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Chapter 148
“Are you girls ready?” I asked.
Only after Lydia and Miki assured me did I take a breath and started heading down with them next to me. We entered the massive stone door, and it shut close behind us, sealing us in with the monster. The room itself didn’t differ at all from the floor 10 room. Once I defeated this guy, I could start looking for Celeste. That was what was important.
I didn’t take any risks this time either, the best jobs were selected for everyone, and I even re-added Exorcism just in case. Bosses were always many times stronger than the mobs between levels, and I expected this guy to be no less than a challenge. A moment later, a man suddenly appeared in the middle of the room.
He was a ghostly man, wearing a fine suit. His hair was combed, and he looked refined, not intimidating or scary. He seemed vaguely familiar to me. No, he seemed more than familiar. He was the guy in the murals! He was older, paler, and sadder, but this was definitely the man whose story I had been following. Wait… isn’t this Karr’s dungeon?
Then again, now that I thought about it, Mina’s Dungeon was not actually created by Mina, but her brother. So, in other words, this wasn’t Karr’s dungeon? Did that mean it was the Fairy Queen’s?
“So, more challengers have come.” The man said sadly. “First, a fairy destroys me, now animalkin slaves. It seems only suiting that this would be my fate. Please, bring me death.”
This ghost also seemed to be self-aware. The mid-tier boss I defeated seemed unintelligent and never learned from battle to battle. If it had, it might have started avoiding me or changed its tactics. On the other hand, this guy seemed to remember his premature death at the hands of the fairy. Was that a trick of only intelligent bosses? And why was he intelligent anyway? I might have expected the Dungeon owner to be intelligent like in the case of the necromancer, but why was Karr capable of intelligent thought? Wait, let’s make sure…
“Why do you want to die?” I asked, cautiously, feeling out the boss.
Karr looked over at me. “I failed her. I failed them all. I tried to protect everyone, and in the end, I saved no one. My great city fell, and I died a pauper’s death. All the good I tried to do in life, in the end, it was wasted.”
“The Fairy Queen? You’re talking about the Fairy Queen, right?” I tried to push him for more information.
“She gave everything for me… and I failed her too…”
“What about Celeste? The one that killed you. What does she have to do with this? Is she the one?”
“Who is Celeste?” His eyes flashed and then he shook his head. “Enough of this! You have come here for a purpose. It is time that we fulfill that purpose. I may seem like a weak noble to you, but I was a great adventurer in my day. I even fought alongside the Great Harem Hero, Artemis.”
“Harem Hero? What is a Harem hero?” I blinked.
Karr’s eyes flashed. “You have two women at your side and you pretend not to understand? I envied that man. I envied the path of the Harem. In the end, I lost everything because I was not fit to have a harem!”
I shook my head. “What? Why are we on harems now? Rather… I don’t care about your love life!”
“If you don’t want the knowledge of a harem, then you aren’t fit to have one!” Karr shrieked.
I was at a complete loss, but apparently, I had pissed him off and now he was attacking with all he had. Spells came flying at the three of us. The battle had finally begun.
Chapter 149
“Split up!” I ordered, ducking behind some columns as several fire spells bombarded me.
If we had a tank, maybe I could have them stand in front with a shield and accept this kind of bombardment. In fact, that’s exactly what our party was missing. At first, I had never had to think about such things as party dynamics. I got Lydia from convenience and aided Miki because of her effectiveness from ghosts. Even Celeste, who had good magic ability, was someone I accidently ran into. All four of us together made a somewhat well-rounded party, but what we were really missing was a high constitution person to take the hits for us.
Would that be a Knight or something like that? Well, I didn’t even know if our party would stay together once I freed everyone. I was thinking about continuing to dungeon dive, but I’d need to form a real party for that. I certainly didn’t want to hire a Knight slave and have them get hurt because of my selfish desires.
Anyway, the point was that my Holy Circle couldn’t hold off his bombardment for more than a few seconds and we had nothing like a tank, so we had to split apart and in turn split up his fire. It seemed like a good idea until I realized just how much magic this guy was shooting out. He appeared to be tossing out a few spells a second, more than enough that all three of us were busy. I couldn’t imagine how Celeste had managed on her own when all of his magic was concentrated on her. Then again, she was a magician too, so maybe she had a magic counter that could directly fight against him.
“I will destroy you!” He screamed.
Was it necessary for the boss to scream things like this? It was really distracting when you were trying to defeat a boss. In fact, wasn’t he busy spell casting? How could he even talk in between all of his spell chanting? If only I could shut him up, maybe we’d get a window to attack.
“Wait… silence!” I called out, continuing to move as spells stuck the ground beside me.
“Eh?” Lydia said, dodging a bit better, but failing to close any distance on the ghost.
“We need to use a spell like Silence on him!” I explained. “RPG tactics. He’s a spell caster. If we can block his speech, his spells will definitely weaken!”
Lydia’s eyes brightened. “Ah! Master is smart! So, you have an ability to silence him?”
