“Plan B, guys,” Norman said pumping his chest like a gorilla. “I’m up for it! Who else is coming?”

“Me, obviously,” Wharton said. “Since I’m a Pathfinder.”

“You don’t really need to go, you know,” Nicole said to Norman.

This was going to be fun to watch, I thought.

“They need me to lead them. And we can’t risk Megiddo with this plan.”

I would have volunteered myself to join just to endear these people to me but I decided against it. As a Forager, it really wasn’t my place to be in our next plan. Plus, I really, really didn’t want to die in this place.

Three other Pathfinders went with Norman and Wharton for a total of five players. The other Foragers gave them potions to drink that boosted their speed. Healers called on the remnants of the flames of our ancestors to bless the brave volunteers and increase their stats, speed, and gave them added resistances; at least to try and slow down the Frostbite.

“See you on the other side guys,” Norman said.

“As a metaphor?” I said under my breath. But Nicole apparently heard it because she raised her brow at me. I just didn’t mind her. It was rare, but sometimes I couldn’t control saying comments out loud. Maybe I was getting too comfortable around these people and letting my guard down.

“I should really go with you,” Megiddo said.

“But what if there are more of them and you died?” Norman said.

“We know you’re the strongest among us, Megiddo, that’s why we can’t have you dying,” I said, eliciting agreement from the others. “If it turned out that there will be more goats further inside, there’s a chance that you might die. If you die, it’s really a huge blow to all of us here, because we don’t have a chance of progressing at this point if you die now.” No one cares if Norman dies.

“I guess you’re right.”

“We’re not just going to let the great Megiddo go and die,” said Norman.

“And they’re not going to fight the boss, anyway,” I said.

“Team, are you ready?”

“Good luck, Norman. You have our full support,” I said. Just kidding. But I do hope they would succeed. I was quite fine with being stuck in Mardukryon mountain for awhile. I haven’t explored many parts of the mountain, and I also wanted to get back at the Lord Mirdabon who killed me, although I doubt if I could do that. But it would be awesome as well if we were able to go out of Mardukryon mountain as soon as possible.

All this white of snow was kind of boring sometimes.

“Go, guys!”

“You can do it!”

The others cheered on the brave squad of Mardukryons entering the cave of Mr. Goat that was full of bullshit debuffs. We followed them and packed at the entrance, waiting to see what will happen. All of us couldn’t fit because of our size, so some were forced to sit down to give others a view.

Norman kickstarted and charged into the lair of Mr. Goat. The Pathfinders followed him. The plan was just to run past the goat and see if they can find an exit somewhere down the path. If there was no need to kill this boss, then what’s the point of taking the effort? The goat probably has some awesome loot to drop but it could wait. Finding the way out was more important.

The boss goat came rushing out to meet the players who dared to test its ice making skills. They time their next [Charge] so as to avoid the goat running for them. Mr. Goat missed them and hit the wall of the tunnel. We could feel the mountain tremble from the crash.

We watched with bated breath from the opening of the tunnel as Norman and the others weaved to evade the icicles falling from the ceiling, disturbed by the quake. I mean the others watched with bated breath, not me, because I don’t really care what happens to them.

Norman and the Pathfinders kickstarted and charged again to put some distance between them and the enraged Mr. Goat chasing their asses. Norman lagged behind. The Pathfinders all have skills to increase their speed and even tackle obstacles easily so they were the logical choice to try this. I didn’t even know why Norman tagged along with them. Obviously we couldn’t let Megiddo do this. Given our experience, there were lots of ridiculous mechanics inside Mr. Goat’s tunnel. If it turned out there were more goats inside and Megiddo got killed, then that would be a huge loss for our entire operation.

The ice tunnel started to curve slightly to the left from the distance so Norman and the others ran out of our range of sight with the boss goat following them. The cave shook a couple more times. The players in contact with the ones being chased by Mr. Goat confirmed that they were still alive.

Looks like they were going to make it?

We waited for several minutes while the others tried to find the way out of Mr. Goat's lair. After a few more earthquakes, the scouting group communicated with us.

“What?” Nicole said. “The way is blocked? Wait, the others should hear this.”

“—blue wall. Shit, the boss is coming,” Norman said, his voice echoing.

Wharton also spoke out loud, “Let’s try breaking the wall?”

“Go! I’ll try to distract it.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“Huh? Run away, let’s go back.”

“The fuck? Wha—?”

“Run! Run! Run back!”

