Interlude: Destination Part 2

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

There was once a boy who lived a normal life.

It wasn’t anything particularly great or bad, it wasn’t as good as some, yet better than many others. Born to parents that loved him, yet they were busy. One was a doctor, the other a paramedic, from the day he could take care of himself, the boy was left alone. He enjoyed eating, but alone at home, he would order takeout for most of his meals, eating junk and fast food, quickly putting on weight. He ended up being chubby, not really fat or obese, but noticeable enough.

Enough that when he entered school, he was bullied, not anything great, snide comments and remarks about his appearance, expected of young children, to speak their minds and point out any difference. The boy tried to play with them, but he was fatter and slower, he did poorly in most physical games, every game he failed he would become mad and leave. Feeling the pointlessness of trying to play a losing game with people he didn’t really like.

There was a boy who forgot enjoyment.

“So it’s impossible,” Alex said, less a question, more a statement as he looked over the piles of notes Declan brought.

“I dunno, this is still all gibberish to me,” Belle murmured.

“It is very impressive, however,” Alex noted as they shuffled through the papers. “This isn’t just an arithmetic of trading HP, you take into account positioning and optimal attack patterns.”

Declan shrugged, “It’s nothing impressive, I bet you could do it as well Alex.” And he meant it, the clone had displayed a near eidetic memory, a perfect internal clock and was better at logical thinking than he was.

“No,” Alex quietly denied, “I could not have.”

He raised an eyebrow at this, which prompted them to continue, “My field of knowledge lies in real-world combat, boss and character statistics, along with their interactions are outside my purview. So I could not have made this.”

“Can we try it out?” Matt finally asked, just as he finished wrapping his head around the last page of the dozen page document.

“Looks simple enough,” Mortimer said, despite his face clearly saying he understood none of it. “We just have to follow this exactly right?”

“Even if we do,” Declan began, “our group can bring Vek’Na to 18.41% health at best.” He had the numbers memorised, after all, they were the group he based all his initial calculations on.

It was after he realised it was impossible for their group, that he began to try with different builds and parties.

“That’s better than anything we’ve managed to do,” Belle pointed out. “We’ve only managed like 20% at best right?”

“23% is our record,” Declan affirmed.

“Then this is a better option than just running in blindly right?” Matt cheerfully asked.

There were nods of agreement, and even Declan had to agree, this was better than what they’ve been doing.

But it was still not possible.

“But it is worth a shot,” Matt said.

As time went on, these small comments, little insults, all began to build. If it was just his weight and size, it might’ve been fine, but every game he left, every time he threw off interaction, only made the others distance themselves from him. Until he no longer felt like he belonged in a classroom, until he longer went to school, instead he took classes from home. A home in which he was alone, a home for three yet only one lived there.

There was a boy who forgot human warmth.

Declan braced for impact.

His long red robes went flapping in the wind as they slapped against his face. Yggdrasil had good wind physics, he had to give them that, but it was extremely annoying that they added it to literally everything. The first boss that entered its final phase by letting out a massive gust of wind was cool, the fourth was annoying.

The hundredth was fucking Vek’Na.

“Final phase!” Alex yelled as they slashed at the boss.

The boss turned its skeletal eyes across the battlefield, here came the most annoying part. Upon entering its final phase, Vek’Na spent 0.3 seconds randomly deciding a target before moving. Due to it becoming immune to taunt and CC effects, they had to spend at least 4.6 seconds, that is, enough time for Alex to perform two full damage rotations before they can do anything.

The most dangerous thing in this moment was the fact they cannot take actions that would generate more aggro than Alex during this phase, otherwise, combat lines would be lost and Vek’Na would target the backline. All the while Clarion Call was eating into their HP.

This was the moment that wiped the vast majority of parties.

Clarion Call should only bite into about 23% of all their health, but it was a close shot. Most in danger was Alex, who was fighting for aggro control while Declan and Belle were healing him. It was a razor-thin edge they were walking. They needed to heal just enough that Alex stayed alive, but not enough that either of them generated higher aggro. It was a just, just possible with spreading the duty two healers.

“Finished!” Alex yelled and they all moved to action.

“Heartbeat Healing!” An AOE overtime heal centring on Belle, currently, it was enough to counteract the Clarion Call DOT.

Declan ran towards the edge of the instance, just within Belle’s healing AOE whilst throwing his own attacks.

