Chapter 376

When the Star Fell (VI)

While Emma and others were being ushered back into the arena, confused as to what was going on, Cain was dodging several projected beams aimed at him, blinking left, right, and center. The fight was still in its probing phase, but the tensions were rising. There were fewer ‘breaks’, and more and more ships were firing off at him simultaneously.

He’d also noticed that, among the beams that nearly blinded him, a few smaller, though far more accurate spells were being fired off. At first, he didn’t know where they were coming from—until having noticed the detached cabins of sorts on the sides of some of the ships, hanging in the blind spots, and firing off under the cover of the ships’ beams.

They were largely inconsequential as their spells were very slow and weak. Still, he had to pay attention to it as it could simply be them probing some more, from different angles and frameworks. There were thousands of things ripping through his mind every minute and he knew there would be thousands more to come for the duration of the battle.

In the meantime, Emma and others had resumed their battle against U’nul. They had barely enough time to rebuff and collectively recover before they were tossed back into the fire yet again. Just like the attempt before, U’nul opened the fight with major aggression, barely leaving any room to breathe to any of the tanks. However, having experienced it once before already, the trio adjusted much quicker than before—at least to the level where they weren’t being consistently battered and abused

Similarly, aim of the most of those standing at range had improved to where one in every five skills actually landed on the boss. The fight was still extremely slow, though, U’nul’s health barely dipping, but the progress was visible. Under normal circumstances, Emma was confident that with some practice and some five-ten repeated attempt they’d have this part of the fight down-pat. But they were given a simple order—they were not to leave the arena… unless they defeat the boss.

Everyone realized that it had something to do with the flashes in the sky that they saw, though nobody could postulate as to what those flashes were. Even if Emma and Senna and others could imagine it likely had something to do with Cain, that was about as far as their theory went. For some reason, those flashes were linked with their fight—and for some yet different reason, they would have to defeat U’nul this attempt, no matter what.

Emma dashed forward and intercepted the spear, deflecting it slightly to the side and allowing Jamal to flash in with a milky-white streak of light bleeding off the edge of his blade, striking directly at U’nul’s chest, taking off over 1% of her health bar in the process. At the same time, a sword whizzed through the air and appeared beneath Jamal’s feet before he landed, dragging him backward and out of range of the retaliatory strike.

U’nul heaved forward and thrusted the spear toward where Jamal was, missing by a few streaks of hair, though allowing the momentum to carry her forward as she spun and used the other arm to swing widely, alighting it with fire, and unleashing a wave of flames toward the back ranks.

Chriss hurried to the rear and spread out a massive, projected shield that soaked the flames though left him faintly burnt and singed. Not for long, though, as a heal immediately brought him back up to full.

They’ve found their rhythm, it seemed, and the flow of the battle became consistent. Over the many raids, they have learned that this was the key to victory—engaging directly with the ebb and flow of the battle, and slowly carrying it to the victory. There was an issue, though—all those previous battles had the preconditioned flow that they could abide by, but U’nul’s… didn’t. The moment they got used to one rhythm, she would switch it up erratically as to disrupt them.

One thing she began doing was delaying her attacks—her swings, which were imminent, slowed down. All three, Emma, Kramer, and Chriss were baited into using their defensives preemptively several times simply because U’nul made the posture for the attack but took extra half a second to actually attack. And if they got used to that delay, she would delay it further before speeding it up. Eventually, she even made conscious changes to her stances.

Initially, whenever she would thrust forward with the spear, she would cradle the backend of the shaft underneath her armpit and make a slight but twitchy movement forward with the left side of her body that garnered just enough momentum for the spear to pierce someone thoroughly. Eventually, though, she held the spear by the center of the shaft in her hand and thrust in the middle of recovery postures, as a direct follow-up.

The thrusts became erratic and extremely difficult to predict—their speed, angle of attack, and even power were no longer consistent, but seemingly entirely random. At around 85% of her health bar, U’nul abruptly retreated and thrust the spear into the bulging heart of fire in the center for a moment before retrieving it.

The spear burned brightly as she soaked it further, alighting parts of her arm in the process. The raid party didn’t pursue her, opting instead catch a breath and recover slightly themselves. The scattered groups were brought back into planned ranks, though for how long those would hold was the question few were inclined to answer. It was better than just randomly standing about, however, at least.

Facing forward, they saw U’nul slowly approach them again, the spear burning brightly; it was the solitary difference, Emma noted, and would likely be where most of the changes in her battle style would be.

“I’ll exclusively take care of the spear,” she called out to Kramer and Chriss. “You two make sure nothing else gets past us.”

“Alright,” the two men nodded and positioned themselves center and left of U’nul, preparing.

The boss rushed forward abruptly, leaving behind a delayed, screeching roar of fire. She wildly swung her blade toward Emma, but the latter simply dodged right, keeping close to U’nul’s left hand where she held the spear. In the meantime, Kramer, who stood at the center, positioned aggressively and attacked U’nul’s right side to divert her attention.

The battle began yet again, but the difference was much larger than Emma anticipated—U’nul became what Cain called a ‘free boss’. Not entirely—active, aggro-generating abilities still worked on her, but she would rid herself of them in just a few seconds, screeching for the backlines.

Without a spoken word, Emma, Kramer, and Chriss settled on a rotation—she had the fewest aggro-generating active abilities and, as such, she was once again reduced to the role of a cover. Chriss had the most and he became the primary tanker, while Kramer became the secondary, covering for the first one in the meantime.

Attacks continued to rain upon the boss—but most still missed. The ones with by far the most success were melee attackers, Jamal and Daniel standing out vastly from the rest. They also picked their poison carefully, however, attacking only when they were certain the boss had no means of attacking back. Those scenarios grew rarer, though, as U’nul had fewer and fewer recovery postures, electing to use Mana to forcibly bend her body unnaturally.

Rather than being displaced by a deflection as before, she used the momentum to shuffle to the either side or, in some scenarios, even retreat, breaking the flow once more. Health bars all around continued to dance as while Emma, Kramer, and Chriss kept her occupied, fire rained elsewhere often. Most of her attacks had residual cones that fired off bolts of fire at the rear, and, every so often, pylons would turn on and churn out heatwaves that dealt persistent damage to everyone in the raid.

From time to time, too, she would break through the ranks of the tanks and attack others—Senna worked perhaps the hardest she ever had in her life to keep an army of wide blades at a ready just in case U’nul broke through. She would immediately shuffle the blades toward those most at risk and, in case U’nul attacked them, use the blades to move them out of the attack’s trajectory. She was consuming inordinate amounts of Mana, but the alternative was for healers to consume it instead—and hers was far less valuable in the grand scheme of things.

At 70% of her health, U’nul shouted loudly, knocking everyone back as she retreated to the center, soaking both the spear—that had seemingly run out of fire in the meantime—as well as the sword with the fire from the heart, seemingly baptizing her weapons. Fire began to burn in her eyes and her hair as the two weapons eerily melted into silver droplets that fell to the ground for a moment before they began to move on their own, coalescing into a new weapon—a double-edged scythe. It burned, much like the heart, and was over ten feet long, the size that seemed impossible to combat against. And yet fight they must, they knew.

Emma, Kramer, and Chriss once again shuffled to the front, their hearts pounding within their chests as they desperately begged the many cooldowns to move quicker. They would need all defensives, they knew, just to contend ever so slightly, not to mention survive what was likely to be a raw, brutal onslaught that knew neither method nor reason.