Once the decision was made, Raine set about preparing the optimal battlefield. He clearly remembered the boss would call any surviving crogs in the village to come to his aid, so his first order of business was clearing them out.
For the most part, the level ten beasts were distant enough from each other to avoid pulling two at a time. There were, however, several larger buildings that rested above the water on long stilts. Inside, multiple groups of two would need to be dealt with. The only real issue with these groups was that one of them was always a caster.
After clearing all the lone crogs, Raine positioned himself on the outside of the first large building. He pressed his back against the bamboo-like structure, feeling the ridges dig into his back with the advanced tactile feedback only ZL or real life could emulate. After inching down the wall, he stuck his head around the corner of the open doorway.
Luckily, the three groups of two inside the sparsely decorated building weren't in range of him. They pathed around randomly, often coming into aggro distance but he simply ducked out of sight until finally spotting his opening. The rock flew true, smacking the nearest mage in the face just as it traveled far enough away from the other two groups that they wouldn't follow it.
Not seeing Raine—since he had already retreated around the corner—the beast croaked and charged toward the doorway. Having no intention of taking chances with a potential six enemies, Raine had already triggered the roulette three times to get the weapon he wanted. The moment the caster popped into sight, it ate a mouthful of Final Gambit. [-870] Its head instantly exploded into gore that splashed into the eyes of its partner—who was charging through the door behind it.
Raine capitalized on the warrior’s temporary blindness, stabbing it several times in the neck. The goddess of luck was clearly cheering him on as he scored two critical hits in a row, finishing it off before the fight had truly started. He collected their drops, adding the money and another spare weapon to his inventory. A note with hints regarding the location of Torell’s cave was tossed aside with a knowing smile.
For the next group, he pulled them out of the building the same way. The time it took for them to be in the right position from the last group allowed him to regenerate his Health and Discipline, but was not nearly enough time to restore his MP. Not that it mattered, since even after the fourth roulette, he wasn’t able to bring out his knife again. Settling with the mace, he smashed the caster in the face as soon as it came through the doorway. He only had time for one more Strike before its warrior companion joined them. Upon seeing Raine, the warrior unleashed a loud croak and Charged right at him.
Raine sidestepped, hugging the wall so he was angled in a way that the knockback from its undodgeable charge hurled him to the corner of the building. He landed hard on the wet wood of the dock surrounding the building and made no attempts to halt his slide. Instead, he threw out his hand, grabbed the corner strut of the wall, and used it to rotate around the corner and out of sight just as a Water Blast crashed into the flooring.
His momentum, and the slickness of the wood almost sent him sliding off the deck. He barely caught himself on a nearby pole that was set deep into the shallow lakebed. He hopped to his feet before jumping onto that same support pole. There wasn’t enough space for both his feet, so he placed one atop the other in an old ninja jumping technique. With the force of both legs, he bounded to the top of the building as the warrior rounded the corner.
Burning Discipline again, Raine sprinted on top of the building and dove onto the caster feet first. His weight drove it into the floor and before if could regain its footing, he finished it off with a crushing Strike. [-276]
The warrior was quick to return and Raine made sure that its next Charge merely sent him bouncing against the wall and not into the water where much more dangerous foes lurked. After a short back-and-forth exchange of blows, it followed its ally into death.
The third pair was much easier than the second. The roulette gifted him his shield and he used it to block the warrior’s Paralyzing Scream, then hold off its spear while the caster fired at him from behind. Raine was intimately familiar with the cooldown of the basic Water Blast. With the caster positioned directly behind him, each dodged shot crashed right into the warrior, quickly killing him. The caster didn't survive more than a handful of seconds without its tank.
[Level up! +1 to all attributes]
After clearing all four buildings, Raine had accumulated several more duplicate weapons that would certainly sell well to new players, along with just under four silver and enough Superiority to level.
He trudged down the series of long docks back to the shallows and made his way to the chieftain’s clearing. The space was devoid of debris and had solid footing, though that wouldn’t last long after the battle began. He made his final preparations and faced the massive beast from just outside its large aggro radius.
It held a cleaver longer than Raine’s body in one hand as if it were a dagger. Its thick, scaled body had no armor but it hardly needed it with its natural defenses. Razor-sharp, rotten teeth filled its gaping maw and its beady, crimson eyes spoke more of primal viciousness than calculating cunning.
image [https://i.imgur.com/BSPtzPj.jpg]
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Sensing Raine’s bloodlust, it pulled itself free from the sand, rising to its full height. Size wasn't always an indication of a monster's Potency, but in this case, it certainly was. Raine was well aware that its attributes were over double his own. Even a glancing blow would send him flying and there was almost no chance of him surviving two hits without significant recovery time between them.
Unlike the Golem, this thing doesn't have an exploitable weak point. I'll need to save all of my Discipline for dodging. The real issue is going to be when it reaches fifty percent HP. If I get unlucky, I'll die without standing a chance.