“Eldritch Blast!” Mortimer yelled, just as Matt’s dual pistols fired into life. Both DPSers were heavily hobbled in this situation. Without Alex’s taunt or CC abilities, they had to hold aggro purely through damage, which meant if either Mortimer and Matt surpassed their DPS, then this razor-thin fight would be lost at that moment.

However, it would eventually be lost.

Clarion Call’s damage over time kept biting into them, gradually increasing in damage. Just as the boss fell down to 23.6% health, Declan was forced to break this paradigm.

“Red Wedding!” He cast his AOE buff, affecting all players. It was one of the ultimate abilities of the Hemomancer build, granting lifesteal to every party member.

It also raised his threat level by an absurdly high amount.

Vek’Na turned its head away from Alex, for a single moment before Alex activated their own ultimate,

“MK7 Mechatron.”

Above them, a clear blue portal opened, and a massive steampunk mech fell through, picking up Alex and tossing them into its cockpit, just as Vek’Na took its first step towards Declan, Alex rammed the boss, re-establishing aggro.

‘22.3%’

This was the moment where most of their DPS could be allowed to flourish, in the short moment Alex was in the mech, they could attack and heal with significantly higher freedom. Though neither Matt nor Mort could cast their ultimates, as it would increase their aggro over even a Mechatron Alex and Declan was still stuck within the ending animation of Red Wedding.

‘22%’

‘21%’

In the 8 seconds Alex was in the mech, they dropped Vek’Na down to 21.8%. Now came the annoying part. The Mechatron self-destructed as its duration ended, ejecting Alex out onto the ground. For a few seconds, Alex was stuck in ending lag and couldn’t move. All the while Vek’Na turned towards them, the exposed backline.

It jumped towards them now, and if Declan calculated this correctly then…

‘Me.’

Vek’Na headed straight for him, the player furthest from the group. This was by design, he had the highest aggro past Alex, doing mixed healing, damage and supporting at the same time. His positioning allowed a precious 1.3 seconds where the boss was just running towards him. Time for Alex to come out of the ending animation, when the boss finally reached him, its scythe held wide in preparation for a swing, Declan cast his next skill.

“Blood Letting.”

The scythe paused mid-swing as all but 5% of Declan’s health bled out of him, forming into a red ball at the tip of his fingers. The bosses eyes glowed a sinister green as its activated its aura, Eyes of Death.

Its scythe attack in enraged mode was a guaranteed one-shot for any non-tank character, meanwhile, Eyes of Death had an 0.5 second cast time, when forcibly used, it will interrupt any move it was doing, focusing entirely on the aura attack.

If a normal attack was guaranteed to kill him anyway, Declan might as well purged all of his HP, forcing the boss to pause for a second, then, “Transfusion, DPS Up,” send it all to Matt and Mort, massively buffing their damage for a moment.

In that 0.5 seconds, both Matt and Mort unleashed their strongest attacks without worry. For the boss would not stop its instakill cast, but when it did finish, its aggro chart would be completely reset. Just in time for Alex to escape their ending animation and regain aggro.

Declan died to Eyes of Death, and the boss suffered both Matt and Mort’s full damage assault.

But little could be done in half a second.

‘20%’

Now was where things went wrong.

Alex charged the refreshed Vek’Na and Declan could already see it failing. With the damage buff from Blessing of Death and the loss of one healer, Alex could not survive the current Vek’Na for more than 9 seconds. If either Matt or Mort did more damage than Alex, then the pull was lost and they raid wiped, if they didn’t do more damage then Vek’Na will kill Alex shortly enough. If Belle began using her strongest abilities, Alex will survive till the end of the raid, but not because he survived Vek’Na’s attacks, but because Vek’Na will switch priority to Belle and kill her first.

All the best scenarios lead to defeat.

Mortimer was rushing to revive him, not according to the original plan. He would succeed long after Alex fell, given the high cast time of Revivification, by then the raid would have wiped.

There were other options, if Matt was the one with the next highest aggro and was the one sacrificed to buy time for Alex to return, then they would’ve survived longer, but overall would’ve dealt less damage to the boss.

Mortimer dropped down next to his corpse, raising his hands, he began casting, but just then a massive plume of necrotic gas erupted over him, the environmental effect which interrupted skill casts.

It didn’t matter. They had already lost.

Raid Wipe

In the end, the most crippling loss was the loss of taunting and CC. Without them, the tank couldn’t keep the boss in check well enough and the whole party suffered. Damage dealers and healers had to limit their skills so that they never generated higher aggro than the tank, which intrinsically meant neither Matt nor Mort could do more damage than Alex. And while Alex’s Battle Smith build was suited for a damage playstyle compared to most tanks, it dealt nowhere near enough compared to specialised damage builds like Sharpshooter and Necromancer.

