The Last Experience Point-Chapter 176: Twenty-Five-Fifteen

Chapter 176: Twenty-Five-Fifteen

Its hooves emitting pure flame, the Mare of the Primordial Void charged forward, leaving a trail of fire behind it as it released an angrier neigh than any that’d come before. Immediately, four tanks jumped out of its way—but one was too slow to avoid the boss's charge. The man, who if nothing else at least had his shield raised, thankfully managed to absorb some portion of the attack before he was blasted away.

Zach, acting quickly, hurriedly flung himself to the side as the metal-armor-wearing tank was launched right where he'd been standing. An instant later, the tank crashed down onto the brown dirt, where he began rolling and tumbling along the barren landscape that the market-square had been turned into. He then groaned, alive but clearly injured.

Since acquiring its immunity to fire, the boss had picked up three new fire-based attacks: one was a dashing charge, another was a conjured sword of flame, and the last was the ability to summon rising pillars of flame directly in front of itself, which were short-lived but burned an intense reddish orange, such as the one that it now brought to bear against Ophelia Graven, who backflipped up and over it, then swung her buckler shield to deflect an ordinary stomping attack as the boss charged at her through its own flame.

“We don’t have time to be standing around here arguing,” Jimmy said over the Comm as healers attended to the downed tank. “We can beat this boss. I’m telling ya’ll right now, if we run away, I’m not coming back or helping next time, and you can figure out how to kill this thing by your own damn selves.”

“Jimmy, that’s incredibly immature,” Mr. Oren said. Zach looked behind him where Mr. Oren waited with the other melee DPS. He had a frown on his face. “And I say that as someone who actually agrees with you and does not think a retreat is warranted.”

Zach once more looked over to Jimmy, whose frustration was plainly evident on his face. For the past few minutes, during an active boss fight, the adventurers had been arguing over whether or not to retreat, regroup, and attempt this raid another time. Many wanted to pump the brakes on this battle, and though Zach was keeping it to himself for the moment, he honestly agreed with them: especially after the massive explosion that came after the appearance of that ring.

Anyone not inside the ring would’ve died instantly, Zach thought, disturbed by the existence of such an attack. Even if we had a million points into constitution, we’d still have died instantly according to Jimmy. Even if we would’ve had a billion!

Zach didn’t think they were ready for a raid like this, and just a cursory glance at the surrounding scenery—or lack of any scenery—was enough to reinforce this belief. Prior to the appearance of that “ring of safety” and the explosive attack it preceded, the market square had been badly damaged but at least looked like an area where civilization had once existed. Now, it was just dirt and the smell of ash. There were no lingering pieces of concrete or husks of destroyed buildings: it was all just dirt and empty space. It was as though they had walked into the middle of a wooded area after a forest fire—minus the tree stumps.

Yet as unsettling as that may have been, Zach also understood Jimmy’s side of things as well. Jimmy was desperately trying to prove himself, and he was clearly worried he wouldn’t get another chance to redeem himself if Donovan and Zephyr forced them all to retreat for the moment—which seemed increasingly likely, as even Fiona Darkmae, the leader of the Children of Order, and the individual who had the most to lose, seemed to be wavering about continuing on with this raid.

“If it comes down to it, retreating and building a new highway that wraps around this area is better than losing two-dozen of my guild members,” she said all of a sudden, her words unexpected. “Maybe we really should just back off for now. It sure beats every one of us dying.”

“I agree,” Kalana added. “This thing is like super dangerous, and there’s too much we dunno about it. I don’t wanna risk all of us getting killed.”

“You’re not, because that’s not gonna happen,” Jimmy insisted. Seemingly to Fiona, he asked, “Do you really wanna destroy your whole economy like that? Like you said, if we don’t kill this thing, it’s gonna mess up your whole region, right?”

“It won’t destroy us: it’ll just set us back.”

Zach could visibly see Jimmy tense at the way she was responding, and he didn’t think it was just because Fiona was now open to the idea of retreat, but also because the way in which she spoke of “building a new highway” implied that returning any time in the next few months or years was unlikely…and to be honest, it probably was. Zach could easily foresee this being one of those things where, if they did retreat, the adventurers would promise to come back, and they’d discuss it and make plans and so on and so forth, but…would it ever actually happen? Probably not. At least not for many, many years.

Everyone has to know that if we retreat, we’re probably not coming back any time soon.

This boss was not an existential threat. That was just the fact of the matter. This was something that they hadn’t known at first, but once discovered, the absolute need to kill it had evaporated. Sure, the political guilds would throw a fit about a boss existing in society where ordinary people could see it, and it would invite questions and cause some unrest, but like all things in life, Zach expected it would only be a matter of months—if not days—until it eventually just started to feel normal and ordinary.

“What about all that shit you were saying before?” Jimmy asked, an urgency now in his voice. “That uh…what was it called again? Yeah, ‘aggro terrorism.’”

Zach recalled learning that term in the diner along with Jimmy and the others. It referred to instances where ordinary level-1 people would intentionally aggro a boss during times of emergency in order to wreak havoc on their neighbors and society. He supposed they were sort of like people who intentionally started wildfires only via a different mechanism.

“Unlikely to be a problem with this one, kiddo,” Donovan said. “The boss’s level of aggression is pretty limited. You’ve gotta stick pretty close to avoid de-aggroing, and a level-1 ain’t gonna be able to kite it very far without taking an unintentional hit. Especially since they can’t slow it. I doubt they’d get more than a block’s worth of distance away before it melted ‘em.”

Zach wondered if he should say something, but he decided against it, as he didn’t want be seen taking sides in this matter. Still, while he may have agreed that a retreat was the right move to make, he did feel that Jimmy was absolutely correct about one thing: standing around and talking about it was a big mistake. They needed to either fight it or run from it, but having a debate about what to do while it was attacking the tiring, fatigued tanks was the worst possible way of handling things.

