“Woah, woah, woah, they’re in trouble!” Dante said, leaning forward over the hill. He was right. The trees had probably made it easier for those players to get away from that monster, but now that they had broken into open ground it was gaining on them, and fast.
Two of the players looked like they were at least able to keep pace with it, but one of them was slowly falling behind. From where we were standing I could see the reflection of the sun bouncing off of a serious set of armor.
The minotaur chased after them and raked its large axe across the ground, kicking up rubble which pelted the fleeing players. The player who was lagging behind fell to his knee from the impact.
“Tch.” This was bad. There was no saying what kind of monster that was or what kind of position they were in so carelessly intervening could be-
“We have to do somethin’!” Dante yelled, taking off down the hill in a sprint that left him in serious danger of toppling over due to the stiff angle.
“Wait- Damnit!” I called after him but he didn’t stop. His momentum carried him all the way down into the valley below where he took off at a sprint towards the minotaur.
Before I could think, Willow had thrown herself down the hill as well, sliding down the drop with ease before recovering at the bottom and running off towards the troubled party. I clicked my tongue. We had no information as to what was chasing those players. It was exceedingly reckless to go and fight it.
Still… it was just like Dante to not sit and wait when someone was in grave danger. A quick glance to my side saw Mari standing with a look of deep concern on her face. You too, huh? And I guess Willow had already taken the plunge. I was honestly surprised that my normal instincts of “run as far away as possible as fast as possible” didn’t kick in here, and instead I found myself leaning over the edge of the hilltop myself.
I sighed and gave Mari a look. “Let’s go.” I said, stepping onto the slope and skidding down to the bottom.
By the time we’d reached the fight, Dante and Willow had already intervened. Dante danced around the monster, landing strikes with his hatchet while Willow drew its attention. Willow stood fast against the greataxe wielding bull man and was able to block the first of its attacks, but as soon as she had recovered from the staggering impact her HP was reduced by two thirds… my heart sank. Whatever this monster was, it was seriously strong.
“Mari! Heal Willow!” I shouted, running over to the three players. The two players who weren’t wearing heavy armor were helping the third to his feet and moving further from the battle. That was good. As long as they could just get out of aggro range of the boss then they’d be fine. As for us…
Now that I was close enough to see it, I took a good look at the monster. As soon as I did, my eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
King Tree Minotaur, level 9. There was an icon next to its name of a laughing skull… There were a few universal things common in all Annex MMOs, and that skull was one of them. Any enemy with a skull next to its name wasn’t just a random trash mob or overworld spawn… it was a boss monster.
“You’re… kidding, right?” I said, feeling a bead of sweat form on my brow as the Minotaur stood tall and took aim again with it’s axe. Willow stood firm and raised her shield onto her shoulder. What was she thinking?!
“Dodge! Don’t try to block it!” I shouted, causing Willow to abandon the idea of using her shield just in time to leap out of the way of the strike. It pulverized the ground as it impacted and the rocks thrown from the impact still managed to take a small bit of her health bar away. I clicked my tongue. There was no way we had enough people for something like this. Fighting was basically just suicide.
I wasn’t sure what constituted a full party of players in this game but it usually ranged anywhere from four to eight, and bosses like this one could even be designed for multiple teams to take on at once… in other words, there was only one thing that we could do.
“Retreat! Don’t turn your back on the boss but don’t engage it head on! Bring it far enough away from its spawn point and it might reset!” I called, waving the startled players who had burst from the woods to get back further towards the hill.
As soon as I did, though, one of the survivors, a brown haired man, looked at me with pure desperation in his eyes. “That ain’t gonna work, man! That thing’s chased us for at least a half hour! We tried to lose it by going into the woods but it just kept coming! It even crossed over the zone borders!” He said. His voice was shrill and his face was pale. That bead of sweat on my forehead got a brother.
