"You want to eat me?" the Underworld Orc replied and seemed to find amusement in Xen's desire. Chuckling deeply, the monster glared at him with one eye while a mask of clay obscured the other. "I don't think you have the capabilities, you foolish creature."

  Xen's eye twitched. Who was this dumb Orc to call him foolish? Even as a level one Mind Slime, he possessed more intellect than this brute. Xen was smart, perhaps the smartest of all monsters in all of the World Dungeon. There were many things Xen could tolerate, but he would not let an insult targeting his impressive intellect slide.

  "No, you listen here, you mindless lump of clay," Xen ranted as he stomped toward the floor boss with his bloodied sword still pointed at the monster. "I've almost caught up to your level in a matter of days and defeated your pathetic little army practically by myself. Every move you've made, every spell you've thrown, I've predicted it all with ease. Before my greatness, you're like a newborn goblin playing with magic in the mud."

  The Underworld Orc's composure crumbled. While monstrous, the floor boss had been carrying himself like a sorcerer king commanding his subjects from a throne, but with the army gone and the perpetrator now hurling insults, the Underworld Orc showed his orcish side. His expression twisted into one of primal rage.

  "You insignificant worm!" the Underworld Orc roared, throwing spittle from his putrid mouth. "My name is Gor'Zhul, the supreme overlord of clay," he pointed his gnarled fingers at Xen, his lips curling around his tusks in a cruel sneer. "You, a monster serving the humans, dare to insult me?! A king!"

  Earth mana rose from the throne and surged around the monster in a torrent, solidifying and coating Gor'Zhul in the same defensive skill he had used to make his guard so difficult to kill. However, this time it seemed far denser.

  Xen winced, not out of fear, but because of how terrible having a human's sense of smell was sometimes. He was within five meters of the floor boss, so his Blight Aura was starting to stack and would eat away at the newly formed defensive layer. All he had to do was distract the monster a little longer, but that was easier said than done. Due to the beast towering over eight feet tall, he had to strain his neck to meet the Orc's gaze and endure having drool and spittle raining down on him. He wanted an umbrella—whatever that was.

  "As I told you before, I'm not working for the humans," Xen snapped back, feeling quite annoyed at the whole situation. "I merely want to eat you," he wafted his hand in front of his nose, "but with how terrible you smell, I'm starting to have second thoughts. Even these weak goblins you have surrounding me smell better than you!"

  It seemed that being compared to goblins was quite the insult for an Orc to endure.

  Gor'Zhul snorted, and Xen skillfully stepped back just in time to avoid a bombardment of black mucus ejecting from the Orc's nostrils and splattering onto the ground. It hissed upon contact with the stone, releasing a terrible smell.

  Xen felt his eyes watering—honestly, at this point, this felt more like a battle than just running around and hurling spells. Being near this brutish beast was a unique kind of torture.

  "To compare me to a goblin," Gor'Zhul gathered earth mana into his hand and leaned in with a disgusting grin, "will be your last mistake, little worm."

  I'm not a worm, I'm an intelligent slime, Xen thought as he side-eyed the gathering spell and traced the flow of mana via Geomantic Perception. As expected, he is drawing mana directly through the Earth Mage Throne rather than his own mana reserves—that last spell that turned this side of the cavern into spikes must have been the last of what he could muster. Returning his attention to the Orc, he grinned behind his helmet.

  "Such a weak display of magic," he sneered, "I'd have expected more from the self-proclaimed 'Supreme Overlord of Clay,' but perhaps that's just me having unrealistic expectations of an Orc pretending to be a mage."

  The Underworld Orc's face twisted with rage again, giving Xen immense satisfaction. There was something so freeing about this conversation. He didn't have to think as much and carefully play the information game. Since he was planning on killing this Orc and there was little chance of the humans overhearing him and understanding Orcish, he was free to say whatever he wanted.

  "You will regret those words," the Underworld Orc said, but Xen doubted that. In his initial plan to defeat this floor boss, he had expected the Orc to be running low on mana, but not so low that the Orc would humor a shouting match to buy time. The fact that the Orc didn't try to stomp him despite being so close and was so focused on trying to conjure another spell despite his depleted mana reserves proved another of Xen's theories—that despite his looming size and being an Orc, the floor boss had the stats of a mage, and likely deemed the chance of triumphing in a physical battle impossible after seeing what Xen did to his guarding Orcs.

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  What Gor'Zhul wanted was to ensure this was a magic battle. An outcome Xen couldn't accept, as he knew that winning in a battle of magic once the Underworld Orc had regained enough mana to fight was impossible. So he had only engaged in this dance of words for one purpose: to stack his Blight Aura.

  "Appraisal," Xen said, completely ignoring the Underworld Orc.

  [Gor'Zhul: Underworld Orc (Level 41)]

  Afflictions: Blight Aura (stacking)

  Not finished stacking yet, likely due to the floor boss's immense magic resistance as a mage, but I can see the black aura around him strengthening. I can't give Gor'Zhul any more time to recover his mana—the time to strike is now.

