The Queen Tyrant: Level Fifty-Eight Elite-Plus Dungeon Boss

  Current Difficulty: Extreme

  The Queen Tyrant remembers ruling with an iron fist—a tiny one, but an iron fist nonetheless. She was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Cretaceous. Now, she finds herself in a new world, one filled with weak and helpless prey. The Queen Tyrant remembers ruling, and when she’s finished, no one will dispute her right to rule again.

  Skeletal - This boss takes reduced damage from weapons designed to cut or pierce.

  Insatiable - This boss will feed on any viable food sources within its range.

  Dominion Aura - This boss’s lair grants it the Elite-Plus status.

  Elite-Plus - This monster moves faster and hits harder than a similarly powerful monster.

  Broodmother - This boss is nesting, and will not leave its lair unless certain conditions are met.

  The dinosaur that pushed itself up off the exhibit floor didn’t look any different than the one that had chased us across the floor and out the door the last time I was here, but there were a few key changes.

  First, the extra levels. I’d expected five for it being Elite, putting it at a sturdy Fifty-Five. Five levels worth of extra power was probably beatable. Eight? Eight was a stretch at best.

  Second, the Broodmother buff. That was a whole level of challenging, and I wasn’t ready for it. Our whole plan had revolved around getting the Queen Tyrant out of its lair. If it was determined to stay, and it was eight levels higher than us, we were in trouble.

  And the Queen Tyrant didn’t give us time to adjust our plan.

  It roared. The scream chilled my spine just like it had the first time I’d entered the Reliquary of Bones, but I gritted my teeth and yelled back. The Trip-Hammer was ready in my hands, and we needed to get into the lair proper if we wanted to win this fight.

  I charged the Queen Tyrant, and the Queen Tyrant charged me.

  We hit like a pair of waves—only one was the ripples in a pond after a kid threw a pebble in, and the other was a tsunami. The force slammed me into the ground, driving air from my lungs. It also saved my life. The Queen Tyrant’s jaws closed on the air inches above my head with a deafening crack.

  I activated the Autoplate Pauldron and swung the Trip-Hammer. It roared, but the sound was drowned out by the Queen Tyrant. I made contact with its jaw, and the blow snapped its head sideways—but only a few feet. The bone held, even where I’d driven the armor-cracking spike into it.

  Tori took advantage and ran. But she didn’t flee. Instead, she ran into the lair. “Hal, this is amazing! There have to be dozens of eggs and stuff. They’re all rock, though!”

  “Tori, it’s a dinosaur museum!” I dodged the Queen Tyrant’s foot, rolling to the side as it punched into the tile where my leg had been. A railgun shot punched a tiny hole into the boss’s hip. It roared and thrashed, and I army-crawled away through something’s ribcage. “Help me out!”

  “Alright, alright!” Tori cast Crush. I felt the air overhead bow inward and collapse on the Queen Tyrant, but it didn’t do anything. The bones were too strong, and the air between too hollow. “Nothing!”

  We were both wrong, though. It did something.

  Just not what we wanted it to.

  The Queen Tyrant turned, its hollow eye sockets locking onto Tori for the first time. It roared and started stomping toward her, and I rushed behind it, trying to get its attention with the Trip-Hammer.

  And that’s how I—finally—entered the lair of the Queen Tyrant.

  Tori’s description didn’t do them justice.

  They weren’t just stone eggs. Every one of them was jewel-encrusted, but not every one of them was an egg. Some looked like the footprints of creatures that dwarfed even the boss, and others like massive versions of cow patties and pig droppings.

  They were the key to victory, but I couldn’t let the Queen Tyrant focus on Tori. I swung the Trip-Hammer again. It slammed into a gigantic egg the size of my torso, shattering it. Tiny—by comparison to the boss, at least—bones poured out, along with a stinking yellow-brown liquid.

  Princess-In-Waiting: Level Thirty Monster

  Time Remaining: Twenty-Nine Seconds

  I squished it under the Trip-Hammer before it could either grow, time out, or attack me. Then I spun as the Queen Tyrant’s tail thrashed out toward me. I had its attention again.

