“This isn’t going to get any easier if we wait around,” I said making eye contact with the group. “Does everyone have bandages and HP Potions?” There was a small moment of double checking, and while Alan, Thomas and Lucas were all set, Maria didn’t have either. Jessica and I both gave her one of each, which would be enough for the fight, hopefully.

I took out the STR and DEX buff potions we had found and passed them to Jessica. “Use these as soon we start fighting.”

“Which sphinx will we be focusing on?” Alan asked me.

“Tank the left and we will kill the right first. Try to move it away from the other at least a few feet.” I said. “Hold nothing back at all. Use your potions, and any abilities that may help. If I recall you have Entangling Arrow right Maria?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“Use that on Jessica’s pull after the Quagmire Traps go off. It goes without saying, prioritize living over anything else. If you take damage—use a potion or a bandage—don’t wait. If we can survive as long as that other group did we should be able to down them both.”

Everyone gave a nod and I felt a nervous excitement start to creep up my spine. This was a fight to the death, and the first that I truly could not run from. I opened my stats.

Name: Mike Reynolds (27) Class: Necromancer Level: 20 EXP: 0%

HP: 905/905 MP: 385/385

STR: 5 Fear Resistance: 5

AGI: 2

DEX: 5

VIT: 20 +12

WIS: 24 +18

Available: 9

Skills: [A]Summon Skeleton LV. 8 |[A] Decay LV. 2| [A] Reanimate Dead LV. 2 | [A] Bone Armor LV. 2 | [A] Vast Shadows | [P]Sixth Sense | [P] Bravery LV. 2 | [P] Mutated LV. 2| [P] Pain Resistance LV. 2 | [P] Skeletal Mastery LV. 4| [P]Intimidate Living |[P] Inner Calm |[P] Necrotic Vision

I had nine stat points unspent and now was the time to use them: I opted to put every single one into VIT. It was only a guess, but it was likely Decay wouldn’t have much of an effect on a non-living object.

If I were to get aggro, the extra hit points would give me the best chance of survival. Nine more VIT increased my effective HP pool to 1040 through flat HP. And this also made a significant difference to Bone Armor: my armor value when I activated that skill was based on 35% of my maximum HP. So I’d added nearly 40 HP to that layer of defense.

Although I had previously made WIS my main stat for the MP, I did not anticipate running out in the short space of time this fight would last for – one way or another – even if I spammed summons.

“Let’s do it,” I said trying to muster enthusiasm. But everyone looked worried, and I felt the same. I took a good hard look at each teammate by my side—Alan, Thomas, Lucas, Maria and, of course, Jessica—it was possible this was our last few moments together.

As we walked towards the sphinxes, the other groups of players noticed our purposeful movement. Hushed whispers raced through the crowd as all eyes were on us. No one tried to alert us to the danger ahead, as it was certain we had witnessed the fate of the group just a little earlier.

Jessica walked as far forward as she felt she could without triggering either sphinx and set two Quagmire Traps; she hurried back and then quickly drank both the STR and DEX potions, back to back. We got into a formation with me at the very back.

I cast Bone Armor and then Vast Shadows. My army of undead appeared behind me in an instant. The sound of gasps and shock sounded out around us, and in that moment, I truly felt like a superhero, or super villain, from a comic book.

Looking around, I found the guy that gave me the double middle finger, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes now. It seemed he was regretting his earlier actions.

“This is it,” Jessica said, “here comes hell or victory.”

Thanks to the boost of the potion, she drew back her bowstring with more strength than ever before. The wooden longbow creaked before it twanged and an arrow rocketed with enough force to distort the flow of air around it. It was impossible for Jessica to miss.

As soon as the arrow hit the sphinx on the right of the entrance, both statues looked directly at her and rushed in our direction. The earth shook with each step of their massive stone legs, “Hold!” Jessica yelled. The two sphinxes needed to trigger the Quagmire traps first and foremost before Alan ran in.

