“What was that ability?” Lester asked, innocently asking the question Jay least wanted to answer. Lester was unaware of the things Jay was trying to hide. He likely didn’t even know that Jay learned of the connection with his brother; there wouldn’t be any reason for him to know.

Jay hadn’t spoken of that connection to Mr. Georges. He was holding it tight to the chest. Still, the question created tightness in his chest. As he hesitated, the game was rapidly eating away at their minute of preparation time.

To stall, he quickly reloaded a few of his clips that had been emptied during the previous boss battle. Around him, the other players, Taylor Lynn and the healers, exchanged potions and chattered about the possibilities in the next round. Taylor Lynn met his eyes, giving him an encouraging smile.

Jay resolved to claim the ability as one of his normal Monster Hunter abilities. Nobody would know the difference, even though it would lock him into holding the power in his Defensive Synthesization slot. He needed to avoid suspicion, which Lester would definitely have if he ever missed an opportunity to use such a powerful ability.

“Just one of my Monster Hunter abilities,” Jay said, shrugging it off. “I had no idea it was so powerful.”

“Can you do it again?” Lester asked.

Jay opened the ability to check on his cooldown. His abilities had been reset between rounds one and two. However, he saw the particular ability still suffered from its day-long cooldown. It was possible the ability recovered at the start of the third round instead of between rounds.

“I’m honestly not sure,” Jay said. “Our cooldowns are being reset between rounds, but it’s a rather powerful ability. Usually has a twenty-four-hour cooldown.”

Lester whistled. “Twenty-four hours? That’s the highest I’ve ever heard of, but I’ll still be hoping you get it back.”

“I’m just hoping this round is free of bugs,” Taylor Lynn groaned. “I don’t want to see another beetle any time soon.”

The party faded as the time between rounds elapsed. The third round immediately proved to carry a more rapid pace than the previous round.

Enemies fell in on the party the moment they phased into the coliseum. The warriors were rail-thin but wore complete sets of armor. Each opponent carried a shield and a longsword. As Lester clashed with the soldiers, Jay realized the monsters were undead soldiers.

There was a small positive note: Cuddles leaped from Jay’s shoulder as soon as the fighting began, beginning to inundate the enemies with laser red-eye beams. The beams damaged the skeletal soldiers everywhere they stuck, causing bones to crumble.

As Maria rapidly tossed out heals, Carlos joined Taylor Lynn’s icicle spells in blasting the skeletons asunder. Muttering words that almost seemed to sing, Carlos summoned a soft yellow, holy light that fell on some of the soldiers mobbing Lester. The soldiers buckled under the weight of the radiant energy.

Taking a deep breath, Jay activated his Analyze ability.

System Message: Analyze failed. To obtain data on this creature, the Catalog ability must be used. All subsequent Analyze attempts will fail.

Jay grimaced, frustrated at being unable to determine their weakness. That made multiple times in a row that the ability had failed.

His crossbow wouldn’t be particularly effective against the skeletal soldiers, although his trapped bolts could still be valuable. He eyed the soldiers to ensure he knew what the party was facing—as well as he could.

Strogian Soldier, Level 30. Health: 550/550.

The monsters were much hardier than the previous round, and Jay balked at the idea of facing off against a contingent of level 30s. Scanning the numbers, Jay counted eight standing soldiers and two already withered from the holy light. But that wasn’t the strangest part of the scenario.

These soldiers were destroyed by Strogian Death squirrels an unknown amount of time ago, though it seemed to be ancient history in Tumultua. Despite all that, they stood here facing down against Jay and his party. They shouldn’t even exist anymore.

Cuddles blasted a third skeletal soldier apart with his laser eye beams on cue. Jay was suddenly happy to have the squirrel on his side.

System Message: Your bond with Cuddles, the Strogian Death squirrel, has deepened.

Jay recognized the message from the fight with the Willbender but didn’t have time to think about it, at least not until after this round. All in all, ten enemies weren’t much to be concerned about after facing down hordes in the previous round.

Pushing his hesitation aside, Jay leaped into action. He fired a muck bolt into the grouping of soldiers, causing the rapidly extending swamp to slowly sink three skeletons that couldn’t escape.

“What are their weaknesses?” Lester called out, stepping away from the muck as he blocked two swings from the soldiers at once. Turning their blades aside, he struck back, causing a fourth soldier to crumble.

Taylor Lynn and Carlos turned the raining spells toward the group of trapped skeletons, striving to finish them off. The holy light and icicles worked together, quickly making sitting ducks of the skeletons.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

“Holy light and traps, it looks like. The analysis didn’t work.” Jay switched to his sword, joining Lester at the line to bring down the remaining three Strogian soldiers.

His blade darted quickly, slamming against the bone creatures. He was able to rack up damage fast but growled in frustration at facing down more enemies that couldn’t be blinded by his unique sword.

As Carlos, Taylor Lynn, and Maria worked on recovering for the next boss, Jay helped Lester eliminate the final three enemies. He darted through the melee, finding whichever skeletons left the most accessible openings. The party was aided by Cuddles, who did not seem to tire as the mage-type players did. The laser eye beams supported the bladed weapons in making short work of the final soldiers.

Jay quickly opened his ability page, finding that Maragon Blossoms was still on cooldown. He was disappointed it wouldn’t be available for the third boss, but it had been essential in surviving the second boss. That was something.

