Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! CRYSTAL PANIC TIME!

ANYWAY, with this, we have one boss down after a big fight… Whew this was one tiring chapter to write… I hope you guys enjoyed this fight. I kind of wanted to make this boss more of the technical fights, with lots of mechanics that are hard to figure out, but gets relatively simple after you figure the trick. So, how many of you figured out the trick behind this guy before Gon?

ALSO, since this boss was more of a technical one, I plan on doing the wolf a more brutal and direct one, so there won’t be all this much figuring out. Not that he will be all that easier, though.

ALSO(2), one more warning, but there is a Q & A coming Sunday/Monday. Two question per poster, any character you want to ask, no spoilers!

Have a good read!

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“So, are you all ready?” Yagver asked us for one last time after we reconfirmed the plan.

“Ready as I can be.” I said confidently while the others nodded in agreement.

Sir Yagver eyed all of us one last time before nodding for me to go ahead. I smiled wickedly and walked dauntingly towards the boss who stared at me for a moment as I stood in front of him.

“Hey! Gramps! Isn’t it about time you stand down your guarding role and leave it to the new and sexier generation?” I taunted him mostly for the sake of doing it. I’m not sure if it worked or not, but I do know that the boss advanced a step forward while raising his sword for the room-splitter.

When he did that, I raised my shield and waited patiently for him to wind-up the strike, and as soon as he brought it down towards me, I aligned my shield and activated Nature’s bastion stopping a good part of the damage.

But soon after, when Nature’s bastion effect stopped I started to feel the pressure of the attack and began to be pressed downwards by the sheer strength of Excel’s and my health started to drop in a steady but quick pace. I grimaced for a moment as I noticed that the others were already attacking the sword, but my load was relieved when Yagver came from behind me and put his shield above me, taking the attack from me.

I quickly rolled away after we exchanged the position of the one holding the attack and I turned towards the sword to attack it with the others.

“Lieutenant! Get ready!” I shouted to my pet, who made a salute in response while readying himself for his job.

Right afterwards, the sword shattered in a thousand fragments and the Drone took a step back as if hit by recoil and stared at its limp hand for a moment. We had this brief moment of calm we had before he went berserk to put our plan into motion. Lieutenant approached the unsuspecting drone and jumped to his arms, holding himself there tightly while stabbing them with daggers.

For now, that was all he did while holding himself together.

Our plan for this opening was something along these lines: Since my Nature’s bastion was even better at stopping instant impact than sir Yagver’s shield, I would be the one to stop the boss initial attack and right as the effect ended, Yagver would take over the job keep the sword stopped while we all nuked it to oblivion.

Afterwards, we had the animation where the boss would look at his arms and see it go limp while crystal-less. At this Lieutenant would cling to the armor-less hand and would be the one responsible for keeping it dead, as well as make a small test for me.

His damage isn’t all that high by himself, but it’s more than enough to give us some breathing room during the berserk phase, where he goes nuts with his shooting arm. Afterwards we could have Yuu or Lenny to explode it back to 0.

We also prepared some ideas for the whip skill and the green circle. However, we still had no idea what the other leg does, or even if it DO use some kind of skill, so we had to be cautious about it.

His muscle-like crystals bloated greatly as he extended his arm-gauntlet and made a full swiping barrage in front of him. Me and Yagver managed to block the attack while the others simply ran away.

Immediately afterwards he started his non-stop crystal-spear shooting, targeting one of us at random and then blasting away. For this part even me and Yagver had to jump away from the attacks as they would probably pierce our defense right away. After around the thirty seconds of non-stop shooting he finally

calmed down a bit and turned towards Yagver after he roared his taunt.

The drone started to pummel him for some seconds, and we took this time to take a breather. After around five seconds of non-stopping tank attacking, he turned towards the center of the room and prepared his attack.

But this time he lifted the left leg instead and stomped the ground heavily, making a slight quake effect that almost made me and Yagver lose our balance.

Right afterwards a chunk of crystal popped from the ground beneath his feet. I looked at it for a moment before noticing that another chunk popped up besides the first one, then another, and another. The crystals looked like that old snake game, with a new piece popping up at the front like it was advancing towards someone, getting faster and faster as time went on.

