Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 71: [The Heir of Thornspine 5] The Bloom of Despair

The doors sealed shut with a whispering crack.

The chamber beyond was no throne room or dueling hall. It had once been a library—but no more.

Shelves stood warped and twisted, slanted into unnatural angles, their wood swollen with rot. Some had splintered entirely, half-eaten by glowing blue fungi and coiled root clusters. Tattered scrolls and ruined books hung from the ceiling like vines, strung between chandeliers that sagged with the weight of wax and decay.

A faint purple mist hovered low over the ground, denser near the corners where four great cursed blooms glowed, each one pulsing slowly in rhythm with the Deathsong.

And there, seated with her back to the room on a throne of roots, was the Briar Warden.

She turned as the last of the vines sealed the doors behind the team.

Not with her hands. With the vines beneath her feet.

Her body floated upward, suspended by threads of flowering tendrils. Noble robes, half silk and half bark, clung to a body no longer fully hers. Her face was partly masked by thorn petals, her voice fracturing into three parts as she spoke:

"You would erase what I became. But I... I bloomed here. In his absence. In your silence."

"You might call this a curse. I call it inheritance."

"You’ve stepped on noble soil. Shall I grow a gravestone here?""

[Midboss Detected]

Widowvine Arcanist – "The Briar Warden"

Element: Cursed Nature / Arcane

[Abilities]

Hexsap Volley: Fires spore-charged thorns at multiple targets. Dodging or blocking applies Sticky Hex (10s slow). freewёbnoνel.com

Entropic Bloomfield: Summons cursed flower zones. Standing inside boosts damage dealt but applies Wither every 5s.

Vine Puppet: Roots a random player and forces them to mirror Widowvine’s next spell, targeting allies instead.

[Special Traits]

Levitation Movement: Floats across battlefield, repositioning above cover.

Ritual Anchor: At 40% HP, triggers Bloom Pulse from all corners.

The fight just begun.

The air thickened.

Hexsap Volley burst first—not as a spray, but as a calculated curse.

Widowvine raised her arm, and a thick, coiled vine detached from her wrist, twisting midair. It bloomed outward with a wet snap, launching a cluster of glowing thorns that spun like slow, sticky cannonballs across the chamber.

The first volley was meant to stagger.

Raven rolled sideways, but one of the thorns clipped his boot, embedding with a dull thunk. It pulsed faintly, leaking green light into his armor. Sticky Hex.

His joints tightened. Movement slowed.

Duskrunner darted to flank—too late. A thorn struck his shoulder, vines curling instantly to anchor him mid-stride.

Widowvine’s hand twisted again.

A second vine curled forward, shaping into a longsword of bark and bloom. She struck downward—aiming directly for Duskrunner.

The wolf yelped and barely twisted aside, the strike slicing through a pile of rotting scrolls beside him, sending mold and dust into the air.

Root-Soul retaliated, lashing out with a burst of vines toward the Warden’s chest. They cracked harmlessly across her outer petals, buying Raven a moment to reposition.

"Don’t clump," Raven barked. "She wants overlapping fields."

The Briar Warden lifted both arms, and two corners of the room ignited with toxic bloom.

Entropic Bloomfield.

A field of cursed flowers spread at Raven’s feet, blooming with unnatural beauty. The petals shimmered, exuding the faint aroma of forgotten rituals. Raven felt the arcane pull—his strikes quickened, sharper inside the circle. But the price came fast. Each second within leeched a layer of resistance, Wither coiling into his limbs like fungal frost.

Widowvine hovered to his left, one arm outstretched, thorns forming another volley. She moved fast—unnaturally graceful, weaving through the hanging scrolls like wind through curtains.

Her voice echoed again, low and venom-sweet:

"My roots remember... and the seeds deserve protection. Even from you."

She launched another Hexsap Volley, forcing Raven to dive aside into a bookcase. Rotten tomes burst open, spewing clouds of ink-smoke that curled into choking shapes.

"This isn’t sustainable," Seer whispered, flickering through one of the fallen bookshelves, its edge warped from nearby bloom surge.

The chandelier overhead groaned, vines wrapping tighter, as if straining to fall.

With a gesture, Widowvine’s vines surged toward Root-Soul, binding her ankles.

Vine Puppet.

Root-Soul froze as dark glyphs etched into her bark-like limbs, spreading like fungal veins. Her arms lifted against her will, fingers twitching. The green light in her core flared.

With a jolt of horror, she cast a volley of thorns—not at Widowvine, but at Phantom Seer.

