Marissa

  After the tank buster had just about taken down half the party, everyone actively ran into the boss’s attacks to wipe the group and restart the fight.

  The group respawned standing just beyond the blue circle that [Uathach] had called them to outside the commander’s tent inside the camp, before challenging the boss.

  “Oh, neat. A checkpoint.” Jazz said happily.

  “Aw, man. I was looking forward to getting to do the cavalry charge again.” Evan whined.

  “Oh, right! Mongie!” Evie said, quickly moving her camera around to find the whole group’s mounts idling nearby. Not exactly where they had left them the last time, but still within easy reach. When Evie let out a relieved sigh, Firo chuckled.

  “Good to know they’re still here.” He said. “That presumably also means that we’re gonna need them again. Or at least use them again.”

  “No reason to have them respawn with us if they were really a once off, yeah.” Ash agreed.

  “The game doesn’t usually de-spawn stuff like that though, even in instances.” Marissa said. “Don’t get too attached.”

  “Yeah…” Evie sighed, sounding dejected. “I suppose.”

  “Anyway, what’s the plan?” Nyx said, trying to get everyone back on track. Marissa suspected she was also trying to get her friend’s mind off the mounts that they may or may not get to keep.

  “Well, given the, like, thirty seconds of fight we’ve seen, it’s hard to say yet.” Jazz said.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Kieran said. “At the very least, the one main mechanic we’ve seen seems pretty straightforward to me.”

  “Agreed.” Evan said. “Putting the different effects aside for a moment, it seems like Bufon can interact with different runes on his armor to get different effects to manifest.”

  “And the animation of his combo changed depending on which effect he wanted.” Kieran continued. “So we get a few different tells to help us see which one is coming, which is nice.”

  “Ok,” Ash began thinking aloud, “so we’ll need to keep an eye on the animations for his combo as well as the runes that light up. Also keep in mind that as the fight goes on, he’ll probably add more mechanics on top of it to get a little tricky, so keep your eyes open.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Also - that cleave. What kind of range do we think there is on that? Because it clearly hit the DPS standing behind Bufon.”

  “No kidding.” Nyx sighed. “I didn’t expect the cleave to fully reach behind him.”

  “Well, we know to watch for that sequence of attacks now. And that the secondary hit alone is enough to kill a DPS.” Kieran said.

  “Y’all, the secondary hit nearly killed me.” Jazz said. “Admittedly, it was entirely unmitigated on my end, but still. 10k damage with tank defenses is no joke.”

  “The two hits together nearly took me out with Stalwart active. I’m going to need to layer it with other defensives too, I guess.” Evan said, then paused a moment before adding. “Or some shielding.”

  “Knowing that it’s coming, we can probably help with that.” Ash said.

  “Yeah,” Evie agreed, “you know neither of us have a lot of shielding skills, so we’re going to be picky with them. That buster does feel like a good place for them though.”

  “Anything else?” Marissa said, turning Bisky to face toward the ring by [Uathach].

  “I don’t think so?” Ash said.

  “Nope, let’s get to it.” Evan agreed, and the group at large turned toward the ring and stepped inside.

  As before, [Uathach] called out the enemy leaders, and the same two enemies emerged from the tent. The dialogue and short scene played through the same way as the first run, with [Uathach] and [Regnu] fighting their way off into a different area of the camp.

  [Bufon] taunted the group as before and opened with the same leaping attack. The beginning of the fight went the same as before; a raid wide attack during the opener, followed by an attack aimed at one of the healers - this time it was Evie who needed to dodge the red light streaking toward her.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The next series of attacks went through, and the ground eruption attack targeted Nyx, who easily dodged away from it. Then the three hit combo ending in the fourth hit tank buster went through. [Bufon] swept over his right vambrace’s rune to activate the red glow, which moved to encompass the hammer’s head as he slammed it against Fiona.

  Fiona added an extra defensive cooldown of some kind with [Stalwart], and the two hits eventually left her standing with a little over 4,000 HP, thanks to the small HP shield Evie sent her way.

  Aleister, Caoimhe, and Nyx simply backed off from the boss entirely. They made extra space, just in case, to be sure they didn’t get clipped by the wide AoE of the buster’s secondary hit. They would lose some uptime on their damage, but for now, that was acceptable. Afterall, they still didn’t really know whether or not they even had a DPS race in this fight yet.

  “Alright, looking good, looking good.” Ash said, as everyone moved back into position to resume attacking the boss.

