Marissa

  The party quickly spread a little bit after the small party mechanic resolved, worried that [Scathach] would follow it up with a spread mechanic quickly. Small mechanic loops that required a lot of movement were common in harder fights, to make it more difficult for players to just damage the boss.

  Marissa wasn’t sure what would be next, but she wasn’t sure that she’d have much time to think about it. [Scathach’s] attacks - even the basic ones - were doing so much damage to Fiona that she was using mitigation and blocking just to stay alive. Without it, the damage she was taking might even outpace Evie and Mellody’s healing, unless they started dipping into emergency reserves.

  “Aleister, I think we’re going to need regular tank swaps here.” Evan said, sounding as if he was on the back foot. “Her damage is bonkers.”

  “Let me know when you want me to take her, then.” Aleister said. “I can step in when you need me, and we’ll swap off as mitigations come back up.”

  “I hope that the provoke skills come up in time.” Evan laughed wryly, as everyone was able to watch Fiona’s health bounce down, then back up, then down again with every strike. And more than that, it started to strike Marissa as odd, how long [Scathach’s] basic attack string was. Most bosses only hit the tank three or four times before moving into the next mechanic, but [Scathach] was laying into Fiona well past that mark.

  “I don’t like this,” Marissa said, as she went through her rotation. With the way that the boss was so focused on the tank, she was almost mindlessly going through the motions without feeling any danger.

  “Same.” Ash said. “Everyone stay on your toes.”

  Marissa hit a few of her bigger damage skills, as a few of them came up once before her big burst windows refreshed. Seeing [Scathach’s] HP barely move at all as she went through a smaller burst of damage left her even more concerned. Not that the party’s opener had done all that much either.

  “Good lord, what are her defensive stats like?” Nyx said, giving voice to Marissa’s concern. And no doubt, Nyx was just as worried, as she was regularly getting deep into her [Knife] combos, where the damage numbers were actually just disgusting at the cost of the [Knife’s] safety. But without any mechanics happening, there was simply no reason for Nyx to worry.

  “She must be level 100 or something. This feels the same way attacking a much higher level mob does.” Kieran said. “Not sure what we can do about it though.”

  “I still think we just need to trigger some other -”

  “Aleister, swap!” Evan called, interrupting the planning. Fiona had finally run out of mitigation, and couldn’t keep up with the damage. When Aleister hit her [Provoke] and stepped in between Fiona and [Scathach], the boss just moved around her and laughed.

  “You’ll have to try harder than that to get my attention, little [Ebon]!” The boss laughed, continuing to hound Fiona instead. Marissa felt her jaw go slack.

  “Uh - what?” Jazz asked, clearly confused. Even Aleister was just standing still, not moving, as if Jazz was staring at her screen in disbelief.

  “Fucking hell,” Evan said, “not only did the voke not work, she laughed at us and called you out by path?”

  “Has that ever happened to anyone before?” Jazz asked, moving Aleister back into the fight, trying to pull [Scathach] off of Fiona through regular skills.

  “Not in combat.” Firo said.

  “I’ve been addressed in the story by my path. And I’ve had special dialogue options, or special lines about it before.” Evie said. “But nothing mid combat before.”

  “Surely that’s not all you have?” [Scathach] began to taunt the party - or more probably Fiona - as she chased the tank around the battlefield with dogged determination. “Stop running!” She called, starting to sound frustrated.

  “Uh, Fiona? She sounds mad that you’re running and I’m not sure we want to make the boss angry like that.” Firo said.

  “If I stand and fight, I’m for sure gonna die. Some mit is back up in fifteen seconds, though.” Evan said, continuing to run around in a wide circle.

  There was a moment where Marissa stopped attacking to just watch [Scathach] chase Fiona around, mostly confused by the whole thing. “Guys, what are we doing?” She asked, suddenly feeling very off about the whole thing. “We don’t really do much damage, and she’s just chasing our tank around in a circle.”

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  As the other DPS stopped for a moment to consider this, [Scathach] had evidently had enough.

  “My daughter said you were impressive fighters, but there’s nothing impressive about this.” She said, stopping the chase. She held up her spear, gathering shadows around it again, forming the massive drill-like lance.

  “Careful!” Ash shouted at the same moment the boss vanished in the same puff of shadowy wisps they had seen multiple times at this point.

  She appeared directly in front of Fiona and struck with the lance. Fiona blocked, but the massive shadow-spear simply bypassed the shield and ran her through. Fiona’s HP zeroed out in an instant, and she fell to the floor dead.

