“What do you mean by cheese?” Nia asked when they were back inside the Raid.

The question came about forty-five minutes after the statement. John was less surprised that she asked with such a delay than he was about her not knowing what he meant. As much as he liked to throw gaming terms around, he had expected this one to grace her ears at some point before. Maybe it had and she just hadn’t asked. Regardless, he gave her a swift explanation. “Basically, we’re going to look for a cheap but effective tactic.”

“A cheap tactic?” tilting her head, the pariah had a blank look on her face as she continued. “What is a cheap tactic?”

“Something that’s too easy.”

“Isn’t that part of what makes it effective?” Nia’s neck had almost reached a 90-degree angle, when she asked this.

“Yes, but it’s still considered dishonourable, because it’s the sort of tactic that sucks the enjoyment out of the game…” he trailed off and sighed. Through that entire sentence, Nia’s neck had tilted to the end of what the human neck allowed and then she had started to pull her eyebrows together in an ever more confused motion. ‘That’s what I get for trying to explain this to a natural born power gamer,’ John scolded himself. “We’re looking for something that exploits the gaming design of this place.”

“Ah,” Nia’s head went back to being upright, “I understand. Do you have any experiments in mind?”

“Two or three,” John responded and got the group moving towards the east while he explained. “First, I would like to test if I can aim Arcana Strike at the bosses and how effective it would be. It obviously won’t work against the Ravenstorm, because it’s flying, but maybe the other two bosses can be hit with it. If it works against the Titanturtle, we can knock out all seven spires at once, given enough charge time, so that would be something. For the Matriarch, it might just do a lot of damage to her, but that would be worth it as an opener or finisher already.”

John took a large step up a particularly sudden rise in the unsteady stone ground. Whenever they beat this Raid, he desperately hoped that the next one had a bit more going on when it came to the visual side of things. The Lair of the Onyx One had been similarly one-note, but a magma chamber was considerably more impressive than all of this grey.

“Second,” he looked back to Nia, who elegantly jumped up the same elevation, “I would like to see if and how much you can weaken, ignore or nullify certain mechanics. I know that eliminating any of the mobs would be too much, but maybe there are certain things your anti-magic powers can exploit. Third is that I would just like to understand mob behaviour a bit better. All of the bosses are more or less under the open sky, so I wonder if there is a way to take advantage of that.” His gaze brushed over everyone else around. “If you have anything else you believe would serve as a good exploit, we should test those as well.”

There were some ideas brought up. Lydia mentioned how she would like to try to bind the Sicklebrood Matriarch’s name-giving sickles to her arms. That would reduce the danger coming from her by a fair bit, as grab attacks would be denied. Gnome suggested that they should look into whether or not they could regrow or revitalize the plants on the Titanturtles back to avoid the laser. That would also cause the add-spawn rate to go back up, if it worked, but it was an idea. Rave suggested they brought some glowing objects with them into the Matriarch fight to prevent the enemies from diving into the shadows. All small little advantages that they could stack up to optimize their approach to the encounters.

As for the experiments John wanted to do, results were mixed. To even use Arcana Strike, John needed to get on the back of the boss. He could launch the charging sphere to hover up to a hundred metres away from him, but that was far from the kilometres he needed to reach the boss from the shore. Once on the back of the turtle, the issue with putting it out was simply that the boss moved. By the time the Arcana Strike was charged enough to do considerable damage, it would hover above an empty piece of lake.

Gnome’s suggestion worked, which was an extremely useful bit of knowledge, especially once they found out it only required a single tree for the boss to immediately stop charging the attack. Encouraging Nia to use her abilities as much as she thought she could also revealed that she could intimidate the adds into temporarily leaving them alone, suppress the buff aura from the splinters and avoid the spire golems to chase her. Only her, sad as that was, but it was better than nothing.

The Sicklebrood Matriarch could be hit with Arcana Strike, but it was a bit of a chore. Since the spell always descended in a straight line, angling it down into the cave was, annoyingly enough, impossible. Using it inside the cave was the first solution John came up with, but the Sicklebrood Matriarch was then just triggered into the encounter. They did their best to just fend her off until the Arcana Strike had charged to a meaningful degree. When John then dropped it, it did manage to tear two limbs off the Matriarch, so that was good. It also popped all of the eggs in the room and caused a figurative tidal wave of young Sicklemen and Broodlings to wash over them, so that was bad. They wiped quickly afterwards.

