Carlos’s choice to take the first available exit was no surprise. He had signed up for the expedition as a favor to Lester. His association was loose, and Maria, the other person he worked with, never even made it to the island. But his loss was going to be felt in the boss fight.
Jay found himself hoping against hope that he wouldn’t run out of time on his Potion of Body Resilience. They were pushing it, if this new Pathfinder had The Fear.
Given the chance, he took a moment to inspect the nameplate of the enemy more closely.
Dissimu Shaman Pathfinder (Battle Form), Level: 45 [Elite] [Boss]. Health: 11,690/11,690.
The Pathfinder had less health than the War Form enemy possessed. Still, Jay had no doubts that there would be other tricks involved in the impending encounter.
The shimmering blue portals in front of each player winked out. Fortunately, no one else took the Pathfinder up on its offer. He was certain his friends had been sorely tempted. They weren’t anticipating a dungeon that needed to be completed on the island, so bringing their characters to safety would have a certain allure. Jay needed to stay and finish his task.
“I can see that no one else is intelligent enough to accept this gesture,” the Pathfinder said. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to turn the other cheek and leave this place?”
It stepped in front of the party, taking center-stage in front of the artifact, protecting the pedestal with its body. The staff the Pathfinder was carrying glowed with power, but it made no overtly hostile moves.
“We’re here to take revenge for the alligator Dissimu,” Jay acknowledged.
The Pathfinder sighed deeply. “I thought it would come to a fight. I won’t relish in your deaths, but I must protect my own people. The alligators are fools. The Rage is the way.”
With that, the Pathfinder had said everything it intended to. The creature stepped forward again, raising its staff at Sarah as she charged. Her taunt ability held its attention easily. After her brand was in place, she stunned the creature by slamming it with her summoned divine hammer.
The whole party laid into the single enemy with a flurry of attacks, taking advantage of its momentary stun. Jay had the perfect opportunity to use Vital Points and land a triplet of critical strikes. All too soon, the enemy emerged from its stun with a vengeance.
Waving its staff, arcane energy pulsed, pushing Sarah backward, and nearly causing her to trip over Ken. The dome of arcane force damaged everyone in a radius, forcing Jenny to send her flurry of tags throughout the battlefield.
The Pathfinder had a substantial health pool, but it didn't seem to have defenses in place beyond a standard boss monster. It took damage normally, and the party was slowly whittling its health down.
Jay took a moment to activate Analyze, gritting his teeth at the outcome.
System Message: Analyze failed. To obtain data on this creature, the Catalog ability must be used. All subsequent Analyze attempts will fail.
That was about as expected.
The Pathfinder activated a spell similar to Taylor Lynn’s meteors. A circlet of glowing purple orbs, each orb about two inches in diameter, appeared around its head. Those six orbs all lanced directly into Sarah without pause.
Sarah’s health spiked dramatically as the six missiles impacted. She dropped her self-healing ability, adding to the recovery of Jenny’s tag buffs. Retaliatory strikes laced with holy energy slashed into the Pathfinder.
Taylor Lynn followed up by activating her own meteor ability, empowered by her damage boosting abilities, and activating instantaneously. The flurry of meteors slammed into the Pathfinder with even more force than it had sent against Sarah.
Jay, Ken, and Zenya all attacked the creature with whatever they had. The damage was bringing the boss down, but Jay received more bad news from the game.
System Message: This enemy is immune to being blinded.
All the party could do was pile on damage until something happened. Taylor Lynn’s meteors had put the party in a good position, burning the enemy’s health down quickly.
As the health of the Pathfinder dipped below 8,000, the first of its threshold abilities activated. Twirling shining blue energy around its fingers, it pointed toward Ken. The energy flung from its finger, wrapping around Ken, and encircled his body. With a surge of magical energy, Ken completely disappeared.
Jay tried to quickly open his menus to communicate with Ken, but there was no response.
“What was that?” Sarah called out, slamming the Pathfinder in the face with her shield. She tried to fire a lance of holy energy at it, since the brand boosted that ability’s damage, but she whiffed the attack.
“No idea,” Jay yelled back. “He’s not responding to my messages.”
“That was my brother, stupid monster!” Jenny chastised, throwing an orb of energy from her staff. She activated her instantaneous tagging ability, refreshing all the possible buffs on the remainder of the party.
With a twirl of the same energy, the Pathfinder tossed the ability at Casey. In a flash, she too disappeared. When she disappeared, Scales and Zenya poofed from the battlefield.
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“That was my friend,” Sarah groaned, though she was less energetic about it than Jenny. “Guys, we need to burn this guy down fast.”
Sarah jumped backward, managing to dodge out of the way of another pulse of purple energy.
Jay fought on, switching quickly between his sword in one hand and crossbow in the other, leaning on his outlaw combat style. He was getting the hang of it, so he was able to land crossbow attacks and sword strikes in separate critical areas. It was a dance to properly move his body, which helped him understand the purpose the Balance statistic could serve.
Taylor Lynn summoned another crown of meteors, although this round wasn’t empowered, and launched the whole set at the Pathfinder.
In response, the boss held up its staff, creating a shimmering blue dome of blue energy. The twirling energy resembled the same power it used when Ken and Casey were banished, but this one was a little different.
