“Those tentacles are air-bound!”
After sweeping the tentacles across the ground from the outside in, the Dark Young whips them back out again into the sky toward flying players. The tentacles are even faster than they were on the ground, perhaps because they have more room to move.
Mr. Alf is still out of commission, but he should be back soon. There’s no need to go and revive him, it seems. As a tank, there are plenty of people around him who can do that for us.
“Meeeeeeeeeh!”
“Oh? That one was longer,” I notice.
“Is it a new attack?” the twins ask.
The Dark Young’s thin tentacles continue to wriggle endlessly, gathering magical energy at their tips.
“Looks like another magic attack, but it’s moving differently this time.”
“Its bleat was different too.”
“It shot something out!”
Black and white spheres the size of watermelons begin to shoot out and scatter all over. They naturally end up dotting the landscape, but they also hover in the sky as well. I wonder what these things are…
“Hyah ha ha ha! Look at all those bulges!” Mr. Mohawk cheers.
“Excuse me?” the players respond in unison.
“Wait, they’re actually bulging.”
“Yeah, they’re expanding. Doesn’t that mean…?”
“Oh crap!”
Yes, it’s quite obvious now. These spheres are going to explode.
“But how can we run when there’re so many? Do we have to destroy them?”
That player runs up to one of the black spheres, causes it to detonate, and takes ten other players down with him. Their HP disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“There you have it.”
“‘There you have it’?! This is bad news!”
“So they’re exploding mines, essentially,” I observe.
“Should we fly up to avoid them?” the twins ask.
“Even with our damage reductions, I’m not sure we could survive a mine explosion.”
The only real upside of using mines is that they pack a major punch—and I’ve no doubt these, laid by a Dark Young who gets plenty of damage boosts to compensate for being limited to Light Magic and Dark Magic, are as lethal as they come.
I try attacking a sphere with a spell, but it shows a different animation than normal when it lands.
“Argh! I don’t know anymore! What the hell are we supposed to do?!”
“That thing might actually wipe us all out at this rate.”
“In the end, they’re just magic mines, right? Telekinesis!”
“Hey, watch out!”
“Sorry, but I’ve gotta move them.”
That’s good news. It seems we can be rid of them just like any other kind of mine. I’ll inform the party leaders in our union.
We quickly fly away from the spheres that are bulging the most. The white ones pose the biggest threat to the twins, so we’ll stay away from them too. It’s all about finding the right position. We might survive the black mines, but we don’t stand a chance against the white. I also make Lizzy keep her distance.
“They’re so huge! Oh?”
The spheres have grown from the size of watermelons into that of exercise balls. Divine Revelation shows me the vast danger zone spanning from the center of each sphere. I won’t have enough time to escape like this. I tell the twins to flee while I chant a defensive spell, doing my best to put distance between myself and the mines.
A few seconds later, they shrink to the size of a handball before exploding just like a burst spell. I put my tentacles up like a shield around the twins.
“Magic Barrier!” I cast.
“Eek!” cry the twins.
“Aaaaah!” everyone screams.
My Magic Barrier made it just in time. This seems to be the best countermeasure for when I can’t make it out of range in time. The twins lost roughly 20 percent of their health with my tentacle shield, but I’m in a lot worse shape. Without time to use Gravitas Maneuver, I couldn’t get further away from the blasts. Lizzy, however, managed to dodge the mines.
“Ah, I think I might die,” I realize.
“Live…”
You’re beautiful. Actually, that wouldn’t be my line, would it? In that case… “I’m beautiful!” I declare.
“Pffft!” The people around us crack up.
“Yeah, I understand her logic, at least.”
Hey, don’t look away from me and start laughing. My vision allows me to see you all anyway.
More importantly, we need to heal up, or this is going to get very bad very quickly.
The countdown until the Dark Young calms down has changed colors. It looks like there’s a mountain of corpses all over the ground. Please help them all recover, healers down there.
After launching the mines, its thin tentacles started hitting the tanks while the thick tentacles remained still. This gives us some time to regroup and get back on our feet.
The timer has gone from red to orange. I don’t know what that means, specifically, but the countdown was still continuing even when it was in the red, so orange must be showing us that it’s some rank lower than red.
“Meeeeeeh!”
“Here come the thick ones!”
“We haven’t even finished healing yet!”
