Undaunted by their loss against the Koreans against Tiamat, the Death Fiscalists move across the taxiways of Gatwick to get to the final boss. On the taxiway, a fire engine spreads a fire retardant when the party gets within firing range. And the gunners on its roof fire a heavy machinegun at the party, at point-blank range.
“Down with Korea! Down with Bulgogi!” Karine attempts to motivate her players as they hack away at the fire engine’s subsystems. “For the turret phase, I will man the turret because I am much more fragile than Béteulle”
As the party moves into melee range of the fire engine, the party is getting attacked by riot police, supported by their own heavy infantry. Which prompts Karine to draw a bright line. The now-blind riot police officers start detonating flashbangs at random, especially after the fire engine is destroyed. However, unlike in the fight against Tiamat, the CIWS crew doesn’t use it to attack the party. It seems like the CIWS crew has learned their lessons from Tiamat, Karine muses while they advance under the loud noises of the flashbangs.
Once the riot police is dealt with, they drive a stair truck, and attempt to align it with a jetway so they can use it to get to the south terminal. And, from there, the CIWS turret at one of its corners.
And yet, the raiders enter a concourse devoid of any security guards. They start to feel like the demons are out to get them between boarding gates. Especially as they approach the maintenance spiral staircase of the CIWS turret.
“Watch out for new mechanics, but otherwise start the same as in brutal mode; I will take the point on the roof” Ram instructs the players. “Personally, I’d say, the melee DPS should go and defend Karine from the concourse’s inside for phase one”
“Joy…” the assassin sighs, believing that Karine’s bright line would be useful there.
When the first phase begins, Karine mans the CIWS turret to fire at Belzebuth. Which she needs to fire manually since Belzebuth does not have a radar signature, nor an infrared one.
While Karine mans the CIWS fire control console, the ranged DPS on the roof fend off enemies of increasing power, the first wave being paratroopers. Here, the real causes for concern are the grenades being thrown by several types of enemies, both on the roof and in the concourse.
“Are the grenade throws interruptible?” Karine asks her teammates, while the CIWS can no longer fire at the boss. “Or is there damage that must be healed or repaired before the CIWS can fire again?”
It turns out the answer is yes to the second question, but not the first. The second wave, on the roof, includes wyvern-riding knights, who zero in on the CIWS’ barrel assembly, or the ammo underneath. Concourse grenadiers, on the other hand, aim for the staircase’s central pole. Especially critical to them since the fire control system’s wiring is housed in the central pole.
When they wipe to attacks from the wyvern knights and lords doing them in from above…
“We have been too slow in repairing the damage to the CIWS!” Ram complains about something that went wrong during phase 1.
“Speaking of CIWS, it seems like I might have focused too much on the boss whenever I was able to fire it. I guess I might need to focus on the adds for a second or two per airborne add” Karine wonders whether doing so would make the party’s life harder in later phases.
As the wipes accumulate, the party gets better at dealing with the emergency repairs to the CIWS system, which are new in fatal mode.
“Whoever has consistently been the worst DPS should be performing the emergency repairs! Our DPS has been a little erratic!” Caro yells on voice.
By the time they start doing phase 2, an hour or so later, they realize how finicky the emergency repairs have been, or what forces them to undergo emergency repairs in the first place. Once the helicopter is near the CIWS turret, and the players start boarding it:
“Remember: the manufacturer didn’t hotfix the nausea mechanic for nothing! Cleanse the nausea at around fifteen stacks, same as with the previous boss!” Karine orders her players to watch out for their nausea stacks in the later phases of the fight.
Meanwhile, virtually everyone else fighting this boss believe nausea works differently on this boss as it had on Tiamat. Like the Koreans think cleansing nausea on Belzebuth might mean something different. And experiment various combinations of how much to cleanse, or whether to cleanse at specific spots on the boss being the most common.
With the nausea out of the way, we know how to handle it and we can then focus on other new and exciting mechanics, Francis reflects on how they are going to play going into later stages of the boss.
Some of her newfound followers look at her stream and just laugh when wipes happen, while others just want to root for a given country. Especially those whose countries have no real hope of winning. For example, Karine’s audience comes mostly from the Americas and the Danish streamer’s audience is mostly European. Such as when the latest wipe seems to take forever to materialize, unlike in most wipes, where things going wrong can snowball.
---------------------
Meanwhile, another Kataparuto player, in Miyagi District, gets visited by what Karine kept calling hallucinations since these visits began, but this time, it’s a player who never played with Karine, and has far more alts than she does.
“Our world is in grave danger because of actions made by yours!” one of that player’s characters, Yasama, shows up to him.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Deteiku!” (Get out) the player yells at the ghost while his DPS in active gameplay is doing emergency repairs to the CIWS fire control system.
“For your world, what happens in ours is a game; however, residents of our world have begun revolting!” Yasama, an archer, warns him, causing him to lose focus and, from there, his character to die.
“Revolt? What did we do, or fail to do, to make the residents of your world unhappy to the point of revolt?” a puzzled player asks the astral projection of one of his characters with a Japanese accent, after his character dies.
“I’m not going to sugar-coat things. A lot of us feel forced into servitude, into paths we would never have wanted for ourselves!”
“Your world is constantly at war, and this expansion is about taking the fight to hell! By revolting, you’re not helping your world fend hell off!” Yasama’s player retorts, not knowing that so many people still playing the game are oblivious to the in-game lore.
