Chương 153: Chapter 150: The Hunt

Everything fell into total darkness, but it was different this time. When Camazotz had killed the light at the beginning of the fight, the UI had blurred and flickered, like the system itself fell secondary to the laws of the greater spirit and the roots, but now, the interface disappeared completely. We couldn't see health bars, or names, nothing from the raid screen.

"Stay close to someone!" I shouted.

"Focus on evading. Do not chase damage!" My voice came back muffled, but thankfully it could still be heard.

"There is no way we can fight this thing completely blind," Alysanna said. She sounded close, then distant, then close again. I couldn't tell whether she had moved or whether the roost was playing with the sound.

"Then there's a mechanic to it," Cyrus answered.

"We just have to find it."

"Finding anything in total darkness is a difficult task, hermano," Mano Roja said.

"Incoming!" Alice shouted, cutting the discussion apart. The only warning was the change in air pressure.. A heavy displacement rolled across the platform from somewhere ahead, carrying the weight of something enormous moving through the space in front of us. I couldn't pinpoint the direction, but the pressure hit my face from one side, and instinct did the rest.

"Quick Step." Something passed through the space I had occupied a heartbeat earlier, close enough that the wind of it tore at my cloak and dragged me sideways when I landed. It was most likely a tail swipe, or maybe a wing attack. It didn't matter; whatever it had been, it would have definitely killed me if I'd stayed still. I came down, crouching, one hand on the stone.

"Keep moving when you feel the air shift!" I shouted.

"It's giving us pressure before the hit!"

"Very generous of it!" Talion yelled back. I fired a Fan of Arrows toward the sound of the movement, more to test than to damage. The arrows vanished into the dark, and no impact sound came back. There were no damage numbers, but whether I just couldn't see them or the attack missed, I couldn't tell. Someone slammed into my side, and I caught an arm before both of us went down.

"Orion?" Somnus asked.

"It's me."

"As long as you have no bat wings, I'm okay with that."

"Can you do anything with this darkness?"

"Unless making more darkness counts, no." Right.

"It's on the left side!" Denxy called.

"I think!" We tried to keep our positions after that. It was impossible to do it perfectly without sight, but at least everyone had a general sense of where the middle of the platform was, and where the front line had been when the lights went out. The problem was that every attack forced people to move, and every movement made the mental map worse. Thirty seconds of darkness felt manageable, but after five, I knew we were already losing the shape of the room.

"Chain Aggression!" Denxy shouted. The skill cracked through the roost with a metallic sound, dragging attention toward him. For about half a second, I thought it worked, but then Leona screamed from the opposite side of the platform.

"Leona!" Diego shouted. There was no answer.

"Does anyone see the raid interface?" I called.

"No," Alice answered from somewhere behind me.

"The entire UI is gone."

"Leona?" Cyrus called.

"Answer!" Nothing. The realization hit hard enough that I almost missed the next pressure shift. Lune didn't. She had been clinging to my shoulder since the darkness returned, claws dug into my armor, body pressed against my neck. A second before the attack came, she leaned across my face and licked my left cheek, and I reacted immediately by grabbing Somnus by the sleeve and pulling him left with me.

The swipe passed where we had been standing, close enough that I felt the heat of Camazotz's body through the moving air. Somnus stumbled, recovered, and grabbed my shoulder to steady himself.

"Thanks."

"Thank Lune." The fox made a low growl. Camazotz wasn't flying now; that much I could tell. The attacks were grounded, close to the platform. It wasn't using the echo-blades or the fire either, nor the sound-wave bursts that had nearly killed multiple of us in the air phase. I was grateful for that, because a focused sonic attack in this darkness would have wiped us before we could understand what happened. Still, the fight wasn't easy. Honestly, calling it a fight was overkill.

We were just trying not to die while a predator walked among us in the dark, larger than anything we'd faced so far, and there were no mechanics to learn from. I heard Corral activate Grand Bulwark, and a heavy impact struck somewhere near the middle, followed by the sound of a barrier shattering. A second crash came immediately after, and this time it was something big hitting the stone floor. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Corral?" Rafael shouted.

