Close One
(Photo of the nest sealed behind a translucent barrier)
Had some free time so I figured I'd go check out Dragon-chan, but the place is locked down.
Pretty sure this wasn't here last time I came.
It's dead quiet inside too. Where'd everybody go?
(Photo of a solo raid party that got absolutely wrecked)
Ever since the alliance raid disbanded, people keep trying all over the place and just keep failing. No answers in sight.
Even the streamer I watch is basically half-giving up at this point.
We need this thing dead before the real main quest even opens up. Ugh.
The plains of the Central Continent.
A vast stretch of land just south of the northern territories — and it was here that Haring and the rest of Lea's disciples arrived at the ogre colony.
Under normal circumstances, they would have needed to complete the main quest, its linked side quests, and secure the key that unlocked the path to the Altar where the Ogre Lord dwelled. Even for a ranker, that process would have taken a solid three months.
Haring, however, had gone looking for Adela the moment she set foot in the royal capital.
She's gotten stronger again. Come to take down the Ogre Lord, have they?
I'll write you a letter of recommendation as Knight-Commander.
It had been Adela who first told Lea about the Ogre Lord's existence — which meant that with Adela's influence behind them, the usual string of unnecessary quests could be skipped entirely. Haring hadn't known any of this, of course. She'd simply taken her brother Hajin's advice that greasing the right important person's palm tended to produce good results, and gone looking.
"Fast skip, love it."
"Love it~"
"Is this the Lea-chan buff…?"
Having skipped the entire process of building "trust" through deeds in the capital, Haring's party made straight for the ogre colony. All that remained was obtaining the key that opened the Altar's gate.
The drop rate was abysmal, of course — you'd normally have to kill nearly two hundred elite ogres to get one. But—
The key? I've got extras. I'll give you a couple. Built up a stockpile while farming.
In exchange, you owe me a boss clear.
Hajin — Haring's older brother — handed over two keys. Each key was consumed per raid party, and the party size cap was twenty. For Haring's group of six, that was more than enough.
CRACK!
SLASH-SLASH-SLASH!
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!
"Hah! This side's clear!"
"Swept the other side too."
"We've gotten so strong."
"This area's done!"
They tore into the ogre colony like a storm and wiped the place clean. Gear and raw skill might still leave room for improvement, but their levels sat in the high fifties. The previous generation of rankers had been stuck in the high thirties to low-to-mid forties — a qualitative gulf. And as Lea's disciples, they had also obtained a hidden piece that massively boosted every single stat. Ogres simply weren't in their league.
Woom! Woom! Woom!
CRAAAAASH!!!
"…Nya-nya, are you for real?"
"Hehe. I've improved a bit, haven't I?"
The most stunning performance of all belonged to Nya-nya. She swept away dozens of ogres with a barrage of mana waves — a spell called Mana Pulse — firing off more than a dozen at once. And she'd done it without even using the Frost Staff.
The others stared at her in open admiration, and Nya-nya scratched her head sheepishly.
"Guess a Second-Order mage really is built different."
"Ehehe… I'm not quite there yet. My second star hasn't fully formed either."
"Nya-nya, you're amaaazing…!"
"Wait, what's a Second-Order?"
"Two cores, two stars — 'Second-Order' just sounds cooler, doesn't it?"
"Does it?"
In any case, the ogre colony was cleared. The ogres here respawned over time, so speed was essential. At last, Lea's disciples stood before the towering Altar.
An altar steeped in black and green. Roughly thirty meters tall and roughly square in shape, its peak held a black skull that radiated an ominous aura. Dark demonic fluid seeped from the skull and trickled down the stairs.
Nya-nya swallowed hard and tightened her grip on her staff.
"It's a little… creepy."
"Now this is a proper boss fight. All right! Everyone ready?"
"Yes!"
"Been ready for five minutes."
"We've got two attempts, so we don't have to clear it on the first try. We've got the patterns down — just stick to formation."
"Okay."
"Let's smash it quick and go home."
"Right."
Haring took the lead and lifted the key. The moment she pushed it into the central recess that served as the Altar's entrance, the space around them transformed.
Click.
RUMBLE!
"Oh."
"Here we go."
RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!
The altar, still dripping black demonic fluid, had become a throne room covered in eerie sigils. Along the walls stood statues of the Goddess with their heads twisted backward, black fluid streaming from their eyes.
Six heroes dropped into the center of the throne room's entrance. And watching them from a massive throne, a ten-meter-tall Corrupted Ogre Lord rose to its feet.
Haring drew her sword and took the front. Yugi and Hidene — fellow melee fighters — joined her in the vanguard. Yong-ba, the archer, positioned himself at the rear, while the mages Nya-nya and Ka-zen prepared their spells from the center of the formation.
A brief silence fell.
Woom! Woom! Woom!
"Incoming!"
"GROOOOOOAAAR!!!"
Phase One began.
The opening attack was the Ogre Lord's roar — a sonic assault that dealt minor damage and inflicted a fear effect on players below level thirty or those with weak wills. For Lea's disciples, sitting comfortably in the high fifties, it was nothing. Living alongside a dragon, an ogre's bellowing barely registered as background noise.
SLASH! CRACK!
"Grk?!"
"One hit and get out!"
Haring's blade and Hidene's spear grazed the ogre's flanks and pulled away. The creature immediately swung the massive bludgeon in its hand, but its targets were already gone.
The Ogre Lord's attacks always land if the person who hit it is still nearby.
Per-person reset is roughly… three seconds?
The Corrupted Ogre Lord's special ability: Vengeance. With a radius of about ten meters, it was a guaranteed-hit skill designed to prevent melee fighters from landing consecutive attacks.
The bludgeon carved empty air. Waiting for that exact moment, Yugi's dual axes came crashing down on the Ogre Lord's nape.
CRACK!
"Tough bastard."
"Get out!"
WHOOSH!
Yugi sprang backward like a jackrabbit, clearing the bludgeon's path before it could come down on him. The moment the ogre's attack failed, Haring and Hidene — their cooldowns reset — struck again.
The mages and the archer held their fire, weapons trained on the ogre. That, too, was part of the plan they'd agreed on beforehand.
Phase One is manageable with just the melee DPS. If aggro pulls toward the ranged, the Vengeance range and timing calculations get messy.
Sure, you could just overwhelm it with raw firepower and numbers — but we've only got a handful of people, right?
Then save it. You'll get to go all out in Phase Two.
CRAAACK!!
"Hahaha! Can't even land a hit!"
"Don't get cocky."
"What, this is nothing!"
Just as dual-axe-wielding Yugi cheerfully declared, the Ogre Lord couldn't catch the heroes swarming it like gnats. An ordinary level-thirty hero would have landed one hit and failed to escape the Vengeance radius — but these were heroes in the high fifties. Landing a strike and clearing ten meters afterward was hardly a challenge.
They hammered the ogre for roughly ten minutes.
"Grrrr…"
"!"
"Phase Two!"
"Ready! Mages, get ready!"
The Ogre Lord's eyes blazed red, dark green blood dripping from its wounds. Black vapor erupted from its massive body, and the bludgeon in its hands sharpened into a blade — a dark-steel sword etched with a grotesque skull motif. Gripping it with both hands, the ogre locked its gaze on Yugi, the one who had struck it the most.
Ah, and one person has to be sacrificed.
The ability's literally called Vengeance. In Phase Two it fires a sword aura at whoever hit it the most during Phase One — basically an instant kill.
The second Phase Two starts, send whoever took the most hits to the opposite side of the room.
Can you block it? Well… I've never really tried.
"W-we can block it!"
"Probably?"
"We have to block it! Hey!"
SHWAAAAAK!!
The sword aura came screaming in — large enough to fill a third of the throne room, a space the Ogre Lord itself could freely leap across. Yugi stood on the far side from the rest of the party, jaw clenched.
WOOOOM!!!
Thirty layers of shields, prepared in advance by the two mages, enveloped him. A powerful barrier forged by the combined might of mages who each bore two stars.
And then—
CRAAASH-SHATTER!!!
All thirty layers of shielding shattered to pieces, and Yugi's body was cleaved cleanly in two.
"Can't block it."
"Yeah, can't block it."
"Yuginong… he was a good man."
"Close one."