Chapter 147: Knight to D8
“Get its health a bit lower.” Aegis instructed his party. The group was engaged with a Royal Mosmir, Aegis in the front and holding its attention with his shield held high. He had a sense for how close it was to dying based on how long the group had been fighting it, and he wanted it weak before he started any funny business.
Somehow, in some way, this monster is the key to finding the way to the Queen’s lair, Aegis thought.
“Okay, good, stop.” Aegis shouted to the group, and they quickly complied. Lina, Rakkan and Snowflake all backed away, while Pyri pulled off her cinderbolts and Darkshot lowered his bow. “This is most likely going to hurt… but, I’ve gotta try it.” Aegis sighed reluctantly as he waited for the Royal Mosmir to go through its basic attack rotation. Headbutt, into pincer grab attempt, into claw strikes. Following that, it prepared to shoot the void sphere out from its antenna.
“Here goes nothing.” Aegis took a deep breath and winced. He didn’t attempt to dodge it, he stood still and held up his shield, letting the void orb hit him head on.
You take 13,319 Void damage.
Level Up!: Void Resistance has reached Level 2!
It was about as painful as Aegis expected it was going to be. The moment the orb touched him it dispersed and released a surging wave of energy that encased his entire body for a moment, giving him the sensation of his bones exploding and his muscles being ripped to shreds for two seconds, before returning to normal.
It was enough to make him pale and put him into a cold sweat almost instantly. Though, he was happy to see he hadn’t received a log-out warning this time.
“Aegis!” Lina cried out worriedly as she saw Aegis’ disfigured expression of pain. He shook it off and jumped backwards to prepare for the Royal Mosmir’s attack rotation to continue.
“Anything?” Darkshot asked him worriedly.
“Nope… it just hurt a lot.” Aegis sighed. "Heal." He cast on himself.
“Maybe you can see something that you couldn’t see before?” Pyri suggested. Aegis took this suggestion to heart and looked around the tunnel while continuously dodging Mosmir attacks.
“Nope…” Aegis replied slowly as he confirmed her theory false.
“What was your theory, then?” Rakkan asked curiously.
“That these Royal Mosmir are the key to getting to the Queen’s lair, somehow.” Aegis replied frustrated.
“You have to assume that Feng’s guild took hits from them. If it just took getting shot with void orbs, they woulda figured it out.” Darkshot sighed.
“I don’t hear you coming up with a better idea.” Aegis grumbled back at him. “I still think I’m on the right track though. We’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle, I’m just putting them together wrong.” Aegis said as he dodged another string of attacks.
“Want us to kill it?” Lina asked him. “There’s another one patrolling towards us.” She added as she motioned to the tunnel behind him.
“Lina, you’re a genius.” Aegis snapped his fingers and pointed at her excitedly, as if a light bulb flicked on in his head. “The key isn’t one respawning, it’s all four. The Voidreavers can teleport using void magic, so these guys probably can too, right?” Aegis thought out loud as he excitedly ran in the direction of the second Royal Mosmir, the first still chasing him.
“Hang on, wait, Aegis!” Pyri called out after him as his party chased him and the Royal Mosmir down the tunnel.
“But they’re not doing it when we fight them, because we’ve been fighting them alone. That’s it! That’s why they are not elite. They need to be non-elite so players can manipulate their standardized AI.” Aegis added in excitement as he came up on the second Royal Mosmir and it screeched angrily, charging at him from the front, while the weakened one continued at him from behind.
“So you think if you fight them together, they’re just going to somehow start teleporting?” Rakkan asked hesitantly, the doubt was audible in his voice.
“It’s a working theory.” Aegis grumbled back. “Challenging roar!” Aegis said to get the second ones attention. Snowflake flew over top of both of them to get behind the newest combatant and prepared to strike.
“Hang on Snowflake, don’t hit it yet. Let’s see what they do.” Aegis said to his gryphon who squawked back obediently, prowling a few meters back from the Royal Mosmir.
Both Royal Mosmir engaged in a standard attacking rotation. One from the front, and one from the back, making it difficult for Aegis to dodge their attacks. He quickly maneuvered around one of them so that they’d come at him side by side, but rather than doing this, one of the Royal Mosmir scurried to the roof and began striking at him from above and in front.
