Entering the safe room for level 2 he noticed it was the same, but different, it was the same shape and size but every surface was some kind of reflective crystal. The room was bright but didn't have a recognizable source of light and there was a stone post in the middle, like the other safe room and this stone was not made of the same reflective crystal. He hadn't really inspected the previous one but now since it stood out so much Eli couldn't help but check it out. He touched it and it hurt his fingers, like it was pushing magic into him, far more magic than his body could handle. So he focused his mind onto his magic senses and tried to feel what it was doing, but the magic was to foreign and strong for him to get any real feelings on it.
He saw the tunnel leading out into this level and stood at its entrance. The tunnel was also reflective crystal in an octagonal shape and he could see it right turn just 10 feet in, probably to prevent being able to see down the tunnel. It was only 6 feet tall and wide, meaning with Eli's 6 foot 4 height he would have to crouch and since this place was meant to be cleared by a team of 3 or more it would present a difficult place to fight. If he wanted to make this difficult he would put something in this tunnel to challenge a front line fighter since they will be in the front. Before he stepped in the tunnel he sat down and focused on his hearing and magic senses trying to see if he could get an idea of what was up ahead. He got nothing, after 5 minutes his senses couldn't pick up a single thing, it was like he was standing in front of a magically homogenous area.
Since there wasn't anything else he could grasp from waiting, there was nothing to do but get moving. He stepped into the tunnel and began slowly walking towards the first bend, holding his bone mace ready, trying not to end up like his first walk into the first level. Going around the turn slowly he didn't see anything but it was hard to discern because of all the reflective surfaces, but it looked like there was another turn after another 10 feet. The tunnel was empty so far so he kept walking. Slowly, he peaked around the next corner and he saw what looked like a red crystal-skinned anthropomorphic frog wearing a yellow pointed hat. The sight of this monster made him freeze on the spot and he stopped breathing. This tunnel was twice as long as the previous ones minus the turns and the monster was at the end before the next turn.
The monster was not moving, like it was a statue, not breathing or anything, but he knew it was alive and would attack. The problem was, with the reflective surfaces, they seemed to be angled in such a way that he could not use them to see around the corner but he was sure the monster could. That didn't seem like something that was possible but then its horn and eyes glowed at the same time with the same yellow and he noticed a faint yellow on the walls around him. This is probably what gave it the ability to see using the mirrors when he couldn't use them. The frog person, Eli decided that he would call them perog's for short, sucked air into his chin sack thing and opened its mouth wide made a sound similar to a frog croak sound but it was deeper and resonated in the crystals. The sound shook his bones and teeth and gave him a piercing headache, a stabbing headache like his brain's pain nerves were being directly hit with a tattoo gun needle on full speed.
After the sound attack that was mostly confusion and disorientation came its physical attack, its tongue came out and in a cone spiral like some kind of crazy straw and Eli ducted back into the tunnel before the turn and a loud crack echoed down the tunnel. The perog had used its spiral tongue like a spring and shot it out like a bullet, so fast it broke the sound barrier and the wall of the tunnel. Eli was worried about its power and speed but it seemed like it took some time to wind up so it would catch him off guard he hoped, but that vibration from the croaking sound almost immobilized him. It seemed to resonate with the crystal surrounding the tunnel making it harder to bear. From the safety of being back in his tunnel before the perog's tunnel he tried smashing the walls with just his mace and it just left the smallest crack. Then he tried to use his smash skill with a minimum magic usage and focusing on his strength and it wrecked the crystal. It seemed like enough damage to prevent it from resonating again.
Now he just needed to do this in the tunnel with the monster fast enough for it not to be able to stop him. Burning a little extra magic for the skill he darted into the tunnel and smashed the walls on both sides and to test his theory he stood for a second and let it croak and it affected him much less than last time. It still messed with his balance and made him stagger, but the pain was far more manageable so he ducked back and let the tongue fire off doing more damage to the end of the tunnel. This monster was starting to feel more like a defense turret than a real monster to fight, but he knew that tongue attack was not something he could get hit by without taking serious damage.
So the next step would be to get as far as he could down the tunnel and smash the walls, then after the croak try to make it the rest of the way to hit it before the tongue hits him. It was going to take commitment and he had to not flinch or slow at all. The croak charge time was about a second and a half, and the tongue attack took about 2 seconds to charge. Eli's stats made him fast and strong but he could not just immediately reach max speed nor could he stop in an instant. He would have to push this and his smash into the walls would have to be very quick but still strong, he would not have time to switch focus between stats so he would have to only focus on speed. I can trust myself, he thought, I can do this.
