[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 111: Spring Storm (Patreon)

“Watch out!” Setna cried. “The Gardener is joining the fight.”

The crew let loose with ranged attacks, including Edge’s chakram, but the boss raised its shield and deflected them with contemptuous ease. It advanced without breaking its stride—inexorable as the turning of the seasons.

He could sense an incredible concentration of mana burning in its reactor—more magic than the monster had used to gather the horde. Meanwhile, the gem in its chest started shining with an ominous emerald light, which filled him with a deep and unshakable foreboding.

“Prioritize defense until we know what we’re dealing with.” Byron speared a monster on the end of his lance, then gutted it from stomach to sternum. “Whatever the boss is up to, it’s going to be a problem.”

While he spoke, the shadowkiller wiped the blood from the blade, treated his lance with a fresh coat of poison, then added a weapon oil that increased its penetrative power. Combining poison and oil is a powerful tactic. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

When the Gardener reached the bottom of the towering mound of bones, it paused to crush a hedgehippo that was foolish enough to challenge it, shattering the monster’s skull in a single swipe of its mallet. Then mana began flowing out of the boss’ core and into the air—so intense that it warped the space between them like Edge was looking through a crude pane of glass.

The hunters repositioned behind some rubble that provided partial cover, launching another round of missiles that the monster evaded with a liquid grace. As it continued casting its spell, the Gardener sang in a screeching voice that chilled him to the marrow of his bones.

“The thaw of spring brings the rain. Days of growth as leaves unfurl. But when it falls time and again, what was once a balm will bestow pain.”

“That chant is deeply disturbing.” One-Eye fired volley after volley, conjuring more arrows with a skill that Edge wasn’t familiar with. “I would wager Mortium against mudpies that we’re not going to enjoy what’s coming.”

When the Gardener gem started glowing, it had deactivated the spell that was enraging the monsters filling the chamber. A few of them were still going at it, but the rest had pulled back to lick their wounds, giving the crew a moment to catch their breath.

For a few tension-saturated seconds, the battle came to a standstill. Then the air pressure started to drop. Edge’s inner ear popped as a moist breeze rose to lick his skin. By now, he had survived enough storms to know what it felt like when one was heading his way.

“That’s weather magic.” Setna finished off an injured monster that had wandered too close to their position. “No wait, it’s even worse. It’s using elemental mana to form a fucking domain.”

“The Gardener has an Epic skill.” One-Eye wiped the blood from his face with a rag from his pack. “This day just keeps getting better and better.”

Despite being plunged into the midst of a deadly ordeal, Edge’s ears pricked up at those words. Domains were powerful skills that affected a wide area around their wielder, and all of them were Epic rarity.

Although they had to survive it first, if he managed to steal the Epic domain, it would be an invaluable addition to his collection. The mere thought caused Skill-Eater to awaken, evaluating battlefield in an instant.

When Skill-Eater noticed the Gardener, Edge sensed surprise coming through their bond, along with what almost felt like shame. His core was still half-asleep, but he was certain that it recognized the boss-class monster standing in the center of the enclosure. They must have known each other from before the Gardener was locked inside the dungeon and the big guy got turned into a core.

His certainty solidified when he received a warning from the ravenous lord. It was familiar with the monster’s skill and knew exactly what was coming. While the boss was using its domain, its mana would dominate the local climate—using the weather itself as a weapon.

Additionally, the monster’s fighting style would shift to match one of four manifestations of seasonal wrath. It was possible to disrupt the domain, but first he would have to… Skill-Eater returned to unwilling slumber before it could finish that thought, leaving him to figure out the rest.

Edge knew in that moment that a storm was coming. And it was going to be big.

Sure enough, the sunlight was extinguished like a spent candle a bare heartbeat later as inky clouds congealed in the air above the chamber. “Shit.” One-Eye grimaced. “I don’t think that bit about spring floods was a figure of speech after all.”

No sooner had those words left his lips than the wind picked up and the rain began to fall. It began as a light patter, refreshing after the prolonged battle. But the drizzle intensified into a downpour within a matter of seconds, and that was only the beginning.

The falling water pummeled the hunters, rendering their ears useless while reducing their field of view. Soon the rain was so heavy that Edge could only see a few yards in any direction. He couldn’t find the remaining monsters or the final jailbird. Far more critically, had lost track of the Gardener’s position.

The domain-spawned storm was so intense that it threatened to knock the hunters off their feet. Before the boss made its next move, he gathered his concentration and ignited his core. Repel Water.

He willed the skill’s field to take the shape of an umbrella, then spread it as wide as it would go. Edge let out a sigh of relief when the deluge abruptly cut off, forming a circular waterfall around their position.

The Monsoon was blinding and nearly deafening, but at least the team could move freely while they stayed by his side. Even with Repel Water, fighting in the rain was going to be hell, and he was dead certain that the Gardener would suffer no such impairment.

Edge had no idea how right he was, but he was about to find out.

The boss appeared a heartbeat later, parting the curtain of falling water with its tusk-mallet poised to strike. The head of the weapon was twice as wide as his skull and had been harvested from the remains of a colossal monster. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, the Gardener was floating several feet above the ground—even more agile than before.

