The Gamer Chapter 1612 – Raid and Adventures 7 – Boss 1: Desolation General (Patreon)

“Gather around!” John shouted and clapped his hands. The combination of sounds cut through the noise of the half-dispersed harem, filling out the spacious living room. They had eaten, they had enjoyed themselves, they had chattered, and now it was time to get back to work.

The entirety of the gathered women joined John by the table. Lee had provided them with one with a screen integrated into the surface, making the map creation they used for planning purposes even easier. With a simple touch, John connected his mind to the device using Travel Computing. The screen flickered to life. An attached hard drive loaded various art assets and John threw in pictures of the new enemies by connecting the Harem Comms with the drive.

“How convenient,” Lulu remarked, following the map getting put together. Various tokens for the haremettes were loaded in. “Why do we all have to have our faces on there, except you and Metra?”

“Metra because I want her to keep the habit of entering Raid fights in armour instead of only putting it on when it gets ‘challenging’,” John explained.

“Always this serious, this guy,” Metra joked.

“And me because I don’t like looking at pictures of myself.”

“Neither do I,” Undine threw in.

“Ah, but I like looking at pictures of you and I am in charge of Raid preparations,” John rebutted. “Therefore, y’all have to take it.”

“Scarlett?” Undine threw the vastly more powerful technomancer a requesting glance.

The redhead shook her head. “I’m not becoming the middleman between his words and the input device again. Suck it up, he’s in charge.”

“That’s a tone shift,” Lulu remarked with a seductive smile. “Usually you’re all like, ‘you think you’re in charge?’ and then you’re like…” Lulu took a deep breath, before putting on an alluring enthusiastic and loud play. “‘AH! Yes! Master! Oh, yes, yesh, ushe me, uuuuushee meeeeeeeeee! Pull my reeed haaairrrr, I’m cummm-hhh----mmmm.’”

The imperial tomboy giggled, putting a sudden end to her simulated spasms. The short display was long enough to make Scarlett hide her eyes behind her hand, raised in frustration and embarrassment. It was also enough that John’s barely calmed erection was right back where he had left it.

He sighed and let that be what it was, he did not have time to take care of it before they headed back out. “Alright, so here’s the basic situation…” The lay of the land appeared on the screen.


“…we have one boss at the centre and five starting adds, all of them patrolling. Battlefield is about 30 by 30 metres, so easily crossed by people of our level. Main boss has a giant sword, so we can expect the slow but devastating variety. We’ll know quick enough if Gaia is throwing us a curveball. Going by standard design ideas of fights like these, we will need one main tank for the boss and sturdy melee DPS that can hold their own against the soldiers or ranged DPS that can burst them down before they get in range. There might be tank swapping involved.”

John looked up from the map for a moment, to point at Aclysia, Gnome, and Metra.

“You three are going to be dealing with this. Metra will be the main tank. I want to test if we can let her solo the main boss. Undine, you’re obviously coming along. I’ll participate with the Creator Puppet, ice model, to sync up with Aclysia.” He counted with his fingers. “That puts us at 5 out of 8. I’d like to put in Momo, for the extra area coverage with her shields; Sylph, to burst down individual adds; and Salamander, to see if we can bunch the soldiers up and blow them up. We’ll do 5 attempts, then reconsider with what we have learned. All in agreement?”

Agreement came from all sides. Lorelei softly shook her head when he looked at her. Any visions she had were not useful to the forming of the first strategy here. It was all going to be trial and error.

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“SOLDIERS OF THE CHARRED GOD, EARN YOUR KEEP!” the Desolation General howled as the party stormed the field. “TARGET THE BEARERS OF HIS CRACKLING IRE!”

Just with that phrase, John knew the first attempt was already doomed. Above the heads of Metra, Salamander, and Sylph, markers like burning torches appeared. The soldiers on patrol beelined towards the targets that were thusly targeted, ignoring all other targets. The boss himself charged towards Metra, although it couldn’t be said whether that was because of the marker or because she was just the closest.

The trio of marked fighters were also those that had entered the field ahead of everyone else. That Metra was marked was good and that Salamander was marked may have been handleable, but Sylph being marked was downright terrible, especially once it turned out that the markers were more than just visual aids for the party.

Sparks of fire bounced from the hovering torches down to those affected by them. Every two seconds, such a spark seared their flesh, growing stronger with each repetition.

Regarding the attempt as doomed already, John ran past the soldiers, giving Aclysia the order to help Sylph and Salamander kite them for as long as they could. In the timeframe he was given, he explored the map. Most importantly, he wanted to check out the various bonfires around the map. There was the massive one at the centre, three medium sized ones all around and five smaller ones near the edge of the map.

Touching the large one did nothing. Same was true for the medium ones. However, when he touched one of the smaller ones, the torch above Sylph’s head was transferred to him. Immediately, all the soldiers after her contorted to face him and charged.

‘Well, that’s unfortunate,’ John thought, while four soldiers, two more having spawned, rammed glowing spears into the Creator Puppet, ripping it apart instantly.

