Collide Gamer

Cutting through the Golemkinder army took the entire rest of the day.

First it was Hippo Riders, then more Hippo Riders, then a cadre of Priests of Moo Deng, then Priests protected by Hippo Riders, then some kind of big water-jet-gun that conjured hippos, then just big hippos, then hippos with Hippo Riders, then the gun with a bunch of Hippo Riders, then Priests AND Riders AND small hippos AND the gun.

It was a whole thing.

They ended the second of the six days of the first day of Christmas with the trash mobs cleared and Vokal politely waiting for them to return before he made his next announcement.

There were now three days left on the clock to kill that second boss, four if they cut into Eliana’s birthday celebrations. ‘Oh, that pretty little slut would love to offer us that we spend the majority of her birthday Raiding instead,’ John thought. ‘Little does she know that she will get packaged up like a gift basket and complimented into a coma!’

With that thought on his mind, John took the party to the arena. The current configuration of fighters had served him well, so he didn’t intend to change anything until he discovered mechanics that were best dealt with by specific haremettes.

“Our outsiders return,” Vokal declared. “Ready to once more showcase the sharpness of their steel and wit. Today, they shall face Visceria of Thenngria, the Uniter of Faiths, reformer of the Red Path.”

‘Already?’ John watched as the winged elf leapt from her viewing area. Red wings beat once, before she went into a dive, landing in the red sands on two feet and one hand. In the other, she held a dark grey spear.

“It will be my honour to show you the might of Thenngria, to prove ourselves to the Blessed Warrior and the Red Marble.” The elf’s muscles twitched and tensed as she rose up. John finally got a view of how bulky she was for a woman, especially an elf. Her biceps were pronounced, her thighs meaty and the plunging neckline of her black, minimalistic dress revealed the centre of a set of abs. She had the face and figure of an elf and the sculpted physique of a warrior woman. Blood magic swirled around her left hand. Black-red hair fluttered in dramatic winds.

[Visceria AI: https://i.imgur.com/7xZkgZ7.png]

‘All of its grudges are her grudges, ey?’ John thought and rubbed his chin. ‘Time to engage the hard mode then.’ “With all due respect, Vokal,” he raised his voice, “I do not believe Visceria alone will provide me with a challenge. For the sake of balance, I request-“

“You had me at balance!” Tarshan appeared in the ring to the murmuring of the crowd and the immediate derailing of Visceria’s eager smile. In its place, an intense disgust surfaced. Content orıginally comes from 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵※𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾※𝙣𝙚𝙩

“Step away, Purplefucker,” she spat out. The outburst was so intense, her voice so filled with bitter hatred, that John was almost taken aback. “Your tyranny has no place here.”

The black eyes of the mask widened. “Alleged tyranny!” Tarshan declared, clutching pearls that had appeared around his neck. “What does the Red Path have to say about atrocities, hmm?” The Maskbearer plucked a book out of thin air and fluttered through it. “Let’s see here… right between ‘bleed the innocent’ and ‘bleed the guilty’, it says… Oh, that’s funny, it says nothing! There is no atrocity to a Thenngrian, only happy fun times. We Purpufusc know how to have fun… by dancing!”

Tarshan busted out some moves that were very clearly inspired by Michael Jackson. While he moonwalked a circle around Visceria, the elf did not once let him out of her sight.

“The Red Path is open to all.”

“I mean, no? It’s open to the children you indoctrinate.”

“Enlighten,” Visceria corrected, then changed her tune. “I will not be scolded by the Weaver of Lies. Champion of Vinlok, champion of the Demon of Deception, you who fought with the Godblood Blob twice. You are- Stop – That!”

Tarshan was very audibly sucking liquid out of an almost empty cup. The mask had grown a pair of extra thick lips just for that purpose. By now, John accepted that Tarshan had access to Looney-Toons logic – which was potentially terrifying. “Sorry, listening to you waffle on made me think about how my throat always gets dry after sermons.”

“What sermons would you hold to your close-minded people? All you Purplefuckers do is assert your ‘supremacy’ over lesser races.”

“Hey, we are just very good at protecting people.”

“Start with protecting yourself!” Visceria exclaimed and thrust her spear at the Maskbearer.