This was the worst case scenario. If that was true, if this boss was originally from the Golden Fields and somehow had kept chasing these guys through the woods as well, then there was a chance that no matter how far we ran it wouldn’t de-aggro. And since Dante and Willow had already attacked it, they were valid targets to chase as well. Dante could probably run away, but Willow had heavy metal armor… there was no way she’d be any faster than the guy who had almost been turned to paste just a few minutes ago.
Our only options were to fight it out or cut our losses and accept the fact that one or more of the people here were about to die… not exactly the nicest thoughts to have.
There was no way Dante would leave Willow to die, and I doubted Mari would let that happen either. We could always abandon the guys that we’d saved and make a break for it, hoping that the boss killed them instead, but that line of thought left a pit in my stomach so deep that I couldn’t bring myself to think about it. So all that was left was a fair fight.
Even with Willow’s counter and Dante’s attacks the boss’s hp gauge hadn’t dropped below ninety percent. In other words, we didn’t have nearly enough damage to bring down a mob of this level before it wiped us out… well, that was to be expected. We were only level three, and none of us had leveled up our skills before the fight.
If that was the case, and we had no chance at winning, there was only one resource that was fairly abundant on the planes that could get us out of this. I turned back to the three men huddled behind me.
“Fine. Either way, the three of you are in no shape to help. Gather your strength and then go get help! I don’t care who it is or what level they are, get as many players as you can over here!” I yelled, turning my full attention towards the boss.
“Uh, right! You’re a lifesaver man, really!” One of them said as they all nodded to each other then broke off in a sprint towards the road. Now it was a numbers game. Can we find a way to survive the boss long enough for those three to get enough help to win. My palms felt clammy but nonetheless I wrenched my Wolf’s Fang from its sheath and held it at the ready.
Turning my attention back towards my own party that had been tangled up around the boss I gave out some new orders. I hated to admit it, but these guys weren’t skilled enough to deal damage while keeping themselves alive. So our priority should be…
“Willow! Focus on walking the boss back away from the forest! We want this thing in the open so we don’t get cut off by the trees!” She didn’t reply, but as the boss swung its axe across its body she leapt back, goading it to take a few more steps further into the Golden Fields.
“Dante! You don’t have enough damage to hurt that thing, back off and help Willow spot its attacks. Only jump in if you think you have a guaranteed shot!” He didn’t listen at first, but eventually wrapped around the boss and disengaged.
“Mari! How much MP do you have left?” I asked.
“I can heal one more time!” She said in a panic, her book was out since she had already used one of her heals on Willow, bringing her just about to two thirds of her maximum health. that was bad. We didn’t loot any potions or healing items on our way over, so besides Mari’s spells we had no way of recovering lost hit points.
As if to punctuate my statement, the minotaur roared and lifted its massive hoof off the ground, before taking a huge step forward, clearly trying to crush Willow under foot.
Willow dodged the stomping attack by a hair with a deft roll to the side but there was something else wrong… Shit! “Willow above!” I yelled. She landed and looked up at the boss, who held its great axe in two hands as it prepared to swing down at her.
“Ah…” she squeaked, trying to bring her shield up to block, but the roll had knocked her off-balance so her stance wasn’t firm. If she didn’t have proper posture then there was a good chance that the game wouldn’t count the strike as blocked and it would do full damage. If a blocked attack took out two thirds of her hp…
“Willow!” Mari screamed. She started using her fingers to desperately trace the circle of a healing spell but each time she made a swipe the circle fizzled and disappeared.
I took off running towards the boss, begging my legs to carry me just a little bit further… just a little bit faster… but there was no way to close that much distance in such a short amount of-
“Outta my way!” A voice yelled from behind me. Just as I’d heard it a flash of red hair passed by my side and a short girl wielding an axe leapt off of the ground and sailed clean over the head of the kneeling Willow. She brought her axe across her body so fast I could only see the white flash of a skill activating before a sonic boom almost knocked me off my feet.
