Of the entire party, Cuddles was the most ferocious about chasing down and blasting Shards, relying heavily on his vicious laser beams. Every single attack burst apart its target. It took the squirrel only a moment to aim each blast, and he did not miss.
On the other hand, Taylor Lynn suffered the most with targeting and breaking down The Maragon’s Adds. Her spells took too long to summon and wasted too much mp. Bringing up her staff, she started firing energy bolts from the top to drastic effect.
For the melee fighters, the battle was an intense shift of focus as their boss “disappeared.” They started to destroy the Shard pieces as fast as possible, but each attack wasted a lot of energy due to the minuscule size of their targets.
The battle against the tiny creatures quickly shifted in favor of the party, especially with Cuddles’s intense focus on their destruction. Still, it was backbreaking work to hunt down the little monsters. Taylor Lynn openly complained, resorting to swinging her staff like a bat to keep the tiny monsters from getting too close. They seemed to like her the most.
Despite their caution, the tiny explosions of acid could not be completely avoided. The only person to largely avoid such a fate was Jay because of the Strogian Death squirrel's ferocious attacks.
Sickly green energy emanated from everyone else as the final Add was destroyed. The energy rose into the air—soaring into an upper corner of the spiderweb—where the party could now see the Maragon remained out of reach.
Satisfied that the small critters were destroyed, Cuddles leaped onto Jay’s back, returning to his comfortable position.
The battle began anew.
The boss no longer remained in the center of the spider web, waiting for the party to destroy it. It could sink into the plant material, reappearing anywhere within the spider web.
The party quickly found their former strategies useless with the boss’s second phase movements. The melee fighters rarely got close enough to put a real dent into the boss. The Maragon would slink away through the web as soon as they opened attacks.
Taylor Lynn and Jenny could still consistently land magical attacks, but the fight was slow going and mp was low in supply. The party continued to slog on, fighting with the enemy whenever it drew near.
Jay started to load his smoldering bolts, knowing they needed the extra fire damage here and now. He could feel the pressure now, the need to expend any advantage, despite the cost. More enchanted bolts could be made in the future or purchased, so he couldn’t afford to be stingy now. After all, he needed to impress Lester and get in good with the guild. His new job and Sarah’s future depended on it.
With this in mind, his previous exhilaration at the fighting was extinguished. Cold and calculating, Jay stuck the creature with his debuffing ability, further reducing the already low damage the Maragon was dishing out.
Jay dodged to the side as tangles of vines lashed out in response. He was too fast for the vines, but the rest of the party had more issues.
Jenny worked hard to keep the party’s health up as they slowly took damage, but everyone was being pushed to the brink.
After another smoldering bolt, the fire damage dealt by Jay and Taylor Lynn finally dropped the boss’s health to under 1000. It was apparent only fire attacks made a real impact. But when the boss dipped into three-digit health, Jay ground his teeth as it formed another shell from its roots.
“Give it everything you got,” Jay said, charging up his most potent attack while he finished loading a smoldering bolt. “ Take this shield down as fast as we can.”
A supercharged fire spell, his powered-up smoldering bolt, and weapons hurled by Ken and Lester soared into The Maragon’s strange shell. As expected, the shell exploded outwards, but it spewed even more Shard monsters than before.
Cuddles growled grumpily, eyeing Jay with a severely disappointed look before scurrying off to his war. The laser-eye beams started firing across the battlefield once again.
“What’s going on?” Lester demanded, glancing back at Jay. The other player was angry even though there was little Jay could have done. “Why did it summon more creatures than the last activation?”
“It’s way worse this time,” Jenny agreed, swatting away tiny plant creatures with her staff. “What’s different?”
Jay’s brain raked its way back through previous mechanics from other games. He mindlessly chopped through shard creatures with his dagger. He needed to conserve ammunition. The Shards weren’t worth the special bolts, and his high Speed allowed him to step away from the creatures as they exploded. It was tenuous, stabbing them while avoiding poison splashing all over his shins. But he was mostly successful.
Last time, Ken’s frustrated attack had created fewer enemies than the flurry from the group had this time. Two of those abilities had even been supercharged. In hindsight, the answer was obvious.
“The shell is basically a reflection field,” he said, continuing to battle through the creatures. “Next time, when the shield forms, stop all attacks immediately. It won’t summon any creatures.”
A chorus of assent came from the rest of the party. With a rough plan in place, the party focused on finding a better balance of moving around to land attacks on the boss and destroy the tiny plants corralling the party.
