For a moment it seemed as though the spirit beast didn"t know what to do, but that soon changed as they decided on a new approach to combating Joshua"s group. Usually they"d send one large spirit beast in at a time with its own cl.u.s.ter of small spirit beasts to aid it in its fight. This would allow the spirit beast to tire out their enemies before the powerful boss would appear and finish off the exhausted foe. The problem this time was the fact that one large spirit beast didn"t seem to be enough to tire out Joshua"s group or even hurt them at all from the spirit beasts point of view. Of course the spirit beasts didn"t realize that the last fight was just luck on Joshua"s part since his group had the perfect counter to the beasts they had to face. This situation seemed to make the spirit beast decide on taking a new approach going forward. Instead of coming out one by one like they had originally planned they decided to go all out in the next fight and try to suppress Joshua"s party from being able to last through the second phase. Instead of a long battle of endurance that had been planned out they were going for a harsh one time fight all because of a simple misunderstanding. As the four remaining large spirit beast started to float down and approach the platform Joshua realized what was going on.
"It seems like they"ve decided to come at us all at once this time around. Maybe making the last fight look so easy wasn"t a good idea after all." Henry said with a frown as he made sure everyone had their buffs in place for the upcoming fight.
"Well it might make things harder, but it"ll also make the dungeon clear faster." Adrian said with a smirk as he held his two blades at the ready. "If you ask me that"s a win. Proves were stronger than this dungeon was expecting us to be."
"Yep, we showed that last beast how strong we are and we didn"t even have to use all of our best abilities." Amy said as she stood behind her brother ready to charge in the moment the fighting started. "Plus I can feel I"m about to gain another level."
"Well we"ll see what these things have up their sleeve this time. If it takes all four of them to form whatever they"re planning it must be stronger than the shadow fiend we just took down." Joshua said with a small frown as he watched the four creatures reach the platform and hover above them.
For a while it looked like the four large spirit beast just planned on starring them down, but soon they started to whirl around each other as their large size seemed to expand even more as it took up a good chunk of the platform. Whatever creature they were planning to form would be far larger than the other beast they had faced up to this point. Joshua could only think of a couple creatures he had come across so far that were big enough to fit the bill and were in the sub-boss category, but when the tail of the creature they were forming took shape they all knew exactly what they were going to be up against.
It was a creature they had gotten use to fighting in the past few weeks so they already knew the best way to handle the fight under normal conditions, but they knew that somethings were definitely going to change. The spirit beast finished forming the large sub-boss scorpion creature with its crystal armor and all, but it still had a ghostly look to it as if it wasn"t really there even if they all knew the creature could actually hit them. The platform once again started to change as it seemed to have several crystals form around it to give an advantage to the scorpion. Under those conditions it was impossible to use Tank to much in this fight since he would end up getting trapped the moment the large scorpion started focusing on him. Instead Lilly had him set up several bubble traps before switching out to Flutter to empower the entire group.
Soon they all knew that the large scorpion wasn"t going to be the only thing they had to fight though. More spirit beast came swarming down and formed three little groups that morphed into some creatures that Joshua had never seen before. Seeing them he could tell that they weren"t the type of creature that could physically do much harm to Joshua or anyone in his group. The creatures looked similar to squirrels of some sort, but quite a bit larger than the normal squirrel considering they were the size of a normal dog without taking their large bushy tails into consideration.
"Well d.a.m.n, that just made things a lot more difficult." Adrian said with a frown as he looked at the squirrels as they rushed over to the large scorpion and started climbing up on top of it.
"I take it you guys have come across these things before?" Joshua asked.
"Yeah they don"t fight on their own, but they tended to help other beast by supercharging their aura while in contact with them. Three of those things can make this scorpion twice as difficult as normal if not more so. It was already a difficult creature to deal with, but now it"s as if its stats are doubled." Henry explained before the large scorpion started to screech and send its now amplified aura into the surroundings. The killing intent rolling off of it was now on par with the Scorpion Prince while the creature"s size took up about half of the platform and made it hard for them to maneuver around it.
"So those squirrels are similar to Flutter with her boost ability then?" Lilly asked as her body got over the tense feeling from the killing intent that had been sent their way.
"It"s closer to Jade and Light since the squirrels actually have to be in contact with the beast that they are empowering. The good thing is that they can"t hide inside the creatures shadow or aura and are killable." Henry explained getting a nod from everyone in the group.
"The bad thing is the fact that they are incredibly fast and know to avoid attacks while staying in contact with their partner. They"ll run all over the scorpion while avoiding our attacks to the best of their abilities." Aito said as he pulled out his sniper rifle and stepped to the back of the group to get as much distance as possible and get the most out of the buff that Henry had placed on him.
