It was cold and overcast when the team set out to face the dungeon again. This time they were taking no chances. They moved through the streets of Chancery Hills as a unit. Cannoneer led the way with Gray Guardian providing cover. Lightforge and Circe were behind them, watching for threats from the rear. Sunbird was above the group in the sky, watching for any potential threats that the others might miss.
There was a tension in the group as they carefully made their way to their destination. There hadn’t been any guards roaming the streets on their first attempt, but there was no guarantee that things wouldn’t be different now.
When they finally reached the corner before the building, they stopped and took in a few tense breaths. Circe used her illusions to make Lightforge invisible, and he slowly crept around the corner to take a look at the exterior. He took one look and then blinked and turned back to the team, open confusion plain on his face.
The rest of the team turned the corner to take a look. What they saw were a pair of destroyed laser turrets and a door that had been smashed open. In other words, the outside looked exactly as it had after their first entry. Not just similar, but exactly the same.
The group huddled together, and it didn’t take long to realize what had happened. Missions didn’t reset, and that didn’t just apply to ones that had already been completed. Whatever progress they had made in the dungeon had stayed upon their deaths. This was further confirmed when they walked inside and found the remains of the various robotic sentries that they’d dispatched.
With that new knowledge, they quickly made their way through the tunnels, following the trail of their own destruction. It wasn’t long before they found the destroyed remnants of the room where they’d attempted to rest before the boss. The end of the hallway was still open, giving them a clear view of the boss’s chamber.
Just like that, they were there again. The UFO covered in tentacles floated in the air lazily, just barely visible in the dimness and distance. They all went stiff at the sight. Lightforge held a finger to his lips and motioned for the group to head back the way they’d come.
They’d learned from their mistakes the first time around. They made their way several hundred feet back up the corridor before they stopped and began to arrange themselves. There were a few minor changes to the plan, but they all understood the general idea. This time they would be the ones to start with momentum on their side.
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The dungeon’s boss was known as the Mechanical Overlord. It was the pinnacle of the research that had taken place in the secret lab over many years. Its creator had labored for most of his life to develop the secrets that went into its creation. Once the scientist had finished, they’d given the Overlord a simple directive: protect the lab.
The Overlord had considered this directive for a near-eternity of 0.68 seconds. It looked into all possible situations that could result in the lab becoming compromised and reached the only logical conclusion. If it had been a little more human, it might have struggled with the decision.
Instead, it simply skewered its creator with a titanium spear before carefully vaporizing the remains. It was only logical; the human was the most obvious flaw in security. With them out of the way, the Mechanical Overlord was free to concentrate on its duty to protect against intruders.
It had fought off the very first invaders just one day before. While it had no emotions, it was satisfied with its performance. It had repelled the intruders without receiving fatal damage to its systems. That was classified as a successful defense.
It moved slowly through the air in its chamber, observing in all directions. While it had very precise clocks, they were unnecessary for carrying out its directive. It had long since disabled them as a matter of course; just one more step to increase its efficiency.
Thanks to that choice, it had no way to tell how long had passed since the last group of invaders had arrived. It might have been mere moments, which led to a single instant of confusion when an intruder stepped into the chamber from the labyrinth above. It was an intruder that the Overlord had already killed. How odd.
Then the instant passed, and the Mechanical Overlord brought all of its weapons to bear. Time to fulfill its directive once again.
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Lightforge stepped out of the passageway slowly, with a determined stride. His shield was strapped to his left forearm, and he held a dagger in that hand while his other hand held his hammer. His robotic foe turned slightly at his appearance, and it didn’t take long for weapons to point at him. He fought back the impulse to run; it would be wasted energy. Instead he focused on the metallic tentacles as they danced through the air in front of him.
This was a job that only he could do.
The first tentacle that shot towards him was a simple spike of metal. He watched it approach, muscles tense as he slid into a fighting stance. This was it, the moment of truth.
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He held his ground and met the spike with his hammer. He felt Sabotage take effect, blasting the tentacle away harmlessly. The ring of metal on metal was an opening bell that sounded throughout the space. It marked the true beginning of the fight.
There was a flash of gold in the corner of his eye as Sunbird launched into the air and shot towards the Overlord. It took aim with one of its gun tentacles, but Lightforge hurled his dagger at it. At this range the weapon did little damage, but that wasn’t the point. The knockback from Sabotage threw off the robot’s aim, sending a blast of red energy harmlessly above the flying hero.
The Overlord whipped around, bringing three more arms to face Lightforge. Two had nasty, jagged blades while the third carried a machine gun instead. The blades lurched forward with a slight whistle as they cut through the air. They were fast and coming at different angles, which was a good counter to his relatively slow hammer.
