Free Web NovelChapter 5: [5]: Brewing the Venom, The Boss Encounter
Levi kept walking until the dead trees of the Weeping Woods grew so thick they completely blocked out the digital sun.
He had reached the heart of the zone.
The ground beneath his feet shifted from dry dirt to a spongy, disgusting layer of thick green webbing. Every step made a sticky, peeling sound. Puddles of bubbling green acid dotted the landscape, melting the petrified logs into sludge.
In the dead center of the massive clearing slept the Venomous Broodmother.
She was a nightmare given digital form. The spider was the size of a delivery van, covered in bristly black hairs and sporting a swollen, pulsing green abdomen. Above her eight closed eyes floated a massive, glowing skull icon next to her health bar.
[Venomous Broodmother] [Level: 5 | Field Boss] [HP: 1,500 | ATK: 40 | DEF: 20]
Levi crouched behind a webbing-covered rock at the edge of the clearing. He didn’t just run in swinging like a suicidal newbie. He was a veteran. He knew exactly why this boss was a notorious early-game gatekeeper. In his past life, a massive guild coalition had thrown twenty Level 5 players at her, and they all got completely wiped out in thirty seconds.
The reason was simple: her AoE "Acid Spit" attack. It covered a massive cone, and if you didn’t have poison resistance, it melted your health bar to zero almost instantly. Fighting her head-on with base defense and no healer was mathematical suicide.
But Levi had a cheat code.
He opened his inventory. During his trek through the woods, he had slaughtered exactly four Forest Spiders. Along with the XP, they had dropped a few basic consumable items. He pulled them out. Three small, corked glass vials filled with a murky green liquid rested in his palm.
[Minor Antidote Vial] [Rarity: Common] [Effect: Cures basic poison status. Grants 5% Poison Resistance for 1 minute.]
"Five percent resistance isn’t going to do squat against a boss," Levi muttered to himself. "But let’s see what the system thinks about three of them."
He opened his status menu and pulled up the Boundless Fusion interface. The familiar golden window popped up. He dragged the three Common vials from his inventory into the three empty fusion slots.
He tapped ’Fuse’.
A bright, flashing green light illuminated his hiding spot. The three cheap glass vials melted together, the glass stretching and reforming into a sleek, crystal flask. The murky green liquid boiled and purified, turning into a glowing, vibrant emerald color.
Levi grabbed the flask out of the air and read the new tooltip. He couldn’t help but grin.
[Potent Antidote Flask] [Rarity: Uncommon] [Effect: Grants absolute Poison Immunity for 3 minutes. Restores 5 HP per second while active.]
"Absolute immunity and passive healing," Levi whispered, popping the cork off the flask. "I love this broken-ass game."
Before drinking it, he stayed crouched behind the rock and ran the math in his head. This was the most important part of any VRMMORPG boss fight. If the numbers didn’t make sense, you died.
His current Total Attack was 45. The Broodmother’s Defense was 20. That meant his basic physical attacks would only deal 25 damage per swing. The boss had 1,500 HP. 1,500 divided by 25 meant he needed to land exactly 60 basic strikes to kill her.
"Sixty hits," Levi sighed. "That is a seriously long time to survive against a boss with no tank to hold aggro. But at least my Agility is sitting at 13. I should be able to physically outrun her heavy attacks."
He didn’t have time to second-guess himself. The game rewarded the bold and punished the hesitant.
Levi raised the crystal flask to his lips and downed the glowing emerald liquid. It tasted like mint and battery acid, making him cough. Instantly, a cool, refreshing rush of energy suffused his avatar. A small buff icon appeared in the top left corner of his vision: a green shield with a timer counting down from 3:00.
The three-minute death timer had officially begun.
Levi gripped his Serrated Scythe with both hands, stepped out from behind the rock, and sprinted directly into the clearing.
His footsteps on the sticky webbing were loud. The Broodmother’s eight eyes snapped open simultaneously. She let out a horrific, ear-piercing shriek that vibrated in Levi’s haptic helmet, making his teeth rattle. She reared back on her four hind legs, her swollen green abdomen glowing brightly.
She didn’t waste time. She violently sprayed a massive, sweeping wave of Acid Spit across the clearing.
The green sludge covered a massive cone, melting the ground, the rocks, and the trees. A normal player would have desperately tried to dive out of the way, wasting their stamina and ruining their positioning.
Levi didn’t even blink. He deliberately charged straight through the tidal wave of acid.
The green sludge splashed all over his coarse peasant tunic and his virtual skin. The game’s system logs flashed wildly in the corner of his eye.
[Poison Damage Nullified (Immune).] [Poison Damage Nullified (Immune).] [Poison Damage Nullified (Immune).]
He burst through the other side of the acid wave, completely unharmed, and closed the distance. He slid right under her massive, hairy front legs, placing himself directly beneath her vulnerable underbelly.
"Reaping Arc!" Levi shouted.
He felt the 10 Mana drain from his pool. The jagged blade of the Serrated Scythe ignited with a bloody red aura. He swung it upward with all his might, burying the blade deep into the spider’s green abdomen!
A heavy red [-61] popped out of the boss.
He didn’t stop. The skill had a 5-second cooldown, so he immediately followed up with a frantic flurry of basic physical attacks. He used the momentum of his first swing to spin the heavy scythe around, slashing three times in rapid succession.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
His 45 Attack minus her 20 Defense resulted in exactly 25 damage per hit.
[-25] [-25] [-25]
Total damage for the combo: 136. The boss’s health bar barely moved, dropping to 1,364 HP. But the serrated edge of his scythe did exactly what it was designed to do. The passive effect triggered. A small, bleeding teardrop icon appeared over the Broodmother’s head.
[-5]
The bleed started ticking, draining 5 HP every second, completely ignoring her defense.
The Broodmother was absolutely enraged by the tiny, mosquito-like human carving into her stomach. She shrieked again and aggressively slammed her two massive front legs down into the sticky ground!
Levi saw the animation wind up. He relied on his 13 Speed, kicking off the ground and desperately rolling to the side. He managed to dodge the direct physical crush of the legs, but the sheer force of the boss’s attack sent a shockwave rippling through the clearing.
The shockwave clipped his shoulder before he could finish his roll.
The math registered the hit. The Boss had a base Attack of 40. Because Levi successfully dodged the direct hit and only caught the AoE shockwave, it registered as a glancing blow, cutting the damage in half to 20.
Levi’s meager 5 Defense absorbed a tiny bit of it.
A red [-15] floated above Levi’s head. The NerveDive pain engine sent a harsh, blunt-force ache through his shoulder, simulating a heavy punch. His HP dropped to 85/100.
He grunted, pushing himself up off the webbing. Before he could even check his health bar properly, a green [+5] floated up from his body. The Potent Antidote Flask’s passive healing had immediately ticked, restoring his health to 90/100.
"Okay," Levi breathed heavily, adjusting his grip on the scythe. "The math holds up. I can survive the glancing blows. I just have to keep moving."
The Broodmother turned her massive, ugly face toward him, her mandibles clicking furiously in the dark. The timer in the corner of Levi’s vision ticked down to 2:50!
He had less than three minutes to carve through over a thousand health points. The true battle of attrition had officially begun.
