Marissa

  Marissa stared at her screen as everyone was transported once again to the little starting zone. The enemy camp, still a mess, was spread around them while [Uathach] stood in front of the commander’s tent, ready with her declaration of war.

  “Alright, so we know that things get a little tricky around 75% now.” Marissa said with a chuckle. “But I honestly don’t think that two of the mechanics at a time should really be that hard once we get a feel for it.”

  “I agree.” Ash said. “Really, unless they can actually throw some broken combinations at us, most of the ones that make sense should be fine to deal with.”

  “In before we get a stack and spread at the same time.” Evan snickered.

  “I’d just like to point out,” Firo said, “that I think the stack and spread at the same time might happen.”

  “Say what?”

  “Yeah. The party stack AoE was unusually large - didn’t anyone else notice that?”

  “I did, but I didn’t think about why it was like that.” Ash said.

  “I think the individual mechanics were designed to accommodate for any combination thereof. Just barely.” Firo said. “I suspect that, for example, if we spread out at clock spots along the very edge of the party stack, there would be just enough room for the spread AoEs to go off at the same time.”

  “That’s gotta be a really tight fit.” Jazz said.

  “That’s what -”

  “No.” Half the party said, cutting off Evan.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be pixel perfect or anything, but yeah. It’s going to be very uncomfortable.” Firo agreed.

  “So, are we ready to get back in there, then?” Marissa asked, eyeing [Uathach] standing on the side of her monitor.

  “Yeah, let’s do it.” Nyx said first, followed by everyone else.

  The group flowed over to the starting gate and prepared themselves for the coming fight. When [Bufon] appeared again, the group spread out, ready for the fight to start even before [Uathach] and [Regnu] sped off for their duel.

  When the massive armored bear made his leap, he awkwardly targeted Mellody instead of one of the tanks, which forced the opening sequence of the fight to be a little awkward when it came to positioning. Fiona picked up [Bufon’s] [Threat] quickly enough to keep the damage smooth, but it took a little doing to correct the positioning.

  The first phase of the fight went fine. With the party able to recognize which mechanics were which, none of them were difficult to deal with individually. The only one that was even a little bit of trouble was the tank buster, simply because the area it covered was obnoxiously large for a cleave, forcing the melee characters away from the boss for a short time.

  The entire party was alive when they made it to the combination mechanics phase this time. But they also immediately noticed that the first combination wasn’t the donut AoE and single target pillar attack that they had seen first the previous run.

  “The order in this phase is random?” Nyx whined. “Lovely.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Ash said, trying to sound hopeful. “Look, it’s just the party stack and delayed damage one this time.”

  “The one that wiped us out last time, you mean.” Evie joked.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Whoever gets the delayed damage debuff, stand apart.” Ash called. And when the delayed damage energy struck Bisky, Marissa rolled her eyes. She had been targeted by the delayed damage effect every time it came up so far. She did as told, though, and kept her distance from the party stack, which let everyone survive just fine. The healers got everyone back up to full shortly thereafter.

  Things went fine through the next combination before they saw a new one - the tank buster and donut combo.

  “Try to stay as far back behind him as you can but stay in the safe zone?” Firo said.

  “Yeah,” Ash agreed, as the group did their best to position themselves accordingly. [Bufon] threw his hammer in the donut AoE first, but the AoE itself wasn’t marked by a flashing red floor, leaving the party to judge it for themselves.

  Hibiscus, Evie, and Firo all misjudged how far they needed to be, getting clipped by the donut AoE. The damage wasn’t too bad, leaving each of them with around 3,000 HP.

  However, when [Bufon] caught his hammer and immediately moved into the tank buster without wasting a breath, the resulting explosion of shrapnel caught almost everyone else who had been too close in an effort to avoid the donut. Fiona was fine, expecting the buster to hit her, and Aleister had noticed the issue in time to hit two mitigation skills, saving himself.

  Caoimhe and Mellody were obliterated by the buster’s cleave, while Nyx had simply run away as soon as the hammer had finished its spinning flight.

  “Ok! I guess running away works!” Nyx said, overly happy, as Evie [Resurrected] Mellody, who then got Caoimhe back up.

  “Guys? I need -” Evan said, immediately before Fiona dropped dead to a regular attack. “ - healing…”

  “Oh, shit.” Evie said. “Sorry, I immediately went for the rez and then -”

  “And then I died!” Evan shouted. “How could you not heal the tank after a tank buster?” He wailed, as Aleister moved in and picked up [Bufon’s] aggro.

  “I’m sorry.” Evie whined comically, holding onto the final syllable as if she was singing.

  The combo that followed was the healer-targeting attack and a second tank buster.

  “Now that’s some bullshit.” Aleister said, preparing to take the buster since Fiona was still down. This time, the tank buster came first, which everyone made it through fine. Without the donut AoE forcing the party close, they were able to be careful and stay more than far enough back to avoid the cleave damage.

  As soon as Aleister took the massive hit, Mellody immediately started casting a heal, as the rest of the group scattered. The attack that followed, unfortunately, chose to target Mellody, who was focused on healing the tank after abandoning Fiona to the tank buster’s damage the previous time.

  As it turned out, the healer targeting attack was an instant death grabbing attack that immediately put Mellody on the floor. As the group laughed about the fiasco, Evie simply couldn’t keep up with the healing demand needed to keep the party up through the following party stack’s damage.

  When the moment for the dreaded stack and spread combination came, the group did their best. Several of them died all at once, however, leading to a wipe pretty quickly.

  “Firo, my guy, you were standing literally on top of me!” Kieran said through a bout of laughter.

