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The Gamer Chapter 1620 – Raid and Adventures 16 – The Raid Boss of the Raid
🕑 Added 2024-02-10 21:43:55 +0000 UTCHalfway through the fourth day, they finally did reach the end of the camp.
Silent and cleared out, the tents lay behind them. The summer sun above felt distant and cold, the rays reflecting eerily off the grey sands. For all their desolation, neither the camp nor the bleak beach competed with the ominous presence of the stone. Enormous, the red black chunk towered above them. The two pillars extending from its front were, on closer inspection, cracked and jagged in their surface, practically forming natural stairs to the top of the crude block of stone. It was too purposeful in its design to be natural.
Carefully, the group progressed, awaiting the boss spawn. They all stopped simultaneously when a large number of Skinwalkers peeled out of invisibility. They sneered and gargled at the party, regarding them with mutual care. Ten of them were gradually coming together between the extensions of the great stone.
Chitin-covered hands met one another. Shoulders bumped together, then melded on the surface. Screaming in pain and triumph, two, then four, then eight of the Skinwalkers fused into one being of ever greater mass and power. The final two of the monsters were picked up by their huge kin, their forms collapsing into the hands of the giant Skinwalker.
The final surge of biomass tipped the monstrosity over the edge of the evolutionary threshold. The carapace expanded with cracks and creaks, the outer layers turning thin as cloth and draping the monster like cloaks and ribbons. Thin strands, like hair, covered the neck, while forehead and scalp were covered in barnacle-esque bumps, almost fully hiding one of the monster’s eyes. Thin horns, there were, and a mouth ever agape in that scream of pain and triumph, even when it grew silent.
The monster was surrounded by the myriad of wiggly and jagged tendrils that grew not just from its back but its shoulders and hips as well. Its surface was a knotted nightmare of fused bone, chitin, and skin. Tall, it stood, and eager, awaiting the challenge of the party.
“Alright, time to call Rel,” John announced.
The seer was by their side in less than a minute. Having already been in the watcher’s area at the spawn point, she just needed to step onto one of the usual teleportation platforms. That they were technically nine people at that moment, the Raid mechanics forgave. Gaia was gracious enough to overlook what code would not.
“A prolonged trial of many moves. Stay in motion, ignore the body, and cut the extensions of its mass. Slow and arrogant at first, growing swifter and trickier with time, this enemy will challenge you. Thick, its blood will fall in the sand. Burning, its blood will invoke the might within the stone. Ascend the stairs if you wish to see the boar of hell and the sphere of the fallen heaven.”
“Single phase boss fight with ramping attack difficulty and an optional hard mode that will let us unlock two other bosses, got it,” John translated into game terms. “Ignore the body and cut the extensions… so I guess this is a fight where we concentrate on the tentacles over the actual boss…”
“Sounds like it’s all about speed and manoeuvrability too,” Metra stated. “Not much about tanking the boss.”
John nodded. “Well, let’s do a trial run to test that, then decide.”
“Do we go up the stairs?” Undine asked.
“Don’t see any reason not to. Extra bosses are extra rewards,” John answered.
Lorelei took a bow, then retreated. The rest of them got ready – then sprinted onto the battlefield. As soon as they crossed the invisible threshold, gargantuan spikes of bone and chitin burst through the ground, forming a wall around the arena.
The Vanguard Supreme launched one of its tendrils towards each of them. The limbs elongated, managing to cross the distance and even fly past once they all dodged. Turning as stiff as stone, the same tendrils swung in wide arcs around the axis of the boss, surface sharpened into massive knives. The sheer height of the boss put the various tendrils at different elevations.
It was a challenge to weave through, even for someone who could fly. Still, the entirety of the party managed, even the slowest members. Past the three-quarter point of their 180 degree backswing, the tendrils turned flexible again, whipping around the sides and covering the boss in a protective layer of its own limbs.
