Collide Gamer

“The warriors of Untal lie defeated,” Ikoria remarked. The First of Blood, as John had learned her to be called, had a hand on her hips. She looked at the stand of the nation with a degree of criticism. “That is what they get for never letting Calamity into their nation.”

Vokal put a hand on the elven bride’s hip. “That is hardly the reason for their defeat.”

“If you say so, darling,” Ikoria purred and plopped down in his lap. “Still, I do not think their warrior will be able to do this on his own.”

“Hmm… and why should he?” Vokal rubbed his chin, before raising his voice to echo within the whole arena. “In my position of authority as god of war and the one the Blue Marble has authorized to organize this tournament, I call upon Lionnir Dorn of Untal and Saphiria of Dagressia to face these outworld contenders!”

“Finally, some action!” a woman’s voice echoed through the arena. She leapt out of the stands of the Golemkinder segment of the viewer’s area and flew on eagle wings. Black feathers shared the colour of the raven hair that fluttered in the winds.

She was a tall woman, her skin the colour of milk coffee, with a toned hourglass figure. She wore an expensive garb of purple cloth and gold. The bikini top and dangling cloth between her bare legs gave the impression of a harem outfit. Yet, in her hands, she carried a weapon of heavy steel, its head a spiked mace. Cat ears flicked, her tail waved with excitement.

‘A sphinx girl?’ John asked himself.

He was just about to Observe her when a flash of light blinded him. “I made it first,” a man spoke, stoic with just a bit of competitive mirth. The light ebbed away to reveal a muscular man of tropical complexion, bare chest covered in winding blue tribal markings. His dark brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Some parts of it were decoratively braided.

Most outstanding about him was his weapon. From a handle of rune-covered stone emerged a sabre of light and electricity, crackling in a confined beam.

[Dorn AI Picture: https://i.imgur.com/Zkjf2Ra.png]

“Never met an Aontacter that was a show-off before,” the sphinx said, once she had landed. “Not that I’ve met a whole lot of ya.” Saphiria put her weapon across her shoulders.

[Saphiria AI Picture: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/358284a05835.png]

“Most of us like to keep to ourselves,” the Aontacter responded. John would have labelled him a human, had he not been two metres tall and radiating elemental power.

“What about you?” Saphiria asked, intrigued.

“I’m my people’s most renowned wanderer. I enjoy… venturing into the unknown.”

“That so?” Saphiria asked, clearly intrigued. “Want to talk about it?”

“After we dealt with these outsiders – and after we fought our own duel,” Dorn declared with half a smile. “Let’s make our world proud.”

“Well said!”

With that, the two Raid Bosses assumed their idle combat stances.

‘What would you two have in store?’ John wondered, scanning the two bosses. He had fought both of their factions before, so he knew that the Golemkinder had a preference for water while the Untal were general elementalists. Dorn had a rather obvious preference for light and lightning. Observe was the first tool to gain additional insights.



The second… well, John didn’t want to call Lorelei a tool. His second option to acquire intel was the seer, who delivered the usual service.

“Two will fight as two, one engages in a battle of endurance, the other forces you into a battle of reactions. Beware of the cat's bite, for it rends the armour of her foes. Beware of the gleaming crystals, for they bring with them the greatest danger. Two will fight as two, then fight as two together. Avoid the waters, they bring blessings to your enemy.”

“So Saphiria has a tank-buster mechanic that requires us to do swaps while Dorn will target the vulnerable members of our party. There’s some water spawning involved that will… heal? Maybe some other kind of buff. Also, Dorn will charge up towards a super attack every now and again.” John tapped his chin. “Also Observe tells me there is a mana burn. We’ll have to test if that extends to alternative resources.”

John took that information back to the mansion with him. They had been clearing out the bridge encounters all day. Though he and his women were lucid enough to get a few attempts in with the boss, the Gamer saw no reason to use that time forcing them to learn an encounter at less than their optimal condition. Instead, he used the hours remaining in the day to draft a first strategy of the fight.

There were several questions he needed answered from the get-go to establish the optimal unit composition. First was the question on how fast Dorn was and if Sylph could be used to kite him. Second was the question on how long the debuffs by Saphiria lasted, which influenced how many tanks they would need. Third was whether they could manipulate the mechanics in such a way that the water would spawn in areas that were then covered by a Saintess mechanic.

