Chapter 146: Anemoi the Tempest Monarch (2)

Chapter 146: Chapter 146: Anemoi the Tempest Monarch (2)

Seeing Anemoi reel from Mirei’s frost arrow, Seraphina seized the momentum. Reaching into her alchemical bandolier, she pulled three crimson glass spheres filled with hyper-concentrated, highly volatile incendiary fluid—her custom Infernal Flame Compounds.

"Rowan, lower the root wall for three seconds!" Seraphina shouted above the roaring gale.

Rowan didn’t hesitate. With a swift flick of the Hoe of the World-Tiller, a section of the petrified soil barrier parted just wide enough. Seraphina stepped into the open wind, her arm swinging back before hurling all three flasks directly into the swirling vortex surrounding the boss.

Mirei followed up instantly, releasing a single spark-tipped arrow through the air to intercept the vials mid-flight.

The resulting detonation was violent and immediate. The moment the pressurized incendiary liquid shattered, Anemoi’s own hurricane-force winds swept the fluid directly into its vaporous form.

Instead of blowing the fire out, the massive wind currents acted like an elemental blast furnace. In less than a second, the entire spirit monarch was completely engulfed, turning into a towering, screaming ball of incandescent fire.

The thermal shock ignited the monarch’s inner atmospheric structure, inflicting severe, continuous damage as the flames scorched through its outer spirit shell. The boss shrieked in atmospheric agony, its storm-grey form turning brilliant crimson and orange as its health bar plunged even further.

Panicking under the suffocating, relentless heat, Anemoi abandoned its offensive. Recognizing that the dense oxygen on the monolith platform was fueling the inferno consuming its body, the tempest monarch rocketed straight up toward the heavens.

It broke through the thick cloud layer, ascending thousands of meters into the freezing, high-altitude atmosphere where the near-vacuum and starved oxygen levels rapidly doused the flames.

As the blazing comet vanished into the thin upper sky, the roaring winds on the monolith platform abruptly died down to a eerie stillness.

"It’s trying to starve the fire!" Caelen called out, squinting up through the clouds as the distant red glow began to dim in the upper atmosphere.

"Let it," Rowan said coolly, resting his hoe over his shoulder as he tracked the sky. "Up there, without the domain’s lower wind currents to sustain it, its spirit shell is going to thin out completely. Get ready—when it comes falling back down to the arena, that Gale Core is going to be wide open."

A thunderous crack echoed across the heavens as the storm clouds split wide open. Plunging out of the high-altitude haze, Anemoi returned like a falling meteor, consumed by pure, unbridled fury. The doused flames had left its spirit shell scorched and erratic, triggering its Eye of the Hurricane state.

The ambient air pressure plummeted instantly, creating a terrifying atmospheric vacuum that yanked Squad 07 toward the center of the arena while a rain of crackling, aqua-blue lightning and sonic shockwaves detonated across the monolith.

The monarch was determined to end them, but Squad 07’s defensive wall proved utterly impenetrable.

Barney was the first to meet the onslaught, slamming his vanguard shield into the stone and activating his locking clamps. The kinetic impact of Anemoi’s opening pressure blast hit his barrier like a siege engine, sending bright blue sparks showering across the basalt, but the shield held firm.

As the boss whipped into a violent spin, firing ribbons of razor-sharp vacuum blades, Caelen and Princess Lyra stepped up into a fluid, double-guard rotation. Leveraged by his Level 20 stat boost, Caelen wielded the Edge of the First Warden with blinding speed, knocking away pressurized air streams with heavy, rhythmic parries.

Right beside him, Lyra’s golden aura flared into a solid sun-barrier. Her sword gleamed as she intercepted the stray lightning strikes, deflecting the high-voltage arcs harmlessly into the sky.

Whenever the vacuum pull threatened to rip their feet from the stone, Rowan planted the Hoe of the World-Tiller deep into the core of the peak. Dense, iron-hard root arches erupted beneath their boots, forming physical footholds and stone braces that anchored the party against the hurricane-force drag.

Behind the front line, Seraphina moved with practiced, surgical efficiency. As Caelen and Lyra swapped places to manage their stamina, Seraphina pressed glowing vials of Granular Recovery Elixirs and Aura-Restoring Draughts into their hands. The high-purity alchemical concoctions instantly closed any minor wind-bleed nicks and topped off their health reserves to maximum the second they rotated back.

No matter how frantically the tempest monarch thrashed, roared, or rained down lightning, Squad 07 moved as a single, immovable unit. They absorbed every ferocious blow, holding the line with absolute composure while waiting for the frantic monster to expose its final vulnerability. ℴ

As Anemoi overextended into a wild, wide-sweeping atmospheric shockwave, its elemental body stretched thin. To channel the massive blast, the monarch’s swirling vapor thinned around its center, forcing its intangible spirit shell to briefly collapse inward to anchor its central power source.

In that fraction of a second, Mirei’s Level 20 heightened perception caught the subtle glimmer of pure, unshielded crystal at the center of the storm.

"Core exposed!" Mirei called out, her voice razor-sharp despite the roaring chaos around them.

She didn’t shoot just one arrow—she drew four frost-infused shafts back in a single, fluid motion, bending her heavy bowstring to its absolute limit. Channeling every ounce of her newly expanded dexterity and perception, she released the volley straight into the calm eye of the gale.

The shafts streaked through the air like streaks of glittering ice, cutting clean lines through the turbulent atmospheric vacuum. Guided by her flawless vector calculation, all four arrows struck the exact same pinpoint location in rapid succession. They punched straight through the collapsing spirit vapor and slammed directly into the solid, fist-sized Gale Core suspended in Anemoi’s chest.

A blinding flash of white light exploded from the impact point. The catastrophic 300% critical shatter damage fractured the compressed crystal anchor into a dozen webbed cracks.

Anemoi let out a final, deafening screech that echoed across the cloud-draped abyss. The monarch’s intangible form violently imploded toward its shattered core before bursting outward in a harmless, shimmering shockwave of pure wind mana.

The roaring tempest died instantly. The pitch-black storm clouds dissolved into thin air, revealing a serene, clear sky as the howling gales quieted into a gentle, cool breeze across the basalt peak.

Floating softly in the air where the monarch once stood was a swirling, crystalline sphere of pale-green light—the Wind Core.

Rowan stepped forward, catching the sphere gently in his palm as it drifted down. He stowed the fourth and final elemental core alongside the Earth, Fire, and Water cores in his spatial inventory.

A deep, vibrating resonance hummed through the monolith under their boots. Across all four quadrants of the floor, massive beams of light shot upward into the sky, converging high above the central nexus to unlock the grand stairwell leading upward.

Squad 07 had officially conquered Floor 8. Rowan adjusted the brim of his Enchanted Straw Hat, resting the Hoe of the World-Tiller over his shoulder as he turned to his grinning squad. "All four cores secured. Let’s head back to the nexus and see what Floor 9 has waiting for us."