“What happened?” I said.

“My friend was Frozen when he hit the ice wall blocking the way,” another player said, who was in contact with one of the Pathfinders. “They’re running back now.”

“Damn.”

“Five of us already dead.”

Now we are down to seventeen players. This is not going well at all.

“Shit. Fuck. Then we have to kill the boss?”

“Looks like it.”

I nodded while I stared at the floor, thinking of a plan. Perhaps this was one of those levels in a game where you couldn’t progress unless you defeated the boss guarding the place. The cave shook a few more times as Norman and the others tried to escape. We waited until the survivors returned to plan again.

“We could see it. The ice wall was sort of transparent. There is a path behind the tall ice wall at the end of the tunnel Mehubathar is guarding,” Norman said.

“And when RedVelvet attacked the wall, she was frozen?” Megiddo asked.

RedVelvet? Like a fucking cupcake or something? If she had an awesome name like I did, she would probably survive. But, too bad. Anyway, this was a lesson to let others go first so that they would be the ones who will die if something went wrong.

“What do we do now?” Norman said. He sat down on the ice, hiding his hoofs beneath him. His party grouped near him. They were probably the only ‘group’ within our exploration group that had no casualties.

The others also sat down, forming a loose circle around Megiddo. I shrugged and followed suit. It looked like some players were messaging their deceased friends, the ones bulldozed by our good buddy, Mr. Goat. From what I could tell, only Megiddo and I were the ones without a group of sorts.

“Are the other groups close here? Let’s call them. Use our numbers to overwhelm the boss?”

“Yeah, we should call for help. That boss is such a pain.”

“What would having more players do?”

“We could kill it faster.”

“Don’t be stupid. That just means there will be more chances of someone getting frozen.”

Megiddo said, “I can’t ask anyone to sacrifice their life. Continuously attacking Mehubathar would mean that eventually a few of us will get frozen and then die. The chance of getting Frozen along with the rate of deterioration caused by Frostbite depends on the stats of the player, just like how most negative status effects works, but, eventually, someone will get frozen. Even if there were more of us, it wouldn’t matter much if we ended up getting frozen.

“Dying here is too huge a sacrifice just to be fodder for Mehubathar. Fodder while we kill it. Even if everyone would be willing to sacrifice their experience and money in case they died, our respawn point is too far away and we’re already too deep in the Ice Tunnel. And that’s not even factoring in the penalty period for dying. We can’t just continuously throw players at it to Freeze and kill to buy time for the damage dealers.

"Didn't you say that you and your friends died several times before killing the Ice Troll?" I said, "The one who used to guard the place we made into our first headquarters?"

"Yes, that boss had some weird mechanics as well. We died several times while trying to figure it out."

"Well, we know what's hard with this boss. The question is what we can do about it?"

“Let us not forget that we could get Frozen even at our first strike,” I said. “The chance might be very low at the start…but we might also get unlucky.”

“Brute force is not the way,” Nicole said as she looked at me, giving me a weird stare. “We need a strategy.”

“You have the highest stats, Megiddo,” Norman said. “What if you solo the boss? Some traditional one versus one, huh?”

“We will also give you potions and everything you need to fight it. Support players can go with you in the tunnel since they won't be attacking the goat. Foragers and Pathfinders can spike the ground with their poison, mines, and traps. Those don't count as attacking, anyway.”

Megiddo shook his head. “I don’t think I can kill it fast enough on my own even with all of your support. A while ago, I couldn’t do much damage to it even with the help from Pathfinders working hard to keep up the negative status effects on it. It is surely a beefy beast.”

"Yeah," Norman said, "when we stopped attacking it, it quickly regened our pitiful damage in about a few seconds."

"And what if Megiddo gets frozen?" I said.

“Don’t you have a spell immunity skill or something? The one you use when facetanking bosses,” another player asked Megiddo.

“Oh, that. I can’t have that up all the time. I used it earlier to take on the charge of Mehubathar to prevent me from getting cursed. If I get cursed, I couldn’t be healed, and that would be it, so I used it for that. Still, it has a short duration.”

“So a group of our strongest players then?”

"Kill it fast enough before anyone is unlucky enough to roll the become-an-icicle die?"

"That's still bruteforcing it."

Megiddo tilted his head as he considered it. Everyone fell quiet. I looked around and stopped myself from smiling. It was such a funny tableau. A bunch of monster centaurs, with the upper body of charcoal horned demons, sitting in a circle. And we all looked like children of Megiddo because he was so big compared to the rest of us. Grandpa Megiddo is telling us a campfire story, haha.

