Chương 116: Chapter 115: Raid Boss

"Wanna team up?" the Paladin repeated. Alice scanned the Spriggan, then the hundred players spread across the clearing, then the golden word beneath the boss's nameplate. Enhanced.

"Yes," she said.

"Combined raid. Your tanks and mine form a joint frontline. Healers merge under Desirae. DPS stays organized by guild but fires on my call." Gaul's expression shifted.

"Your call?"

"Someone has to call shots."

"Someone does. And last time I checked, my guild killed this thing."

"Your guild killed a Temu version of this thing." The Spriggan wasn't moving. It stood at its full height in the center of the clearing, with roots sunk into the earth. Its emerald eyes were watching the two groups of adventurers around the field, and the intelligence beyond those glances made me uneasy.

"We don't have time for this," I said, loud enough for both of them to hear, as Gaul was about to respond to the Vice-Guild Leader of King's Glade.

"You'll have enough chances to stroke your egos, but if you can't work together now, we might as well leave." Both of them looked at me. I saw a certain fire in Alice's eyes, the urge to answer with something witty, but when our eyes met, she suddenly calmed down and nodded.

"Fine," Gaul said.

"But my tanks take the front. They know this thing's attack patterns."

"Alright," Alice said.

"Denxy, support their frontline. Fill the gaps."

"Yes, Commander." Both raid leaders started barking orders, and a hundred players shifted into an almost unified formation. King's Glade tightened on the eastern side, Vanguard on the west, with a shared tank line forming across the front and healers stacking behind natural cover at the rear. I stayed on the elevated rock at the edge of the clearing, giving me a vantage point over the entire battlefield. Lune pressed against my leg, her body tense, ears flat. The Spriggan moved.

It raised one massive root-arm toward the sky, and for a moment, the sunlight filtering through the Greenveil's canopy turned green. The light intensified, running through the branches above us, flowing into the trees around the clearing like veins filling with blood. A barrier had appeared, starting from the monster's arms, enveloping the glade. A wall of intertwined branches and emerald energy descended from the canopy, encircling the entire clearing in a perfect sphere.

The light outside dimmed as the barrier solidified, roots weaving together until there were no gaps, no exits, and no way through. A system notification appeared. The Greenveil Sanctuary has been sealed. No players may enter or leave the area until the Greenveil Spriggan is defeated or all challengers have fallen. The clearing went quiet. A hundred players stared at the dome, and I could feel the shift in the air. Suddenly, the boss turned into a deathmatch arena.

"Well," Gaul said into the silence, hefting his warhammer onto his shoulder.

"No running away."

"Nobody was planning to," Alice replied, although uncertainty could be heard from her words. In all honesty, retreating to regroup had always been an important plan B when dealing with bosses, and we couldn't do that now. The Spriggan attacked. Its first move was a sweep of its massive arm, a horizontal arc that carved through the air with a sound like a falling tree.

Gaul's tanks met it head on, six Guardians and Paladins bracing behind their shields, and the impact sent three of them skidding backward across the grass. The other three held, barely, their shields cracking under the force.

"Hold your ground!" Alice shouted.

"Ranged DPS, open fire!"

"Tanks circle left! Contain the arm!" Gaul called simultaneously. The two commands overlapped, and for a dangerous three seconds, the melee fighters didn't know which leader to follow. Some moved left, others held position, and the gap in the frontline gave the Spriggan room to drive a root into the ground. The earth erupted. Spikes of hardened wood burst from the soil in a line that cut through the center of the formation, impaling anyone caught in the path. Four players dissolved into light instantly.

Six more were thrown sideways, their health bars plummeting.

"Heals on frontline!" Alice ordered.

"Get my tanks back on their feet!" Gaul said at the same time. Desirae was already moving. Her staff flared with golden light, and I watched three beams of restoration lance outward, catching the most critical targets before they dropped. The other healers followed suit.

"Nature's Howl!" The buff surged through me, and I drew the Emberwood.

"Piercing Shot!" The arrow streaked across the clearing and punched into the node at the Spriggan's left shoulder. The bark splintered, and the creature let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a thunderclap. -487! Good damage, but the health bar didn't move. This thing's HP pool was monstrous, even by Field Boss standards.

