Armed with the knowledge that they could kite one of the bosses through the entire Raid, John switched gears. Not immediately, part of him was sure Gaia would swoop in at any second, but after a day of tries he was entirely convinced that this was an allowed way to clear things. Given the name of the special crafting material that dropped from the Titanturtle, the Heart of Stone and Thunder, it seemed as if this was the way to get it. How else to get something of that name than make the thunder boss fight the stone one.

“Are we certain this is a wise decision?” Lydia asked, looking at the battleplan John had drafted up. Several basic maps of the area, each of them covered with notes, delineated the tasks of every member of their group. “I imagine this approach is going to be tremendously more difficult than fighting each boss individually.”

“Depends on the way you look at it,” John told her. “I am quite certain that we’re under the ‘appropriate’ level for all of the bosses at the moment. Another thirty levels or so and we could probably kill each of them in fifty attempts or so. What we lack at the moment is damage and sustain. By getting the bosses to fight each other, we take a big chunk out of our damage requirements.” He drew a line from the location of the Ravenstorm over to the Titanturtle. Then he moved his hand over to the east and tapped once. “We’re going quite cheesy there, but you are correct that this means we have to contend with a lot more mechanics. We’ll have to play optimally.”

“That is the origin of my inquiry,” the queen of steel sighed. “What I desire to know is whether or not we can do this in the time limit. We have about 130 hours left and the Ravenstorm alone would have been a formidable challenge.”

John nodded a few times while she spoke, then put out his response, “I have absolutely no idea.”

“My love,” Lydia crossed her arms, her grey eyes drilling into him like a lead thorn, “elaborate.”

“Because of my aforementioned feeling that we’re under the proper level for this Raid, I’m not even sure we can defeat the Ravenstorm in this session.” John’s hand travelled back west. “We might be missing like 5% damage or mana regeneration to push through the fight. We haven’t pushed it far enough yet to see if there is a second or even third phase yet.”

Although they were getting fairly skilled at kiting the Ravenstorm over, their tries usually ended fairly quickly after it and the Titanturtle started fighting. Getting on the back of the turtle was difficult under normal circumstances. Swimming through a lake while a living thunderstorm and a sentient island were throwing magical attacks at each other was a whole different grade of difficulty. As such, they hadn’t done much more than confirm that the bosses would continue to attack each other, at this point. Only for as long as anyone of the group remained in the barrier, of course.

“So, since I’m not sure if we can win even on the ‘easier’ route, I think we should go big or go home. As frustrating as it would be, losing here wouldn’t be too bad. This is just a regular levelling Raid. We can try again in a month with a bit more power behind us. However,” he grinned widely, “can you IMAGINE the power spike I would get from defeating three bosses in one go? The amount of loot? If we manage to pull this off, it’s going to be incredible!”

“Go big or go home, is it?” Lydia sighed again and looked around the table. Most of the girls were already with John on this. On the more cautious side of things were only the queen herself, Gnome and Undine. Even among those three, none of them insisted on the Ravenstorm knowing the Gamer’s rationale. If their chances were low in either case, it did indeed make more sense to go for the gamble with the higher rewards. As a group, they also felt more confident about an encounter that was mechanically difficult than about maximizing their damage output on a single target. “As you wish then, I already got stronger from this trip,” the queen conceded.

________________________________________________________________________

“Everyone ready for attempt 91?” he asked the group.

Despite the many failures they had experienced over the past few days, the nods all around were firm. They had gotten exceedingly close to winning several times and, on request of John, Magoi had given them another day’s extension. Even Lydia stuck around, invested in seeing this through. Even with these concessions, they only had time for one, maybe two more attempts in this session. They had to make it count. There was twilight all around, the time dilation now prolonging a night so advanced the horizon was turning into dark shades of purple, greeting the oncoming day.

“Alright,” John himself nodded and turned towards the boss arena, where the Ravenstorm was already waiting for them. ‘Salamander, you ready too?’

