Gemblade VR chapter 7: Blade Archer

After we cleared the floor of the Chain hybrids Liam sat down to mess with his gear, seeing as we were going to be fighting the boss of this area, and we would need any advantage that we could get. Kira used what was left on her Timer from Richards' skill to give Liam access to a better range of customization, but in the end, we ended up relying on the materials we had gathered to synthesize his armor with the gems we had gained this trip, they were called the arrowblade gems, which sounded pretty cool, but I was more worried about the fact that a hybrid gem might not be the best of ideas for him, seeing as he tended to favor the usage of his bow over a sword, despite the numerous times it had come in handy for him.

After he finished installing his gems, we waited for as long as we could figure was acceptable on our time limit, so we ended up waiting for about a minute. Everyone would have rather had a lot more time to wait, but we were quickly running out of time, and we would still have to leave after we managed to take out the boss, and even if we ran as often as we could, that would still take a fair bit of time, and with an hour left before we were supposed to log out, it would probably be better if we didn't take very long against whatever it was that hid beneath us.

After several minutes of continuing on, we ended up in what looked almost like an abandoned mineshaft, which was definitely not a sign that happy little elves were what were what was waiting behind the doorway at the end of the bottom mineshaft. Yeah, this screamed trap even better than what I usually seen, but hey, it's not like one thing was going to be a major problem compared to what the last couple of floors held for us right? Yeah, no way were we going to be that lucky. So far any time I had the feeling it couldn't get much worse, it did, and we usually had to rely on some new power to save us, which was starting to get a little annoying, like this game was telling us we weren't near as powerful as we should be, like I needed that right now.

The boss room was a chasm open to moonlight, but it still had Torches around the outer rim, again, this just screamed trap, but there was nothing in the room. We kept advancing, everyone keeping watch on different areas of the room.

"Welcome friends." An old man was right by the doorway, sealing our exit.

"Not friendly" wolf spoke up "it's probably a good idea to get as far away as we can before this guy decides he doesn't want to waste time anymore"

"Understood"

"so then" the old guy continued, you have trespassed into my realm, and destroyed my creations, I believe that kind of rude behavior merits some sort of punishment, don't you?"

"Just so we're clear sir, your hybrids attacked us firsthand" Kira spoke up, but I got the feeling this old guy didn't like reason very well.

"However that may be, I believe it is time for me to end the frequent interruptions into my home" the old man changed as he said this, his illusions fading to reveal a guy about twenty five years old, even though it was an NPC.

And the NPC didn't stop changing there, First his face changed into a more canine form, and his back folded over, making him look like he was stuck in a battle stance. As if by time lapse, hair quickly covered his own body as his nails changed, becoming longer, harder, until they were claws. He hobbled over to a corner, and stepped into the wall, returning out with a full set of armor that covered his body, as well as served as an enhancement to his natural claws. His boots stabilized his footing, and he had a giant chain wrapped around his shirt, which had a symbol like my wolf design, but it had two curved slashes on either side of it, and no areas representing eyes. The moonlight boss had arrived. I checked its name –hybrid werewolf- it didn't sound very bad, but the way it was carrying itself was odd, like it was surveying the exact scenario, figuring out exactly how it wanted us dead

"Say hello to the form a beast-human hybrid usually takes kid, you've been lucky so far"

"Looks that way, that thing needs a shower"

It ran for a torch, launching it at us, at the same time charging right where the torch would hit, trying to combo that hit. We all dove to the side, and I ended up getting a foot in the leg, which definitely didn't feel nice. By the looks of things, everyone else had gotten about the same type of treatment. The wolf took advantage of the situation by using Kira as a springboard to get right back to where it started off. Liam shot it several times with arrows, but he didn't have enough left to keep it up very long. Kira tried to use the extra abilities her armor gained, but the wolf kept moving, like it was figuring out exactly how to counter even advanced armor types. For the first boss, this thing was way over the league of anything else I've seen.

I let wolf to the front of the battlefield, hoping his advanced instincts would give us a way to win, instead wolf was completely paralyzed by the killer instinct this thing executed, like it was completely overcome by the dark half of a wolf, which was never a good idea, and in the case of this thing, it was downright scary. Wolf retreated, forcing me back into the battle. I tried to use the Advanced Control system to launch it up, that part worked, the problem was that he came down on top of my head, which really didn't work out in my favor. I got launched pretty bad, knocking out another torch. I threw one of the leftover torches in the path of one of Liam's arrows, and ended up lighting the one arrow that he missed the werewolf with.

"I'm not exactly fond of this part of your family wolf"

"Nor am I, but the difference is I'm not dumb enough to directly fight one"

I hated to admit it, but he might have a point there, as I looked around our entire force was badly beaten up, and all of us were down to less than half health, and that Wolf thing was in a lot better shape, even though most of its armor was dented to hell, his actual body was untouched. The bloody thing still had its Claw guards too, which was pissing me off, seeing as I couldn't use my unarmed skill yet, and the second hit I would be able to get off would be very useful right around now.

I looked at Liam; he was sitting down, his bow replaced by a sword with a giant hole in the pommel, probably the location of his gem. The rest of his armor had at least one hole in each area too, so I was betting he was seeing the 1 minute timer right around now, hopefully he could use a hybrid system, otherwise we were probably not going to figure out how the hell we could stop something that could keep up with the speed of our fastest gear. The gems materialized right as the werewolf punched me in the face, pretty much disabling my view for a few seconds. When I got up, Liam had changed to his hybrid form. His armor was completely steel and Leather, save the joints, which were cloth and Leather to maintain movement. His sword was so thin it might as well be non-existent, and he had a bunch of spare arrows in his quiver. I looked at him questioningly

"new skill came with the bow, whenever my HP is above 25%, I get a spare arrow for every arrow I've spent in the current battle, and the heavy armor means I'm less likely to get below that value, I'm probably going to need Coach to help me train to increase weight resistance though."

He shot one arrow, piercing the claw of the wolf, and then proceeded to knock out every last claw, meaning the werewolf's damage was at least halved, giving me the chance to unleash my fist on it. I released my blade like I usually did, and charged forward, allowing the beast to try and slash me, using a reverse slash to knock both its hands off target, and slammed my fist into its head, causing the poor thing to slam into the chasm wall, where Liam drilled it with holes until Kira walked up and cut its head off, ending the boss of the Hybrid caves. Its body melted into the rocks though, so I bet we would eventually see it again.

All of us got a significant amount of Gem shards, as well as several keys each that enabled us to go to the next area of the boar wasteland, and a couple steel shards and other crafting materials we didn't really need at the moment. I opened my menu to sort my items, and found out my swordsmanship was level 10, allowing me a second upgrade there, as well as unarmed finally reaching level 5. For swordsmanship, I got an upgrade that increases my speed slightly after a successful hit, allowing combos to be easier chained together. For unarmed, I got a rather simple + 0.5% damage each hit. The rest were fairly decent, but I wasn't exactly the best player where anything stood.

We all had to go offline almost right after we got back above ground though, so we didn't get the chance to figure out what to do with the leftover items we had after giving Richard his share for helping us to get access to the gems, which definitely helped us finish the dungeon in time. Tomorrow would be school though, so we would have to pretend that we were all completely normal for a full week, and avoid letting our other personalities out too often.

- end of chapter 7-