“Nya ha ha ha! Keep going, everyone! I’m looking forward to my clear rewards!” Nyamun declared with a smile. A second later, her HP bar shattered. But she got the job done!
The Cerberus Lion, distracted by Nyamun, had made a disastrous slipup and opened itself to attack. With two out of its three heads looking in our direction, it neglected to watch where it was stepping and stumbled right over a stalactite, coming to an abrupt halt.
“Honk honk!”
That was when Perca stepped forward with a daring look on his face. Nothing could stop him now.
“Go, Perca!”
“Hooonk!”
Perca took off once again. This time, instead of hitting the lion with a perfume bottle, he rode on the rail of light and charged straight at the giant monster.
“Honk honk honk hooonk!”
“Grawwr?”
Three cheers for Penguin Highway, the super skill! Check out that stunning Blow Away effect! The Cerberus Lion’s right head was knocked sideways!
The technique had such unbelievably tremendous power behind it that it was hard to believe it came from little Perca. There was no way he hadn’t pulled the boss’s aggro towards us with that.
“Perca, come back!”
“Honk.”
“Huh? Perca?”
Once Perca landed on the ground, he glared defiantly back at the six piercing eyes that were staring him down. That wasn’t even the most surprising part—he then used his Foam skill to assail the Cerberus Lion with bubbles. The damage was minimal, but the lion looked super ticked off. Perca must have realized he wouldn’t be able to escape the boss, so instead he decided to attack. Or maybe he was afraid that the Cerberus Lion would look away from him if he made a wrong move.
“Roooaaar!”
“Percaaa!”
“Honk hooonk!”
Perca’s dead! I watched as Perca was engulfed in a furious blast of flames that the Cerberus Lion spewed out from all three heads, then broke apart into polygons and disappeared. But he had pulled off this task perfectly! The boss focused too hard on the enemy in front of it.
“Wooooo! It’s my turn now!”
“Sakkyun!”
Before Siegfried’s group could attack, Sakkyun came running out from the flames and swooped down on the Cerberus Lion. A red aura surrounded his body, and the effect of the burning flames was reduced by half. Before the battle began, he told me about one of his Yoga skill arts that reduced the effect of status ailments. He had evidently used that and had been waiting for a moment to counterattack.
“I’m gonna go all out before I die! Instant Attack Summon, Tama!”
Instant Attack Summon was a Summoner-exclusive skill. In exchange for only being able to summon a monster out for a brief moment, the skill doubled the monster’s abilities. It consumed a lot of MP and had a very long cooldown time, but the power it provided made it a fitting finishing move.
And sure enough, Tama, the White Tiger Sakkyun summoned exuded staggering power. It wasn’t on the same level as the Cerberus Lion, but it had clearly grown larger and more ferocious since the last time I saw it. That must have been Instant Attack Summon’s effect at play.
“Graaaaawr!”
“Roooarrr!”
The giant white tiger leaped towards the giant three-headed lion, swiping its claws at the side of the boss’s neck. The Cerberus Lion let out a roar that sounded like a scream, shuddered violently, and lost balance. The power behind that move could even compete with Ashihana. A top Summoner, indeed! Plus he was one of the strongest attackers in the game.
And Sakkyun wasn’t even done yet.
“Hraaah!”
“H-He flew!”
Right before Tama disappeared, Sakkyun used the tiger’s back as a jump pad to leap high into the air.
“Giant Monster Bird Kiiick!”
Sakkyun spread his arms out wide like an eagle snapping open its wings and sped forward as if running on air. Then, shrouded in a pale-blue light, he struck the Cerberus Lion with a kick that looked just like one used by a certain masked rider.
“Graaagh?!”
The second Sakkyun’s kick made impact with the lion’s right head, there was an explosive effect and the Cerberus Lion’s body was lifted up slightly. It looked like the main purpose of the move was its Knockback effect rather than power.
The Cerberus Lion was unable to stay standing after taking the white tiger’s attack and Sakkyun’s kick one right after another. It slowly fell on its side, slamming to the ground with a deafening thud.
“Heh! How d’you like that?!”
As Sakkyun raised a celebratory shout, his body broke apart into polygons. Even with Yoga reducing the effects of Scorch, the status ailment eventually finished its job. Sakkyun had really risked it all to land that attack. And he looked really cool doing it! He even saluted until he vanished completely!
The Cerberus Lion immediately tried to get up, but that small opening proved fatal.
“Charge, Silver!”
“Redbud, onward! It’s time to put our lives on the line!”
Both Silver and Redbud neighed in response to their knights.
Siegfried and Rais rode right up to the boss. The horses charged at the Cerberus Lion head-on, as if planning to deal whatever damage they could with a body slam. The lion, who had been paying full attention to me and Sakkyun, didn’t even have time to react.
The knights used their lances and the horses their bodies to tear into the giant, golden beast. And there was still more to come. Akari and Filma, riding in tandem with Siegfried and Rais, tossed something right before being thrown from the horses.
