DD 204 Ch 11

Several days later, with plenty of experience piled on from slaughtering zombies, my party found ourselves back in the boss room on the 50th floor. We had encountered more Orkai and maintained a passing friendliness with them, but we hadn't gleaned any information about the boss. And even if they had provided some, I was not particularly trusting when diving the dungeon.

We were going to figure the boss out for ourselves. 

The boss room contained a large crypt and a not-so-large hooded figure stood in front of it, kneeling with a lantern dangling from a pole next to him. From that lantern spilled not light, but a ghostly mist that spread around him and onto the floor. It was almost as if that singular lantern was creating the mist for all five floors of the dungeon the way it merged with the blanket of mist on the ground, all moving away from him.

He was ‘The Cryptkeeper’ according to my CID and level 50.

I licked my lips and turned to my party. "All right, we're going to take this slow, and we're going to take this carefully. Charlotte, you are to hug the door like it is your best friend.”

The cute druid snapped an even more adorable salute. "On it.”

“Felin, you are in the back with Charlotte and Des. Protect them as long as you can. If something rushes Charlotte you prioritize shielding her. If she goes down, you bounce out the doors and reset this. Penny, you and I are going to go up and see just what this boss has to offer. We don't know what we are up against yet, so we're going to play safe. The goal is survival. We can always pick up damage if it turns out to be easier than we expect." I instructed.

Penny nodded. Nothing I had said was surprising. It was a common tactic for exploring a new boss for the first time. Healers stayed by the door in case they need to escape and revive the rest of the party. 

"Call out what you see. Penny, you're up." Excitement coursed through me as we were about to kick off the fight.

The frost knight spun her sword off her shoulder, swinging it in a few looping passes. She picked up steam like a train leaving the station and charged towards the boss. The boss didn't even react until she was almost on top of him, standing up slowly like an old man, using the lantern and the pole as a crutch. 

"Who disturbs my rest?" the cryptkeeper moaned in a way that echoed through the entire room and reverberated down to my very soul. 

Penny cut a crystal blue slash through the air and thrust into the boss as he was getting up and ready to fight.

Her sword barely scratched the higher level boss as he waved the lantern about. "Trespassers need to beware of the things that lurk beneath the ground." 

As if his warning wasn't clear enough, decrepit hands shot free of the soil, reaching for Penny’s ankles.

I danced back. The ones that grabbed me broke off with a strong step away. "They break if you move," I shouted. 

"You can't stand still," Des said as she began walking back and forth. "It seems if you stay still, more hands come up to grab you." 

I paused, testing the theory for myself and stood still hacking at the boss. True to Des' words, first one, then two of the zombie limbs latched onto my legs as the third tried to take hold.

As the third tried to take hold, I danced away, breaking off the first two. However, it was like walking through mud for those two steps.

"Just stay moving. That's easy enough," I said, though that was perhaps only true for Penny and I who were often moving anyway.

The other three cast their spells far slower as they were forced to split their concentration between moving and casting. 

The boss waved the lantern. "Those who trespass must be banished." This time, four ghostly globes shot out of the lantern, and we all knew instinctively what to do.

We had learned by now that when a boss shoots out multiple objects, there was no use fighting them. The goal was to keep from getting hit.

Des and Felin danced around to avoid one of the globes, splitting themselves up, while Penny and I simply stuck to the boss. ……

The orbs landed amid the mist where they began to crescendo, light building and the intensity of the mist swirling grew. The boss smashed his pole on the ground, and zombies poured out of the crypt behind him. 

"Fuck, I'm in a bad position," Penny called out, running around one of the orbs, as the zombies all made a beeline for Charlotte. 

"Felin, slow him down!" I shouted, only for a gust of wind from the Nekorian to pick up the front few zombies and toss them back into the crowd. I'd spoken about going slow on this one before, but given that the boss himself didn't seem to be doing much, I leaned into my damage as [Liminal Speed] began to gain stacks. 

[Dark Strike] seemed to do nothing to this boss. I had noticed the bigger zombies appeared to be resistant to shadow damage; it seemed the boss was the same. But [Triple Breach] worked wonderfully against him. My stacks began to accelerate as they built upon one another. 

I heard the others shouting behind me about picking up the zombies as the spheres all exploded, the mist spilling out everywhere and inching higher in the room until it settled. The mist had gone from a foot off of the floor to multiple feet. It now moved all the way up past my knees.

My eyes opened wide at the implications. If we let too many rounds of those orbs explode, the mist would quickly go all the way up to our eyes. That would be, in short, a death sentence. 

Fighting blind wasn't something many people practiced, and it certainly wasn't something we could all do while also avoiding monsters or the next explosive spheres of mist.

