Zoe

  Zoe wasn’t sure how they were managing to make the progress they were. She supposed that it had mostly to do with Aleister’s swap to [Zerker], as the self-healing that the [Path] offered was simply too powerful in the face of huge masses of weak enemies.

  She just also had to assume that, at this point, their luck was going to run dry soon. Maybe the developers had set things up that it was possible - with good planning - to make some progress in this [Scenario] while making what we’re almost definitely poor decisions.

  Except that didn’t really quite track with how quickly they had gotten overrun in their first attempt, when they were trying to figure out what to do, but ended up more confused and lost than anything else.

  As it was, she was staring down the big bear-like enemies now, and that felt like the game’s attempt to ramp things up a bit. She knew that they were coming. Or at least had inklings that they would, given that they had seen them before. Of course, she had to assume that more danger was on its way if they dealt with them. And, even worse, they still hadn’t seen heads or tails of [Spio] either. And who knew what was going on with that guy in particular.

  “Nyx, focus!”

  Caoimhe’s shout pulled her out of her wandering thoughts, and helped her focus on the task at hand again.

  “I’m good, sorry.” Zoe said, although she wasn’t exactly sure that she had been performing badly or anything. “Did I miss something?” She asked, still trying to hack away at the bear enemies.

  “I asked if you have ankle pick up?” Caoimhe said, apparently for a second time.

  “Oh, yeah. Which one?” She asked.

  “Can you get mine?”

  “On it.”

  Nyx slid over to the enemy that Caoimhe had been focusing on. Thankfully, with Aleister keeping [Threat] well managed, she had more or less free reign to move about. When she hit [Ankle Pick] and knocked down the target, Caoimhe quickly followed it up with [Punishment], and a slew of other damage skills. Zoe figured since she had already moved this way, she may as well follow suit, and began cycling through her big single-target combo.

  The enemy went down a few skills into her combo, so she slipped back over to her side. Caoimhe followed with [Wild Swing], and they started tearing apart the other mace-wielding bear.

  “I don’t like this.” Mellody said suddenly.

  “Me either.” Zoe said, assuming he meant how well things were going.

  “Don’t like what?” Aleister asked.

  “This is way too easy.” Caoimhe said, evidently thinking the same thing. “These enemies, once they got through the gate, completely trashed us and the NPCs. Why are they so easy right now?”

  “My first thought is some kind of morale mechanic, or they got a buff when we lost the gate.” Zoe said.

  “Could be.” Mellody said, sounding unconvinced. “Either way. I can’t help but feel like something is about to go wrong. And where the hell is the boss?”

  “That hedgehog asshole not being here is a concern, yeah.” Zoe said. “They don’t typically just spawn enemies on top of us, so I have to assume he would be nearby.”

  “Maybe he gets sent this way only if they take control of the wall?”

  “I guess?” Zoe said, simply unsure what the cause could be.

  When the second bear went down, leaving them with just the one they assumed to be the leader with the huge axe, they all shifted focus to him.

  “I got him handled. You guys just do what you do.” Aleister said, adding a quick mitigation to his buffs, and continuing to hold aggro.

  Caoimhe immediately swapped focus, and clicked through a few of her damage focused skills. Zoe was hesitant to simply go all in on her long combos, unsure whether it was safe to do so. She couldn’t help but feel like things had to get harder somehow.

  She actively spun her camera around, trying to see if new enemies were approaching, or if she could see any sort of clue to what might be coming next.

  “C’mon Nyx, focus.” Caoimhe said. “I can tell you’re nervous, but we still have an enemy right here to kill.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” Zoe said, and shook her head to focus. She started her main single target combo as Aleister kept the regular mobs from interfering. It allowed her to actually go through all of her main hits, even the ones that lasted dangerously long. The seventh hit in her combo in particular - [Death’s Dance] - was a five second long animation lock that did enough damage to warrant it.

  As Nyx and Caoimhe hacked away at the bear troupe’s leader, Zoe did her best to keep her eye out for whatever was next. Which mostly amounted to her flicking her camera this way and that between attacks, giving her very little information.

  “Our reinforcements are here.” Fiona said. “The knights took over at the gate, so I’m free. Where am I needed?”

  “Don’t know.” Mellody said.

  “Up on the wall for now?” Cass asked. “We don’t know where the hedgehog bastard is.”

  “Okay, on my way up.” Fiona said.

  It was just a few seconds more before the final bear went down.

  “We’re clear down here.” Aleister said, as their small team transitioned back to a wedge formation.

  “Incoming, right.” Bisky shouted. “Spio’s back!”

  When Zoe spun her camera in that direction, she could immediately pick out the spot where the crowd of enemies was parting to let something through, and it was moving fast.

  “Aleister, get in front of it.” Mellody bit out quickly. “Caoimhe, Nyx, get ready.”

