Risen World

Chapter 263: Canyon Dungeon Part 11

Soon the rest of the group had reached the point where they could jump down from the cliff and into the room that Joshua was waiting at. They weren't in any danger since they were well ahead of the death trap and were able to leap to the floor below. Outside of a couple of the mages stumbling with their landing all of the group seemed perfectly fine if only a little tired out from the hours of intense climbing. Joshua knew that they would have to take a rest before they attempted to take on the ram boss, so he already had a decent fire going to warm everyone up and prepare some food as they all came over. Abigail and Aito got to helping Joshua make some quick food while the rest of the group started to catch their breath.

Even though they had gotten out of the way of the danger from the trap along the cliff they could still hear the thumping from the cliff being smashed and it kept getting closer and closer. Eventually it came to a halt as the last area where the cliff was still visible was slammed into by the opposite wall and completely closed off so that the group was stuck in the room and could only move forward by going into the boss room up ahead.

"Well that was an interesting trap. Never thought climbing could be made even more dangerous." Lilly said as she fed some food to her pets. Out of everyone she and the healers of the group had the easiest time since Cinder had carried them down the entire way. The large spider didn't seem tired at all as she started sucking the life out of one of the cocoons that Lilly had set aside for her.

"Hopefully it won't get any worse." Devin said with a sigh as everyone agreed. It would be one thing to deal with such a trap on its own, but it would be a whole different can of worms to deal with such a trap alongside fighting a boss. Now that the idea had been planted in all of their heads they were sure that something like that would happen during the upcoming boss fight. The group settled into a quiet meal as they all got into the mind set of taking on another boss. Some people were rather silent and just quickly ate their food before preparing their gear for the upcoming fight. Some were chatty with one another to get their mind off of the tension slowly building up. It depended on the person, but they were all preparing for the upcoming fight in their own way.

After they had taken a long enough break the group got up and headed over to the boss door once everyone was ready. At this point the powerful killing intent on the other side of the door was hitting them in waves to the point where even the members of the group that usually wouldn't sense such a thing could feel it. Joshua could also tell that the beast on the other side of the door was a step up from the bat and the beetle that they had faced. It seem to give off more power, but he wasn't sure if it would put up as much of a challenge since he could only feel one source of power on the other side of the door. The bat and the beetle may have been weaker, but together they made a powerful foe. He knew that this ram boss would have to have something up its sleeve to be as dangerous as the bat and beetle were.

"Are you guys ready?" Joshua asked and watched as they all gave him a nod. "Then let's head in. We don't know what kind of tricks this boss may have up its sleeve so be careful." After his short words of warning Joshua walked up to the two sides of the door and started to push them open from the center like with all of the other large doors they had come across while exploring these dungeons. Before the doors even fully opened the group was happy to find out that the next room was lit up with all sorts of glowing stones along the walls. This confirmed the fact for them that they wouldn't have to fight in the dark like with the bosses of the last path. If that had been the case then they would have been in trouble since they didn't have any night vision potions left.

The room was just as large as the room they had fought the last pair of bosses in which gave them a lot of space to move around. The main difference that everyone could see in this room was the fact that the ceiling wasn't as high. This was likely because of the fact that the boss wasn't of the flying type unlike the bat that would need the space for its quick movements. At the very back of the room the group could see the boss for this path lying down and glaring in their direction. What surprised them all about the boss was the fact that it wasn't some giant creature that towered over Tank or anything along those lines. In fact it was a ram that was a bit smaller than the large rams they had seen in the canyon. It even looked extremely similar to them with the curved horns that wrapped all the way back around while having pointed edges that could stab through things if hit at the right angle.

The major difference between this ram and the rams they had seen in the canyon was the fact that this ram's fur was a golden brown mix instead of the usual grayish brown that all of the other rams had. Another small detail that they noticed was the fact that there was a golden gem on the creature's forehead just underneath where its horns started to grow out. This gem gleamed brightly and gave off an extremely dangerous vibe to the entire group. They knew that whatever trick this boss had would have something to do with the gem.

Joshua quickly observed the creature and noticed it was called the golden goateven though it looked like a ram. Joshua just sighed a bit at the small joke the system was probably trying to make and took a look at the rest of the information he could gain from observing the boss. It was level eighty like the other two bosses had been along with five stars next to its name, but Joshua could feel that this creature gave off a far more dangerous vibe in his opinion. That feeling wasn't coming from the 'goat' itself, but instead was coming from the gem on its forehead.