“Look, just let things play out a little longer, okay?” Jimmy asked. Though his words were spoken with an air of confidence, he failed to disguise the note of pleading that seeped into them. “I’m telling all of you right now: we got this. It ain’t as bad as it looks.”

An uneasy grunt from Donovan came over the Comm. “I’m not so sure about that, kiddo, but you might as well keep on leading while Zeph and I think about it.”

The fact that Jimmy sighed with relief and thanked Donovan was evidence that, despite Jimmy calling the shots, Donovan and Zephyr were still truly the ones in charge here, and Zach knew they could put an end to this with just a single, quickly uttered command. But, at any rate, it looked like Jimmy was in the clear to keep things going—at least for the moment—and he didn’t look like he wanted to waste any more time in that regard, either.

Jimmy clapped his hands together. “Group 2S,” he commanded, “hit everybody up with those ice buffs. Let’s get it done quick! And 1S, give us another round of fire. We wasted too much time, and I don’t wanna worry about them expiring later on. Don’t worry, though, 1S: this should be the last time you gotta buff.”

Zach could visibly see Lienne’s face swell with misery as it seemed to dawn on her that she’d have to cast her fire debuff on a significant subset of the raid all over again. As the lowest-level—and the least-experienced—member of her group, she had succumbed to the exertion debt and had passed out during the first round of buffs. Thankfully, Jimmy seemed to recall this as well, and a moment later, the sound of a strange groan came from the Mare of the Primordial Void along with a popping sound, and Zach turned his head to see several damage numbers rising above the boss just as the remnants of a greenish cloud faded away near its face.

Jimmy poisoned it.

A few seconds later, Jimmy moved closer to Lienne and cast Breath of Rejuvenation on her. “There,” he said to her, “that’ll keep you going, yeah?”

“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head.

“Fuckin’ buff is a miracle,” Donovan grunted over the Comm in a way that suggested he hadn’t even meant to voice the words aloud. “Can’t believe the kid can do that shit.”

Now, with constantly replenishing stamina, Lienne joined the rest of her group and began casting—but not before Zach felt a chill surrounding him, one that was actually welcome amid the punishing heat. Glancing upwards, he then noticed that a single, sparkling, snowflake-shaped object was dancing above his head while raining gold-colored glitter down on top of him, all while making fluttering, buzzing sounds.

Name

Frostward

Effect

Increases user’s resistance to frost and cold by 38%

Duration

14:59

The noises stopped, the glitter vanished, and then, no sooner had it disappeared than Lienne’s buff hit, refreshing the timer on Flameveil II back up to fifteen minutes. Darting his head around, Zach saw that the same was true of the rest of the raid; with an impressive efficiency, the members of 2S buffed and the members of 1S re-buffed the more than one-hundred raiders who had come to fight the boss. And now, with the two support groups just about finished casting, Zach once again turned his attention to Jimmy, who was eagerly and energetically bouncing on the balls of his feet as if anxious to kill the boss before Donovan and Zephyr had the chance to call this raid off.

“Okay, everybody good? If you’re not, you better tell me, ‘cause your life probably depends on it. Last chance. Anybody not buffed? All right, sweet.” Once again, he clapped his hands together. “All right, let’s do this shit! Group 2: you’re up. Cast your ice and cold magic on the—”

“Oh, shit!” a male voice cried over the Comm. Zach did not recognize the speaker, but the sound of it came from nearby in addition to the Comm. Turning his head, Zach saw that the man was a middle-aged adventurer wearing a set of mismatched-looking armor that included a red metal breastplate, yellow cloth trousers, and green sandals.

“What’s wrong?” Jimmy asked, his voice surprisingly cool.

The man pointed to a spot near the boss’s massive front-left hoof. “Is that the thing?” he asked, his index finger trembling. “The uh, the big attack thing it does!”

Numerous heads turned to look where he indicated, and the beginning of a panic started to take hold. Two more voices cried out in alarm over the Comm. Then five. In another few seconds, it would probably be dozens. The adventurers seemed to be on the verge of some kind of raid-wide mental collapse. And Zach could almost sympathize with them, as the whitish streak of light near the raid boss’s hoof kind of looked like the ring from earlier, but only just barely. Still, people were obviously feeling jumpy.

Thankfully, Jimmy was very, very quick to deal with it. “Chill,” he said calmly, almost casually. “That’s not the big attack from before. It’s just the sun doing sun shit.”

“Jimmy is correct,” Mr. Oren added. “What you’re seeing is just directional light caused by a gap between two small clouds.”

“Oh,” the man said, shedding an embarrassed-sounding laugh. “My bad.”

“You scared half of us to death, you moron,” Reni Sarwin growled over the Comm.

“Everyone, chill,” Jimmy said once again. “It’s probably not gonna do that again, for real. I think that was a one-time thing.”

Zach wasn’t sure how Jimmy could know or suspect such a thing, but he didn’t doubt that Jimmy was correct, so it was a relief to hear it. Zephyr and Mr. Oren, on the other hand, seemed much less inclined to take anything on faith alone. Both immediately started questioning him, and upon these questions, some of Jimmy’s coolness slipped away, replaced by obvious frustration.

“Look, I know it’s not obvious to you guys, but it is to me. This boss clearly does a big-ass, fuck-you-up super attack each time it picks up a new immunity, but it probably only does it once.”

“And you’re one-hundred percent certain of this, Jimmy?” Mr. Oren asked him.

“And is this separate from the other new attacks it gains?” inquired Zephyr.

Jimmy exhaled audibly into the Comm. “Nah, I’m not a hundred-percent sure, just like ninety-five, and yeah, it should be separate. It also happened when I made it poison immune too, remember? After I hit it enough times, it changed colors then turned almost all the air in the market into poison.”

“A sample size of two—not a whole lot,” Mr. Oren said.

This only seemed to further frustrate Jimmy. “I hear you, but look: if this thing actually could hit us with that again, then by now, it probably would have. The fact we haven’t seen it by now means it can’t.”

“I’m not sure I buy that.”

