Risen World

Chapter 260: Canyon Dungeon Part 8

Now with one of the bosses down Joshua knew that the rest of the fight would be much easier. The beetle was powerful, but at the same time it was incredibly slow so it was easy to avoid any of its powerful attacks. The only problem was trying to figure out how to actually kill the thing. The darkness was hampering the power of Laura's flame spells which were the strongest spells they had at the moment to damage the creature, while any physical attacks became nearly useless against the creatures thick exoskeleton. Since the exoskeleton wasn't metallic in nature like with the ant queen they couldn't simply overheat the creature to do damage.

The only way Joshua could think of to kill this beast was either to try to wait and see if all of their attacks could out damage the beetles healing speed which would take a long time, or try and find a great weakness to exploit. So far they had attacked just about every part of the creature's body and none of it seemed to be a weakness from what Joshua could tell. The only person that seemed to do any real damage was Amy and that was because of the penetrative force of her blows. Even so it wasn't nearly enough damage to slow the beast down enough. Its internal organs were healing at the same rate as every other part of its body. What they needed was to be able to get everyone the ability to attack the creature's weakness and from what Joshua could tell there was only one place that they hadn't tried to attack yet.

'Guys I think we're going to need to attack its belly if we want to finish this fight quickly.' Joshua said as he observed the large monster as it was turning its body around so that it could get another good charge going towards the group. Its movements were extremely slow without momentum so the group had some time to devise a plan.

'How are we going to get it to expose its belly? If you hadn't noticed we can barely slow its movements let alone flip it over.' Devin said with a frown as he and his two brothers started positioning themselves to try to hamper the beetle once again.

'Lilly bring out Tank to take on its charge after we've slowed the creature down a bit. He's the only one here that can help us lift up such an enormous creature. When Tank stops its movements it'll be up to Dave, Devin, and Dillon to cut at the creatures front legs and get it to rear up a bit. Use all the strength you've got. Tank can take that as an opportunity to help lift it up while Abigail will stun its body so that it can't resist for a moment. That will be enough time for us to bombard its belly with spells.' Joshua explained getting nods from everyone.

Lilly immediately had Tank move into the path of the beetle. The larger creature seemed to be angered by the fact that Tank was getting in its way as it started to aim its horn in an attempt to pierce through Tank's head, but Joshua knew that Tank would block it with his shell. He and Jayce both started creating projectile shields in front of the giant beetle to help hinder its momentum as much as possible. The large beetle easily smashed through the shields, but it did help keep it from being able to build up to much steam. Jade also decided to help out as she leapt out of Amy's shadow and dived towards the beetle possessing it. Jade couldn't hinder it too much, but she was able to use bindings to slow its movements down even more. By the time the beetle had reached Tank's position its momentum was nearly all gone as it crashed into the giant turtle.

The collision shook the entire room and Tank was forced back quite a bit considering he was the smaller one and had to stop all of the giant beetle's left over momentum. Tank's feet created a long trail along the floor as they sunk into the ground the further the giant turtle was pushed back. Luckily the horn had collided with Tank's shell since he moved his head out of the way at the last minute. Even with so much force and power behind the beetles attack the shell was able to easily withstand the blow. With no momentum left the beetle was preparing to back up to get some space to try to hit tank once again, but there was no way Tank or the rest of the group was going to let that happen.

Tank immediately bit down hard on the beetle's horn keeping it from backing up. Although he wasn't able to bite through it he was easily able to keep it locked in place so that the giant beetle wasn't able to get away. The rest of the group took this as the chance to finally get the beetle in position where they could do some real damage. They knew that they couldn't break through the beetle's exoskeleton fast enough before its healing kicked in once again and even if they could it would take a long time to kill the boss with that approach. So instead they were going to flip this large beetle up so the mages could aim for its underbelly.

The Carsen brothers were the first to rush in as they all got into formation. One of them each went to one of the beetles large front legs while the last one got underneath the beetle. They quickly got to work as the two at the legs started using a skill that boosted their strength causing their muscles to strain visibly wherever there wasn't armor on their body. They then slammed their axes into the legs with enough power to greatly crack the exoskeleton. Normally at this point the beetle would have tried to back away, but with Tank holding it by the horn it couldn't get free. They then slammed the axe again into the same place causing the axes to break through and get stuck into the beetle's legs.

