Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds (35 page)

Once the room was clear of smaller mobs, Paul and Mark, flanked by their pocket healers, charged toward the center where the boss that had murdered the last raid was already following all of its kin to the right.

The ground shook as it drew close… but Paul and Mark used shield bashes and pommel strikes to get its attention and turn it away. They move to the left wall, as far away as possible from the trash mobs.

Toby’s screen flared red.

He turned his attention back to the task at hand, striking down lizard people as they swarmed amongst the raid group.

Bright green light washed over him. “Eyes on the prize.” Jesse stepped up beside him holding a ball of fire.

“Yeah, yeah.” He swung at the lizard people, building combos and leaving bloody meat chunks in his wake.

The mobs were definitely tougher than those they had tackled outside. The remaining two tanks with them were rounding them up as the DPS worked to burn through them. After a few moments, nothing was hitting Toby back, even as he laid waste to their spines. A testament to how well the tanks knew their job.

Toby couldn’t help glancing over now and then to see how the others were doing. Paul and Mark ping ponged the boss between them after either of them sustained a few hits. There was a limit to what they could take, and a limit to the mana of their healers.

The boss, the largest lizard person of all complete with extra legs making it a lizard centaur, didn’t seem injured much for their trouble.

But then, Miller had changed the damage resistance of the mobs in here, and tanks were not known for their damage output. It was probably absorbing a fair amount. Fortunately aggro wasn’t based on damage, at least not exclusively, so they could still keep its attention even if they had no chance of ever killing it on their own.

Four minutes had passed while they fought trash, but the mobs were running out. The two tanks had all of the remaining ones corralled at this point, their healers keeping them up without much trouble.

Across the room things looked to be in hand, but it was a near thing. The damage stacks were climbing higher, neither tank having time for the stacking debuff to go away, only reduce the stacks before the next hit added another when they swapped back in.

Toby wailed away at the remaining lizard men but his mind was elsewhere. “Do we need to clear this entirely, or can we start transitioning over? Time isn’t exactly on our side here.”

Jesse glanced over and frowned. “Generally, we clean this area out then transition over as a group so the tanks can position the mob for us. But it looks like the damage resistance change has made things worse. The boss should be at seventy five to eighty percent by now. It’s still over ninety.”

“So…” Toby stabbed a lizard man through the chest. The creature went limp and fell forward as he lowered his sword. “You’re saying we should head out sooner instead of later, yeah?”

She threw a large fireball, sending more than a few of the straggling monsters to their singed graves. “You go, we’ll keep thinning and send DPS as we free them up.”

“On it.” He nodded and turned, charging across the room.

The timer hit five minutes remaining.

They were going to be cutting this one close.

He threw his sword before he got close enough to swing.

The creature didn’t so much as blink.

The sword reappeared and he sent shock wave after shock wave at it as he closed the final steps. They clearly struck the creature, but it paid him no mind.

He laid into its back leg with repeated attacks. The tanks and healers were carefully positioned to keep the boss turning back and forth, hitting only one tank at a time, and keeping their healers out of range. Toby wasn’t exactly sure where he fit into that, but keeping out of the arm’s swipe range seemed like a plan.

Arrows striking the rear of the creature signaled the first DPS to join him. Amos fired away and stayed much further back.

Smart man.

Before long several more DPS had joined in, and the last of them were charging across the room with the other two tanks and their accompanying healers on the way.

The tanks and healers ran to the front instead, getting topped off and throwing taunts to get themselves high on the aggro list. Their job would be to grab aggro if the other two tanks couldn’t swap without dying.

When the boss dropped to fifty percent it started doing tail swipes. The DPS had to watch for the tell of the tail moving to one side and then get out of the way when it swung by. It was less of a threat to melee than ranged, due to the tail’s length.

Toby didn’t have any trouble with the swipes. He was in too close. His only problem was moving when the boss changed targeted tanks.

At least until the circles started appearing.

Toby instinctively moved out of the way, but a few of the more dedicated DPS didn’t notice. He yelled, but his words struck deaf ears as the boss turned its muzzle to the sky and spit out balls of fire that landed precisely where the circles said they would.