The sphere of worm-like squirming went ignored. The entire party instead ascended the stairs. Once the boss noticed, it unfurled and gave chase.
The top of the stone was mostly even. What ups and downs there were to its surface were not enough to impede regular walking or even fast running. The party did not have to wait for long for the Vanguard Supreme to land amongst them.
This time, the tendrils came down in vertical slams. The attack was punished, to the best of their abilities, by hacking, slashing, and firing spells into them. Thick, deep blue blood gushed from the tendrils and pooled supernaturally thick in the grooves in the stone’s surface.
A hiss was the only warning everyone got, before the blood ignited into walls of fire. John barely managed to dodge with Magus Step. Through the flickering flames, the tendril that had aimed for him swung and slammed into the Ambassador Double’s stomach, before going back down.
“Master!” Aclysia shouted and grabbed him by the back of his suit. Ripping him off the tentacle’s side, she prevented his disastrous impact on the ground. Others around had also been hit and the walls of flame continued to burn, moving down the grooves of the stone towards some kind of centre point.
Withdrawing its many limbs, the boss prepared its next attack. The rest of the fight was a rhythmic and predictable affair. In gracious intervals, the Supreme Vanguard aimed at them all with its tendrils. The moves typically had two components, one being the kind of attack used to stretch out the tentacles and then a follow-up to threaten the entirety of the area around it.
Just out of interest, Salamander tested what happened when she hit the body. Lorelei’s recommendation held true for a simple reason: unlike the tendrils, the boss itself was universally covered in armour. Hitting it dealt strictly less damage, so they focused on the tendrils instead. The spilled blood ignited again and again into walls of fire.
Past the initial surprise, they were easy to circumvent in theory. They moved slowly. Their direction was difficult to predict, but John worked out quickly that there were several end points in the runic network – he just had to find out where exactly and which grooves connected with them. What made them practically dangerous was that they presented a visual barrier that made keeping up with the boss’ area attack that little bit harder.
The fight was of the variety John generally enjoyed. The mechanics were incredibly simple, just a storm of area attacks that could, with proper discipline and care, be avoided completely. That meant the fight could be beaten by one sufficiently skilled person.
Realistically, that would never happen, because the margin of error was too slim, but it could.
Because all attacks were AoE anyway, tanks were not strictly necessary for this fight. Once back in the house, John gathered up everyone. It took a second longer than usual because Lu Zhi had been fighting with several of his alternatives.
“Alright, speed and manoeuvrability are of the essence here, so we’re pruning the slower members of the current line-up. I go with my primary body for Magus Step and Skitterstep usage. Aclysia, you’re out.” John looked over the rest of the current line-up. Undine also was slow, but unreplaceable, so they would have to keep her. Getting hit wasn’t as bad an HP loss for her anyway. She’d just splatter about and reform. “Lydia, Salamander, you two are out too.” For those, it was more of a matter of John having replacements. “Metra… you too.”
Of the previous line-up, only Nia and Nightingale remained. The pariah nodded at this. The harpy was puzzled. “John, I am not as mobile as others you’ve pruned?”
“I’m convinced that ‘trickery’ means that the boss will utilize illusions, so you’re going to be vital.” Nightingale took that explanation with a nod. “In are Rave, Siena, Sylph, Beatrice and Lorelei.”
“H-huh?!” the seer let out a most unexpected sound. Everyone looked at her. “M-master, I must remind that I am untrained in the matter of combat.”
“You’re cute when you get surprised.”
“This is a most unwelcome reminder of the emotion!” Lorelei cleared her throat, forcing herself to become calm. “I do not know if I have the necessary utility to help with this encounter.”
“I believe you do. Your lack of speed will be counteracted by your second sight and you’ll help the rest of us.” John gave her a smile. “I think it’ll be a good learning exercise for you. I won’t force you, if you really don’t want to.”