  “Um.” Evan said, confused. “There was nothing I could do about that one, sorry guys.”

  “No…worries?” Evie said, moving into a [Resurrection] cast. [Scathach] didn’t seem to even pay attention as she turned toward the rest of the party from where she killed Fiona.

  “I tire of this. You all seem far less interesting than I thought.” She said, and then threw her spear into the middle of the battlefield. It landed in the ground solidly, burying itself a foot or so deep into the ground. There was a moment where nothing happened, and then the lance let out a pulse of dark energy that emanated through the whole field.

  It wiped the party immediately, sending them into a loading screen, and then back to the entrance of the pasture, before the fight.

  “...what?” Kieran laughed.

  “The fuck was that?” Nyx shouted, sounding somewhere between angry and amused.

  “Apparently,” Firo said, “we didn’t entertain her.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Jazz said. “She’s an NPC. What exactly are we supposed to do to ‘entertain’ her?”

  “Well, not kiting her around the arena for survival seems to be a good start.” Evan joked. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.”

  “The…weirdness, for lack of a better term, started when you dodged the stunning blow, right Fiona?” Evie asked.

  “I…suppose? The big attack was right after that though - and then she locked onto me.” Evan said.

  “...What are the chances that [Scathach’s] AI is a more advanced one? One that can take actions on its own without being so scripted like most bosses?”

  “It…could be.” Marissa said, considering. “Given that this isn’t a conventional fight to begin with, given her presumably much higher level and ability to basically just kill us outright, and our inability to do real damage, maybe the devs wanted to test something here?”

  “That could be.” Ash said. “The more traditional fights are all very well designed, even when there’s been more than one way through the scenario. But Scathach might not be held to those same design philosophy.”

  “We should keep that in mind for the next pull then.” Nyx said. “If the story goal is to impress her with this fight, though, what should we do?”

  “Well, if we want to operate under that assumption, the most obvious play is to survive the fight well and do a bunch of damage, isn’t it?” Jazz asked.

  “It would be normally, but clearly that doesn’t seem to be the winning move here.” Kieran said. “Unless we tripped into some weird mistake in the last pull somehow. A bug in the AI or something maybe?”

  “Mag Mell has been incredibly bug free so far. That seems unlikely.” Firo said.

  “I have a little…unorthodox suggestion.” Marissa said, trying to think around their current problem.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Let’s get a little crazy. Fiona, can you try to perfect guard and counter literally every attack she throws at you?”

  “I mean, I can try. I’m bound to miss some, but I can probably get a bunch.” Evan said, sounding mildly confident. “If nothing else, I should be able to get used to her attack pattern after a couple more pulls.”

  “Okay. Everyone else, just try to play your class to the highest possible skill ceiling you can imagine. For me, that’ll be landing as many weakpoint shots as possible, for example.”

  “I…think I see what you’re getting at.” Ash said. “I’ll try to move between my musick options as much as possible without missing any beats.”

  “And I’ll go for all of my most damaging combos.” Nyx said. “That’s what you’re getting at?”

  “Yeah.” Marissa said. “If we’re really trying to ‘impress’ an AI, there has to be something that is measurable for us to impress it with.”

  “That makes sense.” Kieran said. “I guess for me that’s just maximizing my punishment uses....”

  “Alright. We’ve got our strategy then?” Evan asked.

  “Oh, and one other thing.” Marissa said. “Judging based on how she reacted to the voke, don’t use skills that have like…just a meta effect. Know what I mean?”

  “No, not at all.” Nyx said, laughing.

  “Like, voke does nothing but manipulate threat. The stuff that is very…game-y.” Marissa said, unsure how else to explain it.

  “Oh.” Evie said, paused, then continued, "Yeah, I still don't get it."

  “I’m not sure if using them itself has a negative attached, or if she’ll just ignore them, so I guess just keep it in mind?” Marissa said.

  “Fair enough, I guess. Are we ready to go again?” Ash asked, prepping to walk back to the starting circle.

  “As I’ll ever be.” Firo said. “Not sure I’m confident what I need to do, but I guess we’ll see.”

  “Try to land a Soul Shatter.” Kieran said. “That sure as hell impressed me when we first met.”

  Firo laughed, “I can try, but I’d be shocked if I manage it.”

