Disclaimer!
I don't own DC Comics or any of its media and characters. I claim no money from this fanfic and the only thing I own are my OC's and original ideas.
X
Issue 4: Boss Fight and Upgrades
Date: 7th of February/2024
Location: Unknown pocket dimension
"Kenny, please get up." Rosalia pleaded as Kenny slowly opened his eyes and sat up to not only see Rosalia sitting next to him, but he also noticed that they were inside of some strange and massive sized cave with water dripping from the stalagmites…Stalactites? Kenny could never figure out the difference.
"Where are we?"
"Were in some form of pocket dimension. You've also been unconscious for about two hours. You were exhausted and needed rest, but we can't afford to waste any more time. I can sense the twisted energies of this place, and we can't linger, or we'll be killed." Rosalia warned in a serious and sad tone of voice.
Kenny didn't say anything at first and instead stood up and placed a hand on Rosalia's head and ruffled her hair a bit before giving her a smile.
"Sorry for making you worry so much. But I won't let us die here. I promise." Kenny said before looking down at his still soiled clothes with a grimace. "I guess I've got time to finally learn this skill a got now."
Kenny was of course referring to the skill book he earned from the martial arts tournament and without wasting time, he summoned his Inventory and quickly learned the random skill.
[Skill
Name: Earthen Fist
Tier: 1
School: Evocation
Level: 1
This is an earth elemental spell that allows the user to conjure a small rock projectile that can be fired at an enemy. This spell at higher levels can fire multiple rock-based projectiles to a maximum of three.
Rock Projectiles Available: 1
Size: Baseball
Damage: 150-250
Damage Scales: INT, ARC
Range: 10 Feet
Cost: 40 MP!]
"Awesome. Now, we've just got to figure out how to get out of this place." Kenny said while cracking his neck a bit.
"Before we leave though, there is something of importance that I need to discuss with you." Rosalia said making Kenny raise an eyebrow in slight confusion.
"What's up?"
"Regarding our companionship. While you were unconscious, our powers managed to…Update. I am now able to assume forms if you are willing to sacrifice unique and powerful souls to me. That way, we are able to fight together in more ways than one." Rosalia said honestly while Kenny thought about what he was just told.
"So, if I grab special souls, we can use them to power you up?"
"In simple terms yes, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy with this development. Our partnership has been feeling extremely one-sided, and I don't like the idea of letting you do everything without help from me," Rosalia explained with a small smile.
"Well, you helped me stay alive in this place. So, don't act like you're useless or anything. Besides, I'm the muscle in this arrangement, so don't worry so much." Kenny replied before taking a good look at the environment before he opened his Inventory and took out his unique weapon and used his Observe skill on it.
[Item!
Name: Draining Claymore
Rarity: Unique
Type: Claymore
This claymore blade is enchanted to drain stamina energy from enemies through the activation of this weapons enchantment.
Enchantment: [Lesser Stamina Drain]
By sacrificing 50 MP you can activate this blades enchantment and create a stamina draining affect around you in a full 360-degree radius within 7 Meters of yourself.
Stamina stolen from an enemy is absorbed into you to replenish lost Stamina. This effect lasts for 60 seconds with a 20 second cooldown time between uses.
Base Damage: 22 Points
Damage Modifier: STR
Durability: 50/50
Requirements: 20 STR and 17 DEX!]
"So, this is what the big ass sword looks like?" Kenny asked himself while holding the sword with both hands while admiring the design. The grip was hardened black leather with a gold pommel and cross guard that was simplistic in design but had unique engravings on it and the blade was made of strong looking steel with engravings along the fuller of the blade that reached all the way up to the point.
"The enchantment is minor, but it is a good starting weapon to use. Although skilled and powerful enemies will easily work around or brute force their way through the weak enchantment," Rosalia explained calmly before she dispersed her physical form and returned to the mark on the back of Kenny's hand.
As soon as she did that, Kenny heard footsteps coming towards him, which made him assume a rough stance with his blade in both hands.
"The enemies are nearby but I can sense that deeper in this dungeon is a boss with a unique soul." Rosalia said telepathically while Kenny took a deep breath and saw an enemy come into the room they were in through the exposed tunnel at the eastern wall.
Giant Rat, Level: 13
Gnasher
The rat is roughly the size of a full-grown wolf with the thickness of a small bear. Its fur is a dirty mix of brown and black colors while having large and sharp buck teeth along with crimson eyes and clawed feet that scratched into the rocky ground like a hot knife through butter.