“Eat this!”
“Try Rikyu’s newest creation!”
Two silver spheres traced an arc in the air, and the second they landed on the Cerberus Lion—
BOOOOOM!
They caused a huge explosion.
“GROOOAAARRR...!”
“I-It worked! Its HP is depleted!”
“Squeak!”
Their desperate attacks shattered the Cerberus Lion’s HP bar. In its last moments, the boss let out a roar as its massive body burst apart into polygons, almost like fireworks.
“Rawr...”
The Cerberus Lion disappeared along with the flames that had surrounded us and the effects of Scorch. We had really been down to the wire. We wouldn’t have been able to hold on for even one more minute.
Once the dust from the explosion settled, I saw that the only one remaining was Akari, who was lying flat on her face. Siegfried, Rais, and their horses must have died when they collided with the Cerberus Lion, and Filma likely died from self-inflicted bomb damage.
“Akari! You’re alive!”
“Yuto, would you mind healing me?”
“Dang, you only have one HP left?”
“True Grit saved me.”
“Ah, I didn’t know you had that skill.”
True Grit was a skill that could keep a player alive with 1 HP when they would have otherwise faced a one-hit KO—assuming that they had over twenty percent HP before the blow. However, there was only a very low probability of it activating, so it wasn’t that popular of a skill.
“I got it from a random skill scroll,” Akari explained. “This is the first time it’s actually worked.”
Apparently, this was the first time it activated for Akari. Talk about lucky.
“Anyway, we won!” she cheered. “I can’t believe it!”
“We took down that crazy raid boss on our first try? No way...” I muttered in disbelief.
“We really did! We pulled it off!”
While Akari was celebrating our victory, I was more bewildered than anything else. I’d really thought we had no chance of winning.
Just then, everyone who had survived came running over to us. I was glad to see that some of the others who had been hanging on by a thread managed to make it to the end.
“We did it!”
“Victory is ours.”
“We wooon!”
As I looked at everyone’s beaming faces, the fact that we really had won finally started to sink in.
“Wow, we actually did it...”
“We did, Yuto! We beat the boss!”
“We won... Wooooo! Hell yeah, we won!”
“Yaaay!”
“Woo-hooo!”
I was so stoked, I even high-fived Sawyer. Man. That fight had been one close call after another, but we’d managed to pull off a miracle! Although our biggest MVPs were the revive potions. Without those, we would have been wiped out very early in the fight.
“Sawyer, it’s all thanks to you!”
“What? Not at all, I only gave some support here and there... You contributed much more than I did, Yuto.”
“We wouldn’t have won without the revive potions. So we have you, the one who discovered revive potions, to thank! You’re the best!”
“Hardly! Someone else would have made them even if I hadn’t! Your trap and your firecracker played a much bigger role!”
“No, really—”
“Come now, don’t be humble—”
Somehow, we got stuck in a loop of praising each other. Kokuten stepped in to break us out of it.
“Don’t you think that’s about enough? You both did a great job.”
“Kokuten! You survived!”
“Yes, thanks to my Drunken Boxing art, Revitalization (Intoxicated). Good thing I leveled it up.”
Kokuten explained that the art was a self-healing skill that could only be used when a player was Intoxicated. It activated when he stood still and performed a hand gesture.
Other members of our raid party had also stayed alive by using all the special items and skills they possessed. LJO had a huge array of skills and arts available to players, many of which were not very well-known.
“More importantly, we need to check the results of the fight and keep moving,” Kokuten said.
“O-Oh, right you are.”
“Sorry.”
We checked our inventories as we walked across the boss room, which had returned to its original state. I was shocked by how many new items were now in my inventory.
“These drops are something else. I got some Three-Headed Flame Lion Hides and Three-Headed Flame Lion Claws.”
I had received eight hides, four claws, two fangs, six furs, two Flame Manes, and one Flame Tail. I even had one item called a Flame Jewel, which sounded rare. And when I appraised it, I saw that it did in fact have a high rarity.
Name: Flame Jewel
Rarity: 6 / Quality: 10 ★
Effect: A jewel that holds the power of flames.
As far as materials went, they all seemed pretty versatile. Other than the boss-specific items, I also received a lot of ores, such as Silver Ores and Iron Ores. Did that have something to do with us being in a cave? In any case, this had definitely been a profitable battle.
Other members of the party had also received pelts, claws, fangs, fur, and Flame Manes, but not a Flame Tail or Flame Jewel. Those two must have been rare drops. Others had received a Giant Fang, Flame Claw, Evil Eye, a Stuffed Head (Right) and Stuffed Head (Middle). Did those drop thanks to Kettle’s Calling Blessing? There was no way for me to know, since this was the first time this boss had been defeated.
Other raid bosses also dropped two types of rare items, so that wasn’t unique to the Cerberus Lion. I wondered if that meant that Calling Blessing wasn’t effective in increasing the number of rare rewards that players might receive.