“Seems like it,” Megiddo finally said. “It would be tempting fate, but that’s the best chance we got. If all the strongest players banded together, the chance of someone in the group getting Frozen is extremely low. We could try rotation, but I'm not sure about the damage output. But if we don't cycle teams, we could get the life of the boss down faster that way. It would be a race between Mehubathar dying and one of us getting unlucky…”

Still, what if someone does get Frozen? That was the biggest problem here. Not exactly my problem, though.

“But it would take some time before we can organize everyone needed to from the team to log in at the same time, and actually have a strategy to make everyone feel safe,” Megiddo said.

As they discussed, I searched the internet for topics related to environmental status effects. As Megiddo had said, even if you were able to get together all of our best, or high levelled players, I mean, because best doesn’t mean high-levelled because I am the best and I don’t have a high level, there was still the problem of getting them to join a mission with a large chance of death.

“But they also can’t fight for a long time,” a player said, pointing out what I was thinking.

“What if they get Frozen too? The chance might be lower for you guys, but there is a chance.”

Everyone aired their concerns. I zoned out for a bit as I thought of a plan. This really wasn’t my duty to think of a plan; I only have a small stake in this. I didn’t even expect to reach this far in the tunnel. If killing Mr. Steroid Goat proved to be impossible at our current strength and level, then I would just go back to farming and leveling. It would be quite sad for Megiddo, though. I was sure he was itching to finally leave the mountain.

What did we know about Mr. Goat? One, if you get hit by its charge, then its buh-bye since the Healers presently with us cannot remove its curse that prevented healing, and we weren’t sure if even ChiliMaster could remove it. Plus, it also inflicted some sort of damage over time besides the primary damage of the charge.

So just dodge it, right? It was obvious when it was about to charge, and we have plenty of experience when it came to evading a charge. Correct! But then how will you kill it?

Which leads us to…Two, there was a chance to freeze if you try to kill it, attack it or use an attack skill, whatever. Furthermore, the longer it took you to kill it, the higher the chance to get frozen becomes. It was a very durable boss level monster, so it would take a long time to kill. There was bound to be someone who was going to get Frozen.

Three, if you get Frozen, a status which we couldn’t dispel, you couldn’t move, your health drops a fuckton per second, and Mr. Goat would be coming for your icicle ass. Which then brings us back to point one, you’re dead if you get rammed by Mr. Goat.

I could think of two easy ways to face Mr. Goat. Use skills or items that wouldn’t really count as attacks, like my poison bottles for example. They weren’t really counted as attacks unless I threw the bottle at the Goat, I think. But my poison was weak for a boss of this level, and I doubt the other Foragers have poisons or fire bombs that could do more than tickle Mr. Goat. Such a waste, this would have been the perfect opportunity for me to save the day. Just think about it, that freakishly blue ice cave filled with my poison gas, and we’ll just have a picnic right outside, waiting for the boss to die.

Enough daydreaming, that’s for some other time.

The other way was, as Megiddo mentioned, rotation. Cycling through teams. The effects of Frostbite, combined with the environment status effect and Mr. Goat’s own stupid aura with a chance to Freeze made it dangerous to fight it for extended periods. But if we went out of Mr. Goat’s cave, the Frostbite will slowly wear off. We could form two groups and alternate facing the goat until we win.

The problem with the second plan was that there was still the chance of getting Frozen. The chance would be smaller because of the rotation, but there was a chance. And that was the problem.

Five players were already rammed by Mr. Goat. Four in our first battle, plus the Pathfinder who got frozen because she tried to force her way into the next area without defeating the goat.

Wait! Wait! There is something I am missing here…

Everyone was animatedly discussing what should we do. There were mixed emotions. Some of the players were pretty sure that we were close to getting out of the mountain especially with the change of ice and the environmental status effects.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey! Two players got Frozen before we retreated from Mehubathar’s lair, right? I mean before we got out.”

“Yeah, and they’re dead. Your point?”

“I saw one of them got rammed by Mehubathar. But what about the other player?

“What do you mean the other player?”

“He’s dead too, duh.”

“This is not really helping.”

All of them resumed their stupid discussions and didn’t let me finish with my point like the dumbasses they are.

I held up my hand and said in a loud voice, “No one tried to move the frozen guy out?”