The party waited for the boss to spawn, but no boss came. Instead, another group of skeletal soldiers appeared. Quickly scanning through them, Jay counted 12 in the new wave. Before he could finish counting, Cuddles was already blasting ray beams into the crowd of skeletons.

Lester twirled his sword in a large arc, trying to strike multiple creatures simultaneously to gain their attention.

Jay instantly focused on firing strategic traps throughout the approaching soldiers. He fired two trap bolts, one muck and one ice, which disturbed the approaching ranks. The muck trap proved more effective, although watching the skeletons dance on the ice was more entertaining. Each soldier was pushed into the splits as it moved forward, trying to find its feet by pressing skeletal hands against the ice. Instead, it would fall on its face.

The necrotic bolts weren’t likely to be effective—so Jay didn’t even try. Once the traps were set, he joined Lester in fighting the skeletons face-to-face.

One skeleton managed to break away from Lester before Jay could notice it. The creature attacked Maria but was ultimately destroyed by ice and holy light. The power of the light caused them to crumble away to dust.

Taylor Lynn and Carlos continued to attack with their spells to grand effect. The light spells wielded by Carlos caused the undead to crumble away into dust. The ice spells from Taylor Lynn slowed the skeletons down, locking up any who escaped Lester, aided by the traps.

Lester continued to scrap with large swathes of skeletons at once, trying to maintain the attention of the mobs with large arcs of his weapon. The giant sword couldn’t cut the skeletons, but it could use weight and power to throw them around, dealing damage with pure force.

Best of all, they were all learning to work better as a team. The coliseum taught them what moves people preferred to utilize and how to cover the weaknesses of their party members.

Jay and his party didn’t notice much of a change in the third wave, which was composed of 13 skeletal soldiers. They could employ the same strategies as the second wave. Jay fired off his traps. Icicles and holy light blasted enemies away, aided by red-eye beams—fired by a small, deadly squirrel named Cuddles. Maria worked tirelessly to keep the party alive while Lester maintained enemy attention.

It was the fourth wave where the situation began to shift out of the party’s favor. The fourth wave was composed of 15 enemies. Even after Jay fired two more traps, 10 enemies remained active on the battlefield. This proved to be too many for Lester to maintain attention on.

While Jay was darting through the skeletons with his sword, looking for places to make an impact by bringing down weakened skeletons, a pair of soldiers shambled past him. The monsters made it to Maria, ripping through half her health with their longswords before the other players could react.

Lester hesitated, unsure if he should intervene, which would drag the other skeletons chasing after him.

Taylor Lynn activated her chain gun ability, blasting a torrent of fire bolts at the wayward soldiers. While she blasted the enemies apart, Carlos stopped his assaults of holy light to heal Maria. The waves of healing energy repaired the damage.

But it still marked a turning point in the coliseum round.

The party rallied together to finish off the remaining enemies in the wave. Carlos was forced to intersperse heals among his damaging light spells.

Jay didn’t help kill the last two skeletons at the end of the third wave. Instead, he paused to activate his Catalog ability and receive details on the Strogian soldiers. They were weak to holy and immune to necrotic damage. He was disappointed by the information since both points were obvious. Beyond that, the entry lacked any other flavor information, which most entries had.

In the fourth wave, Jay was down to a single pair of traps in his clips. He expended them and activated Rapid Fire to respond to any other threats. Too many broke away from Lester, so Jay tried a new strategy. He fired off a couple of the zinger bolts, which lanced lightning damage through groups of enemies.

Those bolts worked, sending arcs of lightning through large numbers of skeletal soldiers. The impacts of the bolts did minor damage, but the lightning more than made up for it as it jumped to every enemy.

The enemies were too numerous for Jay to count directly. In addition, the numbers forced Carlos into a position where he needed to heal Lester and Jay often instead of focusing on his holy light attacks. Jay was fast, allowing him to avoid deadly blows, but there were far too many enemies to avoid being struck entirely.

The party ground through the rest of the wave, with Jay leaning on his traps to stem the horde to a manageable degree. The party succeeded, primarily due to the traps funneling the skeletons into a manageable size. The traps stemmed the tide that was an actual threat. Dancing skeletons were much easier to destroy.

The fifth and final wave against the Strogian soldiers was… different.

The number of soldiers appeared innumerable. Everywhere Jay looked, they were surrounded by skeletons. Jay utilized it for all he could, leaning on his increased firing speed. He fired off the rest of his zinger bolts. He dropped traps everywhere and didn’t even pay attention to what the rest of his party was doing.

In short order, he ran out of lightning bolts and could no longer find compelling places to drop traps. He returned to his sword, using Purple Haze while dashing through the throngs of enemies. Each skeleton took several rapid slashes from the unique weapon, but he made progress.

Skeleton by skeleton, the party pushed against the wall of difficulty. They took soldiers down, focusing on reducing enemy numbers as much as possible. The intensity increased until Jay reached a trance of being entirely tunneled into the game. He didn’t let up until the final skeleton was dead.

At the end of the wave, the party was practically breathless with the focus and effort required to survive the final group of skeletons. Looking around, Jay finally realized that everyone had survived the round. The party received a slight reprieve, allowing Jay to quickly refresh his loaded clips. They looked among themselves, exchanging thumbs-up signals and pleased grins.

Unfortunately, there was still something lingering in the air.

Sometimes, players made stupid mistakes. Certain things shouldn’t be uttered because the words themselves tempt the powers that be. Not even in the mind. One of the most foolish things a player could possibly do was to wish for a more difficult boss.