by K. T. Hanna
But that was all they’d figured out so far. Lots of poison, and hairy sharp legs that coupled with screeching noises that set Murmur’s teeth on edge. Surely there had to be more to the fight?
Mages like Ishwa and the other casters stood to the rear close to the rangers and let the Usurper have it. Fireballs, Iceblasts, Fire Arrows, anything and everything the ranged classes could throw at the beast.
After the third shower of honied acid from the Usurper, something in the atmosphere changed. The queen screamed out a command from behind them, rallying all of her forces to her. Murmur tore her attention away from the fight in front of her for long enough to see what was happening. At first, she couldn’t quite comprehend the scene in front of her.
The workers, whom she had originally thought were mostly harmless, expanded in size. No, that wasn’t accurate. They sort of blended into each other, as if one absorbed the next. Each pair of workers smooshed together to become a larger worker with better armor and if she wasn’t mistaken more damage capabilities.
And if that wasn’t enough, the Usurper in front of Dev grew two more legs.
Location Redacted
Brainwave Focus Study Laboratory
Day Twenty-Seven
James leafed through the reports in his vision. With every page his ire grew. It wasn’t that the reports were incorrect or were trying to hide something. In fact, the reports were pretty much perfect. Shayla had a stellar reputation when it came to paperwork. He should’ve known she wouldn’t be coerced so easily.
The contract was majorly in favor of James’s original employers, except for a couple of little things he’d neglected to notice in the default section. Overlooking such an important element wasn’t going to go down well with his bosses.
Add to that the fact that all the paperwork in front of him was entirely within legalities didn’t help him one bit. He promised that he’d gain the headset adjustments and be able to move them to the brainwave focus study facilities. He’d been so gung-ho about it, so confident that he’d overlooked something he shouldn’t have.
He longed for the days when he could’ve thrown a keyboard across the room. Instead he chose a photo frame sitting on his desk and lobbed it at the wall. It didn’t have quite the same effect, but the smashing of the glass was somewhat therapeutic.
His intercom buzzed in his ear, and he knew he couldn’t avoid taking the call. Reluctantly, he answered it.
Do you have it?
James knew he couldn’t hide the facts either. No, I was wrong to assume they’d take me at my word. But it’s okay, I know who’s using the headsets they’ve modified, and I will prove that we are entitled to the plans behind all of those adjustments.
You’d better. We didn’t fund this whole debacle just so people could play a damn video game. It’s time to deliver.
The connection went dead, and James knew the threat that hung in the air was real. Perhaps not explicit, but he’d understood the subtle undertones.
Wren Summers. That was where everything began. The account that somehow managed to stay online nonstop for the first week. Even more if he remembered the readings correctly. But when he visited her place of residence she’d been fine, only using the capsule for deeper immersion.
James racked his brain, knowing that there was still something off about the entire encounter. Laria had been home, and she should have been at the office. How had she known? How had Wren managed to get out of that thing when he’d been almost one hundred percent sure that she shouldn’t have been able to?
He began to sketch out a timeline following Michael’s activities and culminating with the raid he’d led on the Summer’s residence. Something wasn’t adding up—not only the girl’s whereabouts, but the pull of power he’d observed from her connection to the server once he realized that she didn’t seem to be disconnecting.
How had that been possible? What was it that Laria did to enable her daughter to remain in the game, or at least the character? It was obvious Shayla knew something was going on. If Wren had been okay the entire time then why had she constantly being connected to the game?
Was it just a different headset or was it something else entirely? Perhaps it had been a glitch in the system readings, though he highly doubted that. He could feel the answer just beyond his reach as if it was sitting on the tip of his tongue like he could almost taste it.
He’d figure it out, even if he had to tear down Storm Entertainment and Somnia Online to do it.
“Esolan, head over and help our allies,” Murmur yelled over the noise of the raid, knowing that most of them would tune out text in their peripheral vision in the middle of a fight.
The Exodus tank simply nodded and moved over to help the Ciricians. Meanwhile Rashlyn switched her stance back to tank. Not that she would be able to tank brilliantly in DPS gear but with her ability to avoid damage and not take hits she stood the best chance of being effective.
The only good thing about pairs of the workers combining was that there were fewer opponents. Instead of twenty-four remaining workers there were now twelve super workers. It appeared that their allies had access to a type of crowd control that was different from Murmur’s. She wished she had time to figure out how to add it to her arsenal.
The webspinners easily captured the super workers and held them in place. Granted, too much damage would render the webs ineffectual, but it kept them largely out of the fray. Esolan positioned himself so he was able to tank two of their super workers at once. Luckily, even though they were hefty opponents, with the amount of backing he had from the allied Ciricians, Esolan could hold his own.
Since Dev built up sufficient aggro, Murmur swapped her Enrage buff to Esolan to help the others out. It was all she could do to help their allies without earning the wrath of the Usurper.
I’ll keep wards up on him just in case. Veranol messaged her and Murmur smiled. Teamwork. How had she ever thought she had to do everything by herself?