The rat let out a annoyingly high pitched cry before running towards Kenny who quickly dodged to the left to avoid the rats tackle attempt and in response he brought his claymore blade down as hard as he could onto the back of the rat and with a violent burst of blood, the rat's back was split open making it shriek in pain before it fell limp onto the ground.
"I guess I severed its spine." Kenny said with a heavy breath before noticing an experience point alert that he quickly dismissed when he heard more footsteps heading towards him.
"Point the tip of your blade onto the corpse of the giant rat and I can loot the items for you."
"You're the best Rosalia." Kenny said before doing just as he was told and sure enough, he noticed a few items being deposited into his inventory before three more rats entered the room and Kenny was quick to spring into action.
1
"Damn, this place goes on forever." Kenny complained after walking through another passageway after killing what had to be his sixtieth rat.
[The skill [Improvised Claymore Mastery] has leveled up! Level: 12-13!]
[The skill [Laceration] has leveled up! Level: 9-10!]
During this little extermination mission, Kenny managed to gain two levels as well as get a detailed explanation of the changes made during the system update that Rosalia had told him about earlier. The update fixed some bugs and renamed AP or action points into SP or Stamina. A bit of an arbitrary change but Kenny wouldn't complain.
The big changes were some of the new things that Rosalia was able to do since she was able to interact more with the RPG-based powers he had gained and she could even influence the drop rate of some items, which is how he managed to gain the armor he is wearing.
A rat leather cuirass and breeches along with a matching set of gauntlets. All the armor fit over his clothes thankfully and it seemed that he would be able to fit some other form of armor underneath. Like insulated long johns or something like that.
"This whole time I should have used my new combat spell or even my light-based ones, so I could level them up." Kenny groaned in annoyance at his lack of thinking in this situation.
"I assumed that you simply wanted to focus on getting used to wielding a sword."
"That too, but its going to be a pain to level up my other skills. I could have killed two birds with one stone." Kenny replied before noticing that he came to the end of the passageway and that instead of another dead end in this maze of a place. There were two large metal doors with old and large handles.
[Warning! This is a boss room! Make sure you're prepared before entering!]
"Is this what you were sensing earlier?"
"No doubt about it. We get through this, and we get closer to finding a way out of this dungeon."
"Might as well buff myself up a bit before going in." Kenny said before he summoned his stat sheet.
[Statistics!
Name: Kenny Reigns, Age: 17, Race: Nephilim
Title: Keystone City Protector/The Player, Alignment: Good
Level: 10 [4,120/6,300 XP!]
HP: 1,300/1,300, SP: 860/860, MP: 350/350
Strength: 26
Dexterity: 24
Endurance: 29
Charisma: 17
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 8
Arcane: 14
Faith: 12
Stat Points: 15, Perk Points: 3
Souls: 8,500
Unique Perks: [Players Mind-Rank MAX, [Players Body-Rank MAX, [Angelic Grace-Rank MAX]
End!]
"My endurance is rising and so is my arcane and faith, so let's leave those alone for now and focus on the other stats."
Statistics!
Name: Kenny Reigns, Age: 17, Race: Nephilim
Title: Keystone City Protector/The Player, Alignment: Good
Level: 10 [4,120/6,300 XP!]
HP: 2,300/2,300, SP: 1,700/1,700, MP: 620/620
Strength: 30
Dexterity: 30
Endurance: 29
Charisma: 22
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 13
Arcane: 14
Faith: 12
Stat Points: 0, Perk Points: 3
Souls: 8,500
Unique Perks: [Players Mind-Rank MAX, [Players Body-Rank MAX, [Angelic Grace-Rank MAX]
End!]
[Available Perk Points: 3]
[New Perk Acquired!]
[Perk!
Name: HP Boost
Rank 1
Your health has increased slightly, and your lifespan has increased by an additional 10 years.]
[Your HP has increased and is now 4,500!]
"I'd say that's a huge improvement but based on that monkey dude and Cassandra that seemed like normal people; I'd bet that my health works more like an online RPG instead of a single player one, which means that big numbers don't always mean big rewards." Kenny said to himself before he used his remaining perk points.
[Available Perk Points: 2]
[New Perk Acquired!]
[Perk!
Name: Stamina Boost
Rank 1
Your maximum stamina has increased slightly and now you have slightly better physical conditioning]
[Your SP has increased and is now 2,500!]
[Available Perk Points: 1]
[New Perk Acquired!]
[Perk!
Name: Tremor
Rank-MAX
Through your sheer might enhanced with magical abilities, you are able to conjure the earth to defend you or attack you by summoning walls, spikes or literal localized tremors of earth all within 10 Feet of you.
Grants the following spells!