“Just trust me, all right? I—no, we—got this. We got this, man, seriously.”

Mr. Oren made a slight grunt, but Zach was unable to tell if it was one of agreement, approval, skepticism, or some strange mix of all three. Still, it looked like he had no further objections to raise, and so Jimmy picked up where he’d left off. Raising his voice slightly, he said, “Group 2! Attack the boss with ice and cold!”

Zach regarded the Mare of the Primordial void. So as not to grant it melee immunity, the tanks were hitting it only as much as necessary to keep it taunted. Three conjured swords made of pure fire lashed out at Ophelia Graven, who was apparently now using something called a “de-taunt” to pass the aggro onto Spider so that she could recover her stamina. At the moment, the boss loomed large. It was fiery, daunting, and would only become more lethal as the fight went on.

HP

11,400,875/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

Well, Jimmy says we got this, Zach thought. Here’s to hoping we actually do.

*********

Eilea scowled and clenched her fists. How could one man possess so many insufferable qualities? How was it that, humbled and humiliated, he gave off no trace of anger or shame? For the first time in perhaps several-thousand years, Eilea had outsmarted Adamus, and although she detected a degree of surprise coming from the rotten, withering-old bastard, she did not feel any resentment directed her way. But this was deeply upsetting. She wanted to feel his resentment: his anger. Especially after the way he had shamed her in front of the Elves yesterday. For that and so much more, she wanted him to experience the sting of humiliation.

You were wrong, Adamus, she said to him. You misjudged me, my actions, and the purpose of the boy’s continued existence. I want you to think about how you were wrong. How does it feel, husband? Does it burn? Perhaps senility is beginning to take hold of you. Perhaps you are less than you were!

“Your attempts to goad me into anger are childish and shall gain no foothold upon my composure, my beloved,” his whispered voice spoke into her head. “And yet still: wrong as I may have been, the odds of success are barely above twenty percent, I am fairly certain.”

Rubbish! Zach and Jimmy will kill the boss. Twenty-percent? How insulting and offensive of you to underestimate them.

“Underestimate? If anything, I am still perhaps overestimating their odds.”

Eilea’s scowl deepened. She clenched her teeth now, too, in addition to her fists. And just as she was about to slam her coffee cup down on Kalana’s beautiful glass table—an action she would of course regret—Jascaila put a hand on hers and shook her head. “You’re talking to him again, aren’t you?”

Eilea swallowed nervously. “No.”

“Eilea?”

She hissed in vexation. “Fine, yes! But you don’t understand. He’s—”

“We talked about this. You need to—” fгeewebnovёl.com

“—no, no, you don’t understand! Adamus is arrogant, and selfish, and—”

“Eilea!”

Eilea closed her mouth. Jascaila squeezed her hand. “No more contact,” the human woman said. “Thousands of years of pain will lead to thousands more unless you start the healing process, and that can only begin by breaking off contact and working on yourself. Forget him. You yourself said he is no threat to you as long as you keep your end of the deal. That means you have no reason to ever communicate with him again. Break off contact. Do it.”

“Very well,” Eilea muttered, closing off her mind. She seethed as she realized that Adamus wasn’t even trying to keep the communication open. He actually seemed pleased that she was yanking her mind away from his. Once again, she growled angrily. “This is what I mean! He just let me dismiss him!”

“Good.”

The two were seated in the large living room not far from the kitchen. That adorable little dinosaur—Ruby was her name?—was napping on the couch near them, and the prince boy, Peter, was in a bedroom doing schoolwork. Outside the large home, dozens of Elvish guards stood by. Eilea felt badly that the queen insisted upon it, as their population was small and there were certainly better things for them to do. But, if nothing else, at least those here with her had not been sent off to war, where they might possibly die.

“I’ve cut communication with him. For good this time.”

“You say that now…”

This was Eilea’s second “session” with Jascaila. Honestly, she couldn’t believe she’d actually agreed to something like this. She was, after all, an Elvish Goddess, and Jascaila was a mere human. Whereas she had lived for thousands of years, the tall, broad-shouldered woman had existed for five or six decades. What good were her words? What could possibly be learned from one who, comparatively speaking, was but a newborn babe when put against an ancient being such as herself? At least with Francis Calador, her ally and sort-of paramour, she dealt with a human who'd been around for longer than a thousand years, and so his advice at least had some experience behind it. But Jascaila Iseldar? What could she possibly know?

And yet, despite her age, Eilea listened. Eilea opened her mind as best she could, and she slowly set her coffee down on a napkin on the table. Then, with a calm breath, she attempted to reason with the woman. “If you would just let me explain something to you,” she whispered.

“Explain what to me?” Jascaila asked her. “How much you hate him? All the things that are wrong with him? How he’s an abusive, manipulative piece of shit that has destroyed your happiness for a time so long I can’t even comprehend it?”

“Well…well, yes,” Eilea said, shocked. Was the woman reading her mind like Adamus?

Jascaila sighed. “Look. These are topics we’ll get into. Trust me when I say that. They’re extremely important. But right now, you need to start by redefining your life without him in it. Don’t you get it? Your entire existence up until this point has just been Adamus. Adamus, Adamus, Adamus. It’s to the point where, honestly?” She chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve heard you go more than ten minutes without mentioning him.”

Eilea felt stunned. “That’s true, but…but I need him to know.”

Jascaila took a sip of her coffee. “Need him to know?”

She nodded. “Why do you think I am here? Why do you think I’ve taken such an interest in Zach? It’s all to show him that he’s wrong. To create a world far better than his own—and to know he had no hand in creating it. That he was wrong.”

Jascaila made a warm smile despite the heat that came across in the words she spoke. “So you’re telling me that you, a being with such vast, unimaginable power—your only purpose in life is to prove your estranged husband wrong?”

“Well…no. I wish to create a world of kindness, love, and—”

“Eilea…”

“Fine! Yes! I want to prove that foolish, evil, coldhearted, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing freak wrong! I want to see his mind crumble beneath the weight of this realization. Even if it takes me a million years! That’s what I want.”

