DD 203 Ch 8 (Patreon)

In the sand quarter of the raid, we were quickly confronted with elemental monsters. A large golem, made of square limestone blocks, thudded through the hallway. The monster had a stiff-legged walk that caused it to thump with each step. We heard it far before we saw it.

The raid party spread out and prepared for combat. Unlike bosses, we went in blind, unsure what to expect.

Myrtle went in swinging, along with the rest of the tanks. After a few seconds, we dove in.

My blades were fast, chipping small pieces of stone away from the golem. Though it was hard to maintain my form as each strike was jarring. My arms reverberated with a small amount of pain every time I hit it.

The fight seemed fairly simple at first. Before the golem shook and a small sandstorm rolled off of it, picking up the chips and the dust that had fallen off of it from the fight thus far, creating a whirlwind that slowly moved through the raid.

Everyone got out of the way. It was slow enough that there were no problems with the rest of the raid avoiding it.

Once we got the golem to half health, things changed. It shook, throwing out another tornado, the first one still active, but then the golem split in two, its blocks falling apart and reforming into two golems that were half the size of the first.

The tanks picked them up and grouped them together so that everyone could exercise any cleave ability they had.

I was continuing to work with [Liminal Speed] building up. As I tried to kill one of the golems, both of them shook and created what were now four tornadoes.

At this point, it was getting more complicated for the raid to avoid the sandstorms, the tornadoes.

They split finally a second time. This time there were four golems standing 8 feet apart. Two golems standing 8 feet tall. They were pulled together and this time the DPS switched and people started throwing out AoE attacks rather than single target or cleave abilities.

The golems went down and I looked throughout the raid. There were actually two people who needed to be revived.

I raised an eyebrow at Candice for what happened.

"They got caught by the tornadoes," she explained, "and they were unable to get out. It got a little hectic back here even with how slow the tornadoes were."

I winced. Most of these trash mobs had been proving to be practice for the boss, meaning we were most likely going to be dealing with these sort of tornadoes during the boss fight.

"Better to learn now," I said, as the raid picked back up and we continued through to fight more monsters.

There had actually been two types of monsters as we cleared to the first boss. One were the golems that we had just fought. And the second were whirling sandstorms that did not take melee damage or physical damage of any kind.

Only magic damage hurt it. Thankfully, I had [Dark Blades] that provided some damage, but it was significantly blunted. Poor Regan only had her arrows and piercing abilities. She ended up throwing her bow to the side and storming away after trying and failing to injure the whirlwinds.

We continued the raid, killing two more bosses.

The first was a two-monster boss, a golem and a sandstorm, that required us to kill them at the same time, only for them to split and us have to kill the splits at the same time as well. It required some coordination and damage, and we got it on our third attempt.

The next boss, and the monsters leading up to it, was a giant sand dune that continually spawned monsters. This boss was interesting because we could not damage the sand dune, but instead each of the monsters took health away from it when they spawned.

When we finally got rid of all of the sand, there was a large totem that we destroyed to defeat the boss. The totem itself used dark magic, pulsing and sending it out into the raid, dealing an extreme amount of damage, it was a final DPS check.

One that we passed with flying colors.

The third boss in this section was apparently one of the hardest in the raid, and rather than take it on, we left and finished one more boss in the main branch of the dungeon before we had to call it a day.

***

Our party was met with the familiar sight of the camping tents for all four schools. We had pulled up our camping on the 28th floor and moved it here to the 32nd. We wanted to be able to maximize our time inside the raid and the rest of the schools were doing the same.

Prince Albar was waiting outside the raid, a sneer on his face. "Did you all have fun wiping? Any of you ready to quit? I'd understand if it was too much for you." He sneered at me, clearly trying to chip away at my group's confidence. "I hear every time you die you lose a little piece of your soul."

"Shut up," I told him, not one for bullies. We had a bet, one that if I lost, I would lose Crimson.

Prince Albar was certainly not above trying to do emotional damage to my raid in order to get a leg up. Really, I didn't think he was above any sort of foul play. The prince was just the kind of man that didn't care for a fair fight if it meant he could win.

Elysara gave him a rather sinister smile from behind me. "I'm glad you're still able to pick a fight. It would have been a shame after the business deals fell through that you lost some of your ferocity."

He glared at the princess behind me. "I knew it was you."

Elysara smirked, "Then you shouldn't have sent someone to fucking kill me." She turned her nose away and pulled me away from the prince.

I glanced at her. "Have you already started shifting business?" I asked.

"Of course. So, then comes a complication. Because some of these contracts require we go through human courts, others elven courts. As for the elven courts, it's quite simple. The human courts seem to have a large bias towards him." She made a face. "Either way, the business has stopped or been rerouted through Silver Fangs, bleeding them. All he can do is seek damages.”

“Leave it to our princess to slaughter the financial group." Des hugged Elysara from behind, giving her a kiss on the cheek and making the princess blush.

