Marissa

  “Okay…” Marissa breathed out as the party tried to gather the information they could from the battle log from the last fight against [Scathach].

  “Well, at least some of us are easy to figure out. Firo and I can do damage when we land more skillful attacks. For me, that means landing critical hits and weak point shots.”

  “And for me, that means any spells that require timing and aiming,” Firo said. “Easy enough. Sorta.”

  “For me, it looks like any counter skill.” Evan said, as he presumably scrolled through the battle log as well. “It’s unfortunate that she’s so fucking unpredictable with her attacks.”

  “You’ll manage.” Marissa said, still looking through the list of damage trying to figure out exactly how Caoimhe and Nyx could deal damage.

  “My guess for me would be landing boosted Punishments,” Kieran said hesitantly. “It’s the one ability where a Tyrant can show some real skill expression. Otherwise, I’m mostly just here to hit the big damage buttons.”

  “Okay, se we need to be cognizant of spacing out and using our roots and knockdowns so you can land as many of them as possible.” Ash said.

  “Yes - there’s one,” Kieran nearly shouted. “I found one instance of good damage from me, and it was on a boosted Punishment. So that must be my goal.”

  “I have a bad feeling that I know what mine is going to be,” Nyx said, still scrolling.

  “Combo enders?” Firo guessed.

  “I’d bet, yeah.” Nyx agreed. “She has shown a couple times that she has a few long, stationary phases where she prepares the next attack, before teleporting away to use whatever skill. I bet I’m supposed to try to land my combo enders in those longer pauses, before she poofs.”

  “You think you can?” Evie asked.

  “Knowing that it’s my goal? Yeah, I think so.” Nyx chuckled. “Hilariously, knowing that we can really only do damage one or two ways each means we can focus solely on those strategies and kinda ignore everything else. It actually makes the playing part of this fight pretty mechanically simple.”

  Marissa snorted. “That’s part of what makes me worried. Knowing that I have so little to focus on, rotation-wise, makes me think that the fight is going to lean on tricky and precise mechanics.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Ash said. “From what we’ve seen so far, it feels more like a brute force fight. Or maybe more like something from a non-MMO action game.”

  “I can see that.” Nyx said.

  “She hasn’t been strictly following aggro or anything either,” Evan added.

  “True. It seems like she just decides to target whoever “impressed” her most recently,” Jazz said. “And I think we have yet to successfully block any of the attacks she’s tried to land so far.”

  “Which means what exactly?” Kieran asked. “We just do whatever we can and try to survive whatever happens afterward?”

  “...Yeah, actually, I think so.” Ash said. “Given what we’ve seen so far, I actually think that the move for this fight is not to play it like an MMO boss, but maybe more like a co-op action game with MMO-lite mechanics.”

  “Fuck it, it’s worth a try.” Evan said. “Does everyone have some idea as to what they’re doing?”

  “I don’t,” Jazz said. “War, and by extension Ebon, are maybe a little too straightforward for me to come up with anything that might work. It’s a flashy but otherwise simple and effective class that doesn’t have a lot of skill expression options.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Marissa began to scroll back through the battle log again, looking for at least one instance of Aleister dealing significant damage while thinking about what she knew of how Ebon plays.

  “I would probably guess Ebony Blast would be the key for your damage, right?” Evan asked.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. Ebon isn’t necessarily built around it, but a central mechanic for War as a whole is manipulating your HP and MP through taking and dealing damage. Ebony Blast is your big MP spender, right?”

  “It is,” Jazz confirmed. “I don’t usually use it much because there are more useful things to spend my MP on in most situations.”

  “Sure, but that’s because you favor party survivability over your damage,” Evan said.

  “I still can’t believe it, but he’s right.” Evie agreed. “Aleister, for all your constant battle hunger, you probably spend too many of your resources on defense.”

  “Found it,” Marissa said. “Aleister, you did hit with one Ebony Blast last pull, and got some damage out of it. So, yeah, there’s your goal.”

  “Playing around my MP management, then. Fair enough, I guess.” Jazz said with a sigh.

  “I think we’ve got our tasks laid out for us, then? Now we just need to kick shadow lady’s butt.” Kieran said.

