The Balloonia castle interior was almost exactly as I had pictured it in my mind, except very bouncy. All of us bounded off the walls and floor as we hurried through narrow passageways and antechambers, before we finally reached the throne room. It had six pillars running down the length of the floor, leading to a raised podium with steps up to a large golden throne upon which a massive figure was seated. To his left was a wrinkly balloon man with a funny-looking hat, who seemed to be the court wizard.

  The floor and pillars looked like stone at a glance if you squinted real hard, but everything was the usual fare of inflated balloons, everything except the king. His body was somehow different, because he had the ribbed texture of a basketball, not to mention the same orangey color. He stood four meters tall as he rose from his seat, and his body was covered in dark-grey interwoven balloons that were meant to resemble plate armor. He had a big belly and a relatively small head with a golden balloon crown resting atop it, and his face was painted on the front, along with a line indicating a double chin. In his left hand he hefted a big shield, made in the same way as his armor, and in his right he wielded a large metallic needle.

  [Appraisal x ]

  Level 14 — ‘King Popper of Balloonia’ — Boss

  “I was born to rule.”

  Often it is bloodline, heritage, tradition, and such things that determine who gets to rule. Monarchies rely entirely on these things for legitimacy, particularly the whole bloodline thing. Obviously, the people of Balloonia don’t have blood, but they do put some value on the quality of air inside a person.

  King Popper has none of these claims to rule, and the air inside him is pretty thin to be honest. What he does have however, is a big-ass needle and durable skin. Balloonians like delicate skin, because it’s considered beautiful, so by that metric King Popper is as ugly as a troll. But it’s really hard to tell him that to his face when he has the only thing in the whole kingdom that can instantly kill someone, doubly so when all attempts to kill him fail, due to his thick skin. Even the guns that the farmers possess can’t hurt him.

  Fair warning, this guy does not give a shit about collateral damage and he really likes popping stuff.

  “Invaders in my throne room!?” the king squeaked menacingly.

  “Oh my God, he’s full of helium!” I exclaimed.

  “Begone!” he squealed, swinging his needle lance and popping one of the large pillars, making the entire castle shake.

  The court wizard trembled in apparent fear of his king, but then he made a complicated gesture of his sausage-like fingers, firing a water-balloon towards us.

  I immediately grabbed John who insisted on sticking close to me, and then I lifted his small body out in front of myself, using his immunity to balloons to send the attack bouncing back towards the wizard, who narrowly dodged it.

  John moaned loudly.

  I let go of him immediately and looked at my hands in disgust.

  “You made me touch him!!” Brock yelled in outrage.

  Samantha, Camilla, and Bee charged the king. Between them they had a pencil, a cactus, and a stinky fish.

  “I don’t think your afflictions will work on the boss,” Panda told Bee, but she ignored him.

  I activated my Giant-Slayer Soul Blade and an ominous red light emerged from my chest as I pulled it out. Unlike every other time I’d used it, it actually looked pretty cool for once.

  It was made of the same bright-red glassy material as my special fishing rod, but it came out as a very uniquely-shaped sword. The handle was like the grip of a katana, the crossguard was shaped like an X with the blade protruding from the middle, and the blade itself looked like a 2D view of a strand of DNA with two coiling pieces connected by thin horizontal lines between them.

  “It kind of looks like a key,” Panda noted.

  Suddenly Bee came bouncing back towards me, followed by Camilla. Both of them had been violently repelled the moment they’d attempted to strike the king.

  “He has some kind of reflective power!” Camilla announced.

  In front of the throne, Samantha was bobbing and weaving around the king’s powerful stabs, each of which popped the tiles under her, revealing a dark cavity below.

  Bee used her wings to pop back to her feet, and then she surged forward, activating her Moth Dash to fly right through the boss.

  Surprisingly, even this was reflected and she came bouncing back a second later.

  The wizard launched another spell, this time a red balloon.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Like an eager golden retriever, John used the bouncy floor to intercept the attack with his face, sending the balloon right back to the wizard, where it popped against his wrinkly body and deposited a whole lot of lava, immediately melting the old guy down to nothing and popping the floor under him.

  John paused after he landed again, breathing heavily with a disgusting grin on his face.

  “We can leave him here, right?” Camilla asked.

  “I hope so,” I told her.

  I loped forward, right as Samantha jumped from the ground and stabbed her pencil into King Popper’s head. Predictably, she was sent bouncing backwards, her pen flying away with her.

  “Do you guys not have real weapons!?” I yelled at her when she flew past me.

  “We lost them as we fled the masked guy!” Camilla explained.

  “Guess it’s up to me then,” I said.

  Using SPRING_HEEL mixed with the bouncy floor, I shot my body at the boss like a missile, my weirdly-shaped soul blade pointed ahead of me like a spear.

  As the two tips of the sword struck the king’s body, a loud click from some enormous lock echoed through the throne room.

  “That was weird,” Panda remarked.

  Then the sword was fired away from the king’s large stomach, spinning wildly as it flew through the ceiling, popping the bricks and vanishing from my sight.

  “My soul!” I exclaimed.

  A split-second later I flew after it, the reflective power of the boss impossible to circumvent.