Attempting another solution, John conjured the Arcana Strike in front of the cave entrance. If they couldn’t bring the Arcana Strike into the fight, maybe they could kite the Matriarch into it or just charge it for so long that the shockwave was enough to kill the boss. John would have been willing to sacrifice an entire day to charging the thing and see if it worked. However, using Arcana Strike outside the cave triggered the fight as well. That was its own useful knowledge, but it did prevent him from looking at the mana-bar-emptying spell as a good tool.

Gaia had clearly learned from his past shenanigans and designed her Raid encounters to take into account the most obvious gimmicks he liked to use. At least Lydia’s wire-binding trick had limited success. Binding all eight sickles to the responsible limbs was incredibly difficult, but even just getting the frontal two decreased the chance of getting grabbed tremendously.

All in all, John didn’t find anything immediately exploitable anywhere on those two bosses. A couple tries on the Ravenstorm also yielded nothing. After spending the rest of the second and all of the third day on some more tries on all three bosses, they agreed on concentrating on the Ravenstorm.

_________________________________________________________________________

The Ravenstorm spread its wings wide and screeched. Lighting rode on the soundwaves, crackling outwards in all directions and dealing damage that diminished with distance. Having anticipated the attack, the party in the sky had formed a cluster around Nia and Sylph. The thunderstorm elemental bent the electricity around them, while the pariah eliminated whatever magic slipped through the counter control. Combined, the actions diminished the damage received to almost nothing.

Immediately upon the raven shutting its beak, the group dispersed. Not a moment too soon as well, as the boss dove for them as a streak of yellow and blue. The drumming sound followed in its wake, as if a dozen lightning strikes had just hit in close sequence. Through the successful dodge, the group had a moment to hit the creature’s back with an array of ranged and melee attacks. Nia’s attacks were particularly effective against the purely magical enemy. Her weapons sliced through the living electricity with ease. It didn’t penetrate deeply, at some point the concentration of magic became high enough that her weapon couldn’t neutralize it quicker than she was moving her arm, but it was a successful cut regardless. One that couldn’t immediately be healed either.

Everyone backed off, when the Ravenstorm unleashed a shockwave of its feathers. Compared to other attacks, it was weak, but still nothing that should be taken repeatedly. Especially not since the boss’ attacks inflicted a stacking debuff that lowered resistance to further electricity-based attacks. Unless one was a pariah or a thunderstorm elemental, of course.

The boss flew a large curve, beating its wings as it rose back up into the sky. The black clouds above gathered in some spots, forming bulges that pulsed with energy. Once the boss had reached the zenith of its flight, it turned around and hovered on the spot. Another clap of its wings caused the clouds to unload. Each bulge was the source of a crackling lightning strike that split the air.

Sitting on the edge of a platform, John chewed on some crisps. “Want some?” he offered Undine, who shook her head.

“Too dry,” she responded, as they both watched the ongoing boss fight.

This was attempt number ten of the day and the twentieth overall. A neat thing that they had found out was that the Ravenstorm would bombard the tower with attacks if the majority of the group stayed inside, but left it completely alone if most were out and about. As he had very little to add to the battlefield if he joined it, it was better for John to stay back, keep a distant eye on the situation to coordinate everything and save the mana that would have gone into Particle Skin otherwise.

The series of lightning strikes hit more than half of the party. None of them were aimed at anyone, but the sheer amount and speed of them made them near impossible to dodge in the moment. ‘I think you can predict the course of the lightning strike by looking at the locations of the cloud bulges and the direction of the wing clap,’ John theorized. This was only the fifth time he had seen that move, so he was still working things out. This was their most successful pull yet. Normally, they got done in during the first barrage of attacks.

He also needed to occupy his mind with battlefield analysis to ignore the fact that Siena and Gnome had just been finished off. The latter just got hit a lot; the flight buff’s speed scaled directly with Agility, so her high Endurance and even her moderate resistance against lightning weren’t as useful. The former was just, for the purposes of this specific boss fight, the squishiest member of the group. Normally that title went to Sylph, but her nature gave her superior resistance against the attacks the boss was dishing out.

Even if he knew they were fine at the end of it, John did not like seeing any of his girls getting defeated. In a hurry, Rave and Nia retreated to the tower. Undine immediately rose from John’s side to greet both of them with some healing. “You would have another thirty seconds, Jane,” John gave some quick feedback. “A whole minute for you, Nia.”