The next morning, John put together his first experimental party. He was building it to answer questions, not to win, so it was neutral and defensively focused. Aclysia, Gnome and Metra would serve as the tanks. For the damage dealers, he went with Sylph, Lydia and Fianna. For the supports, Undine, Momo and himself were there, the Gamer using his real body for this exercise. For origınal chapters go to novel⦿fire.net

The first five attempts on the boss all ended swiftly. Observe had been truthful: Saphiria was a relentlessly aggressive fighter. Raid bosses usually acted in accordance with their stated backstory more so than their mechanical tankiness. That was to say that a boss that was designed as a coward would conveniently forget that they had a HP bar appropriate to withstand blows from 9 people their level.

Saphiria knew she had access to powerful healing. Consequently, she slammed into them like an attractive sledgehammer. It reminded John of how Eliana fought, all too aware of her borderline immortality. The resulting persistence in her aggression made her incredibly hard to tank swap. She would slam back whoever she was currently fighting and then transition into a flurry of blows with her mace, shredding the defences of all around her.

Dorn did not have this raw confidence in his durability, but that only made him dangerous in a different way. True to his own stated settings, the second boss largely ignored the frontline. Indeed, it appeared that he had no predictable aggro settings besides ‘strike whoever is most vulnerable’. Feints could work on him, but they had to be incredibly good, to the point that they practically stopped being feints and were self-imposed stuns. Summoning Sprites to distract him worked somewhat, but he killed them so fast it was rarely worth the mana.

It also fed him energy in return. Dorn carried a chain of crystals on his belt that lit up segment for segment as he landed hits. It was a convenient visual for gameplay purposes, a warning that worked well enough. Whenever the chain’s final link glowed, Dorn would turn into a charging beam of light and electricity, dashing through multiple targets and afflicting all of them with his mana burn.

The debuff did reduce mana and alternatives to it with few exceptions. Momo’s Fireflies were not reduced, nor was Fianna’s Aim counter. Everything else, from Ehtra’s Vengeance to Metra’s Rage, suffered from this reduction. Only Nia could claim full immunity.

The three big questions that John had entered the fight with were each answered as well.

First, no, Sylph could not be used to kite Dorn. Not only was his targeting program too sophisticated, he also was faster than her. A true Raid boss of light and lightning.

Second, Saphiria’s armour rending debuffs were permanent. John had not encountered that before. This revelation meant they weren’t in for tank swaps as much as tank expirations.

Third, they could indeed stack the odds so the Saintesses would eliminate the areas that water spawned in. This required a Saintess that had such an area denying mechanic (Ikoria, Riveria and Takaria). They were semi-random, each having their own set of weighting conditions that John was becoming more and more certain of.

Manipulating where the water spawned was easier. Independent of the armour reduction, Saphiria applied a debuff on hit that had the struck person magically drenched. The intensity of this status increased with each hit, until reaching a spilling point. Once at that point, the affected person had 2 seconds to reposition, then they would harmlessly expel all the magical water, turning a 5-metre radius around them into a pond. If Saphiria ever touched that water, she immediately got a burst of healing. If she remained in it, she continued to heal at a slower rate.

Even for them, two seconds was not a lot of time. There was no clear indicator for when they went over the threshold either, they had to learn that one by feel.

John waited until attempt 10 to make his first adjustments to the lineup. On the tank front, he changed nothing. Aclysia with her active Juggernaut and Metra with her passive Unbreakable had ways to cope with Saphiria’s displacing strikes, they just had to use them adequately. Gnome had no specific game mechanics, but if she used her stone magic properly, she could stop herself and others from flying too far away.

The trio of tanks had the equipment to deal with this, they just had to get good at handling the specifics the encounter demanded of them. Aclysia faced the challenge to her Master with her expected disposition. Metra and Gnome both were stoked to have this individual, more defensive challenge. It was neatly different from their usual fighting styles.

On the damage dealer front, he had to make clear changes. Neither Fianna nor Sylph were equipped for this encounter. Fianna was at her most efficient when she was stationary, something Dorn relentlessly exploited. Sylph was too much of a glass cannon to be in a fight against an enemy that went after targets when they were most vulnerable. In most fights, Sylph had been out minute one, and when she made it further, she was always done when Dorn first activated his charged attack.