Time felt as if it slowed down as I watched the two enormous monsters come at us like hungry dogs. “Now!” Jessica said. I was used to this tactic so my minions were already there and ready to intercept the right Sphinx. Alan charged the left on her shout and then immediately cast his Battle Shout, buffing everyone, including my squad of summoned undead, by fifteen-percent.

Maria let off two Entangling Arrows to further slow the sphinxes while Lucas joined the ranks of my skeletons. Double Wind Slash after Wind slash was thrown out, leaving shallow grooves on the deep stony exterior of our target, the right-hand one.

It was immediately clear that these sphinxes had incredible defenses, and yet powder from chunks of stone being plowed off by swings from my abomination streamed into the air. Every attack caused an explosion of debris.

My skeleton general held the front, despite every stomp of the sphinx’s massive feet threatening to crush it in place. Somehow though, it continued to take attack after attack without falling. With my squad all engaged, I paid attention to the other battle, where Alan seemed to be holding up and his guess for how much damage he would take was pretty accurate, around twenty-percent from each hit.

Thomas carefully allowed Alan to fall below fifty-percent and then cast his Barrier on him. Before now, I had never noticed how experienced Thomas had become. I watched him begin casting his heals immediately after completing one, but sometimes canceling the spell at the last second, when he felt it was going to over-heal if it landed. In this way Thomas avoided wasting his MP.

Out of all of us, Jessica was having the most trouble, and the frustration was visible on her face. She didn’t have any offensive skills to augment her shooting, and against a stone target her arrows merely left a small indentation before ricocheting away. Often, she leveraged her extraordinary accuracy to target the eyes of our opponents, here they were no more vulnerable than any other part of the Sphinx’s body.

Fortunately, Maria was having a better time of things as Entangling Arrow proved incredibly effective. Even the damage from Explosive Arrow was blasting fist-sized rocks off its body. The damage we were dealing was accumulating fast.

Merely ten seconds had passed when suddenly there was a development in the fight. The right sphinx paused his attack for a moment and instead lifted its two front paws into the air. It seemed in that moment that there was nothing but complete silence all around us.

The paws came down with a thud and the entire earth shook. An instant pulse of damage hit everyone, including my summoned undead. It was like the sphinx had summoned an earthquake here in this arena that we couldn’t leave.

The shockwave wasn’t enough to break my Bone Armor, but I saw everyone lose at least ten percent of their HP. That wasn’t alarming. What was alarming was that the sphinx didn’t stop at that. There was a second pulse, and then a third.

Luckily, our target stopped after the third pulse and didn’t continue. Thomas started to glow with a white halo of light as he cast his AoE healing ability. Everyone gained back half of the thirty percent they had lost. “Drink a potion!” I yelled and then recast Bone Armor. The combination of a group heal plus a potion allowed everyone to bring their HPs back above ninety-five percent.

This was the first ability hurdle we needed to get over, and it was clear it wasn’t aimed at inflicting a killing blow on one person, but it was designed to wear down the whole group. Alan was concentrating on defense, so at least the same special attack would not come from the other one until we had switched targets. But with the right sphinx at only twenty-five percent down, I felt there was bound to be a second ability in due course and maybe a third.

Fortunately, none of my summoned squad had fallen to the AoE attack but they were all seriously damaged. My skeleton minions definitely weren’t getting out of this alive, and maybe even my abominations were doomed.

I started to count the seconds in my head. The special attacks might be on a timer rather than be triggered by HP loss. The first ability demonstrated by the sphinx had come at around ten seconds into the fight. I was up to ten now… nothing special. Eleven, twelve. A giant stone paw came crashing down and smashed my skeleton general to his knees, and then the next attack crushed him into powder. My second general stepped in and started to parry with its Zweihander. Maria and Jessica continued to pummel the monster with arrow after arrow; nor did Lucas relent from repeatedly casting Wind Slash.

He was focusing on specific spots on its body and building damage. I’d nearly reached a count of twenty seconds when thanks to this damage a huge chunk of stone dropped away from the chest of the sphinx.

Exactly as my count hit twenty, the sphinx paused from stamping at the undead around it and again raised its two front legs in a repetition of its previous attack.

