Farming is OP

It was just the Lich and me now and… I didn’t like my odds. I could see the glint of his magical shield still there; my wives had all spent all their power whittling it down, and even still, he could defend himself. The only difference was that his feet were now on the ground; the flying spell he cast must have been too much of a drain for him to keep it going in this enclosed space.

He didn’t give me a second to breathe before his attack began in earnest. The death bolts he launched before now appeared to be moving more slowly again; whatever magic he used to speed up the spell now whittled his mana down, making it to be risky to keep up. I rolled backwards, the bolt flying over my head as it struck one of the stalagmites blocking the view of the dungeon core. I moved away from it just in case so he wouldn’t notice it after that.

He could use other spells, but for whatever reason, that death-based attack was one of the only ones he used. For whatever reason, possibly because of its high kill potential or maybe because it was the best mana to power spell, he kept using it. Now closing the distance with his own body as I dodged, dipped, dived, ducked, and dodged all of his spells.

I couldn’t just dodge; his spells became more and more accurate as he got my rhythm down. That was when I also had to use my own magic to counter his. Raising a clump of dirt to hide behind as we both ran around it. Him trying to kill me, me trying not to die. It wasn’t very brave or dignified, but I was trying to survive, trying to wear down the impossibly deep well of his mana, because there was no way I could rip through his shield.

Screaming like an idiot as I barely moved out of the way, clumsily falling to the ground to do so. Finally, he was sick of my tenaciousness, screaming in anger himself. “Enough!” As he did so, I was struck with that same wave attack that left Tems vulnerable, and I was left vulnerable in the air as well. I didn’t think; I just acted, pulling out one of the fish I had stored in my spatial storage to block the blow.

My eyes widened as I expected the fish to dissolve into black flesh and blood, but it didn’t. Whatever the fish was before, it had some kind of reflective scales, deflecting the attack right back at the Lich. Now, if it only deflected the magic, the spell would have cleanly passed right through the Lich’s shield; even if he was struck with death magic, I doubted it would have done anything to him…

But that wasn’t what happened. The fish's scales not only deflected the attack but also altered the element to a more water/light-based attack. The bolt was absorbed into the fish before becoming a ray of energy pointed at the Lich, energy that went completely against him as it burned through the rest of his shield, even burning him slightly before he recovered and got another shield up.

I could only gulp, but I noticed something else: the Lich’s composure was shattered. I knew that being such an unkillable cockroach was pissing him off, so I leaned into it as I began to taunt him. “That’s one for me and none for you so far, Lichypoo. Come on, you can do better than that!” I couldn’t tell if it was a placebo, but it looked like his shield began to flicker, and his death bolts were just slightly bigger than before.

I fell on the ground again, and instead of trying to stand up, I just started rolling, spell after spell missed as I could hear his frustration and anger continue to build. I hopped back up as I smiled at him. Taunting again. “Haha! You still haven’t hi-.” He cut me off as he fired two bolts at the same time, one high to the right, one low to the left. I went low and to the right; the bolt flew ahead of me, but I wasn’t fast enough to dodge both. The one-shot low clipped me as I felt the death energy flow through where it struck me, my ass.

I wanted to cry out in pain; I wanted to limp around holding my ass; I wanted to chug down a potion to heal myself and dull the pain, but I just didn’t have the opportunity to. As if finally sensing blood in the water, his bolts began to rain down even faster. I had to do nothing but focus on dodging, but as I was watching him, solely focused on him, I noticed something he didn’t. The giant stalactite above him.

Once again, dodging out of the way and falling to the ground in a very unorthodox manner to not be struck, all I did was wiggle it, and that was enough to dislodge the thing. The cave system I made wasn’t just me. Sure, the tunnels were, I made the tunnel maze, but the cavern underground was something I stumbled upon by accident. So what dropped on him wasn’t a pile of dirt, but an actual heavy as fuck rock.

His shield was powerful, so powerful that it could block attacks from people far beyond anything even most dungeon bosses could take. Every single shield was equivalent, if not more, in health than what it would take to kill a boss, more health than any of his generals, yet here we were, almost ten shields down, the final being destroyed by environmental damage.

It didn’t just break the shield; it shattered it. His sheer willpower held together every shield of his, but breaking it allowed him to instantly replace it; this was the first time the damage overwhelmed him, which left him vulnerable to the same rock crashing down on his head. Tons of weight, something he would scoff at and avoid if it came from anywhere else but directly above him.

I had gotten both lucky and unlucky. Lucky that it worked, but unlucky that the way he fell was forward instead of backward. What could have been an instant deathblow was just his legs being pinned and shattered. A primal scream of anger wrenched from his lips as I felt a sudden spike of power from him. He moved, abandoning his legs, his robes ripping and tearing as he pulled with all the weight his body and flight spell could put into half of his body, while the rest was left behind.

There was no shield, no more death bolts; he came at me with his own physical body. Anger in his eyes, so enraged he didn’t care anymore, except… He was a fucking caster. An uber-powerful caster, but a caster nonetheless. As fast as he was moving with his flight spell, all his stats were put in a single area: intellect, and he just gave up that advantage, that last bit to rush at me and try to put his bony hands around my neck because I was that frustrating to him.

By the time he closed the distance, I had my axe summoned in front of me, and I smashed him like I was aiming to hit a home run with the blow. Cutting through one of his hands as a side effect, I aimed for his head, and it went flying off, smashing into the ceiling, then a wall, then the back wall before finally spinning to a stop.

I waited… Was it over? Did I win? Was he going to use one last all-out attack, turning his head into a bomb and try to take me out, or… Was he finally, completely drained? I moved over fearfully, slowly moving to pick up his head, half expecting a surprise attack from his upper half or something just as insane, but nothing. There was nothing extra. I thought about destroying him, but then remembered Liches had that thing that let them come back to life, so his being a head was actually a good thing.

It was right then, as I held the Lich’s head in my hand, that Leaf had finally dug out the blocked entrance here, and she didn’t hear my inner monologue. She only saw me holding the still glowing-eyed skull of the Lich in my hands while I had my thinking face on, and she acted. The arrow dug in, launching the skull out of my hands and pinning it to the wall as I couldn’t help but look at her with my eyebrows furrowed. “OUCH! Ow ow ow! This asshole shot me in the asshole! Also, Rude! That was clearly a kill steal!”

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