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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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ㅡBoom!
The Rock Centipede, which had rammed its head into the wall on its own, began to rampage once again.
It flailed its hundreds of legs and twisted its joints, expressing pain with its entire body.
‘Finally.’
I applauded my own patience for having endured this foul and despicable gimmick a whopping 20 times.
The last one was precisely the 20th, so now I only had to do it 40 more times to reach the 4th phase.
The surrounding terrain had long since been reduced to ashes.
Due to the creature ramming itself into the wall and rampaging, the entire floor had been overturned, and cracks had formed all over the walls, with some parts even collapsing.
After thrashing about for a while, the creature forcibly pried open a crevice between the rocks with its huge body, smashing through it and fleeing awkwardly.
Because it was so enormous, it took a considerable amount of time for it to disappear.
The tremors gradually faded into the distance.
With this, the 1st phase could be considered cleared.
I dusted myself off, got up, and moved towards the path revealed through the collapsed wall.
Having finished one phase, it was time to go and slice through mob monsters while performing the 2nd phase gimmick.
The upcoming gimmicks in the 2nd and 3rd phases weren’t much different.
Luring the Rock Centipede, which charged at a yawn-inducingly slow pace, and making it ram its head into something on its own.
The only difference was that the “something” changed from a wall to a pillar, and then from a pillar back to a wall.
It was a structure that lacked any fun, took a long time, and had an insanely high risk of dying from a stray fragment.
So how could anyone possibly enjoy this?
‘In the game, there was no mid-save point, so if you died, you had to start from the beginning without fail.’
What was even more terrifying was the fact that this seemingly eternal time from the 1st phase to the 4th phase was all treated as a single boss battle, so there was no such thing as a mid-save point.
This meant that if you made a control mistake on the 60th and final repetition after completing the gimmick 59 times, you would have to go back to the 1st phase.
I had seen quite a few people rage after experiencing that.
I had experienced it once myself, and I couldn’t help but quit the game.
‘Ah, it seems to be about time for them to attack.’
Although I hadn’t progressed far, centipedes similar in size to me began to crawl out from between the cracks in the rocks.
They were the same ones that had been flattened en masse by the falling rocks when I descended underground.
There was no need to dodge attacks by rolling for these mob monsters, so I just deflected the first hit and immediately chopped off their heads.
The centipedes were sliced into chunks wherever the Blood-Stained Sword pierced.
Even though it seemed impossible to deflect the centipede’s attack of trying to bite with its lower jaw, strangely, whenever I swung my weapon, they would get hit, get knocked back, and become stunned.
After slicing about ten centipedes like that, I heard a rumbling sound from far away.
It meant the start of the 2nd phase was approaching.
I quickened my pace.
Emerging from the narrow alley, a cavern similar in size to the one I had been in until just now appeared.
The difference was that there was a huge pillar in the center, reaching up to the ceiling.
That pillar was the key element in performing the 2nd phase gimmick.
Everything else was the same, but this time, I had to make the Rock Centipede ram into that pillar 20 times instead of the wall.
‘Whether it’s this or that, it’s equally boring.’
If only the number of repetitions was around 5, I might have grudgingly accepted it.
With an explosive sound, the Rock Centipede burst out, shattering the rock on the opposite side.
I swiftly dodged the flying rock fragments.
Compared to the 1st phase, the creature’s appearance was quite a mess.
There were fine cracks on the carapace part of its head, which had rammed into the wall 20 times, and as soon as it saw me, it irritably clacked its lower jaws, seeming much angrier than before.
Its upper body immediately slammed down.
It seemed determined to crush me to a pulp.
I rolled to the side to avoid it, and a shockwave swept over from behind.
Fragments scattered in all directions.
‘Deflecting is sealed this time too.’
It was similar to the specific pattern of the Headless Armored Cavalier.
If I deflected the pattern where it charged at full speed, jumped, and slammed its spear downward, my body would be pushed back, and a grapple attack would follow.
As a result, I would inevitably get hit by the follow-up attack.
The Rock Centipede was the same.
Every attack had a tremendous deflection after-delay, making it impossible to avoid the next attack.
Thanks to that, I had no choice but to use rolling, and the already tedious boss battle became even more tedious.