"Alright everyone get in a defensive formation we don't know what this creature can do so be on guard." Joshua shouted before taking up a defensive posture as the goat rose to its feet and let out what was supposedly a ferocious bleating sound that almost seemed comical. The only issue was what happened next didn't seem funny at all. The gem on the goats head started to glow brightly as all of the stones in the room started to shake as if something was pulling on them. The shaking was so fierce that it was difficult for the group to keep their footing the entire time.

The shaking rocks started to float up into the air before soaring towards the goat in large amounts. The rocks would break down into all sorts of minerals before they surrounded the goat's body creating what looked like a giant ram head at first. Then the rocks just kept coming until what stood before the group was a large ram as big as Tank that let out a much deeper bleating sound as the large red gems that were supposed to be its eyes gleamed dangerously. The goat wasn't done yet as several rocks started to form smaller rams around the large one that made it seem like a whole pack of these creatures made out of hardened stone. The largest stone ram seemed to smirk before it charged over with its head down preparing to ram straight through Joshua with the rest of the rams following behind.

"Lilly get your pets out quickly we need as much help as we can get to slow these things down." Joshua shouted over the stomping of the hooves of the stone rams. Lilly nodded before bringing out Cinder and Tank alongside Flutter to boost the whole group. Light came out as well and immediately jumped into Joshua's aura. The rams were far faster than the beetle ever was so Joshua didn't have much time to stop the big ones charge. He ran into its path while using aura hardening to ramp up his defense even more. He then caught one of the rams horn with his scale blade and stood his ground as best he could. The large ram structure kept shoving him, back for a while but eventually Joshua was able to stop its movements.

Taking the opportunity Joshua twisted his blade locking the ram in place as Tank rushed over and bashed into its side knocking it further back. Even with the massive slam from Tank's shell there were only a few cracks along the stone ram proving how sturdy it was. The cracks quickly fixed themselves as more stone was absorbed from the floor. Joshua didn't have much time to think about that as more of the smaller rams were preparing to charge into the group. He let out a heroic shout to grab all of their attention as the rest of the group sent several spells into the mad pack of rams. Unlike the large ram the smaller ones weren't nearly as sturdy as they were easily destroyed from the mages' spells or a few well-placed shots from Aito. The problem was the fact that once destroyed the stones would quickly reform themselves and create another ram.

The rest of the tanks of the group stopped the surge of rams from getting to the mages. Both Jayce and Abigail created large shield walls to block the creatures off and allow the melee members to charge in and take out the rams that tried to break through. Now that the group knew that the small rams would just keep coming back over and over again they turned their attention towards the large one since the gem inside of it was the source of all of their problems. They bombarded the creature with all sorts of spells while avoiding hitting Tank at the same time who was holding it in place. Cinder and Isabella however spent their energy creating ice cold winds that would freeze over the smaller rams to slow them down and keep them from being too much of a hindrance.

For a while they stuck to this tactic for the fight. The ram couldn't get away from Tank who used his heavy body to drag down its speed. In the meantime the ram would continuously heal up any damage it would take from the stones in the room constantly rushing to merge with its body and heal any of the damage it had taken. Joshua knew at some point something would have to give with the beating that they were giving to the boss and he had a feeling it would happen soon.

In the meantime Joshua would dash around the large creature and attack any openings he could find while staying out of the way of the rest of the group. Whenever the large ram would break away from Tank's grip Joshua would smash it from the opposite side of Tank with a sword smash that would knock it back just enough for Tank to bite into it once again and keep the creature in place for the mages to keep pelting it with powerful spells. Madalyn even got involved by tossing a large canisters towards the creature filled with some sort of black liquid. The moment one of Laura's fire balls got near it the explosion created was so powerful that it created a large hole in the side of the stone ram that was quickly filled in with more rocks.

Eventually the group noticed that the rocks throughout the room were starting to thin out as several glyphs on the floor started to appear where rocks had been pulled away. They didn't know exactly what that could mean, but they had a feeling that this was the easy part of the boss if the smirk the stone ram was giving them could be believed.