Hell, Heaven, and Baron!
While Irea was tasting heaven in Jeong Hana's arms, Kang Minseo was experiencing hell.
The Four Major Dungeons had to be run.
This was something every gamer who had ever touched an RPG knew naturally, without needing someone to sit them down and explain in excruciating detail which items dropped where and why they needed to farm them.
So today, Kang Minseo was running Gemstratholme.
“Guys… the adds, please!!! Guys!!! Aaaaaagh!!! Hit the ones with the skull marks first!!!!”
And Kang Minseo was screaming her lungs out.
“Wow… Miss Minseo, your health is really hanging by a thread.”
“Are we about to hear another ‘Mom, I’m sorry’ moment?”
Today Kang Minseo had recruited two of her DPS from the viewer pool.
Of the remaining two spots, one was taken by the Rogue Sky, and the healer slot was filled by Danina.
Danina unnie…! Unnie! Unnie, unnie! Unnie!
And every single tragedy was coming from Danina.
“U-um… I’ll eat something real quick to recover. This is my first time in this dungeon, so it’s pretty tough.”
A Protection Warrior tank and a Priest healer.
Currently the two best classes in Lost of Fantasy, yet Kang Minseo’s personal experience was telling her otherwise.
“Whoa. There’s a function to eat food like that? I didn’t know.”
“…Excuse me? U-unnie. What did you just say?”
Kang Minseo, who had been desperately stuffing food from her bag into her character’s mouth to restore health, suddenly felt a sharp sting at the back of her head.
“Hmm? Why?”
“That…”
Hoping against hope that it wasn’t true, Kang Minseo frantically clicked on Danina’s character.
Her mana…! Her mana! It’s only half full!!! I’ve never leveled a healer before, but even I know you’re supposed to keep your mana topped off!
A healer’s mana was directly tied to the lives of every party member, not just the tank…
So no matter how busy things got, if the healer said they needed to restore mana, any party with half a brain would wait for them.
“U-unnie— aren’t you out of mana? I have some food, I’ll share it with you.”
“Really? What does eating this do?”
Thankfully, Danina accepted the food.
“Eating this fills both your mana and health completely.”
“Oh my, really? The one I ate last time only filled a little… Whoa, this fills up a lot?”
Kang Minseo rubbed her face with both hands.
donated 1,000 won
[If you miss PaladinJjangjjangman this much just like the post lololololol]
1 donated 1,000 won
[Just how many tanks has she killed so far whoa whoa whoa]
“U-um… the adds, stop, stop… no more mean donations like that…”
donated 1,000 won
[Be honest, it feels good to curse out Danina, right???????]
“Stop!!”
Kang Minseo let out a huge sigh and clicked each of her WASD keys once.
“My condition’s fully recovered now, so shall we start with the boss that’s visible from here? The Black Crusader? It doesn’t look that hard, so we should be fine.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go poke it right away.”
Listening to Sky’s cheerful agreement, Kang Minseo charged toward the ‘Artillery Commander’ while praying the dungeon would end quickly.
“Ah~ I thought since it was called an Artillery Commander it might actually shoot cannons or something, but it’s nothing special.”
“Uh… yeah? There are even two cannons next to it, I thought it would use them…”
The time she had spent recovering her health now felt slightly embarrassing as Kang Minseo realized the boss in front of her was actually easy.
“Wow, this boss is weird.”
“What? Nina unnie, what is?”
“Something keeps spawning behind us.”
“…What?!”
Kang Minseo hurriedly looked toward where Danina was standing.
“Oh, it’s hitting me. Minseo, help.”
“N-no! Unnie!”
Danina stopped healing and waddled over to where Kang Minseo was.
At the same time, the ‘Black Crusader Knights’ that started pouring out from the doorway began bouncing aggro everywhere like crazy.
“Uh, Miss Minseo? What do we do about this?”
“Just finish the Artillery Commander first— huh?”
Contrary to Kang Minseo’s hopes, things were not going well at all.
The reinforcements that burst out from behind the door obviously hadn’t been tagged with aggro.
And when these high-spec trash mobs started swinging their weapons, the DPS players’ health bars began getting shredded at an alarming rate.
“Uh, the heals aren’t coming. Minseo, why is this—”
“Ughhh!! Unnie, I’m sorry! I’ve never leveled a healer before so I don’t knowwww!”
