Chapter 159

Army of the Dead (V)

The second phase began, and with it, the struggle; tanks quickly launched themselves over to the golems as everyone in the group tried focusing them down quickly. They realized, however, that golems' defense was much, much higher than both the boss' as well as the corpses'. They did almost half as much damage to them as they did to the boss.

The fight didn’t wait for them to kick the golems down, however, as the Undead began spawning shortly after, in concert with Lek casting ‘Bone Spear’ the first time. A tiny portal appeared above his head as a red thread exploded from it, landing on Diya, marking her. Just a second later, a spear made of bone burst out of the portal at speeds barely perceivable by the naked eye. Though Diya tossed herself to the side as quickly as she could, she was still late; luckily, Lukas stayed back near the healers for this very purpose, quickly tossing himself in the path of the bone.

Just then, Lek’s flute flew up to his lips as he played it; it was a low, grating sound that caused everyone’s blood to temporarily freeze. It was short-lived, however, but as soon as it was done, everyone found themselves slightly more sluggish, their movement speed dropped by 20%.

“Focus on golems!” Emma grunted as she dodged a heaving fist of a golem; it struck the ground and dug out a few feet deep hole, kicking up the debris. “Senna, pick up all the Undead and kite them as best you can! We need to swallow the cores before the 3rd stack of ‘Horror’ since we’ll be too slow to move!”

“Gotcha!” Senna replied as she shuffled her weapons in an arrow-like fashion and guided them to attack all of the undead on the field while the tanks slowly worked to drop the aggro.

The battle quickly became more chaotic as the Undead continued to spawn; when the golems' health was at around 25%, there were 18 Undead roaming about, with Senna having already killed some. In the meantime, the second stack of 'Horror' flew out as well as two 'Bone Spears', as did the mausoleum, grinding everyone's movements to a crawl.

Senna cheated a bit as she used a sword to fly, and classes like Assassin could still skitter around somewhat with their movement skills, but for the rest, they felt as though they were drunk and about four hundred pounds heavier.

“Fuck it! Burn cooldowns, kill the Undead, swallow the cores, and kill these goddamn, fucking golems!!” Emma wallowed out in frustration as she struggled to take a step back and dodge yet another of the golem’s strikes.

Daniel shuffled over to the corpses and, in concert with range DPS, he began to slowly mow them down, one by one. Each time he did, he’d toss a core to a member of the party, prioritizing healers and tanks and those with low mobility. This tacit slowed down their DPS on the golems, and after a few more rotations of ‘Bone Spears’ and summoning of the Undead, everyone was clear of the ‘Horror’ stacks just in time for the flute to play again.

"Get these golems down, now!!" Emma called out as everyone re-focused on taking down the hunks of bones, ready to deplete the remaining 17% of their shared health.

It wasn’t difficult to spot a problem in this tactic, however; if it took them this long to down a batch of golems with over ten people still in the party, how long would it take if their numbers continued to drop?

“I have an idea,” Diya said as she continued to pour heals and shields onto everyone. “But it’s risky.”

“Better than what we’re doing right now,” Kramer said, also having realized they stand no chance of victory if they kept at it like this.

“We’ll have to time several things together,” Diya said as hurriedly as she could. “One, we first need to bring the boss down to 30% without using any major Skills. Two, we need to have two tears prepared beforehand. Three, we need to get him into Phase 3 from 30% in one go.”

“Right, shit. There’s still the third phase... so, your plan is to use the tears to bolster our damage?”

“Yes -- and they need to be absorbed by Daniel and Jamal since they’re dealing the most single-target damage.” Diya said.

“What about phase three, then?” Emma asked, frowning.

“I... I have a hunch that ‘Entombed’ will end at the start of Phase 3. Otherwise, the cloning aspect of it would be too easy.”

“Yes, you’re right!” Emma exclaimed. “Alright, we’ll do it like that. We’ll go 10% by 10% on his Health to stack up two tears. Everyone will first grab a Core before we stuff them into lanterns; use the Cores just before the 4th time he plays the flute to optimize it. Once the golems are dead, it will become much easier to navigate; focus on the Undead and dodging!”

Sweat had already doused everyone’s backs as they hastily began moving around; golems’ strikes had created several tiny craters across the hall, narrowing down the amount of room they had to navigate. Spells and skills flew out and about, corpses finally dying time and again, and, eventually, golems dropping down to the ground in the form of ashes.

As per the plan, everyone first got a single Core to keep at their person before Daniel resumed his role as the Core-dropped for the lanterns. There was a new caveat, however -- one lantern could, at most, hold 7 Cores, forcing him to run to others and, eventually, to the other side of the room.

The most painful aspect of the fight was that regardless of their wishes, the party spent most of the time slowed down, usually around half their normal speed. Add to that the fact that a good deal of Cores had to be 'wasted' dispelling the debuff, and the fact that the number of people in their party would only continue to drop, the fight had reached its apex even before the final phase.