In growing the two new legs, the Usurper had regained ten percent of her health.
“Rogues and rangers: I need a stun rotation to make sure she doesn’t regenerate again. Her cast is fast and requires precision, but if enough of us stun her as it’s being cast, one of them should take. If we keep allowing her to regenerate to that extent, we’ll lose this. We can’t afford to let it happen in our current state.” An extremely loud grunt emerged from Dev as he took the brunt of a flurry of attacks from the Usurper. It was like the boss knew he was talking about how to defeat her and wanted to discourage it.
He coughed once and continued. “Basically, if she keeps growing legs, we’ll never kill her.”
That small bit of humor lightened up the overall mood of the raid, and Murmur glanced back to see that their allies were holding up well for the time being. She returned her attention to the massive Usurper in front of them, determined to assist with her own set of stuns. Sadly, her AoE stuns didn’t affect raid bosses.
Next to her, Sinister’s DoTs grew in magnitude, causing more and more damage and thus increasing healing for more than Murmur had ever seen her do. When the Usurper hit fifty percent health, they needed that healing more than ever.
The creature extended her wings fully, and the membrane caught the light in such a way that they appeared jewel-like for a moment. She beat them once with more force than she’d done before. Every single person hit by the wind was knocked back slightly and received a debuff.
Out of the Hive
You have been hit with the debuff Out of the Hive. This debuff has an escalating effect. You are on a timer and must defeat the Usurper before your raid dies. Thank you for battling in the dungeon of Vahrir.
Murmur cast Esoteric Fix, hoping against hope that it might work.
Please be advised. The spell you are trying to cast cannot remove the debuff Out of the Hive.
Murmur barely managed to suppres
s a scream of rage, despite the fact that she’d been fairly certain it wouldn’t work. There was no way this dungeon would be that easy. Instead she spoke over raid chat. “It’s cooldown-burning damage magnifying time. This debuff will grow in power as the fight progresses. The longer it takes us to kill her, the more likely it is that the raid will wipe first. Use everything you have to heal yourself and take the pressure off the healers for as long as possible.”
Behind them their allies still fought with the super workers. Thanks to Esolan’s help, it appeared they’d already downed half of their opponents and were left with the remaining six. Maybe if they finished before the bulk of the raid group, their allies could jump in and assist them take down this false queen.
As the Usurper’s health began to drop further, her movements became more erratic. The hot shower of golden honey-acid increased not only in volume but also in frequency. As the fight wore on, Murmur could time her kinetic shield with the damage so that she mitigated for the raid and hopefully took strain off the healers. What she couldn’t do was extend her reach to those on the outskirts of the fight. Not even if she pushed the abilities. But she trusted Veranol to have those covered.
All the while, her tendrils of subtle mind influence fed her fellow raiders strands of confidence. They needed it, needed to be sure in themselves and their abilities. She didn’t have time to waste with bolstering them naturally.
Tapping mana from the Usurper wasn’t something Murmur could do to regularly. It seemed that siphoning that power from their opponent raised her far too high, too quickly on the aggro list. So she was left to Manabalize herself and hope the healers could top her off.
Because the one thing that would prevent them from winning this fight was healers running out of mana, the casters running out of mana, and the rest of their damage dealers taking so much damage they all died. Basically, it was a speed race to see who would die first, and right then she wasn’t liking the odds so much.
Instead of using Mana Theft, which was way too dangerous considering the Usurpers weird threat table, Murmur resorted to using only Mana Drain. It was far smaller in volume, but at least it trickled out to the rest of the raid automatically and didn’t require that she lower her own health. It was basically like a secondary Mana Tide. Along with the bard songs and her own buff it was the best they could do. Mana potions were being consumed on cooldown, while the melee fighters did the same with health potions. Some among them had a first-aid skill which allowed them to bandage themselves and or others. Every little bit counted, and while bandaging might at first seem counterproductive every time the AOE hit and the melee had to run back out of range, there were a few precious seconds that would otherwise be completely unproductive.
Finally, just before the Usurper hit twenty-five percent health, their allies and Esolan managed to finish off the super workers. While that might appear to be good news, Murmur had seen far too many Somnia variances to celebrate early.
Mana levels were barely able to keep pace with the Usurper’s health. Which meant they were running out of mana faster than the Usurper was running out of life. And there was nothing Murmur could do about it. She only hoped that with the allies moving forward to take their place by the raids side it would somehow be enough.
Webspinners climbed up into the vast, distant ceiling and shot their webs out with the hopes of slowing the Usurper’s attacks somehow. Strong white tendrils of web wound themselves around her pincers and legs, but they didn’t last long. The sharp hairs on the Usurpers appendages made relatively short work of the restraint. Still, over time it made a small difference that might even be enough.
The queen assisted in healing, but even her mana was hitting the dregs of the barrel. Murmur had secretly hoped the potential boss mob might have had a secret endless mana pool, but it appeared they weren’t so lucky.
Even with hundreds more attackers, the Usurper didn’t go down easily. Slowed so her opponents could actually see how fast she was moving, entangled by webs so much that the snapping sounds of them became a part of the combat noise, her carapaces began to glow.