Lorelei folded her hands in her lap. Closed eyes and her plain expression betrayed nothing. Seconds passed by. She opened her braid and redid it. Then, she slowly nodded. “As you wish, Gamer, I shall follow the lead of the Lady’s chosen.” A constrained smile was all she could muster. “You wish the best for me. I’m willing to entertain.”
It was the first time Lorelei would be involved in a boss fight in a proper manner. She had been part of the Executioner fight during the Astria Raid, but that had nothing to do with fighting. Here, she would actually have to move and sustain damage.
Under other circumstances, John wouldn’t have told her to come along. Had he thought another haremette was a better fit, he would have taken her instead. Had Lorelei been as much of a sheltered nun as she sometimes appeared to be, he wouldn’t have taken her along either. Underneath that quiet and feminine exterior was not a woman that had grown up in safety, however. Lorelei was a seer of the house Varnik, a leader of the Order of the Golden Rose’s inquisitors. She had lost her eyesight at a young age, had seen into the hearts of the most wicked men and women, and walked battlefields still in motion.
Lorelei was a woman of willpower. She could handle pain, even if she was not a combatant.
“We’ll re-adjust the group should it turn out that the illusions are absent, weaker than I think, or if we need more damage.”
“You won’t need more damage, because Sylph is here!” the arcvolt elemental declared. “Imma hop and zap and fry this crab guy!”
Everyone around chuckled at the babbling air spirit.
They did not chuckle fifteen minutes later.
It was the third attempt on the Vanguard Supreme. They had been faring well during the second attempt, well enough to push the boss until it had to utilize its illusions to reposition stealthily. Nightingale, Lorelei, and Nia combined easily made that a reality.
What also happened was that Sylph once again showed that she was an absurd speed demon. As the fight progressed, everyone struggled to keep up. The hit combos of the boss grew longer, more intricate, and had less pauses in between. Some of the tendrils weren’t real, some were larger than they appeared, and the tells for that were often difficult to grasp. Everyone struggled – except Sylph.
The volt bunny was a streak of light green and blue lightning, hopping in between attacks as if the tendrils were a river rushing between stones. Her Tier 5.5 ability meant she only grew faster and faster as she moved. She never even stopped, she was stopped because John eventually died.
So, she had made a simple request. “How about all y’all just try to run away from the boss and let it concentrate all on me and I do the thing where I run and run and charge up and then I just nuke it with a gargantuan lighting strike, and if that doesn’t kill it, I do it again until it does kill it?”
It was entirely ludicrous.
It was also what they were currently doing right now.
It was also working.
The entire rest of the party stood out of range, looking from the edge of the stone. Seven tendrils should have been split up between the seven of them and, under other circumstances, they doubtlessly would have. The boss would have relocated, to catch them all. They had tested this, it had been exactly what had happened. The thing was just that the boss did not get to relocate.
Sylph was a bunny-eared streak of destruction. The boss, designed to catch any and all of them off guard, failed to keep pace with the air spirit. She ran. She skipped over swinging tendrils. She slid under slamming ones. A wall of several tendrils came towards her and she leapt. She turned upside down mid-air like an Olympic high jumper, then pushed herself off the air as if it was solid, returning right to her storming ways.
The air crackled for a hundred metres around. The latent electricity bound in the tiny form of the green-haired woman escaped all around. Two questions occurred to all that witnessed the spectacle of magic. One was whether Sylph even had the form of a woman still, rather than that of a living bolt of lightning with bunny ears. Second was who actually was the Raid boss in this scenario.
It happened so suddenly, even the mental connection with her could not track it. One moment Sylph was storming ahead, the next she had ripped through all eight extended tendrils she was meant to be dodging.
The world itself had to catch up to the impact. Tendrils turned to ash, the silent boss found its voice to scream once again, only to be overpowered by the apocalyptic roar of the plasma-made gaps in the air closing. The smell of ozone was so thick, John began to cough in response.
