Charlemagne’s vision swam as he sailed through the air. Both his lungs sported large holes, courtesy of the Bald Bull’s horns, and his ribcage was a hot mess. Thankfully, his Ember Core was on the job, ensuring that his avian brain received sufficient oxygen while it went to work patching up the massive trauma to the rooster’s chest. Regaining his composure, Charlemagne attempted to right himself in midair so that he could at least land somewhat on his feet, but his wings and legs wouldn’t move. That was worrying. He landed in a bloody heap on the soft but unyielding turf and lay there for a moment, trying to figure out what was wrong.

  Sending his awareness inwards, Charlemagne detected damage in and beneath the long chain of bones that connected his legs to his skull. Insights into the nature of the problem came swiftly as the rooster’s burgeoning intellect took another leap forward despite the concussion he was currently fighting. Charlemagne suddenly realized that it wasn’t the bone that was the issue. He’d fought with plenty of broken bones before, and by this point they barely slowed him down. No, the problem was the damage to the softer tissues that ran through the bones and were almost always protected by them.

  Checking the rest of his body for confirmation of his theory, Charlemagne saw numerous examples of internal injuries that lay beneath undamaged areas. His feathers and skin were abnormally tough thanks to the Ironskin Skill, but the organs that lay beneath them were easier to damage. Specifically, the gore attack had caused damage to places that hadn’t even been near the twin impacts. The rooster noted that even his brain was bleeding a little, likely caused by the delicate tissue having slammed against his thick skull.

  The epiphany led Charlemagne to redirect mana from his Ember Core away from his shattered ribs and breastbone, focusing instead on his nervous system. A tingling sensation spread throughout his legs as they slowly began to regain function, while the rooster’s blurry vision, caused by his concussion, slowly came back into focus. Charlemagne was quite pleased with himself for having figured out a key aspect of how his body worked. Perhaps, in time, he could figure out other mysteries, like where baby chicks came from.

  The approaching stomp of enormous hooves announced that Charlemagne’s recovery time had ended, however. Unfortunately for the rooster, his body was in no state to resume combat. The Bald Bull seemed to understand that this was the end of the line for Charlemagne and took his time closing the distance. When the bull arrived, his face was pulled back into a maddened grin that belied the bovine’s previous display of cultured mannerisms. He raised a hoof high into the air, ready to stomp.

  “Nooooo!!!!” came a soft cry just as the Bald Bull lifted his left hoof. Charlemagne heard the whine of Bridget’s wings as he lay on the ground helpless. The mosquito dove right into one of Charlemagne’s open wounds and engaged her proboscis. Charlemagne was not surprised that his party member had decided to backstab him in his final moments, but he hadn’t expected Bridget to sound so sad about it. Maybe she wasn’t as annoying as…no, scratch that, she was even more annoying than Francois had been. And what was worse, now she would outlive him, so he wouldn’t get to eat her once she stopped being useful.

  But Bridget defied the rooster’s expectations. Instead of taking life from him in his final moments, her straw-like organ enlarged and began pumping vital fluids back into the broken bird. His spine almost instantly regenerated, and the pace of his thoughts quickened as the blood pooling in his brain was reabsorbed. Reenergized, the rooster dodged the enormous hoof and sprang away. The Bald Bull, stunned by the rooster’s sudden resurgence, failed to follow up on his missed attack.

  “Bawk!” Charlemagne cried as he scrambled to put some distance between himself and the boss, ready to enact a plan that had just sprung into his mind.

  “You’re welcome,” came the muffled response from inside his chest. “But I hope you have a plan, because I don’t think you’ll survive another hit like that.”

  “Bawack,” the rooster answered with confidence.

  “That sounds terrible! Are you sure it’s the only way?” Bridget complained.

  The rooster did not answer and instead reached deep into his mana reserves, putting his newfound insights to good use. Mana flowed from his Ember Core, but this time it did not muster near the bird’s throat. Instead, it began to form an orb between Charlemagne’s feet. The process felt entirely unnatural and the mana moved more sluggishly than he would have liked, but the ball began to take shape.

  The Dungeon boss stared in stunned rage at the inexplicably rejuvenated chicken, seemingly struggling to come to grips with his inability to finish off the rooster. The bull’s bulging veins and overdeveloped muscles grew even more pronounced as he activated some sort of Special Ability that increased both his size and his overall beefiness.

  Even the bull’s eighteen-pack was affected, gaining another two muscles and turning into twenty-pack.

  The Bald Bull slammed down into a charging position again, bellowing in rage as he pawed the ground with fury. Sparks flew into the air with each impact of the bull’s right front hoof against the unyielding turf. Then the impossibly buff bovine’s muscles went slack for just a fraction of a second before engaging at full strength, sending the enormous bull at almost top speed right at Charlemagne.

  This time, however, the rooster was ready for the almost instantaneous acceleration. He was already moving when the bull shot forward. At the speed that the Dungeon boss was moving, it wouldn’t be able to turn before reaching the spot where Charlemagne had been standing. And the rooster was counting on that fact.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The Bald Bull’s rush was even more intense than the previous iterations, and the rooster found himself unable to completely dodge the dangerous mana threads created by the enormous creature’s sheer momentum. His left wing was completely severed this time, the shock hitting the rooster all at once as he slammed once again into the ground, bleeding and battered but still alive.

  But the loss of a wing was a small price to pay in comparison to what happened to the boss. As the bull passed over the mana ball that Charlemagne had created, the attack detonated. And what a detonation it was.

  Normally the force from an explosion out in the open would be equally distributed in all directions. In the Dungeon, however, the immutable nature of the ground redirected all of the energy that would have been spent creating a hole in the earth back into the air. Thus, the Bald Bull was flung into the sky with double the amount of force than expected.

