Sounds reminiscent of the arrival of a freight train echoed through the Dungeon as the squiggles displayed the rather ominous message. First came the stamping of what Charlemagne assumed were hooves on the immutable ground. The delay between the impacts was so short they each seemed to roll into the next, the volume steadily rising as the charging bull approached. Then came the deafening bellow that sounded like a slightly-lower pitched steam whistle. T

  “MMMRRRROOOAAARRGH!!!”

  Charlemagne didn’t wait until he could see the beast to begin his preparations for combat. His Meditation skill was still active, so he began pulling on the ambient mana, which was quite plentiful, to replenish his Ember Core. In the scant few seconds that remained, he also created a series of three overlapping mana shields to blunt the enemy’s initial charge. That was all he had time for before the Bald Bull was upon him. The beast was down on all fours, its horns radiating a strange energy as it streaked forward at a speed that belied its enormous bulk. The rooster’s Dodge skill screamed at him to roll to the left as the Bald Bull slammed into Charlemagne’s mana shields.

  Charlemagne dodged just in time as the bull broke through all three shields without flinching. Rolling back to his feet, the rooster got his first good look at the gigantic cow boss’ body. It was not a pleasant sight. The bull’s entire body was completely without hair. Veiny muscles were everywhere, even in places where Charlemagne would have sworn there shouldn’t be muscles. As the Bald Bull screeched to a halt and turned around, he rose onto its hind legs, exposing its chest and abdomen to inspection.

  He had an eighteen pack.

  Despite his obvious enraged state, the bull’s blood-red eyes gleamed with intelligence. He advanced forward two steps, his hoofs clanging like blacksmiths’ hammers against the floor.

  “Since you have slaughtered my mates without mercy, none shall be shown to you. I will cripple you first, rooster. You will be trampled under my hooves and gored by my horns. Your limbs will be pulled from your body one by one. Then I will kill your companion in front of your very eyes. Once you are alone and broken, you will come to understand a fraction of the pain that you have caused me.”

  Charlemagne took a step forward, activating the Monocle of Refinement to get an idea of his opponent’s weak points. Other than the eyes and the groin, the thick layers of muscle that covered the Bald Bull’s body appeared to provide excellent defense. With his Meditation skill handling most of the analysis, the rest of his mind was free to think of a response to the surprisingly eloquent beast’s threat.

  “Bawk,” he said after a few moments had passed.

  The enormous bovine shook his head.

  “There is no possible way that you can understand,” he pronounced. “But I will do my best to correct that deficiency before I end your life.”

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne responded. The Bald Bull staggered back a few steps upon hearing the rooster’s bold claim.

  “You…consumed your own children? Oh, how I have misjudged you! But no matter, I will help you atone for your sins before I end your life. I can only hope that the suffering of your body lessens the burden on your soul.”

  “Bawk?” the rooster asked.

  “Oh, certainly. I am still going to crush your bones and rend your flesh. We are, after all, fated to meet each other on the field of battle. And yet, I find it most effective to have a rationale for my beastly behavior. Speaking of which…it is long past time I resumed it. I will speak again once your body lies broken on the turf.”

  The Bald Bull took several steps back and slammed down onto all fours again, lowing his head and brandishing his horns, which Charlemagne could now tell were tapered down to a fine point on top of being covered in some sort of shiny, yellow metal. The color reminded him of his Monocle of Refinement. Not wishing to be on the receiving end of another one of the bull’s thunderous charges, Charlemagne pressed in, using his smaller size to his advantage as he attempted to attack the enormous bovine from its right flank. But the boss was surprisingly nimble despite its size, dancing back out of the way with footwork that would have impressed a chain-smoking ballet teacher.

  A deafening bellow rang out again as the gleam of intelligence in the Bald Bull’s red eyes faded. In its stead, an aura of unbridled bloodlust filled the area. Just the force of the soundwave pushed Charlemagne the tiniest bit off balance. The Dungeon boss capitalized on that moment, barreling forward and catching the rooster with a powerful gore attack and tossing his head up as he followed through. Charlemagne was sent hurtling through the air and landed in a heap.

  “Boooosssss!” a tiny voice cried out as the rooster pulled himself to his feet. Charlemagne didn’t have time to answer his mosquito sidekick, because the Bald Bull hadn’t thrown his opponent for nothing. The ground once again began to quake as the one cow stampede ate up the distance between the two opponents. With only a few moments to prepare, Charlemagne didn’t bother throwing up additional mana shields. Instead, he flapped his powerful wings, ignoring the pain in his side where the bull’s horn had penetrated. His plan was simple: to take to the skies where the bull’s rampage couldn’t reach him and then think up a better plan.

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  That was a mistake.

  Charlemagne’s head bounced off an invisible barrier just as he was beginning to gain altitude, the shock of the blow making him see stars for a moment. He recovered quickly, however, bouncing against the “roof” once more as he adjusted his heading. The bull wasn’t quite able to compensate for the rooster’s sudden dodge and once again overshot his target, passing below and to the left of Charlemagne. Or so it seemed.

  A wide gash opened on the rooster’s flank and nearly caused Charlemagne to crash. He swooped low, skimming the ground in a graceful swoop that an ordinary rooster could never hope to match, coming around to face his opponent as he tried to figure out what exactly had happened. Not typically one for chatting during battle, Charlemagne called out as the Bald Bull turned around once again and reset his stance.

  “Bawk,” he asked.

