C92: Some Unexpected Wisdom Pt2; SuperNova
Second half of the boss fight. Starts immediately where the last chapter left off.
8/20/26
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Hovering above the Lumenflower is the same Living Failure I attacked before, floating in stasis. Pieces of the flower begin to break away into ribbons as if the flower was being unwoven. I continue my attacks on the flower regardless as its defenses dropped dramatically without the support of arcane energy.
It is not long before I cut it clear in half before doing that even more until it was borderline shreds.
In the end, the boss never got a full set of thick robes but he did at most get something akin to a t-shirt and shorts or peplos style robe from ancient Greece. The last few ribbons it had left transformed into a bulky crown like what you would imagine of Aladins sultan hat was. As for the rest of the tree, the tattered fragments all gathered like pieces of leaves into a staff in its hands.
The name of the boss also changes from [The Living Failure] to [The Living Sage].
'Well that's interesting. It's finally not my fault that the boss got a new name. Though it really makes you wonder, would this be divine sage or something like that if it got access to the whole flower unharmed?'
"So what do we do now?" I ask the robed figure as they finally begin to lower themselves and land.
Though he seems to take offense to my question as he points his leafy staff towards me whilst saying "die".
I zoom away from where I was as the space where I was standing collapses on itself. It was as it White Beard had reached out and crushed where I just stood. Granted this goes a step beyond that as the center spot actually collapses as if a black hole was just summoned before it closes itself and space naturally reforms.
I was not idle at that time as I bumrushed the sage with both weapons drawn and slashed with my regular buffs active but with shatter echo on this time since I wasn't sure if the boss would move or not and unlike weapon echoes, shatter follows whatever I hit and refunds me if I miss at all.
BANG
The duals weapons collide with the sage, or rather his barrier that is wrapped around his skin as im repelled by him or his barrier a moment later.
"Not bad" I say as I swing out 2 more times before the sage could even counterattack.
This time, the sage sweeps his staff vertically and pillars of earth rise up around him. It's not outright harmful so I don't dodge, not that there was much room to dodge. Essentially everything around him except the sage himself was lifted up.
VOOMP
I understood quite quickly why this was the case. There is an orb of arcane energy radiating out in the center of this area. It is rotating in place and I swear the temperature is getting colder, much colder. As it rotates, it leaves streaks of light that release more cold air. I quickly squat down and peep through the ground a bit to look at the sage before asking.
"Hey buddy, quick question. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU MAKE A REVERSE SOLAR FLARE?" I start yelling as the land around me starts freezing in place and I'm forced to run around, enabling my hardcore parkout skills which is essentially just replicating certain techniques and movements, courtesy of Kyle Crane.
Eventually a part of my leg did get frozen but by that point, the lunar flare had ended. I just swept my saw cleaver and shattered the ice. The freezing was also internal so I did not automatically regain sensation in my leg but with everything else here getting frozen. Me shattering the ice around my leg also broke the ground around me. Splitting and crumbling around us, the ground gave way. Dust was knocked up into the air, preventing sight for either of us.
I didn't need my eyes to see the enemy. He had used earth manipulation to now create an elevated platform for himself. The sage is looking around, likely searching for me. Several seconds pass and still no action from me nor him as we both plot on how to kill each other.
Eventually the sage raises his empty hand and with the shine of his staff, a bag appears there which the sage grabs before dispersing something into the surrounding dust cloud. I reach out and grab some of whatever it was that he released.
Sniffing it, my magic enhanced mind quickly analyzes it before releasing that it's flour.
"Bread? Wait no." Panic appears on my face as with another shine of his staff, a glass panel appears above him that begins moving down. He jumps up and seals the final circular spot above him before it speeds up it's lowering speed so that the pressure of the arena builds up.
A spark of fire appears in the sage's hand as it melts through the glass only for it to close back up behind it. Soon the fire comes in contact with the pressurized dust of earth, flour and shattered magical ice.
BOOM
The arena explodes everywhere as the sage rises once more to create a second panel of glass to stand atop and block the leftover explosive force as he stands in the middle of the arena. He cant sense the hunter nor any movement below him.
"GOTCHA BITCH" I appear behind him with an old skill of mine that I never really got a chance to try out. One of my early on skills was the rune stone 'light step'. Together with darkness mastery it had made chaos step in the first place. As such it was reasonable for me to use the tidbits of knowledge I got about light to quickly gain an elemental manipulation of it, upgrade it quickly by practicing the whole time we were at a standstill just so I could appear behind him.