Ascilla’s axe had connected clean with the minotaur’s own downward slash. Their combined attacks cancelled and both of their weapons were violently blown backwards. Ascilla herself landed on her back about four feet behind Willow where she tumbled deftly back to her feet.
The Minotaur’s axe was blown back with such ridiculous force that he was barely able to keep a single hand on it to prevent it from flying away.
“Ascilla?” I couldn’t help myself from identifying the fireball who had cut through to save the day. She looked back at me with a piercing gaze. This wasn’t remotely the same playful girl I’d met in Origin.
“Situation?” She asked. I didn’t answer her yet.
“Dante, get Willow and retreat! Leave this to us!” I said. Dante, who was also standing off to the side dazed by what he was witnessing screamed into action, running in and pulling Willow out of the boss’s attack range by her hand as it recovered its footing.
Ascilla stepped forward to take her place, her axe resting square on her shoulders.
“It’s a level nine boss monster using a two handed axe. Its attacks are area of effect, but if you don’t take a direct hit you’ll probably be fine. It can attack vertically and horizontally, but I’m not sure the differences in the patterns yet.” I said. She nodded and ducked under a horizontal slash from the minotaur’s axe before pushing up and cutting into its shin with her own weapon.
The minotaur raised it’s leg. “It’s stomping!” I called, Ascilla immediately leapt back and avoided the attack completely.
“Got it!” She said, stepping back in and landing another hit.
I rushed in beside her and cut into the boss with a couple of attacks. It slowly stood tall after its stomp and so I landed a clean Cross Slash on the minotaur’s leg before leaping back as its axe came up over its head before rocketing down and pelting the ground in a vertical slash.
This time the blade wasn’t parried, and cleaved down through the ground until it extended back behind the boss. Ascilla took the opportunity while it’s face was low from the sweeping blow to land a skill of her own across its face, but as soon as she activated it I realized her mistake. It wasn’t easy to see from the front, but from slightly off to the side, the boss’s attack was all too obvious.
“Watch out, it’s swinging from below!” I tried to warn the fire-headed warrior, but it was too late. Whatever skill she had used locked her in place, and now a level nine monster was threatening to hit her clean. It roared as it pulled the axe back from behind itself and swung up through the ground at the defenseless Ascilla.
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I roared as I pushed my right foot back and leveled my blade so that its flat was parallel to the ground. I hovered my left hand above it and as I did I felt power swell into my legs. When I practiced the other day I almost complained that the skill charged too fast, but now it felt like agonizing seconds were passing as I pushed my hips lower and coiled my body like a sprinter about to take off at a race.
I watched as the minotaur’s axe began cutting through the earth, and finally when the energy reached the very tips of my toes, I let it all out at once.
“Rrraaaaahhhh!” I screamed for all I was worth and thankfully shot forward with an immense amount of momentum. My only movement skill, Step Slash, had activated perfectly. My body was low to the ground and the whole distance between me and the boss was covered in an instant… except I wasn’t aiming for the boss.
Make it in time… gotta… make… it!
As the last of the air left my lungs I drove my shoulder forward as hard as I could, extending the blade just those few extra inches. I closed my eyes and an impact so hard I felt like my shoulder was going to get torn out of its socket rocked through my body.
The sound of metal against metal rang in the clearing, causing my ears to ring so bad I thought I’d gone deaf. The force of the two blows colliding sent my avatar tumbling out to the side. I didn’t want to look to see if what I’d tried had worked but as I rolled to my feet, Ascilla was still standing there. I’d deflected the attack.
“Th-Thanks-“ Ascilla started to say, but I cut her off.
“Jump back!” I yelled, as soon as the system gave me control of my body again I leapt away from the boss as fast as my legs would carry me. A second later, a hoof as thick as a tree trunk stomped the ground between us causing a wave of rock to splinter out in every direction. I had just barely seen the red indicator of an area spell as I’d recovered. If I had missed it, I’d have probably been dead…
“Tch. Guess I owe you twice, beansprout!” Ascilla said, recovering from a clumsy backwards dive of her own.
