Risen World

Chapter 301: Identifying the Boss Class Beast of the Town

The enormous figure that was resting in the mostly destroyed school building seemed to have a rather large stomach that was rising and falling constantly. From its position they could all tell that it was asleep, but at the same time they didn't want to move any closer to check the beast out. What was surprising was the fact they were able to see the creature without having to use Becca's echolocation. The haze in the area around the school building was far less than it had been anywhere else and Joshua could tell the reason once he noticed every time the large beast breathed in it seemed to suck in some of the haze into its mouth. As it slept it slowly thinned out the haze around it, but it seemed to be recharging itself based off of how powerful its' presence was.

When Joshua started to look over the creature from his position on top of a building across a street, he was able to tell right away that the beast seemed to be based off of an orangutan. He wasn't sure what species it might be crossed with since he couldn't see the back side of its body, but from the front it had the heavy fur and the face of an orangutan. The one strange thing that seemed to set it apart was the fact that it seemed to have two pairs of arms unlike normal types of it species, but Joshua knew there would have to be something weird about the creature since it was a haze creature after all.

Joshua quickly used observe on it so that he could find out how powerful the creature was and he wasn't surprised when level eighty popped up by its name along with five stars. The beast was going to be troublesome to deal with on its own and Joshua knew that it wasn't the boss creature of the town. The reason he could tell this was simply because of the fact that it wasn't generating the haze itself, but was instead feeding off of it. The boss haze creature of the town was also considered to source of the haze. It generated haze from its body into the surroundings and could manipulate it to its will. This orangutan was powerful, but it clearly didn't have those qualities.

Before Joshua could think of anything else concerning the overgrown creature he was surprised when he heard a high pitched shrieking sound come from across the school building. It was on the other side of where the orangutan was and was out of his current vision even with the thinned out haze. The shrieking seemed to wake up the orangutan as it started to move and roll over. In the process of rolling it destroyed even more of the school building, but it also showed off another portion of its body that was distinctly different from what you would expect of the creature. It had a tail on its back that had the look of a scorpion tail, but seemed to be far more flexible as it swayed back and forth.

The large orangutan pushed itself up on to its feet and when it stood up on its own power it was a bit over five stories tall. Its frame was rather bulky though which made it seem extremely large. Size wise it was comparable to Tank, but it probably didn't have the slow movement issue that Tank did outside of water. The orangutan roared back towards where the scream came from before two shrieks responded in turn. Joshua, Becca, and Marcus all just watched the sight with a bit of apprehension since they didn't know what exactly was going on. They made sure to hide their presence as much as possible and stay out of sight. If they were found then they'd have to run for their lives right from the start without finding out any more information which was what they wanted to avoid the most.

After a couple of minutes of waiting as they just watched the large orangutan stare in the direction of where the screaming had come from nothing had appeared yet. Its tail continued to sway back and forth lazily before it swooped down and snatched up a few roaming smaller haze creatures that were nearby. The tail then hovered back up into the air before going over the top of the orangutan's head and dropping the small haze creatures right into its mouth. The creature seemed to enjoy the small snack as it lazily munched away while waiting.

Soon enough Joshua and the rest were able to see what exactly the beast was waiting for as two smaller monkey like creature came into view as they jumped from building to building. Their frames were much smaller than the orangutan's but they moved extremely quickly as they made their way over to the much larger beast. The two monkeys were both only around two and a half stories height wise, which made them much smaller than Cinder let alone the orangutan, but it didn't seem like the creatures were having any sort of dispute. In fact it looked as if they were talking as they grunted at each other continuously.

Joshua quickly observed the monkeys to see how strong they were and wasn't surprised when they both came up as level eighty with five stars just like the other sub-boss. This meant that there were at least three sub-bosses for this town and they seemed to all be working together. It was going to be troublesome trying to take them all down without the boss noticing. Especially if they wanted to do it in a timely manner, so that the large group on the fringe of town wouldn't get dragged into it in some way.

'So what do you think Josh? Are these all the sub-bosses?' Marcus asked through the mental link.

'That's most likely the case since all of the roaring would have attracted more over if there were any others.' Joshua said through the mental link as he looked at the monkey like creatures talking to each other. 'Besides with how much haze that orangutan seems to eat up on its own by just sleeping I doubt the haze can support anymore sub-boss level creatures at its current level.'

'Are you getting our view on your end Natalie?' Becca asked as she continued to stare at the large creatures.