  But the sky in this Dungeon ended rather abruptly, as Charlemagne had discovered when he had attempted to fly out of the boss’ reach. So instead of being flung high into the air, the Bald Bull was blown straight into the invisible ceiling, slamming into it headfirst. One of the boss’ gilded horns snapped clean off, proving that the bull was not completely impervious to injury. The rest of the Bald Bull’s body slammed into the barrier with a loud crack before rebounding toward the unforgiving ground with a substantial amount of velocity remaining. This time, the bull’s legs impacted first, causing them to buckle under the sheer weight of the enormous bovine. There were a few additional snaps as several bones failed in rapid succession, crippling the Dungeon boss.

  “Bawwwk!” shouted Charlemagne, seeing that his opponent was vulnerable.

  “Here I go!” Bridget announced, sounding somewhat unsure of herself as she launched herself toward the gigantic bull, which still projected an aura of menace despite his injuries.

  The mosquito dodged the bull’s powerful jaws as she entered his sinuses through one of the nostrils. Charlemagne pulled himself to his feet and worked on tending to his injuries as much as possible while he awaited the outcome of his plan. Any moment now, Bridget would make her move.

  After almost a minute of watching the Bald Bull snuffle, sneeze, and snort, Charlemagne had nearly lost his patience. His part of the job had been the difficult one and he had pulled it off without any issues, why was Bridget having trouble with her role? He was just about to call out to her when he saw a black speck emerge from the boss’ nose and fly toward him.

  “I tried, boss! It’s harder than it looks!” Bridget complained as she buzzed around the rooster’s head.

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne answered, already moving toward the Bald Bull, who had finally stopped making a racket and was trying to stand up despite its broken bones.

  The rooster stopped just out of the bull’s reach and stared into its bloodshot eyes, which were wild with anger and wide with pain. There were no hints of the intelligence that the Bald Bull had previously displayed, so Charlemagne held his tongue. Instead, he began pulling more and more power from his Ember Core, draining the entire vessel dry as he recreated the flaming attack that he had used to take out Raul Sanchez. The air inside the Dungeon grew hot and heavy as powerful flames coiled around the rooster’s beak. Charlemagne took his time forming the attack while keeping a close eye on the Bald Bull’s efforts to scoot closer and attack him.

  “Ouch!” Bridget cried as she accidentally flew too close to Charlemagne’s glowing beak, getting singed in the process. “I’ll be over here, okay boss?”

  As the power of the flames plateaued, Charlemagne took a step forward and leaned his head down. The Bald Bull, seeing that his enemy was now within biting distance, didn’t hesitate. He opened his mouth wide, showcasing the flat, powerful molars that were meant to chomp on grass. But the rooster wasn’t concerned about the shape of his opponent’s teeth. Aiming for the roof of the mouth, he activated his Strike skill and slammed his head forward into the Bald Bull’s mouth, facing almost certain decapitation should his attack fail.

  The rooster’s beak slammed into the bull’s hard palate, shattering it. The attack, however, was partially deflected by the bony plate, sending the majority of the force down the bull’s throat rather than straight into its brain. But that was when the Pyro-enhanced flames that Charlemagne had created came into play. They flared up within the enclosed space, penetrating deep into the bull’s respiratory and digestive tract. The methane gas in the bovine’s stomachs, a byproduct of the bull’s digestive processes, mixed with the oxygen that had been introduced from the outside.

  The resulting explosion was contained by the Bald Bull’s impenetrable skin, mostly.

  Charlemagne was sent flying once again by the force of the blast, his own flames rebounding back at him but causing no damage. The rooster hit the ground for the last time before quickly rising to his feet to survey the damage that his attack had done. As he raced back to the smoking corpse that had once been the Bald Bull, he was treated to one of the most delicious aromas that he had ever experienced: cooked beef.

  Back in Grimfalk’s personal dimension, the theropod deity was moping because he hadn’t paid the upgrade cost to get feeds from inside Dungeons, an oversight that had forced he and Longclaw to forego betting on the outcome of the delve. Not that he would have bet on the stupid rooster anyways, because for some reason Charlemagne had chosen Hell difficulty despite only having one other party member, and a rather unimpressive one at that.

  “I still say that he should have picked up that human as a party member,” he groused at Longclaw. “The one that didn’t want to fight him.”

  “I don’t think that would have been wise, and I think you know that. You’re just nervous,” Longclaw answered, her insight once again right on the money. Grimfalk, annoyed at his companion being right but not wanting to admit that he was annoyed because she was right, said nothing as he turned back to watch Sungay try to fight an alley cat. The stupid thing kept teleporting away right as the Champion got close enough to attack, but the rooster was too dumb to realize that he had no chance of catching his quarry.

  “For goodness’ sake, do something else!” Grimfalk growled after a frustrating minute. He changed the channel and heaved his bulk up off the sofa. “I’m gonna go grab a snack, want anything?”

  “I think it’s almost time for your daily hunt, why don’t you wait until after?” Longclaw suggested.

  “Bah,” the grouchy deity retorted, stomping off towards his hunting grounds. All of a sudden, he froze for a few long seconds. Then he whipped around, his expression a mixture of joy and confusion.

  “You’ll…you’ll never guess what just happened?” he shouted.

  “What? What happened?” the other theropod asked, worried but also curious at what could have caused the sudden shift in her boss’ mood.

  “I just got a message from the System...and it’s an Achievement.”

  The shock was so great that Longclaw’s device slipped from her hand as she sprang to her feet.

  “But that’s…that’s impossible!”