Chapter 338

Roar of a King (XIX)

Cain’s abrupt vanishing had startled Quinn perhaps more so than everyone else--few had the sheer grasp of how important he was in the tank rotation since it was actually his job to soak up the potential insta-kill abilities as, according to his own words, ‘you’d have to kill me eight times over... to kill me’. And death of a single tank against the tentacled behemoth would spell doom for the entire raid immediately.

And though the panic did take over the raid group for a little while, both seeing him ‘up there’ and noticing something else about the boss had calmed the group down considerably. Namely, after taking over the tanking duties and ‘eating’ the first strike after Cain vanished, Quinn, instead of losing the standard 15~% of her health, lost measly 2-3%, which was barely anything further considering that she didn’t even use a major defensive.

Upon investigating more and seeing other people rally, everyone noticed several more things: besides the boss just doing insanely less damage than before, it also took more raw damage, upwards of 80%, actually, and the remnant tentacles that it used to attack the rest of the raid could now be attacked by the melee fighters and deal decent damage to the behemoth itself.

Though they didn’t have the Tower to confirm the numbers, visual feedback was still there and most, if not all people here were experienced enough to know when their spells hurt and when they don’t.

Something changed with the boss fight after Cain left--not only did the boss hit less, it also seemed less... intelligent, so to say. It took Quinn a while to realize what was wrong, but eventually she did--the boss was reminiscent of the first few bosses that the Tower threw at people just beginning the Conquest.

Most first bosses in the Towers were entirely artificial--meaning, they were made by the Tower itself rather than being inhabitants of the worlds within. As such, they lacked that distinct presence of intellect when it came to decision making as everything they did was entirely robotic and pattern-based. Currently, the behemoth felt the same.

It followed a distinct pattern that was easy to lull it into--Quinn would take a frontal, but rather than attacking immediately, she would let some of her threat slip away to the ranged DPS, upon which the boss would turn to execute a longer-ranged attack, which was when she quickly regained the threat and forced it to switch to the normal attack. In fact, it almost felt like a bug some four minutes into the fight after Cain left--since all boss ever did... was normal attacks. Even with all the nerfs to the boss, however, one thing was for certain--the beast had insanely high health pool. In fact, the longer they fought, the deeper Quinn’s frown got. In part, it was because of the uncertainty--what if Cain returned and, with him, the old boss? Perhaps that was one of the main mechanics--that the boss does a ‘soul split’ of sorts that affords the raid group a sort of a ‘burn timer’ where they have to chew through as much HP as possible before the boss regains its original strength.

There were several bosses with similar tactics in the Tower--namely, one of the huge gates of progress on Quinn’s world during the early days was the Guardian of the 16th Floor. The main mechanic of the fight was simple--there were four orbs stacked around the room that had to be injected into proper rune slots. Until that happened, the boss was almost immune to any damage, and gained increased damage and attack speed every second in combat. Furthermore, it had inordinate amount of HP, almost eight times that of the previous floor Guardian. The raid group, essentially, had around 40 seconds to put orbs in proper place before even the most well-geared tank would just fall over.

Once the orbs were in place, the boss entered the burn phase where it took increased 1000% damage for 8 seconds. After 8 seconds, it would recover and the orbs would randomize again. The issue was... it could enter the burn phase only 3 times. Meaning that they had, essentially, 24 seconds to kill it.

The mechanic itself was braindead and it was literally the only mechanic of the entire fight since the boss only knew how to do normal attacks on the tank, but thousands of people would come to die before the boss was defeated. And the way to do it was simple--in the end, the raid consistent of one tank, no healers, and 39 best DPS that her world had to offer. Of which 37 were Blademasters which, at the time, had the single highest pure single-target DPS output possible.

Even with all that, the boss was barely defeated, but it became a cautionary tale. The so-called ‘burn bosses’ were extremely notorious on her world--4 Guardians, in total, were like that, and each and every one was a death sentence to many-a-star with a bright future.

If that was the case with the behemoth--which seemed to be an even more exaggerated idea of the fight, then they were on a ticking clock that could potentially end up with all of them dying. Then again, committing fully to the notion that it’s a burn phase boss could similarly bite them back if it turns out that this was just a prep-phase of sorts where the amount of damage the boss takes simply depowers it for the actual fight.

Though Quinn had only ever fought one such boss before, the fight itself remains deeply rooted in her psyche as it was one of the closest times she’d ever came to dying in her life. At the start of the fight, the raid had around 40 seconds to free cast damage while the boss freed itself from the chains. No matter how much damage it took, it would heal itself back up to full after it was free. However, it was important how much damage it took since it had another resource similar to Mana that it used to cast spells. So, the difference between the boss having 90% energy versus 30% energy was huge as it not only decreased the boss’ damage by further 60%, but it also cut down how many spells it could use during the fight since its energy didn’t regenerate.

It wasn’t even a Guardian fight but a dungeon boss, and most groups simply avoided the entire dungeon by a mile because of the terror it inflicted. If that was the case with this fight, then there was a prerogative to deal as much damage as possible, but there was still the fight after--one the reasons why Quinn came so close to dying was that her party members just didn’t have any cooldowns to burn so the fight took insanely long to finish, meaning that she herself was virtually empty of all life-saving measures by the time it ended.

This was why she was uncertain--whether to commit right now, or to commit perhaps half the raid, or to stay off and wait and see. And yet, minutes passed... and soon did a whole hour. They were no longer able to see Cain above as he seemed to have vanished. But the boss hadn’t changed. Quinn was still keeping it bugged, just auto-attacking.

And though there was some visible damage on the boss, it was... marginal, at best. Even Quinn was aghast at this point--free firing upon any boss, even Guardians of the 60 and upward floors, for a whole hour, cooldowns or not, would down every last one of them with no issues. Even at just that level, people stopped talking about boss’ raw numbers when it came to health pools as they tended to break a billion, and instead talked about percentages.

The behemoth, still, eclipsed all of them--if the visual state reflected the health pool, they likely shaved off some 10 to 20% of its health... and they must have dealt billions already in raw damage collectively.

“Something’s off,” she mused aloud. The fight had gotten quite monotonous and the strained nerves had relaxed. People began to chatter and talk since everyone could fire off their basic rotation even while high off their minds. The fight was... boring. What they thought would be a nail-biting fight for their life turned out to be a limit testing on a dummy.

“It’s probably something to do with Cain,” either Nature or Harmony said as the twins appeared next to her.

“Yeah,” Quinn nodded, looking up. There was nothing there anymore... but she could almost feel something happening. “The question is... what?”

“Maybe a dual fight?” either Harmony or Nature posited. “Like Ka’bun.”

“No, Ka’bun was different,” Quinn shook her head. “There was still some interaction between two fights. This feels like two different bosses, and we were left facing this decrepit thing that can’t even think.”

“I--” before either could utter a word, space above them shattered into millions of shards, almost as though glass began to rain.

From within the shattered space, a roar that stirred the depths of their souls bellowed--it was a roar that not only forced them and the rest of the raid to the ground and on their knees, but the behemoth itself. It was a roar that shook and quaked and a roar that boiled their blood.

Looking up, Quinn saw it--a blinding, scorching burst of light that seemed to birth a silhouette. It was a winged silhouette, a holy one, an unmatched one, one that she could only equate with one other throughout her life. In that moment, she looked to the side and met the twins’ gazes. They understood it.

“Leave none alive,” Quinn mumbled lowly just before they could move once again.