Sylph did not complain at all about being ousted, she was all pouts and grumbles anyhow, complaining about Gaia’s stupid design decisions.

As replacements, John pulled in Lydia and Nightingale. It could have been Salamander instead of Lydia, as the two had some similar strengths. Both were all-rounders with ranged attacks, decent tankiness and justified confidence in their melee. Salamander was much better in a short to medium length fight with multiple targets while Lydia excelled in long fights courtesy of the Hydra Steel ramping up as a battle continued.

This was not the reason John had chosen her over the elemental. No, the actual and very simple reason why it was Lydia over Salamander lay not in what they could do but what the queen was wearing. The Cloak of Radiance, one of the three items she had gotten out of Astra, came with Light Resistance 8. Astria, Plate of Royalty, also had Elemental Resistance 6 and Damage Reduction 2. All combined, Lydia was just tankier. She also was not dependent on outside mana, which further helped inform that decision.

Nightingale, John chose on her suggestion. It was an experiment to see if her shadow could snuff out, if even only for brief moments, Dorn’s light.

On the support front, no changes were necessary either. Undine and Momo were backliners, yes, but neither of them were fragile. Far from it, in the case of Undine, and Momo had her AS levels of HP regen to back her up. What was bothersome was that Momo got all her mana burned some time into the fight, but her Fireflies remained useful enough that she stayed until developments would show that they needed something else in their toolkit.

That made their line-up from attempt 11 and forwards: Aclysia, Metra, Gnome, Nia, Lydia, Nightingale, Undine, Momo and John himself.

There was an immediate spike in how much deeper into the fight they got. Since they no longer had Sylph and Fianna dying near the start of the fight, they had two more lasting targets for Dorn and two more damage dealers as well. Still, they struggled intensely to find the right rhythm to deal with their challenges.

The only truly steady factor of the fight was Saphiria’s armour-rending strike, which came down exactly every 60 seconds. Everything else was execution dependent. The position of the water, the involvement of the Saintesses, Dorn’s attacks and charge timings, they all were directly tied to how well the party played the fight.

It was a pretty well-designed challenge, scaling directly with the skill they displayed. Early on, the fight seemed like a practically insurmountable challenge. Every attempt showed them a way to deal with that or gave them a bit more experience to cope with another mechanic. It was the Dark Souls formula at its best. Iterative improvements bore cascading confidence.

On the tank front, they tried out two different models of dealing with the tank shredding. John dubbed one ‘Depletion’ and the other ‘Traditional’. On the Depletion model, one of them would keep taking the defence reductions until they were in one-shot territory. Traditional meant they did constant tank swaps. The former had the advantage of the damage gradually rising and then dropping off a plateau, giving Undine some recovery time. The latter made the fight predictably more difficult as it went along.

Both approaches had their advantages. At the end of day 2 of the week and day 1 of grinding this boss fight, the party decided to opt for the second approach. It worked nicer for them psychologically.

Beyond that, the trio of tanks was just getting better and better at not letting Saphiria throw them around. They studied her patterns, learned her moves, minimized hits taken and maximized damage dealt.

On the backline, they figured out a few tricks of their own. Dorn was not immune to crowd control. He was incredibly resistant, yes, but not fully immune. This could be exploited whenever he used his charged lightning dash. Nia or Nightingale could hit him with a concentrated pulse of their powers. If timed correctly, his lightning dash would be transformed from a guaranteed multi-target hit to straight line charge that would only go through his primary target.

It was a massive reduction in damage taken. The power required to pull this off was intense though, so Nia and Nightingale had to take turns doing this even when they delayed Dorn’s charging up for as long as possible.

In the middle of Day 2 of tries, they managed to get to a breaking point.

Metra whirled around her own axis. Plasma torrented from the back of Rex Magnar. The axe-blade of the halberd cut into Saphiria’s side, digging only a few centimetres deep into the caramel skin of the sphinx woman.