Since the others were already taking note of the boss, I did not need to warn them of this skill Forgotten easily dodged the skill. However, it didn’t stop there as it started to make a wide turn around while picking up the speed. Even worse, the earlier crystals weren’t disappearing and this was cutting out our room for maneuvering.

I turned towards Yuu and Lenny and nodded towards them, signaling for them to try and attack the crystal. They quickly started bombarding the crystals breaking them, but the one in front seemed to be difficult to actually destroy.

I must say, that this is probably the easiest skill from the boss to deal with, if we manage to destroy that crystal in the front. I left it to our two ranged attackers to deal with it, and turned my focus back to the boss, who was pummeling and shooting our main tanker all this time.

After some seconds, the boss once again turned towards us and lifted the hand up in the air before bringing it back down into the ground. We all immediately turned towards the four pillars that prepared to appear and started to bombard them with our best hitting attacks. But because Yuu and Lenny were trying to destroy the moving crystal, we only managed to destroy two of the crystals before the boss raised himself towards the wall and prepared to shoot the red crystal out.

“DO IT!” I shouted aloud and received a meow in response.

Suddenly the boss staggered and the red coloration disappeared from him as the crystals in his other arm started to shrink back to its ‘normal’ post-berserk size. It immediately stopped whatever it was doing and tried to extend its arm towards the limp arm-blade in his other side and tried to yank Lieutenant out. But the cat managed to climb its arm up and stand on his head while the Drone flailed around for a moment, trying to get him out.

I gave a thumbs up to my favorite soldier who answered with one of his own before going back to the limp arm.

“STUN SKILLS WORKS ON THE ARMOR-LESS ARM!” I shouted to the others, who nodded in response.

“Shishou! We can’t stop the moving crystal!” Yuu said to me as she shot a frost-fire lance towards it, but even when she destroyed the crystal, another one quickly sprouted up while chasing her.

By now even our ace was having a hard time running away from it, as it had more than enough time to gather speed, so she could only land an occasional attack every few seconds. She looked towards me with some worry, but the one to give the idea was Hanbei.

“Yuu-chan! Lead it into one of the pillars! His attacks seems to destroy each other!”

Yuu nodded and quickly ran towards the pillar and circled around it, making the creeping crystal hit it the pillar and the two shattered each other, leaving nothing else in the area. The two girls smiled cheerfully at each other for the working plan.

This seemed to enrage Excel, as he started to lift his right leg and changing his crystal coloration to green.

Seeing this, I immediately used Tactical charge to get me outside of the danger zone and leaving only Yagver inside. We all immediately turned towards the crystal and started to bombard it with our skills, but it shrunk a bit too fast and Yagver almost died, but just at that moment, the green crystal exploded. The boss jumped up surprised and looked downwards towards the right leg that he had used to create the area.

And the crystal in the right leg started to shatter and fall down, leaving nothing back on him.

We all looked towards each other and prepared ourselves by taking some distance from him. One of our predictions was that there would be a berserk stage for every piece of him that we destroyed, and it seemed to be true, as his crystals bloated up even more and once again he started with his swiping barrage. Different from the last time, however, was that instead of stopping to change to the spear throwers, he kept doing the barrage while at the same time stomping the ground with his good leg.

And for every stomp he did, another one of those creeping crystals would pop up and start making its way towards us.

Luckily, the self-destructive nature of his attacks made so that whenever one of them hit a wall made by another, one of them would break.

At least around ten of these managed to survive and hunt us, and I couldn’t help but feel that Lieutenant had the easy part simply clinging to the unmoving arm.

Me, Forgotten, Xredder and Hanbei were left as the responsible for luring the creeping crystals towards each other, while Yuu and Lenny made sure to keep the arm and leg locked down on 0 health.

We managed to destroy all but one of the creeping crystals by the time the boss calmed down once again and started to melee Yagver. Xredder tried luring the creeping towards him, but the crystal simply ignored the boss and passed right through him.

