DD 301 Ch 13

"Boss time!" Harley said, far too chipper, as our five parties came to a stop in front of the pair of large bronze doors. Then she plopped herself down to camp.

Her party had moved in our wake, killing monsters, but generally taking it easier.

Ah. Now her excitement made sense. It wasn’t time for her to do the boss, but gossip outside the doors while a few other groups went first.

Helen had beaten our larger group of several parties there and was waiting by the door, clearly set to enter first. 

"We'll take it. If you'd like to watch, you can come in. Just don't disturb us," Helen told us. 

I rolled my eyes. "Don't get too cocky now. Otherwise, that rooster's probably going to set you straight." I saw inside the door and had already guessed it would be something like what we had been dealing with on the floors up till now. 

Sure enough, the boss was a much larger version of the birds we'd been facing throughout the floor, only it had three heads, with different color crests on each of them. One red, one green, and the other blue. 

Helen's group took center stage as her group walked past the bronze doors, ready to take on the boss, and we all could do little but watch as they closed behind them. We would wait and be ready to run in and cast revives as needed.

"I'm still frustrated that Crimson hasn't clarified what the summer assignment was," Candice said as she leaned by the doors. 

"Candice, I hate to break it to you, but there was no summer assignment." I replied.

The blonde blinked at me. "But Crimson said..."

Could this woman not understand that Crimson had been lying?

"Crimson lied so she could punish us, and by punishing us she got an excuse to leave and get out from under the headmistress, who then appeared at the Haylon building in Star City as a way to prove to Crimson that she couldn't escape. It’s nearly a game between them.”

I watched the blonde and several of the others do the mental gymnastics. 

"So there was no homework? We were punished for nothing?" Kendra asked. 

"No, you were going to be punished regardless," I air quoted 'punished' because really it was just another day of training with Crimson. "However, if it's punishment instead of classes, then Crimson could ditch the college campus. It's still punishment because then otherwise Crimson wouldn't have been able to make us train on the first day of class. She would have had to read a syllabus or some other stupid shit and then just make us train double the next day." 

"Oh, well, when you put it that way, I would almost rather getting 'punished' as it were," Candice said after a moment of thought. 

"Uh yeah, trust me. After two years of her being my teacher and then a summer training with her, I understand well. She can be pretty harsh and she does mostly what she wants. At the end of the day, Crimson really is doing her best to turn us into a powerful fighting force." I told them, genuinely appreciating all Crimson put into our learnings.

We had just started talking only for the bronze doors to swing open. One remaining member of Helen's party, Dolly the sadistic, the masochistic healer, threw herself out the door as an explosion rocked the boss room. 

We all blinked in surprise.

"Already?" I asked.

Dolly huffed, patting off her robe. "Well, you can go next if you think it's that easy," she snapped at me, only for Helen to come limping out, the boss having disappeared the moment the door was open. 

"I’ll get it next time," Helen said, glaring at me as if daring me to say otherwise.

"I'm sure you will. Any advice for those of us that come next?” I pressed.

“Green head does poison, blue head does ice, red head does fire, and it should be noted that the poison is highly combustible. If there's any still floating in the air when the red breath goes off, the whole room explodes." Helen told us all.

I whistled. "Thanks for the tip." It was definitely one of those mechanics you had to learn the hard way. Thankfully Helen and her group fell on that particular grenade. Though, she didn’t explain the rest, I assumed it would become apparent.

My party moved into the room with confidence, Felin closing the door behind us. 

"Thoughts?" Des asked as the boss reappeared on the far side of the room. Much like the dungeon floor before it, the boss room was a grassy forest, and the boss towered over the few trees that existed. Though it was as if they were designed to be backdrops, growing against the walls only.

Then again, I wasn’t sure the plants in the dungeon actually grew.

"My guess is we have to control the order of events," I said, glancing at the other two heads. "So, we have poison, fire and ice." I rubbed my chin, assuming they all interacted together. "If fire interacts with poison perhaps they all interact. Then maybe if we get the frost breath and then the fire breath, it'll unthaw us," I mused aloud. 

