"....WE DID IT!!!!" Some one shouted as everyone cheered at the downed corpse of the Spider Tyrant.
"Someone find the mana stone!" Jonas shouted as he sat down.
For raid bosses like this, they had a certain amount of time to collect the mana stone before the body would automatically collect itself.
As for Shiro, she was slowly descending as to not hurt her arm.
’The harvest isn’t too bad.’ Shiro thought as the contributions both she and Lyrica made were decent.
She had a contribution of 15% while Lyrica had 5%.
Landing softly, she walked over to the fatigued Silvia.
[Thank you for the buffs.] Shiro smiled.
"Ah don’t worry about it." Silvia replied.
[May I know where you learned to use the buffs?]
"I didn’t learn from anywhere. I studied text by myself."
[Are you in this party permanently?] Shiro asked. She was planning on making a party to go raiding, and a talent like Silvia couldn’t be let up on.
"Shiro are you trying to poach my teammate? Hahaha." Jonas laughed as he walked over.
[Half and half. Having her help out at times would make things easier.] Shiro shrugged not denying this fact.
"I’m afraid I’m in this party for good." Silvia smiled.
[Shame. But if I need your help in a Dungeon run and raid may I ask for your assistance?]
"We’ll see. I’ll have to charge you for my services thought." Silvia giggled.
[Naturally.] Shiro nodded in understanding.
Leaving the duo, she walked back to Lyrica.
[How do you feel about this fight?]
"A little tough, I won’t lie. The defence of that thing was crazy strong." Lyrica sighed.
[Well it isn’t a raid boss for nothing. With bosses like this, you need to have a lot of patience. On top of that, you need to be able to judge the timings. When you can slip in another attack, or when you need to back out.] Shiro smiled.
"You sound like you’ve done raids a lot." Lyrica said.
[I suppose you can say that. When I think about raids and the such, information just floods to my head.] Shiro smiled.
"Heh~ mysterious."
[As mysterious as a 13 year old level 28 can be I guess.]
Shiro shrugged.
Waiting for a little while, they managed to find the stone and the corpse dispersed.
Her loot from the boss was a piece of armour, a weapon and money. The basics.
Scrapping both, Shiro looked over at Lyrica and realised she levelled up.
[What did you get?] Shiro asked.
"I got a level 20 sword. I can use it as one of the ingredients to evolve my blade." She replied.
[Hold onto it for now. It might come in handy later.] Shiro smiled.
As everyone rested, Jonas explained the next section.
"Seen as though we can deal with the bosses without a problem. We’ll continue this fight. The next area is the maze. There are several traps and false entrances. The maze resets with every Dungeon Raid so we don’t know the exact outline. BUT, we are able to know the general path since the maze follows a rough outline."
He then proceeded to talk about the path as it involved using several levers to open doors and progressing through them.
"There are a total of 10 chests, but 7 are fake. We aren’t going to attempt to get them since our main goal is to get the bosses, is that clear!" Jonas shouted out.
"YES!" They replied.
They knew the danger of carelessly picking a chest as it could lead to the entire party dying. That was a thing no one wanted.
After they finished discussing the plan, everyone gathered together as they entered the burrow.
The eerie silence freaked Lyrica out a bit as she held onto Shiro.
"Here’s the first divergent. The pattern shows that the lever would be at the end of the right path 70% of the time so we’ll enter there first. If there isn’t a lever, we’ll backtrack." He said as the team followed.
As they progressed with the maze, Shiro mentally mapped the entire area. The maze so far was like a ants hive, cross sections, false paths, levels and the such made it hard to traverse in a short amount of time.
It was only after 2hrs did they exit out the maze without harm.
What welcomed them was a kingdom. Giant luminescent rocks glowed overhead as it gave the area an ominous purple-blue glow.
Webs and eggs were scattered everywhere as they could see a building, somewhat resembling that of a palace.
Between the palace and them, there was a huge ravine where nothing could be seen at the bottom.
In front of that ravine, a platform could be seen with 3 crystals in three different locations. The crystals were huge as it was hard to miss. Spiders swarmed around the crystals as there were openings for more spiders to come.
"The next bosses are in there. But first, we’ll have to open the gates for the boss. We’ll need to defend three crystals in three directions. We’ll assign 10 people at each crystal and 5 in the middle.
The job of the 5 is to try thin out the herd. But the most important is to shout out the location of the Spider Knight. When you see the knight, you must call out its location and which crystal it’s heading towards." Jonas said as he made sure everyone understood.
"When we know the direction of the spider knight, 2 people from each crystal must go to it along with the five in the middle. This leaves us with 8 people on two crystals, no one in the middle, and 19 people focusing on the spider knight.
The 19 people focusing on the knight must kill him before he reaches the crystal. Once he’s dead, we must grab his head and run to the centre. The head will then glow brightly as the carrier must stand still for a whole minute. In this time, every spider is aggroed to him so we need to defend him.
Similar to last time, 2 people from each crystal must go and help him. This gives us 11 people protecting the carrier.
After the minute has passed, the light around him will glow green. The carrier must them run to any crystal and pass on the light by touching it.
We then repeat this process on the other crystals until we have all three being lit up got it?"
"Yes!" They responded. Everyone here knew the basics as even if they didn’t they can just keep the role of killing the mobs around the crystal.
[I have a question.]
"Go on."
[Let’s label the crystals 1 to 3. This will make it easier and less confusing.] Shiro suggested.
"Hmm... true. Alright let’s go with that. The crystal closest to us is 1, the one to the left is 2 and the right is 3.
For the people in the centre, it shall be Shiro, Lyrica, Silvia, Josh and Ken. The people for crystal 1 is..."
Jonas proceeded to assign roles as he then picked two people from each team to assist in killing the Spider knight.
