Chris never answered.
Once the top was bolted into place, Brandon, Imani, and I moved to the last, crucial part. The braces for the roof: five heavy-duty barbell poles designed to hold more than a thousand pounds of weight each. I discovered if I held my hand in just the correct place and called the heavy pole from inventory, it wedged itself perfectly between the roof and ground, solid as a concrete pillar.
Our mini fortress had a usable area of about ten by ten feet, and we had to move about on our hands and knees. It was tight when it was just the six of us, but with the addition of Agatha, who continued to wail about her damn shopping cart, we could barely move without slamming each other. And because she’d joined us, we didn’t have room to place the final, center pole.
I looked worriedly at that center cross-section of the roof just as Donut exclaimed, “Here it comes!”
If this boss had any sort of fire or lightning or acid attack, we were absolutely fucked. So far it seemed each boss only had one main attack, and this one’s was pretty obvious. It rolled right the fuck over you.
My kneepads had an attribute that canceled out momentum-based attacks. But if my experience with videogames was any indication, one couldn’t count on that sort of thing when it came to bosses. Plus there was no way I was going to test it.
Once, as a kid, I was riding down a country road with my mom and dad. They’d been fighting, as usual, and I’d climbed into the very back of the SUV, as far back as I could get. I’d oftentimes do this, staring out the rear window as the world whipped by, pretending like I was in the cockpit of a spaceship. On this day a large, yellow truck was behind us. It was one of those box trucks, a Penske, something people rented to move.
It happened so fast. One moment, I was staring up at the guy, who was getting so close to my dad’s ass that I had to crane my neck up to see him, and then, the truck was just stopped, pulling away from us, the top peeled off like a sardine can. We’d gone under a bridge, and the truck was too tall. As I watched, the sides of the truck fell away, spilling furniture and boxes all over the road with a resounding crash! The main cab of the truck tilted violently to its side, broken away from the rest of the body. My dad heard the accident, looked up into the rearview mirror, muttered, “That’s a shame,” and just kept driving as my mom yelled at him to stop. He didn’t.
That’s what I was hoping would happen here. This massive ball of flesh filled the hallway, from the ground to the ceiling. My forward section of the redoubt was wider, giving a more gradual angle, just enough to wedge the ball between us and the ceiling nice and tight.
Like Mordecai had suggested, I needed to look at the clues. Those strange entrances dotting the side of the arena were there for a reason. It was so we could catch a glimpse of the monster. All I could see was that it was big, round, fast, and shoved tightly into the tunnel.
My first idea was to build a solid wall, but as we observed the ball from one of the many portcullis entrances, the track forced the monster directly into a 90 degree angle. It bounced right off, barely losing speed as it turned away. There will always be clues.
It never lost momentum. It just kept going and going. So we needed to stop it somehow, and we needed to be in a position to do something about it once it did. I was hoping it’d hit our structure and get wedged in good. From there, Imani would stab, Donut would shoot missiles, Chris would cast his spells, and the rest of us would jab our makeshift ninja-star-tipped spears up into the boss until its health ran out.
Most of the goblin tables were made of thick, hefty steel, which was why they were so damn heavy. The wide table we used for the front of the redoubt also had a pitted wooden covering. Brandon, Chris, and I had spent a good five minutes throwing fifty of my ninja shuriken deep into the wood, adding black spikes to the ramp. Spikes that would hopefully damage the boss each time they pierced its flesh. Unfortunately, only about 20 of the stars remained unbroken.
That part had been Brandon’s idea. I’d shown him the shuriken and allowed him to read the description.
“These things are way more powerful than you realize,” he’d said, voice filled with awe. “Do the math. Compounding damage means if you poke something 200 times, it’s like literally millions of points of damage.”
“I don’t do math,” I said. “But I do know we ain’t poking anything 200 times with these things. Look.” I pulled a single star out. I’d tested it earlier to see if I had any sort of ninja skill. It’d received a single chip, and the red enchantment had faded away. Mordecai wasn’t kidding when he said these things were fragile. They were clearly meant to only be used once, tempering their value.
Despite their fragility, we’d used several of the stars to create the spike strips, nothing more than a pair of stars placed between two pieces of bolted-together wood. They’d survive one or two stabbings before breaking. The strips wouldn’t be stopping the monster by themselves, but each time it rolled over one, the amount of damage inflicted on the boss would increase by 8%.
“Brace,” I cried, grasping onto the wall as the monster barreled toward us, impossibly fast.
Crash!
The entire structure shuddered and slid with a horrifying screech. All four of the ceiling braces popped out of place and went flying. One bounced hard off Yolanda, throwing her over. The terrible stench filled the now-dark chamber. An unending, high-pitched squealing filled the air.
We’d done it.
The ceiling sagged, bending ominously as dark squares of flesh pushed through the empty spaces of the lattice pattern. The ceiling was going to break. We were going to be crushed. The ball had managed to squeeze itself between the top of the tunnel and our fortress, the massive pressure pushing down against our defense.
“Stab!” I cried as the stick appeared in my hand. It was half of a chin-up bar with a goblin clamp at the end, clutched onto a tied-together cluster of three stars. I hoped they’d be less likely to break if bunched together. I jabbed upward, poking the flesh. It felt as if I was doing nothing. Next to me, Imani struggled to get her longsword angled and through the holes in the ceiling. She was pushing her sword all the way in and pulling out, over and over. Pigs squealed, blood rained. The music quickened. To my left, bolts popped from holes, shooting off like bullets. One clobbered Agatha, who didn’t appear to notice despite a well of blood that appeared. She was still screaming something about her shopping cart. Above, the pressure grew. I stabbed, and I stabbed.
And then, just as the top collapsed, I pierced upward and there was a mighty Pop! like a balloon.
Tuxedoed male and female tusklings in glittering, formal gowns rained down upon us as our ill-fated fortress collapsed. The lattice-patterned ceiling broke into pieces, the metal clanging and bending where it was bolted together. My hobbled-together spear was caught in one of the ceiling’s holes. It ripped out of my hands as I was violently crushed onto the ground. I arched my back, protecting Donut under my body. Squeals and screams and hollering filled the hall as my minimap turned into a mass of red dots.
A fat, heavy orc crashed into me, and we both rolled, tangled in pieces of ceiling. Donut yowled and leaped away. The ninja star-covered tabletop lay broken to my right. A handful of stars still glowed red, and the creature rolled onto them, squealing with pain. I pulled myself to my feet just as Donut leaped onto my shoulder. She was screaming something incoherent, shooting magic missiles point blank at the tusklings, who rocketed backward with each hit.
I stepped on the squealing tuskling, smushing him deeper into the shuriken-covered wood. His health bar dropped, slowly at first and then just plummeted away as the exponential damage bonus kicked in.