Chapter 158

Army of the Dead (IV)

The party shuffled closer together when the count of the 'Cores' inside the lanterns reached 39, taking a few steps closer to Lek. Until now, they only had to deal with two mechanics -- the undead and the mausoleum Lek erected for them after six died. Because of it, the fight was largely a breeze -- once everyone got into the rhythm and pattern of it, there were virtually no hiccups even if someone made an accidental mistake since someone else would quickly fix it.

However, the lower Lek's health became, the more that would change -- they knew. In their last battle against Myeala they became overwhelmed toward the end of the fight, once the mechanics of it became rampant and more and more resources had to be exhausted to keep up with them. This time, however, the party expected that phase of the difficulty to begin as soon as the second phase of the boss started.

After all, by then, it will be possible for several things to occur at the same time -- the undead, the golems, the mausoleum, and the ‘Horror’ debuff to further slow the party down, not to mention that, by then, they will already have 5 people entombed. Effectively, by the fight’s end, they should only have 6 people standing, but that was also unlikely as at least half of those would need to soak a tear at some point.

However, they had already had the discussion over it -- if it comes down to that, the last three members that should be standing would be Senna, Diya, and one of the tanks.

As Ryu landed a killing blow on one of the undead, Lukas and Belric quickly picked up the other two and dragged them to the side while Daniel sped over and placed the last core into one of the lanterns. The six of them lit up suddenly, their green shimmer exploding into kindling fires that raged out in an arc and landed on Lek’s sheen, boring through it.

The boy cried out for a moment as the notification popped up in front of everyone’s eyes ‘Lek’s immunity has temporarily ended!’

“GO! GO!” Emma cried out as everyone unleashed a barrage of attacks, most burning through their cooldowns in the process. The onslaught landed on the boy shortly after, prompting the latter to cry out in pain, though few seemed to even notice it as they were too busy looking at their health bar. They, also, noticed something at that point -- their damage... was much, much higher than they thought.

“... his defenses... are non-existent?” within 10 seconds, Lek’s Health dropped to 90%, surprising everyone.

“You--you heathens! Pay the price for hurting me!”

“---!!” the party panicked slightly as they saw a circle form beneath where every melee attacker was standing. Luckily, it was a 4 seconds long channel rather than instant, prompting everyone to jump aside as Kramer called out one of the members of his group and had him stand there as the channel finished. Right after, six chains wound from underneath the man’s feet and wrapped around him, dragging him into the ground. The man’s name and health still remained visible, however, telling them that he was at least alive.

The group lost a few seconds to the panic before resuming their attacks, eventually managing to drop Lek’s health to 76% before the immunity returned and another member of the party became buried underneath the ground.

Lek cried out once again and knocked everyone near him back, dealing 50~ damage in the process and summoning three more undead immediately. By now, as the mechanic didn’t stop during his immunity, there were 14 corpses on the battlefield held barely by Lukas and Belric.

Senna immediately used ‘Aerial Onslaught’ as others, who hadn’t burned all their cooldowns on the boss, joined her, trying to whittle down the number of the corpses as much as possible before the next set spawns. Emma and Kramer ran over quickly to alleviate the struggles slightly, each picking up five corpses to handle.

By the time the next trio of corpses spawned from the ground, the group had managed to shave 12 down to 4; by then, however, they had burned through almost all short-time cooldowns and were in no hurry to burn through the truly big ones as they may need them later.

“It’s fine,” Emma said. “We’ll just take it slowly and recover; the mechanics remain the same until he hits 50%. Keep taking cores to the lanterns, but don’t hit 40 until we’ve cleared the field of all corpses. It’s a bit easier to get overwhelmed than we anticipated.”

That was exactly what they ended up doing. Surprisingly, the first phase of Lek was much easier than Myeala’s, since the corpses, though plentiful and sturdy they were, didn’t do all that much damage and there certainly wasn’t a mechanic that could instantly kill someone. Rather, it became somewhat boring and monotonous to grind through them as they slowly collected the cores. They cherished these moments, however, as they knew that the second phase would up the ante considerably and that there was a high likelihood of them getting overwhelmed completely if they were not careful.

