Chapter 133: The Thing Under the Mountain Pt.2

“Peace of Mind!” Miranda shouted. Aegis turned to see that she had used a monk skill to break free of the mind control effect from the boss. As she had, the tendril linking her to the purple orb disconnected and disappeared. Aegis then turned his attention to Sapphire in the cage, under control. Despite her being mind controlled, she was only trying to use her scepter to attack, not her spells, so the bars were enough to contain her.

“Use control effects on the mind controlled players.” Aegis shouted out to the other players in the cavern.

“We can’t control a berserker with his berserking buff up.” Uggard warned Aegis. “He’s doing more damage than the damn boss.” He added in frustration as he tried to block a few more hits from Herilon’s greatsword.

“Lina, smoke bomb Herilon so he can’t see what he’s doing.” Aegis shouted, and he watched as a warlock player shot a black stream of lightning up to the cliff where Quinn had been shooting from. Once the lightning hit Quinn, she became paralyzed and stopped trying to hit her allies. Similarly, a druid player shot out a wave of vines that entangled the white flames member that was attacking Erikson. Then, Lina’s smoke bomb erupted around Herilon. Uggard was able to jump out of the smoke, as did other nearby players, while Herilon remained inside of it swinging wildly at nothing.

“We can’t leave them mind controlled, have you tried knocking them out of it?” Aegis asked, once he saw all of them were under control. It was hard to think while he was focusing on dodging attacks from the boss, but he did his best.

He noticed his health was spiking much more now that he only had a single healer keeping him alive, and saw Cheryl looking quite strained as she kept her eyes peeled on Aegis’ health bar.

“Dispel effects aren’t working, the mind control is being channeled.” Trexon replied after trying one on Sapphire.

“I could break it with peace of mind, it’s a monk skill that makes me immune to control effects.” Miranda said, trying her best to contribute as Christoph gave her a nod of approval.

“Try shooting the orb!” Aegis shouted to the damage dealers, and they quickly complied. Darkshot and Quiver up on the ledge, as well as the many other casters and damage dealers on the lower cavern floor began bombarding the orb with attacks, and it worked - damage numbers began to appear over the orb to show that it was something with hit points that could take damage, and therefor be destroyed.

“Good! Focus attacks on the orb guys, destroy it.” Aegis announced.

A few moments later, the light orb exploded. The mind controls wore off immediately as the light purple tendrils vanished, but the explosion released a shockwave of energy that rippled out throughout the cavern dealing massive psychic damage to the entire raid.

You take 6301 Psychic damage.

You take 1443 Piercing damage.

You take 1643 Piercing damage.

The tendril attacks on Aegis kept coming in the midst of the psychic damage, bringing Aegis dangerously low on health, but Sapphire’s mind control wearing off allowed her to join back in healing alongside Cheryl, despite the fact that she was still stuck within Tullan’s cage.

Just as Aegis was about to drop to 0 health, Sapphire’s healing spell landed on him alongside Cheryl’s, bringing him back up. Aegis looked to see that though the mind control effect had ended, Quinn was still paralyzed by the warlock spell and unable to give any followup instructions.

“Dispel Quinn.” Aegis shouted, and Trexon quickly complied by removing the control effect from her using a wave of his staff and a cast of a Dispel Magic spell.

“Good, phew.” Quinn said with relief through the party interface. “Losing control of your body is really trippy.“ She added as she shook her head to herself.

In this time, Lina stopped smoke bombing Herilon, Tullan released the iron cage around Sapphire, and the entangled white-flame member was released from the spell that was binding them, setting the raid back to a normal state. This didn’t last long, however.

Another purple orb appeared from inside the creature's mouth and began to slowly and peacefully hover out from its maw of teeth to float in front of it, above Aegis as he continued to brace and dodge tendril strikes.

“He’s doing it again!” Yuki shouted, and Aegis looked up to see Quinn was still disoriented, but he’d already come up with his own idea to deal with it.

“Everyone unequip your weapons until the mind control targets have been selected!” Aegis shouted as loud as he could. Without any hesitation, the entire raid group listened. All damage dealers stopped attacking, stepping back from the boss and unequipping staffs, bows, spears, all of it. A second later, the orb shot out 5 more tendrils at random party members, causing their eyes to turn red again. This time, one of them was Ren, but Ren was able to break out of it himself by shifting forms.

The others who got mind controlled, as Aegis had predicted, couldn’t use skills or spells. And with no weapons equipped, they resorted to trying to punch their nearby allies which did significantly less damage than they would’ve if they’d had their weapons equipped.

