Kieran

  As the group finally moved to help Fiona out of her current situation, Kieran was running a mental checklist to make sure he was prepared to face a huge hoard of middling enemies. The skills he needed to use were entirely different from normal here. With so many enemies around, even attacks that only did a little damage in an AoE would completely outscale a high damage single target attack.

  “Aleister, group up enemies on the left. Fiona, take the right. Facing from where we’re coming.” Ash said calmly.

  “On it.”

  “Who are our two best AoE DPS?” Ash wondered aloud.

  “Me and Bisky.” Firo said.

  Ash didn’t second guess Firo’s answer and immediately continued. “Ok, Firo, Caoimhe you take the right side with Fiona. Nyx, Bisky, left with Aleister.”

  “Bro, you could’ve just said small parties.” Evan chuckled.

  “So I could’ve.” Ash laughed in response. “I’m going to put out as much mit on the tanks as I can, so we’ll be missing damage songs. I don’t think we need them here, though.”

  “Okay, I’ll back you up with healing.” Evie said. “Aleister, Fiona, you’re going to need to keep a real close eye on your mit with this many enemies. Be proactive about it. If we misjudge this, you just die.”

  “Right.” Jazz and Evan responded together.

  “Then let’s just do the best we can. Good luck everyone, focus up.” Ash said. “And keep comms clear for callouts. If you see something happening, call it out.

  “Yes sir!” Firo and Kieran called together, then laughed.

  “Focus.”

  And then the first wave of enemies was upon them.

  Kieran did immediately focus on the task at hand. He wasn’t sure how long he had between the different enemy groups reaching their little killzone, but he knew that the quicker they could remove the threats, the better off they would be. If the enemies’ numbers built up too fast, their tanks would crumble under the weight, and then the rest of the party would follow.

  Caoimhe was running through only her basic attacks to start, which only worked well because they cleaved. Most melee attacks in Mag Mell did, to some degree. If you swung a weapon and the animation hit an enemy’s model, they took the damage, unless the skill specifically called out that it was single target - and several of [Tyrant’s] skills did specify that.

  Caoimhe was biding time until Fiona had rounded up as many of the enemies as she could manage. Some of the ranged mobs didn’t get close enough naturally, so Fiona had to gather the melee ones and then use whatever draw-in abilities she had to gather the ranged ones. Unfortunately, the AI was smart enough here to actually keep distance if they had ranged attacks and you tried to approach them. Pulling them in and [Rooting] them was the best option.

  As soon as Fiona had most of the enemies grouped up, Caoimhe switched to using skills. [Wild Swing] was first, and the wide sweeping attack bowled over the whole mass of enemies. Firo jumped on that with several AoE magic skills, while Caoimhe hit them with [Punishment]. Fiona hit [Vortex Blade], which was a low damage skill that drew in nearby enemies with a vortex of wind.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  With the enemies gathered again, Caoimhe hit [Damnation], which was her highest damage skill with an AoE component at 2000 [Might]. Unfortunately, it also had a long [Cooldown] of 2 minutes. [Mass Devastation] was an AoE variant of the single target [Devastation], which did less damage at 600 [Might] than its cousin with 1800 [Might], but would pay out huge on eight targets like they had now.

  In combination with Firo’s magical assault, the first pack of enemies were below 15% HP, so Caoimhe transitioned into dancing through them with her sweeping [Greatsword] attacks. Thankfully, the wide sweeps of the massive weapon were solid for AoE damage.

  Even with Caoimhe herself being so small, the weapon was large enough to make up for her reach pretty significantly, still damaging most, if not all, of the enemies. So long as she was careful about where she was aiming. The attacks dragged her forward after all, so repositioning and being conscious of directions were important.

  The next group that Fiona was responsible for arrived just before the first went down. Kieran could see the effects of new mit skills go off on Fiona, but was too focused on trying to maximize his own damage to acknowledge exactly what went out.

