“Milord, before Concetta asked about bosses getting sick in battle, as opposed to only hurt, I was talking about how you should resist the urge of making the park harder than the last. Especially since a trash-free park’s main appeal is the lure of quick loot; you want to deliver on that promise” Saronium tells him.

“Are you telling me this park is too hard as it currently is? Or that this party is otherwise not representative of who will even want to go into the park?” a puzzled Enno asks.

“I’m afraid so. You want your park to succeed as a business venture, you should err on the side of too easy”

Seloniel, while still a ghost, had a stroke on the second stack of internal haemorrhages, and a heart attack on the third. Or at least as convincingly a ghost could suffer from that, Saronium reflects on how fragile Seloniel’s health is, and how she can be killed with what haunted park runners call stacks of that mechanic.

But now they collect more loot: Bryzax gets new cuisses, Mijanou, pants, which she gives to her lord, Enno, a new jacket, Saronium gets a skirt and Concetta, an axe.

“We must take the crane down to the bottom of the quarry. The next boss is down there somewhere” Bryzax tells the others as the trio all put on their new pieces of gear.

It’s then that the treadmill crane gets down to the bottom of the quarry. A little faster than in normal quarrying because the three ghost ex-anusiya whose gear have been sold off to pay for the park only have a payload a little over half a ton to get down. As opposed to a stone-laden wagon drawn by a team of two oxen. But even that takes them about ten seconds.

A ten-second period where they take in the music being played in the background, and where they could feel the eerie wails of ghosts haunting the quarry, just not Janick.

And Saronium keeps healing the adventurers as they move into where the third boss’ room, at the bottom of the quarry. However, the second they step off the crane, the party is left wondering why the quarry has been abandoned by its last owners. What made Janick decide that a quarry was the best place to hide the pair’s phylacteries. Are their phylacteries items that can be easily disguised as common tools in use in quarries? Enno starts asking himself. If what they say about Janick is correct, her only claim to adventuring fame is killing the electricity-stealing dragon terrorizing the border region between Caladon and Kaeshana. My predecessor even deployed a ballista against it, as part of an expedition.

Speaking of electricity-stealing dragon, its ghost has more or less the same appearance as the original monster. He has a blue belly and scales, while his yellow wings threaten to tear them apart.

“The one thing I can say that could make the fight easier is the need to ride the boss’ back. Just like some bosses in Caladon Bog, and usually rideable bosses tend to favor melee” Mijanou suggests to the rest of the party.

“If so, this boss should be easier than Seloniel, provided you aren’t airsick” Saronium comments on the medical complication of fighting a flying boss on its back.

“At this point, a boss that’s easier than Seloniel would be a welcome breath of fresh air!” Bryzax exclaims before moving into position to pull the boss. “Pulling in three, two, one…”

Concetta and Enno both provide cover fire at the boss’ joints as they follow Mijanou on their way to the boss’ tail. They need to be quick before the boss flaps its wings, or else they will be buffeted before they even get the chance to ride the boss’ back.

As everyone gets buffeted by the boss’ wings flapping, the dust cloud makes it harder for anyone to see through it while it’s still up.

It’s after the boss is done flapping its wings that it lands. Bryzax is then thrown electricity at. Which freezes him in place, at point-blank range, and barely able to swing his dha while his entire body takes a hit.

And Saronium must focus fully on Bryzax while the boss is spitting out electricity. At the same time, the DPS get on its tail, and on its scaly back from there.

“Aim for the wing joints!” Mijanou yells at Enno while he fires his assault rifle at the area where the wing joints are.

Meanwhile, Concetta focuses her spells on the area of the spine where the joints as they advance. As she hopes the scales soften some, she hopes that the bullets will penetrate the dragon’s skin and dent the bones.

At the same time, Mijanou hacks away at the other wing joint with her two talwars. With a few hits, they get wounds to open in the wing joints, as well as the boss’ blood vessels to get exposed.

“Now, Concetta, now!” Enno yells.

By this point, Concetta, feeling like getting the boss drunk might make the job easier, focuses her alcohol magic on the exposed blood vessels. And causes the boss’ blood pressure to go up. However, she must continually cast alcohol magic on these, causing some scales to fall off around the spine.