The three brothers looked towards each other before nodding and lifting up. They strained their bodies and put as much strength into their legs as possible as they slowly started to lift the beetle's legs off of the ground. When they had lifted up enough to the point where the third brother that was waiting underneath the beetle could see its underbelly they were finally in position. With a shout the last Carsen brother slammed his axe into the beetles' underbelly creating a large fracture and making the beetle rear up a bit. That was more than enough for Tank to do the rest of the work. Tank used the moment from the beetle losing its balance to push it up further to the point where it was standing completely on its back legs exposing its now cracked underbelly to the rest of the group.

Cinder leaped towards the ceiling and started tying up as much of the beetle's upper body with her webs. She was in her ice form so the webbing would slow the beetle down even more while restraining it and keeping it in the perfect position. The beetle did try to struggle, but without having the power of its legs to help move its body properly it was like any other beetle caught in a web and that made it open season for all of the mages of the group. Abigail made sure to hit it with a stunning strike to freeze its movements up long enough for Cinder to finish trapping the beetle completely before getting out of the way. They bombarded the creature's underbelly with spells of all sorts ranging from large fireballs, to cutting wind blades or anything else they could be used to do damage. Aito got in on the action as well sending in explosive rounds that blew off large chunks of the beetle.

After a while the beetle stopped struggling and they could all feel another surge of experience. Joshua leveled up and smiled from the feeling he gained from getting stronger before going over and putting the bodies of the two bosses into his inventory. He smiled knowing that the beetle's exoskeleton would make good material for armor while the large bats body could be sold to the system for more system points in the alliance's pockets. A few moments after the fighting had ended glyphs started to appear along the walls and ceiling of the room brightening everything up to the point where it was possible to see once again. For a moment it messed with their vision a bit since they were still under the effects of the night vision potion that Natalie had taken. She quickly stopped feeding what she was seeing through the mental link and everyone was able to look around just fine.

"Well at least we won't have to worry about not being able to see clearly on our way back." Laura said aloud now that the dangers of this path of the dungeon had been taken care of.

"I don't think we'll have to worry about finding a way back." Henry said as he pointed over to a portion of the room where the floor had started to light up with several symbols that created what they all assumed was a teleportation spell that would lead them out of the path. It was something they had all gotten used to seeing in some of the tougher dungeons that they had taken on recently.

"What's that besides the exit?" Amy asked with excitement as a brilliantly gleaming royal blue treasure chest had appeared next to the teleportation location as well.

"Seems like a new chest to open to me." Isabella said with a small smile. "Well then leader go ahead and see what we got for taking down the bosses of this path." The moment she said that just about everyone in the group was looking towards Joshua excitedly. They all wanted to know what type of reward they'd get from such a challenging boss. Joshua simply shook his head before walking over and opening the treasure chest to see what was inside. The last time he had seen a similar chest in design he had gotten a blue print out of it that was a bit more special than the other ones he had come across. It ended up being the blue print for his next weapon after all so he was hoping for something of similar worth this time around.

When Joshua reached down and opened the treasure chest after both Becca and Marcus gave him the go ahead sign that it wasn't covered in any types of traps he smiled at what he found. On the inside of the chest there was just one blue print, but it was of the same design as the blue print that had his next scale blade design on it. This meant that it was a higher tier blue print than the normal ones you would find. The blue print was of a darker blue to show the difference and Joshua was certain that whatever equipment they got from it would be far better than most normal blue prints.

"Well looks like a higher level blue print to me." Adrian said as he looked it over. "To bad we won't know exactly what we'll get from it until we get back to the hub city."

"That's fine but at least we know that we'll be getting something interesting with each boss we take down in this dungeon. I was worried that the only reward that we would get would end up being at the end of the dungeon, but looks like I was wrong in that regard." Joshua said with a smile as he turned away from the treasure chest.

"Well then let's head through the teleportation spell to see if it takes us back to the start of the dungeon. It's already been a few days and we've only cleared one path so it's probably going to take us a while to finish this dungeon." Henry said getting everyone else to nod. They still had a good three weeks or so before they planned on taking on the large town so they weren't in too much of a rush.

They walked into the teleportation spell and were quickly transported back to the center of the large room where they had to decide which path to go down. The first thing Joshua noticed was that on the large door where the final boss to the dungeon was located one of the locks had broken off. The path they had come from was now lit up with those glyphs along the wall and they were all ready to decide which path they would go down next.