The moment Joshua finished destroying the core on his end the veil of darkness that the boss had created to trap the both of them inside the sphere for a one on one battle was lifted. It faded away quickly allowing Joshua to see how the rest of the group was doing. From what he could see most of the members of his group were doing just fine if not a little banged up. The tanks seemed to have taken the most damage with their ruined armor and the bloody wounds on their bodies that the healers were busy fixing back up. They were still all on edge as Laura and Julia tried to keep most of the giant heads from being able to regenerate, but now that the core had been destroyed the regeneration factor of the beast had faded. All six of the heads crumbled and fell crashing to the ground.
Joshua could see the relief in their eyes as most of them looked exhausted from having to hold off the boss for so long. Luckily no one had been put in fatal danger from their injuries and it was all something that the healers could handle. After noticing everyone was alright Joshua had to deal with his own problem at the moment. The backlash from using so much aura for such a long period of time had put such a strain on his body that it felt like his blood was on fire. He was utterly exhausted as he struggled to just stand and place the large scale blade on his back so the holster could lighten the weight a bit with its enchantments.
When the rest of the group noticed Joshua standing by the corpse of the boss where the core laid next to him shattered like glass, they all sighed with relief. No one seemed to have the energy to rush over which to Joshua was a surprise considering he was used to his little sister being extremely hyper, but instead she seemed like she was going to pass out from exhaustion any moment. In the end Henry was the first one to make his way over since he seemed to have more energy than everyone else. He had used a lot of mana to keep up his support spells, but it was mostly mentally draining for him.
"I'm glad you took that thing down just in time. If you had been stuck in their much longer we would have ran out of ideas on how to keep the heads occupied." Henry said with a small smile as they both glanced over to the boss's body which started to fall apart and break down into dust. The only part of the boss that was left over was the broken core that could sell for quite a lot of system points if it was anything like with the haze bosses. "How did things go on your end?"
"Honestly I was getting nowhere at first." Joshua said with a sigh before he sat down to catch his breath and to let his body calm down. It still felt painful to move so he didn't want to press things for the moment. "The damn thing just healed from everything I did to it and it was beating me like a pig. I could only play defensive at first, but that wouldn't have worked in the long run since you guys would have been in trouble and my aura would have eventually run out."
"Then I guess you must have changed things up at some point?" Henry said taking a seat in front of Joshua. The rest of the group was making their way over while the healers kept focusing on healing up the tanks.
"Yeah I just basically said to hell with it and went all or nothing in the end. I used my aura purely for damage instead of healing myself. What was weird about it was the fact that at first I couldn't see or hear anything, but when I wanted my aura sense to be more accurate I could suddenly see the boss clear as day. It was far more draining on my aura, but it allowed me to react in time. Later on I did something similar where I wanted my blade to cut through its armor and deal actual damage. My aura seemed to respond to that as well and grew sharper in reply while leaving remnants of aura wherever I cut through the boss halting its regeneration."
"Sounds like you lucked out to me. Whatever it was it has something to do with your aura obviously, but how does that exactly work?" Henry asked out loud, but seemed to be thinking to himself. Everyone else that heard their little conversation seemed a bit surprised as well.
"I don't know, but it definitely cost a price to use my aura like that." Joshua said as he lifted his arm and everyone could see how it was shaking nonstop. Joshua took some calming breaths to try to placate his body a bit as he turned away from looking at his shaking hand. The pain was still there, but it wasn't as bad as it had been when he first killed the boss. "It was definitely a lot of power at the time, but the backlash seems to be pretty bad. I don't think I'll be able to use my aura properly for another hour and I can hardly move at the moment."
"Hmm then I guess you shouldn't use that in a situation where you have more to do after you use up all your aura, but in this situation you didn't really have much of a choice." Henry said with a sigh. "Well no matter, we'll be resting up for a bit now anyways. We've got nothing to worry about with the dungeon cleared." Just as Henry finished saying that a large message appeared that everyone could see.
[Congratulations on clearing the Canyon Dungeon. You are the first group of your species to clear a level eighty dungeon. Accordingly you shall be given the special reward that was promised at the beginning of the dungeon along with another reward based on your clearance record. Analyzing…excellent clear reward shall be given accordingly.]