As the electricity-stealing dragon gets clobbered around the wing joints, Bryzax thinks he might be able to make the boss zap itself when he’ll shoot a blue-white lightning bolt again. Just getting behind a leg as the dragon’s head gets repeatedly slashed in the teeth. And the teeth falling off had cavities.

But it’s clear that, by doing so, the boss must twist his neck to get a shot at zapping Bryzax. Even so, his neck has a finite flexibility and there’s only so much the dragon can twist itself before he’s put in a position where his own body gets in the way of zapping the tank.

In his buzzed state, he decides to flap its ailing wings, and take off, so he can get a shot at zapping Bryzax without zapping itself. Yet, Mijanou is about to cause a wing to get clipped.

“Watch out, Bryzax! The boss’ right wing is about to fall!” Enno yells at his herald while the dragon’s wing falls to the ground.

“Now, Concetta, now! Go for the veins!” Mijanou yells at the alcohol witch, as she switches to the left wing.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Saronium questions the wisdom of Mijanou clipping the dragon’s other wing, already maimed by Enno’s gunfire.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The dragon gets steadily drunker as Concetta casts alcohol spells at its veins, exposed by the boss’ right wing being clipped. Yet, the sight of the wing falling off makes Bryzax get away, taking hits from the dragon buffeting the area.

In his drunken state, the dragon spits a lightning bolt, but to no avail since his vision is blurred by his skyrocketing blood content. As he gets angrier, he keeps spitting electricity and failing to hit the herald.

As the drunk dragon’s left wing gets clipped, while flying over the quarry’s crane, it falls to the ground, threatening to throw the other four off its back. They only have a few seconds left to hit the boss; here Enno fires at the boss’ neck.

The boss crashes into the ground, making a loud noise and knocking everyone off on impact. And yet, the drunk electricity-stealing dragon hasn’t managed to kill anyone by falling off the sky, no more than it killed itself.

Still, everyone had broken bones, ribs and so on, causing Saronium to focus on herself before she uses the healing chain spell to get the others back up. They groan in pain, barely able to keep up their attacks.

The life witch scolds Mijanou for clipping the electricity-stealing dragon’s wings in mid-air, while she suddenly holds aggro on it.

Saronium’s face turns red. “Mijanou, you almost got us killed!”

“We almost killed the dragon, too!” Mijanou responds, while trying to evade the dragon’s bite attempts.

Because the dragon’s broken bones can no longer support its massive weight, Mijanou feels like she can get the boss to zap itself, while the ranged DPS keep firing at the exposed joint. Which has become so exposed that they have a clear shot at the spine, and hence turning the monster into a tetraplegic.

“The monster can’t move anymore! Final burn!” Bryzax then attacks the tetraplegic monster’s neck.

And even when he could twist its neck, the boss tries to zap Mijanou to death, but manages to duck at the very last moment. Behind his immobile tail.

But since the boss is obsessed with hitting Mijanou, presumably because of the saber dancer’s role in getting its wings clipped, it zaps its own tail, since Mijanou is right behind it.

“Mijanou!” Enno yells at her, while blood is getting spilled on the floor.

“I’m fine, the boss has zapped itself” Mijanou answer as the drunk dragon’s body shakes despite being otherwise tetraplegic.

But an agonizing dragon, oblivious to his body being torn apart thanks to Concetta using her magic to make him drunk, starts vomiting electricity left and right. The electricity attacks cause everyone to get on the move.

Given its sheer size, and the limits of his “firing arcs”, the five quickly find blind spots from which they can keep attacking the dying dragon. Yet Concetta vomits on it since her own blood content went up like crazy as she cast rapid-fire alcohol spells during the fight.

The telltale signs of the boss’ imminent death are as clear as day, because the size of the puddle of blood increases by the second. Whose drunkenness makes the boss lose more than just blood: it also makes the boss urinate, until its body becomes rigid.

After the boss breathes its last, Saronium comments on how this park seems to be different from past haunted parks.

“This boss doesn’t even feel like a haunted park ghost anymore! Past haunted park bosses were expected to just get spanked without affecting their ability to throw mechanics at the parks’ visitors! Aside from alcohol magic of course. Here it seems like the ghosts have medical conditions commensurate with the effects of their mechanics” Saronium comments on the differences between this park and past haunted parks.

