Chapter 42: 042. Phantom Boss...? More Like Phantom Wussy

"Huh? Phantom Boss?" Ren said and blinked.

He wasn’t aware of them... these Phantom Bosses hadn’t popped up within the first half of the novel, so he genuinely didn’t know about them.

He searched through the original Ren’s memories as well, just in case he had missed a lore drop, but came up empty.

Floor 60 was supposed to be a milestone, sure, but a Phantom type? That was an entirely different league of annoyance.

However, instead of dread, a spark of genuine excitement lit up in his golden eyes as he already had his sword drawn and resting casually at his side.

Beside him, the romantic atmosphere had shattered like cheap glass as Astrid groaned in profound frustration, and shoved the velvet ring box back into the deep pocket of her robes.

She took hold of her magical staff, her knuckles turning white around the polished wood.

Astrid had waited... she had waited for a man to meet her standards even though she had reduced them a lot, and now... the universe had the audacity to interrupt her proposal.

But before Astrid could even begin channeling her twilight mana to vaporize the interruption, a deafening shockwave rattled the obsidian arena.

"HAAAAH!"

Marcus had sprung forward, leading the vanguard.

The massive Guild Master crossed the distance with terrifying explosive speed, his heavy boots cracking the black stone beneath him.

He swung his halberd with enough physical force to level a small building, colliding head-on with the Phantom Boss’s jagged Greatsword.

The impact generated a massive, circular wave of wind that blasted outward in all directions.

The force of the clash sent the Guild’s rear line staggering with their cloaks whipping wildly in the gale.

Despite its towering size and unnatural composition, the Boss was physically forced backward into the center of the arena, its armored boots skidding violently through the dark, polished ground.

"Don’t give it space to breathe!" Marcus roared with his muscles bulging as he prepared for a second strike.

Immediately, one of the elite Mages positioned on the flank reacted to the opening. He pointed his intricately carved staff directly at the skidding Boss, channeling a massive surge of elemental mana into the crystal at its tip.

"Fire Blast!" the Mage shouted.

The orb atop his staff glowed with blinding intensity before unleashing a massive, roaring sphere of superheated flames.

The heat made the cavern instantly sweltering with the heat washing over the raiding party like the open door of a furnace.

The projectile streaked through the cavern, illuminating the dark obsidian walls as it barreled forward to incinerate the Boss; however the Phantom Knight didn’t attempt to dodge.

It simply looked at the incoming inferno and raised its free empty hand.

Smack!

It caught the raging fireball barehanded. The flames roared, trying to consume the shadowy armor, but the Knight merely tightened its grip.

With a sickening crunch, it crushed the spell into bits, letting the dispersed embers flutter harmlessly into the cold air.

The monster then slowly turned its hollow glowing purple eyes toward Marcus.

In a deliberate chillingly human gesture, it extended its gauntlet and gave a slow "come here" motion with its fingers.

The Mage who had cast the spell gritted his teeth in absolute disbelief with his staff trembling in his hands.

By now, the entirety of the Twilight Guild party had left the grand staircase and were officially standing on Floor 60.

The heavy obsidian doors behind them slammed shut, sealing them inside the boss room.

Marcus gripped his Halberd tighter with his battle-hardened instincts flaring. "Don’t let it intimidate you! Mages, chain your attacks over at—"

Before Marcus could finish his command, the ambient darkness in the field suddenly expanded outward.

It writhed and boiled like a living fluid, rising from the floor to create more soldiers made entirely of condensed Darkness.

Phantom Soldiers.

They materialized with tattered armor and glowing purple eyes matching their master, unsheathing jagged shadowy blades of their own.

Without a sound, the five Phantom Soldiers ran directly at the raiding party with terrifying speed.

"Vanguard, intercept!" Marcus commanded.

The part of the Twilight Guild Party that utilized swords immediately came forward, their enchanted blades humming with aura as they clashed with the Phantom Soldiers.

The first Twilight swordsman, a hulking man wielding a massive zweihander roared as he brought his blade down in a devastating overhead cleave, completely overwhelming his Phantom Soldier in the very first slash and burying it into the floor.

To his right, a nimble dual-wielder ducked under a shadowy horizontal sweep, cross-slashing her twin blades through the midsection of a second Phantom, rendering it temporarily immobile.