"Nothing better than trying it first," Penny pointed out. "But if we're going to use the fire to thaw, that means there can't be any poison still lingering in the air. Or maybe the ice will take the poison out of the air?" 

I nodded at her assessment. "I’m not sure exactly how it’ll work. Taking all three back to back sounds hard as well. So, we'll focus on controlling the poison head. Anyone else have thoughts?" I glanced around at the others and noticed they were ready to fight, not plan.

Drawing my two blades, I nodded to Penny. "You're up." 

Our frost knight smirked, rushing into the fight. Penny was a solid tank, and when a monster wouldn't pay attention to her, she had the added benefit of slowing and controlling it considerably with her frost abilities. However, the one flaw baked into her class was a lack of movement abilities, something we would have to make up for her through buying skills.

Yet, thus far she hadn’t picked anything up. Movement abilities were prized possessions.

I pushed those thoughts for the future aside as the boss turned its attention on all of us, all three heads squawking loudly before pecking at Penny in quick succession. I raced up behind her, but didn't get behind the monster as six serpentine tails snapped at us as the monster's front half twisted and turned with its attacks.

The boss had to be twenty feet tall and each time it attacked with the side two heads it put its whole torso into the attack, making its tails wag back and forth.

I unleashed my abilities in a rapid fire, one after the other. After the attacks, the skills went on a cooldown, and I put dents in the monster's health as purple lightning began to race up my arms. I had [Dark Blades] active on my weapons as I leaned further into my hits, dealing magic damage at high speeds. It added a flat damage boost to each of my attacks, dealing shadow damage and with [Liminal Speed] which vastly increasing the speed of my attacks but doing nothing for my cooldowns. It was a wonderful multiplier for my strongest ability. 

I focused on keeping my martial form tight and controlled, my attacks coming as fast as possible while also staying out of the way of six snapping jaws and letting Penny worry about the rooster heads.

After a brief and basic start to the fight, the boss flapped its wings and took flight, throwing itself across the room before all three heads began opening up with magic smoldering inside of them. 

"'Ken, poison!' Penny shouted, even as everyone else easily pivoted to its new location. Des and Felin just turned and kept up their ranged attacks.

I rushed past Des, Charlotte, and Felin, weaving under dark bolts of magic, bolts of lightning, and stormy balls of thunder and wind. I stepped before all three of the heads and activated [Earth Stomp], hoping the stun would do something.

However, my hope was in vain. The boss didn't so much as flinch under my stun.

Trying a new tactic, I began slamming my swords into its green-crested head. Bun Bun was there beside me a moment later, squeaking up a ball of fluffy fury. He jumped atop the head and began biting and scratching it for all he was worth. Despite our combined efforts, the balls of magic in each of the mouths did not stop. However, it was clear that the gathering of magic around the poison had slowed. 

Compared to the other two, Penny and I switch hit the fire one. She didn't hesitate or ask for an explanation that could wait till later. My party had implicit trust in each other. Penny switched with me, and Des shouted over the group, "Do you want us to switch?" 

"Stick on the poison one," I said, going with my gut feeling. Des' magic continued to slam into the chicken. Meanwhile, the serpentine tails snapped at Penny and I as we tried to attack one of the heads on the outside. Perhaps next time we could focus on the poison in the center while Des and Felin focused on the fire. But that would come later. 

The ice attack came out first. The beam was wide and flat, washing across the room and sending a sudden chill through every inch of my body.

I shivered, feeling some of my skin crack and bleed under the icy assault. I glanced at the other two heads, seeing the one gathering fire still brighter than the green.

But now, the blue-crested head turned and began pecking at Penny as if she was a choice meal for the massive chicken. 

Penny stopped helping me on the fire head and pivoted to protect herself, using her sword as best as she could to stop and blunt the attacks across the frost armor crawling over her shoulders and down her chest, protecting her from the boss's attacks. 