“Second ability is coming!” I cried, mostly for Thomas’s benefit as he was concentrating so hard on Alan.

This time, however, the pulsing didn’t stop. It continued past three and kept going. Panic was evident as Maria and Lucas cried out and even I felt a sudden urge to run from the deadly waves of damage, despite knowing that lasers would then cut me apart.

It was clear the pulsing wouldn’t stop until us or this Sphinx was dead. Thomas recognized this as well as he was casting his AoE healing over and over again. There was nothing better to do with my MP so I continually cast Bone Armor every time it went down.

“BURN IT!” I yelled. Everyone needed to put as much effort into killing the Sphinx as they possibly could before we all died. Despite Thomas healing constantly, everyone but me was losing HP at a steady rate.

Skeleton after skeleton started to fall and then my abominations cast Noxious Bile. No one held anything back as we pumped skill after skill into the sphinx.

The monster was casting one pulse every second, and by the seventh pulse every skeleton minion had died. All that remained of my squad were the two Abominations now spewing endless bile into the air. Stone and dust was spraying into the air from our bombardment. Another two pulses went off and… all at once the right sphinx collapsed, dying with deep cracks all through its stone body.

Immediately I rushed to the corpse, heart pounding with anxiety. It had just occurred to me that being a special mob, it was possible that I couldn’t spawn fresh skeletons from its body. If so, then this fight might prove to be a massive and fatal mistake. It was possible we were all going to die for my over-confidence.

Fortunately, Summon Skeletons did land, and my minions repopulated in an instant. My abominations had survived the fight and we could reset the fight on the remaining sphinx. Now I had just one concern: Thomas would be on much lower MP than when we started the fight and might not be able to cope with the AoE pulses at the end of the second battle.

The party menu allowed me to see that everyone but me—who was on full—was around forty-percent health in the party window, and Thomas cast several more AoE heals to bring them to a comfortable eighty-percent.

“Bandage and use another potion,” Jessica called out. “Cap your health.”

As soon as everyone was near full HP, we went all in on the second sphinx. Alan was faring well and had gained considerable aggro on it. My shield skeleton general could deal a bit of damage now, and with a fight this close, that might make a difference.

The background voices around us were growing more and more animated, as it was the first time anyone had seen a skill cast by the sphinx, let alone seen one of them killed. There were cries of encouragement, although no one seemed brave enough to join in. It was impossible for me to block out the noise, but I forced myself to focus.

The second battle was progressing much like the first, and the three pulses came with the mob at seventy-five percent as I had expected. Thomas kept Alan under fifty percent by casting his Barrier and only healing after it went down.

His micromanagement was superb, and I realized that Jessica giving him a chance back after his cousin Robert had tried to ambush us was quite possibly one of the best decisions we ever made. A worse healer would be out of MP right now, and we’d probably wipe.

Jessica still had a look of confidence on her face, while Maria seemed incredibly nervous. I couldn’t see Lucas’s face, but it was no doubt the epitome of effort. He had been putting in his all nonstop since the fight started.

His muscles must have been absolutely killing from swinging the Nodachi over and over against solid rock. Still, his swings never stopped, and instead seemed to increase in frequency. The first hurdle had been passed, and we were smooth sailing until the ‘enrage’.

“We need to burst it at the end or we all die,” I said. “Getting there faster won’t help us much; we need to kill it as fast as possible as soon as the pulsing begins.” No one said a word, but I knew that everyone heard me.

Maria stopped shooting Explosive Arrows and Lucas ceased from using Wind Slash. Alan hadn’t complained a single time despite the constant battering he’d been receiving from the stone paws for over a full minute. It was like a machine press was pushing down against him over and over, and only his will power was keeping him standing.

“It’s coming!” I said. My counting was perfect, but my comment had lulled our damage by three or four seconds. The sphinx raised its hands and then slammed down again.

I could hear the people around us, “They’re gonna die this time.”

“It’s over.”

“There’s no way they survive it a second time.”

