“Do we do this today or do we keep it for tomorrow?” Momo asked, after they had cleared out the four Void Chimeras in the area. The question was understandable. They had been at this for over ten hours, so they could justify calling it a day for now. Had this been a boss he expected to have trouble with, he would have most likely done so.

“Let’s just stomp it and continue the path tomorrow,” John stated. These Raid bosses took anything between ten and thirty minutes. An acceptable range of additional time invested in today’s progress. With the experience from the boss, he would probably reach level 475 as well. That would let him take some time tomorrow to grind out a Class Level instead – if he wanted to. “First things first, let’s minimize our risks.”

Just as he said that, Jack and Lorelei emerged from the nearby teleporter pad that was located right next to the path they had taken to this platform. The seer was visibly excited and Jack was naked. A connection between the two didn’t need to be established and many of the harem giggled knowingly. “Since ya already got paid in exposure,” Rave purred in the tone of innuendo, “how about ya tell us what we have to deal with here, Rel?”

Lorelei only blushed a little bit. Continuously, she got more accustomed to the constant sexuality in the harem. “I require no payment,” she responded honestly. “You’re my Master and my sisters, aiding you is my honou- Eeeep!” the seer cried out when Siena appeared behind her. One of the elongated, crystalline claws of the midnight elemental teased Lorelei’s nipple through her summer dress.

“You’re so adorable when you are serious.” Siena’s sultry tone carried far in the silence of the dark altar.

“How did you get surprised by that?” John wondered.

“I do not use the full capacity of my vision when I feel safe,” Lorelei explained, squirming when Siena’s monstrous tongue licked from her shoulder up to her earlobe. “M-mistress, please… now is not the time…”

Expectedly, Siena had capitalized on having a new submissive masochist in the harem and left an impression on Lorelei last night. Unlike Eliana, Scarlett and Lee, all of which had quite the attitude when their brains weren’t flooded with orgasms, Lorelei’s submissive attitude was retained. Audibly, Siena inhaled, and then giggled. Her enjoyment of having someone who consistently called her by the ‘proper’ title was evident.

John liked observing it. Fellow sadists in his harem rarely got to live out their more extreme wishes because, even when he was willing to play the part of the sub, he hated being demeaned and he certainly was no masochist. It was apparent on the face of their interactions, few as they had been so far, that both Siena and Lorelei got a specific kind of satisfaction out of them. Obviously, Lorelei could get her submissive kicks elsewhere, but even for her it must have been a bit different.

“You two can play later,” Momo interrupted, while John was voyeuristically taking in the show. There was some general disappointment. “Can it, pervs! There’s a giant void blob we have to murder… then we can go home and I can… ride Lee’s face or something…” She grumbled that last part. Momo had refused to be any part of the dungeon fucking. That would only make it all the sweeter when, after they got out, John flipped her switch.

For now, however, she was the voice of reason. “She’s right,” John supported the sassy support. “Let Lorelei do her thing so we can kill that… Ruhrszatch.” He was absolutely certain he did not pronounce that right.

Sadist and masochist separated, Lorelei stepped forwards and kneeled down, touching the ground at the edge of the boss arena. About a minute passed, during which the seer quietly concentrated. “This creature the Lady crafted to be your obstacle, it will appear in two bodies, always,” Lorelei detailed what she saw. “The body above, corrupting the hull of what contained it, and a manifestation below, growing in strength the longer it exists. Barrages of attacks will descend. Areas to be untreaded, covered in barrages of pitch black. Then, the creature retreats into a shell, creating an end to the first conflict.”

“Alright, so there will be an add we have to kill periodically so its power resets. The main body in the middle will keep throwing ranged and area attacks. Once we have killed the actual boss, it will either start the final phase by possessing the Guardian or that might be the next boss fight, we’ll see,” John once more translated all of that into gamer jargon. “Sounds simple enough on paper. Aclysia, I want you to focus on tanking that add. Everyone else, I’ll give orders as the fight proceeds, if necessary. Understood?”

A wave of affirmations came from all around, Lorelei retreated a safe distance, and the group triggered the boss fight by taking their first steps up the stairs. The moment they did, they were immediately pushed back by a wave of dark energy. A gargling voice shouted out, “More fodder for the emptiness and madness!”

Immediately, the prophesized add appeared in one of the four corners of the platform. A blob of tentacles, crab claws, and serpent heads pulled together out of energy drawn from the stone itself. Wet, slimy noises accompanied every movement of the creature. It was quite small, only about a metre across. Something told John it wouldn’t remain that way.