And with Clarion Call constantly eating into their HP, it meant healers like Declan and Belle were forced to burn ultimates just to stay alive.

If, if their party was entirely composed of ranged burst damage dealers, who spent the entirety of the time kiting Vek’Na in his enraged phase, they might able to kill him in a few seconds.

The problem was that that party composition had nowhere near the survivability to beat Vek’Na’s initial 75% health, not to mention the rest of the dungeon which was needed for the full clear.

Which meant their two damage dealers had to pull off enough damage in a short enough burst to match a party of five damage dealers doing the same thing.

Which was patently impossible and ridiculous for any balanced MMORPG. No character of the same level should be worth the same as five others. If it were that easy they would’ve won by now.

So they simply failed.

And Declan laid there on the grassy ground, as everyone came back.

“Ahh! We were so close this time!”

‘What?’

“19%, not many top guilds can say they even got to that.”

“The CC and taunt immunity is really fucking annoying though…”

‘Why?’ Declan asked. ‘We lost. We failed. This should do nothing but prove this is a pointless endeavour.’

“Could we up Alex’s DPS somehow?”

‘So why do you all look so cheerful?’

“We need better gear for one…”

“How?” Declan practically spat out, “How do we get better gear? We’ll need to grind hours just for one piece of orange gear. And for what? Two or three extra percent of damage?”

Matt’s eyebrow rose in the middle of their talking and he raised a hand, “Hey look at this.”

He sent them all a link, Vek’Na was getting a balance patch, to be shipped out this time next week.

“So someone is finally fixing their mistakes huh,” Mortimer murmured.

“So we don’t need to bother right now,” Declan continued, driven by the news, “Just wait a week for the boss to become actually possible.”

Alex shook their head, “No, we won’t get the first clear that way.”

“Yeap,” Matt said, realising the problem first, “The patch ships out when we’re both in school Decs. By the time we get back, the boss would already be dead.”

“It still doesn’t matter, there isn’t a feasible way to kill Vek’Na as it currently is. And not even mentioning that, while our builds are fine, but our gear is subpar-”

“So if we just got better gear we would be fine?” Belle interrupted. “If we got better gear, would you stop being a little shit and just try for once?”

Declan frowned slightly, “It would take hours to grind for gear just to outfit one of us, and it’s completely RNG dependant. We won’t be able to-”

“Bet,” Belle interrupted once again.

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s make a bet,” she answered, a small smirk crawling onto her face, “if I can get all the gear we need by tomorrow, you will go along with us and do your fucking best.”

Declan raised an eyebrow, “Unless you’ve been hiding gear this whole time, you won’t be able to produce them.”

“Do you take the bet or not?” she asked.

Declan shrugged, “Sure, but-”

Belle stopped listening, quickly she turned around, strolling away from them to a relatively open spot.

Declan only now noticed the others were grinning.

“What are you smiling for?”

Matt simply sent him a link. A website he recognised, ‘Wiggle’, a popular streaming site.

And it opened up a channel that was live right now. It’s viewer count was rising, well within the ten thousands.

““Hey everyone!”” he heard an echo, an obnoxiously cheery voice both in game and on the channel. ““It’s ya gurl, Silver Belle here again and umm…” she did a cutesy gesture, one where she seemed to squirm in indecision, “I really want to clear the Vek’Na raid but we don’t have the gear we need to do it, and we really want to try to get to it before the nerf otherwise all the larger guilds will all beat us to it…””

Declan looked once at the chat.

The gear all arrived within the hour.

As days passed, years went on, he settled into a comfortable rhythm, a habit of how days passed. Spending them alone at home, ordering takeout for every meal, taking online classes and playing games during them, he convinced himself that he was fine like this, that his parents worked demanding and important jobs, that he should not distract them. Yet as the years went on, the food he ate slowly lost its flavour, the games he played became boring, the work and study from school became easy, ignorable. His grades began to fall, he played games not for fun but to pass time and his appetite increased, food no longer tasted good, yet there was something other than hunger that wanted to be filled, something he didn’t know. Something that could not be filled by food, no matter how he tried. He lived a good life, he was fed, he was clothed, he had a roof over his head, yet no matter what, he didn’t live, he was simply… there.

There was a boy who forgot how to live.

