Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! ALMOST FINISHING THE ARC! HOORAY!
ANYWAY, this fight didn’t come out as good as I first imagined it, and it feels a bit rushed. Still, with this we finish the dungeon part, since I’m not describing the re-runs for material. At most I will tell one thing or another that they have found out.
ALSO, reading some comments I noticed a small problem that I had to address relating to pets, so I did it on this chapter. Not that this will be stopping Gon though.
ALSO(2), Don’t expect an update tomorrow, since I have a lot of classes. At most I may post the 2nd part of the Crossover.
ALSO(3), I won’t be doing any other Q&A for some time, since they take a lot more work than what I expected. (^.^’) And even when I do, I might work on them over days instead of only one sitting like this time, so it doesn’t affect the usual updates.
Have a good read!
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I was sitting back on the corner of the room, far enough so that I wouldn’t enter in the middle of the fight, but close enough so that I could watch everything. Aura was the only one still here with me as the others engaged the wolf in the death battle. Even Lieutenant was there with them.
I swore to myself that I would make that little beast-girl pay as soon as I left this place for convincing the others to make me sit it out this time.
Somehow she managed to convince them that I am some kind of super-professional when it comes to monster hunting during the brief time I spent against the boss, thanks to the fact that Yuu kept speaking with them about the time I fought the Blazing-tail Solo every time I went off to mine. Thus, they left me here to watch the fight and find out all of the guys weakness.
I mean, come on! Even against them I had to watch someone else fight at least four times, and still died four times only to have a draw with it! What kind of expectation did she have of me? And somehow I have the feeling that she did this on purpose, only to annoy me.
Well, then I’ll show her how good I am, so she never tries this again!
But it’s not like everything was that bad, since I had some time for myself and could somehow see if what was bothering Aura was what I had in mind, as well as try to think some strategies in peace. After giving a quick glance towards the group and making sure that there wasn’t anything new happening, and turned towards the fox on my lap.
“Hey, Aura. I noticed you’ve been a bit down lately…” I said getting her attention. I noticed as her ears flickered lightly and her tails stiffened for a moment before turning to me with an innocent face. I smiled slightly awkwardly and petted her. “You aren’t as great of an actress as you think, you know?” I said with a wry smile.
The small fox clearly became sad as she lowered both of her ears and all of her tails. I petted her some more before saying.
“I noticed that you really don’t like simply standing around while me and lieutenant get into the fight…” I said making her look at me surprised for a moment. “Sorry…” I said after some time. “If I knew you would be so bothered I would have made you into a battle one.” I said while gently caressing her small head. “So, as soon as we get back to the city, we’ll change that. Okay?” I said.
She looked surprised at me, for a moment and tried to say something, but I simply smiled at her and gently patted her head.
“Is that a problem with you, Cyg?” I asked Aura’s other personality, and for a brief moment Aura’s eyes seemed to change and she lightly shook her head. “I’ll owe you one then…” I told her, receiving a nod before she let Aura get back in control.
Afterwards I turned my attention back to the fight as I watched the others fighting it out with the boss. He had just lost around one third of his health and they were now luring him towards the center of the room to fill his energy.
During this time I noticed that Lieutenant had turned to me, so I gave him a quick nod, which made the cat smirk in return before focusing back on the boss while picking up something from his inventory, just as the boss finished his transformation.
I had some things I wanted to check on my next bout with the boss, but since they made me sit this one out, I left this task for my trusted soldier, Lieutenant. And if it all worked well, we would probably have a much easier time against the boss.
So, deciding that it’s about time for me to focus again on the fight, I lean back and watch it as it unfolds once again.
…
“You should be a bit less impulsive, you know?” I said to the tiger-man popping up besides me. He eyed me for a moment before grunting annoyed.
“Well… We didn’t manage to survive again…” Yagver said with an awkward smile as he scratched his head. “Even after your little soldier here helped us so much.”
“Well, you did go with one person lacking, so you actually did pretty well.” I said raising my eyebrows. “I mean, the boss had around twenty energy to go before he turned back.”
“Yeah… Now that we were expecting the change, it isn’t all that overwhelming. Even more that I have more mobility.” He said as he tapped his original shield. Then he turned serious and looked to me. “So, did you manage to find anything at all?” He asked me.
I nodded a bit wearily.
“Three things, mainly. Four if you count on Lieutenant’s, but that one you guys already know.” I said while raising my fingers and saw as Lenny and Xredder smiled awkwardly. “First one. The cave breaker, temporary name, and the ground lash seems to share the cool down.” I said while raising my fingers. “He never uses both on rapid succession, so that is probably what it means. There is probably a way we can control what skill he will use, but that still fails me.”
