Chapter 147 Raid Leader Pt. I

Jimmy held his tongue. As a raid leader himself, he knew not to question or undermine Donovan and Zephyr during a raid in progress. So rather than give voice to his disagreements, he chose to say nothing as the two of them began barking out orders to the other fifty-eight members of the raid while they prepared to engage the level-52 “Death Harbinger” elites. Both were concealed in shadow, making it far too difficult to discern the features of either in this nightmarishly dark, wide, and tube-shaped hall.

“So, to be clear,” Donovan said to him after shoving an adventurer back for getting too close. The GSG leader claimed he wanted to ensure they were well out of aggro range until the mobs were ready to be pulled. “This is as far as you and Zach made it. Right?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I pulled those two things with my poison, and it barely did a damn thing. Either they’re really resistant to it, or worse, they’re so strong that my intelligence isn’t high enough to burn them. So basically, ah, me and Zach realized right away we didn’t stand a chance against these two, and we roped out.”

Zephyr flicked his chin several times as though pondering the situation. “And you say they’re elites because of that asterisk at the end of their name, right? Is this from one of your simulations?”

Jimmy looked over to the mobs. “Kind of. Like, not that exact thing in particular. It’s more like the simulations that have elites usually offer some kinda visual indication, and it’s usually in their name. Sometimes, it’s bolded or a different color. A few ga—a few simulations even just say the word elite right in the name. So I’m like one-hundred percent sure that’s what the asterisk means.”

Spider stepped forward and gave Jimmy a firm pat on the shoulder. “Did your training data contain any information on how to determine their true level, son?”

Jimmy thought on the question. He was likely referring to the fact that bosses in this world could have their “true” levels ascertained with a formula involving their tier. Jimmy assumed he understood the question correctly, and he shook his head. “Nah, it didn’t. I just know that elite mobs are uh, a ‘thing,’ and these big boys are definitely elites.”

“What attacks did you witness from them?” Spider asked. “Be very clear about it, too. Don’t spare a single detail.”

Jimmy, as he’d done earlier in Angelica’s, went exhaustively over everything he could remember from the mobs. Only, this time around, he even tried to explain the attack patterns they’d used against Zach, how they moved, and he elaborated much more on their explosive sword magic attack, which broke Zach’s ribs despite Zach using that fancy shield thing of his. It was this last part that caused a bit of apprehension among the adventurers.

“I’ve seen him use that shielding ability before,” Alixa said, shuddering. “If it hurt him enough that he had to use a red rejuvenation stone, we need to really watch out for that attack.”

For the past ten minutes, the entire raid had been held up at this exact spot in the light-resistant darkness as Donovan and Zephyr approached things with a level of care that he wasn’t used to. He understood that this was a life and death situation, but he was used to raiding being more of a fast-paced thing. It seemed that adventurers moved through dungeons with a fair bit of slowness; unless there was an external reason why time was an issue, Jimmy was beginning to get the sense that they treated every unfamiliar encounter with extreme caution. He didn’t particularly disagree with this, though, and in fact, it made sense.

What he did disagree with—and did not state—was the way in which Donovan and Zephyr placed such a heavy emphasis on “pain mitigation.” Usually, in a raid, the tanks took the hits, and the healers healed. But the two raid leaders seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how to prevent people from mentally breaking down as a result of repeated, intense, and agonizing wounds—even if easily healed.

I myself couldn’t handle it, Jimmy thought. But I’m not a tank. I mean, that’s what they’re supposed to do. How do you raid if you can’t let a tank be a tank?

As more and more discussion went underway, Jimmy began to increasingly worry that this raid might not happen at all. In particular, it was because, as their conversations progressed, Donovan and Zephyr kept using words like “if we” such as: “if we come back” or “if we choose to progress today.” They’d scheduled this to be a boss raid. Jimmy assumed that meant they’d be raiding a boss today. How could they get all these people together, form a nice, formidable, sixty-person raid group, and all just to be like: see ya tomorrow! To be sure, some raids did take days or weeks, but never had Jimmy been on a raid where they didn’t even attempt anything.

I guess it makes sense, he thought, bringing his past experiences to mind. In games, we learn by wiping and coming back. But that’s obviously not an option here.

As Jimmy listened to the conversations continuing around him, he remained quiet and respectful. Finally, however, Donovan addressed him and asked him a question he was desperately hoping to hear.

“What do you think we should do, Jimmy?” he asked.

Jimmy raised his voice though only enough so that he could be easily heard without shouting. “If it was up to me,” he said, “I’d opt for a close-range battle instead of pulling them. Meaning, we go to them. That big sword magic attack they use is ranged. If we get our tanks up in their face, they’re gonna have to stick to melee. What I’d do is have Maric, Spider, Ophelia, and Mister Britethorn tag them and then wriggle around behind them so they show the rest of the raid their back. Then I’d have the raid use single-target magic, arrows, and whatever else we can throw at them without friendly fire. Support can veer off to the side so we have line of sight to heal if we have to. But yeah. The primary goal should be preventing them from hitting us with that magic sword thing because just based on looks alone that’ll kill a third of us if we get hit with it.”