The Rock Centipede snatched a nearby rock with its lower jaw, then raised its head as high as it could.
No, rather than raising it, it bent its entire upper body backward.
‘The startup delay is terribly long.’
The rock flew almost 5 seconds after I had hidden behind the wall.
The sound of something shattering was heard from the opposite side, and rock fragments scattered everywhere.
Realizing that the human who had been toying with it was still alive, the Rock Centipede twisted its body and threw a tantrum.
Its body settled on the ground once again.
It was a signal that it was preparing for a charge pattern.
The Rock Centipede slowly began to move its body.
I quietly watched it and moved my steps little by little, matching its speed.
I barely needed to run.
This time, it was even more troublesome than the 1st phase.
I had to lure it while maintaining a certain distance and lead it to the pillar.
If the distance became too great, the creature would cancel its charge pattern.
Then, naturally, I would have to start over from luring it to charge again.
‘This is crazy, seriously.’
If only it charged faster than the player character’s running speed, it might have been criticized for being difficult, but it wouldn’t have reached the level of receiving all sorts of curses from everyone like it did now.
I circled the cavern once to lure the creature and stood in front of the pillar.
The Rock Centipede was charging with all its might, or so it thought.
Even so, its speed was slow enough to make me yawn.
I quietly watched it, and when the distance had almost closed, I rolled to the side and escaped.
A boom! sound was heard right next to me.
ㅡBoom!
“Again?”
Lizé furrowed her brows deeply when she heard an unknown sound and felt the entire cave tremble.
It had happened already countless times.
She thought it had finally ended after a period of silence, but it started again.
“Could it be that this place is about to collapse entirely?”
“I’m not sure either. It’s too intermittent to be a sign of ground collapse, and the scale of the tremors is absurdly large to think of anything else. Both possibilities are ambiguous.”
“Is there a chance it’s a monster?”
“A monster… you say?”
At Iris’s question, Erica was momentarily at a loss for words.
If it was a monster large enough to shake the entire ground, that would be a problem in itself.
“I’d rather it be a monster. At least then we can try to kill it. If it’s a monster capable of causing tremors on this scale, it must be ridiculously huge, but fighting such a thing would be far more feasible than being buried alive in a collapsing cave.”
“That’s certainly true. Rather than dying buried alive here, it’s much better to die fighting a monster.”
“Hey, why are you assuming we’ll die? Are you trying to say ominous things?”
Lizé, who was leading the way, turned her head and grumbled.
Her words had a slight edge to them.
She had been in that state ever since the newbie had suddenly started acting on his own.
“We’re talking about worst-case scenarios, Sister. And I don’t think for a moment that we’ll die here. You heard what the newbie said, right?”
Just as she said, none of the three showed any signs of unease.
Even though there was a possibility of being trapped in this collapsing cave and starving or dying of dehydration.
“I know. He said he would be waiting below.”
It was because of the words the newknight, who must be far below by now, had shouted while falling. That they should just come straight down and he would be waiting below.
Within those words was the confidence that the things the knight commanders were worrying about wouldn’t happen.
“Yes. Since the newcomer said that, all we have to do is hurry down. We can’t let him wait alone below. And we have things to say to him too.”
“Right. This time, we definitely need to have a word with him.”
Lizé, Erica, and Iris all felt the same. This time, they were determined to nag him to their heart’s content, telling him to let them know in advance if he knew something.
No one thought the newcomer had died. He seemed to know something, and whenever that was the case, he had always surprised them.
This time would surely be the same.
ㅡBoom!
“Ah, seriously! What the hell is it?”
“…Let’s hurry a bit more. We need to regroup as quickly as possible.”
“You’re right. Whatever it is, there’s no point in dawdling here.”
The three rushed downward without even being wary of their surroundings. They had been told that there was nothing here, so they could just go.
It was just as he said. They didn’t encounter anything. They couldn’t even find the source of the tremors that had been shaking the ground, let alone ordinary monsters.
The path led downward very smoothly, and the three descended deeper underground.
“What in the world…?”
And deep underground, they discovered a part of a huge centipede-shaped rock.
It was crushed under a thick pillar.
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Dead ?