Chapter 83: The Veiled Blade (Patreon)

As soon as the sun rose, Coop’s False-Light Eye buff dropped off. The sudden expiration was as if the natural light had actively dispelled it from his status. Coop wasn’t seeing the world in green wireframe anymore, though he still had green stripes temporarily burned into his vision. It wasn’t enough to blink them away, but they were slowly disappearing while he continued to fight the pursuing Crazed Serpents.

The stimulant had also gradually faded during the night. Coop had feared a hangover or some other withdrawal symptoms, but he felt normal instead, maybe even a bit refreshed when the buff expired. Coop was practically as good as new when they started the eleventh day of the siege event.

As he mistjumped across the shallows, using his ethereal trident to harpoon the chasing Crazed Serpents, he tried to differentiate between the days that had already gone by. It was difficult, since the days and nights bled together with the waves overlapping, especially when he spent days underground, but he could at least distinguish between the monsters that arrived with each timer.

The siege started with the unusually aggressive Enraged Defenders and the first twist was the Marauding Prowlers arriving before the first wave had completed. The second surprise was when the Frenzied Excavators began their assault from inside the fort, spawning underground along with Felrog, the Field Boss joining in.

Compared to the second and third waves, the Tormenting Kites had been an absolute vacation. They were admittedly a threat to individuals, with their ranged attacks and evasive maneuvers, but they were weak against the fort itself and they were unhurried in their assault. The fact that they were spread over such a wide area while maintaining similar numbers to the other waves also made them easier to deal with, even if it thinned the resident’s numbers as well. At this point, he’d bet on any of the residents being able to deal with a single Kite in a duel, so he thought a wider battlefield benefited Ghost Reef overall.

The fifth wave of Crazed Serpents presented a similar situation to the Kites, with their wave spread around almost the entire fort, but they made up for the sweeping onslaught with speed and aggression that elevated the challenge beyond what the Kites offered. Coop was lucky to have been able to adapt his tactics to counter the rapid assaults of the Serpents, but the rest of the fort was struggling with them.

The problem at the other walls was that no one could match Coop’s role as bait for the surging monsters. The pirates attempted to fill in, but were relegated to sailing circuits in front of the walls, attracting as many Serpents as they could with each pass, but they weren’t nearly as nimble as Coop could be with his mistjumps, and they were constantly taking damage or letting some monsters through. Without Coop’s mobility, it was problematic to establish a clear focal point for the conflict.

The Serpents had been gouging chunks out of the other walls all night to the point that Coop was tasked with rotating walls periodically. Shane was trying to spread the inevitable damage more evenly across the fort by having Coop pull the monsters away from the more damaged areas. The additional burden meant that Coop was drawing quite the crowd of invaders.

Still, fighting the Crazed Serpents from the ships had some advantages over what Coop was doing. For one, they were able to fight while moving when Coop had to consider whether he needed to reposition or if he could stand and fight at any given moment. It was a balancing act between competing the basic instinct of fight or flight, but the ships avoided any compromise. The outcome was that the ships were able to defeat monsters at a much more consistent pace and Coop was forced into maintaining maximum concentration at all times.

The monsters still never made it beyond the entrances to the channel as each end had become the focus for non-ranged fighters. Both sides of the channel were major choke points that quickly eliminated any Serpents greedy enough to try to reach the fort’s interior.

As the arrows were depleted, melee fighters left the walls and jumped at another chance to contribute. When given the opportunity they rotated, either by riding a ship or protecting the channel on the side not already protected by the pig. The last two waves hadn’t been very melee friendly and they were already sufficiently rested after being rotated for breaks, so they were eager to pitch in.

Coop had experimented with Fog of War, but because it failed to sufficiently penetrate the water, it wasn’t a viable deterrent for the Serpents. The disorientation effect couldn’t be applied to the submerged monsters, and they were attacking from such a wide angle, he wouldn’t be able to cut them off by establishing a domain anyway. The nature of the wave called for constant movement.

He was just happy they had survived another night. They would be able to repair the walls after the siege, so the superficial damage wasn’t much concern. As the morning went on, the Tormenting Kites also stopped spawning, leaving the Crazed Serpents alone in their assault.

All things considered, Coop continued to feel confident about their prospects through the siege event. If they were flexible enough to adjust to each of the waves so far, he hoped they would be able to keep it up for the rest.

At least, he was feeling confident until a rumbling tremor shook the entire island until it culminated in an outburst that ceased the shaking. He swung his head to the north in time to see sand and water being launched into the sky high enough to block the midday sun. A plume of debris soared into the air as if a volcano had detonated slightly below the surface of the sandbars on the edge of the reef.

A screech that vibrated the surface of the water and cast rippling shadows on the bottom echoed across the fort. All of the Serpents that had been hunting Coop abandoned their pursuit to heed the call. Coop followed the shrill shriek and noted the nocturnal bats were fleeing their roost in the northern corridors of the fort despite it being the middle of the day. Coop thought they might have the right idea, but he went towards the disturbance instead. He supposed it was the weight of responsibility that sent him chasing the potential danger.