By the time 39 cores were put into lanterns, there were five corpses roaming about, with the next three set to spawn in roughly ten seconds.

“We clear them down to two,” Emma said. “And then get the last core to the lantern. Make sure we don’t push the boss below 50% in this rush.”

“Why?” Kramer asked, frowning; in his mind, it was better to get this fight over as quickly as physically possible.

“Cooldowns,” Emma explained. “We’ll have to burn through them to get him down but then we won’t have anything for golems. If we shave him to 55% mark or so, we can save cooldowns for the golems when they spawn and not get into panic mode immediately.”

“Ah!” Kramer exclaimed with a nod; it felt somewhat strange, having time to chat while fighting a boss. Rather, this whole battle didn’t even seem like a proper ‘boss battle’. And yet, despite that, the party only grew more anxious over the second phase; chances were that it was going to go by much more quickly, but there would likely be no downtime for the entire duration.

As per Emma’s instructions, the group slowly took the number of corpses down to two before Daniel picked up the core and shuffled toward one of the lanterns. They were also slightly hopeful that all the unused cores would remain for the ‘Horror’ debuff, but as soon as the last Core landed in the lantern, all others turned into ash.

The party, now having experienced this once already, blurred forward and onto Lek while Lukas and Belric remained behind to pick up the undead that spawned during the boss’ immunity downtime.

Though they were in somewhat of a rush, the party paced themselves and whittled down Lek’s health carefully until it hit 60% upon which they slowed down even further. By the time the boy’s immunity returned, he was sitting at 52% Health, with eleven corpses occupying the battlefield.

Resorting to the last time they got a lot of corpses around, the few that saved their cooldowns burned through them as the group went back to the now-stale and boring mechanic of picking up cores and dropping them into the lanterns. The most bored of them was Daniel, who, by the 20th Core, gave the task to another Assassin from Kramer’s party.

By now, the battle had been going on for over ten minutes; in contrast, they were well done with Myeala by this point. Another aspect, they realized, of the battle was this monotony as mental endurance once again demanded a role in a fight.

Through timing it perfectly, the party managed to put the last Core into the lantern when there were no corpses wandering about and the next set was roughly 7 seconds from spawning. Lek's shield went down again as the party rushed in, but most held back, only tossing basic attacks and Skills. Even still, the boy's health quickly dipped to 50% upon which everyone was knocked back once again while the boy wept out, the sheen of divinity embracing him again.

“Help me, Guards! Help me!” the boy’s cries seemed to awaken something within the ground as six holes appeared out of nowhere, ejecting fumes of smoke and ash before the world began to tremble.

As the dust settled, the party noted the six newcomers standing in a flat line in front of Lek; they were all identical in their appearance, roughly twelve-feet tall, round-bellied, coated in silver-colored metal that had begun to rust and decay with a greenish hue visible throughout the golems’ surfaces.

The six golems roared at the same time, shaking the hall further and causing some debris to fall down, several pieces hitting a few members of the party and dealing some damage in the process. The group knew that this was when the true fight began -- in addition to the continued rain of the Undead that would spawn, and the monument risen for them, there will be three new mechanics that will overlap -- 'Horror' debuff, 'Bone Spears' that will target the healers, and, perhaps the most important one, 'Tears of a Child'. It was physically impossible to soak all tears as they would run out of members, and they would likely need to allow at least the first two sets to turn into golems, in addition to trying and match that insane boost to damage for when the boss' invulnerability wears off since the length of the buff matched perfectly with the downtime's duration -- 30 seconds.

In her mind, Emma knew that those 30 seconds would make or break the fight and that the margin of error would become narrower and narrower the longer the fight went on. Taking a deep breath, she settled her nerves and the rapidly-beating heart, glancing back at others who did the same.

“Well then,” she said. “Let’s get through this in one go.”