  “How many different patterns do you think he’s got?” Evan asked, continuing to shrug off the boss’ attacks with minimal damage.

  “I guess we’ll see?” Firo said. “I think it depends on whether he has any other mechanics at all, or if it’s all based on his armor.”

  After a few simple, disconnected swings targeting Fiona, [Bufon] moved into another combination attack. This one was different from the others they had seen so far, as the boss twirled and spun his massive hammer in sweeping horizontal swings.

  The wide sweeps clipped the entire melee half of the party, but didn’t do all that much damage; Caoimhe and Nyx got the worst of it, for about 4,000 total damage. When [Bufon’s] final swing transitioned into the one handed grip for the last sweep, he activated his left vambrace.

  The voice chat was silent, as everyone was focused on what was coming. Evie and Mellody were trying to quickly heal the melee characters back up before [Bufon] had the chance to knock them out.

  “Uh…” Marissa said, as she watched the boss throw his weapon straight ahead over Fiona’s head.

  “He missed?” Evan joked.

  And then the hammer started to curve to the left in a circle.

  “It’s a donut AoE.” Ash shouted. “In, quick!”

  Marissa did immediately try to close the gap to get inside the safe zone and avoid the flying hammer. Firo, Mellody, and Evie were similarly making quick dashes in. Mellody made use of her new [Puddle Jumper] skill that she got from the armor piece that dropped after their run to the city, while the rest used standard gap closers.

  Marissa, making use of her extended range, was too far out to make it into the small bubble of safety in time, taking a solid hit from the massive AoE as the hammer spun in a wide circle before slamming home in [Bufon’s] hand once more. The hit left Hibiscus standing at a little over 4,000 HP - so the hit did more than half her HP in a single hit.

  Her HP was already bouncing back up though, as Evie swapped her focus to the lowest HP in the group.

  “That hurt.” Marissa stated plainly. “Damn.”

  “Well, now we know that midfield is safest.” Ash said.

  “Midfield is always the safest place to be.” Kieran chuckled.

  “Not always…” Marissa defended weakly. Kieran was right - balancing distance was always the best way to position yourself for safety against bosses.

  “Don’t worry about that now. If the pattern holds, we’ve got about eight seconds before the next combo.” Evan said hurriedly.

  “Fiona’s right. Dude hasn’t given us any time to breathe; stay on your toes.” Ash agreed.

  “Easy for you to say.” Evie snickered.

  “C’mon, focus.” Firo said as [Bufon] rolled into yet another unseen combo. After the second hit of the combo, [Bufon] was in a stance that was clearly in preparation for an uppercut swing while activating a red glow from his right pauldron. The glow traveled down to the hammer as the uppercut swing dragged along Fiona’s armor for a solid chunk of damage.

  But he didn’t stop there. [Bufon] threw the hammer into the air, where it spun, still covered in red energy. Then it hit the top of its arc and fell quickly, nearly landing on Firo. Instead, it crashed next to him, making a solid dent in the ground.

  Firo’s “Oh, shit -” was cut off pretty quickly when the boss turned away from Fiona to leap to the hammer. Firo tried to scramble away, but [Bufon] was faster. He landed in arm’s reach of the hammer, grabbed it, and pivoted into a heavy swing at Firo.

  Firo had created a decent bit of space, but [Bufon] still closed the gap with two quick strides. The attack connected, sending Firo tumbling across the ground, with zero HP.

  “Holy shit. That one shot me.” He whined.

  “Must be more to that than just a targeted attack.”

  “Probably a shared hit?” Marissa suggested. “Need to see if we can get Aleister in there to share the damage.”

  “That makes sense.” Aleister said. “I’ll hold Shadow Step for it next time.”

  “This guy is really just a showcase for different simple mechanics, isn’t he?” Evan said. “Well, mixed in with pretty hefty attacks, but still.”

  “Which means, what? We’ve still got a party stack and spread coming, probably?” Kieran offered.

  “At least.” Ash said. “And he’s got a lot of HP.”

  Marissa glanced up to the top of her screen, where [Bufon’s] solid 80% was still displayed. This was going to be a long fight.

  Evie spent the party's first [Resurrection] on Firo, since her [Resurrection] had a shorter cooldown than [Refrain], she was best to go first. As he was coming back up, the boss was moving into yet another combo attack. This time, he activated his chest piece, and the final hit of the combo was a stomp that sent him vaulting high into the air.

