DD 203 Ch 5 (Patreon)

Chapter 5

I hurried towards the others as my stacks started to drop off, catching some of the crocodiles and using them to restore some of my stacks to [Liminal Speed]. Another giant arrow appeared, this time hovering over Felin. The Nekorian let out a sound that was half frustrated cat, half excitement. 

"It's on me," she said, as more alligators started to pour out of the water. 

Poor Helen was coming up for air after being thrashed by the boss, though its attention had now shifted to the Nekorian.

Felin wove back and forth on the half of the room that was land. More and more crocodiles came out of the water to swarm her, but she used her spear deftly to bat those that got too close and jump out of reach when they tried to snap at her tail. She kept just inches ahead of them, using up as much of the space as she could.

The boss bore down on her, but as long as she stayed away from the water, it wasn't actually very fast on land. 

She used up about two-thirds of the strip of land before the arrow above her faded and the crocodiles turned to rush the healers. All four tanks were back on their feet and threw themselves between the crocodiles, the boss, and the healers. Spells and melee abilities crashed down on everyone as we ground away the adds and worked on killing the boss.

I was already there, in amidst the writhing carpet of leather and scales.

"That worked really well," someone shouted,

"Too bad we aren't all agile cat girls." Kendra spat, looking at Felin with a little jealousy.

 I rolled my eyes.

What Felin had done was wonderful, but also not entirely needed. I figured by all the ground that she used up, just about anyone could manage to keep the adds off of them if they ran diagonally across from one corner of the dry side to the other. 

My damage continued to increase as [Liminal Speed] soared, my blades making quick work of any adds that spawned. Sweat was rolling down the side of my face as I pumped my arms like my life depended on it, which it probably did.

We went through another round before we rushed to the other side, and much to my dismay, a giant red arrow flashed above my head. 

"Fuck me," I spat. 

More and more crocodiles came out of the water, all of those that were still chasing members of the raid switched to me, and I had a really stupid idea.

Rather than run away from these crocodiles, I backed away onto the dry land and focused on dodging each one of them using my daggers to try and keep up liminal speed with the occasional smack on the boss.

If I had just run, I most likely would have started to lose my stacks. This way I could keep them up as high as possible and even let them climb a little while I was being affected. 

At first, dodging a handful of the crocodiles was no problem. Start adding 9, 10, even more, and even I was unable to get out of their way with each attack.

I activated my [Shadow Phase], reducing the damage I took, as I focused on dodging the boss's attack first and foremost and avoiding as many of the adds' attacks as I could.

It wasn't perfect, but with help from a few healers, I was able to make it through, and hopefully I was also able to keep the boss still so the damage dealers didn't have to stop. 

As soon as the mark over me ended, Fayeth managed to pull the boss's attention back to her, and we started the cycle yet again.

The fight went on like this for about 8 rounds before the massive crocodile fell to the ground in a puff of black smoke. We had lost 3 people during the fight, but had managed to pull ourselves through. 

The healers all seemed to pause for a moment, ready to sit down and rest, only to see that no one was actively working to revive the dead. That was quickly remedied as Harley nudged a few of the healers to bring Meredith back up. 

"Hey, we got that one in one shot," Harley tried to pep everyone up, Meredith included. 

The blue-haired priest scoffed at her. "You weren't eaten alive by crocodiles."

"No, I was not," Harley smiled. "There's always next time, though." 

That caused the raid to chuckle. 

"We can't all be Ken," Selene said. "When he got targeted, he was all whoosh, whoosh." She juked back and forth. "You can't catch me. Nah, nah, nah, boo, boo." She continued to juke back and forth. 

As the raid laughed, Meredith shook her head, not understanding. Harley leaned over to fill her in on what she had missed. 

Professor Sai walked over to our group. "I'm glad you are all still able to laugh. Even though you did defeat this boss on your first attempt, I think there is still plenty for you all to learn." 

The group stopped laughing and nodded in agreement. 

"Ken, why don't you start?" Professor Sai glanced at me. "It seemed you learned something on how to dodge the arrow mechanic.

Loot first, and then I'll explain on the way to the third boss." I flashed the professor a smile, wanting to keep moving. We only had one day to get as much of this raid done as we could. It was important to me that we kept moving.

***

When two white daggers appeared, I felt a flash of hope, only to realize they were intelligence main stat.

More interestingly, both of the daggers were part of a set. The set offered a simple bonus of 5% mana reduction on healing.

As you can imagine, this drove the healers of the raid absolutely wild. The rest of us were happy to let the healers have them, as they were the ones who kept us alive.

Dolly ended up with one, and the healer from Felicity's group got the other. A pair of swanky crocodile leather boots found their way to Harley, and a jagged, rough-looking mace ended up in Taylor's hands. 

Nothing too exciting for me, but the earliest bosses of a raid had the worst gear. The last few bosses was were things got exciting.