Earth Wall, Lvl: 1
Earth Spikes, Lvl: 1
Minor Quake, Lvl: 1]
[Due to unlocking two perks based on elemental affinities you can no longer gain or unlock any other perks based on affinities that you don't have.
Your primary affinities are now [Light] and [Earth]! This does not mean that you cannot learn other elemental spells or incantations, but it does mean that you'll miss out on related perks.
Also, through gaining two earth-based perks you have unlocked the [Earthen Bond] perk!]
[Perk!
Name: Earthen Bond
Rank-MAX
You have gained a connection to the earth itself and now all earth-based spells and abilities gain 20% more experience. The cost of all earth-based spells and abilities is reduced by 20%.]
"Awesome. But it sucks that I'm basically locked into my light and earth perks." Kenny said since he didn't know that he'd be locked out of other elemental perks after improving his current arsenal based on what abilities he had already gained.
"There are ways around this restriction, but the system won't outright tell you. There are some things that you have to figure out on your own." Rosalia explained while Kenny couldn't help but roll his eyes at her slightly condescending tone.
"No use complaining about it I guess." Kenny said before, taking a deep breath before he opened the large doors in front of him and walked into a large cave room of sorts that was lit by torches on the walls.
The doors shut behind Kenny and the sounds of water hitting the cave floor echoed throughout the room and for a while, Kenny was wondering if he was lied to about a boss being in the room, but the moment he neared the center of this massive room was when the boss appeared.
Kenny could somehow sense the earth underneath him moving through some unspoken bond that he didn't even know that he had acquired and as a result the earth told him that a warrior of the earth itself was going to challenge him.
The ground in front of him burst upwards and large rocks came out of the ground and took the form of a large hulkish creature made of hardened stone with a small head that was simply a rock with a drill-like hole in the center of its face that glowed with a blue ethereal flame.
Rock Golem, Level: 30
Earthen Defender
The golem did in fact have a similar build to the Thing in marvel comics from the fantastic four, but he was nowhere near as friendly as it took heavy steps towards Kenny before Kenny jumped back and avoided the monsters rock hard fist that impaled the ground where Kenny formerly stood.
"Alright, let's rock." Kenny joked before reading his claymore blade in his hands after summoning it from his Inventory before he charged and hit the golems exposed leg with the sword and received a painful vibration in return which left him open as the rock golem smacked Kenny aside with impressive force that sent the teen tumbling backwards in pain.
"Fuck! Metal and rock hitting each other was a stupid idea." Kenny groaned to himself before putting his sword away before activating his Stone Skin spell which hardened his body while the golem started advancing towards him.
"Earthen Fist." Kenny cast his spell as he automatically raised his right hand and summoned a sphere-shaped rock in front of him that flew towards the golem and hit it square in the chest to little effect, but it did prove to do some slight damage.
So, by keeping a safe distance, Kenny attacked the Golem with his earth spell and Light Arrow spell repeatedly to help take down the Golems health. The Golem decided to put more effort into the fight and started moving at a faster speed which allowed it to close the distance between itself and Kenny.
Kenny, however, used his new ability and quickly created an Earth Wall in front of him that functioned as you'd think. A few feet tall and thick allowed the wall to take the brunt of the damage from the Golem's punch that shattered the defensive spell and hit Kenny, but unlike before. A lot of the power behind the strike had been hindered from the defensive wall that Kenny had summoned.
"This is getting me nowhere." Kenny quickly said with a heavy breath while dodging another strike from the Golem that put yet another hole into the ground.
"The Golem is strong, but it isn't all that smart. It has moderate speed, but it is rather clumsy. So, the best thing you should do in this situation is trap it in place and target its head to achieve the maximum damage possible. All other attacks have done little to no damage at all." Rosalia theorized.
"A good plan. And luckily, I have just the spells needed to keep this thing in place." Kenny said before he ran towards the Golem and when he got close enough, he summoned several Earth Spikes around the Golems' legs, pinning them in place as the spikes stabbed the Golems' joints and made it difficult for the monster to move its legs.
Kenny quickly followed up by attacking with his Earthen Fist spell again, but this time he aimed it at the Golems' head and got an alert that the attack did critical damage, so Kenny kept firing the attack several times until the Golems' body fell onto the ground unmoving while its head had been blasted away from the final attack.
The creature's body morphed again and turned into nothing more than a pile of rocks.
[You have defeated a [Rock Golem] and gained a significant amount of experience points with an additional 10% experience point increase due to your unique title.]
[You have leveled up! Level: 10-15! You have gained 25 stat points and 5 perk points!
You have gained 10 ARC, 10 Faith and 10 END!]