Tiny portals opened up by Jay, Taylor Lynn, and Jenny. The portals sent Taylor Lynn’s meteors flying at the party members. Jay was fast enough to dodge out of the way, and Taylor Lynn was able to protect herself with her earth wall ability. Jenny wasn’t so lucky. The meteor crashed into her.
All in all, her ability did no damage to the enemy and forced Jenny to use a potion. Seizing its opportunity, the Pathfinder threw twirling blue energy at Jenny, removing her from the battlefield.
The healer was gone.
Concentrating hard, Jay slashed twice, striking two critical hits, and activated his Rapid Fire ability. In quick succession, he landed three more critical strikes from magical bolt ammunition. The combo dealt huge damage to the boss. Even without his Synthesization abilities, he could put out significant damage when he put his mind to it.
In response to his flurry of attacks, the Pathfinder did the most annoying thing it could possibly do. It threw twirling blue energy at Taylor Lynn, removing significant horsepower from the remaining damage. Breaking from its established patterns, it threw the same energy at Sarah. From one moment to the next, a party of three turned into a party of one.
Jay blasted three bolts from his clip, instead of magical ammo, stacking two different damage over time debuffs.
“It’s just you and me,” the Pathfinder sneered. “The way I designed it. Do you really think you can beat me by yourself?”
Before Jay could retort, the boss split into four different images. He could no longer tell which copy was the real copy. The images blinked, teleporting around him to surround him at all four corners. He looked around with Vital Points, but all four copies showed the same points. The ability didn’t reveal a thing.
He started blasting at different copies with his magical ammunition, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to land a proper hit on the real image.
While Jay failed miserably to land a hit on his target, the enemy peppered him with small purple orbs of energy. Luckily, he was still hanging onto some of Jenny’s buffs. Those buffs prevented the damage from being overwhelming. He was still forced to drink a potion to avoid death.
After the tenth miss, Jay finally picked up on what was going on. There was a light flash when it happened. The boss was teleporting between the images, changing which image was real. He drank one of his remaining spiderwalk potions, using the walls of a nearby building to elevate his position.
From his makeshift high ground, Jay needed to spend less time spinning around to find proper targets. Instead, he fired magical ammunition as fast as it would go. Given that he was still under the effects of his rapid firing ability, that was fast.
Finally, when Jay struck the real Pathfinder, the extra images disappeared, leaving only the true copy behind.
His enemy was low on health, so Jay pushed his boosted combat movement speed to close the distance between them. Along the way, he drank a mp potion, since he was actually running low from the heavy usage of Vital Points and Magic Ammunition.
Jay fought in his outlaw style, striking out with his blade as fast as he could. Due to the Pathfinder’s low health, it was forced to try and block some of the slashes from his blade. He took advantage of this.
Every time the Pathfinder blocked his blade with its staff, Jay punished the boss by firing critical hits utilizing his magically summoned bolts. He was in the zone. The Pathfinder activated its staff, summoning the purple dome of energy it used to create space. Since Jay had seen it several times before, the move was telegraphed.
In response, he used his air dodge to avoid the attack completely. As soon as the Pathfinder’s magic spell was finished, he closed the gap while firing a torrent of magical bolts. For a few seconds, the combatants exchanged blows.
When the Pathfinder summoned its crown of purple orbs, Jay knew he was in danger. He tried to air dodge again, since the cooldown was barely finished, but it wasn’t enough. The orbs couldn’t be dodged. All six slammed into him, sending his health plummeting to critical levels.
Grinning in success, but low on health, the Pathfinder drew closer to Jay to gloat. There was an ability that he hadn’t used much recently, since there were other ways to spend his attacks. It was slower, so it was more often useful to his style to rapidly attack. He was built for speed.
But since the Pathfinder was gloating, he had a moment to spare.
Jay activated Wild Strike as he summoned a magical bolt. Focusing on the enemy’s critically weak areas, he jumped up, entering point blank range. He loosed the charged attack right into the Pathfinder’s heart.
The ability blasted straight through the boss, dealing over 1,000 damage in a single attack. Jay was critically low on health and all his party members were gone. The Pathfinder had nearly come out ahead, but Jay adapted. He found the winning move.
The Pathfinder fell and Jay cataloged the creature immediately. If he ever got Synthesization back, he was hopeful that he could make use of the mirror image ability. That attack would be particularly valuable for confusing opponents in PvP.
With a sigh, Jay dusted himself off. He needed to check for loot on the Pathfinder, but he was anxious to get the artifact dealt with. He had gained several more levels, but that could wait for thirty seconds, too.
His approach to the artifact was slow, wary of potential explosions. Instead, the system gave him an alert.
System Message: This Mercuran Heart has been corrupted. You have found the source of the “Outside the God’s Box” effect. The heart may be cleansed by using the Compass of Mercura.
Without hesitation, Jay summoned the compass and placed it onto the glowing artifact. The energy pulsed and was absorbed into the compass. Unfortunately, the process destroyed the compass. The debuff was removed from him, proving his success.
Fortunately, a cleansed Mercuran Heart was left behind.
“You’re going to need a third one,” a cheerful voice offered from over Jay’s shoulder. He whirled, nearly jumping out of his own skin.