In hindsight that was probably the poison work. Her screeches were filled with pain and anger, and once she hit fifteen percent health another countdown appeared high in the air.
Enrage timer countdown.
02:00
01:59
Murmur sucked in a deep breath, and she could hear the echoes of her guildmates doing the same thing all around the cavern. Enrage sucked. Basically, they could take the mob as it was now and enhance its strength by about two hundred percent, its reach by about the same, and its give-a-fuck by about five hundred percent.
In just a moment, it wasn’t going to care that it was dying anymore, all it would care about was how many of its enemies it could take with it. With those sharp hairy legs and those freaking vicious pincers, Murmur did not want to be one of the victims. That resurrection would suck.
“Ready your hidden ability cooldowns if you haven’t use them yet. Should you have an ability that allows you to decapitate, execute, kill the fuck out of the last five percent of a boss, get ready to use it as soon as the enrage timer activates.” Murmur was quite proud of her voice, having steadied it enough to not let any of her hysteria creep in.
Every single person in the raid knew they were probably going to die. That was a part of the game, and damn it if Murmur didn’t want to make sure that they killed the damned beast first. She didn’t want to go through this fight again. Not with the weird way the game characters seemed to remember things upon respawn.
The countdown continued above their heads, glowing gold numbers beating away at their lives. If she glanced up too much, she thought she could even see a green sickening shimmer around the numbers. As if the infection had spread from the Usurper to the entire server. Granted, given the current situation, that probably wasn’t much of a stretch.
When the counter hit zero, all hell broke loose.
Murmur had seen plenty of enraged mobs before, but the Usurper was one she wouldn’t forget for a long time. It blazed, its carapace appearing to have been set on fire and the effect extended down its legs to the sharp hairs and pincers at its front. Every time the pincers closed on Devlish’s shield, she could feel the sheer willpower it took for Devlish not to step aside. That tower shield had been a godsend she needed to thank Neva for if they made it out of here alive.
Four percent left, and the first of their numbers began to fall. Three of their melee fighters including one rogue, one DPS monk, and one thief. They had the worst gear, and therefore the worst stats. It made sense that they would die first, but all Murmur could think of was they now only had twenty-seven raid members and some Cirician allies, who by design didn’t appear to be able to do as much damage to the boss as she’d hoped.
Next to her, Sinister grunted with the strain of maintaining her DoTs while still weaving her healing in and out of the groups. The aura that pressed down on the entire raid from the enraged Usurper was almost overwhelming. It was like a weighted blanket of thousands of pounds draped across all the members of the raid and was trying to suffocate them.
At three percent, the next of their numbers fell. Both witches were wiped out when their cauldrons exploded in their faces. Murmur did her best not to think about Mellow and how they might be feeling with such a violent death while they were still getting used to their headsets.
A split second before Mellow died, they managed to rebuff the raid with the cleansing potion, affording all of the members a precious few resistances back that had worn off several minutes earlier. The other witch threw out potions as he died, ones with expensive ingredients that would provide a lifesaving heal for the entire raid. The remaining twenty-five members downed them and immediately increased their health regeneration by 100% for fifteen seconds, allowing a breather for the healers.
The next cast of the Usurper’s AOE stung more than an
y of the previous ones. Several of the melee fighters fell to their knees including Jinna, Jirald, and even Rashlyn. A couple of seconds later they had regained their equilibrium and continued attacking, but even that short respite had allowed for a couple of their abilities to drop off and meant they had to rebuild their damage from the ground up.
Two percent health on a boss mob had never looked so insurmountable.
Just after the Usurper passed that percentage mark, Esolan fell victim to a particularly nasty sidekick from the Usurper. One of those steel-like hairs caught his neck between the armor plates he wore and ripped his head half off his shoulders. Blood spurted out briefly until the heat of the flame the Usurper was covered in sent the scent of burning flesh throughout the dungeon.
Murmur had to force herself to look away, grateful that Esolan had a normal headset. In that same percentage, the troublemaker mages Etriad and Dalvin died as well. Fascinated by the way Esolan died, Murmur wasn’t even sure what happened to the mages, and she didn’t have time to wonder.
There were down eight members with only twenty-two remaining, and their damned opponent still had one and a half percent health. It didn’t sound like much until she converted to the eighty thousand hit points the Usurper still had. Murmur was less and less convinced that they had a chance to win this.
Once they hit one percent, it was like the enrage effect doubled. The Usurper flailed around in its death throes, striking out at anything and everything in its path. It cleaved Karn clear in two, sending half of her body tumbling back into Risk. Even in the game, Murmur could see the father’s dismay at catching a part of his daughter’s body.
He was lucky that it knocked him over, because a split second later one of the Usurper’s appendages passed straight through where his head would otherwise have been. The flailing took more victims, however, including Beastial and Havoc. Murmur wasn’t sure how the necromancer had managed to get in the way until she saw his body impaled with one of the legs that had been hacked away and knocked loose by the flailing.