The geist screamed endlessly, its wretched tentacles striking into the wall. It gnashed its teeth in rhythm with the whistling. It was sluggish.

  Tar Beast

  Species: Geist

  SE: 39

  Affinity: Onyx

  Description: The tar beast utilizes its regenerating tendrils to pierce the prey and eat them alive. They enjoy making their prey run for as long as possible to share in the cacophony of screams.

  So this monster likes people to scream? What an abomination. I conjured a compressed ball of plasma, infusing it with freezing and necrotizing properties.

  “Die.” The ice bomb exploded, covering the tunnel in black ice. Through it, I could see the tar beast dissolving. “That was easier than I exp-”

  Tendrils pierced my legs and arms, and I screamed. The existence of the second tar beast became apparent. I struggled against the pulling force. The tendrils still pierced my arms, still pulled me.

  Right in front of me, a parched stood, I didn’t even notice it. Its twisted hand caressed my chest, the long claws piercing through VITA and drawing blood. It cried black tears of tar.

  I roared, the numb sensation of being pierced spread to my back, more tendrils. Time was running out. I tensed all my muscles, and fueled as my starpower as I could into my necrotizing flamethrower.

  The purple fire exploded from my palm, covering me and the tendrils. I could feel my skin rotting alive, becoming slush. I struggled still; it was easy without the pain. I dashed forward using the force form with my feet.

  With a push, I ripped out the weakened tendrils. My muscles spasmed; they shook constantly. I channeled more energy into the necrotic flame, spraying it everywhere.

  I went blind as the fire engulfed my eyes. I could barely move. Then the pain hit me. It wasn’t as bad as when I fought with Ivaldie, but it went far beyond bearable.

  Without stopping, I fired. Every other thought went into eating a healing pill. I nearly dropped it, but thankfully, I could push it between my jaws – my lips already rotted away.

  The healing energy immediately numbed the pain. I took another pill. I didn’t count how much time I spent blindly burning everything in front of me, but when my sight came back and when my muscles stopped shaking, there were no geists around me…

  No geists I could see. For security, I covered everything in fire again, and only when I was confident that no more parched were here, did I lean against the wall and let out a breath.

  “Stupid teamwork monsters…” I shuddered. The pills managed to heal me, but who knew if I would be so lucky next time. I almost died.

  My standing emissions didn’t increase. How annoying.

  It took me some time to find the three cores within the disgusting tar, even with the force form. I had to leave this place, and for that, I needed to kill the floor boss.

  The journey through the tunnels continued. I didn’t hold back anymore and created the parasitic poison construct as well as the anchored barriers. Spewing the far more potent flames brought me comfort – it didn’t bring me more cores.

  Another hour passed. A whole damn hour of paranoid walking. The geists avoided me. No screaming of the tar beasts, no signs of parched. It was as if I were here alone.

  “Time for a new method.” I closed myself in with two self-reinforcing barriers. “Idiotic dungeon…” I condensed starpower as much as possible and conjured a heavy pickaxe in my hand.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Let’s see how you like this!” I struck the wall, and rocks fell down into the tar. It was rather soft. The digging was easier than walking. I mined into the wall again and again, but then there were no more rocks.

  Beneath two meters of wall, resided a wound made of darkness. From this pulsating skin, a constant stream of tar fell. It was alive.

  Fiendish Lichter

  Species: Boss Geist

  SE: 81

  Affinity: Onyx

  Description: This massive dungeon-bound geist makes up everything between the stone and the ground, creating a specialized dimension. The tar is its blood and tears. It likes bleeding. It will capture its victims in tar and slowly drain their blood until they are husks.

  The dungeon shook, and stone fell from the ceiling. I was an ant stuck within the belly of the beast. I put myself into a barrier sphere. Tar rose from the ground, wrapping around the rocks, splitting them apart, dissolving them. The tar I accidentally locked in my barrier wriggled.