  “Yup. Let’s get back in there and win this one.” Ash said and his clap came through the chat as well, as everyone began to wander toward the starting zone for the fight.

  Marissa followed, but as was her standard procedure at this point waited a moment just outside of the starting ring. “Last call?”

  “We good.” Kieran said, and received agreement all the way around.

  “Alright,” Marissa said, “just remember, our goal here is to survive while maximizing our personal goals.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jazz said, “Can we just pull already?”

  Marissa rolled her eyes but stepped into the circle to start the fight. [Scathach] went through her standard opening lines and animations while the party got into their assumed starting positions. While they hadn’t confirmed it, putting Fiona the closest to the boss seemed to be enough to get [Scathach] to leap to Fiona first.

  The boss did as expected, vanishing from her starting location and reappearing in front of Fiona with a puff of black wisps. Her spear came down on Fiona hard, but Fiona was able to [Perfect Block] the attack to launch a counter of her own. Even with the block though, the attack did a significant chunk of Fiona’s HP in damage.

  “Healers, I’m just gonna go full throttle. Sorry in advance.” Evan said, as he was no doubt planning to go entirely for [Perfect Blocks] instead of the safety of guaranteed damage reduction by holding the button instead.

  “”Fine. We need to make up for Evie and I not really doing damage here, probably.” Ash said. “We’ll keep you alive.”

  “Says you,” Evie scoffed. “I’m the one doing most of the heavy lifting-healing. But yeah, we got you.”

  Marissa worked her way through a reworked version of her opener, trying to keep an eye on the battle log as she launched attacks. Whenever she had [Master’s Shot] available, she did her best to lock in and land those hits perfectly, and the two she fired off in her opener were direct weak point hits.

  The rest of her opener didn’t seem to be doing much. She watched the damage numbers in the log pop up, but nothing came anywhere near her [Master’s Shot] damage. Even when she landed critical hits or headshots. It seemed like it needed to be [Seeker’s] actual [Weak Point] mechanic, which was either activated while charging her [Master’s Shot] or using her [Master’s Eye] buff, which gave her a six second window with an active [Weak Point] that she could target with any attack she had.

  Playing entirely around her [Master’s Shot] wasn’t entirely alien to her, given it was likely her best skill as a [Seeker], but it still felt off to practically ignore more than half of her kit. But they simply didn’t do anything.

  [Scathach] wasn’t taking the fight lying down, of course. While the party had seemed to more or less suss out their individual strategies, the boss went through her normal opening routine. She struck her weapons together like lighting a match, which exploded outward in her raid wide AoE. As the healers got everyone back into safe levels of HP, [Scathach’s] attacks pounded against Fiona’s shield.

  To Fiona’s credit, she was [Perfect Blocking] more often than not, though a few attacks did get through. Evie was on top of the damage, healing with skills that she didn’t normally use because she would be preoccupied with dealing whatever damage she could. But for this fight, those normally used skills did practically nothing.

  Evie’s open rotation allowed for her to pump out more targeted healing than normal, which kept Fiona healthy despite the near misses. Thanks to the massive boost in available healing, Fiona and Aleister probably wouldn’t even need to tank swap - at least because of mitigation as they previously thought, anyway. Given they weren't even sure they could swap anyway, not needing to was great news.

  But when [Scathach] wound up for her stunning blow, Fiona was ready. Focused more on [Perfect Blocking] that attack than any other in particular, Fiona timed it perfectly, firing back with a high-damage [Counter].

  “That’s the way!” [Scathach] shouted in response. The recoil animation from the [Perfect Block] also was long enough for Marissa to sneak in a [Master’s Shot] and for Firo to land a [Soul Shatter]. Unlike the previous pull, however, neither seemed to pull her attention.

  That exchange confirmed Aleister's idea for Firo, as he was evidently concerned he would pull [Scathach’s] attention with the [Soul Shatter]. He sighed in relief and said, “Fiona, keep landing those counters. Aleister was right - I think her aggro is decided by whoever is performing best.”

  “Ha!” Evan said, sounded absolutely jubilant. “Then Aegis is perfect for this! I can land counters all day!”