The blast wasn’t just a normal spell. It pulsed with corrupted mimicry. The projectiles shimmered with the same cursed hue that bloomed across the Warden’s body.

Seer blurred sideways just in time, the thorns shredding through the remnants of a rotted banner. An illusion burst where she had stood—detonating in a crack of shadow.

"She’s forcing our own spells!" Root-Soul growled, her layered voices grinding in panic.

"Damn puppet master..."

Widowvine rose higher, her face half-shrouded in petals, voice low and cold.

"Every root, every bloom—they remember the shape of violence."

She floated toward the edge of a leaning bookcase, thorns shaping midair. More arcane volleys followed, her motions elegant and brutal.

Duskrunner snarled and dove between cursed bloom zones, clawing down a Rootling that erupted from a flower bulb.

Raven launched upward, chain catching a support brace—but Widowvine vanished again in a whip of vines.

The central ritual circle began to glow.

The Deathsong shifted again.

Now it whispered names.

Widowvine’s voice trembled with layered emotion: "He said we were guardians. Experiments, yes—but I was loved once. Raised under her watch."

"Now she would unmake me? I remember her lullabies better than his commands."

Final Phase. 40% HP. Ritual Awakens.

The four cursed blooms surged. Entropic Bloomfields erupted in all corners, forcing the team into constant movement.

"She’s trying to bleed us dry," Raven muttered, panting. Wither stacked on his HUD like rot.

"Then we hold her first," Seneschal said, and slammed his staff into the ground.

Vines erupted—Root Trial Lattice staggered the Warden for a heartbeat.

Duskrunner dashed through, snarling, harrying her into one side. Phantom Seer cast Fracture Bloom behind her—a layered illusion made to bait her.

Widowvine staggered, her voice cracking under the weight of everything unraveling inside her. "I don’t want to go back... to being a seed."

The Warden turned—and Raven acted.

His Dominion Chain snapped up, latching to the high brace she floated near.

He yanked himself forward, spun in the air, and dropped.

Daggers down.

The Briar Warden turned—too late.

He struck clean through the flowering petals of her mask.

The Deathsong cried out, a long, breaking note.

The Briar Warden’s body slumped to the ground, tangled in her own withering vines. But she did not crumble to ash like the others. Her frame, though broken, remained—petals twitching faintly, the glow in her veins flickering like the last embers of a spell refusing to fade.

From the far side of the chamber, a wall of roots parted.

Eldryn stepped through.

She didn’t flinch at the sight of the fallen midboss. She walked directly to Widowvine’s side, eyes glassy, lips tight, her every movement carried by grief and resolve.

She knelt beside the Briar Warden without hesitation. Vines rose at her approach—but did not strike.

Slowly, Eldryn reached forward and embraced the creature.

Whispers in the choir twisted—confused, almost mournful.

"I remember you," Eldryn whispered. "When you were just a seed, stretching toward the sunlamp in my window."

Her voice quivered. "I watered you by moonlight. Named you after my favorite bloom. My father only gave orders... but I gave you songs."

Widowvine’s twitching slowed.

"You grew," she said. "You became something beyond what was asked. I don’t want to destroy that. I never did."

She leaned her forehead against the broken creature’s bark-wrapped head.

"But you’re in pain. You’ve been in pain a long time."

Then she looked at Raven.

"Please. End it completely. Sever what remains. Not just her. The song. The curse. The voices that refuse to rest."

Raven stepped through the curling veil of vines at the center of the ritual circle.

The second resonance node waited just beyond.

A massive, withered bloom stood frozen mid-petal-spread, its form half-stone, half-root. Black pollen dripped slowly from its core like bleeding sap, pooling around the cracked runes that pulsed with fading magic.

[Resonance Node Detected: Warden’s Bloom]

He narrowed his eyes.

"Big one," he muttered.

The Dominion Chain uncoiled with a clink.

He whipped it once—cracking it forward. The chain struck the bloom’s stem, tearing open its barklike flesh. A spurt of black pollen hissed against the marble.

Raven followed through—Phantom Bind triggered. He launched forward, daggers out, and drove them straight into the pulsing heart of the corrupted flower.

The resonance core shattered.

A wave of energy pulsed outward, blowing back the fog in the chamber. The Deathsong snapped mid-phrase—the low hum dissolved like breath leaving a corpse.

Only the whispers remained.

A new message flickered across Raven’s HUD:

[Optional: Silence Resonance Nodes (2/3)]

He exhaled and rolled his shoulders, blades dripping with cursed nectar.

"One more."

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