Several Phobias have been Utilized for this Boss Fight

The parasite whipped its way to freedom in a never-ending string of black rope, dark and black like horse hair. He was hundreds of meters long, spindly, and uncoordinated as it felt fresh air in the longest time. Everyone backed off to avoid its thrashes. Who’s to say what poisons or barbs the parasite could inflict? After a moment, the demon general fully bloomed from its corpse and became its own creature, a monster the size of an elephant.

“I think I’ve seen enough,” Fuuma stated, ready to vomit. “Girls, kill it.” 

The kunoichi gave it a one-two punch. Tama constrained the wiry beast with a cloud of razor-sharp wire while Kuroni unloaded into it at full auto with mono-molecular paper sheets. The wire pressed into the hairs. The paper diced it into chunks. Pieces of the demon fell off one by one, but there was no screaming or reaction. The creature continued to exist. And then it got angry.

The horsehairs became solid, straight geometric shapes, sharp and angular, with no sense of a face or limbs. It was a swiftly shifting mass of spikes and violence, moving as if it were a glitch in a video game. It rushed the guards who came to protect the king, the wires phasing through its ethereal form. Whatever it touched became corrupted, its angles digging their way into people and tearing them apart from the inside. Skin warped with its infection and became spiked as well, and the defending knights became contorted, their bodies exploding in all directions in a ball of spikes, and yet the skin never broke or tore. It tenderly held the body together, keeping the corruption inside. 

With a scream, Fuuma’s team unloaded further into the escaping monster, trying to slow it down in any way. Fuuma’s internal HUD featured a health bar, signalling what damage they were inflicting upon it. It wasn’t going down a millimeter. 

“Get back!”

The general, a hundred meters away down the hill, glitched in their midst. A strand of spikes went for Kuroni, whose quick reflexes couldn’t match the demon’s breaking of reality, but the blow was blocked by Mars, who was already mid-leap when it attacked. Despite the axe alone making contact, the tendril shot up Mars’ arm, bursting it apart in painful, stretching juts. Only in a flash of desperation did Kuroni’s saber ignite and cut the tendrils within a second. The ninja pulled away the orc before its charge could obliterate them.

“Orc!” She tried to grab his attention, but his mind was only focused on his arm, still wriggling with worm-like demons that thrashed his appendage purple. It was eating him from the inside.

Still, the pain was nothing compared to the orc’s adrenaline, and they dodged the second charge and then sidestepped the erratic pattern of the third. The demon whispered with slipping, suctionlike sounds as if it had a thousand tongues in a thousand mouths whistling something incomprehensible to human ears. 

A beam of light ripped through the beast, piercing from one end to the other. Then, a solid shell did the same, this time with more viscera, as its shrapnel danced across the tendrils. Dige smirked at this and looked up to Fuuma for approval, but his face was still white with terror. His HUD was unchanging, and the beast took an interest in them. 

The next charge was not as fast as before, and its lunge was more gentle. It paid no attention to Tama and Artemis, whose weaponry did less than nothing to the vile creature, and instead found interest in the heroes as its spike reached for them. In a panic, Fuuma threw his rifle at him. His main weapon pushed the tendrils away, but only for a moment before crushing it in its spikes and tossing it aside. It came for him nonetheless.

“Dammit!” The boy pulled his sidearm, but to no avail, and the demon gripped him with piercing barbs, eager to enter him.

“The fools,” the demon general whispered, his voice floating in Fuuma’s head. “You can corrupt the heroes if you put your mind to it.”

Fuuma felt as if his soul was being snatched away, as if he was being violated beyond his body and his mind. Darkness crept into him, and he felt a communion between the other dark entities that noticed his presence with malicious glee. Some were horrors beyond his comprehension, others he’d find in the mythology of other religions. One was a familiar face obscured and distant in the shadow, not daring to look at him, but beyond that visage sat a queen in robes of white and hair of jet black, a ghoulish and dark woman whose countenance bore no love for life or anything. It was only when she noticed him that she smiled, warping her face into an uncanny nightmare. 

Dige cut the tendrils, saving Fuuma’s soul, though imperiling his. His own chain-powered axe tore through the being like teeth tearing through meat.

“Melee boy!” He roared. “Use melee!”

Fuuma could barely understand, but his hand reached for the beam saber, and it crackled to life with energy. Despite the losing battle, their newfound weapons staved off the spikes jutting, slashing, and stabbing. There was little in tactics, only the wild wailing of blades to combat the unpredictability of the creature. It was a valiant last stand for an impending defeat. The two were hemorrhaging blood the further the corruption spread. They were going to die. 

“Is that all you got?” Dige huffed. “You think your kisses are gonna get the best of me? I’m just…I’m just getting…”

Dige let his guard down too much, and a spike intended to end him struck his chainmail and blasted him into Fuuma, causing both to crash lifelessly across the ground and into the lake, skipping across like a pair of stones. Fuuma could hear a shriek before the water took him, and he descended under the depths.

The two souls were in rough shapes, the detached tendrils wriggling to hold on as the water dyed red with their blood. However, after a moment, the corruption and evil fell away, and the two’s bodies emptied of parasites, leaving them free. However, this did not save their lives, and the two rested peacefully at the bottom of the lake.

When they awoke, they found themselves in more water, though it was much more pleasant. Fuuma lay in the tender embrace of his goddess, while Dige became a fountain of all sorts of liquids as Marine fixed him.

“Thank goodness, you guys made it!” Marine sighed. “Do you realize how close that was? That demon almost took your soul!”

“We’ll give you a few more seconds to heal,” Elbeth added, her voice tense with eyes watching elsewhere. “But don’t do this again. Things are getting heated all at once.”

From what they could gather, the waters were rippling harder than usual, and Rani was running back and forth, turning light balls into human bodies. A familiar face emerged into Rani’s arms.

“Hey, Shige!” Fuuma waved weakly.

“Fuuma?” The teen grimaced. “Where have you been?”

“We found the demon general near the lake. Send help, quickly!”

“No!” Dige roared. “You stay in your lane! Boy! Those worms are weak to water! We gotta drown the bastard!”

“Are you kidding? What do you-, huh?”

The HUD did not lie this time. The demon general was at 99.2% health.

"It is my healing water." Marine scratched her head. "There's a shrine to me at the top of the mountain."

Dige roared with excitement. The serene ambience of the soul lighthouse was broken.

“Times up, get back in there,” Elbeth offered her prayer and dropped Fuuma back into the water and, by extension, Glynn’s World. 

Once all were returned, the goddesses let out a sigh.

“That dwarf is gonna get them both killed for real.”

“Oh, you think?”