Chapter 178: Eyes

Before the smoke had finished clearing, the boss turned its hovering body away from Aegis and towards the large glowing white door that was carved into the tree behind it. A small tendril extended out of the base of its spherical form holding the pendant-key that had been snatched from Kur’aktos’ neck.

“Lina,” Aegis motioned towards it as he dashed forward with his shield out. “I’ll head it off, Seliolara, heal me, Pyri, probe for damage vulnerabilities, everyone else just hang back for now. It’s elite so its aggro will be hard to manage, so everyone, be ready to dodge anything at all times.” Aegis instructed them quickly. Lina was the first to nod back, shadow stepping into the dark, lightless region that the boss had created around himself before using her thief skill to try and grab the key out of his tendril. The moment she came into contact with the key, though, she winced in pain and took a large amount of void damage. A second later, she shadow stepped away empty handed.

“Can’t. He’s immune to all forms of crowd control, is the what the ‘skill failed’ message implied. Also took damage from touching him.” Lina announced as she appeared back beside Aegis, while Pyri began sending out magic bolts of varying colors towards the boss. It was ignoring all of this in favor of hovering towards the door leading to the inner sanctum, which was buying them time to probe their enemy.

“We can’t let it get inside that chamber.” Kur’aktos commanded Aegis as he watched the boss close in on the door.

“I know, but we also need to know what we’re dealing with or we’ll all die.” Aegis replied anxiously. “Healing wind.” He quickly cast on Lina, then turned to face Rakkan after stopping a few meters away from the boss. “Try attacking with a weapon using your echoes, without directly touching the boss.”

“Got it.” Rakkan replied before sending one of his echoes forward, and swinging at the boss with it's battle axe. The axe cut into the void being’s form, shifting itself to form around the blade and taking normal red damage. “No recoil.” Rakkan declared.

“Alright, physical attacks are fine as long as you don’t directly touch him. That means you’ll be hanging back for this one, Snowflake.” Aegis shouted to the group, getting a squawk of acknowledgement from his gryphon. In this time, the boss arrived in front of the door and extended its tendril out towards the keyhole, preparing to unlock it. “I might have a way to keep it’s threat on me, even though it’s elite…” Aegis thought out loud as an idea popped into his head, and he charged forward towards the boss, sliding under its hovering body and arriving in front of it, beside the tendril that had extended outwards with the key.

“Avatar of Eirene!” Aegis shouted, creating a blinding burst of light that erupted from his body as he began to emit light alongside the tree. This light overtook the void light absorption that the boss was emitting, and for a brief moment, forced him to close his gigantic eye and wince away, as well as coiling its tendril backwards and leaving the key in the key slot on the door. Aegis took advantage of this and snatched the key from the keyhole, only to see that it couldn’t be added to his inventory. So instead, he used the chain that the key was hanging from and put it around his neck.

The boss had hovered back away from his glowing body a short meter before opening its large eye and glaring at him.

“I will rip that key, and your head, from the rest of your corpse.” The boss roared at Aegis, before suddenly thrusting its body forward while bearing its fangs at Aegis, biting into his shield.

You take 12,353 Slashing damage.

You take 4,089 Void damage.

The messages both popped up from the same attack, but Aegis was surprised at how managable it seemed. Aegis quickly healed himself up and waited for the next attack, but the boss took a moment to pull its overing body back and strike out at him again, doing the same bite attack.

You take 11,293 Slashing damage.

You take 3,987 Void damage.

Level Up!: Void resistance has reached Level 4!

Again, Aegis had more than enough time to heal up the damage before the next, very telegraphed attack came through. All the while, Pyri continued to test out various spells on the boss.

“He’s weak to lightning magic. Resistant to cold, arcane, and poison. Everything else is neutral.” Pyri announced.

“Do you have any lightning spells?” Aegis asked her.

“Yes, but, the skill level is low, cinderbolts will still do more damage.” Pyri replied.

“Okay, good.” Aegis shouted back before glancing around at the others, seeing them all benefitting from his Aura of Beauty. The downtime was allowing everyone to refill their stamina and mana bars somewhat while Aegis easily tanked the boss, but he knew right away that the lessened damage he was taking could be heavily attributed to his Avatar of Eirene spell, which wouldn’t last forever.