"Its health pool is insane!" a Vanguard Arcanist shouted, echoing my thoughts.

"It's nothing like last time!"

"It's Enhanced!" someone else yelled.

"What does that even mean?" It meant we were fighting something the game had decided needed to be stronger. The reason was unknown, as well as the mechanics that had caused it to become stronger, and now we had no choice but to fight something that was on another level. Gaul seemed to agree, because for the first time his confidence faltered.

"This is nothing like four days ago. It's like fighting something ten times stronger."

"Then we hit it ten times harder," Alice said. The Spriggan raised both arms. I saw it before anyone else did. The way the energy pulsed through its root-structure, flowing downward from the arms into the ground, the way the earth beneath the northern cluster of players began to shift.

"North side, move! Now!" I shouted. Most of them listened. A group of about fifteen players scattered from the northern edge of the clearing just as the ground detonated upward. A geyser of roots and earth exploded from the soil, rising ten meters into the air before crashing down in a cascade of wooden shrapnel. Three players who hadn't moved fast enough were caught in the blast. Their health bars evaporated. But fifteen others had survived because they'd moved when I called it.

Alice looked at me from across the battlefield, and I could see the recognition in her expression. She nodded once, then turned back to the fight.

"Orion's got overwatch!" she called to the raid.

"If he calls a position, you move. No questions." Gaul didn't object. The next five minutes were the most brutal PvE experience I'd had in Godsrealm. The Spriggan fought like nothing I'd ever seen. It was fast despite its size, intelligent in its targeting, and it adapted. When the tanks formed a shield wall, it drove roots beneath them. When the ranged DPS clustered, it launched volleys of thorns that covered half the clearing.

When the healers settled into a rhythm, it sent a vine whip across the backline that nearly killed Desirae and two of her healers. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Denxy saved Desirae's life. He was thirty meters from her when the whip came, and he covered the distance in a Shield Rush that I didn't think was physically possible, his new Mythril shield absorbing an impact that should have killed the Cleric outright.

"Thanks," Desirae said without pausing her healing rotations, as if nearly dying was a minor inconvenience.

"Anytime," he replied, his shield arm shaking from the impact. The Spriggan's most devastating attack came six minutes in. It planted both of its feet deep into the earth and began channeling. The pulsating green veins across its body flared, and the dome above us started vibrating. The air itself turned thick, saturated with what I guessed was mana so dense I could almost taste it.

"It's charging something big!" I called out.

"Everyone, get to the edges! Away from the center!" Alice relayed the order, Gaul echoed it and players scattered. The Spriggan opened its maw, a crack splitting across its bark-face, and a cone of emerald energy erupted outward. It swept the clearing in a wide arc, and everything it touched wilted. The grass turned black and the wildflowers dissolved.

Players caught in the beam saw their health bars drain at a terrifying rate; I watched the numbers ticking down in the raid interface, dozens of them dropping simultaneously.

"Verdant Decay!" someone screamed, reading the debuff notification. Verdant Decay: Reduces maximum HP by 40% for 120 seconds. Healing received reduced by 50%. Dozens of players died in the span of that single attack. Had I not called it, that beam would have wiped all of us out. The attack ended at the western flank, which was where Vanguard's melee fighters had been regrouping. Gaul survived because he'd been at the edge of the cone, and even then, his health had dropped to single digits.

He drank a potion and turned to look at the carnage. His face was white.

"Eleven down," Desirae reported, her voice steady even though her hands were gripping her staff so tightly her knuckles had gone pale.

"Twelve down," one of Vanguard's druids said.

"And a dozen more have to fight with the debuff in place for two minutes," Alice observed. Sixty-seven players were remaining. We'd lost nearly a third of our force so far, and we'd barely made a dent in the boss's health bar. The dome was still sealed; there were no reinforcements coming. Gaul looked at Alice across the scorched clearing, and something changed between them.

The rivalry, the territorial posturing, the jabs about who owned the Greenveil — all of it fell away, replaced by the simple, shared understanding that they were fighting for survival.

"Alice," he said.

"Yeah?"

"You take lead." Three words, but I imagined for the leader of a massive guild, they were some of the hardest words to say. Alice took a breath, and when she spoke, her voice carried across the entire clearing with the authority of someone who'd been born to command.