Coop followed the Crazed Serpents around the fort in the direction of the northern wall. Water that had been launched into the sky in the initial explosion was still falling like a light sunshower when Coop rounded the edge of the defenses. The fort’s alarm bells were ringing in the background, but they seemed muffled after the screech that announced the arrival of this new threat. It was obvious a new challenger arrived and when Coop spotted it, he inspected it before he went any closer.

[Field Boss: Primal Serpent (Level 45)]

[Gaol the Veiled Blade (Body)]

[Manifestation of the Primal Constructs]

Another massive monster had arrived. Coop reevaluated the Serpents once he got a good look at their Field Boss. His conclusion was that they were giant sand worms. Instead of following the Crazed Serpents the way they had chased him for the last 25 hours, he changed directions and mistjumped onto the fort, not liking the way the monsters were leading him to the boss that towered over the edge of the reef, out of casting range of the walls.

Gaol the Veiled Blade, Field Boss of the Primal Serpents was higher level than Felrog and was certainly larger. Gaol was only partially exposed, so an accurate estimation of its full size would be difficult, but the portion that was revealed was already larger than any previous boss Coop had seen, its head was elevated at least 40 feet into the air.

Coop noted that its head had a crown of red lights that he expected would be a weak point. He just had no idea how they would reach them. Gaol seemed to be remaining completely stationary, fixed into the ground as it was. The boss had selected the battlefield and was gathering the Serpents to fortify its position. After another screeching call toward the sky, the boss faced the fort and dared the defenders to bring a challenge.

The northern wall’s cannons fired as Gaol was blanketed by Crazed Serpents from all directions. The cannonballs blasted away dozens of the smaller monsters, but Gaol barely reacted, protected by sacrificing its smaller brethren. Gaol had called for all of the Serpents to join it and the smaller monsters had quickly become a wriggling mass that formed a protective layer on the Field Boss’s exterior. Long rigid blades ran the entire length of the boss, but the smaller Serpents were able to maneuver around the edges to form a living, adaptive ringmail.

From Coop’s vantage on the battlements, he glanced back toward the interior of the fort and watched as nearly all of the phantoms and residents rotated to the north wall. Without Crazed Serpents attacking in the other directions, they were able to concentrate their forces once again, though The Eye of the Storm and Windchaser remained as the last line of defense for the shard.

Gaol wasn’t kind enough to wait for the defenders to reorganize themselves. The monster faced the sky and its face split open in four peeling strips, inundating the battlefield with another screech that turned the surface of the water into a mosaic of vibrations instead of the normal steady waves. Crazed Serpents lost their grip and fell off the boss before rushing to rejoin the mass that carpeted its skin.

When the screech stopped Gaol relaxed its posture and there was a moment of calm before the sand in front of the fort’s wall started erupting with a new threat. Metallic bone fingers had appeared in a chain of explosions along the edge of the underwater moat. They immediately started jabbing the stones of the wall as if they were the tails of underground scorpions. Each one had three joints with narrow segments in between. The final segment was a solid spiked nail that matched the Serpent blades of the rest of the invaders.

Coop dropped down, finding something he felt he could fight, and faced one of the fingers with his trident. The thin finger would have towered over him if it stood straight, but as soon as Coop was in range it tried to jab him with its blade. Coop dodged out of range, admiring the whip-like speed of the finger. He swapped to his sword and shield before reengaging.

A shield throw knocked the finger over and a mistjump into a powerful strike on the bottom joint destroyed the threat. The limbs were fragile, even if they were dangerous, they wouldn’t be hard to defeat. If they were struck from any direction other than head on with the point of their blade, they would topple over from a lack of support. Disappointingly, the fingers weren’t individual monsters, so he didn’t receive any kill notifications or any loot for defeating them. Coop worked his way down the row, destroying them one after another with shield throws and mistjumps.

If he hadn’t developed his ability to shield throw, he wouldn’t be nearly as mobile while using his sword, so he was glad to have spent the time practicing. Fighting the fingers with a polearm would have been a challenge to his precision, but chopping them with a sword was nice and straightforward.

While he took care of the fingers, squads of phantoms had entered the battlefield, teleporting from the walls over the moat. They were creating a perimeter around the Field Boss to intercept Crazed Serpents as the smaller monsters attempted to join the others in protecting Gaol like living armor.

At first, the phantoms were too close to the boss and inadvertently revealed another one of its abilities. The boss brought its body down to the surface and rapidly whirled in a full rotation. The spin exposed a massive blade inside what Coop had assumed was its mouth. The boss tried to cleave anything within its range, but the phantoms were quick enough with their teleports to avoid a crushing death as well as the gleaming edge of the revealed blade.