Just as she was launched into the air, Dorn was enveloped in a cocoon of darkness. Though he was blinded, he was too fast and too locked on to miss Lydia. Charging across the battlefield and through the queen, he pulled his being back together behind her. The lightning sabre crackled in his hand – then a wall of gathered scrap slammed into his back. The Queen of Mithril poured magic into the attack, depleting her mana bar before the burn could do it for her. The metal accelerated, stopping suddenly, launching Dorn across the battlefield.

By (manipulated, no doubt) fate, Dorn came to land near Saphiria. The two contestants of the Tournament of Prowess were breathing heavily, staring at their opponents. John stayed his hand. He knew the start of a cutscene when he saw one.

“Whew… looks like we got a lot to chew here, wouldn’t you say?” Saphiria asked.

“Perhaps more than we can.” Dorn fought himself to his feet. Once standing unsteadily, he reached into a bag attached to his hip. He pulled out a second crystal chain, looked at it for a moment, then extended his hand to Saphiria. “Together, as people of this Blue Marble.”

Saphiria smirked, her hand grasping that of Dorn firmly. “You’re pretty cute, ya know?” She shot up as he pulled, rising so far she could place a quick kiss on the cheek of the much taller man. “Let’s do this, handsome!” she shouted, securing the crystals to the belt of her harem outfit.

Embarrassed, Dorn cleared his throat. He would have blushed more had he realized that the kiss had left a mark glowing an aquatic blue. “Elementals, lend me your aid!”

The two Raid bosses charged at them again and the forest turned into a battlefield once more.

There were three changes in phase 2, all of them hard to handle.

First was that the crystals reduced the cooldown of Saphiria’s armour-shred by 6 seconds every time she landed a hit. As she was a Raid boss, there was no dodging all of her strikes.

Second was that Dorn now also inflicted the drenched effect. In the first order, this was not too bad, since he applied it to people already far away from Saphiria. In the second order, it put another timer on them all, since the space to fight Saphiria in got smaller and smaller.

Third was just a general stat boost to both of them, making them hit harder more often and further narrowing already tight windows of opportunity.

It was hard in a rewarding way. They wiped, yes, but when they retried the fight, they did not have to advance all the way to Phase 2 every time to learn it. What they got out of the first part of the fight directly translated into the second. Everything was fast-paced. It was hard, yes, but it was fun and slightly unique each try. There was only one part of the fight that John disliked.

“We’ll win first try tomorrow,” John said confidently, at the end of Day 3 of attempts. They had only 2 days left to clear it, 1 if they wanted to follow their plan of using the final day of time dilation for gift giving.

“Ya sound very confident for someone who spent three days getting his shins kicked,” Rave drawled.

“Master always has a reason to be confident…?” Aclysia’s assertion had an undercurrent of curiosity. She had not read off his mind why he was so certain yet.

“We have the individual skillsets and timings down,” he told them. “I am certain of it. All we need is a tiny push… so I deliberately wiped us on that last encounter.”

“So, you did fucking do that!” Metra shouted. “Why? I was in the zone!”

“Because Vitaia had just triggered,” John answered, to confusion. “The Saintess rotation. I made it so Athenia triggers first during our next pull.”

Athenia’s effect was to shuffle positions of everyone in the battlefield. While she was nice enough not to place Saphiria in water immediately, the consequence of the teleportation frequently was that she did so anyway.

The Saintesses were what John did not like about the fight. Not even because they were intrusive, but because the rotation was maintained between pulls. It meant that, to play optimally, he had to wipe to align the pieces as he liked. Athenia triggering first in the order meant that she would do so when there was barely to no water on the field. She would still trigger a couple of times, but he was going for optimal not unrealistically perfect.

His words would become a prophecy. On the first pull of the fourth day, everything lined up. The freshly rested tanks moved fluidly in both phases, Nia and Nightingale missed only one stun window, and all around they performed in a dance that was wonderful to see. This kind of coordination had a special beauty. The confidence of motion, the knowledge in their steps, it was a mundane sort of magic that John had always appreciated. Being part of it had the efficiency of being a cog in the machine and the individual expectations of being a specialist.

The reward of it all was two bosses collapsing into the dirt. They reached out to each other like fated lovers, then turned to scattering dust. In all of its dramatics, John still felt only elation at the sight. The party shouted in victory, hugged, and bounced about happily.

After they had calmed, it was time for the Loot.