"You know your roles, you know where you should be. Now all that’s left is to execute. Let’s go!" Jonas said as they dashed towards the platform.
Shiro froze the ground beneath her feet as her eyes narrowed at the spiders in the centre.
Giving Lyrica a glance, they nodded at each other as Shiro flicked her wrist and spikes shot up, piercing the spiders.
Lyrica put strength into her legs as she dashed forwards. Vaulting up using her dual ended blade, she killed all the spiders.
"CENTRE CLEARED!" Silvia shouted out as Shiro flicked her wrist and made her a small platform. This was to give her a better sight of the platform and increase her healing potential.
"CRYSTAL 1 CLEAR!" Jonas shouted out as they made short work of the spiders near crystal 1.
"CRYSTAL 3 CLEAR!"
"CRYSTAL 2 NEEDS HELP!"
Hearing the call, Shiro turned towards them and flicked her wrist. 3 ice spears shot out and broke apart as they pierced the remaining spiders.
"THANKS!"
"ALL CRYSTALS CLEAR! ACTIVATE ON GO! 3! 2! 1! GO!" Silvia shouted as the three crystals erupted with blue light.
*CRRRRAAKKKK!!!!!!!!
Echoes of spiders rang out as they started to flood out from the walls.
[Lyrica, in a while, I want you to carry the head.] Shiro typed as Lyrica was the best option in her opinion. The main reason was due to her level. Being the lowest level here, it was best for her to take the head so others can help cover for her.
"Alright." Lyrica nodded as it was probably for the best.
The spiders continued to crawl in as the team tried their best to kill them the moment they appear.
"SPIDER KNIGHT SPOTTED!! NEAR CRYSTAL 2!" Silvia shouted as Shiro made 5 ramps for them to get to the knights faster.
Two people from each crystal followed as they saw the knight.
The knight was around 2 meters tall, and 3 meters wide. Metallic looking black armour and slow moving speed.
[Spider Knight LVL 20]
HP: 75,000/75,000
"KILL!"
Flicking her wrist, Shiro flipped the knight on its back as she jumped up and made another ice spike.
Piercing the knight, she kicked off the spear and landed softly.
Lyrica dashed right after and cut towards the fleshy sections between the joints.
The whole ordeal didn’t take more than a few minutes as the knight was killed.
Making an ice cleaver, Shiro cut off the head of the spider and kicked it towards Lyrica.
Dashing back to the centre, the head in Lyrica’s hand glowed just like what Jonas said.
Sliding on her feet slightly, Shiro spun her body as she created a dome around Lyrica and a frozen field in the centre at the same time.
Slamming her palms into the ground, pillars rose up as they were primed and ready to fire towards intruders.
Quickly drinking another MP potion, Shiro clenched her fist since the spiders were already swarming towards her.
*PHEW PHEW PHEW PHEW!
Spears of ice shot out from the pillars as it pierced a few of the spiders.
They were coming from every direction except up and down. With the help of the others, they were able to keep the spiders at bay whilst still helping each of the crystals.
A minute passed as the head evaporated and absorbed into Lyrica’s body.
"RUN TO CRYSTAL 1!"
"GOT IT! Lyrica shouted back as she dashed towards crystal 1. With Shiro’s ice to help, she was able to arrive in breakneck speeds.
Placing her palms on the crystal. The light transferred over as the crystal changed colours.
"NICE! ROTATION 1 IS DONE! 2 MORE! LET’S KEEP THIS UP, EVERYONE!" Jonas shouted out words of encouragement as the overall potential of this raid party was much higher than he expected.
Returning back to their respective location, Lyrica took a moment to get her breath back.
The hardest part to this wasn’t the fact that it was difficult to kill the knights, but rather stamina issues. With the constant bombardment of the spiders, it took a massive toll on their stamina.
"SECOND KNIGHT FOUND! CRYSTAL 3!"
Repeating the process, they managed to pass rotation 2 without problems.
However, at this point, everyone was tired as the defence was getting harder.
Shiro was fine as her method of attack was her magic. As for Lyrica and the other close ranged combatants, they were struggling heavily as they could barely get a moment to take a break.
Since this was the last rotation, everyone was tense and their nerves were strained.
It was in situations like this that a person was tested. Chances of failure or mistakes were at an all-time high as even Shiro was feeling a little nervous. Not because she couldn’t handle it, but rather due to her teammates.
"FINAL KNIGHT! CRYSTAL 2!"
Dashing towards the final knight, Shiro noticed the damage per second decrease dramatically as they had to spend almost 10 minutes to kill it.
Thankfully, it was the last knight so they could get a break.
"STOP!" Shiro shouted out instinctively, seeing what someone was about to do.
They tripped over their own leg as they were about to stab the head of the dead knight. If that happened, they would need to survive for almost an hour for another knight to appear.
Gritting her teeth, she flicked her wrist as she blasted the adventurer away, freezing him to the wall.
Silvia understood why Shiro had to do it and quickly healed the adventurer up.
Fortunately, nothing else went wrong as all three crystals glowed green and sent out 3 pulses. This forced the spiders away as they finally had a moment to take a break.
"Fuuuu...." Wiping away her sweat, Shiro sat down with fatigue.
"Good job guys! Take this moment to rest up before the next fight!" Jonas called out as they took a short break.
The guy who Shiro had to blast away wasn’t too pleased as he was constantly glaring at her.
Seeing this, Lyrica got annoyed at it was the man’s fault that they could have been wiped.
She was about to stand up and walk over when Shiro grabbed Lyrica’s arm.
[Don’t go causing trouble. He’s only glaring. If we increase the discord within our party, it will only hinder us and not benefit.] Shiro shook her head.
Lyrica frowned as she could only swallow back her anger.