“He wants this key, so he’s focused on me. I think that despite being elite, his intelligence has taken a hit from the transformation. His attacks are really easy to manage, surprisingly.” Aegis announced to the others. His words angered the boss and caused him to roar in anger, but nothing happened beyond that.

“Aegis, I feel inclined to warn you that this type of monster appears quite often in fantasy games, and that typically, the real threat with them doesn’t lie in their physical attacks, but the eyestalks.” Darkshot shouted back at him. This caused Aegis to look up at the 6 eyestalks flailing around on top of the spherical creature’s body as it pulled away from him after one of its bite attacks.

In that instant, one eyestalk straightened itself out, began glowing red, and turned around to face Darkshot as he stood beside Viella, Krael, Pyri, Kur’aktos and Snowflake.

“What’s the red glowing mean, then?” Aegis asked Darkshot.

“No idea, could be anything.” Darkshot replied anxiously.

“Everyone, be ready to dodge!” Aegis shouted as he watched the group in front of the eye bend their knees and stare intently at it. “Guard!” Aegis created a shield in front of the eye.

“NO! It is decay magic, you must not let it touch you or anything you possess!” Seliolara shouted out. The moment she had, Aegis’ eyes went wide in a panic as he canceled the guard spell just in time, while simultaneously Darkshot and the others dashed out of the way just as the red eyestalk released a thin beam of red light, not unlike a laser pointer. It had a near immediate travel time - had Darkshot and Aegis not been warned pre-emptively to avoid it, it would’ve been impossible to react to its speed.

Instead, they watched as the beam impacted a single plank of wood on the floor of the platform they stood on, where Darkshot had been, and the plank immediately disintegrated into ash. Aegis looked under the hovering body of the boss while Darkshot anxiously glared back at him, both with wide eyes.

“Ok, dodge the red eyebeam at all costs. It looks like it’ll kill us in one hit.” Aegis announced.

“Should we join the battle yet?” Krael asked as he and the others looked on anxiously from the sidelines.

“No, not yet. We’ve got to be patient and learn what all of his abilities are first. If the other eyestalkers are as deadly as that one, we need to be prepared for them.” Aegis replied, causing Krael to nod back with a hint of impatience. He didn’t need to wait long, though. After another bite attack into Aegis’ shield, a second eyestalk began glowing blue. This one did not point at anyone, though.

It curved around the back of the boss’ body and pointed downwards towards the floor of the platform, and it took much less time to charge up before it shot a blast of blue magic down at the floor.

The moment the blue beam hit the floor, it released a shockwave that rippled outward in a circle from the impact point, growing as it did and covering the planks in solid ice.

“I’ve seen a spell like that before, jump over the shockwave!” Pyri shouted, recognizing the spell from her studies in the wizard’s tower of Kordas.

Aegis, being the closest, was the first to have the shockwave ring reach him. The moment it had, he jumped over it and landed on the other side, avoiding the growing ring. Aegis then turned to look at his companions and watched as everyone cautiously eyed the ring and hopped over it when it got close to them.

“What happens when we don’t jump over that?” Aegis asked Pyri.

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“We turn into popsicles.” Pyri replied.

“Aegis, next one!” Rakkan called out, drawing his attention back to the boss and his eyestalks. He saw now that one of the eyes was glowing green, and almost immediately afterwards released a blast of poison gas around itself that Aegis accidentally inhaled.

“I can burn it up with cinders!” Pyri shouted.

“It’s in melee range, so if we see it we need to back off.” Lina added as Aegis saw himself afflicted by a poison debuff.

“Cleanse.” He cast, removing it after taking a bit of poison damage, while Pyri rapidly rotated her cinders around the boss to burn up and clear away the poison.

“Good, three down, three to go.” Aegis said after coughing and clearing his throat of the poison effects. A second later, the boss lunged at him once more with its fangs, forcing him to brace the attack. Just as Pyri was finishing up with the poison, though, an eyestalk began glowing purple and formed a blackhole above itself that sucked in all of her cinderbolts.

“Shit, of course it can do that spell, it’s half Mayiera in there.” Pyri groaned as she watched her bolts get absorbed. Simultaneously, though, as Aegis attempted to heal himself from the damage he had just blocked, he watched as the light of his spell too was sucked into the black hole and the spell was canceled.

