Even if he was mentally prepared to face a giant-ass kraken, he still squealed when one of those giant tentacles aimed to crush him underfoot.

  Granted, the only thing he felt wasn’t panic but shame as he managed to evade the entire thing with a well-timed burst of a runic wind spell. What really made him panic was that several more tentacles were aiming right at him.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t due to him being a support mage and the boss realizing it. If anything, he felt that the Master-Rank boss didn’t care at all which it was aiming. All of its tentacles were aiming at everyone and everything, and each time they missed, they meticulously aimed towards the next target without end.

  Those tentacles weren’t just powerful due to their strength and bulk, but the suctions on the bottom of each tentacle proved to be a horrific pair to match with. If even one thing was stuck there, they’d be hard pressed to leave before the acidic suctions managed to burn it off completely, much to how it happened to Hamil’s mineral wall despite it being made of the same acidic properties.

  It was clear that the kraken had stronger acid than even the dungeon’s amount, much like the harpy, but that wasn’t all. It didn’t just use its tentacles–it controlled the very acid it was comfortably resting in.

  Small waves of acid swished and flowed from the lake like an ocean tide, coasting over the land and heading directly at its assailants. Not only would it completely burn someone if they were caught in it, the surroundings were getting melted off one by one, becoming difficult to hide behind whenever the tentacles got too close.

  That wasn’t even the hard part. The kraken, despite everything that was happening already, also shot out straight bursts of acid streams that seemed like sniper shots, and it actually did manage to hit some of their team in the most unlikely spot. While it did manage to hit sometimes, they were lucky that none seemed to hit the vitals, proving that with everything going on, that was the least likely the kraken was focusing on.

  Then again, if it was already doing that much, it was just putting the icing on the crap cake they were dealt with.

  Everything around him was a swirl of chaos all due to the giant kraken in front of them. The last dungeon boss they faced, that giant lizardman with the water attunement, was more heavily focused on melee combat and using its water strikes to deal powerful blows.

  This kraken, on the other hand, was using all of its power to control the field around it, using its acid to make anyone fighting it get into a panic. No matter how many times they try to hit it, a wave of acid comes up from the lake and blocked it, or one of the tentacles get aimed instead, only for the acid itself to actually help it regenerate it back to normal in just a few seconds–literal seconds to recover the giant tentacle as though nothing had happened while its other tentacles did its dirty work. For the kraken, it was literally bathing in its own version of a health potion.

  Zeke had his hands full already trying to get to his teammates who were unlucky enough to get hit once or twice by the sudden streams of acid and the waves of lake acid. His Dexterity buff on full blast, he ran towards the panting Hamil and healed him up, recovering the festering wounds on his right hip and parts of his face before putting him back to normal. While he wasn’t worse off than anyone else, his lacking Vitality didn’t help ease his worries.

  He then, with the help of the nexus rune carved on his back, pushed himself towards Saang and Mikella next. Unfortunately, the nexus rune array took too much mana for Zeke to feel comfortable using in this entire fight. The mana consumption from doing this was too much, forcing him to refer back to just using his rune buffs to ensure a healthy fighting pace..

  Saang had to take on more of the blows to keep them off of Mikella who was dealing the most damage. Out of everyone, Saang was the only one who looked like she was half-melting.

  She was using her blood attunement to keep her wounds from spreading further, but it was clear that her moves were staggering before Zeke managed to get to her without any of those streams hitting him.

  This moment is when a mage is truly pushed against his limits. When he approached her and healed her, the amount of foreign energy forcing her to take damage made it difficult for Zeke during his panic-riddled casting, forcing Zeke to waste more mana due to the rising amount of inefficiency. He growled, ensuring that his healing would work even if it cost more mana to restore her quickly, but forced himself off when a stream got in between them, particularly aiming for Zeke’s head.

  “Shit!” He cursed.

  “Good enough!” Saang yelled out. “Now get back!”

  He had no other choice but to agree and did so. At this point, once again, he couldn’t do much else. He could use his runic spells to attack, but the way things were going, he worried that he wouldn’t have enough mana to heal his comrades after all the damage that had been piling up. He hated the fact that his Restoration was a touch-based heal spell, but if he was honest, none of them would have survived if the heal spell wasn’t as strong as it is now, hence why that all-area healing skill from earlier was pointless. It wouldn’t be strong enough to face the kraken, and even if he tried, he would only be wasting mana, not using it effectively.