The group fanned out, about half flying up the stairs, figuratively or literally, with the rest covering the ground layer of the encounter. As commanded, Aclysia casted Master’s Shield on the blob to get its attention. John kept a counter ticking at the back of his head, counting the seconds. A habit formed by other bosses executing mechanics on a countdown.

Exactly thirty seconds into the encounter, a sphere of energy spawned loudly at one of the corners of the battlefield. It charged up, its baleful light increasing in intensity. All of the orbs atop the pedestals on one of the four sides of the battlefield reacted, themselves changing colour from deep purple to a toxic pink. It was the same row they were currently fighting the second body of Ruhrszatch on.

“Relocate!” John ordered with both his mind and voice, already using Magus Step to escape from that position.

The sphere unloaded itself several seconds after they had successfully evacuated. A ray of energy travelled down that side, causing an explosion to ripple outwards from each sphere it touched. The sphere gathered again on the opposite side. Ten seconds later, it shot back down that same side, then dissipated.

That was only the first of three area attacks the encounter had in store. The second covered a rectangular area on the battlefield. The sphere responsible for it spawned loudly above and, once again, the pedestals in the affected area lit up. It was quite the effective bit of arena design, always making clear what area was affected without relying on the markers video games had access to. While both the side covering and area covering attack were completely avoidable, the third variety targeted a specific person. A sphere appeared directly above their heads and they then had to move to prevent unnecessary area damage to cover those standing around them.

There was also an additional mechanic here. Each time the second body of the boss was around one of the secondary explosions from the area attacks, it absorbed some of the energy and grew in size and strength. This would have been a more considerable issue if they didn’t have such an easy time murdering it. Whenever John deemed that it got worryingly large, they pulled some of the attackers away from the main body and murdered the blob of void energy. It immediately reformed elsewhere on the platform, as anticipated.

As for those pelting the avatar up on the altar with attacks, they had void bolts and other magic attacks to worry about. Dodging or tanking them was relatively easy, but they still had to treat it with some respect. As the encounter continued, the area attacks grew in scope and frequency. The side-covering attacks came to cover an entire quarter of the battlefield, altar segment included. Rectangular area attacks created void fields, lasting for a minute, that rose upwards and dealt increasing damage the longer one stayed inside. The targeted attacks also created those fields and eventually targeted four party members at the same time.

The fight was considerably more enjoyable than the Priests of Darkness. Their margin of error was enormous, because they could endure and heal more than the fight was balanced for, but there was still some skill necessary in coping with the various attacks. Because each of the three area attacks was on an individual and different cooldown, there were rises and falls in the tide of battle. When all three occurred at the same time, Undine actually had to strain herself a little to top everyone’s health up. That she still succeeded, despite them fighting in a highly unoptimized fashion, spoke to their guaranteed success.

Ruhrszatch, atop the altar, grew more volatile the more damage was unloaded into it. After fifteen minutes of combat, dodging and weaving through the area attacks, the Incarnation of Emptiness collapsed into a point the size of a coin and slammed down into the Guardian of the Seal. “I will fill this vessel…!” the gargling voice announced, just as the secondary body dissipated.

A bit unceremoniously, but they had won the encounter. The chest with the loot appeared by Lorelei and John was awarded the EXP.

“Uh, so what now?” Rave asked, a bit confused.

“Now we get to check on the loot while the transition animation is playing,” the Gamer answered, calling everyone over to the chest.

What it contained was, for the most part, disappointing. Nothing was particularly useful, excluding the additional two ingots of Antumbra Alloy. The weapons and lesser materials dropped were all going to end up in John’s vault or distributed to trusted military personnel.

As John had predicted, while they were busy with the loot, the Guardian of the Seal was reanimated with void energy. After five minutes, it stood above the temple. At that time, the group was still busy with the loot. Since they were outside the boss arena, there was no problem. When they were done with storing the rewards for the last fight away, he threw the Observe out.

‘That’s a lot of depressingly themed loot in the Epic category,’ John thought and scratched his chin.

“Do we knock that out too?” Momo asked.

“Might as well,” John decided. 410 was still firmly below the average of the group. “Could be the final boss for what we know. Lorelei, what do you see?”

“I see the patterns repeating,” Lorelei informed him. “And the fallen knight wielding a variety of weapons. His style of fighting changes as the life forced upon him depletes. All accelerates, half is reversed, and never something shall remain still.”

