The cracks in the Cave Lord's body glowed with an ominous blue light instead of showing flesh and blood.
It threw its head back and let out a roar unlike any it had made before.
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Its roar brimmed with pure destructive intent. This was no longer mere despair.
"Roar—!"
Blue flames erupted from the giant axe in its hands.
They formed a ring of fire that kept spreading.
The flames engulfed everything within several dozen meters.
[Despair Flame Ring]: The Cave Lord detonates the despair accumulated within its body, creating a ring of destructive flames that burns continuously. Deals 50 points of shadow flame damage per second to all enemies within range and inflicts [Panic] (reduces attack and defense by 10%).
The Steel Skeletons, fearlessly swarming the Cave Lord, were instantly engulfed in the same blue flames when they touched the ring. Their health plunged at a visible rate.
"-45 HP!"
"-37 HP!"
Damage numbers appeared in clusters above the skeletons' heads.
In just a few dozen seconds, more than a dozen Steel Skeletons in the inner ring had been reduced to piles of charred scrap.
Worse still,
two blue Soul Fires ignited in the Cave Lord's empty eye sockets.
It raised its giant axe.
Instead of striking wildly, it precisely locked onto a Steel Skeleton farther away.
A concentrated beam of blue light shot from the axe blade!
[Soul Devouring Ray]: The Cave Lord gathers the power of its Soul Fire and fires a piercing ray, dealing 500 points of shadow damage to a single target, with a chance to instantly annihilate its soul (increased effect against shadow-type summons).
"Whoosh—!"
The Steel Skeleton had no time to react before the beam pierced it, reducing it to dust. Not a single bone fragment remained!
"Now that's interesting. It's finally doing more than tickling me."
Lin Mu stood at a distance.
He watched his carefully modified Steel Skeletons fall like wheat before a scythe.
Yet his face showed no trace of panic. Instead, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
After entering its second form, the Cave Lord had become far more aggressive, and its attacks had grown more brutal and deadly.
"But you want to play with fire in front of me?"
Lin Mu's gaze sharpened as his talent, [Description Tamperer], activated!
He quickly targeted the description of [Despair Flame Ring].
"Change 'deals 50 points of shadow flame damage per second' to 'deals 50 points of shadow flame damage per day'!" "Deals 500 points of shadow damage to a single target"
In an instant,
the blue ring of flames, which had been radiating an aura of destruction, abruptly dimmed.
Then an extremely gentle blue flame spread out, still carrying a hint of eeriness.
The damage numbers above the skeletons caught in the flames changed!
"-1 HP!"
Then they stopped!
Fifty points of damage per day amounted to almost nothing per second.
The [Panic] effect still remained.
But the continuous, heavy damage had become an intermittent forced loss of health!
The Cave Lord seemed to sense that something was wrong.
It glanced blankly at the giant axe in its hand.
Then it tapped the ground beside it with the axe, making sure nothing was wrong with it.
It looked at the still-active skeletons around it, its enormous head practically covered in question marks.
"Roar?"
It let out another puzzled growl.
It raised its giant axe, preparing to use [Soul Devouring Ray]!
Lin Mu seized the opportunity.
His talent activated again, and he examined the Cave Lord's [Soul Devouring Ray].
"Change 'deals 500 points of shadow damage to a single target' to 'deals 500 points of shadow damage to a liquid target'!"
On the [Cave Lord]'s axe blade, another concentrated beam of blue light shot out!
"Whoosh—!"
The nearest Steel Skeleton had no time to react before the beam hit it. It turned into...
Nothing happened!
"Oh?"
The [Cave Lord] was truly baffled this time.
"[Bone Tooth]!"
Lin Mu took the opportunity to point again.
More than a hundred gleaming Bone Teeth poured toward the Cave Lord's face!
This time, Lin Mu was no longer aiming at its sturdy Bone Armor. He was targeting the Soul Fire flickering in its eye sockets!
"-1 HP!"
"-1 HP!"
"-1 HP!"
The Bone Teeth struck the Soul Fire in the Cave Lord's eye sockets.
They made a series of faint sounds like shattering glass, and the flames began to flicker erratically.
Stung by the attack, it let out a furious roar.
It swung its giant axe, hacking wildly at the skeletons around it.
But without the constant damage from [Despair Flame Ring] and with [Soul Devouring Ray] rendered useless,
all it had left were ordinary attacks.
Against the endless tide of Steel Skeletons pouring in,
its kill rate had fallen dramatically.
Lin Mu continued to stand at a distance, leisurely.
He directed the skeletons to attack without fear,
and occasionally summoned new ones to fill the gaps.
At the same time,
[Bone Tooth] came at the Cave Lord's Soul Fire in wave after wave, as if they cost nothing.
Each Bone Tooth still dealt just one point of forced damage.
But there were so many of them, and they came so fast!
Even ants could bring down an elephant in sufficient numbers!
The Cave Lord's remaining health—more than four thousand points—continued to fall under Lin Mu's unreasonable attrition tactics.
Three thousand... two thousand... one thousand...
Time passed second by second.
Inside the stone hall,
all that remained was the fearless charge of the Steel Skeletons
and the Cave Lord's increasingly feeble roars.
At last,
"Crack—"
A crisp cracking sound rang out.
The two blue Soul Fires in the Cave Lord's eye sockets, like shattered glass,
dimmed completely and went out.
Its massive body stiffened, and the giant axe in its hand hit the ground with a clatter.
Then it collapsed like a landslide.
[Killed LV.10 Lord-rank Boss—Cave Lord!]
[Necromancer Lin Mu's level increased to LV.9!]
[All surface-level Dungeon monsters have been cleared. You will be forcibly removed from the Dungeon in five minutes.]
[Dungeon overall rating: SS]
As the Boss fell,
blue, purple, and golden lights appeared beside its corpse.
They coalesced into several items, each shining with a different glow.
Lin Mu let out a long breath.
A relieved smile appeared on his face.
"I'm still not cautious enough! I should've waited another day, until I'd increased the number of Resurrect Skeletons and Bone Teeth to nine hundred, before challenging it!"
The battle might have seemed easy, but he had been intensely focused the entire time.
After all, he'd been facing a Lord-rank Boss whose level was far above his own.
One small mistake could have cost him everything.
But after clearing all the monsters in the Dungeon, he'd only received an SS rating.
Lin Mu couldn't help thinking about the "surface-level monsters" mentioned in the prompt.
For the moment, he couldn't figure it out.
He hurried over to pick up the equipment dropped by the [Cave Lord].
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