TBATE Duality

Chapter 54

Jade Leywin POV

We entered the boss room, it was huge, easily 50 meters in height and several hundreds of meters wide and long, the entire room was made of black polished stone, the only sources of light except those we brought with us were little torches scattered here and there that projected long shadows all over the place, suddenly the ground shook

"MOOOOOO!!!"

An earsplitting lowing resonated across the cavern, differently from the others I heard in the last few days rather than deep and booming  it was strangely high-pitched, augmenting my eyes I searched in the darkness and I saw the boss

It was massive, 10 meters tall, differently from the other minotaurs it has midnight blue skin instead of bronze and his physique was more lean than bulky, rather than monstrous power this guy seemed built more for speed and agility, it has 3 pairs of ivory horns twisting and turning on top of its head forming a crown-like structure and at the center of its forehead a sleek, sharp jet-black horn sprouted, an undeniable proof of it being corrupted by the Vritra, like the other minotaurs it was only barely covered my some loincloth and it carried a giant claymore, which was almost as big as him, strapped on its back

At the boss's sides were the 5 AA class beasts, while smaller than the boss they were still bigger than anything we met so far, they were 7 meters tall and like the other they were essentially a walking bunch of muscles, they had sickly grey skin and a jet-black horn sprouting from their foreheads with a single pair of ivory horns coming out from the sides of their heads, they carried a variety of 2 handed weapons: claymores, battle axes, hammers, halberds and a massive flail

Behind them there were the 200 A class minotaurs ready with their weapons drawn, I could feel everyone was starting to get nervous at the sight

"MOOOOO!"

With another high-pitched earsplitting lowing I felt deviant fire attribute mana being gathered by the boss

"DODGE!!!"

I yelled, luckily everyone in this unit had enough experience to tell it wasn't time for questions and just jumped out of the way, less than a second later the boss shot out a massive lighting from its mouth which gouged the caverns ground obliterating everything on its path, as the lighting died down the army of minotaurs charged at us

"TAAANKS!" Drogo yelled and the members of the unit responsible for defence stepped up, some were augmenters carrying giant shields others were conjurers that casted powerful wide area barriers around all of us

In order to fight more efficiently and minimizing the casualties I proposed to have the troops responsible for clearing dungeons take a page from the alacryans, essentially during boss battles the unit would be divided in three sub-units, one responsible of defence which was composed of both augmenters and conjurers and their sole role was preventing other people from getting hurt, another was melee damagers which was the equivalent of the alacryan's strikers this unit was composed solely of augmenters specialised in fighting close range, the last one was ranged damagers a unit composed mostly of conjurers (although it had some augmenters specialised in long range like Helen) with powerful wide area offensive spells

' Yozora let's go! '

I activated [Shadow drive] and shot forward, passing all our troops and using [Shadow step] to avoid the army of beasts, Yozora did the same jumping out of my shadow, growing to a size she deemed fit for fighting these guys and charging at the 5 AA class while I took on the boss

I felt him gather deviant fire mana once again and I knew he was about to use its breath attack again, since they're locked in battle they won't be able to dodge it and while it was true that the other minotaurs would be hit as well I doubt the boss would stop