"Hold on," I gritted my teeth through the frosty pain. The chill was so bad that even with [Liminal Speed], I was nearly frozen in place.

Yet, when the ball of fire and the red-crested head had reached its own crescendo fire blasted out a second later. It washed through the hole room filling it with flickering flames.

This time, I activated [Shadow Phase] and braced myself against the oncoming heat. The attack hadn’t been explosive so much as washed fire over the room. 

I had just been freezing, and now it felt like I was thrown into the heart of a volcano as it ripped away the freezing cold, warming me up and going far past comfortable. The temperature blasting me rapidly reached boiling hot, but the good side was that my movements had been freed up.

Charlotte and Felin were both throwing as much healing around as they could. Penny had thrown herself between the fire and the ranged group, doing her best impression of a frozen wall, while Des also used an ability to protect herself. 

After a long and dangerous moment, the fire stopped. For a brief pause, the glowing green orb in the last mount sputtered as it spun up to a full-throated blast like the other two.

I hesitated in my next decision. I could attack it and slow it down further, however, that could always risk that this blast would last until the next round, or perhaps more fire would ignite the poison gas. In the end, I continued my damage, but I began focusing on the two now active heads.

Half because I couldn’t ignore them as the red and the blue heads  began to peck at me. For the brief moment that Penny was out of range they had switched to me, the boss apparently rooted in place for now.

Our tank rushed back to get herself between me and any danger. Penny's sword smacked away one of the boss's heads bent on pecking a hole through my shoulder, only to roll around me and strike the other way. 

"Hey, can you shift off to the side and deal with the serpents? It's too hard to fight around you," she said as we dodged another barrage of attacks. 

"Aye aye, Captain," I joked, slipping around the heads before poison miasma rushed out of the central head.

The deep green poison filled the room with a dense fog. It sat in the air heavy and dangerous.

The first breath I took afterwards made my lungs burn painfully. I tried to activate absorb to see if it would stop the poison.

Unfortunately, this one was not going to be that easy. While a small wisp of green was sucked into my hand, it did little for the massive amount that lingered in the air. 

I cast a glance over my shoulder to see how Charlotte was faring.

Our healer had sweat beating down the side of her face as she launched heal after heal onto our party without a second thought as to her own situation. 

She was giving it her all and I would too, resetting myself for the next onslaught.

Even from afar, I could see the pain etched on Charlotte’s face as she struggled to cast her spells. Unfortunately, I had no healing abilities of my own. The spell I had borrowed from Charlotte was Revive, which in my opinion, was an absolute necessity for most situations. 

However, it seemed that Felin was more than capable. She swung her spear around, creating a swirl of wind that kept the miasma at bay. She began casting what I could only assume was some sort of cleanse on Charlotte. As I watched, the pain faded from the druid's face, and I found it easing a stress inside of me as well. 

I refocused my attention on fighting the boss. Liminal speed sent purple lightning crackling down my arms, my swords quickly but surely carving the monster apart. I couldn't let up for a second. The first round of breaths had put a significant toll on our support. The job of the damage dealers was to give the healers relief by finishing the fight as quickly as possible. 

I unleashed everything I had into the chicken, even as the serpentine tails struck at me from multiple angles. Thankfully, [Liminal Speed] had increased my agility to the point where it was simple for me to swing around and dodge them by the dozen.

The boss flew again, landing on the other side of the room and opening all three mouths.

I launched myself across the room using [Shadow Ambush] to appear behind the boss. I immediately used [Dodge] as all six serpentine tails struck at me at once. For a single dangerous moment, I thought it was about to end rather poorly, but I kept dodging their attacks while maintaining my own.

The cycle repeated again, but it wouldn’t last much longer. Over half its health was gone and I was only gaining steam.

"Don't give up. One more push," I encouraged them.

But then the chicken's heads fell down low as it raised its squirming, slithering tails high above, where they began snapping at Penny and I at a rapid pace. The feathers gave way to scales underneath. It seemed the serpent half was overtaking the chicken, the boss transforming before our eyes.