That knowledge only redoubled my resolve to focus on my own damage, lightning building along my forearms in greater and greater currents, the speed picking up even further. 

Somewhere in focusing on my DPS, I'd forgotten to pay attention to the boss. He'd been rather idle casting abilities, so when he turned and swung his staff at me for the first time, I barely ducked out of the way with a roll where I came back to my feet on his other side.

Wanting to keep stacking, I didn't pause my attacks. My two swords blurred in front of me as I cut into him with renewed vigor.

“Careful Ken!” Penny shouted.

"Focus on the zombies," I shouted, a chuckle on my lips. "He's got a soft enrage. Notice the mist?" I pointed down. 

"Kind of hard to miss," Des said, still sidestepping back and forth like she was doing a lazy dance, all the while throwing curses and balls of green fire. She'd switched away from her shadow bolts, no doubt she’d also realized the shadow magic was not very effective on this type of monster.

Penny came back around, passing a trail of zombies by the boss and within my range. I used cleave and blade of knives to do a quick round of damage on them but waved Penny on. 

"Just keep kiting the adds. I can deal with the boss. We'll manage it like we did the big zombies of the prior floors." I called out.

Penny nodded but came back around anyway. As she stabbed the boss, a patch of frost appeared and weakened his armor.

"That debuff is worth probably more than my damage," Penny chuckled and carried her growing pack of zombies past me. The rest of my group seemed to have gotten in a good rhythm of staying moving, kiting the zombies and then focusing on damaging the boss. 

Charlotte was tossing out heals. Even a few trickled on me.

I frowned, trying to figure out what was needing healing. All I could piece together was that the grasping hands coming from the ground were leaving small scratches along my legs, or perhaps it was coming from the mist.

Deciding there was no immediate threat, I focused on damaging the boss. At this point, [Liminal Speed] had multiplied my damage several times over and the boss was looking worse for wear.

His health was noticeably going down with every second that passed. When his health hit 25%, he reached up and ripped off his cloak. I prepared for the next battle sequence, whatever it might be.

Glowing ghostly eyes on a skeleton head greeted me as he roared and all of his abilities happened together. He began swinging at me and with each swing, another globe of agitating mist shot off into the distance. Zombies stopped spawning in a group and started coming out in a slow trickle. Meanwhile, the grasping hands evolved and a pair that grabbed from my left leg solidified into another zombie as it pulled itself free. 

"Everyone but Ken, collapse on me!" Penny shouted. She had to have 50 to 60 zombies all trailing after her in a stumbling mess that was threatening to get so large that she couldn't kite them anymore. As the number of stragglers trailed on, it was less a small clump and more a smear of monsters across the room. 

Charlotte hesitated by the door, unsure whether or not to rush to Penny like she called for or stay ready to bail. Felin and Des had no problem running to the tank while casting their abilities. 

"Bun Bun, get anything off Charlotte and run it to Penny," I shouted in the room and leaned into my damage even further. I wasn't sure if this boss had mana. Most didn't need the resource technically to cast, but it still existed. Sadly, I hadn't prepared for my [Mana Implostion] and I hadn't used Shadow Limb since he was resistant to shadow damage, which just left me staring at the cooldown for [Triple Breach]. 

My next burst of damage saw his health drop from 25 to 20 to 15 and then 10 as [Triple Breach] was ready again. I unloaded on the boss as several more agitated orbs of fog exploded and the mist reached all the way up to my chest. 

I activated the second phase of [Liminal Speed], which I'd begun calling [Liminal Space]. The world around me fragmented, shattering in a perfect circle around me and the boss who remained perfectly still, yet I was able to move freely. All of my cooldowns were locked where they had been when I activated [Liminal Space].

I was left with the ability to hack away to my heart's content.

My stacks of [Liminal Speed], however, dropped rapidly, draining away along with the boss's health. It ticked down all the way from 5% to 4%, and finally to 1%.

[Liminal Space] shattered and as soon as it did, lightning from Felin, green fire from Des, and even a bolt of swirling storm from Charlotte hit the boss, pushing past that final one percent.

The boss screamed, dropping his staff. The lantern shattered on the ground as he exploded into black smoke and the fog receded from the room. 

Charlotte stood still, spamming heals on all of us before dipping her head in apology. "I'm sorry I didn't listen, Penny. Staying by the door for the first attempt felt more important."

"No, no, you're fine," Penny waved a hand. "I made the call, but you definitely made the right decision. I was a little in the moment as we were going to one shot it."

"It was the right call,” Des sided with Penny.