“Then he’ll always have power over you.” Jascaila met her eyes, and Eilea was taken aback by the certainty in them. She pointed towards her chest. “You need to let him go. Before we can work on anything else—before we can talk about anything else, we must start with teaching you to let him go and to find yourself again. Until you know who you are without him, you’ll never be anything more than his aggrieved shadow.”

Eilea fidgeted, becoming uncomfortable. She’d ordered the Elvish guards out of the room because she’d known that Jascaila would speak to her in a way that could potentially create tension and unwanted trouble. Even still, she hadn’t expected to feel quite this…perturbed. “What are you trying to say?” she whispered, becoming a bit angered. “That I am obsessed with him?”

“Yes.”

“I am not!”

“You are.”

“No! No, I am not! You think I want him back?”

“Of course not.”

“But you just said I’m—”

“You’re obsessed, not in love. You hate him. I believe that’s genuine. But obsession doesn’t require you to want him back or to crave his company. It’s any mentally destructive pattern of thought, revenge included.”

“And how can you possibly know all of these things? You are a child compared to me.”

Jascaila shrugged then took another sip of her coffee. “I went to a good college, I guess.”

At this, Eilea laughed. “Well, perhaps I should read some of the books you’ve read. Actually, I’ve not read anything in a good long while. I hope to start again soon. Francis said he’ll…ah, sorry.”

“Hm?”

“I shouldn’t talk about him.”

“About who?”

She shook her head. Then she felt heat racing into her cheeks. “He’s this…man. Funnily enough, he’s actually related to the boy, though far removed due to the passing of time. Ah, but I’m rambling now.”

Jascaila laughed. “Speaking of Zach, how’s he doing?”

“Let me check…”

Glad for the change of conversation, she peered deeper into the world of Galterra, finding him quickly. But it was not upon him she wished her gaze to linger. She settled it upon the boy whose life she’d saved: James Green. He was feeling very, very confident. This in turn made her feel confident. “Would you like to see?”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Jascaila sat up straighter and lifted her pinky off her cup. “You can show me?”

“Yes. Open your mind. You’ll see what I see.”

“Okay. Like this?”

“Yes.”

“Whoah! You aren’t kidding. Hey, is that Zach’s friend? Jimmy?”

********

Group 2 kicked into action. Jimmy nodded as seven staves, two spell swords, a mace, and a hammer began waving around, lifting up, or otherwise pointing ahead. Some of the men and women chanted words, and others were silent. But all of them were beginning their attack. Patiently, he waited for the onslaught to begin, and when it did, it did not disappoint.

Things began with a literal bang. A gigantic block of ice, appearing out of thin air, slammed down on top of the boss, shattering over its head and body and dealing 9,124 damage. The amount was much higher than Jimmy had expected, and it filled him with a great deal of optimism. Because now, for the first time, it confirmed to him something he’d suspected—or nah, actually more like hoped—would be the case: that when picking up an elemental immunity, the boss would become weaker to its opposite. Given that the mages in the ice group weren’t meaningfully more powerful than those in Group 1—at least in terms of their intelligence stat—he hadn’t been expecting such a disparity. Yet, just in the event such a weakness existed, he’d carefully chosen spell order to accommodate it whenever possible.

And God, it was paying off.

Even the nervous adventurers began perking up a bit as the damage started rolling in. Now, after a totally unnecessary delay that’d been spent arguing and bullshitting, the raid was back on track and things were moving much faster than he’d hoped for—which in this case was a really good thing. The adventurers, as well as the participating members of Children of Order, seemed to all let out one big cheer as the cataclysmic barrage of ice and frost assailed the boss from every direction and every angle.

Star-shaped, human-sized blotches of ice would appear on the mare’s flaming, yellow-orange skin like a patch or bandage only to make a loud crack as they shattered, which caused smaller cubes of ice to go flying off in all directions while the boss flinched. At the same time, high-pitched whistling noises permeated the air as comet-like streaks made of pure ice rained down on the boss from the sky. There were also miniature tornadoes made of swirling, spiraling ice, and bolts of ice that fired directly across the air at the boss in a way analogous to common fire attacks. There were a bunch of other abilities as well that blended together, including flashing bomb-like devices that erupted into frost, and there were also sharp spikes made of ice that periodically rose up from the ground and pierced the boss’s stomach before disappearing. The mare was getting absolutely thrashed!

4,751

8,655

5,000

5,001

8,901

4,326

9,007

Like before, the damage numbers appeared so fast that most would remain in existence for less than half a second before floating up and disappearing to make room for more. This was good shit. This was really good shit. Jimmy let out a cheer as the Mare of the Primordial Void’s HP began to plummet even faster than it had before as the mages of Group 2 relentlessly hammered the boss.

HP

10,662,146/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

“Wow, it’s really starting to drop,” Zephyr said over the Comm, sounding impressed. “And we only just started hitting it.”

“Hell yeah,” Rian added. “Look at its HP go down!”

HP

10,111,917/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

Jimmy grinned then turned his head to look behind him at the mages. He was glad to see they were holding up well. Although his poisons on the boss had faded, his Breath of Invigoration bar was filled, and he was keeping the buff in reserve in the event any of his mages needed it to continue casting. Quickly surveying the group, he checked to see if any looked like they were struggling. So far, they seemed to be doing just fine—all but one. There was a woman standing somewhat by herself in the middle of the pack that did not appear to be casting anything. Actually, Jimmy didn’t think she’d casted a single spell yet. As in, not even one.

She okay?

The woman was the only person in Group 2 who wasn’t an adventurer. No, she was a political guild member from Children of Order, and she dressed like it, too. Rather than wearing any flashy adventurer gear, she wore standard, neat, and unremarkable guild fare. From what Jimmy understood, guild gear was mostly crafted, tended to be fairly low level, and while it looked sleek and professional, it typically had poor stats and armor when compared to the stuff adventurers earned.