‘Give me the signal whenever you need me,’ the endflame elemental mentally responded. She was the only member of the party not with them at this time. If this had been the last Raid, they couldn’t even have entered the boss arena until she was there. Just another sign that this was intended game design this time around.

Without any great speeches or further wastes of time, John gave the signal to advance. The entire group broke out into a sprint. Flashes of lightning illuminated the dark clouds and soon the electricity rained down on their path towards the large tower. Sylph flew by their side, not yet allowed to engage with the Ravenstorm. Instead, she served as their early detection system.

“Left, left, right, left, back!” she shouted, always giving the group a small window to move in the demanded direction before the area they would have been in was struck by a crackling thunderbolt. Having jumped backwards, John was caught by his girlfriend and shoved forwards. Using that momentum, they lost as little time as was possible getting into the tower.

There was a moment of safety within the empty tower. A warning screech told them all that it wasn’t going to last. Soon enough, electricity would start flooding the walls, dealing ever more damage as their resistance to that element was lowered. Fundamentally, that was bad.

It was also exactly the attack they wanted to coerce at that point. Almost leisurely, conserving their stamina, they strolled up the flight of stairs to where the flight-buff platforms were and waited. Electricity already crackled all around them by the time they arrived at the room at the top of the tower. The very same one that John and Undine had sat in earlier single boss attempts.

The entire group huddled together, each seeking to make it easy for Undine to heal them. Those who didn’t get to enjoy pressing into the warm jiggle of the dark blue slime girl were connected via strands of liquid shadow. The pitch-black material, similar to liquid rubber in appearance but impossible to grasp, spanned taut between Undine and the shadow of a singular person. Through them, she could heal people without touching them. It would have also worked if she just saw the shadow, but this solution was more mana efficient, if unusable without preparation time.

Soon, the crackling around them became stronger and their resistances dropped. What started as an unpleasant tingle on his skin soon grew into a numbing torrent that rushed through all of his muscles. John kept a close look on their health bars. There was a steady tug of war going on between the electricity and Undine’s healing. John supported her with his mana. At this current point, he had no reason to conserve it. Only Particle Skin he dropped. It was more effective to be part of the group heal than to prevent the damage, in this specific case.

When the damage started to overcome the healing, John made the call, “Nia.”

The pariah was already prepared. Her visor was manifested, her strange aura almost as unpleasant as the electricity. A colour-devouring wave spread outwards from her skin, leaving them in a black and white bubble. Wherever the magical lightning hit it, it evaporated. Undine couldn’t heal them inside either, but none of them were under three quarter health, so it wasn’t an urgent matter.

Nia grew more translucent by the second. Nobody was worried about it. They had gotten through these initial parts often enough that they knew she could hold it for as long as was required. John kept steady watch on his debuff stacks. Currently, his Lightning Resistance had been reduced by 560%. Without new attacks by the boss re-applying the debuff, the stacks started to fall off after ten seconds. 10% were lost for every further second that passed. It served as John’s reliable clock.

“Go!” he shouted, once the debuff had gone down to 90%. The bubble collapsed. They were all subjected to one more tick of damage, refreshing and increasing the debuff by one, then they were in the air.

John flew north, Nia followed him, the rest went upwards. While John and Nia engaged in the untraditional battlefield activity of making out, anchoring the blank in reality again, everyone else exploited a moment of weakness. In order to execute his tower-shocking attack, the Ravenstorm had landed on the roof. Seated, it was an easy target for a wave of first attacks.

Every bit of aggression they could muster was unloaded. Undine Unleashed, using all of the damage she had just healed to turn into a devastating wave that disoriented the boss by rushing around his head. Weapons, fists, claws and magic all the while tore into the living lightning. No attack left permanent marks in the energy creature, but they did their damage regardless.