This is going to be Japan’s best tier in this game. In all these years playing for Kataparuto, never before has a Japanese guild even achieved a top-ten in a race to world first, and my alt is about to ruin everything? Yasama’s player starts getting angry at, well, Yasama, for ruining a pull. However, Yasama’s astral projection disappears as Kataparuto is preparing for another pull on Belzebuth.
---------------------
So while Clavet’s rebel cell moves into a hangar at Heathrow, within earshot of Terminal 5, Monseigneur, on the other hand, is busy dealing with Belzebuth in the vicinity of Gatwick. As are her guildies. And several guilds from around the world. As the Death Fiscalists enter the final stage of this fight, where Belzebuth can no longer fly.
With Karine drawing a bright line in front of him, she makes the boss cross it. And the boss uses its gigantic eyes to project various forms of demonic power while on runway 26L.
However, under the effect of the bright line, the boss being temporarily blind means that any mechanic that uses the boss’ eyes will be much more erratic. And the players must be prepared for positional changes.
“We won’t let Bulgogi, nor Kataparuto get away with this!” Caroline screams at the end of the airborne phases of this fight.
“How do you know it’s Bulgogi or Kataparuto breathing down our necks, and not Kronborg or Donghua Networks?” another DPS player asks her, while his character is made to play a Twister game because of blindness’ effects on the mechanics.
“I’ll answer you after I die, or we wipe, whichever happens first” Caroline answers.
“Taunt!” Karine yells at Ram, after her character gets blood sucked by the boss for a second time.
And the boss’ movements sometimes trample melee DPS, hurting the trampled DPS. Trampling melee DPS also allows it to keep his trajectory relatively straight on the runway. But Ram has Béteulle sing a variety of tunes as he moves from the back to the front of the boss. Once the boss is under his control, however, the boss’ eyesight comes back up and he can avoid relying on trampling players to orient itself.
Phew; when Karine held the boss, this made me feel like the whack-a-mole game that’s raid healing went up to 11, the other healer sighs of relief of not having to switch targets as much.
And yet, adds of all kinds, even the drug-sniffing Cerberuses seem to hit like trucks even then. Even when Caroline herds the drug-sniffing Cerberuses together, then throws a frag grenade at the pack of Cerberuses.
She discovers then that putting the Cerberuses in the puddles of hellfire left behind by the boss makes them hit even harder. And the hellfire hits indiscriminately, and harder as well. As a result, Caroline is the first to die, followed by Karine, because the Cerberuses are immune to the high mass.
However, once the Cerberuses die, the boss follows that up with paratroopers, and riot police. Which cause a lot of the survivors to pop their stun-breaking abilities. And those who don’t, well, die quickly, causing the rest of the party to collapse along with it.
“So, for the final phase, I need to ensure that the bright line is drawn behind the boss’ eyeballs whenever I draw one. It appears that the boss trampling resulting from the bright line is a liability here” Karine informs her viewers as she capitalizes on the final phase of the last boss to gain new followers. “If possible, I’d try to put the hellfire on the adds”
“Yeah, boss trampling when blinded made it harder for us to keep everyone alive!” Francis comments while he has his character eat a food buff from a feast.
“It’s after I die that I watch Breathalyzer News’ podcast” Caroline finally answers her DPS teammate’s question.
“Pulling in three, two, one…” Karine counts down before entering the roundabout’s portal.
Thank God the portal leads us to Gatwick’s south terminal concourse, as opposed to a taxiway, Ram sighs.
Caroline then starts praying that the other 4 guilds still in position to win, well, wipe. And Kronborg does just that. It seems like every guild wring out a few meters on the runway at every pull. And decreasing the percentage of health left to the boss along with that. Yet, until then, it seems to be wipe, rinse and repeat, with all the adds from previous phases being deployed.
Well into the night, there is still no winner, but the entire MAA community is watching their favorites progress in their respective fights against Belzebuth. When the Death Fiscalists get to the burn phase:
“The fire engine is deployed on the taxiway again!” the assassin signals to the team.
It pains me to do it, but hopefully celebrating the high mass with the fire engine and its crew will buy some time for Caroline and company. They won’t need to worry about it if these adds fall asleep, Karine muses, while the boss still has 8% left to its health bar.
Against all odds, Kataparuto has clawed back into the RWF picture after a poor ending to day 1. However, Bulgogi seems to be struggling with the runway phase, and so does Kronborg.
“Adds!” Karine sighs, while the boss’ health bar is getting dangerously low.
“Ignore the adds, we only need to survive for about twenty more seconds!” Caroline starts tunneling the boss.
Karine starts blasting holy strobes at the paratroopers, then hides underneath the boss once she holds aggro on them. She starts feeling the stress mounting as the DPS get trampled by the boss. Especially the melee. Was hiding underneath the boss, and hope the paratroopers hit the boss, or get trampled even, to get to me a good idea? Karine ruminates as she dashes towards Ram.
When she gets to Ram, the boss’ health bar ticks down to zero and they can then deal with the paratroopers while the fire engine is busy extinguishing the hellfire puddles on the runway.
“We did it! Canada wins its first race to world first!” Caroline announces on voice, before singing Oh Canada in French for everyone to hear on a stream.
“I guess I got lucky. As a snowplow driver, I couldn’t ask for a better way to end the tier” Francis comments, after the national anthem ends, while Donghua Networks finish second and Kataparuto gets their kill on the following pull, good for third place.
“Like the two Quebecer ladies, I took the week off from work for this, and now I can go to sleep!” Ram comments.