Studying the woman’s appearance, Jimmy realized she was sweating profusely, and her arms were shaking as though it was requiring more than she had just to keep her staff raised. Her legs were also trembling. She looked like she was on the verge of collapse. Did this mean the adventurers were right? Many had warned him not to give any important roles to political guild members. They said those dudes were basically trash at anything involving adventuring. And with so many in the raid focusing their attention on Jimmy, several turned their heads to see who he was looking at, and when they did, they began to chuckle over the Comm.

“Is that girl passing out before she cast a single spell?” an adventurer asked, cackling.

“I think so. Holy shit. She didn’t even cast one thing yet, and she’s already about to collapse. Fucking political guild pricks. Haha.”

Jimmy ignored their jeers and spoke to the woman directly. “You all right?” he asked her. “Everything good?”

“She’s fine,” Fiona answered in the woman’s place, her voice coming through clearly over the Comm. “Nimona knows what she’s doing.”

“But she hasn’t done anything yet.”

“She will,” Fiona replied, sounding confident and cheerful.

Jimmy used his own staff to scratch his head as he continued to watch the sweating, panting, arm-shaking woman keep her staff lifted above her face, her hands gripping it by its base. Then, finally, she exhaled and fell to her knees in the same moment that a massive flash of light came from the top of her cane-shaped staff. A loud pop accompanied the flash, startling Jimmy and making him jump.

“Whoah!” he cried out.

Bewildered, he watched as a rock-shaped chunk of ice flew straight upwards rather than towards the boss—one that was barely larger than a baseball. As the relatively small rock rose up towards the clouds, the woman fell forward onto her palms, and now sweat poured off her face as she panted even more heavily as though on the verge of passing out due to being OOM. Or rather…not OOM. E-debt. There was no mana in Galterra!

“Are you sure she’s all right?” Jimmy asked again.

This time, the woman, Nimona, answered for herself. “I’m…I’m okay,” she said.

She was young, perhaps in her late twenties, and she had short, black, pixie-cut hair, and she had somewhat darker-colored skin, but she wasn’t black. Actually, she looked Native American; of course, that was a term that didn’t mean shit to anybody but Jimmy, so if there was a better way of describing her that would make sense to the residents of Galterra, he didn’t know it. Not that it mattered either way. Jimmy was more concerned that she was actually okay, as she seemed to be getting weaker rather than stronger. She looked like she was going to collapse onto her face. And rather than offer to help her, the adventurers were instead staring upwards as her rocky projectile continued to rise until disappearing into a cloud.

And then came the laughter.

“The fuck is that?” one of them asked with a guffaw.

“I don’t know,” answered another, “but I think she missed. Great aim, miss!”

Naturally, Rian couldn’t help but get in on it. “Guys, stop being mean,” he said. “There’s nothing funny about the fact that a political guild member can only shoot one palm-sized ice rock without passing out. And it’s definitely not funny that she somehow missed the gigantic boss that’s directly ahead of her and basically blocking out everything behind it.”

Kalana growled over the Comm. “Stop it, Rian.”

“Huh? Stop what?”

“You know what! You’re being mean while pretending not to be mean.”

“Who, me? How so?”

“Stop playing dumb! You’re being super-duper mean to her. Stop it!”

Rian looked like he wanted to respond with another quip, but now Seiley and Trelvor were glaring at him, and even he seemed to have enough sense to realize he shouldn’t piss off Kalana’s Elvish subjects. Jimmy shuddered just at the thought of getting on their bad side. The Elves were brokenly OP. Just totally unbalanced. But that was a whole separate matter.

“We can rotate, uh…what’s her name again?”

“My name is…Nimona,” she answered for herself.

“We can rotate you out,” Jimmy said, speaking directly to her now in order to avoid shoveling any further disrespect her way. “I think we have a spare ice mage we can—”

“I do not need to be rotated out!” she shouted, strain and exhaustion entering her expression as she awkwardly stumbled back up to her feet. She raised her hand and pointed her staff upwards at the sky. “Look!”

Once again, the adventurers turned their gaze skyward. And now, eyes widened and mouths fell as a massive boom filled the world, one which caused every nearby cloud to be “pushed” away in opposite directions as a visible ripple of energy blasted across the sky. Following this ripple, Jimmy himself gasped as he noticed there was now something floating up there in the clouds—something huge. Something ghostlike. It was a transparent, ghostly outline of a bearded man pointing a golden, ruby-tipped scepter down at the ground. And it was so large that it filled the entire sky.

Did…did this bitch just use a Final Fantasy summon? Jimmy thought to himself in disbelief.

“What the hell is that?” Alixa cried.

“It must be a unique ability,” Lord Alex Oren of the Lords of Justice said. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Fiona made a prideful, giddy laugh. “That’s what you get for doubting my Nimona. Now, all of you doubters just watch what my girl’s magic can do!”

“Thank you, Dutchess Darkmae,” Nimona said, bowing.

Jimmy looked on in amazement as one, then two, then literally dozens of spears made of ice were fired out of the ghostlike apparition’s scepter, and these were solid, tree-trunk-sized, and they moved at great speed, each one descending from the sky and tearing into the Mare of the Primordial Void with so much force it actually pushed the boss away from the tanks and nearly knocked it down.

46,500

22,100

39,500

Each spear pierced completely through the boss and sent streams of dark-red blood splashing far and wide. Even Jimmy felt some of the warm red liquid rain down upon him as the ghostly giant up in the sky sent one icy spear after the next. And although they melted very quickly after impact, they were coming in so quickly that, for at least the moment, the mare’s entire body had spears jutting out of its flesh all over—with more striking it still.

We turned it from a horse into a porcupine!

The ice spears came in faster and faster, and now, combined with all the other magic, the boss’s HP was dropping so fast that Jimmy began to wonder if they might be able to finish the raid without even needing to make use of every single group. The damage being put out right now was staggering. And since the boss’s immunity was based on the number of hits as opposed to the damage of each one, it was clear they were now going to put a massive, major dent in it.