“Why’s he doing that? There’s clearly enough room for them to both attack me from the floor of the tunnel and be in front of me.” Aegis pondered out loud. “They’re not elite, so that’s gotta be a part of their standard AI.” He added curiously as they all watched intently.
“Also, the second one hasn’t used the orb attack yet. Why? It shouldn’t be on cooldown.” Pyri pointed out.
“Good point.” Rakkan nodded as the party members circled around behind Aegis, keeping their distance and observing. Pyri flattened out her cinderbolts to provide better lighting as they continued the investigation. The key moment, however, was when the antennae of both of the Royal Mosmir flickered.
In unison, both of them held their antennae forward and shot out dark balls of purple energy at Aegis.
“Whoa.” Darkshot’s eyes went wide.
“They’re using the void sphere attack at the same time, even though you aggrod them separately.” Lina replied excitedly.
“What does that mean, though?” Darkshot asked her.
“I don’t know, but it’s something.” She replied. Aegis was sure to dodge both of the painful orbs as they floated aimlessly towards the back wall of the tunnel behind him, hitting it and dispersing.
“What does it mean.” Aegis said to himself as he backed away and dodged their next set of standard attacks. “This formation they’ve made… I need the other two Royal Mosmir.” Aegis declared.
“Hah?” Darkshot shouted in disbelief. “Two looks rough as it is.”
“I know how to get to the Queen now. I’ve put the puzzle pieces in place.” Aegis said confidently. His viewership suddenly began to spike up from 400,000 to 410,000, and continued climbing from there.
“Care to enlighten us? Cause aggroing four very dangerous level 95 enemies sounds a bit risky.” Pyri asked him curiously.
“It’s still just a theory. But If I’m right, the next Royal Mosmir’s will aggro me and try to attack from the left and right walls. They’ll form a square around the tunnel in front of me.” Aegis replied.
“Ooookay.” Pyri replied hesitantly.
“Don’t worry. Look at their attacking style.” Aegis pointed forward as he easily dodged all of their attacks. “They’re the last enemies in this dungeon, but they’re stupidly easy to kill. Even when they hit me, it barely does any damage. They also have ridiculously high armor and health. They’re meant to live through long battles and do little damage. The game wants us to gather them up.” Aegis explained as he continued to back away from them. In the distance they heard the stomping of another Royal Mosmir coming at him from behind.
“Be careful.” Lina called out to him worriedly. Aegis gave her a reassuring smile before he took off down the tunnel towards the next Royal Mosmir.
“Challenging Roar!” Aegis shouted to get the third one chasing him, then continued running to aggro the fourth. “Challenging Roar!” He cast again, making sure all four were focused on him as his party ran to keep up with him.
Sure enough, just as Aegis had said, when he angled the Royal Mosmir to stand in front of him, they all positioned themselves in a square formation. One attacked him from the roof, one from the floor, one from the left wall and one from the right. And sure enough, in unison they all used their void orb attacks simultaneously, shooting the slow moving balls outward at Aegis. The moment he dodged the orbs, a giant grin grew across his face.
“Buffs up! We’re going in 30 seconds.” Aegis declared as he released a burst of light from casting Aura of Beauty. As he dodged around the attacks of the four Royal Mosmir, he took from his inventory enough kebabs for all of them and threw one to each of his allies.
“Seriously?” Darkshot asked as he caught it.
“Yep.” Aegis replied as the viewership climbed up to 430,000. “Come get blessings from behind me.” Aegis motioned them in. One at a time, each member stepped forward to get a bless buff from Aegis, including Snowflake. All the while, Aegis was dodging the simple claw and pincer attacks from the Royal Mosmir in front of him.
“Here it comes.” Aegis said excitedly as the cooldown on the orb attack came up. In unison, all four Royal Mosmir stopped charging forward and pointed their antennae out at him. “Guard!” Aegis shouted after jumping into the air. He landed on his projected shield so that he stood above the floor, in the center of the tunnel, and the center of all four Royal Mosmir. “It’s still just a theory, but this is how all of the puzzle pieces fit into place.” Aegis shouted anxiously as all four dark purple orbs shot forward at Aegis in unison.
Due to Aegis being in mid air in the tunnel, all of the orbs shot out and were set to converge exactly where he’d been standing. He jumped backward off of his projected shield and all of them watched anxiously as the slow moving orbs collided with one another.
