Nyxfall 7: The Veilbreakers-Chapter 66: Second Try At Grimhorn Den 2
They entered the first boss room. Kai and the archer lady beside him had already started burying arrows inside the boss from afar as the others took their place in the formation around the boss. Then Kai left the archer and quickly joined in with his sword.
He had dealt the highest damage, so the aggro was on him, and it stayed consistently on him as everyone launched their attacks on the boss. Bella, with her massive red fists, punched Vurkrash again and again, sneakily launching her attack right as Vurkrash was about to attack or was defending from Kai’s relentless sword attacks. Prince was right beside her and did the same. His mom’s attacks were still not as refined, and despite hitting the boss each time, she did not aim at the vital places or the places which restrained Vurkrash’s huge claws.
They successfully backed away each time the giant bear tried to grab one of them. In that, Xterminate07’s green vine skill was really useful, as the vines could physically restrain the bear for a second, giving the target player an extra second to react and get away. The cyan devil with four arms was also punching like a madman, making up for his low punch damage with more fists at once—Guy too seemed to have learned a martial arts skill like Zayden.
Soon, Vurkrash went below 75% HP and the Whelps were summoned. The others turned around and formed a circle as Kai and the frontline fighters just kept damaging the boss without even looking back.
Kai had noticed the Red Wolf guys looking at him with side-eyes each time he left a flurry of high -180, -178, -203, -194 like damages whenever he got an opening with the bear boss’s wild attacks and huge body. It wasn’t that his damage was high—it was just that consistently dealing such powerful damage at the most perfect places on the boss’s body for maximum damage was the eye-catching thing.
To the veteran VR gamers, it was unmistakably a sign of a true expert. When they noticed how he wasn’t even using a single skill with the sword for added damage, it both confused them and left them in awe.
Kai himself wanted to have a skill like Mimi’s flaming sword or his mother’s purple energy. Even the Red Wolf leader was using a weapon-enhancing skill that coated his sword dark green and left bonus damage on Vurkrash with each hit. But Kai already had all three skill slots full with his other skills and had no room for any skill like those. He would have to go past level 35 and unlock the fourth skill slot to have this one always-active skill.
The boss was easy to deal with, as Kai had told his team the first time they faced the guy. Even after going berserk, Vurkrash was no match for top fighters like their frontline players. It went so smoothly that, in the whole fight, they took only 600 damage from the boss combined, while they killed the boss with over 3500 HP and the 90 Whelps with 200 HP each effortlessly.
They healed up. Kai picked up the loot—with newfound value behind the in-game items, Kai did not hog up all the things, and all the compatible classes rolled for the weapons and equipment while the items were divided equally.
His mother and Mimi were both new to the game and always asked what they should do with this and that, or what weapons were good for them—basically giving every other thing to Kai to keep in his storage chests or use as he pleased. He always provided them the best weapons and equipment, though, even if they didn’t ask. They were his family, after all. For others, he provided advice but did not meddle much afterward.
The Red Wolf guys thought that with so many players from Kai’s own team, they would get all the good things, but Kai didn’t care for such pettiness and divided all things equally. Sometimes even rewarding a weapon to someone who clearly was the best fit for it without any rolls, with others’ agreement, of course.
The second part of the dungeon started with the same annoying Mutated Horn Creepers and Grimhorn Stalkers. The hidden bugs and creepy wolves were the monsters most dungeon-diving teams in Grimhorn received the biggest damage from to their players, and used up their healing/food supplies. Kai kept the poison resistance potions ready but did not give them to anyone. The effects of getting poisoned were pretty visible, with players’ faces getting slightly purple—he could give the potion afterward. The reason was simple: Kai did not want to reveal he had a lot of them because he was the creator.
A few he could pass on as bought from the online shop—that was in case anyone recognized his listings at all. The chances were slim, but Kai did not want to take any risks, especially when Beyonders were involved in this shit. Potions were items that could be used on others without giving them to them. There were already healing potions being sold in Somnium’s town market, but they were too expensive to use as an everyday item yet, costing more than 5–20 golds.
Kai knew the formula for the healing potion but only with selected ingredients. He had not found those in the market, not that he had looked for them with that much focus.
Still, reapplying the crippling oil on all their weapons and lighting some of the torches they had bought, they braved forward. Fire worked the best, the others had found out after asking around or from their own failures. Kai also had blinding arrows—if things were too dire, he didn’t mind using them. He could always say it was his skill.
Mimi’s ability was the most useful in this regard as she just intensified her flaming sword, the flames burning higher and brighter than the torches, saving them the cost of using more of them. With the way more bright and the team more prepared, it should be at least somewhat better than the last time.
Kai changed to his bow and shot anything that moved even slightly in the brighter light. The bones, which were the roots going all around the giant cave in this second part, hid the most creepers on ceilings and the side walls. Kai shot down as many as he could. He had to deliver two arrows to finish them, though, which delayed things where a whole lot came at once. The archer lady beside him with the tag of SilentMaw was also killing three out of five creepers she shot towards. Even Sherry, with better aim than last time, was doing much better.
The Stalkers, Kai just used his sword to deal with, pulling it out of his scabbard was much faster than taking it out of his inventory—it was a worthy purchase.
They barely went on for five minutes, being on high alert and killing Creepers right as they came, when Jor got stung with the poison, his health being chipped away. Kai immediately moved near him and gave him a sip of a potion—the effect of the poison quickly subsided in a second under everyone’s wide eyes. Especially the Red Wolf guys.
"What in the hell is that?" Xterminate07 asked instantly.
"Antidote for the poison, bought it online before coming," Kai replied nonchalantly.
The three exchanged glances as if they had just learned the "Secret" of why Kai was so confident about clearing the second boss.
Every 5–7 minutes, at least one of them was getting poisoned by the sting or the poison cloud left behind by the Creepers as they died, leaving behind a poison cloud. Kai quickly gave them the poison resistance potion and they were good as new. The Creeper poison had a DOT(Damage Over Time) effect, but with his potions, the damage wasn’t even 30–50 HP before the poison was gone.
This stage was clearly made for players to exhaust their food and healing items. Just having this potion saved them the trouble of eating constantly and regenerating HP constantly.
More annoying than the Creepers had now become the Stalkers that left behind a bleed effect, jumping to attack from the shadows—another DOT attack. These motherfuckers were even teleporting, so they only had seconds to react before the attack came. Kai and SilentMaw beside him constantly alerted others as they had the full view of everyone’s backs. They immediately launched arrows to deal damage onto the elusive dark wolves with big fangs so the person had to deliver a few attacks and the Stalker was dead.
At last, after 50 minutes of constant mental strain from fighting, they finally reached the gate of the second boss, Shadra—the Spirit Twister.
They could rest here for a while, which was quite necessary as once they killed the last of the mobs, everyone just collapsed near the brightly lit giant wooden gate. The length of the path was the same as before, which they passed in less than 15 minutes to reach the first boss, but this one took 50 minutes—that alone said how fucked up this part of the dungeon for the beginner players was.