  The stomp had given the nearby melee characters the [Off-Balance] effect again, which left them hobbling around unsteadily. The area around where the boss had leapt up from turned red like a regular AoE circle, but had floating red spokes above the ground. It was a common marker for a party stack, so everyone else rushed into the area.

  “Thank god for Puddle Jumper.” Ash chuckled as Mellody did a graceful hop into the marked zone just in time thanks to the new skill. A few snickers followed as the boss crashed back to the ground, and the red light expanded out in a wave from the impact. Everyone in the party took some damage, but split eight ways it wasn’t too bad.

  “We might be able to survive that with only the melee.” Nyx said. “It’ll be close, though.”

  “Not worth it.” Evie said, as a single AoE healing spell got everyone almost back to full HP. “Everyone being clustered like this makes recovery easy.”

  “Fair.” Nyx said, and everyone moved back to their spots. [Bufon] struck Fiona a few more times before going into yet another new combo they had not seen, which activated his right thigh guard. The light grew and slid into the ground, similarly to the previous pillar attack.

  This time, however, the attack didn’t disappear; a straight line shot out toward every party member and a rune appeared under each of them.

  “Spread.” Kieran called.

  Which was promptly followed by an echoed “Fuck” from Firo and Evie. They were standing just slightly too close to one another when the ground exploded under each of them, their AoEs both catching the pair. While everyone else survived around 5,000 HP, Evie and Firo were both taken down.

  “Mit, Fiona.” Ash said quickly.

  “On it.” Evan responded, and immediately turned on survival mode, focusing on mit rather than offense for a moment.

  Ash was quick about getting Evie back up again., which put [Refrain] on cooldown for three minutes. Marissa was pretty sure the two minute cooldown on [Resurrection] hadn’t passed yet, which meant they had to leave Firo dead for a minute or more.

  “Sorry, Firo. Rez is still on cooldown.” Evie confirmed.

  “Figured.” Firo said. “Just focus on seeing more mechanics.”

  Several people said “Yup” as they fought on.

  The boss went through two more cycles while Firo was still in the dirt. One mechanic was activated by [Bufon’s] right hand - he threw out a quick blast of red energy which latched onto Bisky. She couldn’t dodge it, as far as she could tell, and after a short delay, the energy exploded, dealing a pretty heavy hit to her HP. It didn’t put her in any actual danger of death on its own, though.

  The second new mechanic was activated by [Bufon’s] left hand, and it was a fairly simple, but huge conal AoE. He turned away from Fiona to place Nyx in the dead center of the cone, and everyone needed to dash to escape the massive blast of destructive energy that followed.

  “Twenty seconds until you’re up, Firo.” Evie said.

  “Sweet.”

  As [Bufon] lined up his next combo, a few people made shouts of recognition as he moved into a combo that they recognized. It was the spinning combo that ended with the donut AoE.

  “In, in, in!” Ash shouted, as everyone scrambled in toward the boss. But when he completed the combo, rather than the rune glowing red, it started to glow blue.

  Without missing a beat, [Bufon’s] massive wide swing that had previously thrown the hammer simply flowed into another combo that they recognized - the one that ended with the hidden spout attack on a seemingly random DPS. And as the second combo rolled into the last hit and [Bufon] triggered his second armor rune, the first one slowly turned red.

  In the same motion that ended the second combo, [Bufon] flung the hammer in the same way he had for the donut AoE.

  “Get away from me!” Nyx shouted, but in the relatively small safe zone of the donut AoE, no one had much room to move. They had at least lucked out that Nyx had been standing toward an edge of the safe zone, as the mud under her character turned red.

  Nyx managed to escape thanks to the [Shroud’s] extended [Dodge] reach.

  Caoimhe and Evie, who had been watching their own feet, were not so lucky as they were caught in the blast while still trying to maneuver into the donut AoE’s safe spot.

  The group also learned exactly how lethal the eruption was, as Caoimhe and Evie were both downed immediately, taking almost 20,000 damage.

  “Ow.” Kieran said.

  “So the bastard is going to teach us individual mechanics, then double them up on us. How original.” Evie sighed. “Y’all may as well wipe it. That’s three down, and no rez for a while.”

  “Hey. We can still see the next combination.” Marissa said, as Mellody worked to keep what was left of the group alive.

  The five members still standing managed to see the next two combinations, as it turned out. Remaining fully spread out while dodging the massive frontal cone AoE was easy enough with only five of them alive.

  The delayed damage combined with the party stack that followed, however, sent the remaining five to join their waiting dead friends.