He backed up so he could hit the turn at a run pushing off the walls to give his start down this tunnel more leverage and he made it 6 feet and stopped and smashed the wall to his left and right as quick as his arm would move just as the perog croaked. He staggered a single step then forced himself to focus and moved forward as the tongue started to wind up. He made it to the 17 foot mark and he knew the attack was going to fire before he got there to smash the thing. So he focused on his speed as much as he could and read where the attack would hit and swung his mace to intercept it with a smash at about half strength. A loud Crack like a bullwhip and boom like an explosion vibrated everything and Eli was sent flying backwards into the hole that it had already created with its previous tongue attacks.
Eli was surprised that he didn't black out this time even though he felt like half his body was broken into pieces. His arms and ribs were definitely broken but the real problem was that the handle of his mace had been shoved into his right shoulder, almost separating it entirely and sticking out his back through a broken hole in his shoulder blade. He was worried about the thing surviving his attack and healing faster than he could so he stuck another patch on his forehead so he could hopefully get back up in time.
It turned out to not be needed since after he was healed enough to move his head he saw that it was now pieces on the ground. He laid his head back and just reveled in his pain as it was the pain of victory, he had lived through another thing by the skin of his teeth. While laying there and healing, gritting his teeth in pain he focused on what he did right and wrong. He probably could have done ok with only smashing one wall right as the croak hit, giving him more time and he wouldn't even need to stop completely, maybe just slow down. He was going over how it would work in his head until he was well enough to sit up then he slowly and painfully pulled his mace out of his shoulder, this hurt so bad he was dry heaving.
He adjusted his sitting position so he could focus inward and check on his internal magic. He wanted to get a feel for how it worked when his health was regenerating. Calming himself and breathing through the pain as his shoulder was regrowing he tried to feel how the magic worked for rebuilding his body after damage. At first, he couldn't tell if it was doing anything, but then he could feel it pulling magic from outside his body and breaking it down near his injuries, but in a new way than before. It wasn't being broken down into magic he could use, it was being broken down and used to create his body, the matter that made up his cells. It was like his body could use the magic to generate a physical substance, so tried to give it his own magic instead of the outside magic to break-down.
This started something bad and he quickly cut it off from his magic, it wanted to burn his magic but in tremendous amounts that would have had him to zero in the space of 2 breaths. He might be onto something with this, replacing his body with one made from his magic might be a big boost for him. However, he simply did not have enough magic or control to do it without it killing him so he moved on to something he could do. He calmed his inner magic and after healing for another 30 minutes he felt well enough to move forward and see what he could find up ahead. Eli moved slowly, not being fully healed but he wanted to see if this floor opened to a big room like before or was just this crazy reflective tunnel.
Two more turns after the first frog turret he saw another one while peaking around a corner and backed up a bit to rest a bit more since he was still not healed. The stunted regeneration inside a dungeon made progress much slower and his shoulder still had a ways to go. While sitting around the corner from another perog, as he called them, he closed his eyes and focused on feeling the magic here. He wanted to get a better sense of this reflective crystal and maybe even feel the magic of these monsters to try and gain information.
Breathing slowly and focusing on his wisdom stat while expanding his awareness he started to get a feel for the place, the crystal surrounding him was absorbing and releasing the magic in the area. It was slightly altering itself to match the magic before releasing it. The magic around him was like a very slight version of his internal magic, the way it moved like waves crashing in a storm. However, it was thin, very thin, but there were places where it crashed into itself making it more dense and it was always moving. He shook his head as he knew he was getting distracted, but the information might come in handy later on so he filed it away in his brain.
After just sitting for a while and monitoring his internal magic, he felt healed up and ready to move on, he got up and started stretching. Peaking around the corner again he saw the same thing from last time and decided he was going to try a new strategy. This was risky and reckless but he felt like it would work, Eli was going to force his will to push past the effects of the croak attack and just run at full speed. He prepared himself and focused on his speed and pushed himself hard and took off running at full speed. The perog started his tongue attack instead of the croak and Eli felt like an idiot for not checking this one's attack pattern, but he was too committed. Moving too fast to stop so he couldn't turn around so he just pushed on faster using all the speed he could muster. Right when he knew it was going to fire he dropped to the ground and started to slide forward on his butt, the attack clipped his left shoulder. The force of it crushed his collarbone and almost took off his arm, just from the glancing hit.
Sliding closer he struck it in the stomach with a smash and it shattered to pieces. He felt lucky and was grateful for his investment in his reaction stat. His shoulder was cut deep and he couldn't use his left arm at all and he was covered in blood again. This fight was different, it was too close, as soon as he noticed the attack was different he thought he was dead. He never really was afraid of death, it wasn't something he thought about despite how many times he had come close to death. Depression was setting in at how alone he was, and it wasn't something he liked to think about. He needed to put focus back on getting stronger.
There were 3 more perog's in tunnels further on and finally he felt like he was at the boss area. The tunnel doubled in size over a straight 50 foot tunnel and then there was a left turn and the tunnel continued to expand over another 100 feet growing to 100 feet wide and at the end of that tunnel was a 25 foot tall frog turret except this one had 2 heads and 4 yellow hats/horns. It had 3 arms on each side and 4 legs with a deeper red crystalline body. The previous iterations of this monster that he had fought didn't move, but they could aim their tongue, but this thing looked like it could move. It probably couldn't move quickly or anything but it could move its feet.