“Not a bad idea, kiddo,” Donovan said with a grunt. “But inefficient.”

Jimmy frowned. “How so?”

“Your way leaves too many people unable to do anything. The mobs aren’t large enough. Half our melee DPS will be idling. If we split them up, we can make use of everybody.”

“True,” Jimmy said, “but if you split them up, you might give them the distance they need to shoot that shit out of their swords. We’re not gonna be able to take a hit from that. Somebody’s gotta be in their face at all times with aggro.”

To demonstrate, he pointed his finger at the mobs. “Say we aggro them there.” He began pulling his hand back, drawing an invisible line on the floor. “These mobs move really slowly. So as the tank begins pulling back, there’s a huge chance the mob will just stop short, extend its sword, and start charging up the attack. I’m willing to bet the attack can get launched as long as it’s pursuing someone.”

Donovan nodded. “Yeah, Jimmy, I bet you’re right about that. That’s why…” He raised his voice, now addressing everyone. “That’s why we’re gonna do it like this. BG1 and BG2 are gonna go after Death Harbinger A and try to stick to the left as they do it. BGs 3, 4, and 5 will all focus on Death Harbinger B, but only after the tanks in those BGs have been able to pull the mob from there”—he pointed to where Jimmy had just pointed—“to down over there,” he finished, indicating a position about twenty feet down the tube-shaped hall behind them into total darkness. “BG1 and BG2,” he continued, “will pull theirs right here to where I’m standing right now.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to voice his concerns about the magical sword attack, which he genuinely believed would be fatal to anyone caught in its path. But as if to preempt his concern, Donovan loudly and firmly stated, “Nobody is to use any gods-be-damned stuns unless Zephyr or I call for it. Stuns are only gonna be used if they start going into that charge-up attack Jimmy was talking about.”

“And don’t forget, boys and girls,” Zephyr added with a difficult-to-see grin in this appalling lighting. “When we do call for a stun, remember to rotate between melee-based and magic-based to reduce diminishing returns. For obvious reasons, we don’t want any slows. It’s probably not a coincidence they move slowly to begin with. I’m thinking it’s to give them the opportunity to use that attack of theirs.”

Jimmy raised his hand like he was in school, then lowered it, feeling stupid. But not before Zephyr saw him, and with a chuckle, asked, “Yeah, Jimmy?”

“It just seems like a really big risk to pull them instead of charging them. Even if ya’ll wanna split them up, then at least you’d only have one of them walking around and not two.”

“It is a risk,” Zephyr agreed. “But is it a bigger risk?”

The way he spoke was almost like he was testing Jimmy. Jimmy made a serious expression, hoping Zephyr could see it amid the darkness. “Of course it is.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

Zephyr shrugged. “Well, someone might argue that, since this exact spot you’re standing in is the farthest you’ve come with Zach, you don’t actually know what happens if you move farther in the direction of those mobs. We know this dungeon has traps—can we say for sure we won’t step on any ahead of us that are too hard to spot? Do we know we won’t trigger any adds to spawn? I’d say the only thing we really know for sure is that we’re in safe ground up until this very spot here. Everything ahead is uncharted water. Wouldn’t it be better to bring them to where we know we won’t be surprised than to go to them and whatever else might await?”

Although Zephyr spoke the words in a way that suggested they were open to interpretation and disagreement, his tone was more like that of a college professor who already believed he was right and was trying to educate a student. Jimmy found this insulting. If class was in session, he should be the Goddamn teacher, not these middle-aged worrywarts.

Jimmy really wanted to challenge him on each and every point, but he knew that would escalate things from an honest but permissible question into something more oppositional and disrespectful. As he tried to contemplate a way that he could bring this back up without coming across as obstinate, the thoughts fell out of his head as Donovan extended his arm in Jimmy’s direction and praised him.

“Thanks to this kid and Zach, we now have a whole new tool in our kit: the escape rope. It’s gonna take some getting used to, but from now on, if me or Zephyr shouts to rope out, I want everyone to grab their ropes and leave in an orderly fashion. First, everyone but the tanks and healers, and then the healers and tanks at the same time. Got it?” A cheer along with a chorus of vocal affirmatives led to Donovan nodding to himself as if satisfied with their collective response. “These ropes are gonna make raiding a whole lot safer for us from now on—well, assuming we can keep getting ‘em. Point is, if we say to rope out, you bastards better rope out. If anyone doesn’t have one—and I’m pretty sure you all do—tell me now.” He paused as if to wait for anyone to chime in. When no one did, he clapped his hands together and said, “Before we get going, any last questions?”

“Um, just one,” Rian said. “What’s BG6 supposed to do in all this?”

Donvan walked over to Rian and gave him a playful—but very painful-looking—bump on the chest. “You guys hang tight and be ready to act if we need ya. Once the mobs get below forty-percent HP, you folks can jump in and start wailing on them if you want.”