"Well then for now Lilly have Cinder focus on large area of effect attacks on the scorpion to ferret those squirrels out and keep them busy. Us close range fighters will try to tear apart the crystal armor of the scorpion in the meantime. Even if it is a ghostly figure we know that the armor and exoskeleton will work for it in the same way that it did for the one from the previous dungeon. Henry keep the poison it"ll make off of us and try to bind its legs every now and then to hinder its turning capabilities. Aito it"s up to you to try and pick off the squirrels as quickly as possible." Joshua finished explaining their strategy just before the ground beneath him started to shake signifying the crystals were about to attack.
Everyone avoided the large scorpion"s attempt at sneak attacking them before getting to work. Joshua was the first person to charge forward to get the creatures attention. It let out a roar as it tried to swipe one of its large claws at him and tear him apart, but Joshua parried the blow angering the creature even more as he side stepped its stinger and smashed his aura coated blade into the crystals protecting its tail. Joshua knew it would take some time to tear this beast apart, but he already knew the perfect pattern to handle this creature. He made sure to never take any of the enormous beast blows head on since its size and greatly increased power would overwhelm even him. Instead he would either avoid or redirect the attacks so that they"d just miss and allow Joshua to counter with the amplified power of the buffs given by Henry.
Adrian and Amy on the other hand got to work on the creatures legs. They were dismantling the crystal off its lower body as quickly as possible so that when Aito had taken care of all of the squirrels they"d have a good shot at dealing with exoskeleton underneath. For now the scorpion"s vitality was way too high for any of them to do any real damage. Even Amy couldn"t break through with the help of Jade and her penetrating force with each blow. It only seemed to make the beast"s legs shake for a moment and nothing else. Its vitality was just of out of their league for the moment so the fight became more of a stalling match that would have dragged on for a long time under most circ.u.mstances.
Luckily the front liners weren"t the only ones around to try to do any real damage to the enemy. If that were the case they would get nowhere. Even after Joshua had broken through the crystal on the creature"s tail his blows had no effect on the exoskeleton itself proving that the creature"s stats were well out of his range. It was a similar situation to if Joshua had used his aura hardening ability. Aito and Cinder were the keys to the fight this time around as the large spider avoided any of the crystal attacks that the scorpion used to try to trap her. Its main focus was on Joshua up front so Cinder didn"t have to worry about getting honed in on. This gave her the time to leap above the scorpion and send large waves of flames over the creature occasionally.
Of course the flames didn"t do much more than annoy the spirit formed scorpion, but what it did do is ferret out the three squirrels that were trying to hide on the scorpions back. Now that the squirrels weren"t able to hide on the scorpions back Aito could clearly get a shot and he took the first chance he got. The first squirrel seemed completely taken by surprise as the sniper bullet exploded right before pa.s.sing all the way through its body and tore the little spirit construct apart. This sudden change of situation seemed to alert the other squirrels that tried to hide underneath the scorpion, but two fire pyre"s placed underneath the scorpion exploded agitating the scorpion some more, but even more importantly forcing the squirrels back out in the open.
Aito quickly took the shots and took the annoying squirrels out causing the strength of the large scorpion to dip dramatically. After the first squirrel died Joshua noticed that his attacks were starting to leave small scratches across the exoskeleton of the ghostly figure, but after the next two squirrels died Joshua was able to cut off its tail entirely. The large ghostly figure screamed in pain as the tail broke down into spirits that faded away. Now the entire group knew that the creature was vulnerable and they took advantage of that.
Adrian was the first one to get to work as he started tearing through the greatly weakened legs by going for all the new weak spots that had appeared after the squirrels had been dealt with. Since all of the crystal armor had been torn off the weak spots were out in the open and with its stats dropped the scorpions vitality was no longer high enough to shrug off his attacks. Soon the creature had no more legs left to move around on.
Amy on the other hand just went directly into the ma.s.sive creature"s side and started letting lose. Each of her attacks cracked the beast exoskeleton, but also penetrated deep into its internal organs. Soon the scorpion was vomiting up a foggy substance that reminded them all it wasn"t actually a scorpion, but instead a spirit beast. Either way the beast was getting torn apart by the two front liners. At the same time Aito took out its eyes, Henry used a wind spell to blow away the cloud of poison that the creature produced and sent it off the platform to give them some breathing room.
In the end it only took about twenty minutes to finish off the beast as Joshua cut its head off and they all watched it break apart into a bunch of spirits while feeling the experience gained flow through them.