The moment the message ended another teleportation glyph appeared at the center of the room while a large treasure chest appeared right next to it. This treasure chest was different from the ones they had seen up to this point since it was golden in color and quite a bit larger. Everyone seemed surprised by the outcome, but they all looked excited as they stared over at the chest with anticipation on what could be inside. Instead of running over right away they controlled their emotions and made sure to take care of all of their injuries first. While the healers were busy taking care of the rest of the group Lilly made her way over to Joshua while summoning her pair of rabbits from her soul realm to help heal him a bit.
It took a good ten minutes with her help for Joshua to feel well enough to move around once again. He could still feel the strain on his body, but it was more of a dull ache at this point. By then everyone in the group seemed well off enough to make their way over to the treasure chest and see what was on the inside. Joshua of course was the one to open it with everyone urging him to hurry up so they could see what was on the inside of the chest. He opened it quickly and was surprised to only see two items laying on the inside for them all to see.
The first item was a bit interesting and was something that Joshua had never seen before while exploring other dungeons. It was a pair of futuristic looking glasses that stood out quite a bit. Of course he had never needed to wear glasses before in his life so he wasn't going to try to assume the glasses were good looking or not, but he was interested in figuring out what they were for. When he reached down and touched the pair of glasses a duplicate was formed for him to pick up and take out of the treasure chest. Henry reached over and touched them afterwards and another duplicate was formed for him to take as well. With that they could assume that there would be a pair of glasses for each of them to take. Joshua grabbed the other thing that was in the treasure chest as well since he knew that it was a blue print of some kind and the rest of the group would want him to get it anyways.
Afterwards Joshua stepped away from the treasure chest so that everyone could get a pair of glasses of their own. While they were doing that Joshua used observe on the pair of glasses so he could figure out what they were actually used for. He knew that they were the special reward that the system was giving all of them for being the first group to clear a level eighty dungeon so there had to be something special about them. When he observed them a message appeared from the system explaining what the glasses were used for.
[Glasses of the soul – A specialty item given by the system that allows the user to observe a beast and see how much compatibility it has with the user of the glasses. This can be incredibly useful when it comes to finding the perfect beast companion in the future.]
It was a rather short and simple explanation, but Joshua got a pretty good idea of why the glasses would be so useful. They weren't exactly useful for anyone other than Lilly at the moment, but when they reached level one hundred and gained the ability to have a beast companion these glasses would allow them to find the perfect match for them. It was easier for Lilly to have good connections with other beast since she was a tamer in the first place with an extremely special soul beast, but for the rest of the group they needed to find more specific beast that fit their soul beast.
In Joshua's case he knew that wolves would most likely be a better match up for him as a beast companion because of Buster, but every wolf wouldn't be the same. Some might not have personalities that match or the strength to keep up with the Fenrir soul beast that Joshua had. The pair of glasses would go a long way into helping him figure out which would go well with Buster. He was sure the other members would also end up in similar situations especially in the case of Laura and Madalyn who had some fairly fantastical soul beast that they would have to match up to in the end.
"These things are rather interesting. It's too bad we won't be able to test them out until later on. We've still got a long way to go until we reach the point where we can actually use them." Isabella said with a neutral look as she took off her pair of glasses and tried on the ones they had gained as a reward. When Joshua saw her in the odd looking futuristic glasses he felt like he was looking at some kind of character from an old nineties futuristic movie. They didn't exactly look bad, but they were definitely weird looking.
"Lilly why don't you try them out on your pets. It'll be a good way for us to see how they work." Amy said with a bright smile as she looked over to the pair of rabbits that Lilly was still carrying around.
Lilly smiled before putting them on and looking down at the two rabbits for a moment. "It says that the compatibility with Mr. and Mrs. Hoppy is at eighty five percent." Lilly said before she started summoning different beast companions from her soul realm. When it came to Jade and Light the compatibility shot up to ninety percent. Then when it came to Tank and Cinder it was at a full on hundred percent which didn't seem all that surprising to Joshua or Lilly. Those two were obviously the two pets that connected the best with Lilly at the moment which helped them all believe that the pair of glasses were working as intended.
"Well then what was the other thing you got out of the chest?" Adrian asked Joshua as he tried on the pair of glasses as well.
"Another blue print, but this time around it has gold trimming on it so I figure it's a bit more special than the other ones." Joshua said with a grin as he waived the blue print in front of everyone. In the end they had gotten quite a bit out of the dungeon, but now it was time to head back and get prepared for the next big expedition.
An interesting reward from the boss that I figured would be highly valued by the group in the future. You still don't know what the othet thing they got is, but I thinky you will all enjoy it. Thanks for the support!