  On that point, Saang went off to fight as though nothing had changed. All of her wounds and melted flesh were repaired and she only showed exhaustion rather than pain. Despite the healing, it required plenty of the user’s own willpower to continue fighting. That, and a whole load of Vitality as a main stat. Saang went off and slashed at the nearby tentacle that was ready to crush her underneath.

  The axe dug deep into the tentacle, but once it did, a splash of acid poured out of it. Thankfully, Saang summoned a wall of carmine to block off the lethal acid splash, reducing the attack to a sizzle that combined both blood and acid to create even more of a stench that made Saang’s face scrunched up in disgust.

  The fight continued on, with Mikella eventually using her dragon wings to gain a flight advantage. The kraken noticed her presence and began bombarding her with constant streams of acid at her. Each one aimed directly at her, which completely reduced the pressure off the other teams. Her practice sessions with her wings proved fruitful as her vast Dexterity helped her avoid all incoming acid snipes with fluid movements, flying gracefully in the air with precision in mind.

  At this point, Zeke had little choice but to be in the air himself if he needed to heal her, but that would only make him a prime target. The kraken, the acid snipes, the mana costs–it would only make things worse if he tried using the Rune nexus on his back to support her currently. Hamil and Kote went ahead with the damage, each one dealing sharp strikes with their projectiles at its near leathery skin on its head.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Of course, each strike was blocked multiple times by the bulky tentacles. Even if they managed to take out a tentacle, it would regrow in a heartbeat either way. At this rate, it would only just continue until it wore down the entire team’s resources and killed them all for good.

  His mind whirled for the possibilities, resolving to use strategies against opponents with high regeneration rates. The only thing he could think of is to bind the damn tentacles somehow and hit the main body. The acid shot from those things are nothing compared to dealing with these fleshy suckers all day.

  Finally, he had an idea. So far, the kraken has been able to do all of this while still within the lake. Most likely, the acid-filled lake is what’s helping it regenerate so much. It made sense, considering that being an acidic type of monster, it would actually restore itself much like how a human being needs water to hydrate itself and recover.

  So what would happen if they made the lake itself hazardous to the kraken?

  “Saang! Cover me!”

  Zeke called out, getting her attention immediately as she ran over to him. Once she did, Zeke knelt down and summoned a magic structure, one after another, with Ethereal Manifest. As the structures surrounded him, four floating pens flew out of his storage pack and began to write at a fast pace.

  “What are you…?”

  “Protect me while I make something that can help us!”

  Saang wasn’t keen on learning magical theory, even with her great manipulation on blood magic, but she understood that whatever Zeke was planning, his runes normally had a wider range than what the team normally had. Saang nodded, turned around and deflected all the attacks aimed at the two.

  One tentacle attack, then a crescent wave of acid came after her, but she managed to block it all with her blood. To do so, she had to keep bleeding, so she used a small dagger to cut up her skin to summon it. Since they weren’t able to really make the creature bleed, she had no other choice but to use her own.

  On that point, that’s when Zeke’s healing finally became easier to use. While he drew, he also healed Saang that was just a meter in front of him, recovering from her own self-inflicted harm and to keep defending themselves.

  Still, he winced at how much pain Saang was going through. He felt guilty for putting her through this, but realized that he would gladly do the same if it meant completing the mission with no deaths involved. After noticing Saang’s glance at him, he noticed a glint in her eyes that stated that she can handle anything. He decided to trust her competence and kept drawing like his life depended on it.

  If this worked, it would greatly turn the tide of battle on their side.

  …..

  Mikella gritted her teeth after avoiding another annoying acid stream straight at her. She hoped that she could take its attention to let the others have some room to maneuver and possibly figure out a way to defeat this creature.

  But what she hadn’t found out is just how annoying those streams kept harrassing her. Using her wings was getting easier, but in a desperate fight like this, she wasn’t comfortable relying on them for this long and under pressure. One wrong flap caused her to fly down to the path she wanted to avoid, causing her to override her Dexterity to the brink by twisting her body around to avoid every speck of the acid that could touch her.