If you want, Jimmy thought angrily, repeating the demeaning words in his head.

He was once again reminded of the shameful, pitiable battlegroup he was the “captain” of. Apparently, when Donovan and Zephyr ran raids together, they often included a battlegroup comprised of “lucky” lower-level adventurers who functioned more as “trainees” to “learn” from the higher-level and more-experienced ones. In the case of BG6, everyone in the battlegroup aside from Jimmy was in either the GSG or the Explorers Brigade, and everyone in the BG ranged from levels 30 to 45 except for a fifteen-year-old girl named “Ishina” who was level 29, which Jimmy now knew because the adventurers had turned on name and level visibility in their raid settings after splitting off from the original huge group.

Much like most of the other adventurers that’d been asked to either rope out—as most had done—or wait in Mushkie’s until or unless given the all-clear, no one in BG6, including even Jimmy, was technically “qualified” for the raid. Everyone in this BG, called “auxiliary support,” was being coddled and protected. And no one seemed to mind, either. Rian, Lienne, Ishina, Tena, and the other five teen- and young-adult-aged members seemed overjoyed to be part of this. It didn’t seem to bother them that they were basically unimportant to the raid itself.

Well, it sure bothers me, he thought.

The fact that Jimmy was stuck in this group like he was some goddamn noob made him feel so disrespected and insulted. He’d soloed raid bosses. He’d burst down the walls to this place—metaphorically speaking—after nobody had the balls to come here in centuries! And what? Now he was going to be forced to tiptoe around in the kiddie group? Why even let BG6 roll equally for loot, then? They certainly weren’t going to do equal work. It was just all so damn demeaning, you know? Yes, Jimmy was well aware that real life was different from a video game. He wasn’t stupid. He got it. All right? He did. But the fact of the matter was that he was a natural at this, he knew things that nobody here could even begin to guess, and he should be playing a more important role than being Captain Baby in the “I need to be babysat” group.

Stop thinking like that, he told himself. If you act like a baby, you deserve to be treated like one.

Though only nineteen, Jimmy was still an adult, and he knew it would be unbecoming of him to whine and bitch like a child. Thus, despite his dissatisfaction, he once again shelved his discontent and tried to go along with the flow. In a way, he sort of envied how free someone like Zach felt to just blow up at anyone or anything whenever something even slightly upset him. It must’ve felt good to stomp his foot down and tell everyone to fuck off and eat shit whenever things didn’t go his way. But that just wasn’t Jimmy’s nature, and it wasn’t how his momma brought him up. Jimmy wanted to honor her by living up to being the man she raised him to be. And so, as he led his nine raid members through the darkness so that their back was against the right side of the wall and away from the soon-to-begin action, he did so unhappily, but willingly. He felt humiliated, disregarded, and totally undervalued, but he would cooperate.

Still, I kinda wish I was here on my own with Zach like before, he thought, doing his best to conceal his bitterness and resentment. At least I’m useful to him.

Jimmy crossed his arms over his chest and rested his back against the wall as he watched all the tanks on the raid—except Rian and another kid his age in BG6—draw their swords, axes, short spears, or hammers while raising their shields of varying sizes. Two among them—Maric Ultdern and Frederic Britethorn—spread out to opposite sides of the hall and stood just a bit in front of the others.

“Division 1: I’m pulling,” Maric announced. “Okay, it’s taunted.”

“Division 2: I’m pulling,” Mister Britethorn’s elderly, yet commanding and powerful voice followed soon after. “I taunted it!”

What followed was a split second of silence, and then two dark laughs.

“Zur-hur-hur-hur-hur-hur!”

“Zur-hur-hur-hur-hur-hur!”

Ambling forward, and emerging from shadow and darkness, were the two large elite mobs that him and Zach had “roped” away from earlier in the day. Just as they’d been then, each stood larger than seven feet in height and sported such outrageously muscular forms that they made Spider look like a twig. Their eyes glowed a constant yellow, and a menacing sneer was planted on their lips. Most of their bright red skin was visible except for the few locations in which they donned armor, such as on their shoulders, shins, and feet, or where they were covered with a modest pair of black shorts. As they approached, they unsheathed tremendous, two-handed swords that had bronze-like grips and blades that looked made of a fine, reflective glass.

HP

2,110,000/2,110,000

Name

Death Harbinger A***

Level

52

HP

2,110,000/2,110,000

Name

Death Harbinger B***

Level

52

Maric and Mister Britethorn began moving slowly forward towards the mobs with their knees bent and their bodies slumped slightly forward, their shields held out defensively in front of them. They stopped after reaching the point that Jimmy and Zach had failed to move beyond. The mobs, for their part, began moving towards the two of them as if eager to meet, though they became even more spread out as the two taunting tanks began to position them for distance. They also moved considerably slowly. Jimmy could not think of any mobs he’d encountered so far that moved this slow without first being debuffed.

And there one of them goes, he thought, rolling his eyes. Knew that would happen.

