Twenty minutes later, the group started their careful expedition into the building. There were multiple entrances scattered all around the sides. Although all of them were large, none of them seemed unusual. The architecture of Ohmior took into account the height of Ohmior Knights, more than two and a half metres, and large arches were therefore no indication of anything important being down that particular path.

John had expected something like an arena on the inside. Instead, they found hallways filled with giant artworks, painted directly onto the wall. Each picture was framed by the halves of the golden pillars that stuck out of the walls. Various offices contained splendid workplaces, filled with paper and artifice. If he had been able to, he would have been tempted to take with him whatever was loose for the materials alone. Since they were just props, nothing like that was possible. The paper was empty.

As were the hallways at large. Decorations aside, there was nothing, not even enemies, filling the palace-esque structure. ‘I guess the narrative is that the first segment was the city and the military, the second segment was the corruption that made all of the inhabitants either undead or machines, and this last segment is a show of what they were in their prime?’

The theory gained validity as the group turned into a particularly long corridor. The pictures on the walls told the story of the city. First, they depicted it bustling with activity, people visiting the sermons of the priesthood and worshipping the spirit of progress. Then, those priests were shown bowed over a dark tome and serpents in the black aura around them. Those priests conducted a large ritual, causing a massive explosion.

War broke out in the city. Ohmior Knights and common folk fought against a tide of void creatures. Picture for picture, they pushed them back, until they had finally driven them underground. A seal was placed at the gate and a battle-scarred knight placed in front of it. All that was left to witness its eternal vigil were the undead and its fellow creations.

An outstandingly decorated gate awaited them at the end of the corridor. Gentle brown wood framed by grey basalt, all of it inlaid with silver, stood there as an obvious separation between them and the next boss room. If the implication of its design weren’t obvious enough, the teleportation pad that activated certainly was.

John let out a relieved sigh. Now that they had activated the next checkpoint, it was guaranteed they wouldn’t have to go through that three-hour running section again.

Without their doing, the doors swung inwards, revealing a circular room. Like everywhere else in and around the building, the rim of it was dominated by pillars that were half sunk into the walls. Between them were pictures of three figures, a dwarf, an elf, and a centaur whose lower body was mechanical. Underneath three balconies at the back of the room were particularly striking pictures of them. Those very same figures stood around a large, crudely shaped table at the centre of the room.

There was one more figure, standing with their back towards the group as they peered inside. All that could be seen was the blank back of a silver head and a flowing white cape. “Should you succeed, know that I have the utmost trust that you will do what is right,” the mechanical voice spoke with gravitas. Then the figure speaking teleported away, leaving only the three in the room and the group just before the gate.

“There they are then, the ones we must defeat to become real,” the Mistress of Magic spoke.

“Ay, interestin’ situation,” the Shaper of Stone agreed.

“Enter when you wish to challenge us, Gamer,” the Archon of Artifice said.

‘Always weird when the NPCs start talking in real Raids,’ John thought and deliberately took a step back from the door. “Let’s get Lorelei,” he said. Their level was still quite low, so John didn’t think this would be a challenge, but assurances on mechanics could always save them time. Plus, they might as well take a bathroom break.

________________________________________________________________________

“Each of the triumvirate fights on their own, but they will fall together,” Lorelei reported what she saw. “The giant of the small kin hurls fists of stone and shapes the ground to his advantage. The elegant woman can take little punishment and will flee whenever hit, while hurling spells of red. The augmented hides inside his equine shape energy to hurt and paralyse. They will face you in this order, supported by their equals, until desperation drives them to cooperate.”

John, like usual, translated all of this into game mechanics. “So, we have a typical council fight. One of them will be on the ground, while the other two are up on the balconies. Once we have depleted their shared health enough, they will tag out. In the final phase, all three of them will be on the ground. Shaper will be a heavy melee hitter with environment control, Mistress a mobile spellcaster, and the Archon uses CC and burst attacks. Should be fairly straightforward.”

The level of the bosses was slowly catching back up with them, but there was still a solid fifty level difference between theirs and the average of the party members. Council fights were typically difficult because there were various different types of effects that had to be taken into account. Since the power gap allowed them to make a few sloppy mistakes, John doubted they would require more than one attempt at this.

Strategy going in was simple: the Artificial Spirits would tank the Shaper in the first phase, Nia would keep chasing after the Mistress in the second phase, and they would improvise when it came to the Archon, since his exact combat behaviour was harder to predict. When it came to the final phase, they would largely ignore the Shaper and instead focus on the other members of the council. Since their health was linked, going after the one that had the obviously highest defence would have been a waste of damage.

