Novak winced as he felt his body being crushed by the stone around him.
Still, he did not panic and instead focused on escaping. He'd been in plenty of tough situations before and this was far from the worst.
Activating several skills at once, he felt a surge of power coursing through his body. At level fifty-four, Novak was expectantly strong and was not going to be contained by normal material.
Under the strain of Novak's might, the stone around him began to crack.
Then with one massive push with all his limbs, he fractured the enclosing ceiling and opened up a hole to escape from.
Unfortunately, this had him falling back towards the murky water below without any ans of stopping himself.
A couple of seconds later he found himself plunging back into the pungent water that slled of rot and death.
At this point he would have loved a mont to clean off and get the vile taste of tainted water and blood out of his mouth. Yet even subrged under water he could hear and feel the impact of his party's battle with the undead mass of trees.
As Endless Horizons' leader, Novak knew he could not sit back while everyone else was fighting. No matter how much he wanted a few seconds to recover, he knew that ti was in short supply.
Novak kicked his legs hard against the water and propelled himself out of it.
When he finally surfaced, he saw the four other mbers of his party fighting against the monster that had lodged him into the ceiling with a single kick.
Thankfully none of them looked particularly injured. Landyn was focusing on keeping the creature's attention and allowing Clay, Erie, and Jovie to attack.
The damage that they were inflicting on the amalgamation of rotting trees was not amounting to much though.
Every one of their blows splintered its body, but a sludge-like sap seeped out of its body and quickly began restoring its form. Even the arm that Novak had severed into several pieces, which was only one eight, was already around halfway to being fully recovered.
Watching this Novak wished that he or one of his party mbers could use magic. Sadly, none of them had the talent for it and he had never gotten around to trying to recruit a dedicated mage. For any monster that they needed to use magic against, they had gotten by with spell sealing talismans or wands.
From what he could see, none of the items they had on hand were going to be close to powerful enough to bring down a monster like this.
"We'll just have to bust through it faster than it can heal then!" Novak shouted, both to inspirit himself and his party mbers.
He slashed through the air with his claw blades and sent six mana slashes flying towards the gigantic creature.
His attack was ultimately intercepted by one of the monster's thick arms and left little more than a few deep scratches, but Novak was not disheartened.
The water once again embraced him as he fell, but the second he had sothing he could find purchase on he kicked off and angled himself towards one of the nearby walls.
In an acrobatic feat similar to what Erie was accomplishing, Novak bounced from one wall to the other and returned to the main battle.
"You've already revealed yourself, so that's not going to work."
Just before he reached the other, the wall that he was about to reach sprouted several sharp spikes.
Had he not been expecting sothing like this to occur, he likely would have ended up severely injured, but Novak had already seen the walls being manipulated by so sort of creature.
Rapidly he sliced up the spikes with his claw blades and agilely spun his body around so that his feet landed on the now clear wall.
Below him he felt the wall trying to grip his feet, but he kicked off of it before it could firmly secure him.
Finally, back in the main battle, Novak warned his friends about the walls moving and began a fierce assault against the undead tree monster.
Attack after attack, Novak and his party mbers rent apart their enemy.
Whenever it seed like they might be starting to make progress on bringing the monster down, the walls, ceiling and even the sunken floor would move to interfere with their efforts.
Had they only needed to deal with one opponent, victory already would have been in their grasp.
However, as the battle went on, exhaustion began to creep up on all of them. This entire ti they had been fighting on horrible terrain that gave them little room to maneuver. Every decent attack took too much ti to deliver and every strike against them threatened to be deadly.
Sensing that their strength would not last, Novak ordered an all-out attack. It would be a gamble, but this was the only thing left that would give them any chance to win.
"Don't worry about anything else, just hit it with everything you've got!"
Trusting in their leader, Clay, Erie, Jovie, and Landyn charged up their weapons with mana and prepared to unleash their strongest attacks.
Of course, as they focused their all on the rotting wooden monstrosity, the undead controlling the walls struck out towards them.
This was the most brazen attack it had launched and aid for when all of the mbers of Novak's party were at their most vulnerable.
Yet, none of its attacks reached them.
Novak had been readying his own attack not to strike down the undead tree monster, but to stop any interference from the one manipulating the walls.
Cutting through the air with swift strikes, he sent flaying slashes of mana towards the protruding walls and cut them down before they could reach his friends.
A mont later their best attacks reached the wooden create they had been fighting.
Clays glaive leaved a trail of green light as she slashed down in one great arc.
His attack swift and powerful, he cut off the two arms that moved to intercept him and cleaved into the body of the undead monster.
Jovie's strike hit next and left a large dent in the side of the creature's central truck that acted as its torso. Rotten wood and polluted water sprayed out over the place, and the entire monster crashed into the nearby wall from the force of the blow.
Following up, Landyn ramd into the staggered undead with his shield and slamd it fully into the murky water below. Cracks ford all along its main body and the monster's body creaked dangerously as it tried to move.
At last, Erie finished preparing her finishing move.
In her crossbow, a brightly glowing bolt shone with silver light.
This was her strongest trump card and replacing it was likely to cost her eighty percent of her cut from this job's reward.
As she pressed the trigger on her weapon, the bolt flew at an incredible speed and sunk into the center of the monster's body.
At first it seed that the bolt did practically no damage. Until it exploded in a cacophonous burst of sound that blew the wood around it apart.
Having the core of its body destroyed, the monstrous amalgamation of trees was no longer able to get up.
The corrupt sap within it attempted to nd the damage, but even its powerful regenerative abilities could not repair the loss of its central truck.
Several splashes followed the defeat of their main enemy as every mber of Endless Horizons fell into the repulsive water below.
After unleashing everything they had in a last-ditch effort to defeat their enemy, all of them were nearly out of energy.
What little strength they had was focused on their surroundings. The main threat may have been down, but the monster controlling the walls was still around. All of them were expecting it to attack them while they were still exhausted.
Except it did not make a move, for it had no need to.
As Novak and his party mbers kept an eye out for an attack, they disregarded the body of the monster they had already defeated. Certainly, it was unable to continue fighting, but it had one final move to play.
The wooden debris in the water began to pulsate and swell. Soon the energy inside of them had reached its limit and several explosions of necrotic energy enveloped the area.
Novak felt his blood turn cold, and a horrible pain racked his entire body as he was hit by the explosions.
He watched as his veins turned black and his skin turned gray in multiple places.
When the explosion eventually died down, he found himself still alive, but in incredibly rough shape.
Floating on top of the water nearby, he saw that his companions were in a similar or even worse condition.
Being heavily armored, Jovie and Landyn began to sink now that they had lost even the strength to tread water.
Pushing himself, Novak swam towards them, yet his progress was quickly halted.
Sothing from below was wrapped around his leg and he felt it begin to drag him underwater.
With one last look before being pulled below the surface, he saw that the rest of his companions were sinking as well. The monster that had been manipulating the structure of the sewer had reached out from below and grabbed all of them. Now that they were too weak to resist, it would drag them all to a watery grave.
'I guess this is the end.' Novak thought as he felt his consciousness waning. They put up a good fight, but it had not been enough.
Except just as he had given up, he felt whatever had held him loosened and suddenly he was yanked out of the water.
"It looks like you guys could use so help. I hope you don't mind if I cut in."
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