[The spell [Stone Skin] has leveled up! Level: 4-6!]
[The spell [Earthen Fist] has leveled up! Level: 1-7!]
[The spell [Earth Wall] has leveled up! Level: 1-3!]
[The spell [Earth Spikes] has leveled up! Level: 1-3!]
[You have gained the [Rock Golem Boss] soul! This item can be used to gain a large number of souls, or it can be used to create a unique item!]
[You have gained 10,000 Souls!]
[You have now gained full access to the Abyssal Hold and its shops and tutors without risk of being attacked as an intruder.]
"Ow." Kenny groaned in slight pain at the massive amount of information his brain was just forced to process.
"The exit is available now." Rosalia said before Kenny looked towards the northern wall and saw that the formerly white fog shrouded passageway had now been cleared of fog and is able to be traversed.
"Before we go. Should we use the boss soul on you?" Kenny asked with a bit of curiosity of how the process would go.
"Sure. I can access it through our shared Inventory with no problem." Rosalia said while Kenny took the time to sit down and exhale from the fatigue, he felt despite leveling up and for a while he didn't notice any changes until a new game alert appeared in front of him.
[Your loyal attendant has assimilated the [Rock Golem Boss] soul in your inventory and is now able to transform into the unique helmet armor [Golems Armored Skull]!]
Kenny didn't even have to ask before Rosalia transformed and equipped the new head piece onto Kenny's head. The helmet covered his entire head and was a smooth stone design with a single azure blue glowing circle in front of the face. The helmet didn't have any visible holes which made Kenny confused about how he could see, hear, smell or even breathe while the thing was on, but he simply decided that it was safer not to ask questions.
The oddest part of the helmet aside from the drill-like circle in the center of the headpiece are the small, jagged rock like horns on the sides of the headpiece.
"Whoa. This thing feels heavy and sturdy enough to take some hit." Kenny said while also noticing how his voice had changed through some kind of magical filter in the helmet as he moved his head around a bit to try and get used to this new armor piece.
"I can show you a display of the helmet if you want."
"Show me what were working with." Kenny simply said before seeing a new screen appear.
[Item!
Name: Golems Armored Skull
Rarity: Rare
Type: Helmet Armor
This is the mystically altered headpiece of a, Rock Golem. It has been changed to allow a person to use it as a helmet to protect themselves in combat.
Enchantments: [Lesser Mystic Senses, [Air Bubble, [Voice Augmentation]
The enchantments placed on this helmet allow the person access to all of their senses as well as being able to breathe since the helmet lacks any normal holes or accessible points for a normal person to see, hear and breathe. It also changes the voice of the wearer into a deeper and more menacing tone for added intimidation purposes.
Plus 30 Armor to all covered locations.
Durability: 90/90]
"Awesome…Wait…Are you a part of this helmet now?" Kenny asked and caused Rosalia to think about how to reply.
"Yes and no. This form is a part of me now but if it requires repairs or upgrades, I won't be affected since I can hand the item over to you or a blacksmith. I'd say that this is more of a physical show of our partnership, although I do feel any attacks that hit this helmet. So, please try not to get hit too much." Rosalia said making Kenny smile behind his new helmet before he stood up and stretched.
"I'll try my best. Now, let's get the hell out of this place." Kenny replied before making his way towards the newly revealed exit.
2
"I'm getting sick of these damn things." Wonder Girl said with pure frustration in her tone after she punched another strange monster.
The monsters in question appeared to be a featureless mannequin of all things and they were armed with various weapons from maces to axes, swords, daggers and more. The worse part was that the enemies seemed to attack in swarms against Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and the now injured Cassandra Cain who was being protected by Kid Flash that was zooming between enemies as well as taking them down with his momentum fueled punches.
"We've got to figure out where these things are coming from and how to get out of here." Kid Flash said after stopping his movement when the last of the doll like monsters was knocked down.
"Can't you just run and find us an exit?" asked Wonder Girl.
"Normally yes. But something in this place keeps messing, with my senses if I run too far away from you girls. It seems like we need to move as a group to make any progress." Kid Flash said before Wonder Girl exhaled before picking up Cassandra who slung an arm over Wonder Girl's shoulders.
"Let's get moving than. We don't need another swarm attacking us." Wonder Girl said bluntly before they started moving through the winding and twisting caverns.
END!
Narrator: Kenny has slowly but surely started making his way through this unknown dimension of danger and monsters while the heroes are assailed by enemies left and right.
Will Kenny and Rosalia manage to meet up with the heroes and find a way out of this dangerous place? Stay tuned to the next issue to find out.
Remember to Fav, Follow and review.
Moo.