Nyxfall 7: The Veilbreakers-Chapter 67: Second Try At Grimhorn Den 3
With 5 minutes of rest, they were ready to do this. Kai stood up first, as always. One by one, his teammates did too, all standing in a circle.
"What’s the strategy?" Xterminate07 asked.
The mocking tone he had used before for the first boss was now gone. No one had made it to this gate with all 10 of their players intact in a team before. The defeat of the second mini-boss aside, there was a real chance they would give her a worthy fight and find out as much as possible about her. As a guild competing against the big names, this advantage could not be missed.
Kai looked around and said, "We have seen three of her attacks: the one which drains our stamina and mana, that one had a purple magic circle. The bone spike attack, which has no magic circle but the land vibrates for a few seconds before it happens. And the last is the black magic circle—anyone inside explodes in seconds."
"Yeah," the other guy from the Red Wolf Legion said, "We have reached here a few times. She always starts with that purple magic circle—it’s placed right at the entrance. The bone spike thing is random and too hard to notice with all the chaos going on, especially when we are stuck in that purple circle. And the black magic spell we rarely saw, but it comes after."
"Did any of you land any attack on her?" Kai asked.
"Her staff blocks any arrow shot towards her.. I did it from the front though," Silentmaw spoke for the first time since they had started the dungeon. Kai just nodded.
"We have to avoid the black magic circle at all costs. She starts chanting that one after we go in, so that gives us a few seconds to stop her," Kai said. "The second we are in, all of you grab onto me. All her attacks are land-based. I will launch all of us from the ceiling and we will jump her with all our skills. I don’t know if she has any more attacks—we will have to look out for that. The most important thing here is to never let her finish her chanting. If she finishes it, we are done. Understood?"
"Launch us from the ceiling? How?" Xterminate07 asked, confused.
"With my skill.." Kai replied simply and turned towards the giant wooden gate. "Ready?"
Everyone stepped beside him and nodded. "Let’s do this."
With that, Kai opened the gate and they went inside. The scenery changed and they spawned in the boss room, a bit far from the gate—which was closed now. This is what had happened last time too, so they were all expecting it.
The second Kai’s eyes focused, he immediately shot three arrows in succession right above the lanky, female, werewolf-like boss. It was a cave—the ceiling was made of dirt. All three of his arrows got stuck up there. In the next second, the purple magic circle was beneath their feet; everyone grabbed Kai from all places, and Kai did not waste a second before using the Godstep.
In the next second, they were falling from the ceiling right atop the lanky, robe-covered boss.
"Attack!" Kai shouted.
Everyone had their weapons out, quickly grasping their situation—They all launched their most common skills and landed on the boss one by one. Kai kept shooting arrow after arrow while he fell too. However, something was wrong—not a single attack was damaging the sly wolf. Kai used his bow to hit her as his turn came, but it went through her body like it was a holo projection.
Kai quickly landed on his feet, receiving 60 fall damage, and pulled out his sword, continuing the flurry of attacks on the lanky boss as others regained their balance and slowly joined him.
But still, not a single attack was going through. It was like she was not there at all—her sly, wolfish smile had disappeared though, and her chanting had stopped. After a few seconds of these useless attacks, Kai suddenly noticed the land beneath their feet starting to vibrate slightly. Kai immediately shouted,
"Spikes! Fall back!"
More than half of them made it, but still, Sherry and Mimi fell a bit short and were pierced by the sharp bone spikes. They were at near full health though, with their hunger bar perfectly full, and received 100 damage each before the spikes went back inside the ground.
Jumping back, Kai heard Shadra continuing her chanting, and he quickly ran around the spikes and launched sword slash after sword slash onto her—once again interrupting her chanting. This had to be her real body; otherwise, the skill wouldn’t get interrupted. Then this ethereal body had to be some kind of skill—was it time-limited? No, they were attacking for 2 minutes now. Something else.
"Xterminate!" Kai shouted, not stopping his attacks as others slowly joined in. "Look around, the skill must have some kill switch!"
Xterminate07 stopped coming to fight alongside others and hurriedly looked around—scanning the whole boss room with patient gaze, not missing a single detail. There it was, at the far end of the room, a giant head of some monstrous deity the lanky wolf must be a follower of. The mouth of the ugly face had a bright purple glowing orb.
Xterminate07 didn’t waste a single second and joined the fight as he shouted,
"Beside the exit gate, some purple orb is placed in the ugly statue.."
"Okay," Kai replied, speaking normally since everyone was nearby attacking together, "I am going there, you guys keep attacking."
"Go!" Bella and Silentmaw said at once while continuing their attacks.
Kai pulled back, shot an arrow towards the ugly statue, and used Godstep again. The second he grabbed the purple orb, suddenly the brightly lit boss room started shaking as Shadra shrieked loudly—forcing the attackers to stop and cover their ears against the sharp, annoying sound.
Kai understood it was some kind of defensive skill, and he hurriedly—after putting the orb in his storage—shot an arrow near the screaming Shadra, and the second she stopped—creating some distance between her and the attackers—Kai used the Godstep and stabbed her in the back.
She was about to continue her chanting but was rudely interrupted by him. Kai smiled, seeing the nice red -178 on her head. She only had 2500 HP. Weakling.
Kai did not stop at all and increased the speed of his attacks, going even beyond what a real martial arts skill allowed a player to reach in this game. A flurry of constant -180, -183, -196, -204 started to appear and looked like they were stuck above Shadra’s head. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Soon Bella, Prince, Zayden, the Demon guy, and even Xterminate07 placed themselves all around Shadra and pummeled her lanky ass to oblivion. She could only use her staff to parry some attacks or could use the spike attack to interrupt the constant attacks on her, but Kai’s senses—honed from countless similar battles where even a minute change could prove the difference between life and death—could pick up every time the spike attack was about to be launched and give a last-second warning.
A few times some of them got injured, not being able to react fast enough, but soon everyone got used to it, and those who couldn’t just started to stay a bit behind and use their ranged attacks.
Kai expected her to have some kind of skill when she went below 20% HP in red health, but the skill she launched was actually the same purple magic circle one—this one, however, spammed three of them together all around her so the attackers would run out of mana and stamina before finishing her off.
Kai, however, just used another Godstep, grabbing the boss along with a few frontline damage dealers and got outside the enormous magic effect area—continuing the attacks relentlessly. The magic circles only took their MP and stamina and dealt no damage, and even that only if they tried to move out of it—if they just stayed there standing, it would only slowly drain the MP.
Before anyone’s MP went below 5, the skill or spell ended and they rushed towards the boss to have their vengeance.
Silentmaw had not stopped attacking even when she was inside the purple magic circle. That was a benefit of being an archer.
In the next couple of minutes, Shadra started to appear as a very boring boss to Kai. If the trick to dealing with her was revealed, any average team could defeat her easily. Of course, some skills were needed, but the HP of this miniboss was so low and her attacks so weak—it wasn’t that hard to deal with her.
If they didn’t let her cast that black magic circle, all her other attacks were very basic. Of course, one had to go through all her fucked up spells to reach the purple orb. At last, Shadra died and turned into a pile of loot, the empty giant room finally returning to peace.
