Did they kill the boss? That was Kezodilla's first thought as soon as he teleported next to the Nixigaunt Warp Totem. Straight away, he headed back to the Silent Plaza, his hooves crunching snow as he galloped as fast as he could.

Zoar Elab was on the verge of death moments before he was killed. His party mates would've certainly finished it off. Or did they?

What if they also died like him? Wouldn't it have been better if they waited until after the spike explosion of the boss? He didn't hang around by the Chief's Lodge to check if anybody else would respawn in the village, so he didn't know of their fate.

Monsters curiously stared at him as he thundered past them. He kept his ears peeled for sounds of battle to know if his party got wiped, but he was still some distance from the Silent Plaza.

He held out his swords, tightly gripping them as anxiety crept into his mind. It would certainly boost their morale if they managed to kill Zoar Elab. And it would also give them more confidence that they shouldn’t settle for scraps during the Great Hunt. We need this win!

Truth be told, after Luds’ blunt words yesterday, Kezo was ready to concede that his party shouldn’t aim high and be contented with anything they could kill.

That changed when Herald shared his plan on how to tank the Living Statue.

Kezo’s initial instinct was to dismiss it—Herald was a newbie and wouldn’t know what he was talking about. The main reason Kezo invited him to join the party was for future Great Hunts. Herald wouldn’t be much help now, especially given level and gear, but he would be Kezo’s permanent party member come succeeding Great Hunts. For now, Herald was supposed to be a nominal member of the team.

But Kezo opened his mind to Herald’s idea because the level twelve player had shown incredible teamwork during their fight against the Rotted Cedarlyon. After that fight, Kezo was convinced that Herald was not as new a player as he pretended to be—he was likely a veteran of another race, or races, who wanted a different kind of challenge by picking Mardukryon.

Excitement filled Kezo’s heart once he understood Herald’s plan. It sounded crazy, but it could actually work. And it did!

“As long as someone is still alive,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ll finish off that boss.”

His ears pricked at the noises of hooves that weren’t his own. They seemed to come from more than one Mardukryon. Was it two people? Three?

Kezo’s heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach as he assumed the worst. Could this be Herald, Megan, and Nitana following him?

"Kezo, wait up!” Nitana loudly called out. “You’re too fast, wait for us!”

He felt a sense of hope as he slowed down. She didn’t sound agitated, and she wasn’t telling him to hurry to the boss fight. Did they win?

Kezo turned around and found out who Nitana meant by ‘us’. His uplifted spirit sunk back down as he saw the Mardukryons accompanying his party members. It was Luds, Wharton, and Nic. Luds—the last person he wanted to see. Certainly, that prick didn’t have anything good to say.

It was just a waste of time to talk with him when they should be fighting—

Kezo’s eyes widened as a thought came to him. “Megan and Herald…” he mouthed. If they weren’t here, then did it mean they won? Nitana’s smirk while looking at Luds with bored eyes confirmed it.

“Yow there, Cheeseman!” Luds said as he approached. “I heard from…” He trailed off as he turned to Nitana and then checked her name above her head. He continued, “Nitana here said you guys are fighting the Living Statue again? Didn’t I already tell you to look for other bosses your size? It’s like you’re repeatedly bumping your head—

“Were fighting,” Nitana smugly corrected him.

“Huh?”

“Not 'are fighting'. Were…were…past tense.” She folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head, flipping her braids back. “We already killed it.”

“No way!” Luds elbowed Wharton. “Can you believe this?”

“If you killed the boss,” Wharton said, pointing at Nitana and then Kezo, “then why are you two here?”

“Awesome brain you got there, Wharton! He’s right. There are only four of you in your party. Do you mean to tell me that the wand girl and the new guy are left with the boss?”

“Or maybe, they asked someone to help them,” said Wharton with a shrug.

“A temporary member?” Luds snapped his fingers. “That must be it. Cheeseman, I see you’re wearing your prized Hollow Blood-Drenched set. If you’re going as the main DPS of your party—by the way, that was my advice to you—then someone else is tanking. There’s no one in your party who could do that. You must’ve invited a tank to join you guys to defeat the Living Statue, didn’t you?”

“No, that’s not—” Nitana started to say.

Kezo cut her off. “Yeah, we asked for help from someone.” She raised a brow at him. He gave her a subtle shake of his head telling her that, we shouldn’t reveal our secret.

Luds laughed, thinking that he had them figured out. “And then, you were going to show me that you killed the Living Statue? You’re going to pretend you were able to do it with your mish-mash of a party lineup? That wouldn’t work, Cheeseman. I’d immediately know something is fishy with the whole thing.”

“We weren’t planning to fool you,” Kezo replied. “We even didn’t know you were around. I simply wanted my party to experience defeating a strong boss above their level. If we wanted to trick you, then we would’ve called you.”

“You’re the one who followed me,” Nic pointedly said. “Annoyingly so.”

“There,” Nic authoritatively spoke as she stepped forward. “They already killed the boss. No more issues. Let’s go back and see if Baby and Miko are done with the auction.”

“Bu-but they didn’t do it by themselves,” Luds stammered. “That’s not—"

“They wanted to kill the boss,” said Nic. “They asked for help. Someone did help them and they managed to do it. That’s it. If they asked for your help, would you have helped them?”

“Of course,” Luds quickly answered. “I’m ready to help anyone.”

“And you won’t have any issues if they killed the Living Statue with your help?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Well, they didn’t ask for your help because you’re not a tank,” said Nic. “If you don’t have any problems with them successfully defeating a boss with your help, then it’s fine if they did it with others.”

“Yeah, man,” Wharton said, surprisingly agreeing with Nic instead of taking Lud’s side. “I don't see what's the big deal."

