Chapter 150: Thirty Seconds

Will broke into a sprint.

Under no circumstances did he want to fight a Raid Boss in an enclosed area.

Ancient papers were scattered into the air as Will flashed past them, a gale of wind following his passage and disturbing things that hadn’t felt a breeze in thousands of years.

Will mentally tracked his progress.

Left turn. Hallway – BANG! – the seamless door leading to the maintenance room below was torn off its hinges just behind Will.

Too late, Will thought, sprinting down the hall and hitting the metal box, jumping straight up through the little hatch in the ceiling and sprinting up the shaft.

Platforms of solid stone jutted out of the square shaft to meet Will’s feet as he sprinted upwards, a tar-black humanoid body arriving in the metal box beneath him.

Will picked up speed as the creature climbed up into the shaft, its sticky hands clinging to the walls without effort.

After about fifteen seconds of sprinting straight up, Will’s mind registered something was wrong.

I should’ve reached the ground floor by now. Abyss, at that speed, I should’ve reached the ceiling.

Will covered his head and grabbed himself with his Phantom Snakes, launching himself up, with the intention of breaking through the stone ceiling of the building.

Will felt the sudden acceleration and the wind resistance, but…

No impact.

Will glanced down at the Raid Boss beneath him.

It was still the exact same distance away, despite having slowed to a crawl, limbs tentatively touching the walls as it pulled itself forward, like an insect.

Will glanced back up and threw his axe above him, then launched himself up at a greater speed, aiming to catch it.

The axe sailed ahead of him as though he were standing still.

I am standing still, Will thought, looking back down at the creature.

He was caught in some kind of Ability that limited the range that Will could get away from him. and was constantly shortening it.

Interesting. And terrifying.

Especially since Will was trapped in this narrow shaft. He’d had more options when he was on the floor below.

The Sin Amalgam was approaching, albeit slowly, creeping forward with malicious intent. Something told Will that Sin Amalgam couldn’t move quickly while it was pinning him down.

Time for an experiment.

Will reached out with Middle Phantom Snake and grabbed the Sin Amalgam and pulled it towards him up the shaft while also lifting himself and placing his hand on the wall.

Will felt the wall drag along his fingers as he rose up, roughly the same amount that he’d raised the raid boss.

It’s reeling me in like a fish on a line. But I can still struggle.

At the speed it was going, it would be nose-to-nose with Will in about thirty seconds, and Will didn’t like his odds when that happened.

Despite being affected by an Ability, Will hadn’t felt it latch onto him.

…Usually he could feel that.

Will briefly entertained the thought of dragging it back up to where the rest of his team was and they could all pile on it together. The only problem he had with that, was that the Ability he was trapped in was likely an area-of-effect, rather than a targeted ability.

If it had been targeted, he would’ve felt it. Will suspected he was in some kind of bubble of inward facing space that prevented living things from escaping or using superior maneuverability.

Which totally screws me.

If he swung by the caravan, that ran the risk of civilians being drawn into this thing’s sphere of influence, not to mention his Party, none of whom had damage types that were particularly useful against this thing.

Will imagined a dozen people trapped in this thing’s area of effect like insects trapped in amber, all struggling to push it this way and that, unable to pick a direction to move until eventually they were drawn into it.

That would be a shit show.

Come to think of it, I haven’t even tried damage yet.

Will had been assuming it was similarly resistant to physical damage, like the zombies. Was a sense of hopelessness part of this creature’s bag of tricks or was Will just slipping?

SLICE!

Will cut the Amalgam into a dozen little chunks using Middle. Or…he tried.

The blackened chunks were suspended in midair like they were tethered to Will, rapidly recombining in a matter of heartbeats, and still approaching.

Yep. Wasted two seconds.

So physical damage wasn’t the answer.

Will briefly wondered if it would burst into ghost-smoke if Mason were to burn it.

Or…if the defenses outside were to vaporize it.

Will grabbed Sin Amalgam around the waist and flew both of them to the first floor in the blink of an eye, crashing through ancient desks like piles of loose leaves.

25 seconds.

Will forcibly shoved the creature out into the main courtyard while Will waited behind the nodules inside the building.

Up close to the nodules, Will could hear a strange buzzing sound, like a single massive beetle trapped in a cardboard box, and Sin Amalgam was systematically vaporized by the building’s traps, unleashing massive gouts of black smoke into the air.

Massive gouts of smoke that kept approaching Will.

Shit. 20 Seconds.

It was approximately a third closer to him now than it had been in the shaft, maybe fifteen feet away and meandering closer.

I am the inevitability of death.

That wasn’t my thought. Will thought, narrowing his eyes as he realized he’d screwed himself pretty hard.

Middle couldn’t wrap around a column of smoke to move it around.

No, I can move it.

Will directed the polymorphic armor of his Phantom Snakes to form a bubble around the column of smoke, then squeeze down on it.

Will ended with a bubble of metal about the size of a chair, slowly approaching him no matter how hard he tried to push it away.

It was like a law of nature, and there was no circumventing it. He could move it around, he could move himself, but he could not reduce the distance between them.

Stolen story; please report.

Searching for any idea how to handle this creature, Will’s gaze caught the grate that led to the refiner. The clogged refiner that wasn’t working.

Maybe…

You willing to bet your life on that idea? Will chided himself. It would either work, or he would be dead.

But isn’t it always like that?

15 seconds.

Will spent the next two seconds flying back into the building and down into its bowels, the scenery flickering past him in a heartbeat until he came to a halt in the maintenance room just outside the gunked up refiner, the bubble containing Amalgam floating just behind him and continuing to approach.

Wand of the Undead Retainer

Will’s body suddenly felt heavier as he switched from the Coiled Serpent Amulet to the Wand of the Undead Retainer.

He didn’t need more strength. He needed more hands. Disposable ones.

“Billy-bob, Stevie, Noob,” Will said.

Undead Retainer

118->103 Charge remaining.

The three undead butlers coalesced out of the ether, lined up and bowing.

“How can we-“

“Shut up, I’ve only got a few seconds. Grab all the tools you can carry and bring them down those stairs,” Will said, pointing.

“Inside is an ancient machine. We are going to clean, maintain and reactivate it in the next ten seconds. Go, GOGOGOGO!”

10 seconds

The three undead butlers snapped to it, each grabbing an armload of maintenance tools and tossing them down the stairs before grabbing another, once they had stocked up to Will’s satisfaction, Will Sprinted down the stairs, kicking a box of tools ahead of him.

The damned thing was only about two arms lengths away.

8 seconds.

I’m not going to be here for most of this, but I can cover the big stuff.

Will maneuvered Sin Amalgam into the corner of the room and released it from it metal bubble, allowing it to balloon outward, dominating the space as it continued creeping closer.

Will formed the Phantom Snake’s armor into enormous spatula-like objects, scooping up huge amounts of goop from the walls and floor and flinging it outside into the maintenance room.

5 seconds.

Will could almost touch the thing with his fingertips.