The halberd glowed green for the second time as it swung at Daggers.
"No!" I couldn't stop myself from yelling. I had been amassing a lifeball to heal her, but if she took that hit, it would all be over for her.
The halberd was approaching; Daggers was mid-air and apparently defenseless... But then she somehow twisted her body and crossed her daggers in a guard, intercepting the blow.
[Daggers] Parry successful!
[Daggers] 10,000 damage applied to parrying weapons
Her blades disintegrated while she was thrown back at such high speed that when she hit the wall feet first, she still took some damage.
In the blink of an eye, she'd reached into her cloak and withdrawn new weapons.
"Holy shit, that was awesome," one of the zombies near me said and I could only agree with him.
I sent my lifeball at Daggers to heal her for forty-eight HP.
All bosses in games had a pattern that when identified, allowed one to have an easier time of defeating them. The fight was usually divided into stages according to their HP, and it almost always took a few failed runs to find the best way to beat them.
But I would be damned if I would escape before even finding out what this Boss' third phase was.
First phase was the elites. Second phase was it coming to fight. Third phase would come when its HP reached a certain threshold.
Bear was charging the Boss with his greatsword as I resumed amassing fire morbs. Daggers and a few other zombies ran at the Boss from different angles.
They were almost there when the Boss stomped the ground.
When the ones who jumped touched the ground, the Boss spun again. This time his halberd was extended.
The halberd came back up on the next revolution targeting Daggers. She would've been hit but she shadowed mid-air, which somehow allowed her to leap again off of thin air just as if she'd been standing solidly on the ground. With the boost from the double jump she sailed towards the Boss' head.
Before she reached it, the Boss stopped spinning and the air bubble threw her back again.
That damn skill! The cooldown was too short, and the same with his spin and his stomp. It was almost impossible to stay engaged in melee. The only reason Daggers had managed to get closer before...
When everyone went together, it was easy to get rid of us all at once. The correct tactic was staggering the melee attacks. As obvious as it might sound, it wasn't an easy analysis to make in the middle of such a punishing battle.
They did as instructed. Turtle was the first to get in range and defended against a halberd attack. Another zombie tried to get to the back of the Boss but the halberd glowed white.
One attack pushed the zombie back, and the second pushed Turtle back. There were no targets for the next three fast attacks of the halberd and the white glow died after only one second.
Teal entered melee range, and it was his turn to block a halberd attack while Bear started to climb the Boss' back. It spun around and Bear was tossed off.
Another zombie whose name I didn't know approached to take Bear's place. The halberd glowed green and Teal, who was still close, blocked the attack. His shield broke in half and he was sent flying.
The unnamed zombie reached the Boss' neck and the air bubble pushed him away before he could land a single hit.
My firebomb exploded in the Boss' face, blinding it for a moment. When the fire dissipated, it only saw the new zombie in front of it.
By then Daggers was already climbing its armor.
"Damn pests!" It yelled and released its frustration on the zombie in front of it, who defended the simple strike with ease.
My Blackguard took her rightful place on the Boss' nape and started attacking again.
A few seconds later, it used the air bubble. I followed with some firebombs and we restarted our dance. Teal took a shield from another zombie since he had more HP thanks to my Strategist trait and got back to the fight.
The next time Daggers moved in to attack, the Boss teleported again.
The Boss didn't try to attack me, instead, it teleported right behind Daggers and swung his green-glowing halberd.
She leapt, tucking into a backflip. The halberd passed under her at the apex of her jump, from there she shadowed and sprung back into position to attack the Boss' face again.
The minotaur's scream of rage was understandable. After it forced Daggers back, the cycle simply started again. After a few more rounds like that, the Boss had taken five thousand damage. That's when it teleported away and reappeared in front of the throne.
"Feel my ire!" It yelled as it raised the halberd to above its head and slashed the ground hard with it.
A powerful shockwave hit us all, even those who tried to jump, and we all fell on the floor. The Boss began to glow white, and It didn't look like it would stop.
At the same time, on the right and the left sides of the room, the floor started falling, revealing only a dark void underneath it. One large square at a time fell into that darkness, rapidly narrowing the floor we stood upon.
It continued collapsing until only a bridge from the golden doors to the throne, just wide enough for ten people shoulder to shoulder remained.
"Die!" The Boss ran at us.
It was moving fast, much faster than before.
We weren't prepared for that kind of fight. It was like a grim reaper had come to harvest our lives. It got to the nearest zombie in no time and the halberd glowed green. Even though the poor bastard tried to block with his shield, the sheer power of the attack threw him off of the bridge and into oblivion.