The words were in reference to the duration of the flight buff, being a total of fifteen minutes. That was quite gracious, all things considered, but they had to reset it every now and again regardless. If they did it all at the same time, that would cause the Ravenstorm to attack the tower and deal massive damage to everyone aside and, potentially, destroy some of the buff-giving platforms. Methodically, they were working out when who should return and refresh their buff.

“Better safe than sorry,” Rave stated and rolled her shoulder. “Ya know, with Siena just dying. Plus, I needed healing anyway.”

Nia’s reasoning must have been identical, as she nodded along. Since John couldn’t give direct orders to those two or Lydia, they had worked out that each of them should pair up with an elemental, Siena and Gnome in their case, to orient themselves on their buff timers. An obviously imperfect system that needed at least a back-up plan.

“I know, just giving some pointers for improvement,” John told them and looked out to the ongoing encounter. “We’ll need to minmax this extremely.”

The Ravenstorm shrieked, normally this time, as its electrical form lost some of its colour. For the moment, it had run out of juice to power its stronger magical attacks with. That didn’t make the boss harmless, as it resolved to good old physical attacks. Diving down, it spun like a drill while aiming at Jack. By burning some mana, John accelerated his double enough to get out of the way. The boss seared past the rim of its arena, only to open its wings and circle back around. Feathers started to fall from its wings. That was new, but John’s mind went elsewhere.

‘The vast majority of its attacks are pretty mindless AoE…’ the thought occurred intuitively and from there a number of things fell into place. He turned around to Rave and Nia who were making out. Normally, inadvisable on the battlefield, but the pariah needed not only to get healed but also get some extra tethering to reality. This was the best moment for that. If John hadn’t been so distracted with the death of some of his girls, he would have been ready for that action himself. “Can you two do me a favour and try to take the fight north?”

“How far north?” Rave asked.

“Far as you can,” John told them, while getting up to give the conversation a bit more urgency. “I want to see where the boss’ de-spawn point is, if that makes sense.”

“Makes sense to me,” his girlfriend grinned, “I think I know what you’re hoping for, tiger… that’d be interesting if it worked…”

“Well, less humming, more testing,” John declared and gave both of them an encouraging slap to the bottom.

“As you wish, darling,” Nia returned his affection with a quick kiss. Completely back on this side, she then stepped onto one of the flat platforms that extended from the empty tower’s walls, like an extremely unsecured balcony. Electricity crept over her skin and she took off.

John followed right after Rave, when she had reapplied the buff. “Ya tagging along?” She seemed somewhat surprised to see him fly after her, even slowing down for a moment to ask that question.

“I want to see if those feathers are a damage effect or if they replenish the flight buff,” he told her, while they both moved in the general direction of the boss. “Will be easiest for me, since I get windows for these things.”

“Makes sense. Ya know what ya do, mister strategist.” With a wink, she then accelerated. With her Agility, she reached the boss long before he did.

Not that his goal even was the boss. Heading for one of the softly glowing feathers that slowly tumbled towards the ground, he took his eyes off the actual fight for a little bit to count how many there were. ‘141. Seems like a pretty random number.’ He had expected a multiplicative of the party size or something. ‘Well, first I should check if my video-game hunch is even correct.’

The air where the boss had been smelled odd. It was probably ozone, but with magic involved he couldn’t be quite sure. Since no debuff window popped up, he guessed it was probably fine. Whatever gas all of this electricity produced, there was enough air movement to keep it from being overly harmful.

When he finally reached a feather, his suspicion was validated. Touching the construct of firm electricity caused the duration of his flighty buff to increase by a minute. Since he had reached it under one, he also got to know that it increased over the original time limit. ‘That could eliminate some of the headaches,’ he thought and went back to following the battle. Not that more than half his mind had ever stopped paying attention to it.

Lydia was going with the flow of the battle and the rest had received his order of trying to pull the boss north. They did. The cloud moved along with them. The boss moved on and on. Eventually most of the group had to land because their buffs ran out. One by one they were eliminated by stray attacks. Sylph continued in the mission for a long while.

Eventually she had pulled the boss all the way to the Titanturtle. John was only following things through her eyes at that point, but all he needed to see was the Ravenstorm throwing another lighting attack that hit the turtle and caused it to retaliate with a laser.