Chapter 56
#56. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
A beam of light that had barely grazed past us punched through the ceiling.
Sparks clung to the edge of the shield where the attack had brushed past. I slapped them out with my hand, and the spot had already burned black.
Given the grand title of a hidden boss, I'd at least expected it to have some threatening signature attack pattern.
But even so, I never expected it to suddenly twist its neck and fire a laser.
No, seriously, does it have no conscience?
What the hell do spiders have to do with lasers?
If it was going to shoot anything, shouldn't it be special webbing or poison or something?
It already had a pattern of shooting crystal shards from its mouth, so what the hell was it doing firing lasers from that same mouth?
I didn't know exactly how powerful it was, but if I'd taken that head-on, I wouldn't have survived. I almost died in the dumbest possible way.
“Hey, human, you okay?”
Rizmel, wrapped in shadows to block the beam, asked me.
The reason I managed to avoid the spider's laser was because Rizmel had reacted instantly and shoved me aside.
No, to be precise, it was a little different. Rizmel hadn't reacted to the attack.
That was definitely a prediction.
Rizmel had predicted that a beam would be fired from the spider's mouth, quickly shoved me aside, and then wrapped up in shadows.
Thanks to the boost from my [Instinct] skill, I could also predict an attack's tells and dodge them to some extent.
But Rizmel predicted attacks far faster than I could with my Instinct skill.
That wasn't all.
Rizmel had even predicted the form of the attack. It had to be that Rizmel knew it wasn't another shard barrage, but a laser attack.
Otherwise, that choice to defend by wrapping up in shadows wouldn't have made sense.
How could Rizmel know that much? Could Rizmel have known the spider's attack methods in advance?
“You...”
Just as I was about to ask about it, the floor shook. More precisely, the spider's back beneath our feet shook.
-BOOM!
Sharp spikes sprouted from the crystal spider's back. Rizmel and I jumped down to avoid them.
The fact that its neck had twisted just now meant it could apparently deform its body to some extent.
That meant I couldn't use the surefire spider-fighting trick of climbing onto its back and leaving it helpless.
“Watch out, it's still coming!”
The spider's giant legs swung at us as we landed on the ground.
-THUD!
Its basic leg attack was still not much different from the Dusk Spider's. It wasn't particularly fast, so it was easy to dodge.
As long as the leg attacks kept repeating, I had time to breathe. Let's analyze that thing's patterns in the meantime.
So far, there were four patterns confirmed.
Laser fire, shard fire, spike generation, and leg attacks.
The leg attacks were sluggish and easy to dodge, but considering their weight, I had no intention of trying to block them.
The shard shots were fairly fast, but not very powerful. They didn't seem to have any extra effects if they hit.
The laser fired quickly and hit like a freight train. Judging by the burned edge of my shield, I probably couldn't block it.
Spike generation was still a mystery. But at least its attack tells were obvious, so it was easy to dodge.
“This is manageable.”
Judging by its shape, it probably had extra patterns like web shots or poison attacks, but nothing like that would be a problem.
“What do you mean manageable? Run away!”
Rizmel, having overheard my mutter, screamed at me. Then Rizmel started shouting all sorts of nonsense about whether I didn't value my life.
If you're going to tell me to run from something like that, at least make sense.
With a big growth opportunity sitting right there, how could I just run away?
What had happened when I'd turned tail and run because I didn't want to lose my life? What had been the result of fleeing reality in fear and burying myself in it?
“I can win against this. I've got a few ideas.”
Look the opponent straight in the eye, analyze it objectively, and then ask yourself.
Is the enemy in front of you such a hopeless opponent that retreat is the only answer?
No, not at all.
Once I reached that conclusion, my blood naturally boiled. My heart started pounding of its own accord, eagerly anticipating the thrill of growth.
-THUMP THUMP THUMP!
The spider was still insisting on close combat, swinging its legs around. There was no sense of crisis at all.
I tightened my grip on the sword and shield in my hands.
Then I charged straight back at the spider that was lunging at me.
**
As the spider and I raced at each other, the distance between us shrank quickly.
A flashing leg swung down to smash me, but I dodged it cleanly again.
I weaved through the attacks and this time tried to slip under the spider's belly.
-Screech.
Then its mouth opened, and it began firing a barrage of crystal shards.