“Second. On the first phase, the more energy he have, the quicker he uses both skills. I noticed this because of the time it took for him to cast when you guys got his energy down to zero. But this also makes that when he gets the stone-guarded, the longer it will take to dispel, which lead us to the third thing.”
“Stone-guarded seems to be health-based. Even when you guys took longer to bring his health down, he still cast it around the same health.” Yagver nodded at this last one, seems like he also had his suspicion. “So, that is what I gathered from that last fight. Is that enough?” I sad sullenly. Of course, the fact that I wouldn’t die is good and all, but… It’s boring to simply keep sitting here watching them.
“Are you sure it’s enough? We still have to find a way to deal with his attacks.” Lenny said from besides me. But I simply sighed.
“Look, just like standing aside helps you notice a few things, being in the heat of the battle helps with others.” I turned towards the kitsune who had kept quiet up to now. “And I’m pretty sure Yuu over there found out something, since she barely received any heal at all.
Yuu blinked surprised for a moment before pointing towards herself, confused. I nodded, which made her blink surprised for a moment before she finally understood what I meant.
“Muu… You see… Shishou said to always watch your enemies, I noticed that the wolf always seems to do something whenever he is about to attack somebody… Even when his energy is at maximum…” She said with a wry smile, making the others look shocked while I simply smiled.
“I don’t know about you, but the one I consider the ace of our team, isn’t myself, you know?” I said with a smirk as I have the kitsune explain her own findings to the team.
…
“Yay! I finally get to play!” I said sarcastically as I entered the crystalline room.
“Oh, come on! It wasn’t that bad!” Hanbei said teasingly. “There were only three fights! And you even got to find out some neat things!”
I sighed loudly. Truly, there was a nice trick I found out to help up with the whole fight, but it still doesn’t help the fact that I felt left off this whole time.
“Hmm… I wonder if I still can use this correctly…” I heard Yagver say from besides me as he weighed a huge two-handed hammer. Yup, he wasn’t with his usual sword and shield guys! But with his solo DPS weapon! Do you know what this means? I was the chosen tank for this fight! Yay!
At least one thing was interesting enough this time. Basically, this guy is a boss that is much easier tanked with an evasive tank, rather than Yagver’s block-centered tanking. Mainly because of the enrage mechanic. I was even going without a weapon on my secondary slot so I would deal a bit more of damage!
“Okay, now lets do this in one shot because I want to get to the next level!” I said pumping myself up. “I want to get my second true level up in this dungeon!”
As I said this, I noticed as Yagver flinch for a moment.
“Wait… You leveled once?” He asked me surprised. And I nodded confused. “Say… Does your…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s focus on this fight, I’ll talk with you later.”
I tilted my head confused but didn’t pursue it much longer, since it was about time to get into doggy slaying.
“Hey! Furball! Hope you had your fun, because now it’s our time to slaughter the heck out of you!” I said as I entered in range of the wolf, which immediately started to growl at me.
But the right of the first strike would be mine!
I cast Tactical charge on myself and immediately used it on shield slam. Since Shield-slam ignored defense, it was by far the best skill to use on him whenever he was on his defensive form. Right afterwards I rolled to the side and ran all the way towards the end of the farthest pillar, where I turned back and faced the wolf while smirking widely at him.
-50 (22950/23000)
He became enraged and jumped towards me, trying to lunge and bite me on my neck, but I quickly raised my shield and blocked the attack before activating ignite weapon and landing a stab on his body followed by a simple slash.
-43 -1 – 28 -1
-73 (22877/23000)
I nodded in excitement as I noticed his health dropping as the others finally started their attacks. I raised my shield when I saw his claw coming and grimaced slightly as I felt the impact. The impact was strong enough to even make me take a step back. Luckily, it seemed to be barely within my shield’s block value. Damn, Yagver’s shield is amazing to keep up with these attacks. Deciding that simply blocking isn’t a very good idea, I started to try and side-step to avoid the attacks, but I had to be careful to not move too much, since I had to keep the boss in place to avoid messing up our strategy.
After a few seconds of blocks, dodges and counters, the wolf finally readied itself to use his first skill, as he jumped backwards, surprising the others briefly, before putting strength in his legs before darting forward, trying to land a body-blow on me.
I quickly used the tactical charge on myself and used it together with a slash to fall back, avoiding the body-blow. But this skill was always followed by a lunging claw, so I quickly turned back to the wolf and rolled to the side as he passed right besides me.
