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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“Who are you…?”
The nun, having stopped crying, slowly turned her head with creaking sounds.
It was a sound effect that should never be heard from a human neck.
“Is someone there…?”
Only after the nun’s head had completely turned towards me could I properly see her face.
It was an indescribably hideous face.
The skin on her right cheek was half-rotten and tattered, and between her tightly closed eyes, black liquid overflowed, streaming down her cheeks and chin, dripping onto the floor.
It almost looked like she was shedding tears.
In reality, it wasn’t tears but the black liquid filling up her body to the brim, forcefully overflowing to the outside.
Even though her entire body was rotting away, her facial features were quite beautiful.
Before she became like this, she must have been a stunning beauty.
Of course, it was all meaningless now.
“Ah… If someone is there… Please help me…”
The nun staggered to her feet.
Perhaps due to the impact, a lump of rotten flesh dripped down her body.
The spots where the flesh had fallen off were immediately filled with black liquid.
Various parts of her body began to be stained black.
In proportion to that, the human skin gradually diminished.
With each step she took, the rotten flesh made squishing sounds.
“It hurts… It’s agonizing… Please… Have mercy on me…”
Along with her desperate plea, her outstretched right arm crumbled powerlessly.
Her body, squishily rotting black, vanished as if absorbed into the ground.
From her half-melted shoulder, a new arm sprouted.
However, even though the severed part had regrown, the regeneration didn’t stop there.
More black liquid stuck onto the black liquid.
The nun’s right arm rapidly swelled in size.
Now it was difficult to even call it a human arm.
“Why… Why won’t you help me…”
The nun lowered her head deeply.
Between her closed lips, the sound of sobbing leaked out.
It was a very pitiful sight, but there was nothing I could do to help.
What could I possibly do to help someone whose body had been contaminated long ago and was now clinging to a handful of memories, moving purely on instinct?
That nun had already been devoured by the abyss long ago.
Unless helping meant granting her eternal rest.
“I see.”
Her deeply lowered head slowly lifted.
Her voice had already turned cold.
The sound of teeth grinding together escaped from between her lips.
“You came to mock me. To further humiliate me… while I’m suffering like this…”
The sobbing turned to anger, the pain turned to hatred.
Her right arm, which had already swollen to the point of bursting, grew even larger.
It was to the extent that her entire body would be buried in her shoulder.
As if that wasn’t enough, the black liquid surged from behind the nun’s back, tearing through her bare flesh.
Wriggling and taking the shape of human arms, the black liquid announced its appearance by forcefully stomping on the ground.
“In that case…”
The nun widened her eyes as if they would tear apart and stared directly at me.
Her entire eyes were black.
“I’ll make you experience the same pain as me!!!!!!”
Between her gaping mouth, densely grown teeth were revealed.
If it were a game, this would be where the cutscene ended and the boss battle began with the OST playing.
That nun was none other than the boss of this rune dungeon, “Fallen Priestess Lucia.”
Here, the word “fallen” had a double meaning.
It literally meant that she had fallen from the bridge and survived, ending up in this state, and also that she had fallen from being a priestess who served God to a heretic who hated God.
I calmly took a stance.
I hadn’t used the special ability of the blood-stained sword yet.
It was because there was no need to attack Lucia right away.
In Phase 1, I had to use something other than the attack power buff.
After all, only one buff could be applied to the weapon at a time.
Lucia approached me, using the arms that had sprouted from her back to stride across the floor.
The nun’s main body was hanging in the air, swaying back and forth like laundry on a windy day.
Her abnormally enlarged right arm opened wide.
It was a sweeping pattern.
I closely observed its movement and rolled backwards the moment it started to wriggle.
Her arm swept an enormous range in the blink of an eye.
In vanilla, the pattern would have ended here, but in the Darkest Light Mod, this was just the beginning.
The legs of the nun’s main body lowered to the ground.
Instead, the two arms that had sprouted from her back were raised high.
Normally, one would think that she would slam them down.
But that was a fake.
I looked to the side, not upward.
The right arm that had swept the ground a moment ago was swinging again.
This time, I swung my sword to deflect the right arm, and as soon as the clang sounded and my body was pushed back, I rolled a couple of times to avoid it.
Only after that did Lucia slam down the raised arms.