  "Do you tremble seeing my status?" Gor'Zhul grinned. "Well, you can save your fear for when I eat you alive. Now stay still, Entombing Grasp!"

  Xen's mind rushed for a solution—there were so many options to choose from. Yet, to his surprise, in this moment, a specific spell called out to him. One he hadn't even considered using until now. Pointing his finger at the Orc, he said, "Radiant Smite."

  As the earthen spikes around him softened into clay tendrils due to Gor'Zhul's skill, golden mana sparked at the end of his finger. While the skill was only E-grade, its strength scaled with his magic stat. His human form was his most well-rounded in terms of stat distribution, meaning it didn't excel or suffer in any one area. However, due to [Solo Hunter] boosting him, his magic stat was likely on par with the Underworld Orc before him. All of that was to say, the E-grade skill certainly didn't look or hit like one. What had been nothing but a little spark in the past erupted from his finger as a bolt of golden lightning that no doubt blinded both of them.

  Gor'Zhul stumbled back, roaring as he clutched his one eye. Having spent a lifetime underground and in the darkness, the sudden light had been too much to handle. While levels and stats did a lot, Gor'Zhul was still a living creature and had weaknesses.

  Xen was more annoyed at himself for not realizing sooner that such a weak skill could be so devastating, even with Gor'Zhul not being undead. He had been far too focused on making use of his new shiny skills than stopping to consider old ones. However, this was a lesson he would have to ponder over another time. The Radiant Smite had bought him a precious few seconds to go after his actual target, the Earth Mage Throne.

  As long as the Earth Mage Throne stood, Gor'Zhul could draw on endless mana to fuel his defensive layer. Making use of Geomantic Perception, Quiet Steps, and his boosted speed, Xen weaved through the earthen spikes, avoided the goblins randomly thrashing around, and ran from the tendrils chasing after him. Circling around Gor'Zhul, he reached the back of the throne.

  Gor'Zhul had likely sensed what he was doing and roared in his vague direction. "Stop, you filthy worm!"

  "I'm not a worm," Xen snarled back in Orcish, "I'm a slime."

  Raising his sword, he imbued it with red mana.

  "No!" Gor'Zhul roared, a hint of desperation in his voice as he drew in more earth mana, and despite still being blinded, aimed in his direction. But it was too late.

  "Crescent Rage! Phantom Strike!"

  Xen unleashed one of his most used skills, and the crescent of crackling red mana crashed into the stone throne. It caused a large crack down its back, but it managed to hold together. Earth mana poured out of the crack like a burst dam.

  "What have you done?!" Gor'Zhul panicked, managing to bring his arm over the back of the throne to block the second Crescent Rage strike. As expected, the weaker second Crescent Rage simply disappeared against Gor'Zhul's defenses. Still blinking away the blindness, Gor'Zhul stumbled his way around the throne. Now standing between Xen and the throne, the towering Orc wreathed in a dense layer of earth mana was like an impassable wall.

  Xen frowned—this hadn't quite gone to plan. While the Earth Mage Throne had certainly taken damage, it was still giving Gor'Zhul a large pool to draw from.

  He had gotten too cocky. This was still a floor boss.

  Gor'Zhul, finally having recovered from the blinding light, snarled at him. "You have no idea what you have done," the Orc said in a low and serious tone. "Enough games, I will kill you here and now." Pulling in an absurd amount of mana from the throne toward his foot, Gor'Zhul stamped down with the wrath of a god.

  "Claymancy Surge!"

  The ground burst with new spikes, and Xen found himself with nowhere to run and far from the lake. As the wave of spikes surged toward him with Gor'Zhul as the epicenter, Xen felt his world slow, and he decided what to do. Since the spikes were larger and coming faster than the first time, and he had nothing but a wall to his back, his only path was forward.

  Bending his knees, he leapt at Gor'Zhul. A stray stone spike impaled his stomach, punching through to the other side and skewering him. Xen spat blood as he felt nothing but pain.

  Gor'Zhul smirked at him. "Foolish creature indeed." The giant strode forward, his every step making the spike impaling him tremble. The many weapons and trinkets taken from fallen hunters hanging from the twisted bone totems protruding from his back clinked as he moved.

  "No, it's you who is caught in my trap," Xen said.

  [Gor'Zhul: Underworld Orc (Level 41)]

  Afflictions: Blight Aura (Stacked)

  Raising a shaking arm, he pointed at the Orc and whispered, "Withering Hex." A thin beam of necrotic energy struck Gor'Zhul, punching through his weakened magic defenses and rippling across his skin.

  As a mage, Gor'Zhul immediately felt the foreign mana and became alarmed. "What did you do, worm?!" The Underworld Orc yelled, clawing at his own darkening skin.

  Xen simply laughed in the floor boss's face.

  to read ahead!