  “Mello, there’s no way we take him on with just four.” Caoimhe said.

  “No shit. We have two choices,” Mellody said quickly. “Everyone gets down here and we face him together, or someone needs to find a way for us to get back inside.”

  “Preference? I can look around for something if you want.” Firo said.

  Mello said nothing for a moment then growled. “I don’t know. Firo and Bisky, you guys can take potshots from the wall. Evie, you can heal from there, too, right?”

  “You’re just in range. Don’t move too far away.” Cass confirmed.

  “Great. Fuck it. Fiona, get down here. We do this half split.” Mellody said, running through a quick rotation of [Musick] to apply some pieces of buffs that would last after swapping songs.

  Fiona was on the ground with the group before anything else was even said, moving to join up with everyone. She slipped in the front of the formation beside Aleister, joining the fight against the massive army of weak mobs seamlessly.

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  “Let me main tank.” Aleister said. “I have tons of HP batteries out here, just make sure you don’t completely wipe out the mobs.”

  “Sounds risky, but sure.” Fiona said, and stepped a little back to let Aleister have the center spot.

  “Do we have any sort of engagement plan?” Zoe asked, quickly rotating through some of her untouched [Poisons]. She wanted to have some miniscule buffs for this massacre waiting to happen.

  “None.” Mellody said.

  “Don’t die?” Caoimhe offered.

  “Helpful as always.” Bisky said. There was a beat of silence before she added, “Spio’s not alone.”

  “What?” Aleister asked flatly.

  “Dunno. Someone is following him with a banner.”

  “A standard bearer.” Firo said. “I’d be willing to bet that guy gives AoE buffs.”

  “I bet that’s how we got completely overrun in the first run.” Fiona said. “Do you see any others?”

  “...nope.” Bisky said, scanning the massive army. “I only see the one. But he’s also staying beyond my range, waving that flag around.”

  “If Bisky can’t hit him, neither can I.” Firo added. “I can see magic effects going out.”

  “Yup.” Bisky agreed. “Definitely a buffer.”

  “Great.” Zoe breathed. “What’s the call team? An enemy buffer is not good for us.”

  “Tanks, pick. Suicide charge into the enemy lines, or make a last stand?” Mellody asked.

  “Damn, you make them both sound badass.” Fiona said with appreciation.

  “We’re pretty dedicated to this being a wasted run altogether, right?” Cass asked, and Zoe could hear the grin on her face, not liking where this was headed.

  “Yes?” Caoimhe sounded confused.

  “Great.”

  And then Evie was on the ground with them, although a little ways back.

  “Firo? Bisky? C’mon, I need some guards.”

  “You - what?” Bisky must have been blinking incredulously.

  “This was a screwed run anyway. There are reinforcements here, complete with archers, and I imagine their AI is good enough to target the enemy mages. We didn’t lose the wall this time, and we stopped all the ladders from going up.” Cass snorted. “As far as I’m concerned, this run couldn’t have gone better. But if we want to kill the boss right here, I'm not sure we have a better option.”

  “I see.” Firo said, as he pieced what she meant together and hopped off the wall.

  “You guys are crazy.” Bisky said, but still followed. And the full party reunited on the field as the enemy standard bearer kept what must have been a channeled buff on the enemies, though the affected area was a few ranks away from the team.

  “So what you’re saying is-”

  “Fuck it, we ball.” Cass laughed. “We wanted to go out in a big ol’ blaze of glory. This is the perfect stage for it, isn’t it?”

  A few of the group chuckled, and Zoe wasn’t sure but she heard someone clapping.

  “So we’re just charging in, yeah?” Aleister asked, sounding reinvigorated. Zoe felt it too; she repositioned in her chair, ready to go.

  “On three?” Bisky asked.

  “Sure.” Aleister said, “Ready? One, three,” and took off running.

  While melee classes were the best at it, basically every playable [Path] in the game could attack and move, and the whole group did it now. Led by Aleister, and to a lesser extent, Fiona, they recklessly charged at the enemy ranks. Both of the tanks utilized their repositioning skills to move stubborn enemies out of the way, assisted by Caoimhe and her wide sweeping push backs and trips.

  The group cruised right through the first few lines, but were slowled when they reached the first row of enemies that were being buffed by the standard bearer. They were all receiving a decent amount of healing over time, in addition to either significant defensive buffs or just strictly more HP. Either way, their survivability had gone way up.

  That didn’t stop the group in their tracks, though, only slowing them down. The buffs didn’t stop the enemies from being pushed or pulled around, so the group used that to their advantage, trying to clear out as much of their makeshift path as they could. On the plus side, the big, swinging flag could be easily seen above the crowd of enemies, so they knew exactly which way to run, even while surrounded.