I tried to settle the discussion, "But I also think Charlotte's order to stay by the entrance supersedes a call in the moment. Besides, we had Bun-Bun to help. Right little guy?" He huffed and turned away from me. 

"Who knows, if the boss would have done some 10% explosion or something that we wouldn't know how to deal with, we would have been happy for somebody to revive us. I think especially for any first attempts at a boss, Charlotte staying by the door is more important than all the other calls we make." I glanced around and everyone seemed comfortable with that boundary, nodding. "Good. Let's see what we got."

I picked up a few pieces of loot that had come from the boss. At level 50, most of it was probably going to be too high level for us. We were all still at 43, even if these last couple days had pushed most of us fairly close to 44. Not to mention, we all had raid level gear from level 40. It was high quality gear that would last us a good while. 

"That looks weird," Des said, taking the shroud and putting it over her head like a bridal veil. "Who uses gear like this?" She waved around blindly.

"It's definitely more thematic than functional," Penny agreed.

"Women's clothes in a nutshell." Des tossed it into her CID. "We'll just sell it unless you want to wear it, Ken," Des offered with a giant smirk. 

"I'll pass. Besides, I have no interest in your caster gear," I made a face. 

"Oh, you love my caster gear. Especially when I use it to help you with all sorts of things," Des had a suggestive smile on her face before she licked her lips and bounced her eyebrows. 

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I said, looking away. 

"Uh-huh, you don't get to play innocent. The time for that is long gone," she wagged a finger at me. 

"How about we go look at the next safe zone?" Penny sounded a little uncomfortable with our flirting. 

"Yeah, of course," I gestured for Penny to go ahead.

The rest of the loot from the boss had been simple items. The ghostly veil was the only rare item.

Penny led us down the steps, opening up into a safe zone below. This one was a wide open field. A few camps were set up inside.

I noticed at least a few big green Orkai walking around. They were hard to miss. Otherwise, to my surprise, there were also a few Nekorians about. 

But first, before we did anything else, I activated Eyes of Wisdom, asking the ability which direction we needed to go to find Alice.

A blue line lit up on the ground, trailing away back up the dungeon.

I gestured at the entrance.

The rest of my group grumbled in agreement. As much as we wanted to, pushing as far down as we did was only successful because the zombies were so slow. If they had been anything faster, we probably wouldn't have made it down nearly as easily as we had been able to progress. 

"Are we camping to rest?" Penny asked, uncertain, and looking over her shoulder. 

I paused, considering the idea. "Sure. Let's take a break, no reason to not use the safe zone if we’re in one. We can head to the next area after."

In truth, I didn't feel entirely comfortable staying in the safe zone. I checked the other groups discreetly with my CID.

Both the Orkaii and the Nekorians seemed tough. Several of the groups had members as high as level 52, almost 10 levels higher than us. That meant they would have roughly double our stats.

But before we could completely wander off on our own, one of the level 52 Orkai stood up and walked towards our group. Moving away seemed rude, so we stood our ground.

He looked us over with an air of authority. "A demon? No. Two demons. And some pleasure slaves of his," the Orkai chuckled. "I see you have a Nekorian among them. I came to give a word of warning. While I'm here, there will be no fighting in my safe zone." 

"Your safe zone?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

The Orkai crossed his arms over his chest as his pecs tried to bulge through his leather armor. "The safe zones are a sacred resting spot. No Orkai would let fighting happen in one before him. Considering I'm the strongest here, you might as well consider it my safe zone." His words had an edge of warning to them. 

I bobbed my head as if I was simply an agreeable young demon. "Of course. I just hadn't heard of such possession rights before. Usually when someone calls it their safe zone, there's a few more buildings," I gestured around. 

The Orkai laughed. "No. I'm certainly not wealthy enough to compete for a safe zone this close to Star City. Give it a few months. When they stop fighting over the ones that come from the lower floors, some of the losers from there will come and take these. And you do not want to be here when that occurs. But regardless of that, no fighting with the Nekorians. Understood?" 

"I wasn't planning on it. I'm quite fond of Felin," I said, reaching over and grabbing my Nekorian into my arms.

I saw her eyes locked on the other Neorians. 

"Would you mind if I introduced myself to them?" I asked.

The Orkai narrowed his eyes on me. "Don't antagonize them. I don't care who starts it. If a fight breaks out, I'm just going to break everyone's neck." The big green lug grunted before turning and stalking away with a surprising lack of noise.

Given his leather armor, I thought he might be some sort of rogue, which seemed incredibly odd with his otherwise muscular frame. I was going to have to break the habit of stereotyping Orkai as big, dumb brutes. They had proven to be far more sophisticated than I had given credit for initially.

I turned back to Felin. "Ready to meet some Nekorians?"