“Good call.” Quinn shouted with a smile at Aegis, but from there, she took over leading again. “Stop damage on the orb until everyone is fully healed. Breaking those orbs causes a lot of damage, I want everyone to be at full health for it.” Quinn shouted to the healers, and they began to quickly top off everyone’s health bars.

“Ok, good, break the orb.” Quinn ordered once everyone had been fully healed. The raid had re-equipped their weapons while using control spells to lock down the unarmed, mind controlled members. Just as this second orb was about to be destroyed, a third orb appeared and began floating out of the boss's mouth, though.

“As soon as the second orb breaks, unequip your weapons!” Quinn ordered. It broke, and the raid party of players all took another 6000 psychic damage. They quickly unequipped their weapons just in time as the third orb shot out five more tendrils and took control of 5 more members of the group.

“It’s time based, we need to keep those orbs under control before we get overwhelmed by them. But we’ll never kill the boss if we don’t also hit him. Multiattack the orb and the boss as best you can. Don’t blow up an orb before everyone is fully healed, though.” Quinn instructed the group.

“Healers, keep everyone topped up on health, we need to be able to constantly break those orbs. They might start coming out faster and faster.” Quinn added, and the healers began to get more reckless with their mana usage. “All bards fully focus on mana recovery for the healers. Anyone with a crowd control effect, be ready to use it anytime those mind control tendrils come out.”

It took a few more mind control orbs for things to stabilize, but slowly everyone got into a flow of how to handle it. After the 5th orb appeared, they managed to destroy the orb and heal everyone back to full health well before the 6th orb came out, giving the raid party a lot of time to deal damage to the actual boss.

By the 7th orb, they’d been fighting the boss for a full 5 minutes, and it suddenly began shooting smaller tendrils up at the roof of the cavern from its back and using them to slice stalactites loose, causing them to fall down on the players below.

“Dodge the falling rocks, pay attention to the roof. We can’t afford to take unnecessary damage!” Quinn ordered as Aegis watched Rakkan and his echo skillfully sidestep a falling stalactite that landed near him, shattering into pieces as it crashed into the cavern floor near the shore of the lake.

Falling stalactites, randomized mind controls, raid wide damage, and a constant barrage of attacks on a main tank. The more Aegis participated in it, the more he’d realized how suicidal it would’ve been to try and take this thing on as just a party of five players.

There was so much happening, but everyone was individually able to focus on their role, and it allowed the raid party to function as a single unit. Aegis began to grasp the importance of the leadership role, how Quinn was able to direct every player to do what they needed to do in the fight in order for the entire unit to perform. It reminded him somewhat of how he’d studied surgical teams, and how each member was required to perform a vital role to obtain the ideal outcome. This, however, was on a much greater scale.

He couldn’t trail his mind off in thought too much, though, as he knew it was only a matter of time before the Raid Boss reached its enraged state. 15 minutes after the battle had started, it’s dark slimy black skin began to give off a faint glowing red aura that was impossible to miss.

“Here we go, get ready for a change in tactics. Damage dealers, burn it as fast as you can. Aegis, keep the threat generation up. We’re in the home stretch.” Quinn declared, and he saw all of the damage dealers begin getting incredibly reckless with their attacks.

Within seconds, multiple spellcasters and archer intermediate players began burning their mana pools from nearly full to below half. Glowing auras of various colors began to erupt from the fists and weapons of the melee fighters, and bright flashes of skills and abilities overtook the illumination of the Sage light orbs that had previously been the primary source of light in the cavern.

As the enrage began, Aegis was anticipating a much more violent series of attacks to befall him from the tendrils. Instead, however, the attacks stopped. Then, the teeth of the creature's circular maw began to curve inward. A moment later, Aegis felt a pulling sensation as his hair began to flow in the direction of the boss's maw.

“It’s sucking us in.” Aegis figured it out and shared the information with the group as soon as he had. The force of the creature's inhalation strengthened over the next few seconds as small rocks and broken pieces of fallen stalactite began to flow into the creature's mouth, disappearing into its black maw.

“That’s the enrage mechanic. Kill it before it sucks us all into its mouth!” Quinn announced anxiously. From her vantage point up on the ledge she could see the cloaks, capes, vestments and other loose pieces of cloth and clothing begin to flow inward towards the boss’s gaping maw as its teeth began to wriggle excitedly. Larger and larger stones and rocks were pulled in and began bouncing off its teeth.

Aegis then saw portions of the ruined towers rubble getting sucked in, and Sapphire’s bunny ears violently flapping towards it as it became harder and harder for those in front of the boss to not be pulled in. But as Aegis took a step to the side, he saw that the creature turned with him - he still had its attention and it was sucking in the direction he was facing.