  “Tori, can you set Contingent Casts? We need to—“ I hit the floor as the massive head crashed into my armored shoulder, then rolled to avoid a lethal bite. “Break the eggs! But do it all at once!”

  “You think so?” Tori yelled back, facing the first egg cluster. I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, and I didn’t much care.

  All I cared about was keeping the boss distracted and focused on me until she finished whatever she was doing.

  The plan—as I saw it, was pretty simple. We’d break all the eggs, then finish off the Princesses-In-Waiting before they could do anything using Tori’s area of effect attacks. Then we’d run.

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  That had been The Captain’s first mistake. He saw the fight as a siege—he and his thugs against the Queen Tyrant, with Jessica’s healing as his trump card. That would have worked—but only if the party attacking the Queen Tyrant was already strong enough to beat her, or at least not get into a bad cycle of injury and healing. Saul himself might’ve been there, but both Tommy and the cop weren’t—and if they’d been strong enough, they wouldn’t have needed Jessica.

  My whole plan was to take the hits I had to, avoid the ones I could, and move the Queen Tyrant into the main hall. Hopefully, she’d lose the Elite-Plus status and become a whole lot more killable. She had last time, anyway.

  Tori was casting away, setting up her Contingent Cast Gravity Wells or whatever. I kept dodging, swinging back and knocking fragments of bone out of the Queen Tyrant when I could. Ten seconds passed. Twenty.

  “Ready!” Tori yelled.

  “Head for the lobby!” I shouted. I swung again, crashing the hammer into the boss’s shin. Then I started running, too.

  The first Gravity Well went off a few seconds later.

  The stench was unbelievable. In the space of five seconds, the entire exhibit floor filled toe-deep with rotten egg fluid that burned my nostrils. I gagged, but kept running. Behind me, Tori retched. I spared a glance back to see her running, legs pumping and doubled over.

  And behind her, dozens of the Level Thirty Princesses-In-Waiting filled the hall.

  “I didn’t see this when Saul fled the fight!” I yelled.

  Tori mumbled something, and the first Crush obliterated a handful of the monsters. The Queen Tyrant’s pursuit destroyed a few more. Then she cleared her throat, spitting something onto the tile floor. “We weren’t exactly looking closely!”

  A new message came in as we cleared the exhibit’s exit and sprinted for the stairs.

  The Queen Tyrant is leaving its lair. All Dungeon Delvers in The Reliquary of Bones, prepare yourselves.

  It was bad news. It was horrifying. And it was also the best sign I could have asked for.

  Elite-Plus - This monster moves faster and hits harder than a similarly powerful monster (twenty-nine seconds remaining).

  The seconds ticked down.

  Tori and I fled, heading for the basement level. According to her, it was the only area in the Reliquary of Bones’s first floor that was definitely clear, and it was where we’d trap and kill the Queen Tyrant.

  Behind us, the boss roared and screamed, and the few remaining Princesses-In-Waiting died as Tori Pushed, Pulled, and Crushed them. The balcony and floor had already given way; the boss’s legs were churning what looked like a priceless sarcophagus into so much gold and wood rubble as it pushed through the first floor after us.

  Everything was going according to plan. Sort of.

  The floor’s support beams and piled up rubble weren’t stopping the Queen Tyrant like I’d hoped, but they were slowing it. The massive jaw snapped shut, severing water pipes and I-beams as it plowed after us, but Tori and I were faster.

  (eighteen seconds remaining).

  I swung, crushing a single stone claw under the Trip-Hammer. It was the first blow I’d landed that actually reduced the boss’s ability to kill us—but even that was almost nothing. Still, almost nothing wasn’t nothing.

  (twelve seconds remaining).

  Tori gathered herself and Crushed against the boss’s knee. It didn’t stop the T-Rex, but the Pull that followed tangled it in a support beam for a few seconds.

  (seven seconds remaining).