Once they had, they erupted in a burst of purple energy, creating a portal with a foggy purple rim. It was exactly like the portals that Trexon had created, only the outer rim was purple instead of blue, and on the other side was nothing but pure darkness.
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“If my health hits 0, don’t jump in after me!” Aegis shouted excitedly before rushing forward and jumping through the portal before anyone else had time to take in what they were looking at.
The moment Aegis stepped through it, the light from his Aura of beauty was enough to illuminate the ground around him, revealing that there was indeed a room on the other side of the portal. It was a giant, dome shaped cavern blanketed with sticky white strands on the floor and the nearby walls. Hanging from the walls and ceiling were large pulsating larval egg sacks with various red names above them. [Mosmir Drone Larvae - Level 5], [Mosmir Soldier Larvae - Level 10], [Mosmir Voidreaver Larvae(Elite) - Level 15], and a fourth type, [Mosmir Hatcher Larvae - Level 20]. Aegis didn’t have time to analyze the larvae too much, though, as his attention was drawn by another creature making a loud screeching sound.
She stood up from a lying position at the center of the large cavern. She looked like a giant Royal Mosmir, but with strips of purple spikes going down the back of her head and thorax. Her abdomen was also significantly larger, and she had a pair of large, translucent wings on her back, and a large mouth covered in small black feelers. Her antennae and claws were all shimmering with purple energy. Above her head stood [Boss(Elite)], and she turned her head in Aegis’ direction as his Aura of Beauty’s light struggled to outline her silhouette.
“Uh, you guys might want to get in here fast. She does not look happy to see me.” Aegis shouted anxiously. As the boss was preparing herself to fight, Lina jumped through the portal behind Aegis. Then Snowflake, Rakkan, Darkshot with Darkwing, and finally Pyri. Pyri looked back to see that the Royal Mosmir were just standing there, frozen on the other side of the portal, but a few seconds later, the portal disappeared.
“Our way back is gone.” Pyri declared nervously.
“So it's either we win, or we die.” Rakkan said as they all spread out behind Aegis and readied their weapons.
“If you let my pigeon die, I’m gonna be pissed.” Darkshot mumbled as he nocked an arrow.
“Let’s not die then.” Aegis shouted excitedly as he tried to positioned himself to charge forward. It was rather anticlimactic, though, as he struggled to get his leather boots loose from the sticky white strands on the floor and ended up moving forward slowly, with great difficulty.
“Hang on.” Pyri said as she noticed this and sent her cinderbolts to the ground to burn a path for Aegis. It worked, the silk was flammable, but it was not as effective as Pyri was expecting - the strands burned away very slowly. It lost its stickiness instantaneously from the flames though, granting Aegis a nice safe path to engage the Queen as Pyri sent her bolts ahead of Aegis along the cavern floor.
“She’s elite, so stay close and be ready to dodge any hits. Pyri, can you burn away the stickiness for everyone, so we can all dodge easily?” Aegis shouted.
“I’m on it.” She nodded back.
“Everyone else, play it safe until we know what her attacks are. She could switch to any of us at any time regardless of threat generated, so don’t worry about holding back.” Aegis shouted. “Avatar of Eirene!” He activated it early, just to be safe as the Queen let out an angry screech and lunged forward towards Pyri.
Aegis anticipated this - dodging attacks wasn’t an option when he needed to protect his companions from the hits. He dashed in front of Pyri with his shield up and braced the attack.
You take 13,360 Slashing damage.
It was painful due to the frontal force of the strike, but nothing compared to void or bludgeoning.
“It’s manageable.” Aegis announced to the group. “Healing wind, Heal.” He cast on himself, spotting his viewership numbers suddenly sitting at 500,000. Lina shadowstepped onto the back of the Queen and began stabbing at her. She was taking reduced damage numbers, but it wasn’t as bad as the Royal Mosmir.
Darkshot unleashed a barrage of obsidian arrows that dealt full damage, luckily the arrowheads were sharp and strong enough to penetrate her chitin. Rakkan charged forward with himself and one echo while the third stood back with his crossbow to shoot at the boss. He moved his crossbow echo away from Pyri, while Darkshot strafed away from her as well to spread out.
As Rakkan got beneath the Queen though, she spread her wings and began to flap them furiously, jumping off from the ground of the cavern and leaving him behind. Aegis looked between Snowflake preparing to jump off the ground after her, and Rakkan as he stared longingly up at the Queen out of range of his attacks.
