The First Gate Falls, But the Second Gate is Hell
After Perkle's raid ended, I spent ten hours a day grinding raids. The golden age of raiding had begun.
The Gojadan were venting their frustration at the endless raid marathon, while the brave ones launched their independence movement.
“How brave. I’ll ban you.”
As history has always shown, the fate of independence fighters was never pretty. Time passed, and the day of the raid finally arrived. The viewers let out cries of pure joy.
“You guys like it that much?”
Well, I’ll admit the golden age was intense, but I didn’t think it warranted this much chaos. Time passed, and the rest of the raid party gathered. The rogue looked at me with a worried expression and asked,
“Why didn’t you come to the guild offline meetup? Did something happen?”
“Haha, well, you see…”
When I tried to explain, the priest next to me answered for me.
“Ah, Mr. Chuwang had to attend his maternal grandfather’s funeral, so he was late.”
“Ah…! I’m so sorry!”
“Haha, it’s fine…”
I kept saying it was okay, but the rogue apologized multiple times out of guilt. I had accidentally pulled a Talulla.
The viewers were busy laughing, but on the contrary, I was busy sweating over my lie.
This is going to be a problem if they find out…
The reason I skipped the offline meetup was simple. It was too hot. The temperature had shot up to 30°C that day. Still, disappearing without a word would have been rude, so I lied and said my maternal grandfather had passed away. Don’t worry though—I got permission from Mrs. Kim before telling the lie.
Time passed and all the raid members had gathered. The paladin clapped his hands to gather everyone’s attention.
Everyone, you all know about the Perkle event this time, right?
I nodded along with the rest of the party. This time, the game company had gone all out with the Perkle event to attract a massive wave of new players. The first party to clear Perkle would have their characters featured on the official homepage, plus they’d receive a special title and pet.
Clearing Perkle is great, but please remember our goal is to have fun.
“Of course we know that.”
“Want to bet on which week we’ll clear it?”
While the raid members were making bets, a Toto pool had also started in our chat.
1. Clear in Week 1 — 3%
2. Clear in Week 2 — 65%
3. Clear in Week 3 — 32%
Hmm, so the reverse odds are around 3%?
It wasn’t an incomprehensible number. After all, the legion commander boss being released this time was literally named “The Strongest Legion Commander.” It wasn’t for nothing that we had spent weeks analyzing the other bosses’ patterns.
Alright, everyone’s eaten, so let’s get started.
[Would you like to join the raid? YES/NO]
When I pressed YES, we were transported to a map we had never seen before.
Heh, that person won’t be able to come here at all.
I looked up and saw the first gate boss appear—the one commonly called the Alien boss. I marveled at the tentacles extending from its hands, exactly like in the PV.
“Whoa… I wonder what it does with those?”
I was curious what those tentacles would be used for, but that wasn’t important right now. As soon as the boss appeared, we didn’t hesitate to pour damage into it. After its health dropped by a few bars, the first pattern activated.
[You won’t have your way!]
The raid members were grabbed by the alien’s tentacles and hurled over the castle wall.
“Ah, sorry.”
“I’ll head back quickly.”
The members who had been thrown over the wall were swimming in the water and carefully climbing back up the wall. Looks like we won’t clear the first run…
Getting caught by the tentacles caused a massive DPS loss, and everyone except the paladin and me was barely dealing any damage. Just as I predicted, the first try ended in failure due to insufficient DPS.
The viewers kept cheering us on through our repeated attempts, and we responded by challenging it again and again. Thankfully, the patterns in phase one were a mishmash of everything we’d seen so far, so the paladin and I had no trouble dodging them. We explained the patterns we understood to the rest of the party.
“Shall we try again?”
After the explanation, we challenged it once more. Thanks to the explanations, the raid became much smoother. And finally, on our fourteenth attempt, we reached the last instant-death pattern.
[I won’t let you get away with this!]
“Everyone, go to your assigned positions!”
Following the raid leader’s command, we each moved to our spots as the alien made its final desperate attack.
[My children! Use them as hosts!]
Countless eggs appeared around every character except the supporters. Everyone poured burst damage into the eggs. If left alone, the eggs’ defense would rise while the characters’ attack power would weaken. If even one egg hatched, the entire party would die instantly. So we had to destroy them as fast as possible.