“Add her to the party!” I yelled over to Mari who dutifully inputted commands into her menu. A second later, Ascilla’s name and HP bar had appeared at the bottom of the list. She was only missing about a fifth of her HP so far. I guess that was what upgraded gear got you… Still, I wasn’t about to start complaining.
The Minotaur stood back to its full height and wrenched its axe free from the ground before letting out a guttural roar.
Honestly, that time we were just lucky. If he kept attacking like that, one mistake would easily be enough for an instant death.
I turned to Ascilla. “You deflect its attacks and I’ll counter. That’ll keep it focused on us and give the others a chance to escape.”
“Got it!” She said, immediately charging back into the melee. If I had to give her something, the girl had guts that was certain.
“Mari! Use the rest of your mana to heal Ascilla back to full!” I said. She nodded and took an additional couple of steps back, this time her hand was steady enough to properly trace the glyph and cast the spell. Ascilla’s health dutifully marched back to full. I felt bad, but Mari had done basically all that she could do at this point. She hadn’t started shooting ranged attacks at the minotaur, but that was actually a really smart call on her part. We didn’t know if Ascilla had any way to guarantee the boss’s attention stayed on her, and a ranged attack may provoke the minotaur into using an attack pattern that we hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t uncommon for bosses to have answers specifically for ranged players to prevent the bosses from being defeated by one particular strategy.
The battle raged on for what felt like hours but what had only been about three minutes according to the display on the top of my menu.
By this point, both Ascilla and I had figured out most of the boss’s movements and patterns. It seemed like it would swing its weapon either horizontally or vertically. If it swung horizontally the minotaur would stomp the ground, sending shrapnel flying in all directions. If it swung vertically, it would hit from its front to its back, then drag the blade back up towards the front again. This was followed by a large AoE stomp that had to be dodged.
Overall it was a bit of an annoying situation. Since the both of us were melee players, the boss’s attacks meant constantly coming in and out of range. Each time we closed the distance we’d each be able to get at best one skill off, and even when we executed them well the boss’s HP barely moved a pixel. I was starting to feel like this fight would never end.
“They should have been here by now!” Ascilla said, grinding her teeth in frustration. I inferred from this that she wasn’t alone and pieced together that at least some of Levin’s more senior members were probably somewhere nearby.
“Where’re your friends?” I called. Backstepping out of the minotaur’s large stomp.
“On the road. Bout a minute back!” She said. That was odd. Normally you’d think they’d be here by now… And there was no way they’d abandon Ascilla, even if those guys told them we were under attack by a boss. If anything, I’d bet Levin would love to claim the first kill on a boss monster and all the unique rewards that came along with it.
“Mari! Go see where the others are! We’ll be fine!” I said.
“I’m not going to leave you!” She replied. Well that was certainly one way to make me blush. Were we in different circumstances I was positive that would have landed a critical hit, but unfortunately now wasn’t the time and listening to those words only made me more anxious.
Even with all the work we were putting in, the boss had only lost another ten percent. At this point we’d need to wail on this thing for another thirty minutes before it went down, and that was if its attacks didn’t change based on how much HP it had.
Mari looked like she was going to protest again, but A recovered willow put a hand on her shoulder.
“Come on. We’d only get in their way.” She said. Her HP had already fallen to just over forty percent and she hadn’t even taken a clean hit. There was no safe way for her to rejoin the fight at this point, and Dante wasn’t faring much better from all the shrapnel damage he took. The three of them spared one last look at us before running as fast as they could off towards the road.
“Looks like it’s just us, then.” I said. Ascilla let out a dry chuckle. If she was afraid she certainly didn’t look it.
“Try not to hold me back!” She said, pushing off and sprinting towards the minotaur. She roared as her axe carved into its legs. It wound up a horizontal slice, but she dove through its legs and hit it from behind with a powerful skill, making the stomp hit nothing but air as the minotaur retaliated against a player that was no longer in front of it.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. What a showoff. Oh well, two could play at that!