Although Death Harbinger A continued to make his way closer to Maric, Death Harbinger B came to an abrupt halt. It then extended its sword in front of itself, and the tip of the blade began to glow brightly—and in a way that the general darkness of this floor did not seem to resist; a great deal of light was cast all around, and to Jimmy’s embarrassment, the sudden increase in visibility enabled him to see that, indeed, in several locations that spanned the distance between Maric, Mister Britethorn, and the two mobs, there were a couple of square-shaped, raised elevations that were consistent with what Jimmy expected traps to look like.

I didn’t think there’d actually be floor traps here, he thought, surprised but not totally shocked.

Given the incredibly low level of light here, but even more specifically, the fact that one’s own sources of light could not extend beyond a certain point, it seemed downright unfair for there to be traps on a dungeon floor like this. It wasn’t a reasonable thing to do. It didn’t give the player—or user, whatever—a fair chance of surviving it. If not for this sword attack, Jimmy probably wouldn’t have seen it.

He flicked his eyes nervously over to Zephyr, worried the leader of the Explorers Brigade was going to gloat or do an “I told you so.” Thankfully, he seemed too busy concentrating on the elites to bother. Not that Jimmy could see anything more from him than his vague outline. He also probably wouldn’t have done so anyway, but there was no real way of knowing for sure.

“Stun Death Harbinger B!” Donovan’s voice roared out.

As the sword began to glow with an increasing intensity, a flash of something white appeared from one of the raid members in Division 2. And although the flash was bright enough to be visible, it appeared to cast no light around itself, which meant Jimmy could not see anything beyond the silhouette of whoever had created it. This was interesting, because from the perspective of the person who’d created it, the flash would almost certainly have lit up their immediate area. But to anyone more than a few feet away, it would utterly fail to lift the veil of darkness. This floor really did play with light in unusual ways.

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The flash, which Jimmy soon realized was some kind of projectile, burned across the distance between its caster and Death Harbinger B, and all without ever spreading a single ray of light or creating any shadows. A moment later, it collided with the mob, and the glowing from the tip of the blade vanished even as the mob kept its arms extended as though frozen in place; with the intensely bright, strobing light having been extinguished, once more, much of the hall became buried in darkness.

About five seconds came and went, and then the mob, Death Harbinger B, lowered its arms and continued to march slowly onwards, having clearly given up its desire to launch its incredibly powerful ranged attack. Unfortunately, it had a change of heart yet again; not five steps later, it once more halted, lifted its arms, extended its blade, and began to charge up another one. “Stun it again,” Donovan said with a growl. “Melee this time.”

Even as he spoke those words, Death Harbinger A had also halted and was now charging up the same attack at Division 1 across the hall. Rather than call for a stun on this one as well, Jimmy spotted the outline of Donovan’s massive form—easily identifiable by silhouette alone—speeding across the dungeon floor, where he then bent his knees, leapt into the air high enough that he almost crashed into the ceiling, and then began to release reddish sparks from his axe. Descending down on top of the mob, he crashed his axe through the creature’s skull, causing a spray of blood to shoot out of the top of its dual-horned forehead while dealing 21,511 damage.

Now, red tendrils of electricity began dancing off its skin as it remained perfectly still. Maric laughed and said, “I’m gonna have to taunt it twice as much now to pull it off you, Don.”

“Yeah, well, shit.”

During all this, Frederick Britethorn had pivoted his hips, swung around his right elbow, and slammed his shield into the face of Death Harbinger B, stunning it for several seconds as well while dealing 4,211 damage.

After a short moment, both mobs lowered their swords and again began to press the adventurers, and all while Jimmy was forced to watch and do nothing. This really did suck. He hated being a spectator. He wondered if he’d even bother to roll later on if they made it to the boss or if any other loot dropped. At this point, he was not only uncomfortable with the idea of rolling for items, but if things continued this way, it would end up feeling more like charity than something he’d earned.

This is pathetic.

With the stuns serving as interrupts, the two mobs continued to go where the tanks were attempting to lead them. Every so often, the Death Harbinger mobs decided to try charging up another of their super powerful sword-beam attacks, and they’d be stunned yet again. And even as the diminishing returns on the various stuns became more noticeable, they still served to halt the mobs from launching the ranged magical attacks, which in turn reset them back into their “pursuing” state.

As Jimmy watched them advance, it only just occurred to him right now that there was, in fact, a potentially huge flaw in Donovan and Zephyr’s plan—well, sort of. Their ideas were clearly working out so far, and because of this, Jimmy would be petty to bring it up after the fact, but he actually did see a real problem with their thinking, and he wished he’d realized it sooner, as it would’ve made him come across better. He hadn’t had any kind of answer to Zephyr at the time, but if his damn brain had only thought this up earlier, he would have.

