Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds (37 page)

He’d ask Claire what she wanted to be. He could pick something to suit. He seemed to recall she preferred to roll Tank and had been convinced to try a healer before everything went screwy in here.

Toby barely made it out a circle before fire erupted from it.

Stupid.

Distracted.

He shook his head a few times and focused. Thoughts of tomorrow could wait for tomorrow. For now, blood and death and glory and all that stuff.

Their boss was down to 60%. The other was at about 65%, give or take. He couldn’t see its health as clearly from this far. They were getting toward the time to swap.

Toby backed up a step when a circle appeared under foot. He could spare a few moments of swinging so the other group could catch up anyway.

The health bars continued to drop, and Toby had to dodge two more circles before Mark moved away from the wall. The boss followed him.

Paul was already moving the ghost across the floor.

Everything was going according to plan.

Except for the fact that there were three minutes and twenty four seconds left. By all accounts, two thirds of the time was gone, while the bosses were only halfway down.

One way or another, enraging bosses seemed like a thing they were going to have to endure.

The boss partner swap went well. Almost like they had done it before. Paul and Mark moved into each others side of the room, and immediately swapped targets and laid on every aggro snagging ability they had while their healers kept them topped off. No circles appeared during the swap, so it was playing out as intended and scripted.

Once the bosses had also swapped targets Mark started back with the fiery ghost version of the boss in tow. He stopped further from the wall. “Hurry this up, we don’t have a lot of time.”

The DPS moved to engage. Circles appeared once more.

The fire spewed out by the ghost boss was functionally the same, but it was white and fading from view in places to match the boss.

Toby stood at the boss’ side, just far enough to be considered behind him. He cut his eyes to Mark. “Please tell me the last one alive is vulnerable to
all
damage. We’re going to get an enrage either way.”

Mark shrugged as he parried a blow. “I’m not sure. It might be. That would be nice.”

“How do you not know? You worked on this game!”

“I’m an environmental artist, man. We’re not all programmers. This shit has never come up before.”

“No? This always goes swimmingly?”

Kelly bashed the thing with her shield. “Since we got it balanced, we haven’t fucked it up. But it’s been changed now, so what worked before isn’t having the same effect. I would say that when either one drops we all wail on the other whether it’s soaking a lot of the damage or not. Every little bit might help.”

Amos glanced over his shoulder at the other fight. “Some of us can do physical
and
magical damage. Maybe we should send a few DPS over to whichever is higher, have them use their other abilities.”

Kelly nodded. “Probably smart. Theirs looks stronger. I’d say to send them one or two now if we can spare them. Mark?”

He batted aside the giant’s flaming fist. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Kinda busy.”

Amos whistled and pointed at two DPS then at the other boss. They nodded and broke off. Both had bows, but were firing much more magical looking things at the other boss. Lots of glowing.

The health percentage drops seemed to even out. The circles became much more frequent, but fortunately this boss didn’t have any swipe or area attacks, so he was approachable form the front when all else failed. Of course, that meant his single target attacks against Mark were much stronger, but his cleric was keeping pace. The boss could still block and parry attacks from the front, which he could not do with attacks from his back, but it was still better than nothing.

The increased frequency of fire circles made the whole thing annoying. Mark had to move the boss more than once to keep himself out of them. He could eat one or two blasts, but not a lot more without straining his healers.

Toby did everything he could to kill the boss now. Either way, one was going to go down first and they’d pile on the survivor. Might as well be theirs that went first. He swung as quickly as his arms allowed, cast shock waves when repositioning and out of range, and threw the sword when he was out of range of the shock wave. His sword never stopped moving.

With a minute to go theirs was down to fifteen percent. The other was at seventeen percent, but the difference wasn’t major. Sending over the helpers had been a good idea.

Unless of course that meant neither of them dropped in time and they would all be killed.

That might suck.

No. He needed to think positive.

Time ticked away, but the health of the bosses did too. It was going to be a near thing… if it happened at all.

Thirty seconds. Ten percent.

Not good enough. Toby gritted his teeth. His eyes strayed to the Rage button.

Ten seconds. Six percent.

“Stay on target…”

Five seconds. Four percent.

“Stay on target…”

One second.

Not enough.

The creature’s eyes burned a bright orange as the fire inside it seemed to grow and overwhelm it.

One percent.

God damn it.

The creature gave an ear piercing cry as it raised its eyes to the ceiling above.

“Get back, people!” Mark shouted as he waved his arms.

They scattered as a large red circle appeared on the ground around the creature. Fire burst forth from its ghostly shape as it faded away to nothing. The wave of fire erupted in a circle that stopped just at the edge of the red outline on the floor.

Toby let out a breath.

One down.

The others were already moving across the room. He turned and followed.

That creature was likewise engulfed in flame. It was easily swinging twice as fast as it had before. New circles appeared on the ground before the last set had erupted in flame yet.

Paul was weathering the onslaught but he couldn’t get a swing in edgewise. Everyone that could heal at all was doing so. Claire’s hands glowed like the sun, Jesse’s were awash with green, and half a dozen others were doing all they could.

Advantages to the magic group.

Mark pointed his sword ahead as the physical damage group closed. “Kelly, give him a breather.”

She nodded and charged across the room faster than Toby’s eyes could follow, her shield held high. She bashed into the creature’s leg and sent it reeling a step before it turned on her.

“That’s it, come and get me, ugly.” She banged her sword against the edge of her shield.

The aggro list was a mess if one big taunt caused the boss to change its target.

The others from their side engaged shortly after, trying to fit into the group without crowding them on the glowing disco floor of doom.

Kelly moved to keep the boss looking into the corner Paul had vacated. He gave her a nod as he started healing as well. Mark moved in to join her.