Looking closely, I noticed that Yagver was frowning slightly at each attack he received, as they probably started to hurt by now, and his occasional attacks to keep the boss focused on him were becoming extremely rare by now as he focused all his attention to defending.

It was annoying the fact that we could do nothing but wait for its next attack to start damaging him again. And the fact that he was still locked at full health only made me even more annoyed, but at least we were having a nice advantage by now.

He suddenly stopped the melee and slammed the hand on the ground, but instead of three or four pillars, now we had five. It seems that for every limb we destroy, the others power up. Xredder lured the creeper towards one of the crystals while we destroyed four other. Lieutenant tried to stun the boss when he shot the red crystal, but he had gained some resistance to stun, so he still managed to shoot the crystal out.

I ran to him so I could stop the crystal from hitting him, but the two hits hurt a whole lot more than before, taking out a good twenty percent of my health.

We really have to find a way to deal with this hand in particular, as most of the other are fairly simple to counter.

Immediately after the last pillar was destroyed, Excel lifted his left leg and I started to expect another one of the creeping crystals, but what happened wasn’t what I was expecting. His whole body changed to a yellow coloration.

“It’s Your chance! Get ready!” Yagver shouted noticing the attack about to come, and we all nodded.

The boss landed his foot on the ground with a heavy stomp. After a brief moment, he lifted his foot again before slamming. I looked around worried and noticed as a yellow crystal slowly sprouted on the other side of the room before starting to bloat up over a few seconds.

We all paled up at this familiar scene and readied ourselves for the impact. But in an extremely different fashion, instead of a simple explosion, there was a yellow crystal shrapnel shower covering the whole room.

And for every stomp the boss did in his tantrum fashion, another one of these crystals popped up.

“YUU! WALLS! FORGOTTEN, AOE HEALING!” I shouted to them, and they immediately complied as we gathered between the four ice walls made by the kitsune.

But some of the fragments were a bit more powerful than the expected and pierced through our makeshift defenses, making Forgotten keep up his healing spells going up. After around ten of these crystals, there was a much louder stomp as the boss put all his strength into it.

And with that the ground started to rumble as a huge yellow crystal popped up from the center of the room and rose all the way towards the ceiling. We all looked at it surprised for a moment, until we noticed it starting to bloat up like the ones before it.

“Cripes… BREAK IT BEFORE IT EXPLODE!” I shouted nervously waking all the others from their stupor and soon we were all bombarding it with our attacks while dodging some of the boss shots as he couldn’t move from his place.

The crystal, like the green one, had a full thousand points of HP, so we had to attack it non-stop for a good time, and we could almost see it exploding right before we managed to destroy it.

But it didn’t go without an avenging strike, as an explosion, smaller than the one we were expecting, took out half of our health as it broke down into a million of fragments. The boss had its usual reaction of seeing his legs crystal breaking down in thousands of pieces.

As he lost the support of both his legs, he fell down on his legs like the way we had first seen him when we entered, losing almost all of its mobility in a single blow, but his remaining arm bloating up to an humongous level.

I grew a bit complacent here with my over-confidence, as he had no way of turning around and target us during his berseking, but I was wrong.

He slammed his only good hand into the ground repeatedly, just like a jackhammer. I looked around worried and paled as I noticed tens of small pieces of crystal popping up from the ground here and there before sprouting up from the ground as a stalagmite with raging ferocity, before going back in.

And different from his other attacks, this one didn’t have a single safe zone.

There was no strategy here, and we simply started to run around while trying to avoid the ones where the crystals were about to pop up. It was a mad run as each one tried to avoid his own problems, which almost led to more than a few head-butts on our side.

We spent the whole thirty seconds like this, and by the time the boss stopped, we had to focus all of our ranged firepower on bringing his dead-limbs down again. Luckily, lieutenant used some fire daggers during the berserking to keep it down to a manageable levels.

But the drone didn’t simply stand there looking, as he started to shoot crystal at all of us with incredible ferocity, keeping us on the move for most of the time. On the plus side, Yagver didn’t need to keep tanking him anymore.

However, there was still the problem of how to damage his remaining arm. It was the only one we didn’t have a plan against, since we had no way of damaging it.