He caught one blade on his shield as he swung at the other. It was quick and tried to turn away from the strike, but didn’t quite make it. The hammer glanced off the side of the incoming blade, changing its trajectory only slightly. The blade caught him in the shoulder, neatly slicing through his armor and tearing out a chunk of flesh. He hissed as the pain burned through him, but he held his ground.
The blades jerked away, creating an opening for the machine gun. Bullets tore through the space between them faster than he could ever hope to dodge. Luckily, he didn’t have to. A barrier of swirling white energy popped into existence just as the first bullets reached him, deflecting off the sphere in all directions.
Lightforge sighed at the sight and knelt as Gray Guardian came up to him. The healer had been waiting just a few feet away, which was why the large man hadn’t dared to move from his spot. Gray placed a hand on Lightforge’s shoulder and activated a regeneration skill. It was slow, but it would gain him back the health that he’d lost.
The boss seemed to understand the meaning of the glowing shield that now stood between it and its primary target. More arms swirled around, probably intent on overwhelming the barrier. But a rocket launched seemingly out of nowhere far to one side of the room, streaking towards the Overlord’s main body. At the same time, Sunbird unleashed a powerful blast of energy on the Overlord’s other side.
The boss was stuck between two dangerous attacks. It chose to focus on Cannoneer, throwing up its shield to block the explosive and striking with a multitude of weapons in the direction the attack had come from. Arms got in the way of the energy blast as well, but that simply meant that they took the brunt of the damage and were rendered less effective than before.
Gray Guardian dropped the barrier and hurried back behind cover while the boss was distracted. Lightforge wasn’t concerned about Cannoneer; Circe doubtlessly had them both invisible again, moving to another safe place to fire Cannoneer’s powerful attacks. While the villain was capable of doing damage at range, everyone had agreed that this was the best way to make use of her AP.
Lightforge summoned a dagger and hurled it at the boss. In the confusion the attack managed to slip through the flailing arms and strike at the core of the boss’s body. The flying saucer part of the robot lurched as the knockback took effect, and then its attention was firmly back on Lightforge. While he wasn’t dealing the most damage, he had powers specifically tailored to damaging machines. That alone was enough to draw the Overlord’s attention.
And just like that, they were back to the beginning of the sequence.
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It was a simple strategy, one that most MMORPG players would be familiar with. Lightforge was the Tank, with skills specialized in drawing the enemy’s focus. Once he’d drawn aggro, there were openings that the damage specialists could use to deal massive damage. Circe’s invisibility and Sunbird’s speed kept the DPS characters too hard to target, so the focus stayed with Lightforge. And anytime he got hit, Gray Guardian the Healer would step in with both protection and healing.
It was tried and true. And for a boss at this low level, it worked flawlessly. At least it did now that the team had been able to set up and start the fight on their own terms. They repeated the sequence three times before the tentacles all went stiff and raised to begin the next phase of the fight. Lightforge smiled as a pit formed in his stomach.
This was where the fight became the most dangerous. They didn’t know what new tactics would be brought into play and they would be adjusting their formation and tactics on the fly. That was always risky, but it was the only choice. They couldn’t afford to fight over and over again. They needed to win now.
Sunbird shot away from the Overlord just as it turned into the tornado from hell. This time no one was hit by the mighty attack, so it was time to see what other tricks the robot had in store for them.
As it turned out, there wasn’t a whole lot to it. Instead of picking individual targets and attacking with a few tentacles at a time, the robot swung its arms and began to unload all of its ranged weaponry in all directions. They were vaguely aimed towards the members of the team, but it had definitely switched to a ‘spray and pray’ style of attack.
Lightforge stayed hidden behind Gray Guardian’s barrier, watching the mayhem unfold around him. Such an assault couldn’t last long, so they simply had to wait it out. Or at least that’s what he thought.
What he hadn’t considered was that there were two members of the team that the Overlord didn’t have a solid aim on. While it was firing all of its weapons in three general directions, something erupted from a fourth direction. A missile, shooting through the air at high speed.
Except it wasn’t a missile. It was three missiles, all sprouting from a single launch site and taking different trajectories towards the robot’s main body. It saw them coming and raised its shield arm to block one of the incoming attacks. It guessed wrong, with the illusory missile shattering into nothing as it made contact.
The real missile hit the main core of the robotic boss, and the explosion rocked the entire chamber. Smoke surrounded the impact zone, and everything went still.
The smoke cleared, and the floating Overlord slowly began listing to one side. As if moving through molasses, it drifted towards the ground. Silence filled the room as the mechanical components finally ceased, and the boss came crashing to the ground, broken and defeated.
The silence persisted for nearly ten seconds as they waited for the robot to get back up. It stayed motionless. Then the entire team began to cheer.