Kang Minseo screamed as she frantically fired her ranged weapon at the adds and tried using her AoE skills.
“Oh, they’re hitting me…”
“Ah! Why won’t this aggro stick?! Why are these adds so tanky!!!”
Every time Danina healed, she generated an absurd amount of aggro.
Jeong Hana calculated that and healed at the right times, but of course Danina had no idea.
“P-please! Somebody…!”
“S-saaaaaaaaaave meeeeeeeeeee!”
In the end, after her party wiped and they were resurrecting, Kang Minseo sent Jeong Hana a whisper asking for strategy tips.
[If You Bleed, I'll Rip Your Guts Out]
Yes, following that strategy should be fine.
“Huh? Unnie. This boss has its own separate strategy?”
Im Harin, who was pressing her chest against my arm, pointed at ‘Baron Roshan’ with her finger and asked.
Baron was the final boss of Gemstratholme’s back gate.
People still didn’t seem to know about it yet, but because of the good items he dropped, quite a few groups were already doing ‘Baron runs.’
“Yeah, it originally has a slightly different strategy.”
“What is it? What is it?”
“Baron summons adds. Like undead skeleton bones and stuff.”
Im Harin’s eyes sparkled as she nodded vigorously.
[Portia]
> Then we will begin.
> 3
> 2
> 1
Unlike with Kang Minseo, Irea kindly announced the countdown in chat before casting a spell at ‘Baron.’
He immediately positioned himself so the boss’s backside faced our group, then dropped Consecration on the ground where he stood.
“A lamb being dragged to the slaughterhouse!”
Along with Baron’s shout, roughly ten skeleton bones were summoned around him.
At the same time, a nauseating purple wave burst out from the ‘slaughterhouse’ where the battle was taking place, shaving a bit of health from every party member.
“See? This is how the adds spawn.”
“O-oh…? But how are we supposed to handle this normally?”
Im Harin didn’t seem particularly surprised as she mindlessly spammed her AoE skills while speaking.
“We’re just AoEing everything, unnie.”
“That’s right. You’re supposed to just AoE everything.”
“Huh? I thought you said it was different?”
“Normally the aggro doesn’t pull this cleanly, you know?”
That was when Lee Siwoo chimed in.
“Looking at our party, isn’t it because Irea’s Consecration is perfectly grabbing all the AoE aggro, so that person can just gather everything and hold it?”
“Pretty much. Plus the Holy Shield the Paladin is holding has reflect damage, right? That’s why we can just stand still and kill it.”
“Then how do you normally kill it?”
“You keep the main group at the tank’s maximum range. When the adds spawn, the healer pulls aggro to bring them over, and you kill them while they’re coming.”
“What’s the main group?”
I pointed with my right hand at the spot where my character and Im Harin’s character were standing.
“Usually the place where the healer and ranged DPS stand is called the main group.”
“Oh… I’ve never heard that before, unnie!”
“Anyway, the reason these skeleton adds are dangerous is because if they suddenly start beating on the tank, the tank’s health will fluctuate wildly and it gets risky. But since Irea’s Holy Shield uptime is almost 100%, it didn’t look like he would die.”
This was another complicated factor—unlike Warriors, Protection Paladins were much better at AoE tanking.
You could say this was the one area where they clearly outperformed Warrior tanks…
“Uptime?”
“Ah… so when you use Holy Shield, the Paladin gets a buff on themselves. Increased block chance, reflect damage, extra threat generation…”
“You mean the duration that buff is maintained throughout the fight?”
“Exactly. Pretty much. He kept Holy Shield up the entire fight without letting it drop for even a single second. So he’s not exactly super beefy… but at least he’s not tofu, you know?”
It was a truly unfortunate truth, but even if I secretly cast Blessing of Sacrifice on Irea’s Paladin, if his block didn’t proc properly his health would still swing wildly.
“Unlike a Warrior tank’s ‘Shield Block,’ a Paladin’s Holy Shield isn’t a skill that guarantees tanking.”
“Wait, really? Then how is that even a tank?”
Both increased the chance of the defensive action called ‘block,’ but for Warriors it was effectively 100%, while for Paladins it was only 30%.
Because the class was designed this poorly, even when Paladins were tanking perfectly fine, if they got unlucky and the boss’s ‘Crush’ crit, and they failed to block it, their body would literally split in half and they would die on the spot.
