Syl

Chapter 160: Declawed and Decrowned

"What do you mean it's not real!?" Ian shouted as he was fighting off a group of imaginary swords. Now that I had broken through successfully, the entire fight seemed almost comical.

"All the weapons are an illusion! You need to disbelieve it!" I shouted.

To prove my point, I used [Thunder Step] to appear next to the cat and attempted to backhand one of its floating swords. There were some yells from my party members for me to stop, but I knew it wasn't real, and my hand passed straight through the blade despite some of their gasps and astonishment.

The cat growled, and then its shadow erupted with shadowy spikes toward me; I reflexively threw up an [Aegis] and saw the dark spikes crash against it.

"Okay, its shadow can apparently attack!" I warned as I retreated to a safe distance with another [Thunder Step].

"Is that why it cast [Eclipse]?" Jet said with a frown. "Bloody hell. No stupid monster cat will use my own affinity against me."

Jet seemed to accept what I said easily enough, and soon enough, he ignored the illusory blades that passed through him. Eliza joined shortly after, as it seemed her inability to siphon the illusion damage had spoken volumes to her frame of mind. Ian and Pelopi, however, were struggling desperately to overcome it. I wondered if it was due to their failure to resist one of the numerous curses the cat had flung at us, and unfortunately, the cat seemed to know this as it focused its assault on them and tried to ignore us.

While throwing [Lightning Bolts] at it was all fun and good, it had an enormous mana pool and thus effective health. I had the perfect new spell to try out —[Mana Burn]!

When I cast the spell on the cat, it screeched with rage. Its shadow flickered wildly and lost all cat-like resemblance, instead looking like it belonged to one of my chimeric monstrosity forms. Everyone reacted with shock, and that was when its shadow rose from the surface, detached itself from the cat, and flung itself at me with burning hatred.

I threw up an [Aegis] in reaction, and the shadow monster tore through; as soon as I heard the familiar shattering sound, I threw up another, and this time, it finally halted its trajectory. The shadow slithered around and over the [Aegis] before flinging itself towards me again.

"Focus on the cat! We have to kill it before its shadow gets Syl!" Jet ordered.

"I still can't hit the damn thing!" Ian shouted in frustration. "Eliza! I'm going maximum burn!"

"Right!" Eliza confirmed.

Ian erupted with newfound firepower, the tips of his flames even turning blue with the intense ferocity. Under the insane heat, his flesh was in a constant flux of charring before returning to normal, while a massive amount of dark energy was being constantly siphoned. With her free hand raised, a black flame formed, and then, rather than her usual dark bolt, a flamethrower of black conflagration streamed from her palm.

Pelopi kept up her [Fire Arrow] spells while running away from the swords chasing her. She sprinted and dodged with feline grace.

Jet replaced his crossbow again, this time with two identical handheld ones, and began firing a torrent of shadow-infused bolts at the cat.

Meanwhile, I had my shadowy pursuer hounding me with dreadful ferocity. I tried casting spells at it, but it seemed completely ineffectual against the shadow. The closest I got to harming it was with bright light generated from either [Fire Magic] or [Lightning Magic], which seemed to stun the entity temporarily. This thing was like my worst nightmare: immune to debuffs, immune to afflictions, immune to magic, and likely even immune to slime.

I tried casting some [Lightning Bolts] at the cat when I got the chance but received a scolding from Jet.

"Worry about keeping yourself alive, Syl! It's a damage race right now!" Jet shouted.

"We've got this!" Eliza said reassuringly.

I nodded as I used [Thunder Step] to evade the shadow once more. It almost instantly rebounded off the dungeon wall when it missed me and was again like a projectile seeking to end me. I made sure to at least order any expiring debuffs and afflictions refreshed to my cores, especially [Mana Burn], which seemed to be double dipping in the damage department.

'I had presumed destroying mana would deal damage like backlash does; it seems my assumption was correct. So since mana is being destroyed and mana is its health, it's stacking together. No wonder it sicced its shadow on me exclusively.'

With the number of [Aegis] spells this shadow was chewing through, I was honestly beginning to worry even I'd run into some mana issues. It was becoming a balancing act of trying to estimate whether I should avoid it with [Thunder Step] or block it with [Aegis] depending on its incoming velocity. What made matters worse was the [Jinx Aura] was affecting both my skill and magic, as sometimes I would trigger [Thunder Step], and it would just fail, and I'd be left standing on the spot looking like an idiot. [Aegis] failing was awful as the magical shield would form and instantly shatter without blocking even a single blow, wasting a considerable amount of mana in the process, not to mention the backlash, which felt like taking a hammer to the core. Not fun.

After our game of cat and mouse, it seemed to finally reach a level of its remaining life when it recalled its shadow to deal with the others. With only Pelopi and Ian taking damage from its illusions anymore, it needed to take out the others. It seemed Eliza was its next target as the shadow flung itself at her; I immediately threw up two [Aegis] spells to block it.

"It's coming for Eliza!" I shouted.

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"Shit! Ahh! We were winning this race! Stupid ghost cat! Stop cheating!" Pelopi screamed.

From my perspective, its mana was dangerously low, so I made the impromptu decision to try to seal the deal with [Decay] and also triggered [Assassinate], even if the bonus damage would be halved for the cat being fully aware of me. With six debuffs at least, eight if I included the ones I had merged, and four afflictions, I knew it would be a big chunk of damage, and I prayed to Gramps that it would be enough to end this.

There was a conflux of the various forms of mana surging around the cat and then an explosion; it all converted into a singular source of necrotic mana. The cat's eyes went wide, its shadow shuddered, and then, with a pop, it burst into a cloud of rainbow sparkles and glitter. Its tiny crown clattered to the ground and then poofed into rainbow smoke.