Immediately I walked back to the place where I had kept the wolf earlier and waited there as he turned back to me and jumped once again aiming for my neck. I barely managed to block his bite, but he slipped a slash with his claws from beneath my shield and hacked a good chunk of my health.
Grimacing while I stepped back, I slowly started to circle the boss as he tried to attack me with claws and bites and Forgotten healed me frantically.
Suddenly, I noticed the boss look away for a brief second.
“Yagver! Step out!” I shouted to knight slamming his mallet at the flank of the beast. Since I had just cast Tactical charge on myself, I couldn’t use it on him, but luckily he managed to step away just as the boss tried to hip-check him. “Where do you think you are looking, furball?” I said as I bashed the boss with my shield before rolling away from his swinging tail.
It looked back at me annoyed, before growling and jumping back, landing between two of the pillars and looking towards the one on his right side. I quickly looked towards the others and they all nodded.
We all gathered beneath the huge wolf and packed ourselves together as the crystals falling from the ceiling hit the wolf’s fur and shattered themselves harmlessly against his thick hide. Meanwhile, all of the melees kept attacking the wolf’s leg as he recovered from the impact. I counted on my head the time it took for him to recover, and as soon as the count was about to finish, we all ran away while dodging the final crystals, with me going towards his back.
I turned back just in time to see him preparing to land a body-blow against me. I grimaced as I raised my shield and activated nature’s bastion, but I was still blown all the way back to the wall. Raising myself quickly, I rolled forward just as the wolf jumped towards my throat, passing beneath him, but taking a nasty tail pierce to the back which left me with the bleeding debuff.
I quickly got myself up and threw a poison knife at the wolf as he charged back to me, but he resisted it.
Leaving him between the pillars once again, I slowly moved around while making sure that he was standing in place, until I had my back to the wall and he had his back towards the light. I quickly gave a glance towards his health and saw that he was down to twenty thousands, and only thirty energy.
I nodded to myself as I once again focused on the wolf. Once again I noticed as he quickly glanced away from me.
He suddenly slammed his tail on the ground, picking a stone piece and threw it towards Yuu who was casting the frost-fire spear. Since this was THAT Yuu, I didn’t need to warn her, as she elegantly side-stepped, dodging the stone without losing her cast which landed heavily on the boss.
I smiled widely as I saw that our strategy was working up to now.
This was Yuu’s contribution towards the fight. She noticed that, no matter when, the moment the boss was about to attack someone other than the tank, he would quickly look around and target the player before launching the attack.
This made so that me, who thanks to my more evasive tanking style, would keep eye contact with the boss and warn whenever he targeted other people.
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After some time, as I stepped aside from another attack, the boss once again leaped backwards, landing between two pillars behind him and slamming the one on his right. We all ran towards him once again, taking cover under his body from the crystals.
From there on, the fight was mostly a remix of all that happened before. But the good part was, he only used cave breaker, and not one shotgun. One of the ideas I had while watching the others fight was this. Thankfully, I was right.
Basically, before using either attacks, the boss leaps backwards. If he lands near a pillar, he slams it, dealing large damage to one single pillar. If he lands away from the pillars, he use the shrapnel. So the idea I had was to tank him between two pillars, just outside of the light with his back turned towards it. This way his energy would slowly decrease while making sure that we could control which pillar would be the one to take the attacks.
As we avoided the third cave breaker, I noticed as his health was reaching the seventeen thousands and started dragging him back towards the light, and just as he reached around ninety energy, he activated stone-guarded, depleting all the energy back to forty, and using the cave-breaker immediately after.
I kept him in place long enough so that his energy reached ninety, and he landed the fifth attack, leaving three pillars with 66% and one with 33% of integrity.
Right afterwards, I dragged him right to the middle of the room as his energy reached one hundred.
As he started to howl, I looked towards everyone else and saw as they all held a small leather ball in their hands. Courtesy of yours truly.
And before the boss even finished howling, I turned towards Han-chan, who was charging her attack while taking advantage of the boss’ immobility and cast tactical charge on her.
She landed a heavy attack on the wolf’s flank right as he calmed down from his howl, taking full advantage of the zero defense this buff left the boss with. The wolf whimpered in pain for the first time as its health decreased by a substantial amount, and he started to turn towards the cat-girl.
But before he could do that, a hammer descended from heaven as Yagver used his leaping skill.
“Hey! Rotten fur! Your enemy is here!” I taunted him as I ran forward and landed a shield-slam followed by a stab and a slash.
The damage, together with the previous taunt managed to re-earn my aggro on the boss. This was one of the things they learned the hard-way, but the boss resets aggro when he goes enraged, so the tank must make sure to taunt immediately followed the cast, or else the DPS who lands the first hit will get targeted.