It looks like our short break is over.
The Dark Young launches strikes in two places and swipes another two places.
“Did we cycle through all its moves?”
“The mines appear to be its final move, my lieges.”
“What comes next again? A magic attack?”
“No, I think it does the same move twice in a row.”
“Meeeeeeh!”
Just as the union leaders speculated, the Dark Young repeats its previous move.
“Next shall be the Dark Magic attack!”
“There’s still angel players around, so have them fall back.”
We can shout for people outside of our union channel to fall back, but for everyone too far away to hear, there’s nothing left to do but pray for them.
Also, it seems like it’s hard for fellow members of the Stellura family to fight against each other. I’m still a new recruit, so my damage negation for Light Magic and Dark Magic is only half, but higher-tier races are immune to those elements—they may even absorb them to gain health. But since Light Magic and Dark Magic are also the only elements we can possess ourselves, perhaps the only strategy is to go for physical attacks instead of magic ones.
I get in a few hits as I watch the Dark Magic spell take out even more angels.
“That thing has automatic healing skills, right?”
“I fear this battle may be futile, my lieges.”
“The timer is still ticking for the Dark Young to calm down, right?” I note.
“It seems like our attacks are supposed to be draining that timer, not the boss’s HP.”
“It’s going to be really hard to keep up a large group of living players until this thing chills out.”
“Those spheres are a most deadly foe indeed.”
We can’t even attack the fanatics due to the force field around them. If we don’t find a countermeasure quickly, the spheres are going to wipe us all out.
“Let’s start by seeing what happens when we reflect the spheres back at it.”
“Good idea!”
“Did anyone count how long it takes for the mines to explode?”
“It was about ten seconds.”
“That’s enough time for us to work with.”
“Okay, then everyone close to it will reflect the spheres back, and the rest of us can try to come up with a strategy.”
“I shall do as you say, my liege.”
“Since it seems to be cycling the same attacks now, its moves must go in a definitive order.”
“Yeah, it’d be horrible if all the moves were randomized.”
It strikes two random areas and sweeps two random areas, then repeats this moveset again.
After that, it casts the Dark Magic AOE spell.
Finally, it repeats the randomized strikes and sweeps two times in a row just like before.
“Back on your feet, soldier. Resurrection!”
“Thanks a bunch!”
“That Resurrection spell really leaves you with no MP left, huh?”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
Everyone’s steadily recovering from the last attack, but if their revival comes at the wrong time, they’re just going to get hit by the tentacles again and die an instant death.
Perhaps the healers shouldn’t bother attacking this time.
“It’s supposed to be two more rounds of strikes in four places now.”
“Meeeeh!”
“Is it angling for a sweep?” I ask.
“Not exactly!”
It drags its tentacles once along the ground and once up in the air.
“It looks like the height and location is always random.”
“Light Magic should be coming next.”
“Meeeeeeh!”
“There it is!”
“If you’re weak to Light Magic, get back!”
The Light Magic AOE spell explodes.
After that, the Dark Young strikes its tentacles in four different places twice in a row.
“Is it random whether or not it does a strike or a sweep?”
“We can’t tell yet. It might be alternating between them.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Is it completely random? Or are some parts of these attacks predetermined?
“Meeeeeeeeeh!”
The thin tentacles begin to wriggle wildly, gathering magical energy at their tips.
“Here come the spheres!”
“I wanna test how attacks of the same element compare against attacks of the opposite element.”
“Hey, the animations look a little different when you do that!”
“You’re right!”
I see. I’ll try attacking a sphere with the opposite element too. A Light Magic sphere landed near me, so the twins and I attack it with Dark Magic. That seems to hurt it a bit, so we get help from nearby players, pummel it with spells, and destroy the sphere.
“Looks like you can’t destroy ’em with the same element, huh?! Aaaah!”
With that voice coming from a union member, I notice a Light Magic sphere detonating out of the corner of my eye. It plays the same animation as a burst spell, taking out everyone around it.
I observe my surroundings as I attack nearby spheres. This really is the worst of the Dark Young’s moves. I’d like as much information as I can gather.
The players at the front lines are playing sphere dodgeball with the Dark Young and Blessed of Shub-Niggurath. Frankly, with all its tentacles, us players don’t have any advantage against a Dark Young in a game like this.