Attempt 2 ironed out the initial issues. They let Aclysia, Metra, and Gnome take the lead, only following into the battlefield after they had been marked. John joined Aclysia on the right flank, Sylph and Gnome took the right, Metra took the centre.

First good news was that this was fire damage. In other words, Aclysia went entirely unaffected by the mechanic, no matter how much it would ramp. Metra and Gnome did not have that advantage, although the initial damage was pitiful compared to their massive health bars. That gave the party ample time to familiarize themselves with the moves of the soldiers, the general, and the initial set of mechanics.

The soldiers had no special attacks. They were granted an attack buff if they were in close proximity to each other and had solid teamwork, using the pikes as centrepieces, while the few that wielded swords attempted to be the horns, attacking from the sides. It was dangerous enough that the adds had to be respected. Their numbers were also constantly growing, two new ones spawning from opposite corners of the map every ten seconds.

The general fought like a cumbersome giant, which was a nice way to confirm what his looks indicated. His swings were wide, powerful, but slow. Every fifth strike, his attack would ripple outwards in a cone shape. Getting caught in it was damaging and triggered the torch dot, but not immediately lethal.

That was, until the torch dot began to seriously ramp up. After about a half a minute of fighting, the ticks were up to a tenth of Gnome and Metra’s HP. They had to find a solution fast. First one John thought of was the small bonfire, but that ended with the torch from Aclysia transferring to him. ‘That’s either really unlucky or it’s the closest one,’ John thought, then directed Sylph to the one near Gnome.

A sacrificial move, it had to be said. The arcvolt elemental did as instructed. As John had guessed, the one from Gnome jumped over to her, confirming that it was based on who was closest to that bonfire. It did not, however, reset the dot’s intensity. A smouldering arc of fire enveloped Sylph, taking more than half of her HP off.

John had her zap to the nearby medium-sized bonfire. That reduced the torch back to its initial, minimally bothersome size. The bonfire she had touched burned brighter, more intensely. In the distance, a horn rang.

Before they could find out what that meant, Metra touched the giant bonfire in the middle, as per John’s request to do so. The fire of her torch fed into the massive pyre, which then unleashed it as a wave of white hot fire, washing over the entire battlefield. John and Sylph were instantly taken out, the combination of dot ticks and the fire wave doing them in.

Attempts 3 to 5 were all spent on confirming or testing hunches regarding the mechanics. Small bonfires transferred the dot from whichever bearer was closest to whoever was touching the fire. Medium bonfires reset the dot to zero, but could only be used once and decreased the cooldown between add spawns by 1 second each. The central bonfire also reset the dot and did not appear to have an upper limit, but unleashed a fire wave equal to the current dot level over the entire battlefield.

On the fifth attempt, they also found out that the Desolation General had a move that let him manually explode the torch above one of the targets’ heads. Exact conditions and effects were up for further scouting. Since the boss had picked Aclysia and she hadn’t once cleansed the dot over the two minutes they got into that attempt, it had instantly wiped them.

They returned to the living room, gathered the fighters, and went back to discussion. Eliana was also there. The crafting crew, Lulu and Nathalia were all out doing their own thing.

“Alright, so,” John threw up the map again, “first things first, the boss does obviously have a mechanic so we can’t fully exploit the Fire Immunity, but it’s still a massive HP saver, both from the dot and the fire waves. Beatrice, you’ll join. Sylph, she’ll replace you.”

“Boooo! Reasonable decision, boooo!” the volt bunny complained.

“The soldiers do get a damage buff while being near each other, but they don’t get their speed or defences upped, so we can play around that. AoE damage works well here. Lydia, I want you in as well. You’ll replace Momo.”

“Understood.”

“Reading time,” the fairy maid sighed, relieved.

John considered for a moment if he wanted to tag out Metra. The First of Wrath could only make use of her special ability until she reset the torch. Unless she used one of the medium bonfires, she would trigger the fire wave, which her magic apparently considered as her partaking in other people’s fights. The result was a crashing of her power, and since that went on a considerable cooldown once she was ripped out of it that way, she couldn’t restart it for the rest of the fight.

The only viable replacement was Ehtra though and John hesitated to tag Ehtra in. Her teamwork was still worse and he wasn’t entirely sure if her defences would fare better against the boss than Metra’s. The First of Wrath was certainly sturdier, courtesy of the 25% damage reduction she gained from keeping her Fury maxed out. Ehtra could, conceivably, deal more damage and she had better self-healing thanks to the Blood Halo.

John decided to keep Metra in for the time being.

“What I find confusing,” Undine said, “is what the smaller bonfires are for.”

“I can only assume there’s a mechanic down the line that demands swapping targets?” John considered. “Or maybe it’s for an alternative approach to the fight? Swapping the dot around constantly so the damage is spread?”

“Opinion: we will see. Let us advance,” Beatrice chimed in.

A solid idea to have.

By attempt 10, their layout looked like this.