HP

9,582,004/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

HP

8,997,221/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

HP

8,086,492/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

HP

7,755,723/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

The sound of cheering and shouted apologies flooded the Comm and drowned out everything else. Half the adventurers expressed their joy and excitement and the other half, like, really wanted to let Nimona they fucked up and misjudged her—and then they too wanted to celebrate. At first, Jimmy was glad to see it, as he knew high morale was always a great thing to have on a raid. Getting tilted and messing up was much more dangerous than a little Comm disruption. But this was going on for a bit too long, and he started to worry as any attempt to get their attention was drowned out.

“Nimona, I’ll eat my shoe for doubting you!” an adventurer shouted. “That thing is amazing!”

“I can’t believe a political guild member can do that!”

“I know, right? Hey, Nimona, you’re in the wrong profession! You should be with us!”

More and more voices joined in, but it didn’t sit right with Jimmy. It was just way too soon for this level of celebration. This was something they should be saving for after the Mare of the Primordial Void was dead. “Everyone, chill,” Jimmy said over the Comm as even more cheering and mea culpas directed at Nimona rang out. “Let’s bring it down a bit, all right?” He waited, but no one piped down; the level of background chatter and noise remained high. Jimmy sighed. “None of ya’ll can even hear me, can you?”

Jimmy tried again, this time calling for their attention a bit more loudly. But still, it was just impossible for him to get through to everyone while they were hooting and hollering. These people were getting way too excited. And like, Jimmy didn’t blame them and whatever, because it really was cool to see this big horse get blasted by the God-like spirit throwing ice spears at it from the sky. But on the other hand, any moment now, the boss was going to…

Shit, there it goes!

A sense of urgency hit Jimmy like a speeding bus. He stood up straighter. He gripped his staff more tightly. It happened immediately and without any kind of preamble. Between eye-blinks, the boss went from sustaining a volley of highly damaging magical attacks to near-instantaneously reducing all incoming damage to 0. Jimmy opened his mouth to shout at the adventurers to quiet down. Yet to their credit, he didn’t need to. As boisterous and out of control as they seemed capable of becoming, the adventurers were also seasoned enough to be aware of their surroundings, and so in the exact instant that this transition occurred, the sound of laughing, cheering, and words of praise for Nimona were wiped out of existence, and what remained was a haunting moment of quiet over the Comm as the mages abruptly stopped casting even as Nimona’s sky-summoned apparition continued to launch one ice spear after the next.

0

0

0

0

0

0

HP

6,994,941/13,225,000

Name

(T9) Mare of the Primordial Void

Level

85

Group 2 did real good, Jimmy thought, readying himself. Let’s hope Donovan and Zephyr don’t bitch out now. We’re already about halfway there.

Although no one was speaking for the moment, Jimmy did not require their words to understand their sentiment. They were scared. Their optimism and morale were wiped out along with all their cheering. It was as though they had momentarily forgotten what would—or might—happen after each elemental shift, and the reality of their situation was once again dawning upon them. Now, the sense of fear grew so strong and so abruptly that Jimmy could swear it’d become palpable and that he too could feel it.

“Jimmy,” Lord Oren said.

“Yeah?”

“How certain are you in your theory from earlier? That each shift will beget a one-time, very powerful attack.”

Jimmy took a deep breath and then puckered his lips as he blew it out in a whoosh. “Man, I’m like pretty close to a hundred.”

The last thing Jimmy wanted to do was rattle the rest of the raid, but he didn’t want to lie to them, either. That would be even worse. So, yeah, he had to be straight about this, and the result was that people were beginning to shift nervously. Even Zach was glancing around as though he wanted to be anywhere else right now.

Jimmy paused for a moment to think of what he could say: what words of encouragement he could share that would hopefully lift everybody’s spirits. But before he could come up with anything, Donovan spoke first. “Fucker’s changing,” he grunted over the Comm. “There it goes.”

The level of tension increased tenfold as the Mare of the Primordial Void began to change once again. Just as it had done for fire, the color of the skin all around its body washed away like it was merely a coat of paint. The burning, bright yellow-orange gave way to a new layer of a more subdued blue beneath, and the flames that were shooting all along its face and torso cooled, turned into smoke, and then were replaced with a frosty mist. Interestingly, its hooves did still continue to emit flame, which all on its own was enough for Jimmy to be positive that it would not shed previously gained immunities throughout the battle.

As far as its physical dimensions were concerned, however, it at least did not appear—visually, anyway—to grow any larger or stronger as it had when it’d gained immunity to fire and lava. It did, however, open its mouth slightly and begin to pant out breaths of pure frost. Gusts of icy wind collapsed around the raid, and the punishingly hot summer temperature plummeted so fast that, before twenty seconds had come and gone, Jimmy shivered slightly and wished he was wearing a winter coat. It happened so fast, too. The environment around them became genuinely wintry.

“Get ready!” he warned over the Comm. “It’s gonna do something!”

Scowls of alarm and trepidation popped onto the faces of the adventurers and the Children of Order alike. Fiona Darkmae spun her staff around so that she held it out in front of herself defensively. Meanwhile, Zach and Kalana moved towards one another and held hands. As for the rest of the adventurers, their eyes seemed glued to the barren landscape as though wanting to be able to react immediately if they spotted a “ring of safety” in the dirt. But Jimmy didn’t think they’d be hit with that again. It was possible, sure, but unlikely. No, something else was going to come their way.

And it did.

If one were to draw a circle around their formation, the boss’s next attack began in the very center of them—right around where Jimmy was standing, in fact. In the air all around him were these strange, flat, paper-shaped objects that bended and folded and dispersed, breaking apart and spreading out incredibly fast while the environment itself began to gradually darken as a massive storm cloud appeared overhead and completely blocked out the sun.

“What is this?” Alixa asked, clearly frightened.

Fuck.