Penny's sword cleaved through one of the serpentine heads, only for two more to take its place.

As soon as the transformation finished, all of the serpentine heads opened their maws and began the same magical breath we had seen from the chicken heads, emanating from each. 

I swung my blades and, four strokes later, managed to sever a head pulsing with green magic, only for two more to regrow and begin their cast again.

"It's a DPS race," Penny and I said at the same moment. I caught her eyes and smirked. "Focus on the frost ones. If that goes off, I'm afraid this is all over. As for me, I will keep the poison ones at bay."

"Not the fire?" Penny asked. 

"No, the fire can go off all it wants," I said, "that's just damage. And I think Charlotte can handle that." I said loud enough for our healer to overhear. 

"I can heal damage just fine. But if I'm too frozen to cast spells, we're going to have a real problem," Charlotte shouted as we got to work.

We were on the same wavelength. While the frost had been the least dangerous in the first phase, it was the most dangerous in this one. We couldn’t afford to be frozen and slow our damage down now.

Thankfully, DPS checks were my specialty. My [Liminal Speed] stacks were already built so high that my swords flashed faster and faster, with blinding speed as I severed poison-spewing heads one after the other.

The mouths containing fire washed out one after the other while both the frost and the poison were contained, each head being killed in order so that none of them went off.

In what seemed like no time at all, the boss exploded into black smoke and loot thunked on the ground.

I blew out a breath and stepped back from the smoke instinctually from all of our regimented training. I waved my hand and my sword, trying to clear the smoke a little faster. 

The door to the boss room opened up and Helen's head was the first one through. She scowled as she saw that we had defeated the boss. "I suppose going in with a little information is helpful," she scowled.

"Thanks for that." I told her. “Happy to give a bit in return. Like you said, the boss has three heads. He periodically tries to cast fire, ice, and poison. Based on how much you damage each head delays the attacks, you want them to go off in frost, fire, and then poison. At least that’s what we did.”

“Is the poison cloud then gone for the next round?" Helen asked as the rest of the classroom hedged their way in and listened to our conversation. 

"Yeah, by the time the next round goes off, the poison was gone. And then there's one final phase where those snake tails take over and it becomes more of what you'd consider a hydra. Every time you cut off a head, another one spawns and all the heads do is try and cast the three magic attacks." I told them.

Immediately, several people in the class understood what to do, Candice speaking up first. "If the ice freezes you, then you can't let that go off at all. Even if it's a lesser version, that's just going to hurt your output on a DPS check. So you either then have to choose to suppress the fire or the poison, depending on what your group is more comfortable with - the damage over time or the explosive fire damage.”

Meanwhile, Felin was busy picking up several pieces of loot, one of which was clearly a packet of meat that she slipped into Charlotte's hands. Then she picked up the next piece of loot, holding a headdress with red, blue, and green feathers dancing off of it. Felin made a face as she checked it with her CID. "This thing is ugly," she growled at it. "But its stats are too good." She seemed torn. 

"Can I see?"  I asked.

She threw the headdress at me. I inspected it, and sure enough, it was perfect for Felin. It enhanced ice, fire, and poison all to very small degrees while giving caster stats in the same item. Given that Felin used ice amongst our group, it was hers and I held it back out.

"I don't want this," Felin took it, but leaned away from it like it stank. "Leah, it gives you bonuses to ice. Do you want it?" Felin waggled the headdress over to the mage of Kindra's group.

"I mean, it is good." Leah hesitated, glancing at the headdress. It was, quite frankly, hideous. And, given it had three very prominent colors on it, it was going to be almost impossible to match to an outfit. This would not be the first time I had witnessed my classmates struggling with gear that had good stats, but terrible optics. 

“Just put it on.” I grabbed it from Felin's hands, and then slapped it over her head. Felin growled at me. "It covers my ears. I can only do headbands." She threw it away from herself, and towards Thea.

Who, in reaction, snatched it out of the air, before suddenly looking like she was stuck with this particular hot potato for the moment.