  As my body hurled through the ceiling, chasing the path of popped balloons made by my soul blade, I emerged out into the fresh air. I used my Blink to catch up to my flying sword, and the moment I touched it, it was reabsorbed back into my body, making me feel whole again.

  “Use your traceback skill!” Panda told me, standing on my horizontally-flying body.

  “Traceback(damage)!”

  Traceback initiating!

  …

  …Locating damage origin point…

  …

  …Triangulating…

  …

  …Playing ‘taken_quote.mp4’ through nearest monitor…

  …

  Success!

  Traceback source discovered.

  …

  …Teleporting…

  I reappeared right behind King Popper, just as John allowed himself to be speared through his stomach by the giant spear. It was as long as he was tall, which made the scene look amusing in a dark way.

  “You idiot!” Samantha yelled at him.

  Then John placed his hand on the king’s torso and it instantly inflated to ten times its original size before popping violently and shaking the entire castle.

  He let out a satisfied groan before collapsing in a heap next to the dead boss.

  “What a way to go out,” Panda remarked.

  “He sacrificed himself to save us!” Brock squealed, a sad note in his voice. “Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all!”

  Then Bee went over and shoved an apple-sized strawberry into John’s mouth, and he immediately sprang back to his feet, the rapid regeneration pushing the large needle lance out of his torso.

  “Why did you have to go and do that?” I asked her with a frown.

  Samantha came over and snatched the lance.

  “Since you took the weapon, we’ll take the king’s materials,” Bee told her and snatched up King Popper’s large head.

  [‘King Popper’s Head’ x ]

  Monstrosity Material

  +10 to Vitality

  +7 to Strength

  +10 to Damage Reflection

  + Kingly Aura passive

  Weight: approximately twelve-and-three-quarters

  “How do we get out of here?” Camilla asked.

  “Get out??” John responded, confused. “We’re staying here forever, aren’t we!?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said and went up to the throne to look around, avoiding the hole created by the wizard’s reflected spell, until I found a balloon lever behind where King Popper had been seated.

  “How did you know that would be there?” Panda asked me as I pulled down the lever.

  “They always hide these things behind the throne in a boss room,” I replied.

  The wall in front of me immediately opened up, leading down a long hallway. Everyone followed after me, even John. At the end there was a door with an exit sign where the text was made out of one single masterfully-shaped red balloon snake.

  I pushed the door aside and revealed a tube-shaped tower with a small trampoline on the floor.

  We all craned our necks to look up, and sure enough, far above in the distant ceiling of Balloonia’s sky was a hole.

  “This looks to be our way out,” I said.

  “I’ll stay behind,” John responded.

  “Okay,” Samantha, Camilla, and I all replied simultaneously.

  “You’re not gonna tell me to reconsider?” John asked.

  “Would it work?” Samantha replied.

  “Probably not.”

  “Alright, let’s get going then,” I told the others.

  “Before you go,” John said, eyeing my arm.

  “No,” I told him. “You can’t touch Brock.”

  “Fak off!! I thought you was dead!!”

  John looked down at his feet.

  “I’ll go first,” Bee said and hopped on the trampoline.

  She was immediately launched straight up into the air, flying at absurd speed towards the hole in the ceiling far above.

  “Try not to get publicly executed again,” I told John and followed her.

  Samantha and Camilla came behind me.

  As I flew straight up, I gave Balloonia one last look.

  “What a weird place,” I said as I passed through the exit hole in the ceiling.

  Everything went black for a moment, and then I found myself standing on the edge of the clover-shaped hole.

  “We only need two more materials to finish the monstrosity,” Bee said, hefting the mushroom net with the crack wizard and King Popper’s head. “I think I’ll use the king’s head for the main body.”

  “That means we’ve got enough for a five-fingered hand, right?” I asked.

  Samantha and Camilla popped into existence next to us.

  “I feel bad for the Balloonians,” Camilla remarked.

  “It’s like letting a fox sleep in the chicken coop,” Samantha added. She was the last person I would’ve expected to utter such a phrase.

  A woosh of wings preceded something hard striking me in the back and pushing me forward, almost knocking me back into the hole to Balloonia.

  Then a loud smack emanated from my body, followed by a heavy thud behind me.

  We all spun around to see Matthew Twine lying on the ground, knocked down by my body reflecting his surprise attack with a sword made of blood.

  I frowned. “Ambush tactics? Really?”

  Bee had her stinky fish in her hand in an instant and Samantha raised her needle lance as Matthew quickly got to his feet.

  But then a familiar voice rang out.

  “Steve says: Matthew Twine becomes a little rat.”

  Before our eyes, the musclebound Matthew, who wore a red mask and yellow raincoat with wings, shrunk until he was under half-a-meter tall. His face and mask warped into that of a rat, and a pink tail and grey fur poked out from his tiny little raincoat.

  “Aww, that’s adorable,” I said.

  “The Flayed Lady will tear you to bits!” the tiny rat squeaked.

  Then suddenly a golden lion jumped over the nearby buildings, landing with its front paw directly onto Matthew, crushing him into the ground and turning him to paste in the process.

  We all looked up to see Steve seated upon the lion, still as fucked-up-looking as before.

  “Steve says…”