DD 203 Ch 3

I stood with the healers casting revive one after the other until our entire class of 25 was back on their feet.

Well, we didn't have a full 25. Two of Felicity's group had quit adventuring and we had brought Elysara to come make up for one of the lost spots.

I had pitched for Ami to join us as well, however, my butler refused, citing that she had other work from my grandparents, which was stupid because she was my butler, but apparently my grandparents were ordering her about as well.

So, with just 24 of us, and a good half of us having revived spells of our own, we brought the raid party back to life in short order.

Professor Sai cleared her throat once we finished, and clapped her hands once to get all of our attention. "Now, I know I'm not your normal teacher," she started. "Crimson is out doing a job for the UG, and to be quite frank, most of the other colleges believed she would cheat if she were left here."

I shrugged. Crimson did what Crimson wanted. It would not be outside of her personality to cheat through some of the bosses that she thought wouldn't offer us enough of a challenge.

"That said," the professor continued, "I would still like to offer you all some advice. As I was telling the healers, your first boss fight should be expected to be a wipe. You should go into it trying to learn, and so I would ask you, what did you learn?"

Several people all started to speak at once, but I raised my hand to silence them. "Let's raise our hands. Fayeth, you start first." Sometimes leading just meant providing order.

My Adrel rubbed her chin. "It was difficult getting all of the small beetles. They went after the healers, and it was difficult rounding them up. Everyone is so spread out."

I nodded at that. "We could have the healers collapse into a group when the small beetles come out," I offered, only for a healer to immediately counter me.

"But then we'll get hit by the acid spitters."

I shrugged. What she said was a possibility. "It would only be for a brief moment before Fayeth can get them under control."

Several of the healers crossed their arms, not excited about the prospect. Helen raised her hand, and I nodded to her. "The healers could run to the closest tank if they have beetles on them. That's pretty standard healer protocol." She said as if it were obvious.

Helen gave a good option, but with poor wording. Several of the healers grumbled.

"She’s not wrong," I mused.

It was fairly standard that when a healer pulled aggro, they were supposed to run to the tank so the tank could get them off.

“In that case," Fayeth offered, "I could try and stay in the center of the room. That way, healers could run to me from wherever they're stationed. And then I could quickly move them into the melee group to die."

I nodded at that. It was a good idea. Though I don't think the little beetles were our biggest problem for this fight. They were certainly causing chaos and complexity. But ultimately, we needed to figure out how to deal with the large beetles, especially for when two of them spawned.

That was for the final topic. Instead, we needed to talk about the spitters, because they had actually killed the first of us during that last attempt. “What about the spitters?"

"Spitters are stupid," Helen grunted, then raised her hand. I pointed to her. "The spitters are stupid," she repeated. This time, though, she at least spoke once called on. "They don't seem to have aggro tables. Neither does the big one. So both of them are just running rampant, which leaves me with nothing to do.”

“Do you have any stuns?" Leah, the geeky ice mage asked. "I noticed I was able to freeze one of the spitters."

Helen nodded. "I have one. But if all I am is a single stun. I'm not much at all. You’d be better off replacing me for the fight." She was still being a little bratty about not getting anything to tank.

I shrugged. "We don't always get to be the star of the show. I'm certainly not the star of the show for this event." That earned a few smirks from the ladies.

Penny raised her hand. "If it's stuns, I have a few." Several other people raised their hands, saying that they had stuns as well.

"Well then, we could try and throw our stuns out on the spitters as we can," I said, looking at the range DPS. "It would be best not to overlap. So perhaps we should call it out before we use it."

They looked at each other and nodded, coming to a quick agreement on that.

"That'll help reduce the damage a lot," Charlotte said. "I didn't think it was too taxing. We could keep everyone alive until those spitters all hit the melee group at once.”

“Maybe the melee group should spread out," someone said.

"There's not a whole lot of room to spread out, the bosses’ butt is only so big," Taylor argued.

"Well, those of you that don't have much AOE, maybe you could go on the far side?" The group continued to throw around options to reduce damage from the spitters.

I thought it was a good and productive conversation, and let it go on. The important part was that we were focused on working out improvements for the last fight. Wipes were a huge mental drain on a raid group.

Ultimately, several DPS, such as myself, that didn't have much to offer for fighting multiple targets, were sent to the back end of the beetle, so we wouldn’t catch extra damage from the acid spitters.

And finally we came to the biggest problem of the fight, the big golden beetles.