"It was nothing. He went after Ken. And I'm going to show him just how poor of a decision that was." Despite her earlier words, saying that she didn't want to be a leader, Elysara was fierce indeed.

I loved all of the women around me and the princess only proved just how much they loved me in return. The pain of the lawsuits and the potential conflict between humans and elves was not a small matter to take on to defend me. I felt warm in my heart, enjoying the hug that Des has started.

Another pair of arms wrapped around me. Harley's bell jingling. "Ooh, why are we hugging? I love hugs."

I rolled my eyes and peeled Harley off of me, her having ruined the moment.

She had done so with a smile on her face, and it was hard to be mad at the pink-haired bard.

"Nothing," I said.

"It's not nothing," Des countered. "Elysara is kicking the prince's butt. Woe to those who pick a fight with Ken."

"Damn right," Harley bounced on the balls of her feet and punched at the open air. "The empress, I'm sure, has quite the right hook. I've seen her pretend to be melee DPS, she does a good job."

Our raid party had all pulled away from the entrance and the Royal College didn't hesitate at all. Their raid party, pushing in the second we had left.

I turned to address the raid. "Alright everyone, we have three days." I looked at them. “There were some questions as if we could split the raid with one of the other groups. However,” I shook my head “After experiencing it the first time myself. I doubted any of the other groups would split the raid with us.”

The bosses would respawn at midnight every night. Which meant that any group would want free reign of the raid to move through and clear it however they wished. I'm sure we wouldn't be the only group clearing it in such a haphazard order.

"So we have three days off?" Helen raised her hand.

"Three days off," I repeated. "Though we should continue some training and use this section of the dungeon to grind. But you're welcome to split up into your parties and dive or spend some time in the safe zones to recover. I know after those wipes and everything, people will probably want a little downtime."

There were many nodding heads in the raid. Sometimes after dying in the raid groups, what you needed was to reaffirm why you were doing this. And for many, that was spending the money that we earned. Spending time with family. Or reconnecting with their party.

I knew for myself, I was at least going to use one day to take Elysara out on a date. She had made a comment after seeing Charlotte get a date that she wanted one too.

Des practically dragged me back to the tent.

***

I knew the group is tired when, after a long day in the raid, we came back and went straight to sleep.

Even Desmonda doesn't keep us up with bedtime shenanigans.

So, I was curious about who woke up before me, when my nose wiggled, and I smelled pancakes cooking in our tent. Extracting myself from the limbs, I didn't check who was in the bed and who wasn't.

Padding out of the partition in the tent, I found Crimson cooking stack after stack of pancakes. My teacher was wearing a frilly apron, and I had to squint to see that she was wearing workout clothes underneath rather than her normal outfit. The apron hid her top almost perfectly.

"And where have you been?" I asked her pointedly. The high-level adventurer had been gone for her first round in the raid, and I found that slightly suspicious. She would have normally reveled in pushing us harder.

"Things," Crimson said, dodging the question. "Pancakes?" She plopped them down on the table while she continued to use Fayeth's pop-up kitchen.

"Oh no, you don't get off that easily," I said, pulling the plate closer and dousing the pancakes in syrup as they were meant to be eaten. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Crimson continued to play innocent. “Nothing.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. Crimson normally bowled straight through any issue that rose up in her path. To see her dodging questions was out of character, to say the least.

"Oh, now you're only making me more curious," I said.

Crimson shrugged. "Sometimes, a girl has to have an air of mystery."

I chuckled at that. An air of mystery wasn't normally how I would describe Crimson. But I let her get away with it this time. If she didn’t want to tell me, I wasn’t going to force it.

Instead, I ate in silence letting it do the work.

"There's something happening in the dungeon," Crimson blurted out after a moment of silence. "The UG was having me check it out. As I expected, there was nothing for me to actually find." She shrugged helplessly. "It's not like the dungeon would open up to me and say, 'Ta-da! Here's the answer that you were seeking.'" She grumbled and continued to flip pancakes.

"Well, did you find anything interesting?" I asked.

"Oh, definitely something. But nothing that I think was the cause of the UGs' concern. In several branches of the dungeon, they had large seismic activity." She explained.

"The UG is suddenly worried that the dungeon is going to erupt?" I asked. The only thing that seismic activity said to me was volcanoes, and I really hoped the dungeon wasn't about to erupt.

"Let's hope not," Crimson said shortly. "Until we figure out what it actually is, though, I'm on one task to figure out what is happening. Which right now means running about the dungeon like a chicken with my head cut off." She grumbled. "I swear, these guys have no idea how important I actually am."

She waved a spatula around, painting an interesting picture of ‘important’ as she was currently cooking me and the rest of my ladies pancakes.

I'm sure many would argue that was not the best use of Crimson's talent, but they wouldn't find the argument from me.

Crimson was a fantastic chef, even though her culinary expertise leaned towards efficiency.