A flux of attacks landed on one of the corpses, shimmering it into flames, as Daniel hastily picked the Core up and flashed through shadows, disappearing into the smoke of gray and black, and appearing on the other side of the room, glancing back at Emma who nodded -- it was time.

With the drop of the Core, Lek’s shield went away; Belric dragged the four corpses that were still roaming about away as the rest of the party shuffled over onto the boss, though keeping their damage steady rather than going all out. They dropped him to a comfortable 38% before the shield returned and everyone was knocked back. Just as they were thinking that the strategy would work, as one of Kramer’s people walked into the circle and got Entombed... six golems spawned, as well as a single tear.

“WHAT?!!” Emma growled as panic finally began to set into her heart. “HE... HE SPAWNS THEM EVERY TIME THE SHIELD GETS BACK?!!”

They also realized something new -- they couldn’t take the description of the boss at the face value and, instead, would have to read between the lines as well. The spawning of the six golems put a cork in their initial plans; they would likely struggle mightily to down these six golems, and if they had to deal with another set after they drop Lek below 30%... they would likely fail.

Diya bit her lower lip as her thoughts began to churn; though the party recovered well from the initial shock, it did them little good as now they had to deal with six golems again, in addition to nearly 15 corpses that were walking around.

“We have to get him from 38% to 10% in one go!” Diya relented, concluding it in the end. She sighed, realizing that what she was asking was almost impossible. However... they really didn’t have another choice.

“... go big or go home, huh?” Kramer, surprisingly, chuckled -- prompting others to relax slightly as well and shake their heads. “Alright, Daniel or Jamal -- who will take the single tear we have?”

“Daniel should,” Jamal said immediately. “He can help tremendously with healing so that our healers can also focus on dealing some damage.”

“No, you have a much higher short-period burst,” Daniel said. “You can cover for all damage supports would deal and much more.”

“I agree,” Emma nodded. “Jamal will take the tear -- hold nothing back. Use every Skill, every equipment active, every consumable that you have... and burn through this bitch.”

At the mention of consumables, Diya glanced into her inventory at the three items that could make this fight much easier -- but she hesitated. There were still two bosses ahead, likely far stronger than this one... and they did have a genuine chance of completing it without these. We’ll see how it goes, she sighed. If we’re struggling, I can use one.

She also prepared to use ‘Depraved Desire’, an active component of her headwear; it would help massively with the healing still, not to mention the enormous shield everyone would get at the end of its duration.

Daniel, similarly, looked at the active components of his items; he immediately used ‘Blessed by Blood’ and linked Jamal with him. By the time they get to the DPS-the-boss-down-phase, they should have three stacks on it, increasing their damage by 18%.

Emma looked at her active components as well -- unfortunately, hers weren't geared as much toward damage as they were toward her survival. Still, she had means of temporarily ramping up her attack speed and dealing decent damage while essentially becoming immortal. What worried her, however, was that throughout the entire fight essentially, her shields kept getting broken down easily. She genuinely thought she would require little to no help from the healers since she had almost permanent upkeep to a 1600 Health shield, often spiking to nearly 3000, and yet... she did need healing. In fairness, she was usually tanking 4-5 creatures at minimum, and even if each hit for on average 300, they would break through her shields in one bout of attacks. Sighing, she dispelled her thoughts, focusing back on the fight.

Senna gazed at her two new items, contemplating; there was an interesting way to perhaps exploit the nature of items slightly. She had stacked up her 'Warmaster' buff to 100 stacks and kept it there since there was never a true need to release it. If she used 'Weapon of Divine' to destroy all her conjured weapons and combine them into one and then used 'Vessel of Warmaker' to conjure as many weapons as physically possible within a few seconds before capping it off with 'Heed the Master's Call'... she could likely dear more damage than Daniel and Jamal combined. However, this would mean that the entire party would have to wait for at least a week for her to go back to full before even thinking of attempting the next boss. I’ll see how it goes; I’ll just use ‘Weapon of Divine’ at the start, and if we’re struggling, I can do the combo...

Time slowly ticked away, and the golems fell after some struggle. In no time, the party was back to 39 Cores inserted in the lanterns, just one shy away from downing the boss’ immunity. Everyone’s nerves grew taut as Daniel picked the last Core and shuffled over to the lantern. His fingers were shaking slightly, sweat dripping down his back. This was it. After he dropped this Core, the tiny, pebble-sized, silver shimmer... all hell would break loose and they would enter the most important race of their lives.

“DROP IT!” Emma growled, trying to snap everyone with the sheer volume of her voice. “LET’S KILL THIS FUCKER!!”

Rather than putting it into the lantern, Daniel literally dropped it as he was startled; the stark green of the smoke that lifted off the lanterns seemed to grow a few shades brighter as it coalesced into six arrays of smoke that launched toward the boy. Preparations were complete; all that was left... was the final race. 30 seconds that would determine whether they live to see another day... or whether this crumbling, macabre hall would become their eternal grave.