DD 203 Ch 1

I stepped into the raid once again, along with the rest of Class 2-A.

The raid event was the same as the last time we visited.

Worn limestone lined the floor, punctuated by random pillars of some ancient, dilapidated civilization.

The ruins and the ambiance in the dungeon weren't real. Neither were the monsters. Even if there were humanoid ones, they often performed the same repetitive tasks: moving a log back and forth, swinging a hammer on an empty anvil, or sewing string through the same hole only to undo it with the next stroke.

The dungeon was a facsimile of reality. These ancient ruins didn't actually belong to an ancient civilization. Instead, they were modeled off of... well, I wasn't quite sure what they were modeled off of. 

The prevailing theory among the Nekorian, the elves, and the humans was that the dungeon was a living creature. It enticed people to enter and go deeper, feeding off the bacteria and dead cells they left behind. There was never any dust in the dungeon, and anything left too long would be consumed by the environment.

“We were really doing this.” A hint of nerves etched into Charlotte's tone, the green haired druid was carrying Bun-bun. It was only a few days after the DPS check and the celebration of my victory.

Now, my class and I were starting the raid. But this time, we wouldn't have tanks and healers on hand for us; we'd be diving into this by ourselves.

That said, we did have a teacher from Haylon who had come to ensure that if we wiped, we would be able to survive. Not that there was no danger to ourselves. Many adventurers, after dying too many times, never returned to the dungeon.

"Which way do we go first?" Fayeth asked.

I turned to see the rest of the class all looking to me to lead. I scratched the back of my head under all their gazes. "It makes sense for us to start with the easiest first and work our way up. If nothing else, it would give the entire class more time to come together as a cohesive raid group for when things really got tough. Also, getting some high-quality loot would make everything easier later on." 

While we had all been working hard to level and train our stats, we were a little behind on our gear. And in the upper levels, gear started to make a bigger and bigger impact on total stats. 

"No, we should start in the middle because it's clear we have enough damage to do the early bosses," Helen disagreed with my assessment. I was not the fiery haired paladin’s favorite person.

"Ken has the right of it," Candice defended me. "If nothing else, consider it a warm-up." The arcane weaver put her hands in her pockets. Calm and collected was how I would describe her.

I glanced at Elysara and she just shrugged, the elven princess staying out of any conflict within the class. Then again, she was taking a break from the politics of the elven court and wasn’t going to debate anyone. "I'm just here for a tour," Ely said.

Fayeth rolled her eyes at the other elf but started charging through the raid, her giant glaive over her shoulders like a shark's fin leading the group. It only looked more ridiculous with how thin Fayeth was.

The first monster was up ahead. Fayeth stood in front, drawing her glaive and blowing across her hand using the skill, Agitating Spores. A thin cloud came off her hand and swept over to the beetle. As soon as it hit, the large monster turned and focused solely on her. 

"Shields up!" Helen shouted, jumping up between Fayeth and the monster and taking the first strike. 

"I have this," Fayeth said angrily, sweeping her glaive through the monster and getting its attention again. 

"With your two-hander, you can certainly do more damage than I can," Helen said, her shield glowing as she battered into the monster. "I have to take damage to deal anything of value." 

The monster swung at her again, and she gave a demonstration, her shield glowing on impact with golden light that seared the beetle.

I had paused to watch, wanting to see the dynamic of our group. It was generally polite to wait until the tank had at least some of the monster's attention before going all out. 

The two of them fought over the monster's attention, and I felt comfortable engaging. Two of my daggers came out of the inventory in my CID. Before I started normal attacks into the monster and building up my stacks of Liminal Speed, spells began to fly over me as the casters and the rangers of the group began their own attack. 

Penny filled the spot next to me in what quickly became a line of melee fighters. Her sword was covered in a layer of frost as she cut into the monster, creating patches of vulnerability. 

"Aren't you going to fight over aggro?" I asked her as we swapped spots, and I attacked the brittle frozen patches of the monster's carapace as my stacks began to climb.

"Nah, Helen's got it," She said, tucking back some of her blue hair between swings. "Plus, fighting her is like, well, trying to fight a dungeon monster sometimes." Penny laughed. 

"She is a pretty solid tank," I was forced to admit. I'd seen her in action multiple times. Her class had more mobility than Fey's, and great protective abilities both for herself and her party members.

Its one flaw, and a rather heavy one at that, was that she didn't really deal damage unless she was being attacked. She couldn't really do much of anything unless there was a monster or a PKer.

I partially wondered if she chose a class like that because she had an abrasive enough personality that she was often attacked.