Two melee DPS were knocked away… but they got back up.

Jesse cussed them out even as she threw healing at them. “Do. Not. Stand. In. The. Fucking. Fire.”

Toby chuckled as he moved back into place. The fires had died down to nothing more than scorch marks on the ground.

They had three minutes left… but its health was still nearly forty percent.

It didn’t really seem possible…

But he wasn’t about to mention it. He swung harder. As fast as his arms would allow, building combo after combo.

When the next red circle appeared he didn’t move away from the mob, just left a bit and out of the circle.

He would almost swear he could feel the flames as the ball of fire exploded beside him… but he was outside its range and suffered no damage. He didn’t let up his relentless assault.

There were just under two minutes left when it hit twenty percent.

They could do this.

More circles appeared. DPS raid members jumped and ran to get out of them. Toby wasn’t in danger this time. He ignored them.

Fifteen percent.

Gouts of flame exploded up from the circles. That was new.

A high pitched cry went up to Toby’s left. He glanced over to see a rogue flying backward.

The man had moved too far out and been struck by the swipe attack the tanks were dealing with. He landed in a heap, still moving, but not enough to get back up.

A few of the DPS who could also heal ran toward him.

Toby gritted his teeth. So with one foolish step they were down four DPS instead of one.

Twelve percent with a minute to go.

Damn it all.

29

The rage button off to his left was looking quite tempting. It might give him the boost to make up for the lost DPS…

No. There was only one target here, and a hell of a lot of potential for collateral damage. He’d do tons of damage to them to hurt the centaur lizard a little more? Foolish.

He stacked damage with combos and made damned sure not to miss attacks and waste the added damage. They needed to win this.

Thirty seconds. Eight percent.

Fuck.

The damage spiked as the rogue and the three casters that had broken off to save him returned. They poured on all the damage they could.

Ten seconds. Three percent.

“Just. Fucking. Die.” Toby swung for all he was worth.

Three seconds. Less than one percent.

God damned fucking programmer math.

The creature stood up on its hind legs and keeled over to the side. Toby backed up to get out of the way as it struck the ground and shook the whole place. Dust fell from the ceiling.

The timer on the side of Toby’s screen was flashing a bunch of zeroes.

He sat down on the spot.

“Fucking hell.”

Cheers went up from all around him.

He didn’t feel much like joining them. That had been entirely too close and it was the easiest of the three.

There were some loot rolls. He wasn’t particularly interested. None of it looked useful to him. Pass, pass, pass. He preferred to sit and rest a moment to throwing greed roll dice for things he didn’t want.

Claire found him. She sat beside him. “So, that was a thing.”

He nodded. “How did we do? I mean, we won.”

“It was reeeeeealy close, though.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Paul’s voice rose above the crowd. “Alright people, rest up a moment. We’ll move forward in ten minutes.”

Everyone milled around, a few went unnaturally still as the users took their headsets off.

Jesse was standing on top of the… thing. Creature. He didn’t know what it was called, but was entirely sure there was some lore name for this race of lizard people. She had her hands in the air as if she had conquered it alone.

Paul gave a nod when he found them. “Good work. I’m fairly certain your unique weapon made up for some of the gear gap.”

“Gear gap? I thought we had the best we could get?”

“We do. But it’s still not what would be required. We walked into an endgame raid in PVP gear because it was more obtainable. It worked… but I wouldn’t advise it to future parties.”

Toby blinked a few times. “On the way in I was under the impression we had this thing in the bag.”

Paul shrugged. “We did okay. There was no way to know if we could make it until we tried. No one had ever attempted the raid in PVP gear, and certainly never with your sword. Unknowns that could only be tested by doing it.”

“But… we could have failed. We all could have died.”

Claire laid a hand on his arm. “That’s been true the entire time.”

Paul nodded. “Miller pushed up the time table on us when he showed he was willing to abuse his GM status to end the event by killing you. So…” He lifted is hand, pointing at the large chamber around them. “He pressed our hand. All or nothing. Fortunately, even with his tinkering we managed to make it.” He rubbed at his beard. “PVP gear might need a bit of a nerf, honestly.”

