DD 203 Ch 2 (Patreon)

The boss room was constructed of the same limestone found throughout the rest of the raid. It was a simple, square room, measuring about a hundred yards in each direction. The boss, a giant golden scarab beetle with blue accents, dominated the room.

It stood 30 feet high and a little over thirty feet wide. Sand covered the floor, occasionally revealing the limestone beneath, but more often forming large drifts. The beetle shuffled between two drifts, maintaining its position in the center of the room, along the far wall.

Fayeth raised her hand. "Ready check," she said.

The rest of the class responded by raising their hands, thumbs up, signaling to the tank that they were prepared to begin.

Fayeth then nodded towards Myrtle, who would be the one actually tanking the beetle.

The large girl leaned forward, her greaves sounding on a bare patch of limestone before landing with a swish in the deeper sand as she charged the boss. Her shield came out as she drew back a mace that splattered the boss with mud upon impact.

I had never heard a beetle roar before, but the boss rubbed its two front mandibles together, producing a noise loud enough to resemble the roar of a car on the road.

Myrtle remained silent, save for the thunks on her shield as she blocked the boss's first attacks. The boss alternated between swinging its front legs at her and attempting to bite with its mandibles.

After several hits, I knew it was time for the DPS to start. "Let's go," I shouted, rushing in without using any of my abilities. I anticipated the boss to have an armored stance and started off with a Triple Breach, to get things going. 

The other melee joined me moments later, and we all piled on DPS to the boss.

For a moment, it was a simple fight. Everyone was doing their best to damage the boss. But that all changed quickly. 

"Beetles!" Des shouted from the back as the sand quivered and sank as holes appeared in the ground.

Quickly, Fayeth broke away from the boss to see what else needed to be tanked.

Two different groups of beetles emerged from the sand. One group consisted of five beetles, each the size of a dog. The other group had two beetles, each the size of a horse. All of them immediately scattered, rushing towards different healers in the raid. They were drawn to the healers by their healing magic. 

"Fayeth, over here!" Charlotte shouted. 

Bun-Bun peeled away from the boss to chase after the two scarabs that had chosen to harass Charlotte. 

"Bun-Bun, stay on the boss. Fayeth will protect Charlotte." I admonished him.

The stubborn rabbit pointedly ignored me and dove towards the scarabs, successfully diverting their attention away from the druid.

Fayeth came sweeping in a moment later with her glaive, getting the attention of the beetles and continuing to run around the room to collect the others. Thankfully her Agitating Spores covered a lot of ground and helped her pick beetles up.

The ranged DPS had already spread out around half of the room because the two medium-sized beetles started spitting large globs of acid that splashed on impact.

If anyone was too close to each other, they were getting caught up in the attacks. Helen had left the boss and was trying to get the ranged beetles to focus on her, but her attempts were ultimately a failure. They didn't seem to pay any attention to her and instead continued to attack other members of the raid at random.

"Ranged DPS, you need to be focusing on them," I shouted, in hopes of leading the group, I was angled such that I could watch the whole fight as I went through familiar motions of my fighting.

While we had quickly come up with a plan before starting, it seemed everything was going to fall apart with just a little chaos.

Des activated her metamorphosis and grew a few inches as her skin turned pink and a spaded tail emerged from the back of her dress. Her spells grew noticeably powerful and flew from her hands one after the other faster than before. 

She wasn't alone in using powerful cooldowns.

Regan activated something as her bow turned golden and the arrows she fired off were larger than her arm as they punched into the beetles.

The idea of using cooldowns rippled through the raid and most, if not all, of the ranged DPS activated powerful cooldowns to kill the spitters.

I grimaced at the display, knowing that we had only just started the fight and we likely should have saved those for later.

Penny had once again taken up the spot next to me as we fought in melee range, hammering into the side of the beetle. "This isn't looking good," she said, also keeping an eye on the rest of the group.

I shook my head. "That's an understatement. But this is the experience we need to be able to take it on next time." Raiding rarely went well the first time.

Penny turned to look over her shoulder as a large beetle the size of an elephant pulled itself free of the sand. Knowing that in the spots we could see there was limestone under the sand, part of me had to ask where these beetles were coming from. Then again, the dungeon didn't quite have to follow the rules of reality.

As the large beetle pulled itself out of the sand it rocketed across the room. Several ranged DPS threw themselves out of the way before the beetle slammed itself into the wall and wavered there, dazed, swaying back and forth.

