fungal growths pulsing with soft yellow light. Bone plates jutted out along its shoulders and spine like rusted armor. Its head was all wrong, half skull, half helmet, cleft down the middle with mandibles quivering from below. Glowing green liquid oozed from its mouth like rabies infested dog.
"Holy shit… that's one ugly son of a bitch," Deacon muttered under his breath getting a scoff from Jass.
It shouldn't have been capable of moving the way it did. But it was.
And it was tearing cadets apart.
Dozens of them.
One moment, a spear-line held the flank, then they were gone, squashed under its massive foot. A blaze glyph went off near its arm, burning away part of the fungal material, only for it to grow back instantly, thicker.
One of the cadets flew through the air, screaming, and slammed into a crushed, broken car so hard the vehicle buckled in on itself.
[Fungal Colossus – Floor Boss Lv 8]
Deacon gritted his teeth. "Holy fuck, this is… How long has it been tanking all the hits being thrown at it?"
Jass shook her head, "I don't know, but Floor Bosses are Floor Bosses for a reason."
From the rooftops that surrounded the square and the upper floors of the fortified structures, a small force held formation. Fifteen cadets. All moving in tandem with one another, or at least that's how it looked from afar.
"Those are the top fifteen," Esmerelda breathed, shading her eyes. "The one with the sniper, she's from the Myrielle family, right?"
"Yup," Deacon said. "And those two with the dumb spikey hair with red tips are the Drakethorne twins with mana-pulse bows."
Everyone who made the top 100 in their generation had an artifact given to them by their families or guilds related to them from the moment they were enrolled in the combat department of the academy – some even had more than one.
Each of those artifacts had granted its bearer a tremendous boost in power, often the very reason they rose to the top of their year.
Some of the more infamous relics included the Fleshspore Lantern, which released spores that would drain vitality when the scythe attached to it sinks into the flesh of anyone hit by it and funnels it into the wielder; the Grievous Fang was a blade made of bone that when nicking the flesh of anyone below the level of the wielder would inject them with a poison that would devour their soul. And the Vestment of the Carrion Warden was a shrouded cloak that rendered its wearer invisible to sight, scent, and mana.
And those were only a few; many other artifacts matched or even surpassed them in power. Not to mention the fact that all artifacts were growth types when Soulbound.
With the exception of Deacon, who, even without an artifact, brought himself to Rank 87 within his generation's academy tournament.
But even with all of that… they were struggling to keep the Floor Boss contained.
A burst of light carved through the air – an incandescent lance of light – fired from three directions at once. It struck the Boss square in the chest, detonating in a flash of steam and glimmering shards.
The creature staggered.
For a few heartbeats, it looked like the attack might've worked.
Then it roared.
A shattering wall of sound thundered outward. Dust blasted off the rooftops. Debris lifted from the ground like leaves caught in a gale. The sides of nearby buildings groaned, fractured, then collapsed inward.
Across the ruined city of Seattle, the mutants paused mid-charge.
Then, as one, they turned to face the source of the roar.
And screamed back.
They heard their king.
And now the entire city was on the move.
"Shit," Jass hissed, eyes locked on the chaos unraveling below.
"They're barely scratching it," Deacon said, his grip tightening around his blades. His heart pounded like war drums inside his chest. The edge from the tonic was fading, leaving a burn in his muscles and a snarl just behind his teeth. "They keep falling back every time the front line gets crushed. At this range? Their spells and shots are doing about as much as a water gun at a forest fire."
Esmerelda stood at the edge of the overpass, magic circling her fingers like fireflies caught in a perpetual whirlpool. Her eyes flicked to Deacon, then down toward the cadets still holding the square.
"They're dying a dog's death out there," she said softly. "Not a single one of the attacks from the backline are actually doing anything with how unwilling they are to get closer to the Floor Boss."
Deacon watched one of the cadets, a girl wielding a massive crimson glaive nearly twice her size, leap from a rooftop and strike the Floor Boss across its shoulder. Sparks flew. It turned, caught her mid-air, and slammed her into the pavement hard enough to crater the concrete.
She didn't get back up.
"Are they being forced to hold it?" he muttered, glancing at the frontline and then to the fifteen people huddled together on the roof far away from the Floor Boss.
"That's why," Deacon said, pointing to the lavender, long-haired cadet who stood in the heart of the formation within the top 15, despite not being a part of them in the rankings. "Jeremiah Heart and look what's on his neck."
"The Heart of the Devout," Jass muttered under her breath in disgust. "…He's brainwashed them… Is this how he won the tournament?"
"Yes," Deacon grimaced at her words as a scene replayed itself in his mind. "It gives one hell of an acid trip."
"But he's also a decent fighter," Deacon admitted, unaware of the looks both his friends gave him. "… I'm gonna go help the frontline. While most of the cadets in the academy are cunts, the largest cunt of them all is Jeremiah, and watching them die for him doesn't sit right with me."
Jass took a breath, steady and sharp. "Then we go."
Deacon nodded once before leaping over the guardrails of the destroyed overpass. He hit the street hard, knees bending into a roll, short swords drawn before his feet had even stabilized themselves on the ground.
Jass landed beside him a beat later, her glaive swinging up into a defensive guard, eyes scanning the alleyways as the first wave of fresh mutants came screeching toward them.
Esmerelda didn't jump – she remained above as she began to cast her spells to support the both of them from afar, only moving to keep Deacon and Jass within her spells' range.
They moved like a wedge through the madness, cutting down anything that got too close.