Put simply, while it turned out that, yes, stuns interrupted and reset the mobs, they actually couldn’t have known that would be the case ahead of time. Sure, most mobs likely would abandon a charged-up attack by being stunned, as that was true in Galterra as well as most games. But! In nearly all the games that Jimmy had played, online and off, there were in fact mobs that could and would resume their attack the moment crowd control expired. Hell, there were even some that had “uninterruptable attacks” that couldn’t even be delayed with CC, let alone reset. Either Don and Zephyr didn’t know this or had never even considered it.

But I didn’t consider it until now either, Jimmy thought, filling with regret. But…whatever. Things are going well enough for now, I guess.

The two mobs were pulled away from one another, and eventually, they were in position, far enough away so that most of the raid could get to work. With that, a steady, constant, and stable rhythm began to unfold, whereby the DPS and off-tanks would rush in, take a few high-intensity shots for a few consecutive seconds, and then all would duck out so that the archers and mages could have a go: rinse and repeat.

Jimmy watched as fire, ice, water, lava, rocks, purple missiles, and even bees were fired out of more than a dozen staves, rods, spell daggers, spell swords, and books while about eight more bows unleashed arrows at the mobs. Then the archers and mages rested while the melee DPS rushed in. The healers and support continued to debuff or heal at irregular intervals whenever it seemed necessary.

By far, Kalana, Donovan, and Zephyr hit the hardest of everyone on the raid. Every attack from Kalana—all of which landed on Death Harbinger B’s back—seemed to hit for around 8000-10,500 damage, but she was able to perform numerous such slices with her daggers during the few seconds the DPS would engage before switching. Donovan, on the other hand, only got in one or two mighty swings with his axe on Death Harbinger A, but they landed really hard, dealing upwards of 15,000 each time. And then there was Zephyr, whose sword strikes landed with a stunning level of variability, ranging from just 500 damage with some hits to slashes as high as 37,000.

Jimmy was pretty sure it all had something to do with the man’s sword. It was, put simply, one of the coolest weapons he’d ever seen, including in any of the games he’d played back home. Zephyr’s weapon, a two-handed blade that was slightly smaller than a claymore but larger and thicker than a longsword, took on a white-and-silver appearance while sheathed by the man’s side. Once drawn, however, it was constantly lighting up different colors—but with a distinct pattern that incorporated a degree of randomness. Jimmy thought he had it mostly figured out just from watching him fight for a short while.

Whenever he entered combat, the base of the sword and the grip would glow intensely with a color such as red, blue, green, yellow, orange, or silver—and in some cases black or pure white. There may have been others, as well. But those were the ones Jimmy saw most often. And each time Zephyr struck with this sword of his, the blade would further change properties. And this happened consistently and in sequences of four.

Each and every time, the first strike would cause the blade of his weapon to dimly glow with the exact same color as that which was currently lighting up the weapon’s base. The second strike would then cause the blade to shine even more intensely to where the entire sword became evenly basked in the glow of whatever color happened to be in effect. After the third strike, the blade would light up even more brightly so that it would actually outshine the grip. It would also cause the weapon to begin giving off certain visual effects: when red, it was little balls of fire, when green, little puddle-like botches of goop, when yellow, electrical sparks, etc. Finally, on the fourth strike, there would be a reasonably loud noise that was different for each color, such as a zap for yellow or a whoosh for red—and then the blade would return to its default white state and the base would begin glowing a different, seemingly random color. Most times, anyway. It seemed possible that it would also sometimes glow the same color twice in a row.

I think I remember someone saying that’s an Artifact-rarity weapon, Jimmy thought.

Supposedly, Zephyr was the only adventurer in the entire world known to possess a weapon with a rarity of Artifact, which was above even Legendary. Artifact-quality items were the rarest of the rare, and based on the gossip that went around Angelica’s, only a few were known to exist in any category, with Zephyr’s being the only weapon anyone knew for sure existed outside of the level-105 staff that dropped from the dragon and was now in the hands of the Guild of Gentlemen. Fluffles, apparently, was another adventurer with such an incredibly rare item, which the cat made sure everybody knew and bragged about often. His collar, which was Artifact rarity, supposedly allowed him to turn invisible whenever he hadn’t been in combat for thirty seconds or longer, and there was no recast timer on it or limit to how long he could stay invisible.

Lucky cat…

Right now, Fluffles was sitting back with the other mages in Division 1 and calling down single-target lightning, which while only able to dish out around 800 damage per bolt, was coming in so fast he might have actually been out DPS'ing all the other mages. In some cases, he was striking ten, maybe even eleven times each second.

Due to the fact that Fluffles had been staying at Elendroth during most of the time that Jimmy had been on Galterra, Jimmy had not known Fluffles existed until very recently despite him being one of the most infamous adventures. After Fluffles had saved his life in Shores of Wrath, Tena had told Jimmy all about the cat, and a lot of it was surprising.

Apparently, despite having the worst behavior and raid etiquette of pretty much everyone, the level-51 cat was one of the most heavily requested and desired adventurers for raid groups. This, according to Tena, was because he had the perfect hybrid set of abilities that allowed him to play ranged DPS, melee DPS, off-tank, and surprisingly even healer in some rare circumstances.