Toby swept his eyes around. He saw Claire, still in the midst of casting, her glowing hands held before her eyes…

Which might have been why she didn’t see the red circle around her feet.

Toby ran as fast as his legs would carry him. The circles had a set duration before the fire effect went off. Her health was already low. She had probably weathered more than one of those.

He wrapped his arms around her as the circle began to glow brightly.

“What?” She raised her eyes.

He cast his eyes back the way he had come and touched the raven head clasp at the throat of his cloak.

The world was awash in black smoke for a moment. When it cleared it seemed like he was suddenly wearing glasses with a strong prescription… everything was closer. He swept his gaze, realizing he had in fact moved across the room.

Fire was gushing out of the floor where they had stood, the black smoke at their origin point being washed skyward by fire.

Claire blinked at him a few times before nodding and turning her eyes back to the fight. Her hands aglow once more.

He charged past her into the fray.

Soulbreaker bit into the creature’s side… and its hit point bar budged. He could hurt it. Good. He didn’t know if that meant his attacks were somehow magical, or that the damage resistances were removed when the other boss died.

It didn’t matter.

He could hurt it.

The circles continued to move, nearly coating the floor in red for seconds at a time. He focused on the boss, but kept his eyes low as he shifted his feet. The circles seemed to appear less up against the boss. Fortunate, since that was where he needed to be anyway.

The timer had long since run out, but they were holding on. The enraged boss grew stronger by the second, but the four tanks had set up a rotation and used hard taunts to swap him after a hit or two. The healers would patch up the one who suffered the blow before moving onto the next tank.

He swung with reckless abandon. Nothing existed beyond the boss’ shin, his sword, and the red circles at his feet.

He could do this. He had to do this. Everyone was counting on him.

Toby was genuinely surprised when his sword passed through the boss without slowing or triggering any blood or particles.

He stared dumbfounded for a moment.

“Clear out!” Paul’s voice rang across the room.

Oh. Right. They exploded when they died.

He turned and ran. He was breathing heavily… but fortunately it didn’t impact his running, as his feet in the real world were resting in place as he leaned forward.

Orange light washed over him from behind. He saw the world before him speed up as he landed on the stone floor.

Toby closed his eyes for a moment to let the spacial dissonance pass. Sad as it may be, he was almost getting used to it. Maybe he wouldn’t end up being one of the people that threw up whenever it happened.

When he opened his eyes again he was lying on the floor, the ceiling overhead. The edges of his view were red. His health bar hovered around twenty percent. He leaned forward to make his character sit up.

“Oww.”

He glanced up.

The place was a mess. He had not been the only one to not get away from the boss in time. There were half a dozen still forms of player corpses lying further back the way he had come.

He blinked as he stared out at them.

Why was he still alive?

He checked the combat log… the explosion had hit him for a ridiculous amount… but Uncanny Dodge had gone off, negating all of it. The damage he had suffered was from the fall after the explosion threw him.

And a couple of flame gouts, but who was counting?

He noticed Claire shaking her head as she approached, her hands already glowing white.

Apparently she had been counting.

It took her a few casts to refill his health bar. She gave him a weak smile before moving on to healing other people. All the healers seemed to be busy.

Toby’s arms ached but there was no amount of glowing healing magic that was going to fix that.

Paul was frowning at the fallen raid members. “Kelly, would you mind terribly heading back out and bringing in some replacements? We’ll shift members around once they get here.”

She nodded and headed for the doors leading back the way they had come.

Paul’s hand moved through the open air before him. Names on the list of raid members shifted about, filling up the three groups still inside and leaving Kelly in a group by herself as she left.

Toby shook his head as he stared at the fallen. “So, we just replace them and keep going?”

“That’s why we brought alternates. Less reliable members, sadly, but there’s just one last push. Pass or fail.”

“It still seems… cold.”

Paul shrugged. “Any other day, we’d simply res them or wait for them to run back. This isn’t all that different. Whether we win or lose in the next room, everyone that has fallen will be able to log in again.” He shifted his eyes to Toby. “Do you think it was wise to teleport? You could have kept that ability a secret to use against Miller. He’s bound to be watching us.”

Toby shrugged. “Claire was in danger. A
healer
was in danger.” He corrected himself. Paul was playing a numbers game now. It was all he could do. “We DPS might be a dime a dozen, but healers aren’t. Healers that know the raid are even more rare.”

Paul was silent a moment. He nodded. “I suppose you were right, then.”

“How do you see this going down?” Toby stood up… with some effort. “Miller is going to be in control in there, so what you know about this fight probably doesn’t amount to much. What’s the game plan?”

“From what we have observed, there’s only so much he can change while the game is running. He essentially just gave every mob in here a damage resistance buff. GMs have access to every spell in the game, so that’s not terribly surprising.”

“Wait, why not make them all cast chain lightning or something, then?”

“
He
can cast any spell in the game. He can’t gift them to mobs, and even if he could, they couldn’t be added to the AI’s action tree without a programmer doing it manually and a server reset.” He nodded a few times. “We feared he had some greater set of special admin powers from working in a back door during his time here, but that isn’t panning out much beyond your sword and a few parlor tricks. Beyond those he’s just a hostile GM. We know what GMs can do, so we can plan a bit.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. Because I’m not exactly in the know about all of this.”

Paul smiled a bit. “It’s not the fight we know, but that works out to our advantage.”

“Uh, how’s that?”

Paul grinned. “Simple, really.”

31

Kelly returned with a fresh set of group members a few minutes later. The fallen had been stripped of their gear, something guild members could do if permission was given. Everyone had set it up before Toby had ever arrived. There wasn’t much point in him setting the option. The idea behind it was saving someone a run back to their corpse in some of the harsher PVP settings, though that didn’t apply here.