“It’s sucking in my magic as well.” Aegis told the others. They all stood back, waiting patiently for the black hole to disappear, but it never did after two more attacks onto Aegis. “It’s not going away, if I can’t heal for long periods this will make things very difficult.”

“Maybe it needs to be canceled with damage?” Pyri suggested.

“Ranged attacks and spells don’t work, though.” Darkshot replied, nocking an arrow anyway.

“Lina, Rakkan, hit the boss, the black hole, and the eyestalk channeling the black hole. See if you can interrupt that skill.” Aegis ordered them as he prepared to brace another hit. Not just Lina and Rakkan, but Viella as well jumped into action and tried attacking all of the suggested targets. It wasn’t until Lina shadowstepped up top and hit the eyestalk below the blackhole, that the spell destabilized and canceled, exploding outward in a shockwave that engulfed everyone nearby and dealt roughly 1,312 void damage to everyone. The explosion, however, had hints of holy and fire magic amidst its magical shockwave that it released.

“Did you spot that?” Pyri shouted across the platform to the others.

“Yeah, it did damage equal to what it had absorbed.” Aegis nodded back at her, causing her to smile proudly. “That means purple eye, stop ranged and magic attacks and have melee focus on it as soon as possible. Four down, two to go.” Aegis said while Seliolara stepped forward to help Aegis recover from the damage of the last few bite attacks.

Following another bite attack, another eyestalk began to glow. This time, it was yellow, and it turned to face Rakkan’s echo that was riding atop of Snowflake. Immediately upon looking at them, both Snowflake and Rakkan became paralyzed and Snowflake dropped down onto the floor of the platform.

“Shit. I can’t move the echo. It’s not replying to any spell control.” Rakkan shouted as Aegis looked up and saw the yellow eyestalk was getting brighter and brighter, as if charging up a spell.

“What’s it going to do? Anyone?” Darkshot looked around anxiously, hoping for another call-out from Seliolara. Aegis, on the other hand, glanced through the raid party interface to look at the debuff that Rakkan’s echo had received.

[Lighting Rod]

The focused target of an incoming lightning rod attack. The damage of the Arc Lightning will be dispersed amongst all lightning rods evenly.

Effect: Paralyzed until hit by the Arc Lightning Eyestalk

Aegis barely had time to process it, but he recalled hearing of such attacks from The Night Hunters and the Blades of Kalmoore back when they were preparing to fight the Raid Boss near Rene, and the counter-measure for such attacks was…

“Group up on them, fast! It’s a split damage attack!” Aegis shouted out. Lina and Viella were first to react, shadow stepping to Rakkan's echo and Snowflake. Then Pyri, Krael, and Kur’aktos made it there, followed by Seliolara and Darkshot at the last second as the yellow eyestalk released a blast of lightning magic that arced forward, dividing itself evenly to hit all of them and dealing 13,304 nature damage each.

“Holy shit, if that hits any less of us, we’re in trouble.” Rakkan announced.

“You better heal my damn pigeon!” Darkshot snapped at Aegis after seeing that it, too, had taken some of the damage.

“Seliolara, focus on healing everyone, I’ll handle myself.” Aegis replied.

“I understand.” Seliolara nodded back at him as she began moving around and casting her druidic healing spells on everyone, including Darkwing and Snowflake.

“Give me that key!” The boss roared angrily at Aegis as it bit out at him again, forcing him to brace the hit. Aegis noted after blocking it that he’d already used up two minutes of his Avatar of Eirene spell.

“One eye left!” Aegis shouted.

“Here it comes!” Lina replied as they watched the 6th and final eyestalk begin to glow white and point upwards, then shoot out three white beams upwards into the sky that arched and curved back down towards three separate targets. One aimed at Lina, one at Rakkan, and one at Krael. The tip of the beam formed into the shape of a glowing white spearhead and began to speed up as it closed in on each of them.

“Be ready to dodge it, it's homing in on you and speeding up. Make it hit something that isn’t yourself.”

“Icewall!” Pyri shouted, glowing her hands blue and raising a small wall of ice up out of the ground in front of Rakkan. “Try it.” Pyri instructed him and he nodded, positioning himself behind the wall so that it stood between him and the homing white spear.

The spear crashed into the ice and released a blast of holy energy before vanishing. It caused the icewall to shatter, but otherwise did no damage to Rakkan.