"Listen up, all of you! King's Glade, Vanguard, everyone! We're killing this thing!" She pointed her sword at the Spriggan, which was already recovering from its channeled attack, its roots pulling free of the earth.

"Tank line reforms in a crescent! Gaul, you're the anchor at center. Denxy, take the left wing. Guardians and Paladins alternate your patterns! I want the crescent tight enough to contain its melee range but wide enough that the beam can't hit more than a third of us at once!" Gaul was already moving his people into position.

"Ranged DPS, split into three clusters: north, east, south! Keep the DPS to 80%! If one cluster draws aggro, the other two unload everything until tanks regain it! No tight clusters, keep enough space around to dodge!" She started walking toward the Spriggan.

"Healers! Desirae, you have full authority over healing priority. If someone's going to die and you can't save them, let them die and save the person next to them. We can't afford to lose healers chasing lost causes!" Desirae nodded, grim but resolute. She turned to look at the cluster of Rogues and Swashbucklers.

"Sarella, your unit looks out for adds! As long as there aren't any, you flank the Spriggan and do sustained DPS to ease pressure on the front line! One of the Swashbucklers, a young woman with long, dark hair up in a ponytail nodded.

"Yes, Commander!"

"And one more thing!" Alice's eyes swept the survivors.

"If Orion calls anything, you move! If I call it, you move! If Gaul calls it, you move! Ego stays at the door, and if anyone dies because they thought they knew better, I'll make sure the next time we meet is the most embarrassing moment of their life!" A few nervous laughs, but people nodded. The formation reformed with a speed and discipline that would have been impossible five minutes ago. Gaul planted his warhammer and took his position at the center of the crescent.

The jovial, boulder-sitting guild leader was gone, replaced by a Paladin who had decided that nothing was getting past him.

"Vanguard!" he called to his people.

"You heard the lady. Let's show this overgrown weed what happens when it locks itself in a cage with us!" A roar went up from Vanguard's survivors, fierce and defiant. On the left wing, I watched the Swashbuckler called Sarella slide into position beside Denxy. She was fast and her rapier was longer than most I'd seen up until this point. She moved with a dancer's grace that was entirely at odds with the chaos around her.

The Spriggan regained its composure and started attacking once again, but the raid group was a working unit now. Even when the dryads appeared, our formation held. Greenveil Dryad Level 20 The flankers intercepted them fast. Sarella's first move was a Blade Lunge that closed the gap to the nearest dryad instantly. Her rapier punched through its bark-covered chest in a Flourish, the horizontal cut and follow-up thrust stopping the monster mid-motion. The rest of her group made quick work of it.

She was already spinning toward the second one when it lunged, and she met its clawed swipe with a Riposte that deflected the attack and sent the creature staggering. A third dryad tried to flank her, coming in from behind while she was engaged. She didn't turn. Instead, an afterimage of her shimmered into existence directly beside the add, a translucent copy of the Swashbuckler that moved with its own volition.

The copy thrust its rapier through the dryad's chest, pinning it in place, and the real Swashbuckler finished the second one with a Dazzling Strike before pivoting and driving her blade through the stunned third. Illusions? I remembered Cyrus's illusion-based skill from the tournament, but those were harmless visions; what I just witnessed was capable of stopping an enemy and dealing damage to them. I made a mental note.

The afterimage wasn't a standard Swashbuckler skill, and the one using it wasn't an ordinary Swashbuckler, either.

"Good work," Alice said to her as she passed.

"Commander," the Swashbuckler saluted, flicking dryad sap off her blade.

"Nothing more than a warm-up." The Spriggan roared. The dome shook, and leaves and branches fell from the canopy above. The creature's emerald eyes blazed, and the glowing veins across its body intensified. More dryads were pulling themselves from the ground now, dozens, emerging from the earth in waves.

"More adds incoming!" I called from my vantage point while keeping up the pressure.

"Multiple waves! North and southwest!" Alice pointed her sword.

"Sarella, take the squad and handle the north adds! Gaul, split from the frontline and handle southwest! Denxy, take lead tank role!" Gaul broke from the crescent without hesitation, his warhammer already swinging. Three Vanguard melee fighters followed him, and they hit the southwestern wave like a battering ram, the Paladin's two-handed strikes shattering the monsters like kindling. Sarella rallied five King's Glade members and intercepted the northern wave.

