If Only They Cooperate
"No choice, then. Formation Two."
"Positions!"
After Yugi's noble sacrifice, the players moved to their stations without a moment's hesitation.
Failing to stop the Ogre Lord's Phase Two skill — Revenge — had stung, but they'd seen it coming. While the skill was active, any attack on the ogre sent sword aura flying back at whoever dealt the damage, so their options had been limited. Throw a shield on Yugi, the one who'd hit hardest, try to keep him alive — and if that failed, cut their losses clean.
Shiiing.
Having completed its Revenge, the Ogre Lord wheeled around, crimson eyes blazing. The heroes stood scattered, carefully spaced so a single sweep couldn't take them all.
Thud!
The Ogre Lord's speed surged. In an instant its greatsword came crashing down toward Haring.
KRA-KOOM!!!
Haring barely twisted clear.
Phase Two drops Revenge, but speed and mass go through the roof. Melee can't even trade hits.
Just keep running if you can.
"Easy for you to say…"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOOOM!!
"How am I supposed to dodge all of this?!"
"Haring!"
"Kill it already! I'm actually gonna die out here!"
Haring clenched her teeth and ran — and ran. Every dodge left shallow cuts from the trailing sword aura, but nothing fatal. Airi-style Swordsmanship, built for defense, helped more than a little.
While Haring scrambled for her life, Nya-nya, Ka-zen, and Yong-ba — who'd been catching their breath — poured on the pressure without pause. A dozen spells and arrows hammered down, and the Ogre Lord broke off its pursuit to glare at the ranged line. Then it glanced down at Haring.
"Krrrk."
FWOOOSH!!
"!"
"Nya-nya!"
In a single bounding leap the Ogre Lord vaulted past Haring, its blade already swinging for Nya-nya and Ka-zen. For a creature over ten meters tall, the speed was almost impossible to believe.
Nya-nya watched the sword come for her and carefully raised her staff.
Sixth-rank magic: Teleport.
Fwaaat!!
The Ogre Lord's greatsword smashed into nothing but empty floor.
"Krrrk?!"
"Hah! It worked!"
"It did. Well done."
Nya-nya and Ka-zen reappeared roughly twenty meters from the impact point. Thirty meters was the hard limit, and overuse would overload her — but in a fight like this, spatial magic was worth its weight in gold.
Nya-nya clenched her trembling hands and sketched several magic circles into the air. Then she let out a long breath of relief.
Good thing I only drilled one spell…
Compared to basic magic like Shield or Mana Wave, Teleport's formula was brutally complex — difficulty on par with a fifth-rank spell. Focusing on nothing but Teleport after the fundamentals was paying off right now.
While the Ogre Lord reeled, Haring and Hidene closed the gap and slammed into its back. Yong-ba loosed arrows from maximum range with cold precision, and Nya-nya and Ka-zen answered with more magic.
Ssshhh…
"Sword-aura pattern!"
"I've got five o'clock — moving!"
"Three o'clock's clear over here!"
"Seven's clear too! Nya-nya, Ka-zen, this way!"
"Move!"
Around the fifty-percent mark of Phase Two, a wrongness filled the air and the ogre strode to the center of the audience chamber. Then it attacked — exactly the way it did when casting Revenge.
Slash! Slash! Slash!!!
Three blades of sword aura tore across the chamber, blanketing everything. Instant-kill damage, according to Hajin. The kind of pattern that said if you don't know, you die — anyone walking in blind would have been wiped for certain.
But Lea's disciples already knew. They also knew that standing behind an inverted goddess statue kept you safe. Specifically, only the statues that weren't weeping black miasma.
"Sword aura! Sword aura!"
"Ugh, how many times is it gonna use this?!"
"Three times total — move!"
"Eight o'clock… ah, it's flowing."
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!
In the middle of it all, Yong-ba picked the wrong inverted statue and got split into Yong / Ba the same way Yugi had — but it barely slowed the clear.
How much time passed after that?
Clang!
Six Mana Waves smashed into the ogre's sword and shattered it to pieces.
BOOM!
The audience chamber shuddered.
"Phase Three."
"…Are we really clearing this on the first try?"