'Yeah we can all see them. It looks like this might be rather difficult. Especially if they prefer to stick together while fighting.' Natalie responded.

'Well if that does end up being the case we'll probably have to take the little ones out first so we can focus on the big guy. They seem like they'd excel at being major annoyances if we left them alone.' Marcus said as he wrote a few more notes into his little booklet.

'Yeah they're too fast to leave alone during a long fight. They could get around the tanks and go for the back line if given the chance. We'll have to clear them out from the start while I distract the big guy.' Joshua said as a plan for fighting the creatures started forming in his head. He knew that there were a lot of things that he still didn't know about the sub-boss creatures such as the abilities they could possibly possess, but he had some ideas of what their basic attacks would be from their body structures. Having four arms made them all fairly ferocious when up close, but the long stinger like tails that each of the monkeys had would give them some range if their enemies tried to back away. Playing around those physical traits would end up being key to taking the creatures down.

While they were busy observing and trying to think of ways to fight the sub-bosses another noise started to spread throughout the area. It was consecutive loud thumping sounds that seemed to get louder as whatever was making the noise approached. The pair of monkeys and the orangutan all looked in the direction of where the noise was coming from with excited looks. The monkeys were jumping up and down as they smashed apart the buildings that they were next to while the orangutan started pounding the ground with its fist repeatedly while shouting. It was like all of them decided to start cheering on whatever creature was coming, which instantly got Joshua to thinking the big boss of the area was on its way.

Joshua didn't know what exactly had gotten all of the boss monsters of the haze to start gathering up like this, but it could end up being a common occurrence based off of the type of animals the haze creatures were mimicking themselves after. Apes were social animals so it came as no surprise to Joshua that they would end up spending a lot of time around each other. They would just have to attack them during the times where the beast were separated. There was no way for them to win if they had to fight all of the sub-bosses alongside the boss creature of the haze.

After a few minutes of watching all of the sub-bosses make a ruckus the boss class haze creature that they were welcoming decided to make its presence known. It let out a giant and deep rumbling roar that caused the building that Joshua's group was standing on to shake in response. Some of the glass windows that were still intact on the buildings around the area shattered from the shaking alone. It didn't take long for the new giant beast to come within view thanks to its enormous size. The creature towered over all of the others and was just a bit shorter than the water tower that was at the front of the town.

The beast was a good eight stories tall and each time it took a step forward a loud thump would be created. Just like when it came to all of the sub-bosses, this creature had four arms and an enormous scorpion tail that stretched out and swayed above its head. It was another creature that took on the form of another type of ape, but this time around it was one of the most powerful apes Joshua knew of. It mirrored itself after the form of a gorilla with thick hair around its arms and most of its body. It had a vicious sneer on its face as it huffed and angrily smashed one of its fist into a nearby building. The force of the blow caused the building to collapse in on itself at the casual swing showing the creatures strength.

The large gorilla kept walking over to the other apes ahead of it as they all gathered around it and looked up excitedly. One thing that was noticeable about the creatures that stood out was their fur. All of them mimicked their animal counter parts quite well with the monkeys having dark brown fur, the orangutan having a reddish orange fur, and the gorilla having black fur with a silver tinge around its back. The one major difference was the fact that there were strands of purple in all of their hair. It made it look as if their bodies were being tainted by the haze.

For a while the creatures seemed to grunt at each other as if they were talking about something. Joshua watched intensely to see what they were going to do, but to his disappointment they didn't do anything special the entire time. They grunted towards each other and got a bit rowdy before calming down once more. The large gorilla seemed to be the power behind the operation while the orangutan seemed to be doing most of the talking as it grunted the most. On the other hand the two monkeys just continued to play and jump around the two massive beast for fun.

After a while the beast decided to go their separate ways as the massive gorilla was the first to leave as the tail on its back casually knocked aside one of the monkeys that had been getting on its nerves. Unlike with the other creatures that seemed to be absorbing the haze from the surrounding air, the gorilla's body seemed to pour out haze as it strode through the area. It was getting harder to see the creatures as the haze started to thicken up around them until the massive beast moved out of sight.

'So what do we do now? Do we head back?' Becca asked through the mental link.josei

'Not yet. We need to map out where all of these creatures go so we can take them on separately before they can join up with each other.' Joshua said as he watched the monkeys take off into the distance. He urged Becca and Marcus on to follow the creatures into the haze.