  The bull ignored him and snorted, pawing at the ground in preparation for another charge. Charlemagne felt the mana coiling within the enormous beast’s legs and then springing into action as the bull blasted forward with even more acceleration than before. Despite everything, the rooster couldn’t help but be impressed with the boss’ sheer power. Defeating the Bald Bull’s charge would be a worthy challenge indeed.

  As the boss picked up speed, Charlemagne stood his ground, studying the mana flows around the charging bull. There was some trick to what the Dungeon boss was doing with his mana, which meant that the technique could be disrupted. Charlemagne thought back to the battle he had fought with the plasmodium, not the most recent one, but the one against the plasmodium Champion that had pushed the rooster beyond his limits. In that fight, he had been weaker than his opponent and had only prevailed because he used his mana to disrupt the enemy’s attack rather than clashing with it head on.

  The rooster’s train of thought derailed abruptly as his instincts yelled at him to move out of the way of the onrushing bovine. Charlemagne once again successfully dodged the bull’s lowered horns and stamping hooves, keeping a close eye on the vortex of mana that surrounded the Bald Bull. It was just as he thought: the boss’s sheer speed was whipping the ambient mana into a frenzy, forming threads of energy that seemingly coalesced at random. These threads were extremely dense for their size, making them ideal for slicing straight through defenses. It was the perfect complement to the Bald Bull’s charge. Even if Charlemagne dodged, he would still eventually be torn apart by the very air itself.

  Another thread appeared right in front of Charlemagne, proving that his theory had been correct. But it was a bit premature for the rooster to celebrate, as the string sliced deep into his left wing, cutting through feather, flesh, and bone without resistance. Charlemagne jerked his appendage out of the way just in time to avoid losing it entirely, but the damage was deep enough to trigger Zenrage.

  “Hey, hey boss! What can I do?” Bridget, who had been completely ignored by the Bald Bull up until this point, had managed to make it close enough to Charlemagne to make herself heard.

  “Bawk,” the rooster responded, not bothering to look at his teammate.

  “Oh, there are lethal mana threads everywhere? Uh…I’ll just jump in if I see an opening. You got this!”

  Bridget zoomed further away from the rooster as the Bald Bull swung around for another charge. Charlemagne’s wing was still unusable, but he was still confident that he could dodge effectively. Hopefully, the boss would be a good bull and charge again, allowing Charlemagne to counterattack for the first time since the fight started.

  The bull, true to its nature, obliged.

  The rooster once again faced down the onrushing bovine, but this time he did not just idly study the mana flows. He created another trio of mana shields between him and the boss before reaching out with his Ember Core and manipulating the swirling energy flooding the area, attempting to create order from chaos.

  The Bald Bull smashed into the shields, splintering the sturdy mana constructs as if they were cheap plywood. He bellowed in triumph as he broke through the final shield, seeing an unobstructed path between him and his latest victim.

  Or so he thought.

  Just before he reached Charlemagne, an enormous conflux of mana threads flared up in his path. They were so densely packed with mana that they glowed a bright blue, giving away their positions to anyone with half-decent eyesight. The Bald Bull saw the glowing net, as beautiful as it was deadly, but there was nothing that he could do about it. He was simply going way too fast to avoid it.

  Charlemagne watched with satisfaction as the Bald Bull met the glowing mesh face first, knowing full well how deadly each of the filaments could be. And there were dozens of them. Any moment now there would be a spurt of blood, bone, and brains as the bull’s head was sliced into ribbons by the razor-sharp filaments. But to the rooster’s dismay, the tsunami of gore never arrived. The Bald Bull pulled his face back and shook his head, annoyed and confused but seemingly unhurt. The crazy red light in his eyes dimmed for a moment as the beast’s intellect reasserted itself. The bull heaved itself up onto its back legs and, in a surprisingly human gesture, put a hoof under its chin as it examined Charlemagne’s work.

  “Fascinating,” he said after a few moments of quiet observation. “Your mana manipulation skills are beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Well, maybe. I confess that I am yet unclear as to whether my herd and I were taken from our home to populate this Dungeon, or if I was created to only believe that is what happened. At any rate, the problem is intractable, and so I do not spend much of my time worrying about it. But you, you are some kind of artist, a mana savant, if you will. If only you hadn’t killed my herd, I would have let you live, no matter how the System punished me later. But alas, my girls are gone, and thus too is any hope of reconciliation.

  Charlemagne, having not yet recovered from the shock of seeing the Bald Bull face tank over a dozen deadly mana threads, was unable to appreciate the sudden change of pace.

  “Bawk,” he responded glibly.

  “I know not what an Ember Core is, but it must be a powerful skill indeed. And yet, as you just saw, my skin cannot be harmed by such an attack. You can peck me, claw me, or even wrap me in threads of the purest mana, but my skin is proof against any attack you can muster.”

  The Bald Bull lowered himself back down onto all fours, the thud of his front hooves almost gentle in comparison with his earlier transitions.

  “Well, I know I said earlier I would not speak until your body lay broken on the turf, but I could not keep silent after seeing your incredible skill. In return for showing me your talent, I will show you my ultimate technique, which I learned from a humble insect. Goodbye, strange rooster. I may or may not remember you.”

  Without warning, the Dungeon’s boss was moving toward Charlemagne at top speed, his head lowered in a classic gore attack. His horns glowed brightly as they pierced through the rooster’s Ironskin-reinforced feathers. A split second later, the Charlemagne was flying backwards through the air with two enormous holes in his chest, both his lungs punctured by the two-pronged assault.