Luds wouldn’t give up just yet. “But they won’t be able to do this during the Great Hunt.”

“This isn’t the Great Hunt though,” Nic said. “And speaking of the Great Hunt, we have our own practice, yeah? I think the auction is over so Baby and Miko should be free. Marcus is already online.”

Kezo and Nitana didn’t immediately go to the Silent Plaza. They waited for Luds and his friends to disappear into the trees, making sure that they wouldn’t follow them.

Once he was certain they were gone, Kezo asked Nitana, “Did we really win?”

“Hell yeah!” she replied. “I saw the boss was about to die just before its flying spikes hit me.”

“Awesome.” Kezo chuckled. “Even if we told Luds the truth, he wouldn’t believe it. No way he’d consider we could do it on our own. Let’s go! Megan and Herald are probably wondering what’s taking us so long.”

“Hooray! We did it!” Megan waved her wands high in the air, shooting off multicolored sparks to shower both of us. She also used her Totem to shoot balls of light upward, putting together a fitting fireworks display for our incredible feat. "I can't believe we finally defeated the boss!"

I can believe it because—the truth was, it also surprised me how well it turned out, especially since it was our first try with the new strategy. "It was possible because we all worked together," I said, sharing my genuine thoughts.

At first, I was on the fence with my teammates. But I was now warming up to them. We couldn’t have won if they didn’t do their parts well. They quickly adapted to every situation, including the skills of the boss we hadn’t encountered before as it continued to evolve and become stronger.

And we also seemed to have formed a connection, knowing each other’s movements and adjusting to each other with minimal communication. Nitana especially had saved me several times already.

"But I'm really sad that Nitana and Kezo died,” Megan said. She lowered her sparkling wands as her shoulders slumped. “They’re not here to celebrate.”

“They sacrificed themselves for the good of the party,” I said. “We’ll celebrate when they return.”

We waited for around five minutes for them to arrive.

“What took you guys so long?” Megan said.

“We had to shake off a pest,” Nitana explained, snorting in exasperation.

Kezo clarified, “Luds was hounding us. We had to make excuses so he'd leave us alone. I didn’t want him to know about our strategy.”

“Good call,” I said. “We might surprise them during the Great Hunt and kill a boss or two under their noses.”

Kezo glanced at the corpse of Zoar Elab. “I had a bit of a scare there thinking you guys also died. But I shouldn’t have worried. I know you guys can do it. With this, we have a way of tanking bosses and strong monsters. It may not work for all of them, but it widens our pool of targets by a lot.” He added while chuckling, “A lot compared to none.”

“Let’s take a picture in front of the boss!” That was Megan’s suggestion, as expected.

We gathered in front of the corpse of Zoar Elab—a massive pile of vines as if a giant had left a plate of green spaghetti with a sprinkling of thorns in the middle of the plaza—and took a picture with the game’s camera feature. Taking a picture in front of defeated enemies, that sounded like a good idea to record my exploits. A history of the rise of Herald Stone would be invaluable for posterity.

Nitana said, “Too bad I wasn’t there when the boss died. I didn’t get any loots.”

“You’re not missing much,” Kezo told her. “As I’ve mentioned, the loots of this boss are pretty crap, that’s why no one is hunting it.”

“Yeah, the pieces of armor I got are….meh,” Megan said as she scanned her inventory. “And I’m not sure what these materials are used for. Probably nothing expensive because they’re not in demand.”

“By the way, I also got some rewards,” I said. “Random loot and an unidentified Ocadule Shard.”

“A Shard?” Kezo said. “That’s incredibly lucky. The drop rate for Shards from a boss is already low. On top of that, there’s a massive level gap penalty on the drops because you’re more than forty levels apart from the boss.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But this is probably not worth much, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, Herald,” Kezo said. “I can’t recall if the Zoar Elab Shard could roll any expensive Shard.”

“Might as well just check it,” Nitana said. “You don’t have a Perceiving Glass to identify it?” I shook my head. She initiated a trade with me. “I’ll give you one.”

[ Received: Perceiving Glass ]

“Quickly identify it,” Megan urged. “I’m excited to see what it is!”

“Now, now,” Kezo said, gesturing for her to calm down. “Let’s not get too excited. There’s a reason people are not farming Zoar Elab.”

“Any Shard is already a win for me,” I said. “I’ll just treat it as a trophy for our victory.”

“That’s a nice way of looking at it.”

“Identify it!”

“Here goes,” I said, using the Perceiving Glass on the unidentified Ocadule Shard. And out came:

Lvl. 1 Cloak of the Plaguespreader: Chosen as a servant of a sealed carrion lord, you increase your resistance to diseases while spreading them to those who dare touch you. Negative status resistance (+4%) and have a 10% chance to inflict any negative status you have to an attacker.

Cost: 20 Energy

Duration: 12 Seconds

Cooldown: 5 Seconds

“Hmm. Looks weird,” Nitana said after I shared the item screen with them.

“I’m sure it’s useful,” Megan insisted, trying to cheer me up. “Maybe someone will buy it for a high price.”

Kezo shook his head. “It’s not a good Shard. But it's a good souvenir for the fight. That's what counts.”

“Oh well,” Megan said with a sigh. “Memories are worth something. Right, Herald?”

I didn’t answer them because the gears in my brain were turning. I checked a skill in my Mardukryon Cidule that I didn’t unlock before.

Lvl 1 Cleansing Flames: Purify yourself from ailments with the flames of the Mardukryon ancestors. 70% chance to remove 1 negative status.

(Passive) For every negative status you have (Max stacks [3]):

+10 Armor, +5% Physical Damage Reduction

Cost: 15 Energy

Cooldown: 12 Seconds

Could this be my next build?