"Well, they send you on another errand, you get to hang out with us." I tried to give her a better option.

Crimson looked away, and that's when I knew she wasn't going to be sticking around as much as I'd hoped.

I grimaced. "How often are they going to be sending you out?" I asked.

"Well, you know, constantly." She deadpanned. "Right now they have me running errands because of my portal ability. I'm able to get around and get back to things far more quickly. None of this stuff is sending signals through the dungeon. Mostly it's me running equipment and setting it up in the dungeon so they can get more test results for things that I can't begin to pronounce. Then I have to run down, download the stuff and bring the files back. They pay me damned well and frankly I don’t have much to do with you stuck in the raid."

I felt like there was more to it, but seeing Crimson be dodgy for the first time made me not want to press, and instead let her tell me when she was ready.

"Good news, we defeated five bosses on our first trip." I changed the subject.

"Only five?" She asked, a slight upturn of her lip telling me what she really thought about that.

"Only five?" I shot back. "We worked hard for those five."

"I'm sure you did." Crimson made another stack of pancakes for herself. Her own application of syrup, just as copious as mine.

"I think we did just fine." I was only a little bitter at her downplaying what little success we'd had.

"Sorry, did I hurt your feelings?" Crimson said, with a mocking tone.

"In fact, you did," I told her, and she had the gall to look properly chastised at that.

"Look, I expected you guys to tear through that raid once you guys get settled." She took off the apron and sat down next to me, digging into her own pancakes. "The thing about raids is that no one does them right at first. Everyone has their own ideas of how things work, but once you get in the habit of defeating a boss, it becomes like riding a bicycle, and your raid party will start clearing them all very quickly, and you'll make quick work of the raids." She shrugged, "It's really just a matter of time before all of you have it cleared."

"It took so long for us to do five," I admitted. "The real problem is the healers."

"It's always the healers," Crimson said. "The prissy lot would ask all of us to dance on eggshells if it would keep them from dying."

I raised an eyebrow at her tone.

"Don't look at me like I'm wrong. We both know I'm right. Let me guess. The healers were disorganized, overhealing themselves every time they took damage, and running straight into monsters' jaws." Punctuating those words by snapping down on some pancakes. She didn't pull her punches.

"You just about got it," I chuckled, thinking of what the healers would think of her phrasing.

"It's always like that, but on the good news, it does get better," Crimson said. "They're going to realize that they will die most fights, and they'll go into it with a new, grimmer determination. It just takes time. If you are hoping that I could solve this one for you with a few simple tips, well, I'll just say that I wish I could, too."

She seemed not only to be talking about the raid, but likely what else had been bothering her.

“What did you do when healers were a problem. At some point you were diving with parties.” I asked.

Crimson smirked. “Strangled them and then revived them. Reminded them that damage dealers are in charge. Kill things and look good doing it. Like I said, it's just going to take time. You guys will have this down by the end of the month, though. I'd be shocked if it takes for the rest of the semester for my Haylon class to do it."

I realized at the same time that Crimson was setting some unrealistic expectations for us once again. Not that I minded. I, too, wanted to complete this raid.

"Alright, if you're not going to tell me what's actually bothering you," I said, "then you can tell me what we're going to do, what you have planned for the class during this break."

Crimson grinned like a loon. "Just that, I'm going to give you guys an actual break."

I gasped in mock horror. "No! Are you okay, Crimson? Are you dying?" I teased her and put a hand to her forehead.

She rolled her eyes. "Not dying. Not yet, at least. You guys need a break just as much as I do. Raids are tough on everyone. So instead of pushing you guys further, and, let's be honest, breaking most of your minds. I'm going to let you guys take the days off. Besides, I’ll be busy running about for the UG, most of it anyways."

Feeling that she was a little down, I nudged her in the side. "Make sure that you're not too busy. Make sure you set aside enough to go on a date with me."

Crimson perked up and glanced at me in surprise. "A date?" She asked excitedly.

"A date," I confirmed. "You know, the thing where usually the guy takes the girl out."

Crimson squealed in a very un-Crimson-like manner and gave me a side hug as red sparks danced out of her eyes and she nearly crushed me. "I haven't been on a date in forever," she said excitedly.

I squinted at her, trying to guess what kind of date I should take Crimson on.

Honestly, she would love it as long as we did anything that avoided her being Mistress Crimson and let her be a normal person. I'd have to think about how to hide her identity as we went anywhere. She was incredibly recognizable. However, at the moment I was looking at her in her workout outfit instead of her signature red leather bodysuit and I realized that that might be a wonderful way to get her out incognito.

No one would expect it was Crimson if she wore a dress.

"What are you looking at?" Crimson squinted at me.

"Oh nothing, just making plans." I smirked right back at her, enjoying keeping the secret of what we would do for the date in slight petty revenge for her keeping whatever secret she had from me. I wasn't going to pry, but I wasn't above petty revenge.