“What chaos – I love it!” Vokal declared from his throne, while Visceria and Tarshan exchanged harmless blows. “Then let this be a three-way fight, for the amusement of all!”

John watched Visceria and Tarshan duke it out for a short while. Their fight mostly consisted of Tarshan running away, sometimes by moving sideways like a crab, and making “woop-woop-woop-woop” noises. An occasional bolt of chaotic energy would prevent Visceria from fully catching up. Neither of them managed to harm the other.

It was a show fight, just another form of idle animation. Until the party struck either of the two, the fight would not actually begin.

Which meant it was now time to call Lorelei down for her usual prophecy.

“The blood of the god of the planet’s blood will assail you with her spear and the magic of her worship. Be wary of both falling marbles and falling swords. Know that damage taken is to her advantage and know also that this boon will be extended to you when it benefits her.

“The champion of the Masked God will annoy you, moving across the field constantly. He will only stop to defend himself from the calamity that will be brought down upon both of you and to summon forth the vengeance of his own patron. He will demand of you the swinging of hips and the dodging of pies.

“They must be played against each other, strengths and weaknesses all. Beware that, when one is defeated, the other will turn all their ire and might towards you. Beware that, to slay the daughter is to bring about the wrath of the one that lets the blood flow too early.”

Lorelei lowered her hands and folded them in front of her waist. She bowed, her interpretation of her visions now complete.

“Alright, so Visceria has a lifesteal aura that we can use to survive Tarshan’s big burst spell, while Tarshan will put up some kind of damage reduction that will save us from Visceria’s AoE in turn. There will be a dance battle with pies, maybe? Also we should kill Tarshan first, but only while Visceria is already fairly far down on HP.” John rubbed his chin. “This is going to be more challenging.”

It was a lot more challenging.

The first ten attempts ended up being just learning attempts. The fight had a lot of moving parts that had to be individually respected.

Tarshan both moved randomly and targeted random allies. His standard attack was a bolt of entropic energy. Every time he cast it, there was a random chance of it splitting in two, getting double cast with a delay, or becoming extra strong. Although that introduced a lot of variance in what his damage output was, that damage was properly balanced against the fact. The only one amongst them that had to be truly careful was Sylph.

Visceria was tanked the traditional way. Whoever was closest had her attention. However, she did gradually build up some kind of internal mechanic, represented by an increasing blood-drip from her wings, which unleashed in an extra powerful strike. Whenever she went for that attack, she targeted the weakest person within 5 metres.

An additional complication to Visceria’s attack pattern was that she would always immediately change to prioritizing Tarshan if he was close enough.

All of that was just the base situation; adding further complications were their big AoE spells and the Saintesses.

Viscera threw her big area of attack spell every full minute. She used two different spells, both of them devastating but with different aftermaths. One pulled a comet from the sky that crashed down with a cataclysmic shockwave, leaving behind a red, teethed sphere of molten rock that hovered in place. The sphere empowered Visceria for five seconds every thirty seconds, making her a lot more aggressive and faster. It also applied a debuff to the party that forced them to go into melee with Visceria or take psychic damage. The second variant had a massive sword slam into the arena instead. It had just as horrible an impact and, if it persisted, provided Visceria with a less pronounced but consistent buff to her speed.

Both attacks could effectively only be survived by relying on Tarshan. When the spell was about to land, the Maskbearer made a loud “WOOP-WOOP-WOOP-WOOP!” sound as he wobbled sideways towards an area marked with a bright circle of light. Standing inside it massively diminished the damage taken. Tarshan always shoved them out afterwards with a disruptive but harmless shockwave.

Of course, Tarshan had his own area attack, which occurred every 2 minutes 30 seconds. When he used it, everyone in front of him was subjected to a constant storm of bolt attacks and flying, ephemeral daggers. Neither were kinetic, they were burn and slashing damage, allowing everyone to attack despite them.

Tarshan could be beaten to a pulp, in theory, during this storm. However, those caught were almost certain to die. In order to actually handle it, they had to align Visceria with Tarshan at the moment of the spell, so she supercharged her lifestealing effect to extend to the whole party. Then, everyone was attacking Tarshan together, healing against the damage dealt.