  Evie and Mellody were doing a more than admirable job of keeping everyone healthy. Aleister was living fine off of self sustain, but the rest of the group were taking lots of small hits - but those added up. Still, when the party managed to finally see their goal, everyone was above 7,000 HP, which wasn’t all that bad a situation, given how badly outnumbered and out maneuvered they were.

  When they finally broke out of the ranks of the enemy army, it felt like they had broken free of a forest into a small clearing. The enemy mobs had created some space, generally speaking, but some still flitted about on the edges, darting in and out.

  On the far side of the small gap was [Spio], standing hunched over as before, giant spiked shield gauntlets at the ready. He was flanked by the two bear type Fomorians that had broken away earlier, who were now both wielding absolutely massive tower shields.

  And behind them all was basically a little humanoid rat. It stood much shorter than the other enemies, even smaller than the weaker army mobs. But there it was, holding the extremely tall flag pole, with the Fomorian army logo displayed proudly. It was surrounded in a magical aura, reminiscent of Mellody’s when she casted widespread buffs.

  “So uh…now what?” Firo asked. “Do we just brawl?”

  “If anyone sees a chance to gut the little rat, do it.” Aleister said.

  “Aleister and I can probably hold off [Spio] while you all focus elsewhere, long as we have healing assistance.” Fiona said. “May as well do as much damage as we can, and attacking the hedgehog probably won’t help us all that much.”

  “Sure. Keep him busy, and we’ll do what we can.” Caoimhe said. “Nyx, I’ll-”

  Caoimhe didn’t get to finish the thought as [Spio] screeched loudly, and started to do the Sonic-style charge up for his rolling attack.

  The party immediately broke apart. Fiona and Aleister charged forward, straight toward the boss to get his attention. Bisky and Firo both broke to the left to get a better angle on the bears, and perhaps the rat enemy, but were harried from the sidelines by the enemy mobs. They didn’t do a lot of damage, so were basically just a hazard. A moving, somewhat unpredictable hazard, but just a hazard nonetheless.

  Mellody was locked in somewhere in the middle, trying to keep Evie safe with the defensive skills that [Skald] had access to, and was doing so quite well. Caoimhe and Nyx dashed off to the right, to try to circumvent the boss and get to the rat and its two bodyguards.

  Things went according to plan at first. Fiona and Aleister were able to keep [Spio] contained with help from the healers. Firo and Bisky did their best to deal damage and hamper enemies wherever possible. They were trying to take out some of the regular mobs that were darting into their fighting area, but the banner’s buff made them more difficult to remove quickly.

  Caoimhe and Nyx made it pretty close to their target, but the bears with the tower shields stepped in their way, making a pretty significant wall to overcome.

  Knowing that they were basically on a timer, Caoimhe wasted no time launching into [Wild Swing]. Her weapon slammed against the shields, knocking the enemies back a little, but did not knock them down. [Knife] didn’t have any particularly great forceful opening moves like [Wild Swing], but what [Knife] lacked in power, it made up for in precision.

  Zoe glanced toward the little standard bearer rat. It was cowering behind the two big shield bears, but didn’t seem like it was capable of defending itself all that well. Zoe considered her options for all of two seconds, then shrugged to herself.

  She muttered, “going out with a bang,” and used [Shadow Slip] to teleport behind the little rat. They had spent enough time running and dealing with other nonsense that all of her biggest damage skills were available.

  She quickly popped her stealth skill to get the damage bonus for exiting stealth with an attack and just hit as many of her big damage buttons as she could.

  It took four of her attacks, combined with the damage buffs, to end the rat. The banner it had held up fell to the ground, and the army around the party let out a horrifying, grating screech.

  “The hell happened?” Cass asked, confused.

  “I killed the rat?” Zoe said, almost apologetically. “That was the goal, right?”

  “I thought so.” Mellody said cautiously. And then things immediately spiraled out of control.

  The entire army that had been giving them space to fight collapsed on the party, growling and screeching in anger. They no longer had the buffs that the standard had given them, but they appeared to have gained some kind of enraged buff.

  The party was completely cut off from one another by the sheer number of mobs that crowded the space. They still didn’t do a lot of damage, but it added up quickly. Caoimhe was immediately pinned against the bears with the tower shields, and was admirably fighting off the base mobs. Nyx was also completely surrounded, being basically in a little pocket where the rat had been hiding.

  Somehow, Mellody and Evie kept sending out heals, but it was only a matter of time before they were completely swamped as well, simply buried under the weight of an angry mob.

  Then a huge gout of magic appeared in the middle of what had been the center area of the fighting pit.

  “Gather up there!” Firo shouted.

  Zoe saw Caoimhe immediately [Driver] off in that direction, and disappear among the crush of bodies. Nyx didn’t have a lot in the way of skills that would get her moving through a group of enemies like this while [Shadow Slip] was on cooldown, so she simply tried to fight her way through.