  It was immune to the parasite poison. The tunnel rose and wriggled. My ball was sent flying down, and I struggled within too. The tar attached to my skin scratched against the VITA, as if trying to rip me apart.

  I didn’t know what would be the best way to fight a liquid, but freezing was probably not a bad one. I had no room to scream, no place to panic, the entire dungeon crumbled around me.

  I sent waves after waves of cold. It quickly froze the tar in my barrier bubble. It didn’t help with the things that happened in the dungeon. The stone was gone, converted into tar; there was no sky nor ground. Everything was tar.

  “How can you even kill this?” I shuddered. The tar constantly pressed against the barrier, and I didn’t hesitate when I added more and more layers. Thankfully, the self-regenerating properties seemed to help withstand the force.

  I hyperventilated, panting for air like crazy. I knew it couldn’t suffocate because of VITA. Panic froze my thinking. Should I try heating everything around me? Freezing? Each idea offered more disadvantages than any guarantee of winning.

  One thing was certain – if the barrier fell, I would die.

  The tar stopped pressing against the ball. Like a dying slug, it parted ways. The light on my forehead shone brighter, and I looked deeper into the abyss.

  In the darkness, a thing slightly smaller than my starship opened. It was a massive red eye. A thousand whispers resounded from everywhere, “Please, please, please, bleed, bleed, bleed, for us, us, us…” The endless cacophony of vibrating tar made me reinforce the barrier even more.

  “I won’t bleed, you disgusting freak!” I dissolved the parasitic poison construct and made a freezing fire one. The tar stopped whispering. The lichter and its massive eye remained unmoving.

  I channeled the force form in my feet and propelled forward through the tar. I touched the edge of the barrier and, through the solidified starpower, conjured a burst of flames. It was barely anything compared to its sheer size. Some of the tar froze.

  Then it shook. Instead of a whisper, a scream – “Please, please, please, please...” Continuous pleading. The tar struck again and again at my barrier, much fiercer than before. It cracked and immediately healed.

  I froze as much of it as possible, pushed against it with the force form, but it barely seemed enough. I had to get to the eye.

  The tar was an excellent anchor for the force form. I pushed the barrier bubble deeper, closer to the eye. Every attempt to pierce through the barrier, I thwarted with a precise application of the freezing fire.

  When everything was a part of the lichter, it was hard to understand what was happening. I was a tiny ship stuck in the sea that wanted to crush me and drain my bones.

  “Come on, come on…” With each dash, I was getting closer and closer.

  The eye was before me. So large I could see the ridges of the iris and the pure, all-consuming darkness of the pupil. I really was a bug that flew into its eye. “This is too stupid.”

  To win, I had to gamble again. I started forming the ice bomb, except instead of freezing, I infused heat. It was just a plasma bomb. I cackled like a maniac.

  The barrier cracked as tar struck again. It flew inside the bubble and sliced my back. I dispelled the barrier in front of me and threw the plasma bomb. Fire engulfed everything.

  It burned, not worse than the necrosis, but it burned. My screams melded with the burning of the tar. From the sensation, I could tell I was falling. I covered my skin with solidified starpower, trying to stop the fire.

  It helped.

  Then I dropped on the floor. Everything was fire; it was all burning down. Only the stone ground remained. The agony was terrible, but I persisted.

  In several minutes, the tar cleared up and the fire was extinguished. My skin was scorched in many places, my vision was muddy, it was a struggle to move. Yet I was alive.

  I pulled everything to the light form, trying to see further. A tiny sun shone from my forehead, illuminating the endless void.

  I was to the United States a couple of times and I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty. This monster was slightly bigger than that…

  A giant with a hundred thin arms stood in the void. These arms ripped into the lichter’s beyond-titanic body, lashing itself to bleed more tar. Its skin was like pure darkness. Horns spread out of its head, reminding me of demons from Earth’s religion. It had a massive red heart beating in the middle of its chest.

  Slowly, patiently, it lifted its leg, aiming to stomp me.

  “Well, shit…”