Deacon's short swords were blurs of steel and flame, carving arcs through the first wave. A level 1 mutant lurker lunged at him from atop a fire hydrant, its body wiry and scarcely covered in fungus. He split it from jaw to sternum in one strike, fire licking at the wound as its bisected halves fell to the asphalt.
Jass flanked him, glaive slicing through the low-level mutants that charged them absentmindedly. When a charging, level 3 mutant hound rushed her, its face a mess of teeth and bone plating. She met it head-on, bashing its head aside with the shaft of her glaive, and planting a boot into its throat to keep it down before she drove her weapon through its skull with a sickening crunch.
Overhead, Esmerelda's voice rang clear, "Spirits of Fire and Flame, I call upon thee – Bombard!" and from above, a barrage of fire arrows spiraled into existence. As they whizzed past the heads of Jass and Deacon, they detonated in midair, scorching a full cluster of level 1 mutant humans before they could step within Deacon and Jass's reach.
"Watch your two o'clock, Deke!" she called from behind them.
Deacon turned just in time to see a mutant hound burst out of a shattered bus, all muscle, stitched flesh, and mushrooms. One side of its body was canine, the other, ape-like, its elongated arm ending in a rusted, jagged blade grafted straight into the bone.
[Chimeric Hound – Elite Mutant Lv 4]
It howl-roared before charging, crushing lesser mutants in its path as it barreled toward him.
Deacon didn't hesitate as he launched himself forward to meet it head-on.
He ducked beneath the first wild swing, came up low inside its guard, and drove both blades deep into the hound's chest. It let out a shriek of pain, just before its ape-like hand backhanded him across the street, destroying the protective shield that Esmerelda had cast around his body.
His body smashed against the front of a nearby, already ruined fire truck, smacking against the windshield before gravity called and made him roll and bounce off the pavement. Blood trickled from his mouth as he pushed up to one knee, steadying himself before he shot forward. But he was too slow.
Jass was already in motion moments before he got backhanded.
She launched herself at the hound, catching it mid-snarl with the blunt end of her glaive, then swept its legs and drove the blade through its skull while it was grounded.
*[Chimeric Hound – Elite Mutant Lv 4] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
"I'm fine! We have to keep moving forward!" Deacon shouted, spitting out a wad of blood that got into his mouth just before he threw himself back into the fray.
Catching sight of Esmerelda about to break formation, ready to rush to his side to check if he was concussed, he shouted, "we can't slow down now; if we do, we're gonna get railed by the sheer number of them charging at us."
They pushed forward, cutting through waves of mutants and rushing past cadets, all that stood between them and the Floor Boss."
Bodies littered the streets, cadets and mutants alike.
Just meters from where Deacon rushed past, a mage let out a scream as a mutated bird tore her from the sky mid-levitation. Before the creature could sink its beak deeper into her chest, an arrow whistled through the air, piercing its skull cleanly, fired by an archer perched atop a lamppost one hundred and three meters away.
The ruined city of Seattle was in chaos.
They were just under two kilometers away from the Floor Boss, but they could see it now, between the fires, collapsing buildings, and bodies in their way.
The sound of cadets dying and mutants shrieking filled the air around them.
"Eyes left!" Esmerelda called from behind them, crushing a small Mana Crystal Shard with her fingers in order to increase her mana regeneration. "New elite incoming, it's a big one!"
The mutant lumbered into view: a massive quadruped, its body bloated and stitched together from smaller mutant corpses. Its back was lined with spines and dozens of malformed faces screaming silently as each one vented green vapor.
[Crawler Host – Elite Mutant Lv 5]
"Focus on it!" Deacon roared, launching himself forward. He spun mid-air, further intensifying the flames wreathing his blades.
Jass was right behind him, channeling her mana around the blade of her glaive. As Deacon slammed into the Crawler Host's flank, slicing a massive gout of meat off its ribbed side, Jass brought her glaive down like an executioner, cracking bone and sending chunks flying.
It released a shrill screech before vomiting out a swarm of level 1 Corpse Gnats from its mouth. Hundreds of them, each no larger than a fist, made of rotten flesh and ooze.
"Esme!" Deacon shouted, backstepping from the main cluster as he carved through the smaller swarm that followed him, his flame-wreathed blades slicing fiery arcs through the air.
Esmerelda was already mid-cast when Deacon shouted, blood seeping from her fingers and trailing down to her elbows before dripping onto the bloodied asphalt below as she flooded the spell with almost half of her total mana pool. With a sharp thrust of both hands, purple and blue sigils erupted above her palms, igniting an inferno into existence.
A wall of spectral fire swept through the alley, incinerating every single gnat in a single, blinding flash.
Deacon launched himself forward as the flames from Esmerelda's supercharged spell wiped out the massive swarm of corpse gnats.
He ducked low under the Crawler Host's flailing limbs and shoved a blade up into the center of its chest, to which Jass followed with slicing off its head.
The Crawler Host's head and body collapsed, unceremoniously onto the asphalt with a splat.
*[Crawler Host – Elite Mutant Lv 5] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
*Your Race has reached Lv 5 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
The city square was in sight now.
As the trio sprinted toward the Floor Boss, they were able to see what remained of the frontline as they fought tooth and nail to hold the line, doing everything they could to keep the Floor Boss from breaking through to the backline.
And beyond them stood the Floor Boss.
A hulking silhouette crowned in jagged bone and swathed in fungus-riddled sinew. It held a cadet by the legs – what was left of her upper body dangled limply, torn apart mid-scream.
With a crunch, the Floor Boss split her in two and dumped the dripping entrails into its outstretched maw.