The ranged DPS, already burning through their cooldowns, quickly turned on the large beetle and began to hammer its health down.

"As long as we stay up on the adds, the boss should go down eventually," I said, watching as many of the ranged DPS did their best to split their attacks between the boss and the add. Adds were summons or additional monsters that spawned during a fight.

Many of them, including Des, tried to keep damage over time abilities up on multiple targets. It was a trick that many could do to increase their over all damage.

As for me, my own attacks were increasing in tempo. Liminal speed stacks were quickly gaining as I cut into the boss. For this one, my job was simple, but I couldn't help but keep my head on a swivel, trying to understand what was happening on the raid fight in general. It was important for me, as a leader of the group, to understand what went wrong and when it did. 

The big beetle went down before the boss could eat it. However, just before it died, the boss turned and started to march towards it.

There was a collective sigh of relief. We’d just barely made it. I nodded, worried about the next, but that one had caught the tail end of many of our damage dealers' cooldowns. 

We had only just defeated the large golden beetle, for several more beetles to pour out of the ground. This time there were even more of the smaller ones that began racing in every direction hunting down the healers.

I could see frustration on Fayeth's face as she tried to rush around and gather them all as many of them started to select healers at random and spread out. "Healers, you need to collapse," I instructed.

One of the closer ones to me gave me a confused expression. She was from Felicity’s Party.

"All of you group up when the little ones come out, then Fayeth can pick them up more easily," I explained. 

"She's doing a good enough job," the healer retorted. She had been one of the first that Fayeth had managed to pull the beetle off of and seemed content to stay near the melee and heal Myrtle while occasionally smacking the boss with her staff. Everyone was doing their best to add what damage they could.

More spitters came up and I could feel it as one focused on me and spat acid, hitting a total of eight melee fighters at once.

That close healer scowled at me as she worked to put us all back to rights. "Now if you guys could not take so much damage," she rolled her eyes.

I would have to tell Harley about this one's attitude to see if she couldn't correct her. 

The boss fight continued until the next large beetle add popped out of the sand and started rushing about. It bulled through the melee group, knocking a good half of us down. It clipped Myrtle and for a second I was worried the boss was going to get a shot at her while she was recovering. However, Helen flew into place, blocking that strike while the large beetle continued to run rampant. 

"Helen, get the big beetle," I gestured at it as it knocked over two of our healers.

"I don't think it has an aggro table. It just runs wherever it wants," she threw her hands in the air. "I feel like it's a waste of my time." 

I rolled my eyes, but decided any commentary on what we would do would have to be saved until the fight was over and people's blood was running a little colder.

DPS picked up on the beetle, but it was too slow. The boss turned and charged across the room after it had been alive for perhaps a minute and chomped down on it, swallowing it in one bite. 

I could see the cracks in the boss's carapace and some of the goo that had seeped out of  them repair itself back to a pristine state.

All around the raid, I could hear groans and disappointment, and I could feel the mood of the fight shift. No longer were we happy to cleave through the boss.

Now people were seeing that progress was lost, and I could feel the momentum fade with it. 

"Come on, that was just a setback," I shouted. "Make sure we blow some cooldowns on the next one." The rest of the raid perked up slightly at that, and several other people echoed my thoughts, shouting that the boss hadn't fully healed and it would just take a little longer. 

I glanced over at Harley across the room. She shook her head with a grimace, and I knew what that meant. Our healers were losing their mana faster than we were killing the boss.

We were just too inefficient. Even the time spent at the vampire event hadn’t prepared us to be a cohesive group for a raid.

I hoped that my liminal speed would make up the difference if we could pull this out long enough. My stacks were already at the point that I was attacking three times as fast as when we started, and in several more add waves, that would only get faster. 

I leaned into my damage, continued to hammer away at the boss. Penny stayed at my side, rotating with me occasionally to give me access to frozen patches of its shell so I could deal more damage.

When the next golden beetle came out, Felicity blew a cooldown. Her elementals swelled to twice their size and dove into the beetle with a gusto.

The beetle died quickly, just moments before the boss would have turned to devour it. Seeing the beetle die without the boss eating it rallied the raid.

However, the excitement lasted only for a moment before more beetles spawned than the previous one. 

"I think this is a soft enrage," Penny said. Most bosses, if you went too long, had a mechanic in which they got stronger, they enraged, to end the fight.