Jimmy chewed his lower lip a second, hoping to see something, anything that would lead him to believe this wasn’t what it looked like. Yet, the more he saw, the clearer things became. Right now, the paper-like objects had broken apart and dispersed so thoroughly that they had become indistinguishable from little floating snowflakes. But more importantly was that the temperature was dropping—and continued to drop very, very fast.

“All right, everyone, just brace yourself, okay? We’re gonna have to take a little hit here.”

“We fucking what?” Zach shouted.

Jimmy kept his cool. “This is why we had everyone buffed, remember? And not just the tanks? We’re about to get hit by a raid-wide ice attack.”

The shouts of disbelief and outrage started right away. “The hell do you mean?” one of the adventurers demanded.

“Who’s getting hit? Which one of us?”

“Uh, all of us,” Jimmy confirmed.

“You mean we’re all going to die? We’re screwed?”

“No, no, no, it ain’t like that. This isn’t like the other thing.”

“I don’t understand!”

This only caused even more outrage. It now required Donovan barking at everyone to get them to shut up. “Jimmy, how do we avoid it?” Lord Oren managed to ask despite the rapidly rising level of terror and noise coming through over the Comm.

“We don’t avoid it,” Jimmy replied. “We’re supposed to get hit. But I thought ahead, and that’s why we’re all buffed. I mean…real talk? I’ll just be straight-up and admit that I didn’t think we’d get cheesed this hard. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it could happen, but it’s still lame. Sometimes, raids do this shit to you where everyone takes damage with an unavoidable attack. It just happens. It’s something you gotta learn to accept.”

Based on the raid’s reaction to his words, Jimmy supposed it was something they’d have to learn to accept another day, because they certainly weren’t ready to accept it on this one. The panic and misery spread so quickly it felt like a weight around Jimmy’s neck. He couldn’t let the raid collapse over this. This was part of raiding. It didn’t matter how they felt about it. This was just how raids went sometimes.

“When’s it gonna happen?” Kalana asked. Jimmy looked over towards the Elvish girl. She was terrified just like everyone else, but he could see in her eyes that her fear was not for her own sake but for Zach and everybody else here with them. “When are we gonna—”

She paused. No…no! No! Not paused. She froze. Literally. Jimmy watched as her entire body, in a mere instant, became encased in a solid, all-consuming block of ice. This caused Zach’s eyes to bulge with absolute horror. He opened his mouth to shout her name. But before he could pronounce the first letter, he too became encased in a solid block of ice, one that was form-fitting and in the exact shape of his body.

He looks like Han Solo in carbonite, Jimmy thought to himself. And it almost made him laugh. In fact, it would have made him laugh if he himself hadn’t suddenly felt the world abruptly become distant and separate from everyone and everything else. Without any kind of gradual transition, his sense of reality shifted and changed. And it began with the cold.

So…so cold!

Jimmy was gripped by an unfathomable, burning feeling of freezing. And now, he became aware that he could no longer move. He couldn’t even see properly, either. And he was cold. The coldest he’d ever been. But worst of all, he couldn’t even close his eyes or blink. That was the part that bothered him the most. The world took on a strange, mirror-like quality, whereby he could now mostly see his own form reflected back at him, but he could not lift so much as a finger or even twitch his nose or lips.

With this, the fear finally got the better of Jimmy, but he couldn’t scream or make any sound at all. He couldn’t even croak. For the moment, all he could do was exist in both a literal and metaphorical frozen state. His vision was limited to whatever way his head had been turned only moments ago, and all he could hear was the sound of a hissing, icy breeze and what he took to be small cracks of ice. Yet through the reflective quality of the ice just in front of his eyes, he could see that everyone within his limited range of vision—and almost certainly the entire raid as well—were all in the very same state.

I can’t move, he thought, panicked. I can’t move! I can’t move!

He wanted out. He wanted this to end. This was torture. This had to be what hell was. An eternity of this. An eternity of being frozen, unable to move, unable to blink, and unable to even shout out the horror within himself. And it was only now that he realized he also couldn’t even breathe. This sent his terror into overload. Now, he began to wonder: how long would they stay like this? He became desperate. Desperate to get out. He struggled but to no avail. He wanted out!

He got his wish.

The ice encasing him did not melt. It did not crack. It did not even chip away. It exploded. With a loud, painful crack that left his eardrums ringing, his icy tomb detonated around him—and not just him. Everyone. The entire raid erupted with a singular, synchronized, explosive crack that saw tens of thousands of individual shards of ice blast in so many different directions it momentarily simulated the visibility of a blizzard. And God, it hurt. The pain was unbelievable. Every part of his body, but in particular, his skin, ached so fiercely it rivaled the agony he’d felt last night when he’d sustained a near-fatal injury. All around him, Jimmy saw his own blood dripping down his arms as pieces of his skin on his body, hands, legs, and face were ripped off of him. He screamed. And the sound of his own scream confused him.

Since when do I sound like that?

It only then occurred to him that, just as the ice all broke at the same time, the adventurers all screamed at the same time, too. Some more than others. What he was hearing was therefore not just his own anguished voice, but almost a hundred others beside his—and all at the same time, too. It was a symphony of pain, and it made everything so much worse. But soon, the screams gave way to words.

“Help!” cried a voice he didn’t recognize.

“Oh God, she’s not breathing!” yelled another.

“Maric!” Donovan roared. “Snap the fuck out of it and pull aggro, you son of a bitch!”

“Zach!” Kalana screamed. “Zach, are you okay? Where’d you go? You were right here!”

“I’m right here, Kal! I’m fine! Hurry. Get the stones out. Get the fucking stones out! Everybody who’s not bleeding out, get your Mushkie red stones out. Hurry!”

“How many dead?” Zephyr asked, his voice shaky but still solid.

“I don’t know yet!” Donovan replied. “I think a couple, but shit, I dunno for sure.”

A couple?

Jimmy thought he’d faint. There couldn’t be dead members. No! Not on his raid. Impossible! Yet there was blood everywhere…but most of the adventurers were on their feet, right? Yes. He counted them with his blurry but recovering eyes. One, two…thirty. They were on their feet. But not all of them, though. He now saw there were some who were kneeling, sitting, or lying down and groaning. But there were others who…who weren’t moving at all.

