Chapter 89: Boss, the World Consciousness

Ou Xiaolu did not let a single sentence from the White Queen stop him from searching the area. He still checked everything carefully, and only after confirming that there were no other enemies or hidden chambers nearby did he open the room that led to the mercury pool.

The instant he pushed the door open, he knew he had found the real target. A system notification appeared, and the huge blue skull phantom floating above the mercury pool made it clear as well: the enemy was a powerful blue boss.

“Not bad. Even fighting a boss counts as a mission. Three hundred mission points. Killing the boss should give the same, right? If it drops a few good things too, this trip will be worth it no matter what.”

As he spoke, Ou Xiaolu adjusted the newly changed Purple Veil Robe. Moments earlier, when he had slain the Black Chess King, he had gained a great deal of experience, and eighty percent of it had gone into leveling up the Purple Mansion Manual.

At last, the Purple Mansion Manual had reached level two. No new skills had appeared, but the effect of the Purple Veil Robe had grown markedly stronger.

Now two layers of purple veiling shrouded Ou Xiaolu. One looked like a faint purple mist; the other resembled a purple Daoist robe.

That change gave Ou Xiaolu even more confidence. Looking at the mercury pool, which occupied two-thirds of the room, he said calmly, “We’re here. Come out.”

While Ou Xiaolu was speaking, Xiao You, the Red Queen, and the White Queen had also entered. Xiao You had no real fighting ability, so she held the Sun Coral Egg and watched from the side.

The Red Queen and White Queen were ready for battle, and the White Queen even found the time to cast a layer of protection over Xiao You.

Then, without warning, the surface of the mercury pool began to ripple, the motion like the laughter of someone hiding beneath it.

Ou Xiaolu did not hesitate. He fired five shots at once. The pool was only so big; there was no way he could miss.

For those five shots, he used a skill: Fivefold Wraith Volley.

It was not simply a matter of firing five bullets. It was a concealed-weapon technique, one that could harm spirits and grow stronger with every strike. The final shot was twice as powerful as the first.

Ou Xiaolu fired with great relish. The moment the five shots landed, the rippling surface of the mercury pool exploded upward in a pillar of liquid.

A mercury figure that looked exactly like Xiao You appeared within the water column. She stood upon the mercury pool and shouted something at Ou Xiaolu at the top of her lungs, but unfortunately she had no vocal cords, and no sound could come out at all.

For a boss that could not even speak its lines, Ou Xiaolu could not help feeling a little sorry for it. The last time he had fought the earth vein’s true body, the boss had at least been able to play out some little scheme. But this one was supposedly a kind of world consciousness, and it could not even talk. The gap between them was simply too great.

The mercury boss roared for quite a while, but seeing that none of them reacted, her face twitched. She bent her body, and without any visible movement from her feet, she shot toward Ou Xiaolu like an arrow loosed from a bow.

At the same time, her hands transformed into two sharp blades, which she brought down toward him. She gave Ou Xiaolu the feeling of facing a liquid robot that used the Lion King Sword Art.

Ou Xiaolu now fought almost by instinct. The moment the enemy closed in, he launched the Lion King Sword Art together with two sharks without a second thought.

Unexpectedly, that once nearly unbeatable technique failed to produce the usual result.

When he had fought the Black Chess King earlier, it could still be explained as the enemy’s defenses being too strong for the sharks to bite through. But this one was the exact opposite. She had no defense at all. Whenever the sharks bit into her, it was like biting water; no matter how fiercely they tore at her, the wounds on her body healed at once.

As for Ou Xiaolu’s longsword, when it sliced through the enemy, it felt no different from cutting through a stream. The instant he drew the blade back, the wound had already closed.

The magic of the Red Queen and White Queen also had no effect whatsoever on this boss. The Red Queen’s Abyssal Red magic was all fire-based; fireballs and the like went out before they even reached the boss’s body.

The White Queen’s Celestial White magic was even less effective in terms of damage. If she did not still have healing abilities, she would probably already have been cowering in the farthest corner of the room with Xiao You, shouting for all they were worth.

After a few exchanges, Ou Xiaolu began to feel the strain. He could tell that none of their attacks were making any difference. The only thing that had truly harmed the boss so far was the earlier Fivefold Wraith Volley.

But the problem was that his Godslayer’s Deadly Revolver was an automatic-reload revolver. Reloading it by hand was not impossible, but the effect would not be nearly as good, and it certainly would not produce that special impact against spirits.

That made things pointless. Ou Xiaolu was certain that the reason he had injured the boss before was because the boss had still been in a spirit state.

If the boss was not a spirit, then...

His gaze drifted toward Xiao You.

Then he shook his head. That was not a good thought. If he kept thinking like that, he would not even be able to find a girlfriend in the future.

At that thought, Ou Xiaolu roared, “Red Queen, where are your soldiers? Get up here!”

Without hesitation, the Red Queen said, “Where are we supposed to find humanoid creatures? Do you know how much trouble it would cause if we just started snatching people in this world?”

“Then what about your corresponding kings? Bring them out! I’m going to use my ultimate move.”

“If we release the kings now, everything we’ve done will have been for nothing, and they’ll be controlled by the other side in no time. Is that what you want?” the White Queen said from the side.

“Then buy me some time. I’m going to use a big move. A real big move.”

Hearing that, the White Queen, while casting layers of defense and recovery spells on herself, charged straight forward.

Seeing her force herself into the front line so bluntly, Ou Xiaolu was startled. He immediately drove the longsword in his hand into the ground and pointed at the mercury pool and the boss with a torrent of vortex spells.

The skill Vortex Spell was a fairly useful little water-based spell. No matter what kind of water it was, once the skill was cast, a whirlpool would automatically appear.

Of course, the direction of rotation was random, and so was the size.

When the first vortex appeared in the mercury pool, the boss’s movements visibly faltered. It was clear that if the boss wanted to keep fighting, she still depended on the stability of the mercury pool, since her power came from within it.

And that was only the effect of the first vortex. As Ou Xiaolu kept hurling more and more vortex spells in, the attraction and collisions between the whirlpools created reverse currents in the mercury. Some of the vortices also landed on the boss by accident, making her body increasingly unstable.

This was an opportunity neither the Red Queen nor the White Queen would ever miss. The Red Queen shouted, “Buy me some time. I’m going to use a big move too. A real big move!”