Then there were the Saintesses. They weighed in on the fight every 97 seconds, which was an odd number. It led to some almost overlap, but the mechanics they mingled in with were almost all about area denial so they could be circumvented. On its own, the cycling of the Saintesses was an incredibly easy mechanic, so easy it could almost be ignored. That made it a pretty good Raid-arching mechanic. It was an addition to each boss’ flavour, rather than the main show.

The final complicating factor was the matter of second phases. On two attempts, just to see what would happen, they fully focused on only one of the two bosses. They succeeded in killing each fairly easily, since they could rely on the DPS of the other boss in addition to their own. The problem was that they eliminated the counter mechanics provided and that the remaining boss got empowered.

As Lorelei’s prophecy had indicated, killing them close to each other was the key to victory here.

The fight demanded tight coordination. Because of how mobile it demanded them to be, Nahoa was switched out for Siena after the first ten attempts. Because she couldn’t reliably heal enough during the anti-Tarshan phases to counteract her low HP, Sylph was switched out for Gnome. On the same token, John tagged in the Creator Puppet. Inkaryl already had inbuilt lifesteal, so stacking the modifiers made sense.

With that updated formation, they got further and further into the fight. There was a pleasant mixture of certainty and improvisation in the fight. Because Visceria primarily fought with regular attacks and because Tarshan moved randomly, they couldn’t just play the dance of their mechanics.

The 97 second gaps between the Saintesses was the primary confounding factor. The odd timer put their mechanics closer or further to those of the bosses. Visceria’s AoE was relatively simple to deal with, only requiring a swift reposition. Tarshan was a bit harder, demanding that they had Visceria positioned close to him when it happened.

Precise battlefield control, foreplanning, and coping with new circumstances, all of it went into them gradually pushing further in.

Once they had grown accustomed to that dance, they were faced with the problem of proper damage allocation. The bosses were more visual with how much damage they took than normal. Tarshan’s robe got shredded as they went on, while Visceria sported a great many wounds. That the latter had lifesteal of her own had to be taken into account constantly.

They also needed to destroy the red marbles and massive swords constantly, those buffs made Visceria hard to control.

After over thirty attempts, they managed to push past 10 minutes for the first time. At that point, Tarshan declared a dance battle.

Everyone in the arena was suddenly teleported to the middle. Visceria found it visually distasteful, yet she could resist the sudden swing in her step as little as the Raid party. Everyone was dancing and, even though she did it against her will, it had to be said that those elven hips did not tell a lie. Tarshan himself put on a performance that would have put Michael Jackson to shame. After the dance battle concluded, pies were thrown in the faces of everyone in Visceria’s side of the field.

The mechanic was worked out after three attempts. Taking thirty minutes to experience a mechanic three times was a design idea that John was not too fond of. Alas, he also didn’t know how to do it differently without giving away surprises for such bosses.

The dance battle was decided by their party by the simple measure of which side of the field had more people dancing in it. The harder one side was out-danced, the more pies flew in the face of the opposite, which was a visual representative of a stacking damage taken multiplier. With that mechanic, they could more easily equal out any damage discrepancy between the two.

Armed with that knowledge, it was only a matter of getting that one good attempt – which turned out to be the 63rd attempt total.

John was not a fan of staring at the only other guy in a dance party full of women, but here he was. In the corner of his eye, Fianna was blushing profusely while wiggling her hips in the Caramelldansen. He would tease her about that being the dance she engaged in when compelled by magic. Right now, he needed to not stare at her ass though.

They were all dancing on the side of Tarshan. The Maskbearer was a mess of tattered cloth and open wounds. It was hard to even make out his actual body, a shifting mass of shapes and growths. Under regular circumstances, John would have felt only mild annoyance towards the person. Since he wasn’t a person, he felt a deep apprehension towards the Raid boss that had been running around making Zoidberg noises.

A tap step and Tarshan ended the performance. Out of nowhere, nine cream pies flew towards Visceria. The heavily injured elf was taken out of her elegant tribal performance and forced three steps back by layers of sugary cream splatting on her face.

While she was stunlocked, everyone in John’s party jumped Tarshan. Inkaryl crashed into his back first, closely followed by Gnome’s fist. In a storm of attacks, he was ripped at by wolf teeth, clawed at by shadows, cut by a sword, shot in the leg, blasted with a Darc Lance, and finally beheaded by Rex Magnar.

“Ah well, good game,” the Maskbearer’s severed head said, before poofing into dust.