All of them kept suddenly shut up and looked at me.

“Sooo. Let’s go?”

“If I get Frozen, I’ll be so pissed,” Wharton said.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Norman said. “Let’s trust what my man here planned.” He patted my back while laughing out loud. “I can’t believe you’re growing up so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday that you got mobbed by those Mirdabons outside the village.”

“Still, this depends on us working together,” I said.

And it did. It was just a simple plan but also kind of weird.

There was no way that we could get the chance to get Frozen to be zero. Megiddo said his chance was below half a percent, but that was because he had higher stats compared to us. Guess his body was more resistant to bullshit effects? For Megiddo, and everyone else, there was the threat of getting Frozen, like the sword of Damocles, hanging above us.

We couldn’t simply do rotations because fortune might not be on our side and someone does get Frozen at the start. It would be sort of like gambling, but losing has the very sad effect of not only destroying our equipment and making us lose money, but we also get penalized stats-wise and get sent back to our far away village.

Personally, I wouldn’t risk that. I wouldn’t even join the boss-killing mission anymore without a safeguard against getting Frozen. And I was sure that the others also thought about that.

But with this…

We didn't divide ourselves into two groups just for safety purposes. The real plan involved a rotation to makes sure the Frostbite effect doesn't get too unmanageable, but for our first try, we brought everyone along.

If this worked, we could just organize everyone else to help out here.

“Here comes the boss. Take care, everyone.”

“Let’s do the Mardukryon wall again.”

Hunter-Warriors bunched up together and overlapped their buffs. Healers patrolled the backlines while Pathfinders harassed Mr. Goat. Once Mr. Goat caught sight of Megiddo bathed in all that Threat, it made beeline for them.

Megiddo used his skill to make raise his resistance against curses and debuffs. This was what he used earlier to receive the attack of Mr. Goat head-on. I threw a couple of poison bottles in the path of the Mr. Goat just to show my participation. There was no way I was going to join the main group and attack the boss directly.

My survival above all. I didn’t exactly trust the others right now to do their job.

Megiddo swung his large axe in a wide arc over the heads of the other players. Mr. Goat lowered its head as it closed in on the Hunter-Warriors. Megiddo’s axe caught Mr. Goats large horns which were just a bit smaller than me. Healers cast their magic on Megiddo, who undoubtedly took a lot of damage despite blocking the attack. The others quickly pounced on Mr. Goat. We were like ancient cave men fighting a mammoth, using our number to overwhelm the much larger beast.

I didn’t join in the attack but merely galloped around. The Hunter-Warriors made little headway in chipping at the very long health bar of the goat.

"Norman's frozen," Nicole exclaimed.

The boss stomped the ground and made everyone move back because of the shockwaves. This was the clue that I had that Frozen players could be moved. Actually, it was also wrong of me to assume at first that someone Frozen couldn't be moved.

Mr. Goat then faced Norman, as expected.

"I'll be the one to move him," I said. "Clear the way."

Mr. Goat pawed the ground. From my observation, it would paw the ground three to four times before charging. And its charge was way faster than its normal running speed. After its hoof raked the ground for the second time, I kickstarted. When it hit the ground again with its hoof for the third time, I charged. I unequipped my shield and spear to make it easier for me to drag Norman along.

"I'll save you, Norman, my friend," I said with a maniacal laugh as the boss goat started its charge. I grabbed Norman as I passed by him. Then Mr. Goat thundered along, missing us, hitting a wall. "Quick! Next one."

Wharton was already prepared with his own charge. He dragged Norman as close he could to the exit. I turned to look at Mr. Goat. It already recovered from crashing against the wall. Nicole ran past me to get to the exit. Was Norman out yet? No. Wharton had to charge again with Norman in tow. It was enough to get them right at the exit.

"The boss is coming!"

"Quickly get out."

Nicole charged at Norman. Both of them piled out of the exit, just as Mr. Goat reached them. It hit the exit but couldn't get out because it was too big. It turned back to look at the rest of us who were still in its lair. It exhaled icy fumes.

"I can dispel the Freeze," Nicole said from outside the lair. "It takes several casts but I can dispel it!"

"We just need to get anyone Frozen outside," Megiddo said. "Form up."

Everyone inside cheered as they gathered into the Mardukryon wall again. I couldn't help but smile because the health bar of Mr. Goat just finished completely regenerating. It was as if we never did anything to it at all.

"Looks like we have lots of work to do."