  Her body was utterly sore and she swore she twisted parts that really shouldn’t be twisted, but at this point she was patting herself on the back for it. All those years of intense gymnastics training really pulled off there.

  Each stream was shot at her like bullets from a gun, too fast for her to comprehend even with her senses. She was mostly relying on her Dragon Eyes as each time the kraken shot, hints of red flared from its mouth. It revealed that each time it struck, that was the perfect time to strike. The only thing she can do with Dragon Eyes is to destroy the acid attacks by tackling at their weakest parts, dispersing them with intense lightning strikes.

  It annoyed her to no end because she knew there was no way for her to get there. The other tentacles would just get in the way, and that’s not even considering the random crescent waves shot at her in strange directions. The way they just alter their trajectories not with physics, but with some weird environmental mana shifting, pissed her off to the point of conjuring hundreds of lightning blasts just to get them away from her. The kraken was basically mocking her while she fumbled about in the air.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t try to attack. She brought out her bow, being the best option to attack from a distance. Magic was better, but she wanted to preserve her mana and use it properly to deal a consistent amount of damage, and using the bow does exactly that. She conjured a lightning-aspected arrow and pulled, using her wings to try and balance herself out. Of course, that still almost got her a face full of acid as a stream was headed straight for her.

  She flapped her wings, managing to not only dodge a stream but also let loose an arrow, but her aim was jack shit as it completely flew overhead. She kept trying over and over, becoming more frustrated as her wings forced her aim off while she tried to avoid the damn streams.

  How can the kraken be so frighteningly good at shooting at her? It was even worse that the giant squid was a better shot than her.

  It was only proven true as one flap later, a stream managed to catch her off guard, hitting and melting off a part of her wings.

  She screamed, the bits of acid hitting her shoulder and neck as they burned from the impact. Her wings became like extra limbs for her, so even if they still felt alien at times, the pain was intense. The lack of a working wing left her hanging in the air, gliding down instead of flying after each failed flap.

  She started to panic, not realizing that she was struck just above the lake’s surface, where the kraken eagerly waited for her. The kraken itself saw her and instantly started to grasp at her, reaching out with its giant tentacles.

  Just as she was getting desperate and planning on blowing everything around her with all the lightning magic she had, a figure appeared without her noticing and grabbed her out of the air. She felt momentum tug on the both of them as they were pulled away from the lake, missing the tentacles entirely as well as the dozens of streams that shot their way.

  They managed to land on the other side of the lake, making her realize Kote saved her dumbass from the sky. He recalled the strong lines of his gauntlets into the tips of his fingers, which were actually made of bone that were powerful enough to pull the both of them over.

  “Thanks…” She said, her adrenaline reaching a crescendo, her heartbeat rapidly decreasing from the potential danger.

  “Zeke would kill me if anything happened to you,” Kote said, showing a smile from within the mask in jest. “More importantly, I don’t think you can fly anymore, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mikella said, wincing when she saw the state of her right wing.

  The bottom portion of the scaled wing was sizzling, burnt flesh and blood seeping from the open wound, causing the entirety of it to lay limp on her side. It felt so painful, making Mikella realize that her Pain Resistance didn’t take into account her new wings. The lack of understanding of having dragon wings made them unable to handle the pain. Thankfully, it would be corrected after this horrific sight and feeling.

  Her regeneration was catching up, but if she tried to fly again, it would just be used up in a heartbeat.

  “What about the thing?” Mikella asked, gesturing to the squid trying to kill them.

  “Hamil’s taking care of that.”

  He gestured with his chin to the side, seeing that Hamil was indeed in his commando mode, flying across the air with his two stones underneath his feet. His wand was at the ready, swinging left and right as he commanded several stones from around them to pierce the kraken in every part possible. Of course, the kraken in return recovered instantly and tried to take him down, but his fast movements across the sky made it easy for him to maneuver.

  But Mikella knew of all people how much control was needed to keep that up, and who knows how much Mana he was spending. She needed to keep fighting, but her motivation was lagging to see that the kraken hadn't been injured at all this entire time.

  Just as ideas were flashing in her head, she heard someone shout her name, belonging to none other than Zeke.

  “Mikky! Get ready! We’re about to blow the lake sky-high!”