Sadly, he didn’t give me much time to think, as he slammed the hand on the ground once, bringing three pillars up almost instantly, before lifting it back and slamming down again, making another three sprout.

Me and Yagver grimaced while we started breaking the pillars. However, our limit by now was only three of them, so when the boss shot the crystal towards the wall, we didn’t have enough time to break them, and soon there were eight crystals attacking us at random. At least we managed to break the remaining pillars before they spread out even more, but this made the crystals turn towards the downed robot.

Me and Yagver divided the job of blocking these crystals on their way to fusing with him.

And soon after we stopped the crystals, the boss went berserk once again jackhammering the ground one an even more furious rhythm than before, making us run on an even more panicky run than before. This time we didn’t manage to avoid all of them and took a few hits from the crystals, which each dealt around a whole hundred points of damage ignoring armor.

At least it was still within acceptable damage range.

But how the hell are we supposed to break that other hand then? Even when we break the pillars it doesn’t affect him!

Think, Wargon, think!

What makes it so that breaking the crystals also break his limbs? What did we managed to break up to now? There was the sword, of course. Then there was the green crystal circle and the yellow explosive pillar.

What did they have of different from the pillars? The sword is pretty obvious, as it was still linked to his arms, but the circle and the pillar weren’t! Heck, the pillar was half a room of distance from him!

Then, why didn’t the creeping crystals or the red Crystal had the same effect? Didn’t we manage to destroy them even when they weren’t linked to him? And he still didn’t break his own crystals…

As I focused on that, I noticed as he once again raised his hands and slammed it down into the ground once, creating three pillars, followed by another slam that created the remaining three pillars.

So, now would be when he raises his arm and shoot the red crystal, right?

“GON! HELPS US HERE!” Han-chan shouted angrily at the me who was focusing on the boss. But I ignored her call as I watched the boss as he stood still for around three to four seconds before yanking his arm away from the ground.

Why did it take so long for him to do that? Actually, doesn’t he do that every time he put the pillars? Why?

Wait… The yellow pillar, the green area… These six pillars…

“I GOT IT!” I shouted as I turned to a nearby pillar and attacked it. The others turned shocked to me and looked surprised for a moment. “Next time, everyone focus on my pillar, got it?”

They looked suspicious for a moment, but nodded nonetheless.

However, I almost died on these red crystals, as they hit me even stronger than the last time, as well in greater quantities since it took too long to break down one of the pillars.

But after chugging down a potion I was ready for the next berseking phase. This one even more hectic than the two before it, which almost killed Yuu and Lenny, whom didn’t have as much HP as the rest of our group, but we barely managed to hold back.

After some random shooting, the boss once again prepared for creating the pillars, and as soon as the first three popped up, Xredder said nervously.

“So, which one?”

“Wait. Not these ones…” I said as I watched to where the closest pillar from the second wave would sprout and turned towards it. “THAT ONE, HOLD NOTHING BACK! BLOW IT UP! QUICKLY!”

Just as the crystal popped it was bombarded with all of our best spells and skills and died in less than three seconds from coming up.

And we heard the lovely sound of crystal breaking coming from the other two pillars that popped up together with this one, as well as seeing the boss receive the recoil from his skill being destroyed.

The others looked at me shocked, but I told them later as we turned to the boss, noticing that the blue lines in his chest disappeared, as well as the crystals around his neck being pulled back out.

“It’s time for revenge!” I said with a malicious smile as jumped towards the drone and started slashing it, since I was out of energy from the pillars.

-25 -1 -23 -1 -24 -1 -26 -1

-102 (5898/6000)

I laughed maniacally as I saw his health going down for the first time during all of our fight. The others blinked surprised for a moment, but they soon followed my lead, jumping on the boss and slashing, blasting and shooting him to oblivion.

We were lost into our own delightful world, discharging all of our pent-up frustration on the powerless boss before us, bringing him below fifty percent in less than a minute even with our best skills on cool down.

But the big guy wasn’t going to sit there motionlessly for the rest of the fight.