Claire tilted her head. “Might be all the stamina on it. You were a bit spiky to heal, but not as bad as I would have thought. The real problem was the debuff stacks.”

He nodded a few times. “What I thought as well.”

Toby just stared at his hands.

There were two more boss rooms to clear. He didn’t care about the trash between rooms. They had not had much trouble there… but this boss had almost beaten them and it was the first one up, traditionally the weakest.

Yeesh.

“Yeaaah!” Jesse yelled at the ceiling high above. “Destroyer of lizards!”

Paul shook his head as he looked up at her. “Get down here. We need to reorganize the raid for the next section.”

Toby glanced up. “What? Reorganize how?”

“Magic and physical damage.”

He frowned. “But… the group is all magical, except for me and Amos.”

“Which is why you and he will be in a physical group.”

“Are there physical healers? Like… a medic or something?”

“Heh. No. You’ll have healers for your physical damage tanks.”

Claire patted him on the shoulder. “From here to the next boss room there are two paths we have to cross at the same time.” She pointed at a pair of doors leading further into the raid. “One path is that of flesh, the other of spirit. The flesh path is populated by mobs strong against magic, so physical damage follows that path. The spirit path is full of mobs strong against physical, so magic damage is needed there.”

Paul nodded. “It’s the same for the bosses.”

Toby frowned as he stood up. “Bosses? Plural? You said there were three rooms here.”

“It’s one room with two bosses. They have to be tackled simultaneously. In fact, we need to be careful to keep our damage numbers on both sides close. If one boss goes down, the other enrages on the spot.”

“That sounds bad. We have enough physical and magic to split like this?”

“Planned around it from the start.” Paul nodded.

Jesse was eying the doors as she walked up. “Ah, the poor dragon slayers of old. Torn asunder in their prime, their very souls ripped from their bodies. Both now serve the dragon in death. Which kinda sucks for them, when you think about it.”

Paul raised his voice. “Ready all the fire resist you can for your tanks. Both sides deal in fire. Do not use the potions I handed out earlier. Those are for the final dragon.”

“Potions?” Toby tilted his head. “I didn’t get any.”

“That’s because you don’t need them.”

The name over Paul’s head changed color as Toby was assigned to a different group. Claire and Jesse’s nameplates followed suit as the raid members were shuffled around.

An unfamiliar voice raised over the random talking about the chamber. “Okay, physical groups by the left door, on me.”

Claire nodded that way. “That’s you. Good luck.” She gave Toby a smile.

“You too.” He nodded. “Next time we get a break, check what’s showing tonight. Can use something to look forward to after all this.”

“Totally.” She nodded.

“Yeah, good call.” Jesse leaned in beside her. “If nothing else, I’ve got the 13th Warrior on my tablet.”

Claire’s head slowly turned to look at her. Toby had been around long enough now to notice Claire was irritated, but trying to be civil. She hadn’t invited Jesse. “We’ll see.”

“What? It’s a fun movie. Hokey in places, sure. I mean that one guy has a Roman Colosseum helmet and he’s supposed to be a viking? What’s that about? Looks like they just took the principle cast to the studio’s prop room and told them to grab stuff that fit.”

Toby chuckled slightly. He had noticed the same thing. “Alright, off to physical damage town. You guys be safe. I look forward to reforming the awesome group for the end.”

Claire nodded. “Of course.”

“We’ll be fine, more worried about you.” Jesse winked.

Paul looked Toby up and down. “You’ve come a long way. I’m sure you’ll do your side proud. We’ll most likely have trouble keeping up with you. Just try not to push too fast, eh? We need the groups to remain in lockstep.”

Toby nodded. “Got it.” He waved as he walked away.

The group waiting around the left door didn’t look too different from what he was used to now. All of them looked similar to Toby with the recent gear changes, but their weapons were much more prominent than those of the magic group. Swords, spears, bows, axes, maces, and giant hammers. Practically a documentary on war in the medieval world compared to the other group.