“Snowflake, give Rakkan a lift!” Aegis shouted. Snowflake briefly glanced back at Aegis and gave him a nod of acknowledgement before hopping over to Rakkan. Rakkan quickly jumped onto Snowflake’s back while Pyri burned away the stickiness of the silk around Snowflake’s feet, allowing him to launch into the air and begin flapping his gigantic, majestic wings. He was nothing in size compared to the Queen, however.
Snowflake maneuvered through the air to curve around the Queen, but Aegis saw in the light of the cinderbolts that she was following Snowflake with her eyes, and suddenly lunged her head out at him and Rakkan.
“Guard!” Aegis shouted, projecting his shield in front of the pair to block her attack just in time.
You take 16,093 Slashing damage.
Not being able to brace it made the damage worse. He had a lot of mana regeneration now, but he could tell this would be a rough fight. He quickly began healing himself back to full while gluing his eyes onto the Queen’s movement to try and see who she’d go after next.
All the while, damage numbers began to stream above her thanks to Lina shadow dancing rapidly around the queen and slashing her in the darkness, Darkshot barraging her with multi shots and Pyri settling portions of her four cinderbolts on her hide.
Eventually, Snowflake found a path to fly in and swooped by the queen, scratching at her with his talons while Rakkan swung his blades out at her to deal damage, and cast one of his echoes onto her back just above her wings.
As Snowflake was flying out away from her after the strike, the queen buzzed her wings around in the air and swiped her void-glowing claws at his back.
“Guard!” Aegis shouted, projecting his shield behind Snowflake to block it.
You take 6,620 Slashing damage.
You take 6,430 Void damage.
He took the unbraced damage and was able to protect them.
“Heal, Heal!” Aegis quickly cast on himself to recover from the strike. The light from Aegis’ heal spells seemed to annoy the Queen, however. She turned towards Aegis and curled her abdomen downward towards him, revealing a large black stinger enveloped with purple void energy. Without any wind up she shot the stinger out of her hind like a missile. Aegis jumped to the side to avoid it as it crashed into the ground where he’d been standing.
Rather than just pierce the strand-covered ground like an arrow, though, it instead exploded into a large shockwave of black and purple energy that erupted from the impact in a dome shape, growing outward. Aegis attempted to roll out of it using his momentum from his jump, but his feet got stuck upon landing despite Pyri’s best efforts to pre-emptively burn the stickiness away.
You take 8,821 Void damage.
Level Up!: Void Resistance has reached Level 3!
“Heal, healing wind.” Aegis cast on himself as he struggled against the sticky silk to get back to his feet. As he did, the Queen let out a screech and did a sudden barrel roll motion to spin Rakkan’s echo off her back, knock away Lina and forcing Snowflake to divert his current flight path away from her to avoid getting hit. In the process, both Rakkan and Lina took several thousand points of bludgeoning damage.
“Shit.” Aegis said as he tried to find them and aim his spells at them. “Healing wind, healing wind!” He quickly cast on the two of them.
“Aegis, heads up!” Darkshot shouted. Aegis glanced back at Darkshot to see him motioning to the walls of the cavern. Amongst the larvae-covered walls were several light purple colored elite Mosmir moving about. They had white colored names above their heads, indicating that they were neutral NPCs. [Mosmir Hatcher(Elite) - Level 100].
Rather than showing intent to attack the party, Aegis watched them for a moment to see they were simply wandering about, inspecting, rotating, and checking on the various larvae of the Queen’s Lair. But Aegis paid close attention to the one Darkshot pointed at, to see that it had grabbed a larva from the wall in its pincers, and he watched as it suddenly ripped it from the wall and flung it into the center of the cavern.
The larva landed on the floor several meters ahead of Aegis, with the Soldier Larva name above its head. The larva began to wriggle violently as suddenly its level started rising rapidly. It went from level 10 to 15 within a second, then 15 to 20 within another second as it began to grow and crack.
“Kill it before it hatches!” Aegis shouted as he motioned at the larva. Lina shadowstepped to it and attacked it with her daggers, Pyri sent a cinderbolt shard to it, and Darkshot redirected his most recent multishot of obsidian tipped arrows at it. It worked, the larvae exploded before it reached level 70, killing it, but in that time another Hatcher had thrown a new Soldier Larva onto the cavern floor.