From Jimmy’s own experiences, the vast majority of healing magic regardless of tier was suited towards healing lacerations, cuts, slices, scrapes, etc. The higher the tier, the more serious the type of wound it was effective against. However, far rarer was magic that could heal concussions, fractured or broken bones, muscle tears, or severe bruises.

Fluffles, however, apparently had a unique weekly ability that cast an AOE healing mist of T2.5 potency capable of healing minor-to-moderate brain trauma, minor-to-moderate broken bones, major bruising, and lastly—though Jimmy found this one befuddling—it provided 24-48 hours of relief for moderate symptoms of depression, ADHD, and other moderate, non-cognitively impairing mental disorders.

As Jimmy watched Fluffles zap so fast and with such frequency that the mob actually de-aggroed the tank, he saw firsthand just how much the cat could contribute to a raid. Incredibly, the moment the mob disengaged from Mister Britethorn and started shuffling over to Fluffles, the cat transformed itself into a giant panther and then launched itself at the sword-wielding creature. With an agility that made sense of a cat, Fluffles began to evade sword strike after sword strike while hissing and clawing the creature’s face apart for two-to-three-thousand damage a swipe. This, as Maric, his “daddy,” began to show signs of strain across the hall where he was being worn down.

“These things hit so damn hard!” he groaned, his entire body shaking each time he absorbed the power of a two-handed slash on his shield. “I can’t keep this up!”

“Alixa!” Donovan barked.

“Yeah?’

“Spam Amnesia on Harbinger A!”

“Got it!”

Alixa bent her knees, twisted her body somewhat, and her book snapped shut all on its own. Then she turned it so it was held sideways while throwing out her left forearm almost as though protecting it from something. Honestly, the closest thing Jimmy could think to describe her strange posture was that she looked exactly like a basketball player trying to pass the ball while surrounded by players from the opposing team. She even then made “passing” gestures, only without actually throwing the book. And each time she made one of these gestures, a pin-wheel shaped mass of energy that was very light blue in color would be “flung” out of the book like water from a pail. This energy would then spin wildly fast until flying across the hall to Death Harbinger A, where it would make a gentle humming sound after disappearing around its general head area.

After four or five of these pinwheel-shaped oddities, the mob suddenly disengaged from Maric and made as if to turn around. “Ophelia!” Donovan called. “Now!”

Before the seven-foot-tall mob could spin around and find someone else to attack, its attention was diverted by a beautiful woman with flowing locks of light-blonde hair wearing eyeshadow, red lipstick, and gazing out at it from blue, cloudy eyes. In her left hand was a curved scimitar, and in her right was an unexpectedly small buckler shield with a circumference not all that much larger than a frying pan. With a pained-sounding grunt, she swung her scimitar and parried a vicious slash that started high and came down low, and then she adjusted her stance to swipe away a similar strike that came from the opposite end, this time using her shield like a catcher’s mitt and blasting it away with a ding.

“Bring it on!” she taunted. Jimmy recognized this woman. She was Ophelia Graven, the leader of Boss Rush.

Although Jimmy had never spoken to her in person, one of the first things he’d done after discovering Angelica’s early on in his first week here was familiarize himself with the important players in the adventuring community, gathering as much intel as he could from the drunken patrons in Angelica’s. What he’d learned was that she was one of the leaders of what could be called the four primary adventuring guilds in Galterra.

To be clear, Jimmy could not say this with any measure of certainty, but if he was forced to take a guess, he’d feel comfortable betting that 90-95% of adventurers belonged to one of the four “big” adventuring guilds, which were: The Explorers Brigade, The God Slayers Guild, Boss Rush, and Lost and Found.

Of these four, the biggest, by far, was Zephyr Vextran’s Explorers Brigade. Once again, Jimmy couldn’t actually state this as fact, but he was pretty sure more than half of all adventurers were a member of just that one guild alone. Boss Rush and Lost and Found were probably tied for the second- and third-biggest guild, and then in fourth place was the elite, boss-killing guild, the GSG. After that, there were a few-dozen tiny guilds that contained maybe two, but usually one member. The one and sole exception—if you could really call it that—was a guild called “I did your mom” which, depending on the day of the week, contained either one member or three quarters of the entire adventuring community.

Given how easily people could leave and rejoin guilds provided they were invited, it seemed that many, many adventurers liked to occasionally leave their guild and join “I did your mom” for a few minutes to a few hours. Based on a story he’d eavesdropped on last week, a month before Jimmy had shown up in Galterra, almost the entire adventuring community had briefly quit their respective guilds to join “I did your mom,” and the reason they’d done this was specifically to upset Lord Alex Oren, who’d claimed it was immature, offensive, and childish. The moment he’d made that remark, it supposedly caused “I did your mom” to, for at least an hour, become the single-largest adventuring guild in anyone’s memory, including the Britethorns, who’d also shockingly joined.

