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Tutorial Rewrite 92
🕑 Added 2023-01-25 10:25:22 +0000 UTCA puff of perfume hits my face the second I enter. The intense light makes me squeeze my eyes shut, but on account of this not being a very strategic choice all things considered, I force myself to open them again, letting my gaze fall on the bizarre sight in front of me.
<Gorgon Medusa (Lv.47) [BOSS]>
She’s lying on her stomach, on a regal-looking bed, with a carved pipe in hand. If it hadn’t been for the way she looked, I might have mistaken her for some teenage girl, lying in bed and kicking her feet. But, as it is, the several metre-long snakes curling around her neck and upper back, alongside her shining RED eyes makes that a hard conclusion to draw. Silently, I hunch down a little in preparation for the fight.
“No need for violence, my love,” Medusa says, a stream of perfume-scented smoke trailing out from between her lips. Oh, did I mention that she’s huge? Yeah, she’s easily bigger than the horse-sized snakes I fought earlier. She smiles at me. I feel a patch of goosebumps sprout across my back. “Would you like to see a magic trick?” Um, actually, I’d rather no— “Look at your feet.” And then she winks at me. I almost want to just, you know, not, but when the devil sends you an invitation, you can’t refuse. I look down at my feet.
Ah. They’ve turned to stone, have they?
I look back up at her. She bursts into a fit of laughter. “Bwahahahaha, you should’ve seen your face! Oh, that is priceless. Could you just hold that face while I turn the rest of you into stone? I need to immortalise that one.”
Okay, see, funny thing with petrification: it doesn’t hurt. Like, at all. It’s just that one second you can feel your legs, and the next, they just aren’t there. The pain comes when you move them and rip the stumps from the petrified bits.
Namely, what I’m doing right now.
“Oh, come on, stay in place, won’t you?”
No, I will not. I may not have anything left below my knees, but having knees is enough to go into a fetal position blowover-style roll, which is exactly what I do. She can’t zap me with her gaze if I’m just not visible at all.
But I don’t roll far before she enacts her countermeasures. The snakes that had previously simply remained coiled on top of her now spread out, each stretching out as far as its body can go, all of them laying themselves across the floor like a complex spider’s web. I think I’ve said this before, but it’s worth noting again that while I’m rolling, I’m basically blind because the whole world is just spinning around me too fast to really understand. To make sense of what’s happening around me and where things are, I typically use scent, which is why I even realised that this was happening to begin with.
However, this all came just a second too late, as my escapades are abruptly stopped in their tracks as I run over one of these many snakes, and it, like a spring lock failing, instantly wraps tightly around me, choking the breath out of me and straightening me out into a board-like shape.
“There you are,” Medusa coos, her eyes training onto me. Unluckily for me, this isn’t the kind of situation where my not seeing her will cancel the effects of the skill. There’s only one thing I can do.
I claw at the snake wrapped around me, successfully ripping off its head fully, making the body itself go limp. But by this point, I’ve already lost my upper left arm to the petrification.
That’s alright, though. I’m still alive, and that’s all that matters. While still falling, I pull myself into the fetal position as best as I can. As soon as I hit the floor, I book it for the underside of the bed. I’m able to make it there while tripping over only one snake. While she’s still searching for me, I meditate a little, just to abate the bleeding and lessen the pain to an extent where I can think properly.
It’s a simple situation, really. I just need to treat it as such.
I look down at the limbs I’ve still got.
Simple situations require simple sacrifices.
I bite my lip. This is going to hurt, but as long as it works, it won’t matter in the end. Even though I only have one arm, it will have to be enough. I push my claws into my right thigh, sawing around my femur and then through it, all the while I use moving meditation to keep the wound from getting too serious.
“I know you’re under there,” Medusa says from just above. “There’s no point in hiding.”
I agree with her on that one, but there’s one thing she’s forgotten.
Hiding works best when coupled with diversion.
Pulling off a large segment of my leg, I waste no time to let it go cold before I throw it as hard as I can across the room. The snakes on the floor instantly bound for it, hissing in joy as they crowd around the piece of warm flesh. And right at that moment, before she can figure out that this isn’t all that I am, I leap out from beneath the bed, climb the side of it with only one arm, and jump on top of her back.
“Huh—?” she exclaims beneath me, if only a second too late. Leaping towards her head, I place myself on top of her neck, and before she can properly react, I press my clawed hand into her right eye, and then her left, blinding her. She tries to grab at me, and the snakes turn around to come for me, but I’ve already started digging into her throat, pulling out arteries and opening up her throat. A few of the snakes bite into my torso and my one remaining limb but I can tell that it’s already too late.
She tries to stand, but instead she just stumbles forward, over the side of the bed, and onto the floor below with a crunchy squelch!
<Gorgon Medusa (Lv.47) [BOSS] Defeated.>
<[Level Up]>
<You have reached Level 45.>
<Agility has increased by 6.
Strength has increased by 5.
Stamina has increased by 7.
Magic Power has increased by 2.
Dagger Tooth has increased by 1.
Crush has increased by 1.
Petrification Protection has increased by 1.
Exhaustion Resistance has increased by 1.
Exhaustion Protection has increased by 1.
Salamander Healing has increased by 1.
Moving Meditation has increased by 1.>
Haah, nice stuff!
As Medusa finally dies, the death grip that her snakes kept on me is finally let up, allowing me to breathe properly. To tally up the damages, I’ve lost three of my four limbs, and I’m pretty sure more of the bones in my body are broken. Fracture Protection my arse.
<You have cleared the ninth floor.>
<You have received 1 000
points for clearing the floor.
You have received an additional
1 000 points for being the first to clear
the floor.>
<For clearing the stage completely,
you will receive an additional reward.>
<To repay your debt,
the additional reward has been
traded for 5 000 points.>
<2 Gods have shown a positive response to you.
You have obtained 2 000 points.>
<43 Gods have shown a negative response to you.
43 000 points have been deducted.>
Ah, it’s beautiful. Were my actions this floor really that reprehensible, gods? Huh, gods? Care to explain why you aren’t too hot on my playstyle? No? Right, got it.
<To repay your debt,
the floor clear reward has been
traded for 1 000 points.>
Let me guess. Now you’ll abruptly send me back to the—