Thankfully, that first casualty was the only one. By sheer luck, we were all relatively close to the door and managed to leave the Boss room before it killed more of us. Turtle was the first and he only had to touch the doors for them to open completely.
"Holy crap!" Bear yelled as soon as he was out. "That was amazing! I want more!"
He was the only one excited though. The other zombies were looking tired and the loss weighed on them clearly enough to be visible I'm their posture.
I sat on the ground. "That was tough. First and second phases were easy enough, but third phase will take some thinking to find a solution."
No one said anything, and the silence was a blessing in itself.
I thought about everything that had happened. After about half an hour, I had three ideas:
First, get to the throne and prevent the Boss from hitting the floor somehow. Sadly, I realized it was unlikely that we could stop the Boss from simply appearing wherever it wished, and I wasn't even sure it needed to strike the floor near the throne to start the collapse. We could end up stranded near the throne, with the rampaging Boss between us and the doors. It would be a massacre.
Second, find a way to take the halberd away from the Boss. If it was like the elite which Bear had disarmed before, it would barely be able to do any damage w
ith its fists. Unfortunately the Boss could teleport. It would be too easy for it to appear suddenly, grab the stolen weapon, and use its air bubble to blast whoever was holding it away.
Both ideas seemed okay at first, but the Boss' disengaging methods made them useless.
Unless I use the spider ring.
I completely ignored the alien thought in my head. Couldn't the ring just give up already? I wasn't stupid enough to put it on.
For a while I reviewed the recorded fight from the viewpoints of various zombies, until the solution finally hit me!
"Get another guy to replace the dead one," I ordered as I got up, replaced my cracked armor, and healed myself. "We get back in there in one hour."
"Are you shitting me?" One of the zombies asked. "There's no way we can fight that minotaur on the bridge."
"Blah, blah," was my erudite answer. "We're going with or without you, and when we emerge victorious, you won't get a cut of the loot."
"You only say that because you'll die if you don't conquer the castle," he replied. "We-"
"Dude," I interrupted him. "Whatever! I'm going. Whoever wants to come, feel free. Whoever wants to cry like a baby, just go away. I'm telling you I have a way to win this time. Believe me or be a coward, it's your choice."
I didn't need twenty-five people to win this Boss fight. The only reason I had said to bring another guy was because I was being nice.
The zombie wasn't happy, but he shut up. He knew that even if the survival rate near me wasn't that great — only half of the zombies were currently alive —, those who did survive got the good stuff.
One hour later, we were twenty-five strong again and ready to go.
* * *
We returned to the Boss room. It was back to the initial state: fifty minotaur statues and the Boss sitting on the throne.
"Oh, it's just you again," it said with his cool voice. "I was just..."
Everyone ran, with each of us taking a position behind a pair of statues.
"...thinking about you." The Boss completed his sentence and rolled its eyes. "You're anxious to die, I see. So be it. Guards!"
The fact that it had called the guards the same way as before increased my faith in my method.
The outer shell of the statues crumbled and we instantly began to work.
Everyone had two swords, one in each hand. We focused on doing critical damage by hitting the head and neck of the unarmored minotaurs.
Things went much faster than before. We killed twenty-five of them rather quickly and changed targets.
It was as easy as stealing from a child. Before they were even fully grown, almost forty had already died.
Soon, only one was left.
Then, we ran to the corner to wait for its armor to grow.
"What are you doing?" The Boss asked. "Just kill it already."
We ignored it and remained in the corner. The golden armor finished forming around the elite and the wall opened to reveal the halberd and the crossbow.
The elite ran to the weapons, took up position on the opposite side of the room and started shooting with the crossbow. We waited.
"Cowards," the Boss said and the Hourglass appeared.
That's when my firebombs flew. It took only two to kill the elite which we had already weakened before waiting for its armor to grow in.
And now, we had half an hour of rest before the sand from the hourglass ran out.
A yawn came from the Boss and infected me. Other than Daggers, we all swapped our second weapon for a shield and I put the Circlet away to wear a helmet instead, going back to waiting mode.
There was one minute left in the hourglass when Daggers ordered us to move. We all got up from where we had been sitting and ran straight at the Boss.
That made the Boss sit upright. "Good! You want to die sooner this time!"
He picked up his halberd when we were halfway across the room. It teleported but this time targeted Daggers, not me. She didn't even have to dodge though; two zombies put their shields in front of her. We were moving together in anticipation of this attack.
And in preparation for what we did next.
Some zombies hit the back of the Boss knees, some pulled it back, and some pushed. Daggers shadowed to quickly get under its neck as it fell back.