And why was he thinking about all of this bullshit now during a raid? Why was he letting his mind wander and reflect on all these irrelevant details? Because thanks to Donovan and Zephyr, he had literally nothing better to do. Their plan, which Jimmy still disagreed with, did at least seem to be working. The two elites were being whittled down at a slow, but reasonable pace. And while they appeared to hit crazily hard in melee—as Zach himself would likely attest if he were here—the real threat was their ranged attack, which seemed to no longer be an issue now that they were both in position.

Jimmy watched as A’s HP fell to around 55% and B’s approached the 40% mark. Halfheartedly, he said, “Guys, you can go attack B now if you want.” He finished his words with a bored sigh.

“YEAH!” Rian roared, pumping his chest like a drum with his left hand while wildly swinging his shield as he chaotically flung himself into battle. A similar, but not quite as enthusiastic battle cry was released by Tena, Lienne, and the others as they bolted into the fray and weakly started putting out damage in the low 2-300 range. Yet despite delivering such paltry and borderline insignificant numbers, BG6 went at it like they were fighting that dragon everyone was always talking about. Jimmy, for his part, delivered a few projectiles from his staff that hit for like 800 whenever the melee DPS backed off B and it became the turn for ranged DPS to attack.

Sure enough, the two elites were crushed due to superior firepower, and aside from some sore bodies, it looked like their first big fight was a success. B died shortly before A, which made sense since 3 BGs—four if you counted BG6—were on it, but both were dead soon enough.

HP

0/2,110,000

Name

Death Harbinger B***

Level

52

Interestingly, upon dying, their corpses remained where they were: fully intact, bleeding, and unmoving. Neither dropped any loot, either. And though the raid was set up with xp-share to be raid-wide instead of BG wide, since there were sixty of them, that only ended up being a total of +2750xp for Jimmy. Since he was level 45 and they were 52, it was probably less than half of what he’d have gotten if he himself was 52 or higher. But it still wouldn’t have been enough to be worth much.

But anyways, yeah. Having done almost nothing to contribute, he forced himself to join in celebration with the others over the fact that the two elites were dead. Afterwards, Jimmy sighed again, pushed himself off the wall, and quietly made his way over to Donovan and Zephyr, who were both giving him a very strange, concerning, and unsettling look that he didn’t particularly care for.

What’s their issue?

Donovan opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he shut it as something changed: something in their environment. About ten seconds after both elites were felled, the entire world lit up with a natural, comfortable light, which illuminated the entirety of the tube-shaped passage with something comparable to an adequately lit room. In terms of visibility, it went from so dark one could not see the finer details on the face of a person right beside them to being on par with any normal indoor area.

Now, Jimmy could see far ahead of him into the distance. “There are some traps on the floor,” he warned, pointing.

“Yep, we see them,” Zephyr said.

“And it looks like—”

He gasped as he lifted his head and actually surveilled what was ahead of him. Now that the world was fully illuminated, it revealed itself to be far, far larger than anything he could’ve expected while submerged in the darkness. To say he was shocked at what had been lurking in the shadows was not going far enough. God, this place was mind-blowingly huge!

No way!

Just beyond the traps, the tube-shaped hall expanded to become even wider, and then it really opened up such that there appeared to be a vast, tremendous series of red-carpeted steps—tens of thousands of them—that were equally distant apart and about as wide as half of a sports stadium. Jimmy craned his neck all the way upwards to look at the top of where it led, which in his best estimation, had to be at least fifty stories’ worth of height, and they all converged around a massive door. Or maybe it was more accurate to call it a gate. It was a gigantic, birch-colored entrance the size of an IMAX screen, only made of wood. Written across the door were words in black ink and bold font that would almost certainly be too large to read once they approached too close. But from here, Jimmy could read them just fine.

F29->F30

Boss Ahead. 35+ Party Advised. (Recommended min: level 50. Level 58+ Recommended).

Donovan grunted. “That’s a high requirement, but not a terrible party-size number. We should definitely be able to handle that.”

“Agreed,” Zephyr said. He sheathed his sword, which caused the grip to cease glowing. “What say we go take a look? Watch your step for traps, though. I think there are some just between here and where those mobs spawned, but in this lighting, they should be easy to avoid now.”

Luckily, there turned out not to be any more traps aside from the few that Jimmy had spotted. Unluckily, Jimmy, like Rian, quickly found himself panting and out of breath as the sixty of them began climbing up something so magnificently huge, curved, and stadium-shaped that Jimmy wasn’t even sure what to call something so bizarre and out of place. It certainly wasn’t correct to call it a stairway. It was like having seats at the very top row of a concert and having to walk up from the bottom floor, only it was way taller than that, and his ankles and knees began to hurt before they’d even made it a quarter way.

“Holy fuck,” Rian said, gasping. “Li, this is gonna kill me.”

“Suck it up,” she said, also breathing heavily. "Don't you want to look good for Seiley?"

Rian patted his stomach through his leather brigandine armor. "Yeah. Good point."