“Ah… no…”
“Ahhhh…. M-Master!” Miki cried, not nearly as nimble as me or Lydia, she was having the most difficulty avoiding the attacks. “H-help!”
I thought about all of the abilities that I had. Was there anything we had that could work? None of my abilities worked on spells like this. What I needed was a new ability. However, you couldn’t just come up with a new ability. Wait… maybe you could! Combination skills! They both had a combination skill based off of Spirit Fire, but neither had a combination skill based off of Mana Dust!
Switching to Hero and Slave Master, I turned to Lydia. “Give me a moment!”
“Yes, Master!”
With Slave Status Up now boosting her, Lydia tossed herself at the enemy, using her Quick Attack to close the distance. Meanwhile, I used the skill analysis to look through Miki’s skills while pulling the fairy dust from my ring. As soon as it reached the air, there was a sudden pause in attacks. The lack of exploding fireballs and heat on my ass caused me to pause and turn back to see Karr. Lydia had closed the distance, but Karr floated higher up, and was now outside her range. Hey, that was cheating!
“You… where did you find that!” Karr pointed at the bottle in my hand.
“What, this?”
“How did you get that fairy dust? That’s mine! It’s mine!” Karr’s form seemed to distort into something more monstrous.
He launched his next attack, specifically aiming all of his rage at me.
Chapter 150
I let out an Exorcism before he reached me. He wasn’t even trying to use spells at this point. Instead, his face had distorted into something more ghastly and his hands were now dangerous looking claws. Miki enhanced my sword and I managed to start deflecting his spells. With Moderate Swordsmanship, I was just able to keep his wicked slices at bay. Evil Eye and Basic Monster Identify gave me no weaknesses that were apparent for any ghosts.
With the pressure off the girls, they started launching attacks. Miki spiritual attacks weren’t something Karr could dodge, and he was quickly taking damage. However, so was I! Every third slash cut into my skin. It was really painful. I equipped back to White Mage and started healing myself.
{You have been poisoned!}
“Weak Heal Poison!”
{You have been cursed!}
“Remove Curse!”
“Armor!”
“Heal!”
“Refresh!”
“Heal!”
“Heal!”
“Ow, HEAL!”
I was throwing out spells as rapidly as my mind could work, which was far better after I had spent so much time hunting the level 15 boss. Had I not used that time to grow more familiar with my abilities, I had little doubt that the barrage of attacks right now would have ended me. Being able to cast a stream of spells while also deflecting attacks wasn’t easy. Karr himself was proof of that fact. As soon as he went into physical attack mode, he had abandoned all of his spells in exchange for a fighting style which was much more feral.
“Watch out, this is going to hurt!” I warned the girls. “Create Cushion! Fireball!”
I attempted to blow a Fireball between us and then use a cushion to block my own hit. It didn’t work very well. Fire erupted between us and I was blown back, but I didn’t anticipate the flames. Perhaps if I had used Fire Control, I might have been able to do more, but I was too inexperienced with mage spells. The result was burns all over my body as I rolled away. I had successfully separated us, but my injuries hurt so bad I could barely think.
“Master!” Lydia cried out. “Quick Attack!”
Karr was only temporarily stunned. He recovered quickly and started racing for me, his claws out excitedly. I was on the ground now and the ghost was racing to deliver a brutal attack. I didn’t know if HP existed in this world, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached zero after this attack. Grabbing a pinch of fairy dust, I did the only thing I could think of and created waters of life. The ghost which was closing in on me suddenly jumped away as the spray of water shot from my hands. I put it straight to my mouth and started drinking. Plus, the water fell all over my body and soothed the burns. The pain disappeared almost like a lie. I only took a breath to cast a Moderate Heal, and then stood back up.
I was soaking wet, but my burns were almost gone now. As for the ghost, he was staring at me with complete disbelief.
“How… how are you doing that?” Karr demanded.
Rather than answer him, I lifted my fingers. There was another pinch of fairy dust in it.
“Miki!” I cried out. “Cast Mana Control! Use this!”
I tossed the spirit dust at Miki, and she immediately did as I commanded without question, absorbing the odd mana of the fairy dust and pushing it into her control of magic. She let out a cry of disbelief, then she turned to Karr and held up her hands.
“Resurrection!” Miki cried out.
“Eh?”
Resurrection? What? Fairy dust plus Mana Control is Resurrection? I was hoping she’d gain some kind of ability to control his mana, perhaps a spell interruption. Instead, she unlocked the high-level priest spell Resurrection?
A light floated around Karr. He didn’t seem to be pained. Rather, his facial features returned to normal and his face looked to be at peace.
“How… interesting… it is too bad I cannot be truly resurrected, as I died within this cursed place, but moving on feels right too.”
“Karr… what happened to this mansion?” I decided to ask, as Resurrection was a spell that seemed to one-hit KO ghosts, but also took a bit of time to completely cast.
He smiled. “Please go easy on her? Maybe… maybe you’ll have the ability… to help her find peace. Please finish her story… the right way.”
With those words, his body dissipated into bright lights and then floated away.