Angered, the Ravenstorm spread its wings wide and unleashed an attack. Its feathers glowed dimly, after the wave of electricity had passed through everyone. They weren’t nearly as incandescent as they had been at the start of the encounter. The spread wings immediately turned into a beating motion, once the boss had regained orientation.

Without a word of unnecessary communication, the entire group turned north-east and started flying. The Ravenstorm chased, pulling the thunderclouds with it. Chasing with attacks by beak and dive, it ended up in front of them every so often. Always concentrating on dodging, the party just continued flying. They only took the most unavoidable damage and moved into the way for each other to prevent any new stack build-up. After ten minutes of this flight, their resistances were mostly back to normal and mid-flight heals had topped off health in most cases.

When they were down to six minutes, John started to charge an Arc Lance. Down to five, he suddenly stopped and threw it at the Ravenstorm. Even at double damage, the singular attack did fairly little, but the angry caw from the monstrous elemental, reacting to a short-lived hole being blown into its wings, was the agreed signal. The boss being so noise-happy made a lot of things easier.

The entire party stopped in their flight and moved back into fight mode. This time, without any gimmicks. They fought the boss as they did during their first encounter, albeit with a lot more experience. Getting into its range, they coerced it to use an energy wave. Clumping together and then dispersing, they forced out an inconsequential dive attack.

“Storm incoming, gather up!” John shouted, verbally and mentally, when he noticed the storm clouds gathering into bulges. Without fail, the Ravenstorm turned his latest dive attack into a sudden rise high into the sky. Following Sylph’s lead, the group rose up with it. Then the Ravenstorm beat its wings and the lightning was unleashed. The thunderstorm element dove in a zig-zag.

Rising as one group had incentivized the boss to hurl the attack at an angle that made the attacks denser, maximizing the danger in the area but minimizing the size of it. By following Sylph and her ability to sense the direction of the lightning, they were able to dodge the initial attacks and then leave the affected area behind. Gnome was hit due to her relative slowness and Lydia got hit because of bad luck, but none of them took lethal damage. Undine patched them up as quickly as she could, still relying on John’s mana.

The Ravenstorm looked extremely dull now, almost as if it was just a yellow-blue crow. Feathers started to fall off its form. Depleted of energy and hurt a sufficient amount, part of it was now so unstable they could use it to refresh their buff. The party stayed back. If they didn’t agitate the boss, he would stay in place for the majority of the shedding duration, making picking up the feathers easier. That, and John needed to count.

“FOURTEEN!” he shouted. It wasn’t the actual number, that would have been 146, but the amount of feathers anyone who needed the buff was supposed to grab. ‘Good luck for us,’ the Gamer thought to himself, feeling enthusiastic for a moment. The number of feathers that spawned was randomized between 130 and 150, so 146 was on the higher end. Although they would only pick up 140 of them, the extra density was nice. Having a minute less per person could have been an issue.

The natural flyers, Jack and Sylph, concentrated on distracting the recharging boss while everyone else got their feathers. Then they resumed their flight to the lake of the second boss. It was impossible for most of them, at their current Agility, to make the several kilometre flight in fifteen minutes. By forcing the boss to expend energy and take damage at the very spawning, they got the duration during a halfway fight.

This, in turn, trivialized another issue. Not having to swim to the turtle was a tremendous time and energy saver. They had discovered this strategy only after a few attempts that were defined by a much less effective opener: Sylph alone kiting the Ravenstorm over after everyone else had engaged the Titanturtle. Aside from saving themselves the approach, they also didn’t have to fight the adds on the turtle’s back this way.

The lake came into view. Already engaged in a battle itself, the Titanturtle was following a tiny, red, black and gold dot that cut through the air above its head. Salamander was keeping the boss at attention through occasional attacks. In return, the Titanturtle kept looking at her. The giant boss was too slow to catch her with his jaws and Salamander’s attacks did absolutely no damage, but this configuration worked perfectly for the next bit. The next piece of optimization of this combined encounter was to get the two bosses to fight each other as soon as possible.