  Marissa found herself agreeing - [Aegis] would be able to hold [Scathach’s] attention easily, if only because of the relative ease of access to their “skillful play”.

  [Scathach] moved into her big ring attack, which the party easily got positioned for. The tanks took the initial hits with mitigation, blocking the damage for the rest of the party easily enough. As [Scathach] landed in the center of the arena after the attack, she turned right toward Fiona and began attacking again.

  With the party members knowing exactly how they each dealt damage now, they seemed to be making progress. Caoimhe’s [Punishments] were landing well, despite the boss not actually being affected by [Stuns] or [Knockdowns]. She had a passive buff called [Armor of Shadows] that made her immune to the effects of status, but not the status itself.

  In practice, it meant that whenever someone landed a [Stun], [Knockdown], or other similar effect, [Scathach] received the debuff as normal, and it showed on her status read out, but she didn’t receive the actual effect of being knocked down or stunned. Which was fine for Caoimhe, because she still got the damage bonus regardless.

  Nyx was having the hardest time of the DPS. Maneuvering into her big combo finishers - which were typically seven hits deep into her combo - was rough. [Scathach] did have long periods of being still that allowed her to get through multiple combo hits, but it required better positioning and timing than Nyx had probably realized. Unless she noticed real openings, she was stuck relying on combo skippers that gave her immediate access to later attacks in her combos, which had decent cooldowns attached.

  But she was getting damage out.

  [Scathach] went through another combo of attacks on Fiona - who managed to [Perfect Block] and [Counter] more than half of them - before moving into an attack the party had yet to see.

  “Alright, then. Let’s see you handle this!” She shouted and took one step back from Fiona, then held her spear up, the tip aimed directly at Fiona. As they had seen multiple times by now, wispy shadows gathered around the tip, and began to coalesce into a wide spear head.

  “Everyone get ready,” Ash called, but everyone in the party was as locked in on this fight as they had ever been.

  One side of [Scathach’s] spear head began to expand, and the shadows formed into a scythe-like blade extending on one side of the spear, while an axe head formed on the other. “Here I come!” She said brightly, entirely at odds with the sinister visage of a shadowy-cloaked, scythe-wielding fighter.

  Once again she puffed away to smoke. Evan’s game sense didn’t let him down, though, when he immediately spun around 180 degrees and blocked. [Scathach] had teleported behind Fiona, hovering a little off the ground, and her scythe struck against Fiona’s shield, the ting of a [Perfect Block] resounding around the arena.

  [Scathach] basically cheered, hovering just above Fiona’s head. “Yes!” She said, as she spun the scythe around in an mesmerizing flourish while floating a bit higher. The shadowy cloud around her gathered into wings behind her for just a moment before she plummeted back to the ground, trying to rend Fiona in two with the axe head on the back of the scythe.

  With the clear wind up, Fiona was able to time her [Perfect Guard] to intercept the attack, and on instinct blasted [Scathach] with [Countermeasure]. It turned out to be the right move, as Evie squeaked and scrambled to heal the nearly fatal blow that had left Fiona with double digit HP.

  “That was a buster, no doubt in my mind.” Ash said calmly while also throwing out heals to help Evie.

  “No shit?” Evie shot back.

  “Still standing after that?” [Scathach] marveled. “Impressive. I suppose I shall have to try harder then - do try to keep me interested.”

  Her nonchalance apparently triggered her daughter, who had been watching from outside the pasture’s fence. “Mother! They’re talented! Don’t kill them, please!” [Uathach] shouted.

  “Love that.” Nyx said wryly.

  “At least the game is warning us?” Firo chuckled.

  “Y’all, get ready. We win this one on this pull, you hear me?” Evan declared, “I can feel it.”

  “You sure that’s not the lack of sleep there, bud?” Kieran joked, but Evan seemed to wave it away.

  “Nah. We got this.”

  “Yeah, alright,” Marissa said, hoping that Evan was right. “Prove it to us, Fiona. Lead us to victory!”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Marissa bit her tongue. She would not berate him for calling her “ma’am”. Not right then, at least.