Jimmy, just as exhausted as everyone else, could not allow himself to show it because he was the raid captain of BG6—as insignificant as they were—and that would reflect badly on him. Even still, he was not having a good time. If only he could poison something and use his stamina buff, this would’ve been a cinch. He could ignore the muscle aches. It was the cardio that was killing him.

Zach did say I need to build up stamina, he thought. But damn.

Fluffles seemed to be having no issue climbing, but that was because the cat wasn’t climbing. He hitched a ride on whoever was nearby. Right now, he was perched on Spider’s right shoulder, and Spider was tickling his chin as he easily made his way up red step after red step, his boots making a soft thud. The same soft thudding was echoed over and over from fifty-nine other people including Jimmy himself. When put all together, it became loud enough that it actually drowned out some of the ambient sounds of breathing and grunts of exertion coming off numerous adventurers, particularly those in BG6.

Yet through it all, Donovan and Zephyr would not stop staring at Jimmy. As he continued onwards along this ludicrous, stadium-like hike to the next floor, he couldn’t help but see the way both men continuously looked at him, frowned, and then began to animatedly discuss things with one another. At one point, Jimmy caught wind of just a bit of what they were saying, but he couldn’t really make out much. In fact, amid all the thudding of so many people stomping down on the red, carpeted steps, Jimmy wasn’t even sure he was hearing them correctly. He thought he heard one particular bit of it, though.

“…you really sure that’s what he needs?” Jimmy was pretty sure Zephyr said to Donovan.

“Yeah, Zeph. I know his type.”

“Kid’s doing everything we say, and he’s not complaining. Why’s that not good enough?”

“It just isn’t,” Donovan growled. Then he said a bunch more words that Jimmy couldn’t hear. In fact, for the next few minutes, everything Donovan said was unintelligible. But eventually, when the two began to argue a bit more loudly, he picked up on another snippet of their conversation.

“I can tell from his eyes. The fucker’s not getting it. And if I was him, I wouldn’t get it either. Zeph, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was worth it.”

“It’s cruel.”

“Naw it ain’t. What my dad did to me? Now that was fuckin’ cruel.”

“I know. I was there. Gods, I’ll never forget that awful day. You sure you won’t be accidentally recreating it here and now?”

Donovan made a brief, confident-sounding chuckle. “Definitely not or I wouldn’t do it.”

Zephyr seemed to sigh. “If you really say so. I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Has to be done,” Donovan insisted. “It just has to be.”

Jimmy, after an exhaustive climb, finally reached the top, and then he did his absolute best to avoid gasping loudly for air in front of everyone, and instead, he tried to take calm, measured breaths. It took him a good bit to get his breathing under control. He took a seat on what looked like an area rug—well, for an area the size of a football field. Many of the other adventurers, a number of them covered in sweat, joined him. Then Donovan and Zephyr began whistling and clapping to get everyone’s attention.

“I got an important announcement to make,” Donovan said, causing every head to turn his way. “Everybody listen up, ‘cause this is important! Very, very important!”

“What is it?” Kalana asked, likely offput by the seriousness in his tone. Jimmy was as well.

Rather than reply, Donovan pursed his lips and seemed to take a moment to look at each one of the other adventurers, Zephyr included. Well, all except Jimmy, who he seemed to skip for some reason. Then he placed his hands on his hips, lowered his head as if to stare at the ground, and he held that position for about ten seconds before lifting his gaze once more.

“Major shakeup in the command structure,” he said. Now, finally, he met Jimmy’s eyes. “I’m stepping down as raid leader for this next boss. Your new raid leader will be him”—he pointed—“Jimmy Green!”

Jimmy opened his mouth to gasp but ended up coughing and spluttering, hit by a whirlwind of confusion and awe. “R-really?” he asked—and so did many others.

“Yup.”

Jimmy shook his head as if to clear it of any fog that might’ve settled into it due to the exhausting trip up here. It also didn’t help that, now that they were all the way up here, the ceiling had been replaced by a round, massive glass dome, which served as like a window into the outside world: a world that was covered in mist and mountains made of pure ice that looked lifeless and dead. It was also a world that appeared to be upside down, causing his stomach to make a flipping sensation as his body did not seem to understand what strange trick of gravity was being played here.

“Are you serious?” Jimmy asked, taking his attention off the sights above—below?—him. "Or are you just messing with me?"

“Nope.”

With nearly all the adventurers now seated and taking a few minutes to rest, Jimmy could actually hear them shift as they turned on their asses to look at him. And of all things, as he came to grips with what he’d just been told, his immediate reaction was to smile. Even amid all his confusion and struggle to understand why Donovan would do this, it was giddiness he felt above all.

“Well, all right then,” he said, nodding and grinning. Confidently, he stood up and dusted off his knees and thighs. “About time these two came to their senses. Don’t gotta ask me twice. Everybody, rest up for twenty, and then get ready to raid properly. We’re gonna murder this thing so bad it’ll refuse to respawn!”

The adventurers cheered and Jimmy’s smile broadened. Now this was more like it.