Edge stepped in front of the crew and raised his arms above him, Hardening his entire body for a split-second as he took the heavy hit head-on. The impact revered throughout his skeleton as his feet sank deep into soil that was rapidly turning into mud.

Before the boss could follow up its attack, the other hunters were there.

Byron’s lance cut through a section of its armor, biting into the tissue below. Meanwhile, Senta came darting in low to unleash a tremendous uppercut with her knuckle spikes.

The Gardener leaned out of the way at the last possible second, which carried it straight into the path of One-Eye’s machete. He carved a ragged gash into its mantle of fur, but the blade didn’t penetrate the patch-leather below.

The boss vanished as quickly as it had appeared—obscured by the falling rain. It was clear by now that the storm wasn’t hampering its movement after all. If anything, the downpour was adding extra force to its powerful overhead slams.

Desperate to acquire any advantage he could, Edge activated Penetrate Mist. The skill only filtered out the smallest droplets. But even a minute improvement to his visibility was a godsend under the circumstances, granting him a chance to react to the boss’s attacks before they landed.

The Gardener launched its next assault a few seconds later. It came at them from straight above this time, striking Byron with a glancing blow that sent the shadowkiller reeling before it was gone again. Like Skill-Eater had warned, the monster’s fighting style reflected the weather it had conjured—a fluid, overbearing technique that felt like getting hit by a weaponized monsoon.

The monster flowed and surged like it was part of the storm, as unrelenting as the falling rain. Its strikes fell heavy and hard, threatening to wash them away. The only bright spot was that the other monsters were forced to seek shelter, battered by the merciless deluge. At least that rage spell is out of play; they shouldn’t be nearly as aggressive going forward.

Thanks to Repel Water, the crew avoided taking any critical hits, but the pressure was grinding them down like a millstone. Holding the boss back was exhausting, and the knowledge that a single mistake would be their last was incredibly nerve-racking.

All the while, the monster flitted between the raindrops like a wraith, appearing long enough to let loose with a swipe of its mallet before vanishing again.

Activating its Monsoon domain had cost the Gardener an incredible amount of mana. However, the magicytes in its core refilling at a rapid rate, infusing Edge with adrenaline and a pungent, rising dread. It should be getting weaker the longer we fight, not stronger. We can’t hold out much longer like this.

The crew was still standing, but everyone besides Edge was battered and bruised, even with Warlord’s Mantle reducing the damage they took. His reservoir was draining like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and he could only refill it twice more with the last bites of mana berry he had moved into his belt pouch.

He had to find a way to shift the odds in their favor, before the Gardener overwhelmed them completely. Its powers are tied to the turning of the seasons. Right now, it’s channeling spring rain by filling the air with water-aspected mana. Maybe I can interfere with its domain by adding elements from a different season.

If that was the case, Edge had a single idea on how he could stop the skill-summoned Monsoon. He didn’t have anywhere close to enough Disruption to cleanse the boss’s mana from the air, but he could infuse the chamber with magic of another element.

There’s only one way to find out. He warned everyone to take cover, then let Repel Water dissipate along with Warlord’s Mantle. He let his naginata fall from his fingers, then gathered his will and conjured his iceblade.

A crystalline blade emerged from his palm, covered in shimmering silver runes. His mana-forged weapon was cold enough to make him shiver, but he was just getting started. Edge transferred the subzero sword into his left hand, then manifested another in his right. Dual wielding Elemental Blades counted as a skill combo, burning through his dwindling reserves at a rapid rate.

He poured even more mana into the manifestations, flaring the rank-three skill at full blast. As he cranked up the cold, arctic fury erupted from his position, freezing the skin on his hands as his ice-aspected mana went to war with the boss’s domain.

It grew colder and colder as frigid magic flowed from his weapons like the wrath of winter personified, and soon the patter of rain was replaced with the tapping of ice. Edge summoned every scrap of his concentration and pushed even harder than before, straining himself to the limit as he flared Elemental Blade further than he’d known was possible.

The squish of mud beneath his boots transitioned to the crunch of ice as the pocket of spell-chilled air expanded to fill the Gardener’s chamber. The clatter of hail roared in his ears as the storm was flash frozen within a handful of heartbeats.

When the black rainclouds producing the deluge were saturated by the subzero mana emanating from his iceblades, they struggled for a few seconds, then disappeared—spring retreating before the onslaught of wintery weather.

As the rain ceased to fall, Edge popped a piece of mana berry into his mouth, refilling his reservoir to the brim. The Gardener had come to a stop twenty feet away and seemed shocked by this turn of events. The tusk-mallet and scapula shield fell from its fingers as it retreated to its throne.

Although he had won a brief reprieve, he knew it wouldn’t last for long. The other hunters emerged from behind a pile of rubble, where they had been huddling within the protection offered by one of Byron’s magitech devices.

Before the crew had a chance to confer, the boss picked up a bone claymore as long as its body, then began floating toward them once more. Meanwhile, the gem in its chest had shifted from the green of new growth to a fiery vermillion glow.

“Spring is over, little weeds. The soil dries and floods recede. The heat will burgeon in a hurry, now it’s time for summer’s fury.”