I watched her deploy the illusion technique again, and this time I heard the skill name as well: Phantom Riposte. The afterimage didn't just attack, it parried incoming strikes from the dryads, drawing their attention while the real Sarella carved through them from the flank. She was controlling multiple enemies by herself while her squad mopped up the stragglers. A second illusion-based skill followed moments later.

Sarella raised her rapier above her head, and three shimmering copies of her fanned out from her position, each one engaging a separate dryad.

"Mirage Waltz!" I watched the copies dance through the pack with precise, lethal strikes. The dryads were confused. Every time one committed to attacking a copy, it passed through the illusion and caught Sarella's blade in the back. While both flanks dealt with the adds, the boss itself charged the crescent line of tanks. The ground shook with each step, roots sinking into the earth and tearing free, and it closed the distance to the tank line with a speed that had no business belonging to something that size.

It swung its left arm in a wide arc, and three tanks took the full force. Denxy was one of them. His Mythril shield caught the blow dead-center, and the impact drove him backward five meters, his boots carving trenches into the dirt, but he held. The Guardian beside him wasn't as lucky. His shield shattered on contact, and the follow-through sent him tumbling across the clearing. Desirae's heal caught him before he hit zero, but barely.

"Denxy, hold!" Alice called.

"Holding!" he shouted back, his shield arm steady despite the impact.

"But this thing hits harder than anything so far! I can take maybe two more of those before I need a heal rotation!"

"You'll get it! Desirae!"

"Already on it!" Three beams of restoration lanced into the tank line. Desirae's timing was, as she'd promised, never late. I took the opening. The Spriggan's chest node was exposed during the swing, the bark plates separating for a fraction of a second as it extended its arm. I drew the Emberwood to full.

"Arrow of Ash & Flames!" I charged the shot for two full seconds, feeling the bow thrum beneath my fingers, and released. The arrow crossed the clearing in a streak of amber fire and hit the chest node dead-center. -1, 312! The Spriggan screamed. Actual fire erupted across its torso, spreading through the cracks in the bark, licking at the dry wood beneath. The Weakness to Fire debuff icon appeared beneath its health bar.

"Fire weakness applied!" I called to the raid.

"All fire-based DPS, focus the chest! It's vulnerable!" Burning Arrows, Fireballs, Flame Lances, and other fire-based abilities from the summons of the Conjurers started raining down on the boss. Alice pressed the advantage. She activated Lightning Steps and closed on the Spriggan's right side, her sword crackling with energy.

"Lightning Blade!" The strike carved a wound in the bark along its flank, electricity arcing through the sap beneath.

"Gaul! Right leg! Let's bring it down!" The Paladin didn't hesitate. He sprinted from the southwestern flank where the last rootlings were dissolving and closed on the Spriggan's right leg. His warhammer swung in a devastating upward arc.

"Boneshatter Swing!" The impact cracked the bark wide open, and the Spriggan's leg buckled. For the first time since the fight began, the creature staggered. Sixty-four players roared. And then the Spriggan's veins pulsed again, and I felt the charge building for another beam.

"Beam incoming!" I shouted.

"Crescent, collapse east! Move, move, move!" The survivors scattered. The emerald beam swept through the space they'd occupied a heartbeat before, scorching the earth black, missing the crescent by meters.

"It's learning our formation!" I called to Alice.

"It aimed where we were densest!"

"Then we stay loose!" she called back.

"No formation holds for more than thirty seconds! Keep rotating!" The Spriggan pulled its damaged leg free and stood again, the bark already knitting itself back together. The fire on its chest was dimming, smothered by new growth spreading across the wound. It regenerates! I watched the health bar. It was moving upward, slowly but visibly, undoing the damage we'd just dealt.

"It's healing!" Gaul shouted, seeing the same thing.

"Then we have to outdamage the regen!" Alice's voice cut through the noise.

"All DPS, continuous fire! Don't let up for a single second! Stop caring about the aggro, the tanks will have to deal with it now!" I nocked another arrow, drew to anchor, and kept shooting. We were nine minutes in. It was going to be a long fight.