The best plan for him to survive this would be for him to assume its first attack was stronger than those tongue attacks from before and focus on speed. He could blink to it and probably destroy one head, but then he wouldn't be able to get back out easily and a smash that strong would destroy his arm. So the plan would be to get in fast and destroy a head, then blink out and take his time on the other head. But then he paused and scratched his chin again thinking about how he had almost died from making assumptions about how it would attack. So he needed a test run first to see what it did and stepped out into the open and smashed the ground in front of him to get its attention.
The monster raised up on its multi-segmented legs a bit higher and both heads opened their mouths. All 6 long fingered hands made a cone around the open mouths to direct the sound better and a deep rumbling vibration came out and barreled towards him. Eli was ready for this and was already ducking back into the other tunnel before the sound wave reached him. However, that wasn't enough distance as it resonated all the crystal around him allowing the sound to follow him around the corner and into the other tunnel. His whole body shook and it seemed like some of his bones might fracture, but they barely held together from this increasing resistance stat. Taking a knee he tried to gather himself as the length of time the noise carried on was much shorter than previous. It was more like a half second blast than a long croak, but it was so compact and strong that he was sure getting hit by it twice in succession would break several smaller bones.
He tried again to see if it would do the other attack and both heads did but the body leaned in as each head fired the tongue attack forward reaching over a hundred feet in under a second. The 'Crack' of them breaking the sound barrier rang out and echoed off the walls as both crashed and crushed into the back wall of the tunnel. Right when they were being pulled back in with just as much speed as they had coming out, Eli got his idea for how to get up close to the monster with using a skill or risking running in. This would require perfect timing and nerves of steel but he thought he could pull it off if he just had faith in himself he could do this.
Eli waited until he was healed up from that crazy croak that seemed to just pound on his body and then he walked back out into the partially destroyed hallway and stood in a ready stance. The perog turret boss monster wound up two tongue attacks and was slightly adjusting its aim as it watched him, but he had been watching more closely than it had and he thought he had the timing down and could predict where they would hit. Just as he thought one went for his head and the other for his chest. Now with the distance difference and with all his focus on the perception part of his reaction stat he could tell a slight pause in its coiling movements before it would strike and right as it struck out he blinked himself to be upside down right above where his head used to be. The tongues shot past and did even more destruction to the back of the tunnel, but in that moment where they stopped moving forward and before they started moving back he reached out and grabbed the one from the left.
As soon as the tongues pulled back, Eli went with them, he dislocated his left shoulder from the whiplash but it seemed to be moving slower, probably due to the increased weight it was pulling. But he still moved back in a flash and had a swing of his mace ready. The monster head he was facing was trying to eat him, and the other face looked like it was worried and knew what was coming. Eli let himself be pulled into its mouth and used smash right on the roof of its mouth, he felt like this would maybe punch a hole out the top of its head but right as it hit the monster had closed his mouth and the pressure from his smash made the whole top of its head explode, destroying it instantly. He glanced back to where he entered and blinked back and hid around the tunnel.
His shoulder was dislocated and his hearing was gone with blood running down his ears and nose, but he had survived and was one step closer to killing this thing. He could feel the chaos magic in his body that would make another blink in the next few hours a bad idea, but he was glad he had tested super short blinks enough to know that they could be done 2 or 3 at a time since the small distance used less magic, there was less in his body. However, his problem now was that the longer he waited to heal the longer the monster would have to heal. He peaked around the turn in the tunnel to see what the monster was up to having lost a head.
It was just kind of sitting there moving slowly and kind of wobbly, it looked like the remaining head was having a hard time controlling the limbs that the other one had controlled. He stepped out into the tunnel and it noticed him but could only do a normal croak, without the hands for a megaphone effect and only being one head, plus the distance, it was easily taken head on with minimal effect. It looked hesitant to use the tongue attack, not sure if he could grab it again, so Eli ran towards it at full speed. The monster looked panicked and croaked again with no visible result on the human coming to kill it so it hedged its bets and tried to fire the tongue attack as he crossed the halfway mark. This did not go as planned for the monster since it couldn't control 2 of its legs very well, when it leaned forward to attack it lost its balance and started to reach its arms down to catch itself but it couldn't control them well either.
As it fell forward Eli had finally caught up to it and smashed on top of its head, cracking it but it didn't break. This clearly caused more coordination trouble as all 10 limbs of the monster started flailing around and one of its arms came down on him. Eli was able to use some magic and his mace to block the attack but it made it difficult to use a full power smash which required him to focus his magic into the skill and his mace. So he just used a regular smash then would block and parry flailing attacks, then go back to regular smashes. It took him almost a minute but he finally punched a hole in the outside of its head and defeated it.