Collide Gamer

“The Outrealmer returns to us!” Vokal declared. “Not Unmaker, not Marble nor god, I think. He and his companions travel in your style, Omnius!”

“Yeah, he does, but he isn’t one of mine,” the Divine Harem King responded.

“Indeed, instead he will fight one of yours. I call upon Kin Singer Kohana of the Seinachi Kindom to face the Outrealmer in glorious combat!”

There were cheers from the fox-people quarter of the arena. From among their many-coloured number, one of strikingly pink hair stepped out. She was invisible until the last moment, courtesy of her diminutive stature. Only others of the same, bright pink colour as her were similarly short.

They were also the only ones similarly stacked, and even amongst them, Kohana was the most endowed. She had the body type of a goblin, with breasts that rivalled Nathalia’s, hips and thighs matching the expectations set. Her swept bangs were bluntly cut, as were her sidelocks. Two big fox ears extended from the top of her head and six fluffy tails curled and swooshed elegantly as she sashayed to the edge of the platform.

[Kohana AI image: https://i.imgur.com/jYGCn1a.png]

“A new battlefield is in order!” Vokal declared. He made a simple gesture with his gauntleted hands and the bottom of the arena turned red. Like blood, the sand ran, flattening into a pool. From it rose trees and soil covered in grass. The blood seeped away, disappearing between the blades, leaving only the field of battle behind.

It was the same expansive size as the last field. Kohana leapt into its centre, a dot of pink among the green. Gestures of her hands led to the swift conjuration of three spirits (the mentioned Kin, no doubt). Pink and vaguely fox-shaped, they scattered out around her. One of those Kin then cast a spell in turn, culminating in the summoning of a spectral and heroic figure, armed with a spear.

John and his harem were up in their viewing area still. The event had begun the moment they had entered the Raid again and they had followed it while getting situated.

‘Seems everything has run its course now,’ the Gamer thought and analysed the situation. That was best done with all the intel he could get. “Lorelei, what do you make of this?”

“I foresee a struggle of vitality, Saint,” she responded swiftly. “A tide of summons and summons of summons, one to heal your enemy, the other to fight you. You must balance the act of defeating the enemies with the act of damaging the heart of their power. Act with caution and at the proper pace and you shall know victory.”

“I see, more of a resource struggle than a DPS check,” John said and rubbed his chin. He considered who in his harem were the best at drawn out combat. The Artificial Spirits were the obvious answer, especially Aclysia, Ehtra, Claire and Nahoa, all of whom had mechanics that benefitted from a prolonged engagement. “I will need you for this one, I fear,” he said to the weaponized maid.

Aclysia bowed her head in respect. “My service is yours, Master.”

“I will use my real body for this one, to take advantage of my mana regeneration. Myself, Aclysia, Claire, Ehtra, Momo and Nahoa make six… three more open slots… Fianna, you are in as well, although I am not entirely sure if you are the best fit here. You lack area attacks and this map has obstacles.”

“I am adept at using ricochets,” Fianna said, slightly boasting.

“We’ll see how adept. Two slots left open…” Preferentially, he would have taken Beatrice along as well, but her lack of properly powerful armament still kept her locked out. Metra was another contender, especially since she had the ‘It is Done’ Passive. Every time she killed an enemy, she got a 200 Rage use of an ability for free. That left one slot open.

John was tempted to give it to Salamander, since the fire spirit was the definitive AoE machine among his elementals. On the pro side, that added her damage, on the contra side, if this was a drawn-out fight, not taking a healer along could be a mistake.

The decision was in favour, in the end. “You’ll have to play this carefully. You’ll be the ranged area weakening tool for this. Optimally, you knock them down and Metra finishes them off.”

“Can do that,” Salamander assured and John believed her. Salamander was decent in basically every position, even if her specialization was area obliteration.

With the nine fighters for the first attempt chosen, they descended into the arena. John felt the smouldering gaze of the Bloodletter on him, the red eyes of the demigod attempting to ignite him from a distance. Judging by the faint bit of heat that John felt, he was actually capable of that. A warning by his empress eventually made the Bloodletter stop.