“I’m going to turn it over here, everyone get beside and behind it!” Aegis declared as he noticed this. He quickly dashed to the left of the boss to cause its maw to face northward, while all of the melee fighters and ranged damage dealers on that side of the boss ran to get out of the front of the beast's mouth.

“Wall of Iron!” Tullan shouted, creating a set of iron bars that shot out of the ground to catch Aegis as he lost his footing and was pulled inward towards the creature. In a matter of seconds, the force of the vacuum became strong enough that it started dealing damage to Aegis.

You take 101 Nature damage.

You take 131 Nature damage.

You take 173 Nature damage.

You take 211 Nature damage.

The force got stronger and stronger as the iron bars began to bend and give way. The pain became excruciating, the vacuum kept pulling at him and attempted to suck him through the gaps in the iron bars that Tullan had created.

“Guard!” Aegis shouted as the bars gave way, and he formed the shield in front of himself to reinforce them and stop himself from being pulled in.

“All healers, heal Aegis! Keep him alive as long as possible! Everyone else, burn the boss as fast as you can! Go all out!” Quinn shouted anxiously. “Guardians, help him out with Guard, don’t let the vacuum pull him in. If he goes down this boss is going to spin around and kill us all with that attack!”

“Guard!” Baffo shouted as he, from the side of the boss, formed a projection of his shield in front of Aegis to help protect him and prevent him from being pulled in. Within seconds, Uggard and Erikson began doing the same thing.

With four guards being used, he was safe from being pulled in. The problem then became the damage he was taking.

You take 301 Nature damage.

You take 355 Nature damage.

You take 398 Nature damage.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 2!

He was taking damage every second, it kept getting higher, and the boss wasn’t going down. At first, it was manageable. Aegis couldn’t brace the attacks and it was very painful to experience, but his health was staying up. He looked to the side to see the guardians, all of the clerics, and all of the acolyte players standing by and preparing to cast heals on him while safely out of the radius of the vacuum. The bard players positioned themselves behind the healers and began playing melodies to boost their mana recovery, which reminded Aegis to keep using his challenging roar, which he did.

But after about 30 seconds of this, the damage numbers began to get dangerously high, and Aegis’ health began to yoyo.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 4!

You take 2,331 Nature damage.

You take 2,381 Nature damage.

You take 2,439 Nature damage.

You take 2,500 Nature damage.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 5!

Sapphire and Cheryl were repeatedly casting spells, and it wasn’t long before the other healers joined in. But still, the boss didn’t go down. The damage dealers were getting low on stamina, despite their multiple buffs and auras they had active to offset this. The spellcasters were running low on mana. They were unleashing as much damage as they possibly could.

You take 5,300 Nature damage.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 6!

You take 5,430 Nature damage.

You take 5,515 Nature damage.

You take 5,674 Nature damage.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 7!

Aegis couldn’t bear to look at his own health bar anymore. It was unnerving to watch. His health would go from full, to almost 0, to full within the span of a second, repeatedly. He had a total of 12 players standing off to the side casting healing spells on him without resting, but their mana bars were starting to get low.

Not to mention, they were nearing Aegis’ maximum health, and it was only a matter of time before the vacuum would just kill him in one hit.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 8!

You take 9,634 Nature damage.

You take 9,789 Nature damage

“KILL IT ALREADY!” Sapphire shouted out anxiously as she got below 10% of her remaining mana.

“What do you think we’re trying to do?!” Travis shouted back at her. They were barely audible over the sound of the loud sucking vacuum of the bosses maw. The cavern behind Aegis was completely clean of loose stones and stalactites now as they’d all been sucked in.

Level Up!: Nature Resistance has reached Level 9!

You take 11,030 Nature damage.

It was too much for Aegis. It felt like every second was going to be a game over, he was fully reliant on the healing power of the other raid members that desperately healed him with the last drops of their mana. He held it off as long as he could, but once he saw Sapphire's mana empty out, he knew he was out of time and had to use it.

"VARIBHADRA!" Aegis shouted, and a shockwave of white energy erupted in a dome outward from himself, just barely reaching the boss from behind the guards to deal damage.

You deal 306,430 Holy damage.

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 6!

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 7!

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 8!

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 9!

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 10!

Level Up!:Varibhadra has reached Level 11!

He dropped back to the ground as the forward pulling vacuum released its grip on him, and the damage stopped coming as the beast let out an angry, gurgling cry as it curled its head upwards to the roof of the cavern.