Raine dashed toward the chieftain and it responded by raising the cleaver above its head. The moment he was in range, the weapon swung down with blurring speed. Raine burned a point of Discipline to leap sideways, narrowly avoiding its Chop which rent a huge gash in the ground. He memorized the gash’s location so he wouldn’t trip over it later, internally grumbling how annoying it was that the indestructibility of objects didn’t also apply to the terrain.
Another leap forward brought Raine inside its guard where a flash of light preceded the appearance of his strongest weapon. He grinned viciously. Getting lucky had never been part of his plan and the appearance of the knife sent a jolt of adrenaline through his blood. The blade bit deep, sliding between scales to taste the muscled inner-meat of the crog's thigh.
Raine didn't stick around to see the damage, immediately leaping into a roll that brought him outside the range of its clawed feet. He barely made it in time as a tremendous Stomp crashed into the ground where he had been a moment ago. The soil shook and Raine's teeth rattled. He clenched his jaw and dove back under its guard.
The crog tried to backpedal but Raine stuck fast to the narrow gap between its legs, plunging his dagger into its flesh repeatedly. Each successful hit dealt a measly [-55] but with his boosted attack speed, he was drawing blood nearly three times per second. The first ten seconds of the fight quickly passed and the boss's five percent passive regeneration ticked for the first time. [+300] Seeing the number not only confirmed its elite status, but also its total HP of six thousand.
The crog kicked and thrashed, and Raine steadily burnt Discipline to narrowly avoid each attack. Over only a handful of seconds, he managed to grasp the way its muscles flowed into each action which allowed him to dodge without Discipline more consistently.
Four stabs later—one of them a crit [-110]—the boss's regenerated health was once more hacked through. When the next crit reduced its total HP to ninety percent, the Chieftain used its first special skill, Call Reinforcements. A loud, croaking cry rang through the entire village but Raine had been quite thorough. Instead of being overwhelmed by additional beasts, he was able to safely dig out several pounds of flesh from the boss while it wasted its time.
The moment the boss recovered, it raised a leg high for another Stomp. Raine was forced back into the open. Due to the beast's size and being underneath it, he failed to see the weapon poised above its head. The moment it spotted him, it unleashed another Chop that descended at a blistering speed. Raine raised his dagger with the point angled down, narrowly catching the cleaver and diverting it away from splitting him in two.
Despite the successful deflection, he took considerable damage. [-130] The pain was secondary to the debilitating feeling of hurtling through the air, unable to dodge or even see as the world turned into a dizzying blur. The shockwave created by the cleaver striking the ground next to him ruptured one of his eardrums, further demolishing his balance.
[Negative affliction received: Dizzy (Duration 3.23 seconds)]
Unable to trust what his senses were telling him, Raine fell back on decades of experience. The moment his shoulder felt the hard ground, he extended his arm with all his strength, sending him veering off-course. The cleaver came down again, narrowly missing due to his unorthodox maneuver. Thankfully, the cooldown on Chop meant the attack had been a normal swing that didn't have the force to send him flying all over again.
Raine sprang to his feet, immediately breaking into a Discipline-powered sprint with his eyes closed tightly to fight off the dizziness. He didn't know exactly where the boss was or what its next move would be but he could picture the beast in his mind. He knew it would lift up its weapon and then either swing again, punch with the opposite hand, or try to kick him. Any of those moves would be easy to dodge so long as he got the timing right.
A moment later, his instincts screamed so he leaped to the side in a full belly-flop. The wind from the cleaver sailing over his head came just before he hit the ground. Had he underestimated the boss and tried to merely sidestep, he definitely would have died on the spot.
The negative status cleared just as he sprang back to his feet. When he opened his eyes, a fist the size of his body was careening toward him fast enough for currents of wind to appear around it. Rather than dodging to the side again, Raine made an instinctive decision to run toward the scaled flesh-hammer. At the last moment, he dropped fully to his back and slid underneath it, coming up underneath its mass once more.
With blood-stained teeth clenched in a vicious snarl, Raine stabbed the boss with a determined frenzy. All too quickly, the cooldown on stomp ended. This time, Raine was ready for the follow-up Chop. He leapt out from under the boss to the side so it had to turn before swinging, giving him enough time to properly get out of the way.
Three rotations later, the chieftain's health dropped to fifty percent and it unleashed the ability that would decide the victor of their duel: Summon Reinforcements. It threw its head back and released a raucous croaking exactly as it had before. Except this time, four flat glowing circles appeared on the ground. They were two meters in diameter and appeared at the far edge of the boss’s aggro range. Each circle was crammed with glowing purple and blue intersecting lines. As the energy in those lines congregated from the outermost edges to the very center of the circles, crogs sprang up as if growing from the soil.
Raine remembered this ability all too well as it was the real reason so few attempts were made to kill the Chieftain of the Croglocks. Not only was the location of the summoning circles randomized at the edges of the boss’s zone, but so too were the types of crogs it summoned. Usually, one of the three groups fighting the boss would remain on standby to collect and fight the additional beasts. However, in the worst-case scenario of four casters being summoned across the battlefield, there would be no way for a single group to deal with them, resulting in a guaranteed wipe.
As if luck truly was a two-sided coin, that was exactly the scenario Raine found himself in.