I ran into the melee, pausing just briefly to dodge the debris from the boss’s stomp attack. It immediately followed up by using its downward slice. Ascilla was still on the other side of it, but she was circling around to its front. The boss leaned down to roar but as it did I cut deep into its shoulder with a Cross Slash. Using the momentum from the weapon skill I spun towards the minotaur’s head and ducked to avoid a slash coming from Ascilla’s own two handed axe which passed cleanly overhead.
We spun around each other and our weapons crossed in the middle, both colliding with a different side of the minotaur’s face like a giant pair of scissors. Using the centrifugal force from our collision we both dove to the left and the right, dodging as the boss dragged its axe back through, splitting the ground where we had been standing.
Now that we knew that it was coming, the stomp attack was easy to dodge. Furious, the minotaur raised its axe high for yet another vertical strike. I smirked and lowered my stance for another Step Slash.
The adrenaline coursing through my system made timing the ability a lot easier. Time seemed to crawl and the world went into slow motion. As the minotaur swung down and smashed its weapon into the ground, Ascilla spun to the side, dodging the downward swing and clubbing the side of the bull-like head with a one handed axe swing that looked like it defied all logic. Honestly, she was way too impressive. She realized that she couldn’t reach the boss normally so she improvised her grip to get a clean strike that fast… who was she really?
I could think about that later. As the boss’s face snapped to the side, I released my Step Slash and flew across the golden field This time I didn’t have some insane target like a moving weapon to hit, and so I cleanly placed my Wolf’s Fang right into the minotaur’s right eye. Over half the blade sunk into the beast’s skull before I whipped it out with a downward slice that cut out through the jaw.
The boss’s health bar took a hearty three percent nose dive and instead of continuing its attack it reeled back and grabbed its face before wildly swinging its axe in a horizontal swipe.
“Showoff.” Ascilla said. Her eyes were just as serious as they were when she’d arrived but now a twisted smile was plastered on her face. I knew that look all too well. She was loving every second of this, and I couldn’t blame her. If I had a mirror to check I’d guess I was wearing the same expression.
We both leveled our weapons and prepared to resume the attack when from behind us a booming voice filled the valley.
“Chaaarge!” A man’s voice called out over the area causing me to snap my head to the side. On top of the hill where we’d had our picnic just a few minutes ago a huge man in armor stood with a mace in his hands. He pointed it forward and commanded a wave of players to come sprinting over the hilltop and slide down the embankment.
I didn’t have time to count how many players there were, but I leapt back to disengage from the boss and circled around to the side.
In situations like this the best thing I could do was stay out of the larger party’s way. They would probably already know how to fight and communicate with each other, where as I would just mess up their formation.
The man who had shouted from the hill jumped down in a few impressive bounds and landed on the ground. He jogged over and looked the monster up and down with his own eyes.
“Ascilla! Situation?” The man who had arrived wasn’t familiar from a distance but once he had made it down to the battlefield his unmistakable bulk and squared off jaw, plus his olive skin, made him a dead ringer for one of the other players on stage back at the meeting in Origin. The tank player named Rain.
“Level nine boss! Axe attacks are always followed by a stomp so get out of melee. I’ll call ‘em when I see ‘em” She replied.
“Gotcha. Disengage, we have healers in the back.” He said, putting a thumb over his shoulder to a few players who were still standing over by the hill. There were a couple of people in the parties that were definitely magic casters
“Thanks, Rain.” Ascilla said, turning to make sure the boss wouldn’t rush her because she had been attacking it. It seemed like at least some of the reinforcements were tanks that had taunting skills so once she had double checked she nodded to me and motioned for the people waiting on the back lines.
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It only took seven minutes for the reinforcements to drive the minotaur down to under ten percent HP. Rain had grasped the attack patterns instantly and began relaying them to his two squads as they took turns engaging the boss.