The fight would begin with their first strike, as was normal. However, this time around, it wasn’t so easy to say how that first strike should go. John tried not to overthink it, since there was too much unknown to make a truly informed decision.

“Alright, here is the idea. Ehtra, you will fight the northern Kin. Metra, Aclysia, you take the eastern one with the spirit. Nahoa, Momo, you two will directly attack Kohana. I want you to start stacking debuffs ASAP. Claire, you will use the Death Nail on Kohana, then immediately turn to attack the southern Kin. Fianna, you will give fire support from the southwest. Salamander, you come with me, we will give fire support from the southeast.”

John created a map of the environment on his phone as he spoke, showing them all the formation he had in mind.

“I’ll rely on you, my blessed Kin,” Kohana spoke to the pink foxes, as the party approached.

“Nahoa, you begin the battle,” John instructed.

“Stupid ol’ me?” Nahoa asked, the ditzy tone clashing heavily with the malevolent grin on her face. She raised the dagger above her head and stabbed down.

The weapon pierced the skin of the pink-haired woman. The edge of impossibly blended metal and stone failed to slice the bone and struggled with the muscle. Still, for a Raid Boss, Kohana bled readily.

Everyone else struck immediately thereafter. Ehtra swung at her Kin, Metra did the same, and Fianna fired the pre-Aimed shot. The spectral bodies of the Kin were scattered, only to coalesce again, a little smaller, damaged, but nonetheless active.

Aclysia clashed with the ghostly hero, spear and Marice locking. That was an immediately alarming display. The add had enough power in its arms to keep the weaponized maid locked in a melee. It wasn’t until Aclysia activated Glacial Scourge, increasing her Physical Stats by 50%, that she managed to force the hero on the backfoot.

‘Which creates the question of how frequently these are summoned,’ John thought and followed the battle.

From an outside perspective, it was an equal parts interesting and yet dull sort of affair. Everyone was fighting exactly as advised, exchanging blows with the Kin and the heroes and Kohana herself. The enemies knew how to dodge and fight back, making the fights no doubt engaging on close-quarters level. For John, it was the kind of game he kept running on a second monitor while listening to a podcast.

The first attempt taught them a couple of things. First, it reminded them that the Saintess rotation was still active, which meant random areas of the arena were affected by varying effects. Then, they found out a few things about the specific mechanics of the fight.

Kohana herself had a fairly small HP bar, judging by how easily she took damage that visually showed on her. What she also had was ready access to healing. Every time she spawned a Kin, that Kin immediately cast a healing spell. If a Kin was left alive long enough, it also cast a healing spell. Every third time it would cast a healing spell, it instead summoned one of the heroic spirits. The heroic spirits, in turn, were incredibly powerful physically, but lacked any special mechanics.

As Lorelei had stated, the fight was about who had the longer breath. Bursting Kohana down was something they were of too low a level to do, so they had to engage with the fight as intended, gradually getting in little bits of damage above the healing while getting rid of the Kin. Kohana liked to reposition and summon the Kin in awkward to reach places to make this more difficult for them.

What followed was one of John’s least favourite Raid fights to date.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the idea behind the fight, it was just very monotone for him, as the backline strategist. If he had fought this as a miniboss that he could reliably clear in a few attempts, there would have been nothing to complain about. However, this was a Raid Boss that he needed SO MANY attempts on.

There were no extra phases. The only changing factor was the Saintesses and even they were on a predictable rotation. One attempt bled into the next, each of them the same struggle to conserve their HP, MP and alternative resources while going through the same motions to try and deal the necessary damage.

By the 40th attempt, they had spent 10 hours doing the same thing and called it quits for the day. When John slept, he dreamt of combat strategies. When he returned to it the next day, they attempted a few varied strategies. The most successful of them was the most ambitious.