"Standing," Corral answered, though his voice was strained. Alice's Lightning Blade activated a heartbeat later, the sound of it sharp enough that I could place her for the first time since the darkness fell.

"It's on me, center! Front line to my voice!"

"Moving!" Rafael called.

"I need the rogues in the middle," Alice ordered.

"When it comes for Rafael or me, bleed whatever part of it you can reach. We have to drag it down to the next phase."

"It was at seventy," Cyrus said.

"If the pattern holds, fifty might bring the light back."

"Then fifty is the goal." We couldn't see the boss. We couldn't see each other. We couldn't see our health. We couldn't even trust sound completely, and Camazotz moved so fast that hitting it was more guesswork than actual strategy, but it was our only chance.

"Roger," Scale called from the dark. Mano Roja did not answer.

"Mano?" Verdugo called. The only answer was another scream, and this one came from above. And it wasn't the rogue.

"What the—" Something huge moved upward through the dark, and for a second the air itself seemed to lift.

"It took Carmen!" Rafael shouted.

"Hold!" Alice snapped.

"Rafael, hold!"

"I don't know where it is!"

"Somewhere above! Just hold still!" The boss was moving in three dimensions again, and we were still blind.

"Party check!" Cyrus shouted.

"Answer fast!"

"Orion," I called, and everyone did the same, except Leona, Mano Roja and Carmen. We were down to fifteen. A pressure change swept across the platform again, this time from above. Lune dug her claws into my shoulder and leaned hard to the right. I trusted her and moved before the attack arrived, grabbing Somnus by the edge of his sleeve again and dragging him with me. A claw struck the floor where we had been standing and scraped through the stone hard enough to send chips cutting into my legs.

"Wild Hunt," I said under my breath, drawing before my feet were steady. I loosed, and the spectral arrow split from the direction, looking for the target. The shot vanished into darkness, then turned sharply upward. Camazotz snarled as the arrow struck true, and what was more important was the fact that I somehow felt where the Wild Hunt Arrow had landed.

"Hit confirmed!" I shouted.

"It's above-center, moving left!" Cyrus reacted first. Flame Lance burned through the dark after my call, its light still contained within its own animation, giving us no vision whatsoever, and then I heard the impact when it struck flesh. Alysanna fired a heartbeat later, trusting my direction. Somnus sent a shadow bolt after both of them, and Desirae threw a small holy bolt from somewhere behind me.

"There's no way I can heal anyone now," she said before anyone asked.

"I might as well hit something." Camazotz moved again, and a low inhale rolled through the darkness.

"Fire!" I shouted.

"Down or wide!" The cavefire came without glow, only heat and pressure. It swept low above the platform in a dark wave. I threw myself flat, Lune pressed under one arm, and felt the fire pass close enough to burn the edges of my cloak. I shouldn't have celebrated the absence of its skill usage, I thought.

"Check!" Cyrus called, voice rougher now.

"Fast!" We got no answer from Talion.

"Keep fighting," Alice said.

"Orion," Cyrus called.

"Can you keep landing Wild Hunt?"

"For a while."

"How long is a while?"

"Until I run out of potions."

"Hopefully you have enough," he laughed.

"Call the shots, and we will follow your lead." I drew, and the Wild Hunt had answered once again.

"High left!" I called.

"Descending!" It was more than just feeling my shots. The successful attacks had somehow given me directions, as if I were seeing with the eyes of the Wild Hunt arrow itself. I understood the layout, Camazotz's position; I could even tell where my teammates were for a brief second before landing the hit. And right now, the Death Bat was coming for Alice.

"Front line to Alice!" I shouted.