  The Queen Tyrant roared again, anger and rage and something approaching grief echoing through the Reliquary of Bones. I didn’t care. I stopped running; Tori took a few extra steps to slide behind me. And as I readied the Trip-Hammer, the Queen Tyrant’s nameplate changed.

  The Queen Tyrant: Level Fifty Dungeon Boss

  I’d been right. But I didn’t have time to celebrate. I revved the Trip-Hammer and fired the engine; it slammed into the monster’s shin a second later, and this time, bone cracked.

  It didn’t shatter. The dinosaur didn’t fall into the hieroglyph-filled tunnel we stood in, or die instantly. We weren’t that lucky, and the Queen Tyrant was still a Floor Two boss. But it did hurt it.

  And that was all we needed.

  Tori cast Gravity Well and locked the behemoth in place. I fired my second railgun bolt, and followed up the tiny impact crater with another Trip-Hammer blow—this time empowering it with the Autoplate Pauldrons.

  The shin-bone cracked again—but lengthwise, and big.

  The Queen Tyrant roared in pain and tried to turn, its jaws snapping closed near Tori’s face. She didn’t even back up; she just Pushed the T-Rex, and the whole thing fell, crashing through tile and marble to come to rest with its head against a sandstone model of a pyramid.

  It breathed. Its gigantic eye socket looked at me as I revved the Trip-Hammer and brought it down on the top of its head. The blow drove the skull into the pyramid, fracturing and disintegrating bone as the Queen Tyrant found itself between an unstoppable force and an immovable wedge.

  Boss Defeated: The Queen Tyrant

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  I was battered and bruised, and I would have killed for a single level-up for the Body point. Instead, Tori and I stared at the loot for a long moment.

  She broke the silence. “I get the Epic!”

  Time Limit: Two Days, Twenty Hours, Fifty-One Minutes

  Jessica stared at the assembled Museumtown citizens and the sheet metal and two-by-four fortress in front of the Field Museum. They were a motley-looking crew, and she really didn’t want to let them inside her life’s work. But then again, her life’s work had changed in the last three weeks, hadn’t it? She wasn’t studying anthropology anymore, was she?

  No, she was practicing it in real-time, and not as a scientist.

  “Thank you for coming. You’re all a lot like me—none of you wanted the dungeons and the fighting. But there’s a real chance that it’s coming whether you want it or not, and Museumtown’s just not defensible. Not against what we think could happen. So here’s my plan.

  “We’re going to tear down the town’s walls. All of them.”

  The murmer of discontent—and more—was expected. Even so, Jessica couldn’t help but wince. She powered on, though. “When the timer runs out, we’ll either be completely safe or in more danger than we’ve ever been in in our lives—or somewhere in between, if the Dungeon Delvers work quickly. If the Seared Wilds Tower falls, we’ll be okay. Otherwise, we’ll retreat into the Field Museum. It’s safe in there, and a few powerful defenders will be able to hold the entrance. At least, according to Calvin, we’ll be able to.”

  Calvin nodded nearby, but he didn’t bail Jessica out. According to him, this was her part of the operation, and while he’d be here, she needed to take control if she wanted people to treat her like a leader.

  “So, here’s what we’re going to do—“

  She trailed off as Hal and Tori stepped through the fog gate, and a message appeared over it:

  The Reliquary of Bones: Cleared

  Time to Reset: Six Days, Twenty-Three Hours, Fifty-Nine Minutes

  Tori gave her an awkward-looking wave. Hal cleared his throat. “Should be safe in there until the reset. You trying to fortify the whole thing, or just the outside?”

  Jessica couldn’t help but feel relieved as the people she’d been talking to stood up just a little straighter and seemed to listen just a tiny bit harder. It wasn’t just Hal and Tori’s level—the twins were here, and on paper, they were just as strong as her stepdaughter. It was Hal’s presence. He looked powerful, and he felt powerful. She cleared her throat. “Uh, yes. We’re going to make the fort tougher, and then build barricades blocking the stairs to the second floor on the inside. By the time we’re done, it’ll be the safest place in Chicago.”

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