Leon pushed the doors open and walked in.
The boss room was immediately different from everything that had preceded it. The cave's suffocating darkness gave way to a space that was genuinely, properly lit, torches mounted at intervals along walls that stretched higher and wider than any chamber he had passed through. After navigating by skeleton-glow for the better part of his time within the cave, the light felt almost aggressive.
It also meant he could see what was waiting for him with complete clarity.
He wished, briefly, that he couldn't.
The ogre sitting at the far end of the room was not like the ones in the corridors. Those had been large and threatening in the straightforward way that most large things with weapons tended to be threatening. This one was something else.
It sat at a height that was already significant even seated, and when Leon's eyes traced the full outline of it and did the rough calculation, he arrived at somewhere around eight feet. Possibly more.
Its body was dense with muscle that pushed against the iron armour it wore, scanty pieces of heavy plate covering important places, while under it were old clothes and skin. The armour looked largely ceremonial on something built like this.
Leon stopped walking immediately looking.
He hadn't decided to stop. His legs made the decision independently and the rest of him accepted it. The ferocity it emanated alone sent shivers down Leon's spine, stopping him dead in his tracks. He needed no further introduction to the danger he was about to face.
Using whatever logic was available to him, he speculated that this boss was Grade 2, it had to be at the very least.
'This thing could kill me without particularly trying.'
He was glad, in that moment, that undead did not feel fear. His skeletons stood before him with the same fixed, indifferent calm they brought to everything, greatswords ready, blue eye sockets forward. There was no hesitation in them at all.
Quite immediately, the monster registered their presence.
Its eye lids drew together slowly, narrowing with the focused attention of something that was deciding what it was looking at before deciding what to do about it. Then it stood. The movement was unhurried, the rising of something that had no reason to rush, and as it came to its full height the scale of it became even more apparent. It reached down beside it without looking and picked up the greatsword that had been resting there.
The sword was enormous. Where the skeletons' weapons were large by human standards, this one was in a different category of scale, thick and heavy and shaped more like a club that had been given a rough approximation of a blade's form than anything designed for finesse. It held it in one hand with ease, if though the sword was not as heavy as it looked.
Leon looked at it and then looked at his skeletons.
'Right. Let's not stand here.'
Not wanting to be the one to react, Leon ordered the skeletons to attack, spreading them out so that they didn't get smashed all at once by the ogre.
The ogre swung its sword in a wide horizontal arc that would have taken all three skeletons cleanly off their feet if they had still been standing at the height it crossed. Leon pulled the command through fast, all three ducking simultaneously, and the blade passed over them with a displaced rush of air that Leon felt from across the room.
The follow-through left the ogre momentarily open, and Leon anticipating that didn't waste it. The skeleton positioned behind the ogre came up immediately, charging in with a full commitment swing that landed across the creature's back with genuine force.
Surprisingly, the cut was shallow.
The armour was part of it, but even where the blade found exposed flesh the ogre's sheer density resisted it. The creature grunted, more annoyance than pain, and turned. It swung a fist rather than the sword this time, a faster motion, and the skeletons ducked again, slipping under the arc and repositioning around it.
They settled into a rhythm that Leon guided with steady, continuous attention. The skeletons moved around the ogre's legs and lower body, never staying in one position long enough to be targeted specifically, ducking under the wide swings that were devastating in their arc but slow to redirect after committing. Every time a gap opened, one of the three moved in and struck. It was never deep, but stayed consistent, adding up, a slow accumulation of damage across the ogre's thighs and joints.
The ogre's patience eroded faster than its health and it stopped targeting the skeletons.
The shift happened without warning. One moment the creature was tracking the nearest skeleton with its sword raised, and then its eyes moved past it entirely and found Leon standing at the rear of the room. A decision passed across its face that Leon read about half a second before the creature acted on it.
He moved just in time as the sword came down in the space he had been standing with enough force that the impact against the stone floor sent fragments skipping across the room. Leon scrambled sideways, keeping his eyes on the ogre's weapon hand, reading the next swing before the backswing had even finished. The creature was fast for its size, faster than the corridor ogres by a margin that was immediately and uncomfortably apparent, but luckily still enough for Leon to react.
Given the fact that the ogre was large, and large things needed space to commit to full swings, and Leon had spent enough time watching the earlier fights to understand how to use walls and angles to limit the arc available to something that size. He moved into its space rather than away from it when the next swing came, getting inside the radius where the sword lost most of its leverage, and the blade passed behind him wide.