24.67%

Raid Wipe

23.89%

Raid Wipe

22.03%

Raid Wipe

21.69%

Raid Wipe

20.11%

Raid Wipe

19.46%

Raid Wipe

17.31%

Raid Wipe

15.29%

Raid Wipe

15.35%

Raid Wipe

19.89%

Raid Wipe

14.56%

Raid Wipe

14.32%

Raid Wipe

20.54%

Raid Wipe

14.87%

Raid Wipe

14.12%

Raid Wipe

13.98%

Raid Wipe

14.93%

Raid Wipe

15.78%

Raid Wipe

14.02%

Raid Wipe

16.53%

Raid Wipe

14.56%

Raid Wipe

13.79%

Raid Wipe

14.67%

Raid Wipe

14.95%

Raid Wipe

14.63%

Raid Wipe

And like that, three days passed.

With less than four days remaining, they reached the theoretical limit of all of Declan’s calculations.

And they were stuck there.

Declan sat by the beachside, alone as he watched the recordings of all the previous battles.

He should’ve put his mind to it, paid more attention to all the minute movements, but they were all performing perfectly. They’ve paid the price in hours to brand every movement, every action was according to his calculated standards.

And they were still stuck.

At this point, there were only two possibilities, either Mythic Vek’Na was truly impossible, or Declan was a fool who could not solve this problem.

“So in the end, it is either impossible or I am a failure,” he quietly murmured.

In the end, Declan decided it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whether it was impossible, or because he could not achieve it, because in the end nothing mattered. All they could achieve was a line in the sand. A line that would be washed away by the sea, like all things will be.

“That isn’t true,” he heard a voice say next to him.

Glancing behind him, he saw someone sitting beside him on this empty, virtual beach.

“Good morning Alex.”

“Morning indeed, though I suspect you didn’t sleep at all?”

“I didn’t,” Declan replied, looking back out into the black seas. “I wanted to review the footage to see if there was something we missed.”

“And did we?”

“No,” he spat out, “We have done everything perfectly according to my guide, and we are still failing.”

Because either the path was impossible or Declan was not good enough to take it.

“And that’s why you think either it is impossible or it is your flaw that you can’t do it.”

“We could just quit,” Declan said, “we’re doing this for you, so one word from you and-”

“No,” Alex quietly denied, “we aren’t doing this for me anymore.”

Declan paused, froze as Alex spoke.

“Maybe at first Matt wanted to do this for me, but that is a truth no longer. Can you not see how aggressively he tries to include you in things? How much he’s trying to get you to help and be a part of the party?” Alex said. “He’s trying to pry you out of that shell your made around yourself, to truly be your friend.”

“Wha-”

“And we can’t quit anymore, not after you made this,” from their inventory, Alex took out a sheaf of papers, “You put so much effort into this, no one wants to leave it to waste.”

For a moment, Declan simply stared blankly at Alex.

When he spoke, he spoke slowly, to make sure he was understood, “So you are saying, that it is all my fault that we persisted for so long?”

Alex nodded.

“Why?” Declan rasped out, “Why are we trying so hard, even when I have given up? Why? In the end it is nothing but a line drawn in the sand.”

“Maybe,” Alex replied, their finger drawing circles in the sand, “maybe it doesn’t matter in the end. Maybe it’ll be washed away, but that doesn’t mean it never existed.”

Alex turned to stare at him, “Just because the line is washed away, doesn’t mean no one ever drew it. Just because no one remembers it, doesn’t mean it never happened. To reduce all things to the final destination is just that, reductive.”

“I don’t get it,” Declan replied. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s fine if you don’t understand,” Alex replied, “It’s fine if you go on still believing the things you do.”

“But one day,” they murmured, “one day when you are old, you will look at the lines you drew in the sand. Lines that you drew with friends, and you will smile.”

And they were silent, silent as the waves of the virtual sea lapped on their beach, silent as the sun of Yggdrasil shined upon them.

Then they got a message, a message from Mort and Matt, a message that made Declan’s eyes widen.

And when they hurriedly left that empty beach, when Declan stood beside his allies in the dungeon room of Vek’Na. Under the eyes of the hateful boss, he knelt and looked over a grate of necrotic energy.

“Is it true?” he asked, voice so light it was almost a whisper.

“We tested it,” Mort triumphantly answered.

It was a trick, a bug in the raid, something so overlooked no one ever really considered it.

“Can we do it with this?” Matt asked.

"We'll need to completely respec our characters," Declan answered, his voice fast and hurried for a reason he could not fathom, "but..."

And for the first time since they started this madness, Declan whispered only a single phrase, a phrase he never thought he would utter here.

“It might be possible now.”