“So, we have the same area attacks from the last fight and the various weapon stances and their abilities from the original Guardian encounter,” John hummed to himself and mustered the Fallen Vessel. The original encounter had started with a two-handed axe and ended with the sword and shield. “The weapon order is inverted though, so some mechanics doubtlessly got juggled around.”

John gave everyone a refresher on what the Guardian of the Seal had been able to do. It had gone through four separate weapon phases. A two-handed axe, a pair of swords, a staff, and the sword and shield. Between each phase, it would shatter its weapon into crystal shards that dealt considerable area damage, when taken in aggregate. It had a few fundamental spells, most of which were adjusted depending on the weapon it wielded. Most threatening of them had been a spin attack, during which the Guardian had circled the edge of the battlefield. An energy connecting it to the centre of the arena would instantly stun anyone who came into contact with it, making dodging mandatory. Besides that, it had an energy wave that pushed attackers back and a quick eye-beam that dealt extreme damage but only got used if no one was in melee range. The staff phase had a different set of, exclusively damaging, abilities but was limited by time rather than how much health the boss had left.

That was only a brief summary of the core mechanics. The Guardian of the Seal had been a complicated boss fight. Adding just the additional area effects to it would have made it incredibly hard. Had they been tackling this on the proper difficulty, John would have guessed at a minimum of thirty wipes, fifty more likely.

Instead, like the last two bosses, they did it on the first attempt.

It wasn’t as clear cut a domination as the Priests of Darkness or the Incarnation of Emptiness. To start with, the tether existed not only between the Fallen Vessel and the centre of the arena, being the altar, but also the three closest pedestals. The result was relatively manageable in the first phase, as the boss did not use its spin attack. It had inherited the ability to get charged from area attacks from the previous boss, however, so there was plenty to deal with anyway. Especially since careless positioning could see one shoved into an area attack by the energy wave the Fallen Vessel used.

The second phase was the mage one. The Fallen Vessel teleported on top of the altar and bombarded the group with arcane and void spells. The objective there was simply to survive. Overqualified as they were, this was way easier than it should have been. Huddling on the same spot, they juggled the responsibility of negating or healing damage between Nia, Undine, and Gnome.

In the intermission, the altar at the centre sank down. Its multi-levelled structure folded together, until it became as flat as the rest of the floor, making it so the tether was a stable horizontal line. The boss equipped his two swords and immediately used the spin attack. A copy of it dashed to the eastern, the real boss to the western edge of the arena. Then they travelled along the rim of the square battlefield, the tether always following along.

The party retreated to the now available middle, in order to be out of the path of the swirling boss. Certain death was avoided, but the area attacks came rapidly down at the middle, forcing them to continuously keep moving while dodging the tether. They would have wiped there, had it not been for their superior numbers. Several people got hit where they had to dodge, surviving only on the merit of their level. Their execution was lacklustre, the number of mechanics in effect unfamiliar.

Regardless, they made it past and whittled the boss down so quickly, there was no repetition of that attack in the phase. The final stretch of the fight began with a massive roar by the possessing Incarnation of Emptiness. Warping the damaged paladin armour with an outburst of tendrils and dripping void, Ruhrszatch summoned the two-handed axe and with it two phantoms. One wielded the two swords, the other the sword and shield, and both had to be tanked in order to prevent them from casting the devastating eyebeam.

It was a glorious chaos of a final phase.

Adrenaline pumped through John’s system, while he and his haremettes ceaselessly moved in an attempt to avoid all of the area attacks. Aclysia tanked the main body, Gnome the sword and shield copy, and Metra the double-sword variant. All of the damage was focused only on the real boss. Particles were flying everywhere in quick succession, yet not so rapidly that the Gamer had no time to react. Everything that happened was predictable, as long as he knew what he had to look for. The spinning attacks. The energy waves. The area attacks. All of them were preceded by gestures, unique noises, or markers on the battlefield.

When they won, the Gamer felt uniquely dissatisfied. It just happened. He was in the middle of a desperate dodge, manoeuvring himself into a bad position in the process, when the boss simply keeled over. “Too… weak… an inadequate… vessel…” Ruhrszatch gargled, his essence collapsing back into a point the size of a coin. It continued to hover above the altar, a finely cut piece of stone left in the middle of the arena.

“…This feels so undeserved,” John grumbled. The sentiment was mimicked among most of the haremettes, especially those with a passion for combat. There doubtlessly had been a lot more to the mechanics. Much could have been improved about their approach with experience and discussion. It left his fingers twitching to have won on Stats alone. “…Well, can’t help it,” he sighed.