The third swordsman utilized a rapid thrusting technique, piercing the third Phantom Soldier perfectly through its dark visor, entirely overwhelming it before it could even swing its blade.

The fourth guild member, a seasoned veteran with a shield and longsword, locked blades with the fourth Phantom with sparks flying as they matched each other perfectly in strength and technique locked in a desperate stalemate.

But the fifth exchange ended in disaster.

The youngest swordsman of the vanguard misjudged the speed of the final Phantom Soldier.

He swung too wide, leaving his center exposed.

The shadow entity stepped inside his guard and seamlessly drove its jagged dark blade straight through the young adventurer’s stomach.

"Gah—!" The boy coughed up blood, his sword dropping to the obsidian floor with a clatter.

"Rael!" Marcus screamed, seeing his guildmate fall. He immediately began shouting for the backline. "Mages, cooperate and suppress the—!"

Marcus’s voice cut off as he had to violently lift his Halberd up, twisting his torso just in time to block a devastating downward strike from the Phantom Boss who had closed the distance in the blink of an eye.

BAM!

The impact sent a shockwave through Marcus’s arms, forcing the massive Guild Master down to one knee.

In the back of the line, completely unbothered by the chaos unfolding around him, Ren casually leaned toward Astrid.

More Phantom Soldiers were beginning to spawn from the dark puddles on the ground.

"What exactly is a Phantom?" Ren asked.

Astrid kept her staff raised, her eyes scanning the battlefield as she replied.

"It’s kind of like a ghost, but not exactly. They have physical mass when they attack, but the issue is that Phantoms are unable to be slaughtered by regular means."

Just as she finished her sentence, the hulking swordsman who had cleaved his target in half let out a triumphant shout.

He ripped his zweihander free from the floor.

However, the Phantom Soldier he had "killed" merely lost its physical form, floating in the air as a cloud of smoky shadow.

A second later, the smoke coalesced, snapping back into its full rmored body. It lunged forward silently, stabbing its blade forward and forcing the massive Adventurer to frantically parry the strike he thought he had just ended.

And more of them were coming, rising from the floor like an endless nightmare.

The main field had become an absolute blur of motion as Marcus and the Gladiator Boss exchanged heavy blows.

BOOM! CLANG! BOOM!

Shockwaves continuously ripped through the arena, cracking the obsidian floor with every parry and strike.

From his relaxed vantage point in the back, Ren could see that Marcus and the Boss were currently equally matched in terms of raw physical strength.

But Ren’s mind processed the variables instantly.

’Marcus is human and he has stamina limits. The Boss is made of shadows and has infinite regeneration. It won’t be an equal match for long.’

"How do you defeat them, then?" Ren asked with his tone still remarkably conversational. Astrid loved that... He was pretty calm under pressure.

Astrid didn’t answer him directly.

Instead, she turned over to the Healer standing in the very back of the formation, a woman holding a glowing silver grimoire.

"Seile, is it ready?!" Astrid demanded.

The Healer’s palms were glowing with blindingly intense holy mana. Sweat beaded on her forehead from the sheer concentration required for the incantation and she nodded fiercely.

"All ready!" Seile yelled out, slamming her palms together. "Goddess Sight!"

Immediately, a massive pulse of pure golden light erupted from the Healer, engulfing the whole boss room in a radiant holy aura.

The oppressive shadows screamed as the divine light washed over them. Under the effects of the high-tier holy spell, the Phantoms instantly lost their ethereal smoky nature.

They were forcibly solidified with their shadowy armor turning dull and rigid.

Astrid’s eyes flared with triumph. She raised her arm, her staff glowing with destructive twilight magic.

"Attac—!"

"No worries," Ren said, entirely cutting her off.

He didn’t need the guild to handle this. It was taking too long, and he wanted to battle against that Gladiator...

Ren channeled his mana downward into his boots, bypassing the standard physical limits of his body with Thunderclap Step.

BOOM!

The sound of a literal sonic boom shattered the air in the enclosed arena.

The explosive force of his launch cracked the obsidian floor beneath him into a spiderweb of fissures, kicking up a blast of displaced air that nearly knocked Astrid off her feet.

Ren blitzed forward. He was no longer a person; he was a violent, jagged streak of blue electricity tearing through the 60th floor.

It was as though he teleported across the battlefield.