Fayeth and Helen continued to vie for the monster's attention, but their squabble was short-lived. With the entire class attacking the beetle, it was defeated in less than a minute. My stacks hadn't even ramped up to their insane capacities.

On to the next one.

Fayeth charged ahead, leaving the loot behind.

Candice stepped up, absorbing it into her CID.

We had already agreed that she was the most impartial one to hold the loot. We would determine the payouts for everyone later, after the raid. It was crucial not to get too engrossed in that and to use our limited time pushing as hard as we could.

"You should have gone and gotten the next one," Helen snapped at Fayeth. "Ken and several others would have maintained their DPS better if we could chain the monsters one after the other." Helen was always trying to optimize.

Fayeth glanced at me, as if seeking confirmation. My only response, and the correct one, was to shrug at my adrel. While Helen was right, I wasn't about to side with her over the elf I had harmonized my soul with.

"It would probably be beneficial," Candice, the logical one in the group, said. She ran her hand through her straight blonde hair and tugged at her uniform, which was always immaculate.

"It might also keep you two from figh-." Penny started to speak, only to be silenced mid-sentence by a glare from Helen. "I mean, that way you can trade off. One of you can tank one while the other goes to get the next one."

Charlotte raised a hand. "We should probably have a healer stick with one of them. It's important that they don't get too hurt while dragging it back to the group."

I nodded at that. Charlotte had a good point; the last thing we needed was a tank to wander off and die. Everyone was starting to pitch in, we’d settle out how to do everything better this way.

"We can just have Helen go get them all the time," Des suggested. "She has all the mobility."

I cleared my throat. "Can we just continue? Fayeth can get the next one, and then Helen can retrieve the one after that." I looked around the group to see if there were any other objections. The other tanks in our group, Myrtle and Penny, remained silent. 

Actually, of the tanks, Myrtle was probably the most well-rounded. She had a good amount of self-defensive techniques and mobility, but she lacked anything to aid the rest of her party.

There was no one correct type of tank throughout the dungeon, especially in a more complicated situation like the raid. Diversity was best. That way, we had someone who could specialize for a variety of tasks when it was inevitably needed. 

"Alright," Helen crossed her arms, "Fayeth can get the next one." 

There was almost a collective sigh of relief from the rest of the class as Helen acquiesced to what I hoped would be the new normal. 

"Onwards!" Harley shouted from amid her slowly growing harem of healers. Fayeth gave Harley a glance before nodding at me. Then she moved on, not wanting to be ordered about by Harley.

It seemed the tanking situation was going to be a little prickly during the raid.

I shrugged and kept up a quick march with the rest of the melee DPS. We were just here to kill stuff.

Taylor was ecstatic, wielding two maces. Well, one was a mace, the other one was a wooden club with generous stats. The athletic woman had been forced into a tank position because of the party she had been put in with the class. But she was actually a melee fighter.

While everyone else was arguing over who had to tank, she was just happy that she had gotten back to the role of damage dealer. She had a giant grin on her face as she twirled her weapons. 

Penny was a little slower, but kept up. Like many of the classmates, she wore a white and gold uniform of Haylon with a few added touches. She had knee-high leather boots that had some sort of hard plating around them. Meanwhile, she had a heavy gauntlet on one hand and a pauldron strapped together with a heart guard that ran across her chest. Her chin-length, blue hair, blew behind her as she worked to keep up. 

"Ken, do you think when the next group comes into the raid, if we could rotate to one of the harder quadrants?" She asked.

I shrugged, unsure what the rules would be. As it was explained to me, each college would get priority on their part of the rotation.

If we could grind the raid while another group had a priority that was different in a different quadrant, that would remain to be seen.

Though I was intensely interested in being the first to complete the raid. Not only for the prestige of my dungeon college, but because Prince Albar had made a bet with me regarding Crimson.

The woman, I let out a mental sigh, had put herself up for the bet and a hefty price tag on the other side. It wasn't about earning the money, more so it was about not losing Crimson, because the woman had a penchant for pushing me. My teacher had also become my lover, and I was never willing to let her go. 

"We'll see," I told Penny. "This is all still very new to me as well. I do hope we can get a couple bosses done." 

Penny nodded. "This is the easiest quadrant. We should be able to make quick work of it, I hope. Your damage during the DPS competition left quite the impression." Penny flashed me a smile and blushed slightly at her words. Her eyes watched me intently.

I scratched my cheek, slightly awkward at the intensity of her gaze. "Well, I just gave it my all." 

"Your all is really something," Taylor was close enough to overhear the conversation. "You didn't just crush the rest of the class, you crushed the other three colleges as well. I'm sure that Prince has ground his teeth so flat he'll have to get more gold ones." 