"Rafael, forward. Denxy, Corral, to the right! Brace!" They moved in unison, which was impressive. The impact hit them first, then Alice behind them, though she struck during the landing, Lightning Blade cracking through the dark with a brief blue-white flash. It lasted less than a heartbeat, but it showed her under Camazotz's chest, sword buried halfway into the fur.

"Good hit!" I shouted.

"It's anchored!" Alice shouted, and the melee finally went into action. Verdugo's axe fell with enormous impact, Diego and Scale started besieging the beast from the side, and Adaptive and Redcap attacked the tail. Then Camazotz left the ground, and the darkness belonged to it again.

"It grabbed—" Corral started saying, but only silence followed. After the next check, there were only twelve of us left.

"High right!" I called after another Wild Hunt hit.

"Moving down!"

"Flame Lance!"

"Shadow Bolt!"

"Piercing Shot!" The impacts came together. Camazotz roared again, and this time the roar carried strain. We were getting closer. The next party check came after another fire sweep — Alysanna had fallen. Then Diego disappeared. He had been near Alice, hitting whenever Camazotz landed. I heard him call a warning, heard Alice answer, heard a claw strike, and then his voice was gone from the next check. A bottle clinked somewhere, then another, then another. My own mana was dropping faster than I liked.

Wild Hunt was not meant to be spammed, at least not like this, but without it we had no way of fighting back. Lune licked my cheek again, and I moved to the right, dodging the incoming attack by less than a meter.

"Good girl," I said, and fired. Wild Hunt curved into Camazotz's leg as it landed. Alice hit the same spot with Lightning Blade. Verdugo's axe came down a half-second later.

"Burn it!" Alice shouted.

"Now!" Cyrus and Somnus answered together, and when their combined attack had landed, for a flicker of a second, the boss's health bar had come to life. 54%"We're close!" I shouted, unsure if the others had seen it, too.

"Four percent!" Denxy met the next charge. I don't know how he realized it was coming, or whether he did it at all. Maybe he simply heard the same doom coming and placed himself in front of it because that was what Guardians did. But when we called, no answer came, and we were down to eight players. Rafael went next. He had been holding the middle with Alice, breath ragged, refusing to fall back.

Camazotz landed near him, and he did what he had done since the beginning: raised the tower shield and bought everyone else a second. Seven. Verdugo roared and hit the boss so hard that the sound of the axe carried through the whole roost, and Camazotz answered immediately. Six. It was devastating. For the first time since the game had launched, our numbers were dwindling without us having any chance at stopping it. Scale vanished from the next check after trying to cut the boss's hind leg during a landing. Five.

Desirae stopped answering after a fire sweep. Four. That left me, Alice, Cyrus, and Somnus. Camazotz was still moving, still hunting us. Alice kept engaging whenever it landed, her sword cutting in short, brutal arcs before she rolled away from the counter. Cyrus was almost out of mana potions, but he had started using the Darkfire Cloak in short bursts to help with the damage, while Somnus kept peppering the bat with void arrows and shadow bolts. I drew Wild Hunt one more time, the arrow forming mid-shot.

The green-gold line steadied, the arrow curved through the dark, struck Camazotz beneath the wing, and the roost finally lit up again. Copper-red veins raced across the platform, up the walls, along the pillars, into the hanging stones above. The UI returned in a violent flood of bars, names, cooldowns, debuffs, warnings, and greyed-out raid icons stacked down the side of my vision like a list of failures. Camazotz's health appeared to be exactly 50%.

Alice stood near the center, sword lowered, armor torn, one side of her face streaked with blood. Cyrus stood a few meters behind her, breathing hard, one hand still raised from his last spell, and I stood with Spriggan's Will in my hand and Lune shaking against my shoulder. Somnus was gone. The three of us were the last ones standing. Camazotz landed on the platform in front of us, and for the first time, it stopped. And then it spoke.

"You've come far, children," it said. Its voice echoed through the cavern, deep and timeless like the darkness itself. It felt the same as the Elder Stag talking to me weeks ago, the voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"You've come far," it repeated.

"But it's time to meet your end."