“Darkshot and Pyri stay on the larva. Rakkan and Snowflake are absorbing a lot of the boss's attention, it's easy to guard for them. Lina, float between the targets. Switch to the larva if we’re getting overwhelmed down here.” Aegis made the quick decision for the group on how to handle these new mechanics. No one replied verbally, they all sprung into action as per his instructions without hesitation.
“Next time she shoots her stinger, I’m going to dodge to the right, try to burn a path for me so I can get clear of the explosion effect.” Aegis added for Pyri.
“Ok.” Pyri replied. Aegis watched as Snowflake made another pass at the Queen midair and Rakkan managed to get another new echo on her back to help to the damage, while striking at her side several times with Snowflake. Like last time, the Queen spun to the side and tried to retaliate against them, and Aegis was quick to use guard to protect their retreat.
“Heal.” He quickly cast on himself. The majority of the Queen’s attacks were dealing approximately half of Aegis’ health in damage, meaning if he took two consecutive hits in a row too quickly without using brace, he’d likely die, even with the benefits of Avatar of Eirene. “We need to finish her off fast, before my Avatar wears off. She hits hard.” Aegis announced to the group. With that in mind, he knew he needed to do his part too. As the next soldier larva was flung at them, Aegis charged at it and slammed his shield into it repeatedly to help contribute to the group's damage, all while eying the Queen to see her attempt to slash her pincers out at Lina while Lina shadow danced around her.
He guarded the slashing attack to protect Lina, healed himself, and saw the Queen bending her abdomen and preparing to shoot another stinger at him. This time, Pyri was ready and quickly manipulated her cinderbolts to burn a path for Aegis to escape. The moment the stinger was fired, Aegis jumped to the side and used his momentum to continue running out of range of the explosion that resulted from the stinger’s impact, avoiding the damage completely.
“Nice, perfect.” Aegis turned to give Pyri a thumbs up, and she winked back at him.
“Not bad for an old lady, huh?” She added, before briefly sticking her tongue out at Aegis.
With this strategy in place, the group was able to deal massive amounts of damage to the Queen while Aegis made sure that all of her focused strikes were either directed at him, or blocked by his guard skill. She managed to hit Lina and Rakkan and Snowflake a few times with wild, abrupt flying maneuvers, but they did not count as actual attacks and therefore dealt manageable amounts of bludgeoning damage that Aegis was able to heal them through using healing wind.
He was glad that he’d leveled Avatar of Eirene up as much as he had, but as the fight dragged on, he got progressively more worried. The rate at which the Hatchers were throwing larva down at the party was speeding up, and they began mixing in Voidreaver larva with the Soldier larva. Naturally, the group put a much higher priority on taking out the Voidreavers and preventing them from hatching - Lina and Rakkan’s crossbow echo joining in on the efforts to take them out.
Just as Aegis’ Avatar of Eirene duration reached one minute remaining, they saw the ominous red glow erupt around the Queen of the Mosmir hive. She let out an angry, horrendous screech as suddenly a large ball of void energy shot out from her antennae towards the ground. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular, rather intentionally aimed away from Aegis’ group.
When the ball hit the sticky ground of the cavern, it erupted in a large portal of which the four Royal Mosmir they’d left back in the hive all charged through, still holding Aegis as their primary threat target. Unlike Aegis and the others, though, the Royal Mosmir had no difficulty navigating across the sticky floor, and barreled towards him for a moment before the Queen let out another screech at them.
The four Royal Mosmir stopped their forward charge and pointed their featureless faces up towards the open air of the cavern where Snowflake was flying about and Lina was shadow dancing around.
“Uh, she’s giving them some weird instructions, they’re not focusing on me. Be careful!” Aegis shouted worriedly as the group all waited in anticipation to see what the Queen’s enrage mechanic would be. Pyri and Darkshot were sure to keep dealing damage to her, but Snowflake and Rakkan flew wide and Lina shadowstepped back to the ground near Aegis.
A few seconds later, the antenna of the 4 Royal Mosmir began shooting out balls of void energy, aiming them randomly at Aegis’ various party members. One was aimed at Aegis, one at Rakkan’s echo on the Queen’s back, one at Lina, and one at Snowflake.
“So it’s like that. Sticky ground, lots of dodging. Everyone, do not get hit!” Aegis shouted nervously to his party.