The whirling spin wasn’t only for Gaol to try and slice or crush enemies that got too close. It also launched hundreds of Crazed Serpents off of its body. The Serpents created chaos as the monsters were scattered across the battlefield behind the establishing lines of combat.

When no phantoms were in its range, Gaol also continued to periodically spawn more of the blade fingers, though they were unpredictable in their locations. Instead of placing them all along the north wall, like it had at first, the boss also interrupted the phantom’s formations, using the fingers to suddenly flank them.

The boss’s final trick was a cascade of blades that erupted out of the sand in sequence from the monster's position. The blades were arranged in straight lines that spread across the battlefield, one eruption after another. If anyone failed to notice the telegraphed attack they would be in significant trouble as they were attacked from below with little warning other than the previous eruptions.

The phantoms were forced to spread further out to avoid the boss itself, but they still had to deal with Crazed Serpents attacking them from both directions, the occasional finger surprise attack, and blades from underneath. The attention they drew was enough to free Coop from defending the wall and let him roam closer to the boss. The fingers that had picked away at the wall had left deep strips clawed out of the stone, but once again, the fort would hold strong.

Ghost Reef’s residents and the Field Boss entered a precarious stalemate where each tried to defeat the other through attrition. Gaol was extremely defensive, emphasizing its own preservation by sacrificing Serpents and relying on the fingers to attack rather than overexpose itself.

Meanwhile, the residents lacked the firepower to consistently break through the Serpent shield. The Field Boss was far enough away from the walls to prevent most of the casters from reaching it with spells, though golden arrows blasted into the boss and arcing fireballs managed to land hits. Charlie established a steady tailwind to extend the range of their projectiles, but they still had to rely on cannon barrages and the Tempest Fleet to deal most of their damage.

The most mobile casters, along with the mid-ranged fighters, ventured through the shallow waters around the entire moat in an effort to better contribute to the fight, but it was exceedingly dangerous to leave the safety of the fort walls. The Crazed Serpents were remarkably adept when navigating through the knee deep water, while every non-phantom would struggle to move quickly for very long.

Sea Burial was the most active on the battlefield, by far. Captain Kayla’s corvette with the Charon’s Gaze phantom at its helm was able to stay at range, across the reef, and blast the boss with its siege ballista. Every time one of its massive ballista bolts struck Gaol, the worm-like boss was nearly slammed into the ground. The Field Boss would then shift its focus onto the ship, sending fingers and Serpents to retaliate, but the ship captain had a full crew of pirates along with dozens of his own gray orbs dedicated to point defense.

The northern wall cannons were also effective. They needed to time their attacks so that the Serpents wouldn’t reform their protective layer and absorb the damage, but when they did the damage was obvious. The first few cannons to land were inevitably defended by sacrificing Serpents, but that left gaps in the living armor that could be exploited. They were firing massive barrages to maximize their effect. Whenever the boss was peppered by cannonballs it inevitably took direct hits from a portion of the shots.

Coop was sure they were whittling the boss’s health away, and he did his part by mistjumping around the battlefield, destroying fingers as they spawned and splashing down on Crazed Serpents as they rushed to join the Field Boss. He swapped to his spear in between Serpents and bone fingers in order to heave it at the boss, matching the siege ballista bolts in effectiveness with his rather standard attacks, though he rarely drew the same attention as the ship. He was just another body on the battlefield in the eyes of the boss at this stage.

The fight devolved into a classic slugfest throughout the entire day. They fought to prevent Gaol from regenerating its protective layer and the boss did its best to fend them off. By the time the sun sank beneath the horizon, concluding another red sunset, the wriggling protective layer on Gaol was noticeably thinner even with constant reinforcement. They were winning, but it was slow going.

The night was unusually bright. No one needed night vision while the darkness was being suppressed by a stream of spells and explosions across the shallow waters in the north. Gaol’s Serpent armor was fully diminished before dawn, but Coop was still worried that they wouldn’t defeat him before the next wave began.

He wasn’t the only one worried. The defenders fought more aggressively, whether due to sensing a deadline approaching, or realizing that the Field Boss was losing. Even Gaol changed its tactics, abandoning most of its offensive attacks in favor of erecting brittle finger barriers that were barely enough to block Sea Burial’s ballista or a handful of cannonballs.

The defenders refused to allow many of the Crazed Serpents back into the battlefield, firmly establishing a perimeter on the east and west. A few monsters still reached the boss, especially from the north, but it wasn’t enough to mount a proper defense or become a problem when Gaol released them into the defenders.

It was dawn when Gaol showed real signs of struggle and eventually collapsed. The scene of the giant worm lying limply in the shallows as the sun creeped above the horizon drew cheers from the north wall, but no one had received the notification that they were looking for.

Gaol’s exterior split down the middle as the boss wriggled like so many of its regular brethren had throughout the fight. A shiny metal Field Boss that shimmered with extended blades emerged from its own shell like a snake shedding its skin.