"His teeth aren't gold," I said, having met the man multiple times, I could confirm. 

"That's not the point," Taylor rolled her eyes. "The point is he's an asshole and if he could have gold teeth, he'd have gold teeth." 

I snorted at that because he was an asshole. 

"Quiet up. Weapons out," Fayeth called as she dragged the next beetle back to the group. This one charging around several pillars before slamming into the elf. She cleaved her glaive through it several times before shouting for the rest of the group to begin combat as well.

Things began to go more smoothly as we fought our way through the basic mobs of the raid. Fayeth and Helen were starting to get along. The monsters flowed smoothly. Most of them were the large beetles we had tried for the DPS test, but a few of them were larger packs of small beetles. 

The two of them rotated in such a way that Fayeth was often taking on the larger pack. Between her Agitating Spores and her Cleave ability, she was the better of the two at keeping packs of mobs under control. 

Of course, Myrtle and Penny pitched in whenever there were large groups of monsters. They ensured that the monsters never went for the healers.

After all, the healers were the lifeblood of any raid group. They kept people on their feet and fighting.

When we reached the first boss of the raid event, it was no surprise that it was a giant golden scarab beetle. "Alright, everyone, let's get ready for this," I said. As the raid leader, I felt responsible for ensuring everyone understood the fight.

However, if there was one person who could explain it best, it was our resident nerd, Candace. "Would you like to run us through it?" 

The blonde cleared her throat and didn't even have to look at her CID for notes. "The boss has several abilities that we need to be concerned about," she began. "Firstly, it takes reduced damage and can heal itself by eating smaller scarabs."

"I don't see any smaller scarabs," Taylor interrupted, looking around the room.

"They tunnel up and spawn during the fight quite frequently. There are three types: a really small one that tends to spawn in groups of three to five, two medium ones that spit and stay at range, and then a big golden one that charges around the room. You have to be careful about the golden ones because if the boss eats those, it'll heal almost 10% of its health."

"10% of its health," a couple of people in the raid echoed, letting out soft whistles. We all knew 10% of a boss's health would be substantial.

"Got it. Sounds like a job for ranged DPS," I said. If one charged around and the other was at range to begin with, throwing our melee DPS around to keep up with them and chase after them was going to really hurt their output.

"Unless they aren't able to keep up, I think that's a good place to start," Candice said, looking around the room at the other casters. "I think if we drag the group of small ones to the boss, the melee could deal with them quite quickly."

"So we'll have..." I nodded at her assessment, coming to a decision for the rest of the group. "… ranged damage take care of the medium spitters and the big juicy ones. Meanwhile, we'll get..." I looked among the tanks and nodded to Fayeth. "Fayeth to get aggro on those ones and bring them over to the boss." 

She nodded in agreement but looked slightly upset at not being the tank to tank the boss. Her eyes slid over to Helen a clear rivalry forming.

"Meanwhile, Myrtle should tank the boss." All the tanks looked slightly surprised at that. Myrtle was a large girl with a bowl cut that often hid her eyes. 

"Me?" Her voice was whisper soft. 

"Yes, you. You are one of the sturdiest, are you not?" She bobbed her head without saying anything more. "Helen, if we need a tank for these spitters or the ones running around, you have the most mobility, so I want you on point." Helen seemed relieved that she had a tanking duty and puffed herself up. 

Finally, my gaze landed on Penelope. "As for you, I think we'll stick you on the boss with Myrtle. Candice, are there any effects where they need to tank swap?" 

The blonde shook her head. "No, this one's fairly simple. Very much a get-your-feet-wet boss of the raid. For the tank, it's just tank and spank while the trick comes in dealing with the other beetles that spawn." 

I nodded at that but still looked at Penny. "You still have an important job to do. Even if everything goes okay, you can be a backup in case Myrtle gets too hurt or if Fayeth gets overwhelmed. There's no reason we shouldn't be doing any of these without plans for backup." 

The whole class seemed to nod at that idea, a grim determination sweeping through their faces.

During raid bosses, especially ones you've never done before, people tended to die. It wouldn't be permanent. Multiple of us had to revive. A minder from Haylon Academy would be standing in the back of the room to make sure we wouldn't be dead for good even if the whole party wiped.

Well, this was still our test of learning how to raid.

Ideally, when it was going to be a wipe, one person from the party with revive would slip out the bronze boss doors and wait for everyone else to die before coming back in to revive us. It was a grim job, but it was one we needed so that we could get back on their feet to dive the dungeon another day.

"Alright, everyone, warm up. Let's do this." I met the eyes of everyone else in the classroom, and they all prepared to fight the boss.