Jimmy felt the embrace of hopelessness, just as he had last night. He tried to fight it off, but it was wrapping around him tightly.

Had he done something wrong?

*****

“It’s what?” Prila asked, shaking her head. “But how? That doesn’t make any sense, Adamus.”

“You have invested too much emotion into these adventurers, my child,” Adamus whispered. “Are you sure you would not prefer to return to your colleagues?”

He felt her cling to his arm, and though he truly did wish to comfort her, he knew what she really needed was to witness and accept whatever outcome emerged from this raid so as to reacquaint herself with the reality of the system. “Just tell me,” Prila said to him. “How can you say what you just said?”

“I said several things. Of which do you refer?”

He felt her trembling, though only slightly. “You said that their odds are now down to just five percent even though it was only a few minutes ago that you told me they were at twenty. So how can they be down to five if they were just at twenty?”

“They were a fair bit higher than that, actually.”

“Huh?”

“Things change with new information,” Adamus replied. “Just before the Mare of the Primordial Void used its Frozen Tomb attack, I would have given them as high as fifty percent. This was due to James Green’s leadership resulting in a far more effective second round of magic than any I had anticipated.”

“You didn’t mention that to me.”

“I didn’t wish to give you hope only to have it dashed. As I said, my child, things have changed.” Adamus sighed. “The boy’s morale is crushed. I can feel it. His confidence is shattered, and the raid’s confidence is shattered as well. On the flipside, however, you need not despair just yet, as that five percent now only represents their odds of victory over the boss and not their chance of survival.”

Prila blinked as if in surprise. “Really? But I thought you said those two were the same?”

“They were, at first. But things have most certainly diverged due to the adventurer’s having a greater appreciation for the risk they are taking. Because of this, I now estimate that there is approximately an eighty-percent chance that they flee the encounter entirely with no casualties.”

“No…casualties?” she asked, repeating his words. He felt her grip on his arm tighten. “Wait, are you saying no one is dead yet?”

“That is correct,” Adamus whispered. “Several are critically wounded, and a few are on death’s doorstep, but the boy’s idea of buffing the entire raid was, to put it simply, ingenious. However,” he continued, patting the back of her wrist, “though he succeeded in correctly interpreting the nature and manner of the boss’s next attack, the boy severely underestimated the power that would be brought against him and his raid. For this reason, he was caught off guard even despite deducing in advance the danger they were soon to face. And because of this, it is my belief that he will fold under this pressure. In such a way, he is similar to my beloved, who has brought him here. The two seem to share that quality. They fold when faced with too great a challenge.”

“I hate how you call her that,” Prila said darkly. “Your ‘beloved.’” She spoke the word as though it caused poison to coat her tongue.

“Apologies. It is but a habit.”

“I know,” Prila replied softly. “Um, is there a way we can get a better view? The OMP’s sensors are still barely functional from the nuclear strike on Ogre’s Axe, and the images you’re sending in my mind are getting kind of cloudy.”

“Ah, allow me to dispense with this fog.”

Adamus closed his eyes and concentrated on creating an even clearer picture of the raid. In truth, he had grown to a point where visualizing situations no longer did much for his own personal comprehension of events. Really, it had been many, many thousands of years since he last relied on visual data as a form of information. As he became wiser and more powerful, he learned to value thoughts and emotions to paint a much clearer, more honest picture. But for just about everyone else in the world, seeing was understanding. Thus, he increased his level of concentration and brought the two of them closer and closer so that Prila could now see even the hairs on some of their arms.

The scene was hectic and chaotic. Healers were quickly sorting people into two groups: those who could be healed using magic, and those who required the stones. Healing magic either worked or it did not work. When a wound or injury reached a certain threshold, it required a higher-tier of healing spell—but even that only went so far, as the most serious injuries required a stone and were unaffected by heals of any tier—or at least those that were available to Galterrans on their currently accessible worlds. Perhaps there existed a few edge cases here or there in the form of unique abilities, but aside from that, there was a point at which healing magic could no longer improve one’s condition. But where exactly this “threshold” happened to be varied from person to person. Some could practically be torn in half and stitched together with a little green mist. Others required a red stone for a broken thumb.

“Zach! Drag them away!” Zephyr shouted at the boy. Right now, the T9 world boss was sending out regular area-of-effect pulses of frost in a three-sixty-degree arc around itself at a limited but not insignificant distance. This, it seemed, was providing the tanks with a great deal of trouble. They now required near-constant healing just to stay on the boss and maintain aggro, which was a problem at the moment, as there were many others in dire need of a healer’s time.

With a dispassionate interest, Adamus watched as the black-haired Calador boy scooped four people up at once, two on each shoulder, and then ran their unconscious forms away from the rampaging boss, who had approached closely enough that they would have been killed if they had remained where they were. At the same time, a heavyset boy was screaming at the top of his lungs; it appeared he was begging for aid for his sister.

“Somebody, please!” he howled. “Lienne’s not breathing!”

An Elvish fellow’s ears twitched upon hearing this, and he bolted over so fast that his feet destroyed several sections of the ground as he ran over to her. “Here!” the young Elvish man said, slamming a red and then a purple stone down onto the girl, whose face was so badly shredded she was practically unidentifiable. Her nose was half missing, her forehead was stained with blood, her eyes were bloody.

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” the young Elvish princess shouted. “We need to get everybody to safety!”

“No!” shouted a voice—and it surprised Adamus. “We’ve still got this! We took a bad hit, yeah, but now we fucking hit back! We’re so close to victory!”

Adamus felt another shift within the boy. It was like a cloud of fear was slowly parting. Could it be that James Green did not suffer a total collapse of his morale after all? Perhaps it had been more like a momentary shock? Hmm…

“Fifteen percent,” he whispered. “I raise my odds back up to fifteen percent.”