Ren appeared directly in front of the five Phantom Soldiers that were currently overwhelming the vanguard.

The golden light of Goddess Sight had solidified them, making them perfectly susceptible to physical damage but Ren didn’t even bother swinging his sword at them.

He raised his free left hand channeling his mana into his hand.

’Lightning Blade.’

But he didn’t form it into a static sword... He manipulated the spell’s parameters, allowing the crackling energy to wildly expand and then Ren sent blinding arcs of concentrated lightning shooting outward from his fingertips like a devastating net of pure electricity.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The arcs chained instantly between the five solidified Phantom Soldiers and all others nearby.

The high-voltage electricity bypassed their armor entirely, superheating their shadowy cores in a fraction of a second.

The soldiers convulsed violently, their forms turning blindingly white before they detonated into harmless clouds of ash, utterly obliterated by the sheer elemental superiority of Ren’s attack.

The vanguard swordsmen stumbled back, shielding their eyes from the flash, completely stunned that their desperate struggle had been resolved in less than a second but Ren wasn’t done.

He pivoted on his heel, his eyes locking onto the center of the arena and the Shadow Soldiers in the way then he burst forward again.

Marcus was breathing heavily with sweat pouring down his face as he desperately dodged a horizontal sweep from the Gladiator Boss.

"Haah..."

The Guild Master capitalized on the opening, twisting his halberd and executing a flawless, upward diagonal slash that cleanly severed the Gladiator’s left hand at the wrist.

SLASH!

The shadowy appendage hit the floor with a heavy thud as the dark greatsword clattered away.

"Now!" Marcus roared, powering forward with all his remaining strength driving the spiked tip of his halberd in a lethal thrust aimed directly at the Boss’s exposed chest.

However, the blade stopped just short of piercing the Gladiator’s armor.

Marcus grunted, trying to force the weapon forward, but he couldn’t move an inch. He looked down in horror.

Thick, pitch-black shadows were writhing and coiling tightly around his right leg, anchoring him completely to the obsidian floor.

The Gladiator Boss, who had purposefully assumed a rigid formal dueling stance after its initial charge... giving Marcus the illusion of an honorable, one-on-one knightly combat had secretly utilized the darkness of its own severed hand to trap the Guild Master.

"I thought you were honorabl—!" Marcus yelled as his face went pale with betrayal.

The Gladiator Boss’s glowing purple eyes narrowed in cruel mockery. It raised its remaining arm, forming a deadly, condensed spike of solid shadow, and brought it down in a merciless strike aimed to impale Marcus through the skull.

SLASH!

CLANG!

The deafening sound of metal colliding with force echoed through the arena as the shadow spike didn’t reach Marcus.

It was completely obstructed by Ren’s steel blade, glowing with a light blue aura.

Ren stood effortlessly between the massive Boss and the Guild Master, holding back the lethal strike with only one hand.

"Sorry..." Ren said casually to the stunned Guild Master.

Without waiting for a response, Ren casually kicked Marcus in the chest, pushing him entirely out of the arena’s center and sending him sliding safely back toward the healer.

Ren slowly turned his gaze back to the towering shadow entity in front of him. He rested his sword over his shoulder with a genuine terrifying smile spreading across his face.

"I hope you give me a good fight," Ren said. "since you look like you’re pretty good with a sword."

The Boss didn’t respond verbally. Instead, the shadows writhing around its severed wrist extended outward like liquid tendrils, slithering across the floor to retrieve its cut hand.

The darkness snapped the hand back onto the stump, reattaching it instantly and seamlessly.

The Gladiator Boss gripped its greatsword with both hands, its purple eyes flaring with intense murderous rage at this arrogant human who dared to challenge it alone.

It swung its massive blade in a devastating, horizontal arc meant to cleave Ren in two.

’Thunderclap Step.’

BOOM!

The Boss’s blade cut through empty air. Before it could even process the miss, a blinding flash of blue lightning erupted directly above it.

Ren was suspended in mid-air, his sword coated in the impossibly sharp condensed blue mana of Blade Resonance.

’I would have used my Invisible slashes but it wouldn’t be fair at all.’

SLASH!

Ren descended like a falling star, his blade carving a perfect glowing blue arc through the cavern.

The strike effortlessly sheared completely through the Gladiator Boss’s right shoulder, cleanly amputating its arm.