Claire was tagged out for Sylph, as the Death Nail wasn’t a reliable finisher in this fight. Fianna was replaced with Gnome, because Fianna’s high burst damage was useful, but they also needed an extra tank for all of the adds. John also was starting to use the new Skill he had gotten, but that had been under levelled for combat usage: Summon Sprite.

Were the hand-sized elementals he summoned extremely weak? Yes. Even after he power-levelled the Skill by just using it in every single encounter with Kohana, they were individually pathetic for his level. They gained 0,1% of his Intellect as their Base Stats per Skill Level, with their Main Stat increased by 50% of that value. In any regular fight, this would have been a pretty subpar investment.

The true scaling factor, one that John had not anticipated when he first started using the Skill, was just how long the Sprites lasted. An extra minute every 2nd Skill Level meant that a Sprite summoned at the start of combat could last until the end of it. Adding to that their cheapness (100 + Skill Level times 4) and John had himself an army.

Of course, there were restrictions to this army. The Sprites were stupid in a specific kind of way. Obviously, getting 4% of his Intellect as their Intellect meant that they were already smarter than the average person, but they were still summons who were given one specific order on creation. Once they had completed that order, they would happily exist by staring holes into the air until he verbally gave them another command. Newest update provıded by novel~fire~net

In this fight, the Sprites had two advantages. One was that there was a general lack of AoE abilities by their opponent. That meant that John could just keep spamming the Skill whenever he had excess mana and give them the order to ‘attack pink things’. Out in the open world, that would have been disastrously vague, but in this controlled environment, it was fine. The Sprites launched themselves at Kin or Kohana. When they killed a Kin, they found a new target – if they survived the process.

It turned out there was a ‘secret’ mechanic. If there were enough entities around a heavily diminished Kin, then Kohana would use a spell to blow them up. Used effectively, this meant that John could sacrifice a couple thousand mana to kill a Kin about 5% quicker.

It was the tiny addition that made things a little more feasible.

Having discovered that mechanic, they tagged Claire back in, taking Metra out. Claire would spam her own cheap summons. Together, they could put all the necessary bodies next to the Kin to trigger the explosion reliably.

With that… the fight was still a horrid bore. Not even the melees, who at least had the back and forth of direct combat to entertain themselves, could stand it anymore by the end of the second day of attempts. They lost due to the accumulation of tiny mistakes, the kind that were the hardest to fix and the easiest to make in a battle this drawn out and repetitive.

After 113 attempts, towards the end of the third day, they won.

It wasn’t a satisfying win. It was a ‘thank God this is finally over’ win. They had managed to take care of enough Kin that they could just heavy DPS Kohana for a bit and the Sprites, by the luck of positioning, were all focusing on her. Kohana was simply buried under a tide of googly-eyed tornados (John had favoured the Air variety of the Sprites due to their Agility boost).

“Thank Christ,” John groaned, while Kohana and her summons dissolved. Any bad feelings he had for having to hit a cute shortstack had long since gone out. He wasn’t even happy to see the chest, he was just, for the first time in his life, happy not to see the huge chest of a woman bounce around as she ran around anymore. ‘Curse you, Gaia, you took the joy from my eyes!’ “Good job, all of you are dismissed!”

“””Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!””” the Sprites all cheered as one, then dissolved into silver particles.

‘I hope they get a more serious design when I summon them in actual battle,’ John thought. ‘My sense of aesthetics doesn’t agree with sending googly-eyed little spirits into battle to subdue my enemies… which I absolutely will use them for.’

The Summon Sprite Skill had reached level 57 by the end of the encounter. Each Sprite now cost 328 Mana, lasted for 29 minutes and had 114 Base Stats, with the Main Stat raised to 171. John was still considering the implications of having this ability. He was effectively able to just manifest an army whenever he wanted with it. They would do poorly against other people his level, but when it came to scouring an area he now had yet another tool to do so.

The restraining factor, besides the low mana cost, was that order-reliance of theirs. Also, John had no connection to them whatsoever.

‘If I give them the wrong instructions, I might accidentally commit horrid war crimes,’ he thought.

Just another worry to have during combat.