It’s been thirty minutes since the battle started.
The peculiarities of the thirteen tentacles have finally been identified.
One is hard like metal, another’s elasticity means it can’t be cut with swords.
One regenerates. Others do too, but this one is different. It regrows on the spot.
One has an attack that inflicts the poison and paralysis status conditions. It’s like a colorless breath.
We realized it’s a breath because it opens its mouth when it attacks. The area of effect is wide, but the range is short.
We can evade it by moving away, but that becomes harder when we’re facing off against other tentacles.
One is tricky because it uses a force field or a barrier to nullify magic. It draws it in a semicircle around itself, and the effect runs out after some time.
However, the tentacle is invincible while that’s active.
Fire, ice, and darkness breaths.
Four tentacles use acid and corrosive breath attacks., along with more offensive breath attacks.
A tentacle that stretches infinitely, and can chase us anywhere. Sometimes the tip turns giant to try to crush us.
One sends fangs flying, which return like boomerangs. And even if we shoot them down, they eventually regenerate.
Magic eyes. This one’s eyes are a different color, and if we are affected by it, we stop moving for a second.
Magic. This tentacle doesn’t have fangs, but I’ve seen it use earth and wind magic. I don’t know if it uses others.
Tentacles attack in different ways, and I’ve seen the body attack with ink.
We know what they do, but we still don’t have many opportunities to counterattack. They regenerate, but also cover for each other and coordinate.
Sera has cut two tentacles, and Chris roasted them with magic, but with time, they were restored to how they were.
Seeing this made us think taking down tentacles was pointless, and we switched to attacking the body, but the tentacles wouldn’t let us. Even if they had to sacrifice themselves.
Sera’s attack, Chris’ magic. In a way, they were getting hurt to protect the main body.
Still, like other monsters, we can weaken them by piling on the damage.
Regenerating comes with a price, magic energy.
Then we could drag it into a long battle, but no. First, it recovers lost magic energy, so we have to make sure our attacks make it spend more than it can recover. Then our stamina becomes a problem.
Second, we don’t know when the second boss will appear. We can’t afford to take it easy.
That said, we also can’t push ourselves too hard. If we do and get hurt, we won’t have as much manpower, and we’ll have to spend time healing.
“Even knowing what they do, this is hard.”
Argo exhales as he says that and sweeps a tentacle away.
Knowing doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with them.
The biggest issue is the tentacle that uses poison and paralysis breath.
We can tell when breath is coming because it opens its mouth, but we have to move away when we see that. We don’t know exactly how big its area of effect is. It would be easy to dodge if it could be seen.
The other breaths and the magic eye can be telegraphed by where they’re facing, but not this breath.
Tentacles tend to target whoever is close, so it’s hard to position myself.
“Tch, it failed.”
I hear Guilford as I face that one tentacle.
I can’t see because the tentacle is in the way, but I can sense Hikari and Guilford behind polyopus.
They probably went around to attack it from the back, but were blocked.
It supposedly doesn’t have eyes on its back, but tentacles move to block attacks when they sense danger.
But the attack doesn’t stop there this time.
Chris fires magic from the front, and Mia and Sera attack at the same time from the sides.
It blocks fire magic with ice breath, and blocks Sera’s slash with the elastic tentacle that can’t be cut. It practically has a poyon sound effect.
It blocks Mia’s attack head on with the metal tentacle, making a shrill sound ring.
Mia keeps attacking after the first thrust, but it’s all blocked. She keeps at it, but then jumps back.
Another tentacle attacks where she was, and it follows her.
It looks like the stretching tentacle is after her. But that was part of the plan, as said tentacle is cut by Rurika, who is using Gale.
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