The boss turned towards me angrily and branded its huge crystal-enhanced claws towards me, but right before the impact, the claw got stuck on the crystal pillar as it started to build pressure. Since I was expecting this attack, and that trying to dodge side-ways or backwards would get me hit, I rolled forward, passing right beneath his leg moments before he suddenly released the slash, cutting nothing but air.
Feeling the buff from roll activating, I immediately turned back and landed a slash on his back, making him flail his scythed tail towards me. Although I took the hit, it was probably nothing compared to what I had dodged, as I barely lost a fifth of my health. However, I didn’t have enough time to marvel at my great luck, as he turned back while swinging his great claws towards me.
I barely managed to dodge while jumping backwards, but the boss quickly advanced forward using his charged tail-sweep attack, almost taking the attack if it weren’t for the fact that I managed to throw myself to the ground moments before.
I gulped nervously as the boss looked down at me annoyed for a moment before suddenly lifting his paw and bringing it down in my chest heavily. I lost around a third more of my life in this, but managed to roll away right before he could continue his next attack. I quickly got up as I saw the boss turn away from me and towards Forgotten.
He growled and started to put strength on his leg to prepare for a jump.
But a flash of light came from the healer’s hand, and the wolf coiled its head in surprised.
This was what I had Lieutenant test earlier. Different from the drones that were mechanical, the wolves still had their eyes, so I wanted to test whether we could use the flash-bombs as some kind of improvised interrupt. Even if the boss didn’t take the blinding effect, the surprise flash still worked just fine.
So I gave each one of them a flash bomb, so the moment the boss targeted them on the rage phase, they could activate it and interrupt him for a moment. Just to be sure, we organized ourselves to not use it too frequently, so the boss wouldn’t develop resistance so soon, since the effect wasn’t all that potent to begin with.
It was for but a brief moment, but the one or so seconds of surprise he had was more than enough time for everyone to land one or two attacks and deal a substantial amount of damage. Once he recovered, the boss turned back towards the healer, who stood on the place while healing me and growled at him angrily.
Forgotten immediately stopped casting his spell and ran away from the place he stood towards a nearby pillar. The boss passed inches away from his face on his charge as it swung both of its claws in a cross slash.
Immediately after I threw another poison dagger on the boss and grinned satisfied seeing him get poisoned. This seemed to annoy him, as he turned back to me and leaped the whole path in a single jump, landing right before me while spinning around to swing his scythed tail towards my neck.
I rolled beneath it and rolled soon after, to dodge another incoming claw, ending up right in the middle of the room. The boss growled twice at me before opening some distance between us and suddenly jumping forward and high towards me.
I grimaced as I started fall back as I saw the wolf extend his claw in the air, grabbing one of the pillars for the sweeping tail attack. I immediately fell back since the attack covered the center plus a perpendicular passage. Lenny and Xredder, who were on said passage immediately got away from the pillar he was holding himself to and saw as the tail passed ferociously in front of them, rending the earth like butter.
I quickly glanced at the boss energy and saw that it had dropped to around sixty points. This energy worked as some kind of timer on how long the rage phase would last. What happened afterwards was still a mystery, but I guessed that he would get back to his usual state for another round of the battle.
Still, zero defense aside, there was another great advantage to having the boss spend time in this phase, and that is that he won’t attack the pillars at all during the whole duration of the enrage. In fact, one of the pillars at random would start shimmering slightly and regenerating a bit of integrity.
This one we didn’t have any control, so the best strategy was to make sure that all of the pillars had at least some damage, this way the regeneration wouldn’t be wasted.
As the boss landed back on the ground, it immediately turned back to me and leaped, crossing the path between us in a fraction of a second, barely giving me time to dodge the first strike, but taking some damage even after blocking the following attack.
I grimaced in pain as the boss lunged forward aiming at my head, but I rolled away at the last second.
Well… I still had to survive the unstopping barrage of attacks before wondering what happens if his energy gets back to zero.
Right after I got back on my feet, the boss tried one last slash before suddenly turning away and looking at Xredder, before lunging towards the beast-man, who dodged the charge with some difficulty.
The boss once again turned towards me, but before he could attack me, an ice javelin pierced his flank, which was soon followed by a dashing kitsune, who yanked it out and made a low sweep with it, entangling the boss feet just as he darted forward, taking away his balance.
He fell to the ground with a yelp, which we quickly took advantage of to land even more attacks before he got up back again with a spinning attack.
Some of us didn’t manage to escape on time and took the skill head on, being blown away while loosing a good chunk of our health. I immediately chugged down a health potion to make it easier on Forgotten before looking back at the boss and grimacing.