“Join in!” shouted Jessica without shifting her attention from constantly powering arrows at the sphinx. “This is your best chance to destroy it! Do it for yourself! Do it for humanity!”

Lucas suddenly let out a barbaric scream with all his might, as if trying to pull every ounce of strength from within. Alan joined him a moment later as the two screamed together. This didn’t seem to be from pain or fear, but that they were hyping themselves up.

Waves of AoE were hitting us hard, chunks of HP lost to everyone but me, every second. It was such a weird sensation as well. There was no pain associated with it at all; you just lost ten-percent HP over and over.

Blow after blow continued to smash into the sphinx as sloughs of stone crumbled and burst into dust. Lucas was swinging Wind Slashes faster than I’d seen before and taking off lumps of stone like he wielded a jackhammer. As far as I could tell, none of the bystanders were helping.

Thomas was healing as well as he could, but it was clear that he couldn’t keep everyone alive for much longer. “Potions!” I yelled. Bandaging required both hands, and you couldn’t attack during that period.

That was the biggest downside between a bandage and a potion. You could pop a potion with a single hand and merely two fingers, but not a bandage. Looking at the constant loss of HP, if we didn’t kill the sphinx in less than ten seconds we were all going to die.

Maria was faring worse than everyone, and I realized that she didn’t have as many potions as the rest of us. We had only given her two, and her HP was already falling much faster than the others.

Five seconds passed and every skeleton I had died, and then something incredible happened. My abominations grew bright red and swelled a full size. For the first time since I’d acquired them, they had been brought below a HP threshold for a special ability and to my immense joy had revealed that they enraged when close to death. Both of them were pummeling the sphinx twice as fast and twice as hard as previously.

Everyone in the party was around forty-percent HP except for Maria. She was sitting at twenty-five percent HP. The next tick came and she went to fifteen-percent HP, and I could see the frustration and fear in her eyes.

I immediately rushed over to her with a potion in hand. Another tick came and she went to five percent HP. An AoE heal from Thomas came through at that moment and put her back at twenty-percent HP.

I reached her in the same second and basically forced the potion’s liquid down her throat. She was at seventeen-percent HP. “Use any stat points you have and put them into VIT now!” I said to her.

“I don’t have any!” she cried. The next tick came and she was at seven percent HP.

“I’m out of MP!” Thomas suddenly yelled. In that instant, Maria eyes filled with tears and her face turned grey. The next tick was coming and she scrunched up her face in sour resignation.

Congratulations, you have reached level 21.

The tick of damage didn’t come. The second sphinx collapsed into a heap of stone and Maria had survived. She fell to the ground and started to sob uncontrollably, “I thought I was going to die!” Only then did I remember she was merely sixteen years old. Maria was just a child who had to live or die like a warrior in this fucked up world.

I helped her up and we gathered at the corpse of the second sphinx. I had no undead left and casted Summon Skeleton on instinct. There were items there: coins to be exact. I picked them up.

Special Survivor’s Medallion: Allows the user to access the Special Shop location for 1 day. The Special Vendor is located inside.

There were ten of these on the floor, and we only needed six. I passed them out immediately, one for each of us.

Besides that, there were thirty Survivor’s Medallions, which Jessica had gathered and split evenly: five each. With that, Jessica and I had thirty-five medallions to use inside.

The crowd around us seemed completely stunned. It took a moment for them to regain composure and fathom what just happened. In their excitement they all started to rush forward when something absolutely devastating happened. The two sphinx statues appeared again at the doorway.

“Guys…” Thomas said.

I was prepared to run, but then nothing happened.

Neither sphinx glanced at us, or even acknowledged our existence. The Special Survivor’s Medallion seemed to give us immunity and would allow us to enter inside. I couldn’t help but look at the crestfallen faces as we entered within. The crowd outside must have been hoping to share the gain, having taken none of the risk. Well, if any of them had helped, I would now be giving them a special medal. Instead, feeling triumphant and that there was a kind of justice to this setup, I walked on through and forgot about the players outside.