I speak out just as my holy Moonlight Greatsword in its shimmering state, stabs deep into the sage's body, lifting him up. The sage trembles in agony but then he notices something, the blade and it's original aquamarine light is tainted red.
That red soon lights up in another way as the heat rises this time around.
FWOOOMSHHHH.
Fire jets out from the sword as it surrounds the sage, burning him, inside and out before the fire grows stronger from the augment of wind as even the flesh and organs not burned away are torn apart by the blades of rushing wind.
Following this is the fire turning to magma due to earth being lifted up and crushing The Living Sage, only for that earth to melt into lava that continues to burn away the boss. By this point, his health dropped to 25%.
The sages arcane power rises in response as he tries to push me away but the chaos barrier around me nullifies all these attempts in exchange for my mana. It's dropping fast and as such, I keep spamming chaos effects in hopes of getting mana regen or something like that.
Failure after failure, I keep spamming various elemental skills with the sole exception being lightning as I never learned any technique with that element. The final missing element of my dreams.
For now though, I have light seeping through the magma to deliver blows while I use wind to hold the sword and as such, the sage in midair.
As for me, I'm concentrating on something big. Something I've only ever dreamed of. Something that I found out about only moments ago.
Firstly was the showcasing of the solar flare of ice that the sage had created. When I asked the question. Its surface most thoughts had become the formula for how to do so which I had read throughout the entire escape sequence. It was only when I finished reading all of it and being super giddy, I had misstepped and gotten my leg frozen.
The second attribute being an early chaos step formula that I had gotten my hands on by accident as I found it funny with how an enemy back then died. Said Formula is called Loop. Obviously by it's name, it means that certain magics can be repeated. The few times i've used this, it was mostly to reset trap activation so if something walks on the glyph and sets it off, then it may set of multiple times if whatever stepped on it didn't die the first time around. Due to the stat difference of me and non boss monsters, this is all but unnecessary so it had little usage.
The third piece of the puzzle was faulted to the sage once again. The inspiration for compressing the dust explosion was rudimentary but genius nonetheless.
As such, I got to work on my masterpiece of magical engineering. Mixing Fire and my newfound level 5 light manipulation to create something positively monstrous. Recognizing that my pitiful light power would never match whatever energy I put into my fire magic due to sheer potency.
Firstly, I create an orb of light that uses the light from fire to fuel itself bigger, akin to a spirit bomb. Looping the two magics, I have the ball of light continue expanding from lava burning away at the sage but also the secondary ball of flame which I loop and compress. Loop and compress, over and over again until both reach a stable point and my mana can still somehow last.
With my remaining 500 of my remaining 600 mana, I put the two together, fire and light. This was the hardest part as they are naturally different elements, but it is through their shared natures that I was barely able to fuse them into a miniature sun. From there I compress it further and with my remaining mana, I loop how much fire and light can be released before it's compressed again and this process loops to create…something magnificent.
After a few moments the moonlight greatsword recedes back to my inventory as the floating rock of lava and stone falls to the floor.
The sage is covered in burns and pieces of cooled lava stuck to him all over. He almost looks like The Thing from Fantastic Four. The great majority of his clothing had been reduced to ash,leaving it only with a bit of magical flower cloth around it's waist and the staff in its hand. I noticed that it threw it away shortly after being stabbed but since nothing happened and my plan fell through, it was all for naught.
The sage now retrieves that same staff as he points it to my face. The both of us are trembling. Him from the damage and pain of having his skin melted over and over again. Torn apart by each element I could use that would weaken the overall combo like water and ice. Even my darkness came in at the end and stabbed when it could but otherwise all my focus was on my project.
"It is over" a hollow voice is heard for the second time ever. I don't even see a mouth from which it can speak from but im in no position to question him. If anything, his words make me burst out into laughter.
"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. yes it is over. Hah ha, for us both. I've never beaten a boss in this way before. I wish you to know that I am grateful. You truly were a sage, a great man who imparted wisdom to those beneath him. Through your teachings, I have done something….truly insane."
"Behold, my greatest creation." I hold out an orb containing a ball of red light that occasionally streaks out an oval of fire and light. The sage is stuck in place. Mesmerized just as I am. I get the impression that this is what it's like to stare at the One Ring.
"I cast. Domain Expansion: Pinnacle of Fire. Supernovaaaaahhhh" The loops collapse, the compression fails. The fire escapes. The sun comes out.
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Word Count = 2113