  [Knife] skills didn’t have a ton of displacement on their attacks the way some of the heavier melee [Paths] did, so swinging her weapons around didn’t really clear her a path until she actually downed the enemies in her way. And she was taking too much damage to make it to the group before dying.

  “I’m not gonna make it!” Zoe yelled, but their entire chat was made up of unintelligible shouting and squeaking as everyone was struggling.

  “Hang on, Nyx, I’ve got you. I think.” Cass said. Zoe saw her friend jumping in the middle of everything, trying to get sight on her. On the seventh or eighth jump, she managed to tag Nyx with [Safety Shift], and yelled, “Run, girl!”

  And Nyx did exactly that. With the [Safety Shift] active, she was considered incorporeal and was able to literally run through the mass of enemies. By the time she made it to the little tiny bit of space the party had managed to fight for, everyone except Bisky had made it there.

  Zoe glanced at her party list; at some point in the chaos, Bisky had apparently died and while she probably said so in chat, it got lost in the rest of chaos. Fiona was doing her best to block [Spio’s] attacks, but was still getting dogpiled by other mobs. Aleister was doing his best to keep the small fry off of Fiona, but wasn’t having much luck.

  “They don’t follow the aggro list!” Aleister was shouting, mixed in with all the rest of the shouting. And laughing.

  It was getting to the point that they were in an entirely unrecoverable situation. Even if they had somehow managed to kill [Spio] - which they wouldn’t - they would have to contend with the army itself, which had them entirely surrounded. And as it slowly sank in that they really had no where to escape to, the group realized that this was probably it.

  So they unanimously, without discussion, decided to do whatever they could to go out swinging.

  Fiona used [Final Vigil] to get even a smidge of breathing room, and tried to push the counter attack with whatever gas she had left in the tank, which wasn’t much. Mellody opted to slam all of her oh-shit buttons that remained, layering on as many buffs as she could for everyone - even if they would collectively last for all of 20 seconds, max.

  Firo saw his chance and took it; with the buffs applied, he launched whatever AoE skills he had in reserve - which admittedly wasn’t many - but he was determined to blow up as many of the base enemy soldiers as he could. And the particle effects that followed doubled as fantastic fireworks.

  And then he was completely dogpiled immediately after that, his HP zeroing out.

  Caoimhe fought valiantly, opting to utilize as many of her debuff skills as she could, tripping, stunning, or otherwise inconveniencing as many of the enemy as she could manage as a last ‘screw you!’. Mellody had run to Caoimhe’s side to try to help her hold out longer with her closer range [Musick], but it just led to the two of them getting crushed when the big bear enemies finally waded through the little guys to reach them. Apparently their attacks consisted of punching with the shields - and they did pretty good damage while enraged.

  Evie appeared next to Nyx, and they fought momentarily back to back - as best they could. Evie didn’t offer much in the way of offence, so it mostly amounted to Nyx fighting off all comers while Evie tried to keep her valiant protector between her and the enemy.

  Evie kept her meatshield alive well for several seconds, before the damage piling up combined with bleeds from numerous DoTs from unavoidable AoEs in the mess simply outpaced the healing she could put out.

  Nyx hit [Shadow Slip] in panic, and immediately followed it up with [Cloak], which would give her a few seconds to assess the chaos. The chat was filled with laughter given how many of the team had already died. At some point, Aleister had also fallen, leaving just Nyx and Fiona.

  Nyx was able to slip between a few enemies while stealthed to find Fiona in the crush, who had her shield up held up - currently away from where Nyx approached - and it was glowing with one of her big defensives.

  “Hey Nyx!” Fiona said, sounding far too chipper. “Fancy meeting you here!”

  Nyx placed her back to Fiona’s as her stealth faded, and began to hack at the enemies coming from her side. “Is it? This place seems pretty fucking popular!” For every two or three enemies she took out, more filled the space in a never ending treadmill. But worse, she could see the bear enemies coming.

  “Fiona, we’ve got trouble over here!” She cried.

  “Don’t worry, Nyx, I’ll save you!” Fiona said, flatly. Almost monotone.

  Mag Mell’s camera was third person, with the view centered above and behind the player character. With how far Zoe had her camera zoomed, she was able to see the front of Fiona’s character fighting and defending behind her.

  And in the same instance that Fiona said she’d save Nyx, Fiona dropped her shield.

  Zoe jumped in her seat when her entire screen suddenly turned red, as [Spio] had thundered right over both Fiona and Nyx killing them both in an instant, then just kept right on rolling by.

  As the death screen appeared, Zoe’s heart was pounding from the unexpected jump scare, and she was stiff against the back of the chair. She may have screamed, but honestly wasn’t sure. There was a brief moment of silence in her ears before sound came back to her and she could hear all the laughing.

  She started to laugh too, then, finally.

  “What the fuck, Fiona!?” She howled with laughter.

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