Please hurry…!
Finally the eggs shattered, and with a thud—
[Please… forgive me…]
The phase one boss collapsed onto the ground and disintegrated into dust. We had cleared phase one in just three hours.
“Wow, we finished so fast!”
“Right? It only took us about three hours… I bet we’re the fastest so far!”
The raid members chattered excitedly about clearing it in three hours. I turned off my mic and stretched.
“Ugh, how about it? Looks like we’ll succeed, right?”
Before starting the stream, I had proposed a bet with the viewers. Once again, it was a serious showdown with seven days of streaming break and a female cam day on the line. Naturally, the subject was whether I could clear this raid in the first week. This time, I was definitely going to win and go on that trip to Japan!
Just in case, I asked the viewers,
“Can’t you just let me win? If I meet Hyume-chan, I’ll tell you all the behind-the-scenes stories.”
“……”
I was already perfectly satisfied just chatting with about a thousand viewers, so I couldn’t understand why they cared so much about my success. I said exactly what I was thinking.
“I’ll run my own stream, so can’t you just stop worrying about it?”
Just one sentence and the chat shot up at an alarming speed. Continuing would only tire me out, so I ignored them and moved on to the second gate.
When we entered the second gate, we were transported to some kind of temple. Gravity changed and a parkour map formed.
“From here on we’ll have to do parkour. Everyone, please be careful not to fall.”
The raid members began parkouring toward the temple. The paladin and I, who had good control, smoothly made it to the destination.
“Uwaaaaaah!!!”
With a huge scream, the person at the very back of the priest fell. The anxious members raised their weapons.
“……?”
Contrary to expectations, nothing happened, and the priest also respawned.
When the other members saw the priest respawn safely, they relaxed and continued parkouring—only to fall straight down themselves. Watching them fall like that made me a little nervous.
There really isn’t any penalty, right?
Praying there was no penalty, we arrived at the second gate boss’s temple.
[How dare you enter that person’s temple? Such insolence.]
The second gate boss, who looked like a strategist, opened a magic tome and used an area-of-effect skill.
Skill: God’s Protection
But since the paladin had applied his shield, we should have been able to endure it safely…
The party has been wiped out.
“……?”
For a moment I wondered if my eyes were broken.
After the party wipe, the raid fell into chaos.
“W-what just happened?”
“R-right? We definitely had the shield up…”
The fact that even the paladin, who had the highest health, died in one hit despite the shield meant the same would happen to the other classes. There was only one possible cause.
“Paladin, this seems like…”
“It looks like the boss gets stronger by the number of times we fall.”
Apparently the symbol drawn under the boss’s health bar was a buff that stacked with each fall.
“Ah… I thought it was just a death counter…”
“We’ll have to be more careful from now on.”
After that we reached the boss’s temple again. This time we had only fallen twice, so the damage was noticeably weaker. And that was when hell truly began.
We faced an endless barrage of buggy mechanics and nightmarish patterns. After about six hours, both the viewers and the raid members were starting to lose their minds.
“Not really?”
I had survived long periods without sleep even during war. Back then I could go a whole week without sleeping, and at this point I could naturally adjust my sleep schedule. The paladin seemed to notice the other members’ fading concentration and made a suggestion.
“How about we try one more time, and if it still doesn’t work, we continue tomorrow?”
“Yeah…”
“Sounds good…”
“Let’s just finish it quickly.”
Our party gave it our all, but the game’s relentless trolling eventually forced us to give up.
A little disappointing.
It was incredibly disappointing for me. It felt like if we just pushed a little more, we could have done it…
Because of the bugs we had to quit, but it really did feel like with just a tiny bit more effort we could have cleared it. Still, raiding wasn’t a solo game, and our party members were all about having fun, so we had no choice but to stop.
The raid members said their goodbyes.
“Everyone, hang in there…”
“We’ll definitely clear Perkle!”
One by one, the members logged out with exhausted voices. I ended the stream and was about to turn off my computer when I received a private Discord message from the paladin.
Roughly how many hours do you think it’ll take?
I was genuinely speechless. Why was he asking me that? I wanted to wash up quickly, so I gave a vague reply.
I don’t know either.
Then I quickly washed up and fell asleep on the soft bed that had been waiting for me.