Earlier, I was in midair, so I couldn't dodge as freely, but things were different now.
I made the most of my Instinct skill and agility stat to evade the attacks, blocking only the shards I couldn't dodge with my shield.
I got under the spider's belly without taking a single hit. Then its body immediately began to deform.
As when I had climbed onto its back, crystal spikes began sprouting and targeting me.
-BANG! BANG!
I rolled my body to dodge the spikes thrusting up as if they were about to pierce the top of my head.
The spikes were fast to appear, but their warning signs were still clear. I drew my arm back wide and cast a skill.
-KLANG!
Brandish activated, and my body moved on its own. As I expected, the blade sliced through the spikes just as they began to protrude.
The sharp tips of the spikes shattered and broke off. It couldn't inflict major damage in one hit, but the attack itself still worked.
-Creak!
The next moment, the spider's head snapped down to look beneath its body at me. A laser attack was coming.
The warning signs were hard to detect, but if I knew the range and direction, I could dodge it somehow.
-KABOOM!
A beam swept across the spider's underside. Of course, I rolled quickly to the side and got out of the way.
And when I put some distance back between us, the spider answered with more leg attacks.
Hidden boss or whatever, it was still only a 7th-floor boss. Its attack patterns were simple.
A normal challenger wouldn't have been able to withstand that attack power and defense, but at this point it was just repetitive work.
What the hell, it really was a pushover.
**
The way to take down a large boss in solo play is extremely simple.
All you have to do is dodge everything and hit everything. Stats like attack and defense only need to be high enough to establish the bare minimum of offense and defense.
The crystal spider was bigger than any boss I'd fought so far, and it had just as much attack power.
But in return, it was extremely stupid.
No, if I thought about it, it wasn't even that stupid.
It just had the intelligence you'd expect from the way it looked. Spider-level intelligence, exactly what you'd expect from a spider's head.
If the attack pattern is simple, high specs mean nothing. Just like how Choi Gil-hyeon, that ranker spear-wannabe, couldn't stand against me.
-THUD!
The crystal spider, with most of its legs destroyed by my relentless attacks, collapsed helplessly.
Even my basic attacks could damage its body somehow, and skills dealt even more effective hits.
Naturally, destroying the legs, which were less durable than the body, was even easier. With that, the spider became a stationary punching bag.
You’re sturdy for no good reason, you little shit.
-CLANG! KLANG!
Keeping a possible phase two in mind, I battered the spider's head with my [Death Knight Greatsword].
-BOOM! KWAANG!
Of course, even in that immobile state, it kept firing lasers while twisting its head in grotesque directions.
But it wasn't a new pattern, and I had already completely memorized the timing of its laser attacks. There was no way I was going to let myself get hit.
In the end, after its legs were smashed and it collapsed, the spider took my one-sided assault for more than ten minutes before finally drawing its last breath.
[Clear Reward: You have obtained ‘Experience’ and ‘Gold’.]
[First Clear Reward: You have obtained ‘Light Mithril Ingot x5’.]
[Highest Contribution Reward: You have obtained ‘Hexagonal Crystal Necklace’.]
[Final Blow Reward: You have obtained ‘Active Skill - Light Gathering’.]
Maybe because it was a hidden boss, the rewards were pretty generous. I opened the skill window and inventory to check the exact options of the rewards.
The necklace slightly increases max MP, and [Light Gathering] is a skill that gathers nearby light to create a small light source.
I thought I might be able to shoot lasers like that spider, but all I got was basically a flashlight.
A little disappointing.
“See? I told you I'd win.”
I closed the interface and said to Rizmel, who had been watching the fight from a short distance away.
Rizmel neither joined the fight between me and the spider nor ran away. Instead, Rizmel just kept watching with a fed-up look.
“I-I mean, so what if you won? You almost died several times, do you know how shocked I was!”
“What do you mean almost died? I didn't get hit even once.”
“Of course! If you got hit, you'd die! You were almost getting hit the whole time! What are you smiling about?!”
I brushed the dust off my armor. The wounds I'd gotten from the shards had already been fully healed by [Combat Healing].
In other words, I'd won without even a scratch. By now, Rizmel should've realized there was nothing to worry about.
“You’re not normal. You know that?”
But Rizmel's eyes held an unnaturally strong look of concern.
What did I do?