“Eeek!” Akari shrieked. “I’m poisoned!”
“Oh, shoot! I’ve got you!”
“Squeak squeak!”
“You too, Drimo?!”
Akari was wearing equipment that increased her resistance to status ailments, but she still got poisoned. Even though each status ailment had a low chance of hitting, the probability for each was calculated individually, so the likelihood of getting inflicted by at least one of them was high.
“Aaah!” the Demonic Ghost wailed. She remained in place and summoned her small, basketball-sized ghost minions.
“We can defeat the smaller ghosts, right?” Akari asked to confirm.
“Yeah. Anything except for the Demonic Ghost is fair game!”
In order to form a bond with the Demonic Ghost, we had to make sure not to attack her. The same rule didn’t apply to the small minion ghosts, though, so Akari was free to go all out on them.
I was really lucky to have run into her at the safety zone. Without her, my party would have had to deal with the ghost minions by ourselves. I had done some simulations just to be prepared, but there was still a pretty big element of risk involved.
My monsters and I stuck to the edge of the field and fought back against the small ghosts. Their main method of attack was ramming into us, which didn’t deal that much damage. But in addition to being immune to physical attacks, they could also pass right through our weapons and shields.
The other tricky part was that, since we felt no physical impact from their attacks, if we weren’t careful, our HP would drop substantially before we were even aware of it. In fact, Hamakaze had apparently died several times to this boss for that very reason.
“Kee-hee!”
“Honk hooonk!”
When I first met Akari, my party had been nearly wiped out by ghosts because they were impervious to our physical attacks, but we didn’t have that same problem this time. Both Perca and Lilith could attack with magic spells and use attacks with elemental attributes. Those small ghosts stood no chance against them; one after another, they fell.
Of course, those two weren’t even the ones doing the most work. That honor went to Rick.
“Chiiirp chirp chiiirp!”
Rick used Mental Magic to boost our resistance to status ailments that affected our mental states, and also to inflict ailments to the small ghosts. It worked like a charm on the ghosts. They must have had a low resistance to begin with; they fell into an amusing mixture of confusion and fear. All across the field, ghosts began attacking one another or quaking with fright where they were.
Both Rick and Lilith were dominating the playing field with their status ailments. And with Akari helping out, we definitely had the advantage in this fight. The only downside was that, even though things were going better than I had expected them to, we wouldn’t get the zero-damage bonus.
“Aaa-aaaaah!”
“I got poisoned again!” Akari cried in dismay.
“Come over here!” I called out to her.
“Chirp chiiirp!”
“Oh no, Rick! Did you get hit with Bleeding?!”
These fieldwide wails that inflicted status ailments were a huge pain. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest anytime I heard the Demonic Ghost start screeching.
“I’m running out of potions faster than I thought I would...” I groaned. This was looking like it was going to be a close fight.
We continued putting up a fight and enduring status ailments, and eventually, the Demonic Ghost started to change.
“Ooo-aaaaah!”
“Eeek!” Akari screamed.
“Damn it! Stupid poison!”
At the ten-minute mark, the Demonic Ghost changed up her pattern. She began summoning minions at a slightly faster rate, and she unleashed her wail more often, which also had a higher chance of inflicting status ailments.
The worst change was that the Demonic Ghost’s wail also inflicted a set amount of damage now. It was only twenty points at a time, but that meant we’d be nearly dead after six or seven hits. Add being poisoned on top of that, and our HP would drop shockingly quickly.
From this point on, we had to be even more on top of our healing. I decided to swap out some party members. I sent away Lilith, Perca, and Rick, and summoned in Reflet to be our healer, along with Bear Bear and Olto since they both had high HP. Our focus from now on would be healing damage loss and status ailments while having Bear Bear and Olto be our tanks.
We kept up enduring the boss’s wailing and the smaller ghosts’ relentless attacks for a bit, until the Demonic Ghost underwent another change. A red aura appeared around her, the red light against her white kimono giving it a bloodstained appearance, which only made her look even more terrifying.
“This is just like we heard!” I called out.
“Yes, it is! We can do this!”
“Growl growl!”
“Mm-mmm!”
The Demonic Ghost was going into what was known as a boss’s rabid state. Up to this point, she had only been using her wailing move, but now she started unleashing regular attacks. This was when the boss fight turned into a pretty difficult bullet hell sequence, so it was often referred to as the true start of the battle.
“Aaa-aaaaah!”
“Here she comes!” I yelled.
“Eww, gross!” Akari squealed.
“You can say that again!”
The Demonic Ghost spewed out what looked like ectoplasm right at us. I could understand why Akari was so grossed out by its off-putting appearance.
The boss also started pursuing us around the field, so not only did we have to deal with the smaller ghosts and heal our status ailments, now we had to dodge the ectoplasm. It was a lot harder than I had anticipated, but I had survived the Kappa’s curtain fire, so I wasn’t going to let something like this bring me down!
“Aaa-aaah!”
“Gah!”
“Squeak squeak!”
Of course I get hit after acting so confident in myself! I’m really trying, Drimo! Don’t get mad!
“Mmm-mm-mmm.”
“Huh?”
“Mm-mmm.”
I felt something heavy fall against my lower back. When I turned around, I saw Olto clinging to me from behind. His face was bright red, and there was a bubble effect floating above his head. I had seen this affliction before, at my flower-viewing party.
“Mmm.”
“You’re drunk?!”
“Mm-mm.”
Olto shook his head at my accusation. Then he started doing calisthenics to prove he wasn’t drunk. It might have been convincing if he wasn’t staggering around so much.