“Looks like it worked.” Rakkan announced to Pyri.

“Good, you two next. Multicast, icewall.” Pyri said as she formed walls for both Krael and Lina to get behind, and managed to protect them from the attack as well.

“Ok, that’s it, that’s all of the eyestalks. Darkshot, keep eyes on them and call out the color thats glowing. Everyone else reacts accordingly. Red, you dodge. White, you get behind an icewall. Purple, we stop spells and melee goes for the stalk. Yellow, we group up on the targeted player to split the damage. Blue, you jump over the ring on the ground. And green, the melee backs up while Pyri gets rid of the poison. Seliolara, you heal the group when they take damage, otherwise I’ll focus on healing myself. Focus, avoid unnecessary damage, and prepare for potential changes in his attack patterns.” Aegis ordered everyone. Once he looked and saw everyone giving him nods of acknowledgement, he took a deep breath and eyed his viewership sitting at 250,000.

“Good. Start dealing damage. Let’s kill this thing!” Aegis shouted with enthusiasm. It was the words that Krael and Kur’aktos had been eagerly waiting for, and they charged forward with their mithral weapons and began swinging wildly at the boss. Rakkan, Lina, Viella, Darkshot and Pyri were all strong, and high level in their own right, but the damage being dealt by the Dark Elf leader and his commander using mithral weapons was on a whole other level.

Aegis maneuvered around the battlefield carefully to spread his bless buff out to everyone as the opportunity presented itself, granting more damage to everyone, but he knew that this boss would still likely take a very long time to go down.

Healing through the physical attacks wasn’t going to be an issue - Aegis’ mana was staying at roughly equalized level. His points in spirit were helping his mana recovery offset the amount of mana he was needing to spend to keep himself alive while maintaining bless and aura of beauty on his party.

His biggest concern, though, was that his Avatar of Eirene spell wouldn’t last forever, and once it was gone he’d lose armor and healing effectiveness.

“We’re really going to need to kill this thing as quickly as possible, guys, so don’t hold back.” Aegis shouted out once he saw his Avatar spell’s duration drop below 8 minutes remaining. He held on, though, putting faith in his own damage-reflect skill that he was building up and saving for the boss’ enrage.

The fact that the boss was getting low on health was becoming apparent in another way, though - as it began to shorten the intervals between its eyestalk attacks, until eventually it got to the point where it was using them one after another, with no break in between.

Everyone played out the battle with incredible focus, though. The jumps over the blue rings were timed perfectly. The spellcasting stopped immediately everytime the black hole appeared. The party grouped up instantly whenever the yellow eyestalk began to glow, and the melee attackers jumped back away from the green poison cloud the instant that Darkshot called it out.

The worst eye, by far, was the red, though. They’d discovered that the eye would look at one person and follow them, but stop moving half a second before the red beam of decay was shot out. That meant that whoever was being focused was given less than half a second to jump out of the path of the beam.

Without exception, every time someone got focused, Aegis could see the fear in their eyes as they maneuvered away from the others and prepared to avoid it. He could only count himself lucky that despite the deadly nature of the eyestalks in general, none of them ever targeted Aegis and he was able to focus on bracing attacks and healing himself.

He’d estimated, after watching the damage numbers from Krael and Kur’aktos for some time, that they were dealing the damage equivalent of five raid party members thanks to their mithral weapons. Unfortunately, it seemed to not be enough, as Aegis watched his Avatar of Eirene spell’s duration drop below one minute, and the boss still showed no sign of enraging.

Luckily, though, just as it dropped to 30 seconds remaining, the large white eyeball that glared at him and the key around his neck began to glow red, and the void body of the boss emitted a deep crimson aura.

“There it is, it’s enraging!” Darkshot shouted out anxiously.

“No matter, I’ve been waiting for this! Varibhadra!” Aegis shouted out, dealing a massive amount of holy damage to the boss thanks to all the hits he'd taken over the last five minutes.

You deal 2,463,210 holy damage.

He had hoped that the burst of damage might end the fight, but it did not, and the boss continued to glare back at him.

“Focus, burn him down fast before he does anything crazy!” Aegis shouted anxiously as he prepared for whatever the boss would do next.

“YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU STOOD AGAINST THE LORD OF THE VOID!” The boss screeched out at him angrily.