  “I was in my spot at northwest!” Firo argued. “You were at my spot, Caoimhe - you’re supposed to southwest!”

  “I was at southwest!” Caoimhe shot back. “How do you figure you were northwest?”

  “Y’all…were we spreading true north or boss relative?”

  “Boss relative.”

  “True north.”

  There was a beat of silence before fresh laughter erupted. “Okay, let’s go with true north.” Ash said, finally, once everyone was able to focus again. “The boss changes facing too much for us to reliably do boss relative positions.”

  “Especially if he does the conal attack. Yeah, fair.” Caoimhe said. “But I swear to god, Firo, if you’re in my spot again-”

  “You’ll what, exactly, Caoimhe? Kill me? Because you’ve already done that.” Firo shot back.

  “You little -”

  Two pulls later, the group had made it through a few combinations safely before seeing the spread and conal combination come up. As the group moved to spread out away from the conal AoE, Marissa saw Caoimhe moving much further from the boss than was necessary. And she just kept moving.

  “Oh, no, no, no, you bitch!” Firo yelled as Caoimhe used [Driver] to close the last bit of distance to take them both out with the individual AoEs.

  “The fuck, Caoimhe?”

  “Told you I’d do it.”

  “I was in my spot!”

  “Were you? I’m pretty sure it was mine, silly little boy.” Kieran laughed.

  “You jackass.”

  Evie and Mellody got [Rezzes] out to both of them, but not before a poorly timed delayed damage and party stack combo put the party in the ground, simply because they didn’t have the body count.

  The next pull, things were similarly going pretty well until a few combinations in when the boss chose to use the delayed damage effect and the spread.

  Once again, Hibiscus was targeted for the delayed damage, and Marissa was beginning to suspect that particular effect was baited by the person furthest from the boss every time, which was why she kept being the one to get it.

  “I’m going to try something.” Evie said suddenly, with no real reasoning or explanation, and suddenly Marissa found herself being given the [Safety Shift] effect. That wasn’t a bad idea, given that the spread and delayed damage effect had killed her previously, because the healers didn’t get a heal out to her quickly enough between the two effects.

  The spread AoE went off at her feet to no effect. But when the delayed damage tried to go off and found her untargetable, it instead exploded in a massive AoE, wiping out half the party. It was an effect they had seen happen once already, when the person carrying the effect died before the damage went off.

  The result of seeing Hibiscus standing alone amidst several dead party members was enough to start the giggles again. Marissa couldn’t focus at all as she watched [Bufon] tear through the party, given she had killed both healers when she exploded.

  “Note,” Evie said through her own tears, “Safety Shift doesn’t work on the delayed damage effect.”

  “Good to know!” Ash said flatly. “Now, Evie, next time you’re going to set off a fucking bomb in the middle of everyone, please be a good friend and let us know.”

  Marissa had told the group about her theory regarding the delayed damage after a little more testing herself, and it seemed to work. Aleister was able to bait the delayed damage when it was paired with other damaging effects, but was able to survive the damage with tank mitigations.

  The night’s remaining pulls descended into actual chaos. Firo and Caoimhe had gotten into a troll fight, trying to kill each other while managing not to kill themselves.

  It mostly just left both of them on the ground, dead together. Firo did manage to kill Caoimhe successfully one time by sneakily baiting her into being the furthest from the boss to trigger the delayed damage effect though. It was truly a masterstroke of trolling.

  Several pulls were lost to testing new strategies - or trying stupid things under the guise of a new strategy.

  Nyx had killed herself and Coaimhe by using [Shadow Slip] during a spread and eruption too early, leaving the two of them taking all three hits together because of the poor timing. Caoimhe got her back two pulls later by using [Driver] to escape a conal AoE combined with a spread. Watching Caoimhe and her AoE marker fly straight at Nyx had made everyone laugh, although Nyx was too busy trying to calm herself after the jump scare of her sudden death.

  Several people had died over the course of the night to the hammer toss attack that required a tank to stop the target from getting clobbered. It took Aleister several attempts to get the timing right, but he eventually got the hang of using [Shadow Step] to position himself in time.

  The worst offender for wipes over the course of the night was any combination with the delayed damage effect. While they were positive it targeted the person furthest from the boss pretty early on in the night, getting it to be baited correctly was another issue entirely.

  More than once, they had someone just out of position, standing too far away. Or everyone would be moving toward safe spots for one mechanic, and stop paying attention to their distance from the boss. Even with Aleister actively trying to bait the effect to mitigate through it easily, it kept ending up on the wrong targets.

  And, invariably, something would go wrong. Any non-tank taking the effect needed babying by the healers to not die to follow-up damage, unless the combined mechanic was a non-damaging one.

  But several pulls were lost to the group overreacting to someone getting the debuff, which ended up with the party taking damage they shouldn’t. And that led to the debuffed party member dying prematurely, which set off the party wiping explosion.

  By the end of their three hours, no one could hold it together for a full pull. Everyone was laughing and goofing off, putting actual progression entirely on the back burner for the night to just have a good time. While they were pretty sure they would need to redo the cavalry charge section the following day before getting to try their hand at [Bufon] again, no one was worried about it.

  When Marissa said good night to everyone and logged off for the night, she had a huge grin on her face. It didn’t matter that they had collectively died probably thirty times - maybe more - in the three hours they had been working for. They had had far too much fun to walk away feeling bad about the losses.

  And while she was just as excited for the following night’s raid as she had been for that night’s disaster, her mood was so much better than it had been before.

  She couldn’t wait to get back in there and die again with her little merry band of fools.