ㅡSquish!
I increased the distance further.
If I tried to block that slam with a deflection, I would be fully exposed to the follow-up attack.
It was similar to the charging pattern of the Headless Iron Cavalry.
The arms embedded in the ground split into multiple tentacles, spreading in all directions and whipping through the air.
It was an attack that came during the post-delay of the deflection.
If hit, it was an instant death, of course.
While Lucia was doing that, I surveyed the surroundings.
‘The sacred catalyst…’
In the game, items would be separately marked, but here, there was no way that would happen, so I had to find it with my own eyes.
First of all, it would definitely be inside the boss room.
“Why? Is this appearance not enough? Do you want me to be more damaged here?”
A scream filled with sorrow burst out.
I kept my distance from the right arm that was flailing and rampaging in all directions and ran towards the spot where the sacred catalyst was likely to be, circling the boss room.
Perhaps due to her physical structure, Lucia never ran throughout the boss battle.
Lucia had a different means of closing the distance with the player.
Of course, if you tried to drink a potion thinking you had gained a lot of distance, you would be hit by the interruption pattern that flew over immediately and get ejected to the statue.
‘There it is.’
As I expected, the sacred catalyst was lying in the same spot as in the game.
I quickly picked it up.
The moment I picked up the sacred catalyst, a bang! sound came from behind me.
I turned my body around.
Lucia’s figure had completely vanished.
After confirming that fact, I counted up to 2 in my mind and immediately rolled to the side.
With an even louder kwang! sound than before, Lucia’s body landed on the ground.
Black liquid splattered everywhere from where she landed.
While the boss was straightening her posture, I examined the sacred catalyst.
Black liquid had seeped into every nook and cranny, and its original color was nowhere to be seen, but this was enough.
I held the sacred catalyst in my left hand and the blood-stained sword in my right hand.
I concentrated my strength in my left hand, as if gathering something.
The blackened catalyst began to emit a murky white light.
Half success.
I brought the sacred catalyst to the part just above the crossguard of the blood-stained sword, as I had seen in the game, and pushed it upward as if grazing the blade.
Then, a dull golden light enveloped the blade of the blood-stained sword.
It wasn’t a perfect golden color like the one Stella wrapped around her flail, but it was enough to recognize that it was sunlight.
With this, the remaining half was also a success.
I hung the sacred catalyst back on my waist.
This was the core of Phase 1 of the Lucia boss battle.
It was called the Blessing Enchantment.
Phase 1 Lucia had immense resistance to physical attacks.
If I were to try to defeat Lucia with just normal attacks, even if the attack power buff of the blood-stained sword lasted indefinitely, it would take over 2 hours of beating her.
On the other hand, she took massive additional damage from blessed weapons or sacred spells.
A cleric with buffs wrapped around them could even pass Phase 1 with just two sacred spells.
That was the reason why a sacred catalyst with an enchantment-type special ability was dropped in the boss room out of nowhere.
‘I need it one more time besides here.’
That was something to think about after defeating Lucia.
I took out a potion and gulped it down, then tossed the bottle away carelessly.
The reason was to replenish my health that must have been considerably depleted due to using the sacred catalyst just now.
It was best to replenish such things in advance whenever there was an opportunity.
To allow characters who hadn’t raised their faith and sacred power at all to use the buff, the special ability of this sacred catalyst was treated as black magic.
In terms of setting, it was because the catalyst was contaminated by the black liquid or something.
Black magic dealt much more powerful damage than regular magic of the same tier, but its use consumed a small amount of mana along with additional HP.
The higher the tier, the more HP was consumed.
Unlike the buff of the blood-stained sword, the amount of depletion was a fixed value, so it was disadvantageous for those with lower health stats, and for me, whose stats were all at 1, each spell was nearly a critical injury.
I could even die from this.
If you used black magic in a state of low health, your health would be reduced to 0 and the character would collapse.
Of course, that was treated the same as a normal death.
I had no desire to commit suicide in such a novel way for no reason.
I pointed the blood-stained sword forward.
The blade emitted a faint light of half-blackened gold.
Everything up until now was just a preparation process, and from now on, the real Lucia boss battle began.
“Kya-a-a-a-agh!!!!!”
Lucia let out a scream and charged at me.
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Thx for chapter