We moved on from the alligator boss room towards the third boss.

Professor Sai gave me a look that suggested I should start talking about the issues with our raid.

I cleared my throat getting the raid’s attention as I spoke up. “The trick with dodging the frenzy of alligators is that they require more room than the dry side provides. So, a small loop at the end, or running diagonally across the full length of the dry side, is how you can avoid the whole frenzy. 

"I'm sorry, Meredith," I said, looking towards the healer. "On our first experience of the mechanic, we started in the center, and you didn't have enough runway to avoid the ability's full duration. That was a flaw in our initial planning."

Meredith pouted, but Harley was quick to hug her girlfriend. "We are learning," the priestess said, holding tight to Harley. It seemed she’d be fine.

I continued. "Then I think more people need to be using their movement cooldowns when the frenzy targets them, instead of using your movement cooldowns for getting across the water. Those crocodiles weren't too bad,"

Taylor added. "The ones that spawn when you're rushing across the water only take a couple hits."

"If you're a damage dealer," Bonnie said.

I glanced at her and the rest of the healers. They had a bit of an attitude problem. I was willing to let us continue in hopes that it would resolve itself.

However, it was on my mind that we were having some issues with healers panicking or being somewhat unwilling to listen.

Of those people in the raid, the healers had been those who had faced the least amount of danger so far diving the dungeon.

In a small party experience, or even in the larger event, the healers were able to remain safely behind the damage dealers and tanks. It's only now that we have these mechanics in the raid that target random raid members, that they're really experiencing danger for the first time. 

Not to mention, on some of the 5-man party fights, the healer was the one that always stayed near the door so they could slip out and come back in to res their party.

We were able to figure it out quickly.

"Next time we fight it, we know that we have to go to the side, so that if you get targeted by the crocodile frenzy, you have enough room to run away." Desmonda mediated. 

Professor Sai was nodding along with our words. "What about the tanks?" She asked the rest of the group. 

Helen, always quick to offer her opinion spoke as her hand shot up, "We were able to rotate and use our cooldowns. Thankfully, the structure of the room made it very easy for us to pick up all of the small ones." She glanced at the other tanks for their input. 

Personally, I thought this was a fairly easy fight to tank, besides the whole getting eaten thing. I noted that they all seemed happy in a fight where they rotated off who was tanking the boss.

Even from talking with Fayeth, there was always a sense of pride in being the one to protect the group from the big monster.

I had to wonder how the system chose what class we got. If it wasn't based off our personalities to some extent, I would be absolutely shocked. For every study done on it though, there were plenty of outliers.

Our conversation was abruptly interrupted as skeletons began to pull themselves from the ground.

However, these were not humanoid skeletons; they belonged to some four-legged creature, either tigers or lions.

They charged at our group, their bones creating an oddly musical noise as they ran.

I ducked in between two members of the raid, my blades out and digging into the monsters only moments after our tanks got their attention.

A few seconds after the fight began, one of the leonine skeletons jumped away from their tank to pounce on Regan and start mauling her.

I was there a second later, using Earth Stomp to stun the monster to stop it’s attack.

“Don’t pull aggro. Helen was there a second later getting the monster to focus back on her.”

“I swear I didn’t, I was focusing on the other one. It just leapt on me!” Regan with her wounds healing, hauled herself to her feet.

Helen opened her mouth to argue before another of the monsters ignored its tank leaping over and onto a healer. “Crap.” She jumped, angel wings expanding from her back as she landed next to the monster and stunned it to get it off the healer.

We managed to take the monsters down, not before a few members of the raid started to get jumpy whenever the skeletal lions shifted.

The further we pushed towards the third boss, the more things dried up and the more skeletons we faced. In several instances, there were half-skeleton, half-alive monsters. These weren't buried but instead were used as markers for where there might be buried monsters beneath.

It was a shorter trek through the raid between the second and the third boss, taking us about an hour before we faced off against the giant bronze doors that would mark a boss's room. Peeking inside the door, the entire place was filled with graves with a hunched over figure that stood about 10 feet tall in the back of the room.

I glanced at Candice, our wonderful boss fight explainer. "What do we got?" 

Candice opened her mouth and out poured an explanation that was far too complicated for most of the raid. I noticed a number of head tilts as she continued her explanation and raised my hand to get her to stop.

The fight had a huge variable list of summons and depending on which ones we got, it was a completely different fight.

Rather than watch the rest of the raid nod off, I thought some experience would sharpen their interests. "All right, we'll just have to experience it ourselves. It sounds like everyone, this is the third fight in the wing. Most of the wings get harder as you go through them. Expect this to be the most difficult fight of the three we faced so far." 

I pointed at two of our healers, picking Charlotte and Bonnie. "You two are to stay as close to the doors as possible and if for some reason you are about to die, just run out the doors. We are preparing to wipe on this one so we can learn as much as we can."