After sixty seconds flat, black lines started to spread around his chest, arms and legs and the limbs were brought back to full health in the blink of an eye. Black crystal spread over his body forming the muscle-like shape as soon as our attacks started to bounce off him again.

I felt a chill down my spine and immediately backpedaled away from him, the others copying me at the same time.

The boss stood up in a single movement and made a full spin around with the black sword wiping away at anything nearby it.

The colorless eye turned towards me and with and without any prior warning, its shooter hand was already launching an impaling shot on my direction. I barely managed to roll away from it in time, but before I could even lift myself, there was already a whip coming to strike me.

Yagver saved me by blocking the attack with his shield, and I immediately ran away from the area towards safety. However, Yagver’s interference got the boss’ attention, as it turned towards the Jöntunn and ran towards him, landing an uppercut on his shield that took a small chunk of his health, followed by a downwards slash with his sword hand.

Yagvers life started a steady drop from that moment on as he stopped the boss attack, who would suddenly stop his berserk flurry to turn and barrage us with his shooting hand, with each shot covering an area so huge we barely had time to escape, losing around twenty to thirty percent of our health with every shot.

When around fifteen seconds had passed, he stomped the ground with his feet, causing four crystal lines to form a cross with him as the center, cutting the room into four sectors. Immediately afterwards the walls started to move clockwise.

I tried to attack the wall to see if I could break it, but even that was a bad move, because the moment I even touched the wall, my health dropped by two hundred points in a single moment. I jumped back and noticed that the boss was aiming at me with his shooting hand, and barely managed to charge out of the way before the shots reached me.

It took fifteen seconds and a full spin around the room for the walls to disappear, but even then the boss kept his black coloration as he attacked Yagver relentlessly.

Noticing that his health was almost reaching rock bottom, I kicked the Jötunn away at the last moment and managed to block the attack with my shield and nature’s bastion.

“What’s up, gramps? Can’t even land a good hit on someone younger than you?” I taunted him to get him to target me, and received a thankful look from Yagver as his health started to fill back up slowly, thanks to forgotten.

When the drone lifted his blade hand, I rolled away from the attack, and saw as it formed a black chunk of crystal on the ground that exploded a moment after. Lucikly, the range wasn’t all that big so it didn’t reach me after the roll.

I kept taunting him and rolling away from his attacks for the next fifteen seconds, but not without receiving two painful blows to the body, which almost killed me.

After fifteen seconds were done, Yagver taunted the boss back as he once again used his spinning walls attacks.

After surviving this wall once again, the black color disappeared from his body and he was once again back to his blue coloration and started with the room splitter from the beginning of the fight.

Afterwards, all we needed to do was to keep up with our previous strategy.

And after a few more minutes, his HP reached zero.

Yet, the drone didn’t stop there, as he started to tremble violently while black crystals started to spread once again through all his body. I frowned deeply while looking at this, there was even more? The others and me fell back to get some reaction room for ourselves while waiting his next movement.

The drone stood up once again and started to walk towards us while lifting his sword up high in the air. He got within range of sir Yagver and started to bring his sword down. The Jötunn raised his shield waiting for the strike.

Yet, just as the demonic black sword prepared to strike him, it shattered into thousand pieces as the whole arm fell off from the drone.

He lost his balance due to the sudden loss of weight and stumbled forward while using his right leg to try and regain his footing, however the crystal in his leg shattered and he fell down into the ground.

He tried to use his remaining leg and arm to get back up again, but the effort also destroyed the lower limb, tumbling him back to the floor.

As a last ditch of effort, he raised the right arm towards Yagver and changed it into the spear shooter. But the shot never came, as the black lights disappeared and his body deactivated for good this time, his arm soon following the torso in laying flat besides him.

We were still all tensed up from the scene, all of us ready to take another round of relentless fight, so we couldn’t exactly understand what had just happened. We only recovered ourselves when a window popped up in front of me and I started to laugh loudly at it.

Congratulations! You have defeated Excel-Loran while in the presence of Aura.Chronicles of the Frozen Battlefield have earned the following upgrade:

TGH +3 MND +3 VIT +3

DEF +1 M. Res +1