Des was the first to answer on that one. "We all blew our cooldowns on the first one. That was a problem." The ranged DPS all nodded in agreement. "We could split our cooldowns," Des offered. "But I definitely think Ken needs to leave the boss and help us with the golden beetles after the first few. Especially when there's two.”

“Did we not split our DPS well enough for the two?" I asked Des.

She shrugged and brushed her hair out of her face only for it to fall back into the familiar position. "We could try. My big concern is, while we might be able to eek out killing two, if we get more efficient, we certainly won't be able to kill three."

The group all nodded, and we realized that three big beetles would be the point of no return for the boss fight. We would have to call it if we ever got there.

"That puts Ken in a little bit of a tricky situation. Because if he's one of our top damage dealers on the boss, every time we pull him away, we reduce his overall damage and how quickly he builds his stacks. Because even if he can stay on the small golden beetles, they're moving enough that he's certainly sacrificing his DPS." I nodded at Des’ assessment.

"That's absolutely right. But I think I can manage well enough if I can stay on the boss for the first two." I said, wanting to pitch in for the pain point for the fight thus far.

Teacher Sai clapped her hands again. "The next thing you guys need to understand is while you can strategize all day, it's best not to. Take some learnings, take some adjustments, do the boss again. The important part when fighting raid bosses, or even party bosses that you haven't experienced before, is to understand how you can improve and understanding each other's strengths and weaknesses enough to be able to work better together next time. This raid is not only important for you guys learning how to fight as a larger group, but it's important for you guys to learn how to one day dive the dungeon to a point where you may not have all of the guides written out by the UG."

We nodded at that. Several of us having giddy smiles, certainly filled with our own fantasies.

It was every adventurer's dream to be in the forefront of diving the dungeon and exploring its unknown depths.

The group readied themselves once more for the boss. After a quick check to ensure we were all prepared, Myrtle launched an attack on the boss, initiating the fight.

As was my usual strategy, I slipped in and began dealing damage to the boss.

Penny was beside me, creating patches of vulnerability, only to retreat when the spitters began their attack. She had three different stuns at her disposal, which she used to immobilize one of the creatures for over ten seconds, significantly reducing the damage it could inflict.

The first few waves of beetles were dispatched without a hitch. It went smoother than the first time, healers that had adds chasing them brought the monsters to Helen or Fayeth.

During the fourth wave, I stepped away from the boss to assist the ranged DPS in killing a lone beetle without any cooldowns.

This ensured that everyone would be able to maximize their damage output on the next wave. So far, the boss hadn't managed to consume any of the beetles and was visibly weakened.

I rushed back, maintaining my damage output as best I could.

The fight felt like it was taking hours, but in reality it was less than five minutes.

The next wave was the same one that had wiped us out the first time. The melee DPS spread out as much as possible, dispersing the splashes of acid the spitters spat out one after another. Harley shrieked something about a beetle ruining her dress.

I glanced over just in time to see two golden beetles appear simultaneously from a sand dune.

Stepping away from the boss, I used Shadow Ambush to latch onto one of them, and Metamorphosis to attack as fiercely as I could. The ranged DPS activated their cooldowns, and the golden beetles fell one after the other in quick succession.

The boss, who was severely wounded, at this point. Many of the ranged DPS were still riding the high of their cooldown as we refocused on the boss.

Several new abilities appeared, abilities that I recognized from past experiences with adventurers of my class. A red hot sword appeared above Taylor as she drove it in with a smack of her mace.

Meixie made a skull image with her twin daggers that pressed itself in the boss’ side.

They were execute abilities, which could only be used on a monster with low health. I grew excited and attacked with renewed fervor, trying to kill the beetle before another wave arrived.

Groups of smaller beetles spawned throughout the room, followed by more spitters.

Des shouted over the din of combat, "I think we should focus on the boss when the golden beetles come."

I nodded in agreement, glancing at the boss and using my CID to gauge its health. It was at 14%. I thought it was still a bit high, but with some of the execute abilities being activated, I suspected we might prevail.

I shouted back at Des, loud enough for the rest of the raid to hear, "Everyone, once the spitters are down, ignore the adds and focus on the boss." I took my own advice and struck with my daggers in rapid fire, dealing significant damage.

The sounds of more big golden beetles coming out of the sand behind me made me pause before redoubling my effort.

As I fought with all my might, the boss's health continued to dwindle. It looked severely wounded just before it turned and began to cross the room towards the two golden beetles.