  Unfortunately, Caoimhe’s natural lack of big AoE damage left her AoE rotation fairly sparse, mostly relying on going through her basic attack string and then [Wild Swing] and [Knockdown] - both of which were AoE - into [Punishment]. [Wild Swing] and [Knockdown] both had 40 second [Cooldowns], so Kieran offset them to make sure he was getting as many empowered [Punishments] as possible. On the plus side, Fiona was generating a number of [Stuns] and [Roots] on her own, which was helping Caoimhe sneak in empowered [Punishments] almost every time the skill came off its 10 second [Cooldown].

  And as they continued, the waves kept coming. Worse still, given that of course there were less enemy patrols nearby comparatively to those further out, the time between new arrivals got shorter as they went on. Thankfully, Firo’s skills were solid AoE damage, and his damage didn’t fluctuate nearly as much as Caoimhe’s. It was steady, reliable, and fairly high.

  “I don’t see any more patrols incoming.” Kieran heard Ash say, which snapped him out of his focus a bit.

  “Good.” Jazz said. “I’m running really low on mit.”

  “Same here.” Evan said. “If this keeps going much longer, I’m toast.”

  “Push the damage.” Ash said. “We’re so close.”

  And they did. Kieran was only focused on their side of the field, but it was hard not to focus on the twenty-something enemies they were dealing with at once. Fiona’s tank skills kept them gathered up, and between Caoimhe and Firo, the AoE damage going out was enough to comfortably carry them through. So long as Fiona didn’t suddenly crumple after hitting empty.

  “What. The. Hell.” Evan sighed, when the last enemy fell. Kieran also breathed a sigh of relief, and leaned back in his chair. Mag Mell didn’t always remove enemy corpses immediately in instances, and that left a pretty strong impression on him now. Their party was surrounded by slain Fomorian enemies. And unfortunately, there was not a bit of loot to be found.

  “What now?” Ash asked. “Surely they didn’t just throw this many enemies at us for it to just stop like this?”

  “Maybe it’s just giving us a breather?” Nyx said.

  “I don’t know, but there’s no notable enemies left on the field.” Evie said. “Let’s make tracks.”

  “Good call. Let’s move.” Marissa said, and the group started moving toward [Gorias’] city gates in the near-distance.

  “I’m honestly shocked how easy that turned out to be.” Nyx said as they moved.

  “I guess they were basically just trash pulls strung together, right?” Marissa offered. “No reason for them to have mechanics or anything interesting?”

  “Speak for yourselves.” Evan said.

  “Yeah.” Jazz agreed. “There may not have been mechanics, but if Fiona or I messed up at all, we’d have wiped.”

  “No kidding.” Evie said. “That was like walking a tightrope. A small mistake would have ruined us.”

  “But intense healing like that is really fun.” Ash said. “Really, really fun.”

  Evie snorted. “True. Getting to use all of your skills like that, when you don’t usually need to -”

  “Oh, fuck.” Firo said, drawing out the curse. “We need to run.”

  “What?”

  Kieran spun his camera around, and it didn’t take long to notice exactly what Firo saw.

  The Fomorian army was closing in from both sides. It was hard to judge how dangerous the situation was at this distance, but it was a full battalion to each side moving toward them.

  “That’s death approaching, chief.” Evan laughed wryly. “What do?”

  “Hit sprint and hope for the best?” Marissa said, as if they hadn’t all hit [Sprint] by instinct after seeing the danger. They still had a ways to go before making it to the city gates.

  “I actually think we’ll make it in time.” Ash said, forcing calm into his voice. “They’re still too far away to make it here before we reach the gates.”

  “Think again.” Nyx laughed, incredulous. “Never seen those before.”

  “Is that a fucking cavalry charge?” Kieran laughed, as he watched a medium sized group break away from the mass of the army and start moving toward them much faster than the foot soldiers.

  “Okay, there’s no way we outrun that.”

  “What do?” Evan repeated, sounding like he was on the verge of laughing.