‘Okay, that has to be it,’ John thought, blinking away the tears rising in his eyes. The attack had not killed the boss. New tendrils grew in sputtering sprays of ichor from the scorched stumps of the old ones. Immediately faster than before, the boss assaulted. All the ramping up that hadn’t happened while Sylph concentrated on dodging alone happened in an instant. ‘Very good opening strategy but now-‘
‘Wait.’ It was Undine’s voice in his head that stopped him from giving the order to get back in there. ‘Let her try.’
John was sceptical about it. This was a Raid boss. What was one attempt, however? He stayed his hand and so did everyone else.
Fire exploded from the ground all around the boss. Soaked in rivers of thick ichor, the grooves in the ground fuelled a multitude of obstacles. Harder, faster, and with the addition of illusions, the tendrils came down on Sylph.
The volt bunny was so charged up, it appeared she was dodging even as she stood. Constantly, the outlines of her form crackled in one direction or another. The leotard had vanished, her skin, the usually naked limbs included, instead covered in an electric fuzz of light blue and green that resembled short fur. Whereas her body seemed to quiver and shift, her hair was more fluid than ever, rolling an ocean in the waves. Amber eyes glowed with awesome power.
The tendrils collapsed on her position.
Sylph’s HP bar did not move.
The arcvolt elemental was right back in motion, running circles around the boss, picking up the speed that the discharge from her attack had lost her. Up above, thunderclouds formed in response to the Unleashed volt bunny’s endless display of skill.
“There are illu-“ Lorelei began to say. She could not even stop herself before Sylph had already cut right through the illusion. “How did she know?”
“Ya shouldn’t forget that Sylph is brilliant.” Rave told her. “Girl got combat intuition even I find scary.”
The words were proven right by every passing millisecond. The difficulty had ramped up considerably, yet Sylph just kept on moving. Circumventing walls of fire, often so close together she had to move in a straight line sideways, she moved on. Cutting through illusions made to fool even the most expert of senses, natural or not, she moved on. Ducking, vaulting, stepping, skipping, running, sprinting, walking, twirling, under, over, left and right around the tentacles of the Vanguard Supreme, she moved on.
On and on, in circles, causing the boss to break its own neck joint and regenerate it as a swivel, just to try to keep up with her. The boss was fast. Fast enough that it would have caught anyone else, even Eliana, at one point or another. The boss was made to land some hits, at least, despite how predictable it was. It should fool people at least sometimes. It should catch people at least sometimes. It should drive people into the fire walls at least sometimes.
Sylph suddenly dashed up.
The anti-air measures of the Raid kicked in. Two dozen spears of bone flew at where she was and where she would be. A self-fulfilling prophecy – Sylph zapped from one spear to the next, drawing a constellation of lighting. Bone melted in her grasp, the sheer intensity of the voltage forcing the material to become conductive. Liquified and reshaped, she raised the javelin.
The black clouds above sent down a single bolt. Nature paid its tribute to the lady of thunder, fuelling the strike even more. Then, at a speed rivalling Rave’s Babel Phrase, she descended.
John could not see what happened next. The entire world in front of and behind him was consumed by a thousand lightning bolts flying outwards. Even into his magical vision, the shape of the crackling was burned. Had there not been friendly fire protection, he would have feared for his safety.
Electricity kept crackling in the air for long after the veil was lifted. John looked at a singular form standing victorious in a scattered shadow. Sylph was lightning. There were many more wordy ways to put what John saw, but none of them came down to that simple truth. His arcvolt elemental was a true daughter of the wind.
Hopping around on the spot, this embodiment of thunder, gave them a double peace sign. “Told you I could do it! Who wants to lewd this awesome bunny? Everyone? Is it everyone? Do I hear an everyone?” she blabbered and grinned like an idiot.
She really made it easy to forget how dangerous she was.
Comments
articulus48
So glad you let Sylph shine shes always a favorite!
Phraxius
Very nice. Sylph is no doubt very pleased with herself and rightfully so... but not as pleased as Delicia will be if this thing drops a Legendary Mutagen and useful Ichor.
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