"Is... Is it dead?" Ian stammered as he collapsed to his knees, and his flame died out.

Eliza collapsed so hard that she nearly faceplanted. She struggled to her belt to reach for a blue potion before Pelopi rushed to her side to help her drink the concoction.

Our group cheered. However, it was considerably less energetic than our previous kill, which was understandable given how frantic and rushed it got at the end.

"Gods, if I see another bloody illusion spell, I am going to lose my bloody mind." Jet complained rather uncharacteristically.

"Well... Isn't the final boss all three mutations together?" Eliza said, having recovered some energy after her potion.

Jet opened his mouth to answer, then paused. He put away his crossbow, which I noticed was neither of his two handheld ones nor one of his previously used ones. The [Jinx Aura] must have affected him greatly. He muttered a curse, then pulled out a flask and started drinking.

"Sounds like tomorrow's problem," Pelopi declared.

'Damn it, Gramps! Please give me some class levels already!'

Once again, my complaints went straight into the void. Swallowing my disappointment, I noticed other unread notifications during my frantic escape attempts and looked over them.

With all the [Thunder Step] usage I'd been doing throughout the dungeon, I was grateful for a well-earned level-up. I honestly loved the skill, and I felt like I needed to give Lisa a big hug or maybe offer my dress-cleaning services to her again.

[Exploit Weakness] was also long overdue, and I wondered if it was perhaps due to most of my foes not lasting long enough to take extra damage from the [Vulnerability] stacks. Did attacking an enemy with stacks give more experience than applying a stack? Or was I killing things so fast that the [Vulnerability] debuff didn't even apply? I could only shrug and move on.

'I could have used you ages ago... Great!' I grumbled.

Despite its name and my initial presumption, it did not instantly end all magical effects. There was a lot of information in this one spell hastily crammed into my core, and I had trouble deciphering it all. My rushed understanding was it would take my [Mana Manipulation] and [Arcane Magic] levels and slap them together versus the enemy's own [Mana Manipulation] and equivalent magic skill. That was the basic interpretation. There was stuff for the amount of mana utilized and overcoming resistances, as well as if you were trying to [Dispel] one effect or multiple. It was also easier to [Dispel] something on myself than on another unless that person was an ally, and so on and so on.

Everyone took some time to recover, mostly drinking water, catching their breaths, and letting mana recover. The last one was especially important for me. I had gone all the way down to Ebbing Mana, which I had not seen in ages outside of my transportation expenditure.

"So, did we get any loot? Or was it all gone because of stupid ghosts?" I questioned.

"There's a chest." Jet mumbled as he pointed a thumb in the direction.

"Only one? What a cheapskate dungeon. The last boss gave two!" Eliza muttered.

'Sorry guys... At least that proves my fake emblem isn't working anymore. Hopefully, the dungeon will be less brutal from now on...'

"It could have at least given us the cat's crown." Ian joined in the group rant.

"What do you mean?" Pelopi asked curiously. "The crown is on Syl's head."

"What?" I questioned. Was Pelopi still afflicted?

Everyone turned to me, and they gazed at my head.

"Huh. How'd that happen?" Ian said, scratching his head.

"Now she's become a noble." Pelopi teased. "Or maybe royalty?"

Jet coughed, seemingly having choked on his drink a little.

I reached up to touch the top of my head, and sure enough, there was a tiny crown there. I pulled it off and looked at it with a frown.

I stared at the tiny crown in confusion. It seemed to have some form of enchantment, but I had trouble deciphering any of it.

"I have no idea what this does," I said with a mumble.

"Well, it's not magical," Eliza said.

"Yeah, [Appraisal] is showing nothing." Jet agreed, having recovered from his coughing fit.

I stared at them in bewilderment before responding. "It's definitely magical. I can see three different types of enchantments at least, and my [Appraisal] calls it the [Cat Sith Crown]."

"That's... Odd?" Jet said curiously. "Toss it here?"

I threw the crown over to him, and he examined it closer.

"[Appraisal] still shows nothing... Not even a failed [Identify] notification." Jet said, scratching his head in puzzlement.

Eliza and Pelopi also took a closer look, but both concluded it was showing up as non-magical in Pelopi's [Mana Sight] and Eliza's [Mana Conception].

"So Syl's the crazy one for once." Ian joked. "Think it's the cat's revenge for you breaking its illusion?"

"I hope not..." I mumbled.

Pelopi placed the crown on her head and gave a mocking and snooty laugh befitting a pompous noble. "Bow down before Princess Pelopi!" She joked.

The crown suddenly poofed off her head.

"Your crown's been stolen, your highness." Ian roared with laughter.

Pelopi frantically grabbed at her head where the crown once was.

"Well, shit. It's definitely magical if it can disappear." Jet said.

"But where did it go?" I asked curiously.

Pelopi suddenly pointed to me. "Crown thief!"

"Oh. It appeared on Syl's head again..." Ian said. "That's handy?"

"Or worrying... An unknown magical item has attached itself to her." Eliza pointed out.

"This bloody dungeon... I swear." Jet grumbled, taking another drink.

"It doesn't seem harmful," I said, hoping it was true. At least no scary notifications or garbled text was appearing. "Although if I'm forced to wear this thing, I wish it was a hat rather than a crown..."

As soon as I said that, there were some gasps from the others. Jet spat out his drink and started coughing.

"What!?" I said with worry.

"Definitely a magic crown," Eliza stated.

"It's a magic hat now!" Pelopi corrected.

I reached up and pulled it off my head. What was there now was a round-brimmed cap with a large bright red feather attached to it.

"Huh..." I mumbled, staring at the strange... Hat?