“That’s why people don’t play it. There’s a reason for everything.”
Anyway, at this moment Irea was holding up against the adds’ attacks as solidly as a top-tier tank, and we were able to freely beat on the stationary Baron Roshan’s backside.
“Still, Irea’s really good at AoE tanking so we don’t have to run around at all. We can just spam AoE and everything dies, which is convenient.”
Lee Siwoo wasn’t wrong.
As long as the tank didn’t die instantly, sticking the adds to the boss’s butt and AoEing them was also better for the DPS players to pump out damage.
“A lamb being dragged to the slaughterhouse!”
In any case, since our DPS players were also calmly standing in place and spamming their AoE skills, Baron’s health dropped at an astonishing rate.
“By the way, unnie. Is this normally the end of the fight here?”
“Well, there is more, but since it’s just an AoE that slowly chips away at our health, it’s not a problem.”
This pattern was why Priests were preferred over Paladins here.
But if the party was geared well enough to do ‘Baron runs,’ the fight wouldn’t last long enough for that AoE damage to become lethal, so it wasn’t a big issue.
Though a fresh group with barely any gear would probably cry a little…
“Oh! Wow! We killed it so fast, unnie! He was riding this super scary skeletal horse but it was nothing special?”
“Right? This place is actually pretty good for Paladins. Since all the enemies are undead, you can use Exorcism and Holy Wrath and stuff, so the damage comes out nicely.”
[Portia]
> Good work everyone!
> The Knight did so well it was easy!
[If You Bleed, I'll Rip Your Guts Out]
> Thank you for coming to our reserved party.
I typed out a moderately business-like message and immediately looted Baron’s corpse.
“Ehh? This game has stuff like this too?”
Distribute the loot
Skeletal Warhorse Reins
[Portia]
> Huh?
The item that surprised everyone was a mount.
It might look like a trinket at first glance, but it was an item that let us use the ‘Skeletal Warhorse’ Baron Roshan rode as our own mount.
“This is… yeah. It’s similar to the White Bone Horse or Sky Bone Horse. It’s a mount. A mount. The skeletal horse Baron was riding earlier.”
“Whoa, whoaaa…! I want this!”
“Then roll for it~”
This was an item that every class had a chance to roll on.
“But Siwoo, you already reserved the orb, so you can’t roll.”
“Ugh… I can’t have it?”
“You already took the orb with priority reservation~ If you try to take the Skeletal Warhorse too, the thousand viewers watching Irea’s stream will probably send you some very warm letters.”
Lee Siwoo was kind enough to immediately give up on rolling after hearing me.
Though it looked like everyone else except him had rolled.
“Ah…!”
“Hm?”
[Portia]
> Ah, I lost by one point.
[NotPotatoWakamo]
> (┬┬﹏┬┬)
‘If You Bleed, I'll Rip Your Guts Out’ rolled 99!
“Looks like I get it~”
“U-unnie! Show me! Hurry! Is it really exactly the same as the one the boss was riding?!”
“Wait a sec, I’ll show you… Wow, I actually got it.”
Back when I used to play, I ran this thing over and over and over and it never dropped, so I eventually gave up.
The fact that it dropped right away was already legendary, but to think I would get it with a roll too.
Anyway, since you couldn’t mount up inside the dungeon, I left with the rest of the party.
And as soon as we were outside, I summoned the Skeletal Warhorse and got on.
“How is it?”
“Whoa… it’s so cool. What the heck! It’s not even comparable to the black horse you get from the Sky Bone or whatever! Unnieee!”
Im Harin clapped her hands and made a huge fuss.
[Portia]
> Wow, this is really cool.
Even Irea, who had just come out of the dungeon, was impressed… Well, the Skeletal Warhorse was a mount that anyone playing Lost of Fantasy at this time would naturally be envious of.
[Ssangmun-dong Fire Shield]
> Whoa
> Knight-nim what is that???
> Where do you get it??????????????????
And whether it was good or bad timing, Kang Minseo, who had been standing in front of the back gate, saw me and spoke up.
[Portia]
> Ah hello Miss Minseo
> This is the final boss of the back gate, Baron. It drops if you kill him.
Irea’s kind answer spread like wildfire through the community, creating the reason everyone now had to do ‘Baron runs.’
Along with my embarrassing screenshot.