Jay saw an opportunity to switch back to his crossbow when he was temporarily out of range of any Shards. He was storing his dagger to switch to another smoldering bolt when he was side-swiped by a vine. He hadn’t even seen it coming.
The vine sent him straight to the dusty stone floor, his head hitting hard enough to disorient him. He lost track of all the Shards he had been watching, an uncomfortable daze leaving him feeling slow and confused.
After a moment, he realized he was still on the ground. Trying to push himself up, he couldn’t really see. The room was spinning, but he knew he had to get back into the fight.
As he started to reorient himself—and the fog faded—he noticed several disturbing things. First, his health was hanging by a thread. The only thing keeping him alive was a healing tag from Jenny, which was warring against staggeringly many stacks of poison.
Nearby, Lester had been caught by a vine, too. Ken was dancing with The Maragon, dodging its attacks and maintaining the boss monster’s focus. He couldn’t even see Jenny or Taylor Lynn.
The healing tag was losing to the poison. Jay was all out of healing potions. His abilities weren’t suited for healing himself or clearing toxins. Letting his crossbow drop to the side, he started to run. Finally locating Jenny, he ran toward her.
Stolen novel; please report.
The process was dangerous, requiring him to weave through several Shards. He didn’t take a swipe at them, choosing to stay as far away as possible. He dodged the first three with no problems. The fourth one caught him in the ankle, triggering another poison stack.
When he reached Jenny, she was kind enough to activate a new healing tag on him. She also tossed him one of her health potions, which she had not used. Jay gulped it down quickly before the tags could lose to the poison. The health potion unequivocally saved his life, sparing him a meeting with Gereg. Best of all, it spared him the level loss.
Lester, thankfully, activated a taunting ability, drawing focus from both the boss and the Adds so that Jay could move.
Surprisingly, this created an opportunity Ken was smart enough to take advantage of. He disengaged from his fight, pulling a small potion vial from his inventory in a wave of glittering white sparks.
“Here,” Ken said, tossing the healing potion to Jay. It was one of the potions Jay had initially handed out to everyone.
At first, catching the potion, Jay wasn’t confident the item would transfer without a trade window. Surprisingly, the item information popped up as it touched his hand. Then he remembered Jenny had tossed him the potion earlier without a trade, too.
He found that incredibly weird since the game hadn’t allowed such transfers until this boss fight.
He quickly drank the second potion, leaving plenty of room for Jenny’s tags to fight off the rest of the poison. He could feel his vision sharpen, and his limbs respond more quickly as the worst of the combined injuries faded.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Jay said in wonder, using his newfound health to jump in and destroy one of the few remaining shard creatures that had started to attack Ken. “I probably would have survived.”
“It’s no big deal,” Ken waved it off, adding, “I know how to avoid getting hit. Besides, it was your potion.”
Jay chuckled, then shot back: “Avoid getting hit unless we’re in a duel.”
Ken gave Jay a knowing smile as he entered back into the fight, catching the Maragon at an easily reachable portion of the web.
Jay threw himself back into the fighting, focused on hunting down the remainder of the Shard creatures. Just as he went to cut down the final Shard of the Maragon, it was blasted to smithereens by a very smug squirrel. Cuddles looked at him, very self-satisfied, and scurried back onto his shoulders.
The Maragon started to cloak itself once again, weaving roots around its core. “Stop the attacks,” Jay called out, reminding everyone of the plan. The party paused, and the room fell under eerie silence.
“Is it going to switch if we don’t attack it?” Ken asked. His rapier was extended, poised to sink into the boss if it emerged.
“Nothing’s happening,” Jenny muttered. She waved her hands; tags fluttered off all her party members, landing in her hands. Her mp bar jumped up as the tags disappeared in a cascade of energy.
“That’s a cool ability,” Jay said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you use it before.”
“It reclaims active tags to restore mp,” Jenny said. “You all usually need all the healing you can get. It’s the first time I get a break!”
She clearly found the idea very funny, smiling to herself. Many players gave healers a hard time due to their play style involving almost no damage. Jay knew from playing one himself in previous games that they required much more focus than people realized. Healers needed to watch out for the entire party, or raid, at the same time.
“The shell is breaking,” Jay said, noticing cracks starting to appear just a second before it became evident to everyone else. This time, the shell crumbled instead of exploding, pieces falling uselessly to the ground. No Shards of the Maragon appeared. No chaos was wrought.
Jay loaded another smoldering bolt, charging up his most powerful attack. He managed to catch a headshot with the bolt. The smoldering fire ripped through the main body, traveling several meters down branches in the spiderweb of roots. The most significant chunk of health yet fell away from the boss, still windmilling vines at Lester.