At this point there was nothing to do but wait, or at least that’s what the old me would have done, but now it felt like there was something more… like something bad was about to happen. I couldn’t shake the feeling.
When the boss’s HP hit five percent my worst fears came true. The two parties had decided to switch, having team one, the one that had been tanking the boss, go to the back line for a minute to heal while team two kept attacking and took over the tanking.
It wasn’t clear why, but once the players in team one retreated, the boss let our a roar and then did something we hadn’t seen it do before…
The minotaur reached down and dug its hands into the earth, as it leaned back it freed a colossal boulder that it lifted over its head. A huge torrent of rubble was thrown into the air and was falling all around the battlefield. Even we weren’t safe a few meters back. As they did, Ascilla noticed something horrifying.
“Crap they ain’t gonna make it!” Ascilla yelled, staring in horror as the players who made up the first attack squad, the ones who had been showered by the most rubble, seemed to freeze in place “That rock shower has a stun effect!”
She was right. The players who were right next to the boss when it lifted the boulder seemed to be frozen in place. They could still talk but they couldn’t move. Usually stuns didn’t last too long, they were a very dangerous debuff so to balance it they usually only lasted a second or two, but in this case a second or two would be all the minotaur needed.
It took one large step and had instantly closed the gap on the back half of team one, the ones who were the slowest to retreat, and raised the boulder high above its head.
Rain and the other melee players of the group that had taken over weren’t able to get close to the boss because of the danger of it’s attack… and what was worse…
When the tanks had swapped out, they hadn’t actually switched who had aggro… that meant that the recovering party was the one who was being targeted… if that rock hit them, the entirety of team one would all… wait!
In all of my haste, I had completely forgotten… I had one other skill, a skill that I hadn’t used yet.
I looked up and saw the wave of rubble fast approaching. All of this was happening so fast there was no guarantee that it would work. I needed help… and I only hoped that I could pull this off.
“Ascilla! Cover me!” I yelled springing to my feet and grabbing my Wolf’s Fang by the tip of its blade. As I did I cocked my shoulder back and extended my left hand out to steady myself. To my surprise, a small circle drifted into my vision, and though it was unsteady it was certainly manageable. I focused with every ounce of my being, until the targeting circle was right above the boss’s head.
A chunk of boulder was hurtling towards me, but I decided to put all of my trust in the axe warrior who had shown so much skill just a few minutes before, and true to her word, a white flash, a loud scream, and the swing of an axe pulverized the incoming debris which fell to the ground around me. I smirked.
I put all my strength and determination into my right arm and threw my precious sword as hard and fast as I possibly could. Ascilla made a stunned noise as we both watched it tumble through the air and collide picture perfect with the undamaged left eye of the minotaur. It sunk in to the hilt.
The boss paused for a second with the rock still held above its head, before letting out a sickly groan and flickering before vaporizing in a cloud of golden dust. The rock in its hands crumbled away like sand, and the last noise to come from the battlefield was the faint clanging sound of a single sword landing on the ground.
Tension hung in the air for only a second before the entire group of players let out an ear-splitting roar.
I collapsed onto my back and pulled as much air into my lungs as I could… I forced my eyes to stay open as I watched a spiral of golden dust ascend to the heavens.
“Aha… ahahaha.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of what had just happened.
“Get up, dumbass” Ascilla said, offering me a hand which I gladly accepted. Once I was back on my feet I was practically tackled by a woman built like a linebacker.
“You’re fuckin’ crazy, man!” Dante said, looking up at me as I was trapped in Willow’s bear hug. Mari stood behind him with a triumphant smile on her face.
Ascilla took one look at the scene and shrugged before wandering off to talk with Rain and the others who showed up.
It was only after Willow returned me back to planet earth that I’d finally internalized what had happened. We’d really just won. Against all odds we’d managed to kill first boss discovered in Eld…