The raid party nodded once again, a somber expression fell over the rest of the raid. Preparing to die was never fun. 

"All right, we ready?" Fayeth asked, holding her thumb up and the rest of the raid agreed. 

Professor Sai leaned against the raid door watching with anticipation.

The tanks charged across the room, Helen using an ability to get there first and picking up aggro on the bent over figure.

He turned and it was an old man filled with magic. His cape billowed as sparkling purple magic leaked out from his sleeves and the bottom of his robe. He raised his staff high and when he slammed it on the ground, the graves quaked. 

Bones shot up from a handful of graves and different figures all emerged. One was the bones of what appeared to be a scarab.

However, scarabs didn't have bones so it was wildly confusing to me. Once again, the dungeon didn't play with the laws of reality quite as well as I would have liked. 

Another pulled itself free. This one was humanoid and finally the third shot out, flapping its skeletal wings and taking to the air as it squawked like a parrot. All three of these new monsters were large enough for our whole group to circle around and fight.

Something about raids, everything seemed larger than life. Even the hunched over old man stood probably ten feet tall hunched over. 

As the skeletons crawled out of the graves, the man stuck his staff in the ground and remained still.

I watched as Helen tried to smack him again. There was an eerie green barrier wrapped around him. Bones flew through the air from the three monsters and added to his aura, preventing Helen from dealing any damage. 

"All right, we have to fight them," I said, turning my attention to the beetle. It seemed to be the slowest of the three and I needed to get my stacks of [Liminal Speed] going.

Yet even as I rushed over to the beetle, the flying skeleton squawked again.

The air rippling above us with a physical force and impacting me, sending me flying to the side. It wasn't alone. There were a number of other raid members that were hit by the blast. 

Candace was trying to coach us as the fight continued. "You have to take care of the parrot first. It's the most dangerous. Range DPS on the parrot." 

She was able to get most of the raid following her orders, arrows and magic flew into the air.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hurt the parrot, having very little range attack. I focused on the beetle instead. And then I was once again disappointed as the beetle began to charge around like the giant beetles of the first boss.

It wasn't paying attention to the tanks and instead bulled through our raid like a painful reminder of how disorganized we were. 

I fixed my eyes on the final figure. "Let's see what we got." 

The skeleton man had blue bolts of water conjuring in his hand as it flung them around the raid with wide sweeping . This one, however, paid attention to Fayeth as she used Absorb to suck in the bolt flung at her before the skeleton switched to swiping with its claws.

I joined her using Earth Stomp, Absorb and Discharge to stop various attempts to cast. The other melee damage dealers joined in to help me, but we weren’t terribly organized.

I focused on the skeleton approaching from behind, my daggers slashing into its hip bones, trying to inflict as much damage as possible.

It was somewhat unfortunate that this monster lacked flesh or anything else that would register my attacks. It was frustrating, but I continued to strike with as much force and power as I could muster. My [Liminal Speed] began to stack, and I couldn't help but grin, eagerly anticipating the moment we could attack the actual boss. 

The parrot flew overhead, releasing another sonic blast that knocked Fayeth, myself, and the rest of the melee aside.

We all scrambled to our feet, ready to rejoin the fight, only for the giant beetle to charge through our group, sending us sprawling. However, the beetle collided with the other skeleton, stunning both of them long enough for us to regain our footing. 

I ran, my daggers glowing black with dark blades, as I continued to damage the two skeletons standing side by side. Other melee DPS took advantage of their AoE abilities, and we tried to inflict as much damage as we could. After about 15 seconds, the beetle resumed its rampage, and the skeleton continued to cast spells. 

The problem arose when I noticed my health was at half, and I wasn't receiving any more heals. I wasn't alone in this realization.

Taylor, shouting over at her healer, "Bonnie, I could use some heals!"

"I'm working on it!" Bonnie snapped back, throwing a heal in Taylor's direction before returning to heal the rest of the raid. All of the healers were barely paying attention to the monsters, instead casting spells as quickly as they could. 

It was clear to me that between the parrot, the rampaging beetle, and the spellcaster, the entire raid was taking a significant amount of damage. It was one thing for these healers to focus on healing the tanks, but quite another to heal every person in the raid. 

Dolly was accumulating wounds as she transferred the injuries of the party members to herself. Every now and then, she cast a dark bolt of magic at the parrot, causing her wounds to slowly heal.

Selene was probably the most effective of the healers for healing the raid. Her class allowed her to heal the rest of the party members and the entire raid at once while dealing damage. So, she focused on dealing damage, not to the parrot, but to the caster.

My guess was that it was standing still, making things easier for her. 

Finally, the parrot fell from the sky, and the ranged DPS switched to the beetle, while the rest of the melee stayed on the caster. The caster died second, and the melee switched over to the beetle, chasing it around the room as it slammed into the walls.