On the left flank, Aclysia, John, and Lydia were dealing with adds and on the right flank Gnome, Beatrice and Salamander were doing the same. On average, there were five enemy soldiers alive on the left side and three on the right. This was due to the distribution of fighters. Aclysia and the Creator Puppet’s overlapping ice auras constantly damaged the soldiers, while Beatrice and Salamander dealt their damage in repeated bursts. The result of that was that the enemies on the left side typically died simultaneously, while the right side was dealing with them more piecemeal.

Both approaches worked though and they found ample time to support Metra with the main boss. Damage from the adds was largely avoidable, which reduced their primary injury sources to mechanics related to the hovering torches. Since those were all coming in intervals, Undine had a decently easy time coping with them.

There was a rhythm to this that they had to learn, about how to properly juggle the amount of torch stacks and when to cleanse them. They had to stagger the cleanses so the group-wide damage did not become too much all at once. They also had to allow the people with the torches to move, although that was a minor issue.

They found the use for the minor bonfires in the mechanic that had ended their fifth attempt. The manual detonation the boss did was tied to the number of adds they had killed, making it predictable as long as they kept the counting up. The ability always targeted the one with the highest stacks, but that explosion did not actually deal damage to the one ‘holding’ the torch marker. Further, the size of the explosion scaled with the number of stacks.

What could be done, therefore, was to have the person they wanted the marker to be attached to and a mobile damage dealer on two of the smaller fires. Once it came time for the boss to fire the manual explosion, the mobile damage dealer would take the torch, causing it to explode harmlessly in a corner, and then the tank would immediately take it back, preventing the adds from changing targets.

It was somewhat unnecessary. The tank could just as well move up into a corner on their own and wait out the explosion. Doing it this way allowed the second DPS on that side to continue attacking for about three extra seconds. A tiny upside, but tiny upsides mounted.

That there was more to these small bonfires did not become apparent until day 2 of the tries. Attempt 15 was the first pull of that morning and they pushed straight to the second phase of the boss for the first time. The remaining five members of the Raid each were given a blue flame at that point.

Additionally, there was a bomb. It took the shape of some kind of hovering crystals that fed the blue flame. There was no damage over time component, only a growing flame that John could easily guess would be lethal once it reached a certain size.

Using the small bonfires, they could claim the bomb from someone else, causing it to feed their fire instead. The mechanic was obvious from there: through careful positioning and a game of hot potato, they had to keep the flame from growing too large above any of them.

All the while the soldiers kept on pouring into the field.

The individual mechanics were all straightforward. It was the layering that made it all difficult. They had to be in position to pass over the crystal to the next person by the designated small bonfire, but they also had to be in position to take the original torch when it was time for the explosion. All the while, the boss did his occasional cone attack. Fire waves rolled over the field again and again, as the dots were reduced to the first tick. Adds kept on rolling in. Between all of that, they also needed to find time to actually hit the boss.

It was all highly technical. There was very little randomness involved and that made it so satisfying. Each pull they got a little further. Eventually, they got confident enough to start using the medium bonfires as well. Increasing the add spawns was worth it if they could time the neutralization just so that the boss didn’t get to get a huge manual detonation off first.

Bit for bit, they advanced. Attempts piled on. Then, they did it.

It was the 32nd attempt. Aclysia and the Creator Puppet swung their respective weapons. Auras of frost and hovering pieces of scrap made the retaliating motions of the soldiers sluggish enough to be avoided. Above John’s third body and the head of the queen by his side, blue fire pulsed with unstable eagerness. They were both just one tick away from a detonation that would seal this attempt’s fate. Salamander had already been struck by the lethal explosion.

On the other side of the field, Gnome fought on her own against four more of the soldiers. She ducked and weaved through the attacks, using the cover of a self-grown patch of stone forest. The brunette’s face was a mask of total concentration. Somehow, she was holding her own.

In the centre, Metra and Beatrice executed a desperate gambit. Flawlessly, they wove in and out of the boss’ range. Armour, already rent and torn in all places, was carved further and further. The flesh behind bled, the Desolation General heaving as he swung his giant sword.

The combo of the two polearm-wielding women was suddenly interrupted. The speed of the swing had caught them off-guard, for no other reason than the mental strain the continuous fight put on them. They barely managed, together, to block the strike with the shafts of their weapons.

It was just a pause. A delay that they could not afford. All around, the mechanics of constant threats were ticking down. In just a few moments, Gnome and Metra would be consumed by the ticking damage.

The healer acted. Not by pouring her mana down the maw of defeat, but by turning herself into a tide of claws and gnawing teeth. Undine Unleashed, enveloping the boss. Metra and Beatrice prevented the giant sword from being swung in retaliation.

Like a liquid iron maiden, she formed out spikes of chitinous slime that then rammed into the humanoid in her core. John barely noted all of this through the mental connection, swinging Inkaryl again and again, desperate to keep the adds at bay. The ice-crusted mace swung through a soldier, turning it into dust.

No, he swung through the dust that had been a soldier.

Turning around, he caught the moment the giant blob of slime collapsed on the vacuum where the boss had been. Only ash and dust now filled the core of the healer. Blue and red flames disappeared above everyone’s heads.

And they shouted in victory.