He used his air bubble skill but it was already too late; Daggers and five of the zombies were already in position.
There was something I had realized about the air bubble push in the fight before: if someone was between the Boss and the floor, they couldn't be pushed back. The six of them yelled in pain as the pressure tried to squash them against the floor, but the damage was less than a hundred.
The Boss was falling backwards and couldn't teleport because it had just done that. It used his spin skill mid-air to not fall with its back to the ground but Daggers and two of the zombies managed to keep their hold on the Boss anyway.
Not all of the zombies had attacked when the Boss appeared; we were too many for that. Some had instead backed out of range of its skills. As soon as the Boss spun, they ran to it, grabbed its legs and arms, and focused on getting both under and above it.
There was nothing the minotaur could do but to scream in rage as Daggers began to hack into its face with her blades, and the zombies kept it pinned to the ground.
Twelve zombies were there holding the Boss while seven were just out of the air bubble range to jump on the minotaur after it used its skills.
Most importantly, I focused all my amassed firebombs on its hand, weakening its grip until the remaining zombies were able to take the halberd from it.
In less than a minute after the fight started, we had the Boss pinned down and weaponless.
I took the halberd and put it away in my ring.
From there on, the fight was very straightforward. The Boss kept trying to get free but couldn't find a way. Meanwhile, Daggers stabbed its face.
The five thousand damage threshold came before the Boss could even teleport away from the attacks. We had determined by watching the recordings from the fight that the cooldown of the teleport was about one minute but when the Boss lost five thousand HP, it ignored the cooldown.
The minotaur disappeared from where it had been and appeared in front of the throne.
There, instead of smashing the ground with its halberd, it stomped down hard to start the collapse.
Or it would have if not for the gift left by the few zombies that hadn't been involved in holding the Boss down. All around the throne were piles of mattresses we had taken from the minotaurs bedrooms and brought here, and atop them all, lots of shields.
Although its stomp was a special action and did destroy some of the shields and mattresses, we had simply brought too many.
All of us were already running towards the Boss. It tried to stomp again but still didn't touch the floor.
It was close though; his next try would do it.
On the third stomp, Daggers shadowed and appeared right under its foot. She took exactly one thousand points of damage for interrupting the Boss' special action but it was worth it.
The zombies got to the Boss and overran it again. It fell screaming in shame and anger but it was too late. Daggers eventually got back to her position by its head and the slaughter continued.
As I expected, without causing the floor to fall first, the Boss wasn't able to activate his empowered state.
Stomping the floor to make it fall was a nice touch that added to the 'realism' of the game, but it was also stupid. When V-Soft created that requirement for the Boss to start its third phase, it created an opening to be abused.
All I had to do was take away the halberd and distract the Boss enough that even if it did notice the mattresses, it couldn't move them away in time.
Daggers kept hitting the minotaur and after another four thousand points of damage, the fourth phase finally started.
With another scream of rage, the boss teleported away, only to appear floating tall in the center of the room with two bats wings on its back.
And indeed, morbs began to amass above the Boss' head. I destroyed the first one with a firebomb before it could completely form.
The Boss let yet another furious roar, an opening appeared in the ceiling, and a lightsteel crossbow dropped through it into the winged minotaur's hands. The Boss pointed it at us and soon a magic bolt was incoming. The bolt split into ten and slammed into the zombie's shields.
They received no damage. However, they were thrown almost twenty meters back.
When I thought about what that meant, it was scary as hell.
Thing is, the Boss was supposed to enter this phase with only a thin strip of floor remaining in the room. In a normal fight against this boss, people would have died already, everyone would've been exhausted, and this simple knockback bolt attack would be one of the most fatal moves possible.
We keep shooting at its amassing morbs. I eventually healed Daggers just in case, and then started using my firebombs aggressively, with Daggers staying nearby to protect my own morbs against the minotaur's bolts.
The Boss tried to fly around to make things difficult for us but we were simply too many.
Each firebomb I used dealt about seventy-five damage to the minotaur. It kept shooting the knockback bolts and failing to create morbs.
After a thousand more damage, it glowed purple. Its halberd materialized from inside my ring and flew into its hand. Likewise, we were being pulled closer to the center of the room, as it used some kind of gravity ability.
We tried, but after about five seconds, the pull became too strong and we all flew to the center like broken dolls. The halberd glowed red, caught fire, and the minotaur brought it down toward us with an exaggerated overhand swing.
Unbound Deathlord: Obliteration (The Unbound Deathlord Series Book 2) Page 36