The dragon's attacks hit like a truck as the normal claw attacks it does can even shred the health of our tanks to critical levels. If not for the healers helping out, they wouldn't last.

I made an experiment on how the dragon would do its attacks, how long it does the dragon do its stomps and special attacks, and how random it will do its black fire breath and its other attacks. I calculated them while also organizing the Pioneers to do the damage and defend whenever the dragon attacks.

"Hold off on that side! Tanks defend! Do not break off formation!" I shouted.

After giving an order, I took a glance at the boss' name and HP remaining.

[Dirac, the Dragon of Darkness] Level: ???

Raid Boss

HP: 823,000x24/1,000,000x25

Type: Dragon, Dark, Fire, Beast

The HP of the dragon is 1,000,000, however, once the 1,000,000 HP is gone, it will return to another 1,000,000 HP. Why? Because the boss has 25 HP bars, all are 1,000,000 HP. The boss will undergo a change every time its HP was drained to zero, a Break Bar to be exact. That is why we needed to always be careful once we get to reduce its HP, who knows what kind of gimmick the boss will pull the moment an HP bar was reduced to zero.

"Range attackers, fire at will!"

The magic users and the long-range classes begin shooting beams and arrows alongside rapid bullets flying towards the dragon.

"Melee fighters, coordinate with me, once I started to attack, proceed to attack as well. Retreat once you have done your damage and reduce your distance with the boss so that no one from us will attract the aggro of the boss. This will ease up the burden of the healers while still capable of unleashing damage to the enemy!"

"Roger that!"

Thankfully, despite their transgressions earlier in the castle, they still follow my orders and did not just act on their own. Although I spot a few of them reluctant to follow my lead, most are doing fine with my commands and there are no mishaps. Even the fire that the dragon breathes out after a few seconds of no attack interval and has the most devastating damage is manageable.

When the health of the dragon, it suddenly opened its wings wide and the tips of its wings started to glow just like how it does whenever it is about to fire off its fire breath.

"Sh*t! Tanks! Cast [Damage Absorption] and [Invincibility] then move behind us to protect the mages and healers! Healers! Use your strongest healing skill that can last for a few seconds and will allow continuous heals in set intervals! If you don't have them, use the most potent healing spell you guys have! Alchemist! Use [Smoke Bottle] to everyone! Warriors! Move forward and reduce the remaining HP of the boss while it is charging! It will be targeting everyone in the backline so let's take this chance to reduce one of its HP bars!"

The others agreed to this as well and went ahead to begin the attacks. The dragon then released his attack, containing laser beams as black as its wings accompanied by its usual fire breath that immediately bombarded to the tanks. As expected, the attack was meant to the Range units who deals quite a huge amount of damage to the boss.

Then, one of the tanks, who is a Paladin with a level 88 gear on him, invoke a skill on his own.

"[Counter and Reflect]!"

His shield glows red and the moment the black beam hit his shield, he moved a bit forward and the beam that was fired off bounced back to the boss, inducing a self damage to the boss.

[Counter and Reflect] is a Paladin skill that allows the user to counter attacks that hits the shield directly and return the attack to the one who caused it, physically or magical way. It is usually used by Paladins as a skill for emergency scenarios since the skill has a long cooldown of 4 minutes. However, the long cooldown is justified due to how strong it was if done properly. The effect changed when used in PVP and that will be the only time the [Counter and Reflect] to have a reduced cooldown from 4 minutes to 2 minutes. However, the damaged was nerfed to make sure the skill won't be a broken one that makes every Paladin user to one shot all enemies using this.

Now here is the effect of [Counter and Reflect]. Once an attack lands on the shield of a Paladin who used [Counter and Reflect], the attack that landed to the paladin would be absorbed and will not inflict any sort of damage to the shield user. Once the attack was finalized, the user can then fight back and use the force of the attack was fully absorbed, it can be fired back to the user of the skill. Of course, this skill can only be used against the one who inflicted the attack. The attack fails if you use the attack to another person or enemy who didn't do the attack and the charge will be deemed invalid.

The good thing about this skill is not just the temporary attack absorption but the effect of the skill once the absorbed attack is released to the enemy. Instead of firing off a small fraction of energy to the boss depending on how strong the attack, the absorbed attack will be fired off with double firepower it usually have. If explained in layman terms, if the damage absorbs can inflict 1000 damage, once it is fired back to the attacker, the damage inflicted will be 2000 instead.

The moment that tank used it, the attack immediately reduced the second bar to zero and the next bar was reduced to 500,000. The dragon was stunned by the attack and slumped to the ground.

"Now is the time! Fire all of you got!"

The magicians and range users immediately cast off their strongest range attacks. The colors flying from their staff is quite a sight that anyone seeing it would be really amazed since they looks like fireworks and due to how dark the sky is currently with only a bit of light to be seen, this showed up quite similar to a fireworks display.

"All melee attackers! Unleashed your rage!" I shouted to rally up everyone.

"OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!"

Everyone shouted in unison. Everyone did their attacks rapidly, Harmless Sparrow unleashed her deadly attacks one swing at a time, Bloodaxe swings his ax like a true berserker while laughing, heck, even the ninja is doing his best and managed to inflict [Bleed(Extreme)] to the boss. Though it wasn't as good as how many debuffs I inflicted on the stunned dragon. Since my Versatile Weapon has a chance to inflict [Defense Reduction] and [Corrode] in my basic attacks, the moment it procs to me, the attacks dealt by everyone became too strong that the stunned dragon's HP fell off the moment we continue our attack.

The Dragon once again recovered after our frenzy but it was enough to inflict enough damage and remove 5 HP bars as a result.

"Return to the formation! Do not attack the boss right now! It might unleash its attacks in the process if you continue doing so! Retreat!" I ordered.

Since the tanks are not yet in their position, we are in a tough spot if the boss recovered while we are near it. The boss will immediately squish us to death if that was the case.

I thought everything will be fine but as expected, there are those who are stubborn and just f*cked up that ruins the strategy of a solid and effective plan.

2 of the warriors, one which I managed to recognize to be one of the players who wanted to also become the leader and quite the whiny guy remained alongside another warrior. From what I observed with the other warrior, I have never seen him before so I don't recognize him.

"Oy! What are you guys still doing there! Retreat already!" Bloodaxe shouted.

"Why would I retreat?! We are dealing quite juicy damage already, we should just continue the pressure and reduce the health of this big boy and we will be done in the process!"

I scratch my head at how idiot this bastard is. The reason I want everyone to retreat is due to its new state. Since every time it got its HP bar reduced, there is a chance it will go on rampage mode all of a sudden. We just attacked furiously earlier since we took advantage of the stunned state of the boss, however, now that the boss recovered, things will not be the same as earlier.

Since I retreated from the battle, the [Defense Reduction] and [Corrode] debuff already reach its time to fade, allowing the state of the Dragon to return to its normal state.

Then, a panel appeared out from our interface.

[Diract the Dragon of Darkness entered the state of Frenzy! Please retreat from the area as soon as possible for 1 minute!].

Frenzy is the state a Raid Boss undergoes when a certain break bar number got taken to zero. During this state, the boss will be invincible, and its attacks will be all deal critical damage, and most importantly, they all deal true damage. It only lasts a minute or higher but the main strategy to that is to immediately escape from the area the moment the boss activates Frenzy mode, because no matter how Chunky and hard your armor and shields are, they are completely useless to a boss who is under Frenzy mode.