Congratulations! You have defeated the Raid Boss: Krik’lakgoth the Devourer

You gain 1000 Favor of Eirene.

You gain 1000 Favor of Odin.

You gain 15,000,000 Experience!

Congratulations, you have reached Level 56(+3)!: 5 attribute points available, +356 health, +115 mana!

Level Up!: Leather Armor Proficiency reached Level 62!

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +3 Constitution

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +2 Strength

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +2 Agility

The land status of the Land: [Rene] has changed from [Hostile] to [Peaceful].

“WOOO!” Several players began to cheer excitedly as the bosses body began to disintegrate and everyone was hit with the notifications. It wasn’t just Aegis - nearly everyone present had gained the experience required to level up. Some players, however, opted to drop to their knees and gasp for air, desperately trying to catch their breath.

There were very few melee fighters that still had more than 50 stamina remaining, and most were desperately exhausted. He was surprised to see that Herilon, Christoph, and Finley were all just as out of breath and tuckered out as Lina and Rakkan looked, all flopping to the cavern floor together amongst the other melee players.

“We did it!” Miranda cheered to her audience, prompting Aegis to look up and see he had a viewership of 300,000. Just as he had enjoyed the exhilarating fight, it seemed his audience had a good time as well, and he was relieved that he’d done his job of tanking successfully.

“Nice job, good thinking on turning it.” Baffo grinned as he, Erikson and Uggard all approached Aegis.

“Hell yeah. Now you’re one of the big boy tanks!” Erikson cheered as he held up his hand to high five Aegis. Aegis did exactly that, followed by high fives to Uggard and Baffo as well.

“Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?” Uggard asked with a smirk.

“I could’ve done without the sucking part.” Aegis chuckled and they nodded back at him.

“Yeah, that looked a bit rough, but you hung in there.” Baffo replied.

“How did you like my healing?” Cheryl asked as she approached the huddle of tanks, smiling at Aegis.

“Uh, it was good. Some close calls but, you saved me from dying, especially when Sapphire got mind controlled." He replied. Saying this caused Cheryl to blush and start looking down at her feet awkwardly as Sapphire and Yuki approached.

“Oi, be careful with this one Aegis.” Sapphire jokingly patted him on the back as she saw Aegis and Cheryl’s interaction, while Yuki moved to stand closely beside Aegis. “She’s a Charisma player.” Sapphire added with a wink.

“What’s that mean?” Aegis asked curiously as Cheryl suddenly broke out of her blushing act and playfully nudged Sapphire. In this time, Lina had managed to get up on her feet and quickly rushed over to stand beside Aegis. Without thinking or asking, she took Aegis’ hand in her own and held it tight.

“Loki clerics, their skills benefit from high a charisma stat, so she dumped her bonus attributes in it. She’s getting all the boys.” Sapphire chuckled as she headed off, losing interest in the conversation. “Come, let’s go check out the loot.” Sapphire motioned to Baffo, and he turned and walked behind Sapphire. Uggard followed suit with Cheryl a moment later.

“Charisma makes NPCs like you more, right?” Aegis confirmed with Erikson, Lina and Yuki, looking between them for an explanation.

“Huh? No, not just that.” Erikson replied with a shrug, but as he looked over Aegis’ face he could tell he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Hah.” Erikson chuckled at his ignorance. “A high charisma stat makes the game modify the appearance of that player's avatar to be appealing to anyone who looks at them, based on the viewing player's preference. It’s like a guaranteed way to be attractive. It can’t mess with your mind to make you like her, like it would with an NPC, but she’ll always look pretty to you.” Erikson explained.

“So you’re saying, whatever Cheryl looks like, is what I consider to be pretty?” Aegis asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Kinda, yeah. At least what the game thinks that you think is pretty. It doesn’t always get it right. Or at least that’s what most guys say.” Erikson said, followed by a laugh as he patted Aegis’ shoulder. “Come on, let’s see what he dropped.” He motioned Aegis towards the item orbs that players had begun gathering around at the edge of the lake.

“That doesn’t make any sense. She has pink hair with white streaks when I look at her. And Pink Eyes.” Aegis explained to Lina and Yuki, both of whom were suddenly listening to him intently with looks of determination. “Guys, I swear, I don’t know why the game thinks I like pink eyes and hair. It’s not true.” Aegis shook his head at them.

“So she doesn’t look pretty to you?” Lina asked curiously.

“Well…” Aegis anxiously avoided eye contact with the two of them. “Nope. Not really. Come on, let’s go see the loot.” He quickly walked forward, away from the two girls. They both watched him walk away towards the growing crowd of players, then paused to throw each other suspicious glances.