The shadowy limb plummeted to the ground with the greatsword embedding itself into the obsidian floor.

The Boss staggered backward in a soundless scream of agony escaping its visor.

It tried to retaliate, thrusting its remaining hand forward to conjure a barrage of shadow spikes but Ren landed lightly on the tips of his boots and immediately dashed forward, moving faster than the Boss’s magical targeting could track.

He ducked under the volley of shadows, spun on his heel, and swung his blade in a low brutal sweep.

SLASH!

The Boss’s right leg was severed at the knee.

The towering entity collapsed,crashing down onto the unforgiving stone. It desperately tried to use its darkness to pull its severed limbs back, just as it had done before, but Ren wasn’t going to give it the chance.

Ren stepped forward, his boots clicking against the stone.

He didn’t use lightning... He didn’t use Starfire... Ren just used his raw, terrifying physical stats, amplified by his mastery of the sword.

He drove his boot squarely into the center of the Boss’s chest plate.

BAM!

The sheer kinetic impact was catastrophic.

The Boss was kicked violently to the far end of the arena. It flew through the air like a broken ragdoll, slamming into the cavern’s boundary wall with enough force to generate a massive shockwave.

A massive crater exploded outward in the obsidian wall, burying the struggling monster in the rubble.

Ren stood in the center of the arena, his sword hanging lazily at his side. He didn’t look triumphant neither did he look excited.

In fact he looked profoundly disappointed.

He stared at the struggling, pathetic monster attempting to drag itself out of the crater, and his inner monologue spiraled into pure disbelief.

’It can’t be...’ Ren thought, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion.

He watched the entity twitch and writhe, utterly broken by a basic display of swordsmanship and speed.

’It’s worse than Jace. What the fuck?’ Ren thought with an annoyed sigh escaping his lips.

He had expected a challenge... This was Floor 60.

This was a milestone World Dungeon Boss that elite guilds spent months preparing for so this was supposed to be a creature of nightmare and legend.

’Why be a monster with a giant sword if some eighteen-year-old training freak could beat you in an instant?’ Ren pondered. ’As a Floor 60 monster, too? This is pathetic.’

He stared harder at the struggling entity as a new theory forming in his mind.

’Or is it perhaps holding back?’ Ren thought. ’Maybe there’s a second phase? An enrage mechanic?’

Determined to find out, Ren’s eyes began to glow with intense blue light.

He tightened his grip on his hilt, channeling his mana, fully tensing his muscles and readying himself for a desperate life-or-death final stand from the monster.

From within the crater, the Gladiator Boss flinched.

The monster, despite its lack of a human mind, possessed primal instincts and right now, its instincts were screaming in unfiltered terror.

The aura radiating from the eighteen-year-old human standing in the center of the arena was not just oppressive; it was fundamentally unnatural.

Slowly, the Boss’s severed body parts writhed across the floor, slithering through the dust and rubble to return to its main body.

The arm reattached... The leg reattached... The entity pushed itself up from the crater, raising its heavy, dark Longsword high into the air...

Ren lowered his stance, anticipating the ultimate attack.

"Come on then, show me what you’ve got."

The Monster stood tall, its glowing purple eyes locking onto Ren and then, in a swift, decisive motion...

The Monster reversed its grip on its Longsword. It drove the massive, jagged blade directly through its own chest, piercing its shadowy core perfectly.

SHCK.

The Boss fell over slowly, hitting the obsidian floor with a heavy final thud.

It didn’t writhe... It didn’t scream... Its form began to immediately lose cohesion, slowly dispersing into nothingness like mist burning away in the morning sun.

It had chosen to commit suicide.

Rather than face the absolute, humiliating torture of fighting the monster that was Ren Crowhurst for another second, the entity had bypassed its own coding and ended its own existence.

The ambient darkness in the cavern instantly receded as the oppressive atmosphere lifted, replaced by the quiet silence of the dungeon.

Ren stood perfectly still, his sword still raised in a defensive guard. He stared at the spot where the Boss had just been.

Ren lowered his sword slowly.

Marcus, Astrid, Seile, and the rest of the elite Twilight Guild were frozen in place, their jaws metaphorically hitting the floor... They had expected many things but they...

They hadn’t expected a passing commoner to beat the boss so badly that it decided to kill itself out of sheer depression.

Ren stood in the empty arena.

The Boss... was dead?