  “Hey, it’s not like the game will know you got lucky.” Evan said, then added, “Probably. Oh, man, I don’t like thinking about this.”

  The group chuckled collectively at that as everyone moved toward the starting circle. Marissa paused outside it, as usual, just to make sure everyone was ready before she started the fight again.

  The group spread out a little as [Scathach] went through her opening moves. She said the same lines as previous runs, summoned her weapons, and vanished, striking at Fiona again.

  Fiona however, was ready for it this time, and had seen the opening attack twice. She landed the [Perfect Counter] on the opening attack, and immediately responded with one of her more powerful counters.

  Things almost immediately broke the established pattern right off the jump.

  “Haha, yes! Very good!” [Scathach] shouted as she took the counter, in addition to the party’s opener. Rather than flow into the expected opening combo that they had seen previously, [Scathach] just immediately leapt back a bit from Fiona, and struck her sword against the spear, triggering the normal opening raidwide.

  Marissa couldn’t figure out why she jumped backward before triggering the attack, but decided not to worry about it for the time being. She had her own role in this fight, and was focused on landing as many headshots as she could. And it was not easy.

  As soon as she triggered the AoE, [Scathach] began gathering more shadows around her sword. It was a slightly different stance than the one that triggered the big circular attack though, as she held the blade in front of her, instead of above her head.

  “That’s new.” Ash said flatly, as Fiona scrambled forward to try to get back in melee range with the boss. Caoimhe and Nyx both gap closed their way to the boss, angling to position behind her while Fiona took up her standard position in front.

  While [Scathach] was preparing her new attack, Firo opted to try his luck with landing [Soul Shatter]. It took a moment of focus while the boss was standing relatively still, but he did manage to land the attack.

  [Scathach’s] head turned to look at Firo as soon as the attack’s animation went off and the woman laughed. Firo did too, but for a very different reason.

  “Damage! Soul Shatter did damage!” He shouted, excited.

  And he was right. Marissa hadn’t been paying much attention to [Scathach’s] HP, but they had dealt more damage this time than the previous run, despite it being a much shorter time frame so far.

  “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” Marissa said to herself, opting to pause her basic attacks a moment in favor of scrolling up the battle log. As she looked over the log of damage numbers, she sighed.

  “What’s wrong, Bisky?”

  “Firo’s right. Soul Shatter did damage. I just checked - so did my first and third Master’s Shots, that hit weak points. My second one, which hit her body and not her head? Zero damage. Fiona, your counter did damage. Your attacks are doing basically nothing.” Marissa said quickly, trying to skim the battle log despite being in the middle of the fight.

  “Well, shit.” Jazz said. “So this is literally what you said before then? But applied as literally as possible?”

  “Meaning?” Nyx asked, trying to figure out what she meant.

  “Incoming.” Evan said, stopping the conversation dead, as [Scathach] moved. She did her shadowy teleport, appearing in front of Firo, already swinging her sword.

  It wasn’t the massive, single-edged greatsword this time, but was a long, curved saber. Firo tried to use [Blink] to teleport away, but the attack landed before he actually teleported away.

  It didn’t actually kill him - instead, Firo was [Paralyzed] on the other end of the teleport. He let out a relieved sigh. “I’m not dead. Only maimed.” He joked.

  “You think that’s it?” [Scathach] said, as if she heard Firo’s joke. “I have two weapons, [Invoker]!” She called, and lined up to throw her spear at him. While [Paralyzed], Firo couldn’t take any actions, but he could move in a staggered step, as he locked up every few steps. And he was doing his best to hobble away from where she aimed.

  “I’ve got you covered!” Jazz said, sliding Aleister in place and putting up a guard to block the spear throw. When [Scathach] launched the weapon forward, the shadowy spear all but vanished, appearing to use the same teleport that [Scathach] herself kept using. “What?”

  “Ow.” Firo said, as the spear struck home, dropping him.

  “Nice try, though!” [Scathach] called, as she summoned the spear back to her hand in a puff of shadowy wisps.

  “Alright guys, I have an idea.” Marissa said, not entirely sure how to really convey what she wanted. “We’re gonna slow wipe this one. Fight it out, but rather than damage or whatever, can you try to, like…style on her? Do awesome shit? Show your cool side!” She said, trying to get the idea across.

  “Uh…sure, Bisky. Whatever you say.” Evan said.

  “I like where your head is at, Bisky.” Ash said.

  “Good, then do it.” She said, lining up another [Master’s Shot].

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