Other bosses had more subtle mechanics. In this instance, more and more beetles would spawn every time they did, and it would get so overwhelming that at a certain point it was impossible to keep the party alive. 

Fayeth once again had trouble gathering up the beetles, but Helen, having abandoned her task of trying to tank the others, assisted her, and mitigated some of the panic from the healers.

From my point of view, it seemed a lot of healers were wasting mana on themselves when they were attacked by the small beetles. It wasn't uncommon for healers to overheal themselves a little bit in panic when they were attacked. There was just something different about healing a tank versus healing yourself. 

The next large beetle came up. I stepped away from the boss, using Shadow Ambush to appear behind it, and my Liminal Speed to keep pace with it as it charged around the room. 

My blades pinged against its golden shell, but I continued doing as much damage as I could, knowing that this beetle needed to die. My attacks were quick, and with the help of the ranged DPS, it also went down in time. 

Only for me to switch back to the boss, I could see its armor once again was cracked, goo seeping out, showing that it was moderately damaged. The real trouble came in the next round. More and more beetles continued to spill out. Both ranged ones, and the numerous little ones, but this time the ranged ones were numerous enough that the healers were starting to have trouble. 

Two melee damage dealers went down, after several splashes in quick succession hit the melee group.

I could feel the acid eating at my skin, but Charlotte had prioritized me and kept me alive.

When the golden beetle popped up, it was not alone. Two of them appeared this time, dread filled me as I raced around the room, killing one, the second one was nearly untouched by the time the boss turned around and managed to eat it.

It healed up, not enough to close all of the cracks in its armor, but enough once again for the raid's mood to shift.

"I think we should send someone out for a wipe," Harley shouted. I grimaced, because as soon as she said that, all of the healers started rushing towards the door. 

"Harley," I snapped. "Don't call for a wipe."

She shrugged helplessly as people started to die quickly, with the healers focused on running out. Several damage dealers died to acid spitters, and Myrtle went down to a swing from the giant boss.

As soon as Myrtle went down, the boss went on a rampage through the melee group. 

With liminal speed active, I thought maybe I could try and take the boss, but then, between all of the adds that would spawn, I knew even liminal speed would be pushed past its limits in dodging all of the globs of acid. Not to mention, if I took too long, I could possibly time out the time we had to revive some of the class. 

So rather than go down fighting, I zipped towards the door, throwing Charlotte over my shoulder, being one of the few healers that had stuck around, even though Harley mentioned the wipe. I tore out of the bronze doors with Charlotte, and watched as the rest of our classroom died due to the beetles.

It was a brutal scene, and not one I cared to remember, but I also knew I would see this scene more than once over the coming days.

As soon as everyone in the room was dead, the adds dug back into the ground and disappeared. The boss lumbered back over to the center position on the far wall and started snuffing around a pile of sand as its wounds healed rapidly before my eyes and its goo sank back into its carapace.

"Well, that was a shitshow," Dolly said, as she began casting a revive. The pink haired masochistic healer wore a dour expression.

"Yeah, it was," I admitted. "Though our first raid boss was supposed to be one of the easier ones. It wasn't unexpected for us to wipe on our first time." I tried to soften the blow for the rest of the group.

Our Haylon minder, professor Sai, from class C, walked up to us as we started to revive the group. "It's perfectly normal to die in your first boss attempt. Most bosses people go into with the idea of learning the fight and not surviving."

I nodded at her words. They made perfect sense, however, it still felt like a failure. I could see my fellow classmates and my friend's bodies strewn across the floor. Perhaps once we finished reviving all of them, I would feel a little different.

"We should get Harley up first," Meredith said running one hand through her hair to straighten it as she casted the spell with the other.

I looked at Penny's cousin strangely. "Is there a reason for that?"

"Yeah, revive costs a lot of mana. Getting Harley up first will help us get everyone else up faster." She argued with the kind of tone that was just begging to get into a fight.

I shrugged. I knew Harley was sleeping with her again, and that might have weighed into her decisions, yet her idea was valid.

Harley would help all of us recover our mana faster.

I was, in fact, fairly surprised that after Harley had called for the wipe, she had not made it out, and instead stayed behind to make sure her healers got out first.

Though, I had half a mind to think Harley did it just to earn pity points with her healer hero.

Yeah, the more I thought about it, that was Harley to a T.