If it reached either of them, it would regenerate its health. Given their current health, adding 20% to the boss's health would be a significant blow to the morale of the rest of the raid, especially knowing the difficulty we had in taking out the next round of golden beetles. If there was a third beetle, we would surely lose the fight.

However, I wasn't without options.

I activated the second phase of Liminal Speed, and the world between me and the beetle shattered as everything froze. Everything, that is, except for me. I attacked as quickly as I could, watching my stacks of Liminal Speed decrease along with my own speed.

While this second phase of Liminal Speed was active, I couldn't gain stacks. Instead, they were slowly spent to freeze time for everyone but me.

Cracks in the beetles shell grew, its armor cracking and its legs losing their rigidity. As soon as my stacks were almost depleted, I dismissed Liminal Speed. The boss disintegrated into black smoke.

I wiped my brow, relieved at how narrowly we had escaped defeat. In hind sight, we should have just killed another wave of big beetles.

"Phew," I said. Des came up behind me and handed me a bottle of water she had pulled out of her CID.

"You just used the second phase of your ability and we barely made it," she said, kissing me on the cheek. Her pink eyes were nearly glowing.

"But we made it." I smirked and glanced over at the loot glittering on the ground. The raid bosses all dropped epic gear, and some of the final ones of a raid might even drop legendary gear from time to time. The rest of the group crowded around the small pile of four pieces of epic loot. I could tell by the gleam in each of their eyes that we were about to have a bidding war on our hands.

“Alright everyone.” Candice cut through the group, a sports drink in her hand as she took a sip. “Let’s go over the loot.”

Everyone already had their CIDs out scanning the gear.

I was no exception.

[Golden Staff of The Sun - Stamina +30, Magic +50, Mana +50]

Candice held it up. The thing was entirely golden with a decorative circle at the top radiating out waving streaks of metal. All along down the shaft, it was intricately designed with hieroglyphs that made absolutely zero sense to me.

“That’s a pretty stat stick.” The group was practically panting over it.

“We never discussed loot distribution.” Helen offered.

“Bah, just let her roll it off.” Harley scoffed. “I’m not keeping track of some stupid merit metric.”

Candice glanced at me and I shrugged. In this instance, I agreed with Harley. However, we had all chosen to leave this up to Candice.

“Alright, raise of hands for who wants it.”

All of the healers put their hands up along with most of the casters.

Candice silently counted off before tapping her CID and then counting up to five again from the left. “Leah, congratulations.” She handed the staff over to the ice mage.

The short woman took it excitedly and bounced on the toes of her feet. It didn’t go with her abilities at all, but it was a strong item.

Next Candice help up a pair of golden pants that were quite puffy but tight around the ankles. “Alright, who wants to look like MC Hammer?”

[Pharaoh Leg Guard - Strength +60, Stamina +20]

“Fuck it. Count me in.” Taylor raised her hands. “What? They are hideous but they have great stats.”

Competition wasn’t fierce only Penny also raised her hand.

Candice clicked her tongue. “Rolled a 1, that means Taylor.”

“Shit. Almost wish I lost.” Taylor took the pants and with a few taps on her CID they equipped to her legs, replacing the athletic shorts she’d been wearing. Only instead of the baggy appearance they’d had when Candice had held them up, they were tight on every inch of Taylor’s legs.

“Hey they don’t look so bad.” Des tried to make it better.

Taylor twisted a little in them, checking herself out. “I feel like a party girl at a club.”

“Good thing you don’t look like one.” Kendra, the leader of her party in the class said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Taylor growled back causing her party leader to raise her hands in surrender while trying to stifle a laugh. She looked up at me. “Let’s as the man in the raid.”

“Nope. Ken’s terrible at fashion. If it were up to him, he’d wear all black.” Des came to my rescue.

“I look good in black.” I argued.

“Mmmhmm.” She pat my arm. “You do, but variety is the spice of life.”

Candice cleared her throat and just help up the next piece, a shimmering full length gold dress with some complex looking sleeves.

“Dibs!” Harley shouted.

“It isn’t even poofy.” I stared at the bard.

“Doesn’t matter.” She stuck her arm up higher in the air. “I want it, who’s fighting me for it?”

Half the raid raised their hands.

“Aww.” Harley sagged as Candice rolled and it went to Meredith, then Harley glanced at her girlfriend with shining eyes as she put on the dress. “It’s amazing!” She squealed, clearly over her disappointment of losing already.