The fight changed dramatically. There were two main effects of having no Shard creatures to contend with. The first was a highly content Cuddles. There were no terrible plants for him to go chasing. He could remain on his kingly perch, more than happy to spectate the rest of the fight.
The second was a much easier boss fight. The Maragon encounter was constructed to take advantage of players scrambling around, and they were no longer scrambling.
Now that they knew the trick, the party could simply focus on burning down the boss. The process still took them a full minute of fighting, but the strategy came relatively easily. They could merely tank, heal up, and beat down the boss. Jay only needed to use up a couple more smoldering bolts since he didn’t want to waste the slime bolts.
When the Maragon finally fell, it was anticlimactic. No explosions or fanfare; the boss just crumpled to the floor when the lucky strike from Ken took it to zero health. The coolest part of the whole process was the death of the root spiderweb. The root spiderweb decayed into dust in front of the party’s eyes.
The notifications for experience showed a rather large amount for all of them for the boss. They also got a small amount for each shard they ended up slaying.
System Message: Congratulations! You have reached level 15.
Jay wanted to stash his extra points into his Speed statistic. He was closing in on fifty points and wanted to see if the threshold would yield any noticeable benefits. On the other hand, he knew if he didn’t find a proper level of Balance, the Speed would become a burden. He had plenty of levels to go. It was more important to build a successful character that could go the distance than hit some vague threshold.
He dumped all five points into Balance. His equilibrium was restored. Jay almost fell over as his character’s body adjusted to the new Balance statistics. He hadn’t even realized he slowly started compensating for an excessive amount of Speed.
He also noticed a new ability for level 15. The unlocked ability was called Point-Blank Shot and would deal extreme damage when a crossbow was fired directly into an enemy. The ability was dangerous, requiring him to get into melee range while firing a ranged attack. If he didn’t kill the enemy instantly, the attack would probably be more trouble than it was worth.
Jay added The Maragon to his Bestiary, watching the light show mapping through the fallen creature. He checked the entry, noting the cool image drawn in the interface to represent the creature. There was way more detail in the entry than he found through Analyze. The same was true for the other bosses and other entries. He also quickly activated Catalog on the Shards, sending them into his Bestiary.
“Any interesting loot?” Jay asked as he turned his attention to the rest of the party. His routine tasks for a battle were done, and he was still hoping for something to compare to the Netherbolt crossbow he had seen at Nora’s.
“Actually, yeah,” Jenny said. “There’s a staff that increases healing, which I’d like to keep. It adds a twenty percent bonus to any healing over time effects, which is what my Tag of Renewal does.”
Jay eyed Lester, who didn’t seem likely to complain after receiving his tanking sword earlier in the dungeon. The guild leader noticed his attention.
“Healing gear obviously goes to the healers,” Lester said with a nod.
The other players seemed pleased to have beaten the difficult boss. Jenny, in particular, was still inspecting her new staff fondly. The staff was made of a smooth green wood but embedded with a purple sparkle. There was no head to the staff, leaving it looking like a wooden rod.
To his credit, Ken seemed delighted for his sister. He smiled with encouragement as she was gushing to him about how valuable the item would be. He didn’t even mention he had gone through the entire dungeon without receiving anything.
Watching her enjoy the new gear annoyed Jay. He wasn’t upset at her but annoyed at the dungeon. He was annoyed at its designers. The game had gone to great lengths to highlight this particular dungeon as being related to Monster Hunters. In the end, he received no Monster Hunter gear. The slime bolts were helpful but could be utilized by any class that could wield a crossbow.
Something popped out at Jay in the corner of his eye. He turned his head. He was sure at this point that the Perception stat was influencing him and causing things to catch his attention. He squinted, finding a small doorway at the edge of the room.
“This isn’t over. Do you see that?” Jay asked. He pointed into the distance, where he saw the small doorway leading into another room. The other player shook their heads, so he motioned for them to draw closer. It took them a dozen extra steps, confirming his theories about the Perception score changing what players noticed.
“Is that a doorway?” Jenny asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Taylor Lynn added with a frown. “The boss’s name even mentioned it was the final boss.”
Ken stepped forward slowly, putting himself between the door and his twin. “This game is mega screwed up.”
Jay made his way toward the exit. The rest of the party followed him hesitantly. Something on the other side of the door was whispering for him to continue forward. The feeling was magnetic, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw what else this dungeon had in store for him.
Maybe there was Monster Hunter loot to find, after all.