Mantle of the Gods

The floor bosses were always bigger.

The monsters on the first floor had been about chest high, which was probably due to them being Elites. They had also only been about three feet wide and their tentacles had been under their bodies. They even had something that almost looked like wool covering their bodies with two big round eyes on the central mass. If they'd been smaller and not monsters, then some people may have even found them to be cute.

The boss that appeared in front of us was nothing like that. Its head was six feet above the ground, and its body was higher than that. Most of the tentacles were coming off of the side of the chitin covered body and they were plenty long enough to do some damage. The mandible mouth screamed at us as it prepared to attack.

I pointed at it. "BIND!”

A pair of vines shot out of the sandy ground to wrap around the boss’s body. It strained against the vines, but I was a level three and it didn’t have anything except its mouth to cut through the vines and I tightened the vines to pull it down to the ground to keep it from being able to twist to do that.

“It’s all yours!” I motioned for everyone to start attacking.

Mitchel was staying out of the range of the tentacles with his shield up. With the boss restrained there really wasn’t much for him to do at the moment.

Fray, on the other hand, was focusing on the tentacles. There were too many for her to just charge in, but she was staying just out of its range as well and slicing off the tips with her new katana, while trying to work her way forward.

“Magic Arrow!” A pink arrow struck the boss in between the eyes. I could see a little bit of damage, but it was going to take a lot more.

“Aelin!” I turned towards the blonde. "Why don’t we let Jovena and Fray work on this for a while?”

“You want us to three-man it?”Jovena glared at me. The Shooter had entered the boss room right beside me and hadn’t moved away from me. "That’s not how Miss Gesai said to do it.”

I nodded at Aelin as she walked over to me. "When Trent had us do our first boss, we went in with one weapon and no armor.” I looked at the crossbow in her hands. "You’ve got a weapon, skills, and armor.” I motioned towards the restrained boss. "It’s basically a sponge and you still want to complain?”

“CHARGING!” Mitchel began moving to his left as he followed up that warning with. "LOOK AT ME!”

The boss turned its face towards him and began shooting a jet of black gunk at the Tank. The blonde-haired man kept his wooden shield up, blocking the attack, but getting pushed back slowly for a few seconds, but soon, the gunk had piled up enough at his feet that he couldn’t be pushed back anymore. Once the attack was over he lowered the shield and gave me a thumbs up.

“Justia! Get the gunk dissolved and…” I looked back at Fray and saw that she had been working on the tentacles, which hadn’t been moving during the attack. She had the tentacles on the left side of the boss almost all cut off. I decided that she didn’t need any extra direction.

“You better start helping.” I nodded towards Fray. "Or she’s going to beat this thing by herself.”

Jovena scowled at me and took a crossbow bolt out of her crystal band and loaded it into her weapon. She started firing at the boss’s head.

I looked over at Aelin. "Is it just me or is this way easier than the other ones we’ve done so far?”

“It’s just you.” Aelin pointed the tip of her bow at the homely brunette that was stabbing the tentacle-less side of the monster. "Think about how fast we cleared the snake the second time.”

“You have a point…” I looked at the pistol in my hand, but already knew that I wasn’t going to need it.