  “Keep running.” Ash said. “This is basically an open field. Until we have more information, there’s not exactly much we can do.”

  “Just keep running, just keep running.” Evie muttered, which finally broke the dam, and everyone started laughing.

  It took almost two minutes for the enemy cavalry to approach. The party was fairly close to the city gates by then, after a boring but tense two minutes of solid running, hitting [Sprint] every time it was available.

  As they got closer, Kieran could see the work that went into making the cavalry look dangerous. The Fomorian riders, as always, were a wide mix of monstrous humanoid animals that looked like the product of some kind of twisted experimentation. Their bodies were irregular, with unnatural shapes and figures.

  The animals they rode, though, looked like mutated horses. They were definitely horse-shaped, but had patches of hair missing in various places, and their manes were also patchy. The bodies themselves looked unnaturally muscled, their haunches bulging in odd shapes.

  What stuck our most, though, were their heads. They looked almost skeletal, as if they were undead horses, not just twisted experiments. And every single one of them had smoldering green pits for eyes. Kieran figured the particular shade of green used may also have contributed to the necrotic, undead look.

  As soon as the enemy cavalry was within a reasonable distance, red AoEs appeared on the ground. The entire space around the party was red with lines.

  “Oh, they’re gonna trample us. Yay.” Firo said.

  “Never thought I’d be on the receiving end of a cavalry charge in a game like this.” Evan laughed.

  “There’s no dodging this.” Ash said. “Get ready to intercept.”

  “Everyone behind the tanks.” Jazz called.

  The cavalry had approached only from the right side, which was where the front of the city was. It was, presumably, also where the main mass of the Fomorian army was.

  Thankfully, with only the one cavalry unit coming to meet them, positioning was easy enough to handle. Aleister and Fiona moved to body block the party as best they could, ready to intercept the charge.

  The red AoE lines had a bit of overlap, so there was definitely no safe zone. And each line was a little more than one player character wide.

  “I’ve got a crazy idea.” Kieran said, suddenly.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “They’re charging just one man deep. Stun the ones hitting us.” He said.

  With the party organized the way they were, they would need to stun three of the enemies in the center of the charge to stop them from trampling the party.

  “I see. Let’s do it.” Marissa said, as the enemy charged.

  “I got left.” Kieran said.

  “Center.”

  “I’ll take right.”

  Caoimhe had to move in front of the tanks to reach, putting herself distinctly in danger. Kieran prayed as he hit [Ring the Bell] just as his chosen rider got close.

  The stun hit the monstrous horse and rider, stopping them before they had made it to the party. Caoimhe still took the hit, though, with the charge attack landing at the same time as her stun. The attack blew her back past their tanks, and she tumbled on the ground.

  [Resolute Charge >> 10,043]

  Kieran looked at the sub 1,000 HP numbers and let out a sigh of relief as Caoimhe stood up.

  “Holy shit, that damage!” Evie shouted as she threw a targeted heal at Caoimhe.

  “If we messed that up, we’d be dead.” Marissa said. Thankfully, she and Firo had taken the other two stun responsibilities, and they had range. Together, the three of them did stop the three necessary riders in their tracks before they trampled the group.

  “We’re not exactly safe yet.” Nyx said warily.

  And she was right. After the first pass, the cavalry enemies hadn’t opted to turn for a second pass, but they were now riding in circles around the party, trapping them. Even the three riders they had stunned were moving to join their fellows in the circling trot.

  “We need to break through.” Jazz said.

  “Sure, but they’re layering up now.” Kieran said. “Three circles in alternating directions. I don’t think we can just charge through.”

  As soon as he finished speaking, three red AoE lines appeared. The group deftly moved out of the way as three riders charged through the center of the circle, only to rejoin the blockade on the other side.

  “Well, we need to figure something out. And fast. Before the actual army arrives.” Marissa said.

  “Right. No pressure.” Evan laughed.