“I call dibs!” the Shaper shouted when the group, with the exception of Lorelei, entered the room.

“Go ahead then, you big oaf,” the Mistress responded, rolling her eyes and snapped her fingers. The door behind them slammed shut, just as she and the Archon were teleported up to their respective balconies, being the right and the central one, respectively.

The Shaper jumped onto the crude table and raised his hands. “Hope ye liked this game as kids!” he shouted, while an orange glow encapsulated his hands. The ground rapidly began to heat up and expand. Within a few seconds, the floor would be literal lava.

That wasn’t exactly what John had expected when it came to area control inside a building, but he could still deal with it. The entire group, except for those that could fly, made it to the table and climbed on top. It was massive enough that all of them had enough room to stand. Metra assured they weren’t stormed at, by throwing Rex Magnar at the Shaper and travelling through the Tear she opened in the process.

Hurling his fists at Metra and whoever else got in range, the Shaper proved instantly that they were too strong for this. Each of the attacks should have been strong enough to threaten the tanks off the table and into the lava. While the Shaper still packed enough force to drive them back and deal a lot of damage, it wasn’t enough to be devastating. Same was true for the red spells the Mistress used.

Arcane spells using red mana dealt primarily kinetic damage. That was to say, they bludgeoned their targets, rather than do a mixture of burn, penetrate and smash, like regular arcane spells. As a result, the shove experienced by being hit was a lot stronger. They managed to all stay on the table regardless. The intention of the difficulty had clearly been to deal with the damage from having party members thrown into the lava occasionally. The shockwaves caused by grenades the Archon threw only underlined this further.

While they pelted the boss with attacks, Sylph and Salamander took a quick turn to try and damage the duo up on the balconies. Magical shields protected them from fire and lightning. John wondered if that could be broken with enough effort, but there was no reason to experiment with unorthodox tactics when they could just have their way.

The lava eventually ebbed away, where to was a mystery, allowing them to kite the Shaper, if they had so desired. That must have been the lull in the fight, a stretch where they could recover between the ‘difficult’ stretches of being confined in a limited area with the large dwarf. He used his magic to create projectiles or large spikes that shot out under people’s feet, skewering them if they didn’t move in time. Everybody did, of course, leaving pointy pillars behind.

“You idiot, you’ll get all of us killed!” the Mistress shouted, before they could get to the lava phase again. “Let me handle this!”

A flash of teleportation pulled the Shaper out of the battlefield. In his stead, the red-haired elf now stood there, twirling a long, wooden staff. Immediately she started to hurl projectiles at them. They spawned around her shoulders and flew out in swarms of various sizes. The spells reminded John a lot of Shardbound.

Nia teleported next to the Mistress and sliced at her with the long-bladed anti-magic lance she conjured in battle. One attack and the Mistress instantly teleported elsewhere in the large room. Nia followed. The two of them played a game of cat and mouse. Had the Mistress been a regular mage, a few of these hits would have hindered her casting so much to make this strategy impossible. A regular mage also wouldn’t have been stupid enough to face a pariah head-on, however.

All the while, the Shaper continued to spawn pillars under their feet. John was certain they would be necessary for some mechanics, no reason for them to stick around otherwise. He was validated when the Mistress teleported to the centre of the room and raised her staff high. “I tire of this!” she shouted and conjured seven spheres that marked a target with an aiming laser. Then they slowly moved towards their targets, accelerating crawlingly.

Seven was also the number of pillars currently in the room. Absolutely no coincidence. “Get a pillar between you and the projectile!” John shouted the obvious. All of the haremettes had enough combat sense, game experience, or both to connect those dots. Hiding behind their pillars, the party members waited until the spells collided with the obstacles. The explosion dealt a considerable amount of damage, but not enough to be truly threatening.

“You oaf provided them cover!” the Mistress complained, then teleported when Nia got another hit in. It wasn’t long thereafter that she gasped. “Why do I even get my own hands dirty?!” she complained and switched herself out for the Archon.

The mechanical centaur was evidently ready for the tag. The front of the equine body opened, revealing a cannon inside. Light pulled into the mouth of the metal tube and was then unleashed in a cone. It happened so fast that some of the party members failed to react to the unexpectedly large area of effect. Paralysed, they fell to the floor, John among them. A moment later, lava started to fill the room.

John could feel the heat, deliberately deactivating Particle Skin to avoid his mana diminishing. It was a thoroughly unpleasant sensation to bask in lava. The damage increased with each second he spent cooking. This would have been grounds for a wipe, had they not outscaled the fight so thoroughly.