"Can we not jinx it?"
Phase Three had begun.
From Phase Three on, the clear gets fuzzy.
The coalition raid barely made it in, but everyone was so busy fighting over last hit that nobody properly analyzed the patterns.
They only got it down to maybe twenty percent of Phase Three, so the details are a blank.
Is there a Phase Four? If the game has a conscience, no. Phase Three alone is already ridiculous.
Phase Three. Possibly the Ogre Lord's final transformation.
Haring and the rest of Lea's disciples had put their heads together before entering the altar, but no real answer had come of it. There was no more information, and not many chances left.
Sure, they could always find another key — but according to Hajin, the ogre colony was crawling with eyes. He'd been drawing attention, so it hadn't shown yet; if their entry count climbed and rankers or top guilds caught on, they'd either lock them out or crash the altar for a last-hit free-for-all. On top of that, the tremor that kicked off Phase Three could be felt from outside.
So as long as they'd come this far, they had to finish it now.
"We finish it… right?"
"Two more people wouldn't change much anyway. We do it."
"Yeah, fair."
"Then I'll use it. Everyone, please step back."
Step. Step.
Nya-nya walked out in front of them all and drew a staff that looked like a shard of blue crystal.
Crackle…
With every step, cold rolled off her. The ground beneath her feet froze solid. The other players wrapped their coats tight and fell back — and the Ogre Lord, finished with its transformation, flinched and stared. More precisely, it stared at the staff in her hands, then charged.
"KRAAAAH!!"
Frost's End.
Before the attack could land, glacial power locked the ogre — and the entire audience chamber — in ice.
Rrrrumble…
"…!"
"What was that?"
"Someone hit Phase Three? Hajin?"
"Hajin's group was the one hunting the colony today, yeah."
At the forward base outside the ogre colony, roughly forty top rankers — including BeastkinLover — who'd spent two months gearing up for the raid turned toward the sudden tremor. The source was the altar where the Ogre Lord waited. A tremor meant someone had entered Phase Three. Phase Three always opened with a massive quake as the Ogre Lord awakened.
"Did they pull people together like us? Or form a coalition?"
"Hajin's stream isn't on."
"Must be running it private. No way they actually clear it, right?"
"Come on. No way…"
The rankers shook their heads. They'd upgraded their gear plenty over the past two months, and they still weren't confident. Phases One and Two they could force through somehow — but Phase Three had no intel and was absurdly strong. The brief taste they'd gotten said you'd need three or four twenty-man parties just to make a dent.
Click.
"Heh. Don't worry. They'll fail."
"Yeoje."
"As long as you're with Cheonsang, the glory is yours — not Hajin's little crew."
That was why BeastkinLover and the other top rankers had taken Cheonsang's hand: clear the raid together, split the share. They knew the previous coalition had collapsed into a last-hit brawl…
But we can't just walk away.
BeastkinLover and the rest of the high rankers wanted the Ogre Lord dead desperately. If they kept circling each other and someone else finished the kill, they'd walk away with nothing. So they'd agreed to go in together.
"You're really giving us eighty percent between the two of us?"
"Of course. On the condition that Cheonsang lands the final blow."
"…If you're lying—"
"Please. Trust us. We've grown rather pressed for time ourselves."
Seated across an antique table, Yeoje smiled and lifted her teacup. BeastkinLover's party, a second party filling the seat Heurisk had left vacant, and Cheonsang's own party — a sixty-person coalition raid. With that much firepower, as long as they simply cooperated, a clean clear was well within reach.
As long as they cooperate.
Unfortunately, the newly formed coalition was destined to end in failure. They would push into the late stages of Phase Three — only for both alliances to lunge for the last hit at once, and for the boss to prove even stronger than expected. After that, petty friction would rise, and the coalition would dissolve. Then Cheonsang, armed with the intel they'd gathered, would quietly finish the clear alone.
Neat and tidy.
She set her cup down, dreaming of a happy future. The moment had come. The moment Cheonsang would soar even higher in this world. For the full-scale expansion of the territory already under construction, the Corrupted Ogre Lord had to fall by Cheonsang's hand—
"Huh?"