“I don’t think it makes a park easier or harder per se, just different. Thus far, though, this boss feels the easiest in this park” Enno comments on the relative boss difficulty. “I sure hope that the first two bosses would be nerfed in fatal difficulty, we are relative novices in haunted parks, and we were getting demolished”

But I wonder how the loot is funded. Especially if the park gets the success I was hoping for. How much does the loot cost me? Obviously, I expect the cost of the loot to be based on attendance, Enno starts wondering about the final aspect of running a haunted park that might bother him. Yet, he knew, based on his Caladon Bog run that haunted parks are free of charge for visitors.

Speaking of loot, the loot chest took a while to appear near the dragon’s corpse. Concetta opens it and she finds a pair of jackboots, while Saronium gives gloves to her. By then Concetta is fully geared. Mijanou gets a helmet, and Enno gets some giant rifle with a telescope mounted on it. In the end, Enno gets fully geared, too, but won’t fire as many bullets as he used to, just bigger ones. As for Bryzax, he gets boots, too.

“If you may excuse me, I need to talk to Mardonion outside the park!” a shaken Enno warns the other haunted park testers.

“I guess you haven’t experienced this, milord, but for a park to save a visitor’s progress through a dungeon, you need to stay in the same group. Raids’ progress saving is another matter” Saronium adds.

“What does that imply?” Enno asks.

“This means we need to stay here. Here, take my emergency exit stone” Saronium hands him her emergency exit stone.

“What’s an emergency exit stone?” Concetta rolls her eyes upon hearing about that object.

“Milord, just say press the big red button. It should take you out of this park” the healer gives her instructions to the would-be haunted park operator.

“Press the big red button” Enno speaks to the stone.

Why didn’t Saronium tell me about the emergency exit stone? A puzzled Enno gets teleported out of the park, and finds himself at the entrance of the park. He then searches for Mardonion in Mijanou’s inn.

Once he locates Mardonion’s room, Enno has a few questions for him.

“First, I have concerns about the park being too hard for its fatal mode to be financially viable, or at least the first two bosses” Enno voices his concern.

“If a park gets a reputation of it being too hard right out of the gate, it’s very difficult to repair the damage, at least without what the haunted park community calls nerfs. Speaking of which, perhaps fewer plows against Seloniel, or making the panicking horses die after the pushtigban riding it gets unhorsed, might be a good starting point. And you’re right in that I can clearly see what difference having an alcohol wizard on hand makes”

“Oh I’ll take these nerfs. One more thing: how much will the park’s loot cost me?”

“The cost of raw materials. Sure, the magical loot systems might draw from waste of all kinds, like mining slag, sawdust, or agricultural waste, but every month, you will receive a bill for the amount of raw materials used to make the loot. That’s why gear is cheaper to drop than mounts and mounts are often reserved for the highest difficulties of a haunted park”

“Mounts drop from haunted parks?” a clueless Enno gasps. “Does this park drop a mount?”

“Unlike gear, which is guaranteed to drop, mounts, due to their costs, aren’t. So yes, but which one drops from the park will be a surprise. There are three possibilities: the ghost-drawn hand cart, Marzban’s warhorse or the electricity-stealing dragon”

“You decided that a mount will drop from the park, and you didn’t tell me first? Not sure adventurers are willing to risk their lives for a ghost-drawn hand cart! You can always sell ghost-drawn hand carts; heck, I will even give you an abandoned village to build ghost-drawn hand carts in! But if you have your heart set on having my haunted park drop a mount, Marzban’s phantom warhorse, and make it drop in fatal mode only!”

“You can always have a phantom warhorse draw a cart. But please be advised that the loot system people will bill you, for a phantom warhorse, the same amount as a full set of plate armor’s worth of steel, plus three quarters of oats or hay and a few planks of wood”

Let’s see: that’s 150 gold for the oats or hay, twice as much for the steel, and another 50 gold for the saddle and reins’ materials, Enno is left wondering how many phantom warhorses he can afford to let drop from his park.

Said phantom warhorses were already in the park, so making versions rideable by visitors isn’t much of a stretch to Enno’s eyes, who gives an estimate for how much he’s willing to spend on top of the estimated loot costs.

“Maybe two to three percent drop rate would ensure that it wouldn’t be too expensive, perhaps bumped up to five percent or higher should the fatal mode attendance prove too low!” Enno gives his instructions to the quartermaster and de facto project manager for the park.

“So be it…”