Once the paralysis wore off, they relocated to the table again, where Undine quickly healed them. She had to do so while they dodged more laser attacks, launched by the Archon. Whatever his lower body was made of, it was unfazed by the heat and he galloped through the lava and repositioned without issue.

Aclysia and Beatrice ventured out into the lava anyway. With Fire Immunity, they were merely inconvenienced by the molten rock. Keeping up with the Archon was still difficult, especially since he had small turrets on his horseback that shot darts of paralysing energy. Beatrice managed much better than Aclysia, in large part because she could walk on air for three steps, after she dodged an attack. Sylph and Salamander added further, reliable damage.

After the lava ebbed away again, they managed to surround the Archon several times. He broke out using his considerable speed and gadgets, but each time they dealt considerable damage. “I hate working with you lot!” the Mistress shouted when the Archon started to limp, teleporting the Shaper and herself back down into the arena.

What followed was a whole flurry of spells. Rock surrounded them, grenades and laser beams flew around the place, and arcane projectiles of all shapes and sizes were launched at whatever target the Mistress desired. There were a bunch of interactions that could have been learned here to optimize how much damage they did and how little they took.

None of that was necessary, they just separated into groups that could best deal with each of the three crafters. Those with the most sticking power damaged the Archon, those that could reposition in the room the fastest hunted the teleporting Mistress, and Metra was allowed to have an enraged duel with the Shaper.

It was that duel that produced the final hit. Rex Magnar screamed gleefully as Metra grabbed it with both hands and pulled back for a wide swing. The weapon got visibly heavier, to the point that even Metra seemed somewhat sluggish at handling it. The curved spike opposite of the massive axe-blade shimmered with magic. A torrent of plasma, fire and lightning, followed. Metra let the Extreme Plasma Burst lift the superheavy weapon up. Her strength served only to guide the direction of the attack.

Thundercharge and Earth Ravager activated on the same swing. Devastating electricity and the force to crack the earth was simultaneously unleashed with the raw brutality of the accelerated swing on the rock-made dwarf. Previous hits with the weapon had left trenches and cracks in the boss’ skin. This one cleaved the head apart from top to sternum, in a shredding cacophony of brutal guitars and drum sounds. Excess force travelled through the body, causing it to break in two.

Just as the two halves toppled over, the other two bosses collapsed where they stood, dead in the same second as their comrade.

“FUCK!” Metra cursed loudly, while the bodies of the bosses turned to dust. “I HATE how unsatisfying these victories are!”

“I’m all with you,” John said with a sigh. “We’re getting closer to challenges though. Let’s check the loot.”

The wall segments between the three balconies had disappeared, revealing a chest behind one and a staircase behind the other. Ignoring the latter for the moment, they headed to the former. Lorelei jogged across the room to catch up to them. “I think you fought splendidly,” she said.

“How would ya know?” Rave asked, amusedly. “Door was closed.”

“Pretty sure that’s a minor obstacle for her,” John reminded his girlfriend.

“Oh, right,” Rave realized quickly. “Second sight, duh.”

The loot they got was reasonably interesting, if somewhat meagre.

For the Common category, they had 4 Ohmior Basalt and 1 Bond of Crafters. Ohmior Basalt was a kind of rock that bound to solidified mana, so it could be used in unique architecture. The Bond of Crafters was a kind of item John hadn’t come across in a while. It boosted the Guild Heart’s daily mana output by 1’000. That wasn’t a spectacular increase, but anything permanent was good.

Uncommon loot was two Augmentation Potions. These, when drunk, properly bonded a person’s artificial additions to their flesh. It was a specialized healing potion, of sorts.

In terms of Rare items, John got the Box of Rocks and the Classbook. The latter was the more exciting piece of loot on its face, a new Class was always a welcome addition to the options. By its description, the Augmenter Class was about closely binding to items, improving usage of tools, or replacing body parts with mechanical alternatives. None of those uses were high on John’s priority list. The Box of Rocks was a cube about the size of a grapefruit and could be used to store raw rocks and metals inside it. That was fairly useful, because it could be used to consolidate raw material into a single item slot in his inventory.

Lastly, John got the Ohmior Mine Schematics out of the Epic category. It added a chance to the Mine back in the Guild Hall to spawn an Ohmior Shaft which contained Ohmior Silver, which was essentially a blend of steel and Mithril. That was just a net improvement of the Mine, so John was happy to have it.