I quickly glanced at Yuu, wanting to ask her how she managed to knock the boss down, but she also didn’t seem to know, so I left it alone.
Maybe the lack of defense also left him susceptible to CC?
“Somebody have a stun skill?” I shouted towards the others, and received a response from both Xredder and Yagver. “Whoever is longest, try it on the boss, now!”
Yagver nodded and charged forward as I barely managed to roll beneath another one of those charged claw-strike. He lifted the hammer up in the air and brought it down with incredible fury on the boss forehead.
And the boss fell down to the ground, dizzy.
Meanwhile we rained down all of our skills on the stunned boss. Sadly, the stun still had its effect reduced, so a few seconds later the boss shook his head while getting up and we quickly opened some distance between us and him.
Finally, a few dodges later, his energy hit rock bottom once again, and he fell on the ground for a moment, panting heavily as the blue fur and the crystal dissolved from his body, leaving him back on his state pre-rage.
I smiled wickedly at this. After giving us so much trouble, we managed to survive a full cycle of his fight for the first time. Now, all we had to do was to survive the next.
…
It was a long and arduous fight, but the other half of it was much easier. Now that we knew that we could apply CCs on him during the rage phase, my first idea was to have Yuu use her very own cold-based CC on the boss.
Since the boss main weapons were the ridiculously high speed and damage, the moment the frostbite debuff hit him, he lost pretty much everything he had of scary. Of course, we lost our main damage dealer, since she had to sustain the debuff all the while, but it was more than worth the price, since without speed most of his skills became useless.
So, after all this time, we finally managed to land the final blow on the infernal wolf, and he fell with one last feeble howl while still on his last rage mode. However, we ended up losing one of the pillars, which left us on cold sweat.
The others all immediately started cheering and high-fiving each other while forgotten simply sat down and started to recover his almost depleted mana.
Meanwhile I quickly distributed the points from leveling up in toughness and went straight to the back of the cave, where some of the crystals had cracked after the fight, revealing a small passage upon which laid the very item I came here for.
In the small passage of the cave laid a crystalline formation laying on the very back of the room. In there was a black crystal sprouting from the back of the room. It was the size of my forearm and shone an ominous and mysterious light. Around it seven light pink crystals sprouted forming something like a flower around the crystal. These had a much less intimidating air around them, and almost seemed to pulsate like a heart.
I slowly approached the black crystal and held it, giving it a light tug. Seeing that it was still stuck to the wall, I tried to give it a stronger pull, and this time it did come out fully.
It was surprisingly light… Much more than what I expected.
Throwing it into my inventory, I immediately turned my attention back to the pink crystals, frowning as I looked at them. They were clearly different from the other crystals in the dungeon, as well as from the black crystal in my hand. Fueled by reckless curiosity, I approached the crystals and tried yanking them out.
Unlike the black crystal, however, they didn’t come out easily, so I immediately took out my pick and happily started hitting the base of the crystals, slowly whittling it away.
After taking all of them out of the wall, I went back to the boss room, where I saw Yagver’s group setting up a strange machine on its center.
“You do remember that the dungeon’s objective requires us to stop the mana from spreading, right?” Yagver said while raising an eyebrow. Ooh! There was something like that! I was so focused on my own quest and kind of forgot that! “This is the machine we got after defeating the Drone, and the instructions said to use it here.” He said as he pressed some buttons according to a metal plate in his hand.
“I see…” I said as I approached them. “Oh, yeah. What did you want to talk with me, Yag?” I asked reminding of what he said at the beginning of the fight.
“Oh… Well…” He suddenly felt a bit awkward. “Say… Does your class have the tamer skill?” he asked me after some time. I raised my eyebrows confused.
“I… Don’t think so… Why?”
“Well… How to explain it… You said that you are two levels higher than when you entered the dungeon, right?” He asked me, and I nodded at loss. He then turned towards the others. “Say, Xredder… How many levels did you get in here?”
“Three levels, and I am almost at my fourth. Deaths included.” He said without paying it much mind.
“Lenny?”
“Four here.”
It took me some time to see where this was going, but once it clicked, I became shocked. These guys are even higher levels compared to me! How the hell did they level more than me who is the lowest level?
“And… What does this have to do with the skill?” Hanbei asked confused, already seeing where this was going.
“Well… Don’t you wonder why not many players have battle pets, even when any class can get them with some effort?” Yagver said with a wry smile. “Because when you don’t have the class skill, you receive 30% less experience, which goes to the pet. And the penalty is even bigger when it is at a lower level than you.”
Wait… What?