Immediately, the entire party switched their attention to Visceria. “You robbed Thenngria of its vengeance, for that, I demand your blood!” she declared, wiping the cream out of her eyes. Her feathered wings expanded in size, to showcase her increase in strength, as she met Gnome’s charge.

They had played this out often enough to know that the season elemental would be thrown back. Three of her Unleashed trees sprouted in the trajectory of the spear. Even their stone trunks existed only to slow the thrust of Visceria’s spear. It pierced Gnome’s stomach. She grabbed it with both hands, keeping the weapon locked for a precious second.

Siena closed the distance, approaching the boss’ left flank. It had meant to be a feint, to draw out the second phase weapon they knew was coming. When Visceria manifested a sword of blood-red crystal and scarlet lightning, she moved too fast for even the feinted attack to be turned into a dodge. The sword carved Siena open hip to shoulder. Fateweaving pulled her out.

A gap was created all the same. The entire rest of the group got their hits in, before backing away so Visceria’s empowered strike would not hit anyone. She was a whirl of crackling red, spear and sword. “By my father’s blood, I will end you!” she swore.

Visceria beat her wings, rising backwards to then dive down at them. Ehtra met the midair charge, using her own body to break the momentum. Visceria’s new sword discharged a powerful surge of electricity, sending the First of Hatred flying. Metra leapt into action with pre-planned accuracy.

Extreme Plasma Burst activated. Metra spun thrice around her own axis, before Rex Magnar met Visceria’s spear. Held with one arm, braced against her shoulder, and still she resisted the impact of the strike for a full second before getting thrown to the ground. Two more of Gnome’s butterflies activated, pinning the elf between the trees.

A white Firefly touched down on Fianna. The chamber clicked, the White Bullet loaded. It was a once per day cooldown. If they did not get the kill now, they’d have one finisher less for the remaining attempts. John had approved the use.

The sound reached his ear after the bullet had found its mark. Blood gushed from Visceria’s open mouth, but she still wasn’t dead. She shattered the trees at the root, freeing herself from the tons of stone.

“GLORIOUS BLOODSHOT, THE MENDER OF FAITH BEGS FOR YOUR AID!” Visceria shouted. An incandescent sphere broke the blue sky, descending on shrill tones of hateful laughter.

‘Now, Claire!’

The vampire activated the Death Nail. The hovering spike of her vampiric energy had been growing more powerful as Visceria took damage and now descended, applying a percentage of all of that damage again. Somehow, the elf managed to tilt to the side enough that the attack only slammed through her shoulder, emerging again on the underside of the joint.

The extreme injury was no death sentence. The impact of the red marble, however, would be. Just as John resigned himself to another attempt later, the crimson light of the approaching sphere ebbed away. Visceria collapsed to her legs.

The Mender of Faith tried to rise with the help of her spear. Loosely hung her wings, tense were the muscles of her arm, and yet her trembling legs could not carry her weight any longer.

“The victory… is yours…” she pressed out. “Slayer of Tarshan, you may claim my life.”

John looked around. ‘Scripted events happen for a reason,’ he thought, then locked eyes with the Bloodletter. The demigod of carnage currently was straining against four other Aver, each of them holding an arm of the giant in an attempt to prevent him from leaping into the arena. ‘Lorelei did say that to slay his daughter would be to invoke his wrath too early.’ John glanced over to the Saintesses, who had their weapons at the ready, all of them staring at the Bloodletter in turn. ‘I see how it is. If I kill Visceria now the management will kill the Bloodletter for me, which means no bonus fight.’ “Why would I kill someone so disappointing?”

Insult delivered, John turned away.

There was a tangible wave of heat from the Thenngrian stands. The fury of an entire people combined drilled into John’s back. In real space, he would have considered this a diplomatic faux-pas of the highest order. In here, he was getting exactly what he wanted. “YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU DARE?!” the Bloodletter screamed, but did not yet leap into action.

Exactly as desired.

Visceria dragged herself to the healers, a chest appeared in the middle of the empty arena, and John was notified that he had completed that part of his ongoing Quest. ‘Ahead of time, yes, but that took forever,’ he thought. It had been almost two days since they had first exchanged blows with this boss. ‘I think I can manage the last part of the Quest tomorrow.’

But first: Loot.