Steve gathered up the four unchosen records and placed them back under the register. Seconds later, he opened the pop album and took out the bright pink CD inside. Effortlessly, he tossed it into the room.

Everyone’s eyes followed the disk as it flew on a stable trajectory towards the centre of the room. Once it had arrived there, a flash of neon light blinded them all. The moment it ebbed away, all of the shelves around had disappeared. The steady light from above was replaced with a multi-coloured spectrum of square tiles under the roof. Which ones were switched on changed in regular intervals. The many colours reflected off the ground, having that plastic, silvery greyness of a CDs underside.

The centre of the room, where the CD had been moments earlier, was a circle of translucent plastic above a pitch blackness. A central hole allowed some kind of diamond-shaped drone to fly upwards. It stopped under the ceiling, hovered towards the edge, and then shot a red laser beam at the disk. The ground, in response, slowly started to turn. A slow, very basic beat started and accelerated to a moderate pace.

“Urgh,” Rave immediately let out a sound of great frustration. “What is that? What even is that? I need at least three layers to my beats or I am bored. B-O-R-E-D,” she spelled out, while the boss manifested.

Like the drone before, she rose from that hole in the middle of the disk. At first, she was just a pillar of light standing on top of a plastic black pillar, filling the hole under her. Then her form became more defined, from her curves to the microphone she was holding, allowing John to get the Observe in.

‘I definitely would leave this Raid until I could burst the fight without doing the sex mechanic, yeah,’ John thought and watched the, admittedly very attractive, woman shift seductively where she stood. Her hourglass curves were on the leaner side, with balanced hips and decently sized breasts. John’s taste had shifted somewhat over the past year, in the sense that he had a much greater appreciation for large breasts than he used to, but these lean body types remained his favourites. She could be more bottom heavy, as far as he was concerned.

Her voice, however, grated his nerves instantly.

“Heeeyyy, people!” she shouted into her microphone, the beat continuing to echo from invisible boxes. She had the quintessential ‘popular girl’ tone of voice that immediately made John think of Vanessa and all the other women that had made his adolescence a living hell. “Are you ready to make some bitching bad choices?! Bad choices? Bitching bad choices? Bad choices? Bitching bad choices?”

“Oh God, make it stop,” John groaned at the repetitive lyrics. He hated every second and he knew that it would be stuck in his brain for the next two months. “This is why we can’t have nice things!”

“I kinda like it,” Sylph babbled. “I’m ready to make bad choices, bitching bad choices.”

“You would fucking like it, airhead,” Salamander growled.

Steve waved at all of them. “Have fun!” he said, before the walls in front of his counter closed and left them on the spinning disk.

The battle began right that moment. “All the boys always see me, all the girls always try to be me, can’t be without me, ‘cause I know you want me!” the Pop Queen sang.

‘Did she rhyme ‘me’ four times in a row?!’ Undine asked the obvious, so shaken by the affront to good music.

‘Affirmative.’ Beatrice sounded incredibly not passive in her response.

“LET’S KILL HER!” Aclysia roared, clearly annoyed at the fact that John was forced to listen to music he did not like.

John, for his part, felt a strange affection for the woman all of a sudden. He was present of mind enough to know what was happening, but the control over his feet was overridden by the charm effect. Four other members of the party were affected by the charm, all of them slowly walking towards the Pop Queen. At the same time, several dozen adds spawned all over the room. They were featureless, grey humanoids that looked like the stand-ins for a crowd in every cheap production.

Still affected by the charm, John bumped into one of them. The add immediately started screeching, “NO, I’M HER BIGGEST FAN!” and then literally exploded in a fit of rage. John was blasted back several metres, lost nearly half his HP, and almost collided with a second one behind him. While he was lying on the spinning disk, he approached the laser at pretty dangerous speeds.

“Alright, so don’t touch the Fanboys!” John shouted after he Magus Stepped out of the way of that, finally in control of himself again. It had only been a few seconds, but a few seconds were an eternity in combat. “And grab the charmed party members before they do!”

“Bad choices! Bitching bad choices!” the Pop Queen kept singing, dodging the lightning and fire attacks that Sylph and Salamander were throwing at her. The Fanboys were consolidating around her position, making it incredibly difficult for the melee members of the party to get in there.

Worse, the adds kept on spawning from the outer rim of the arena. Around the pedestal of the Pop Queen, they were packed closer than Spam in the can. While that affair persisted, the other Fanboys seemed content having some personal space throughout the rest of the arena. The issue was that they hopped whenever the Pop Queen made a move in any direction of the arena. Because of the rotating floor, that displaced them ever so slightly. Density, odd movements, and the charm effects, they all made it difficult to avoid the Fanboys in their entirety. Given the amount of damage attached, it was direly necessary to try.

Despite many of the haremettes’ vitriol when it came to murdering the Pop Queen, so far they had barely landed any hits. A large part of that was that John, whose own desire to get this annoying, catchy beat out of his ears as soon as possible was intense, had decided to cease all hostilities. The first minute of the fight was already over. There was no way they could kill the boss from this base, but they could at least try to survive long enough to see all the phases.

For the first part, the primary question was how to deal with the tide of Fanboys. All of this would be much easier if they managed to get that under control. Any sort of direct physical contact between people triggered them and caused an explosion strong enough that John considered keeping Particle Skin on for this encounter, just to be immune to the knockback.

First idea to deal with them was to throw projectiles at them, which they just ignored. Same was true for all manners of melee attacks except those executed with the hand. This meant Metra could trigger them with Rip from a safe distance, which was a start. A second safe way to set them off was by having Undine split herself. Problem with that was that the Fanboys only reacted when the clones were large enough to qualify as an adult human, which was quite the mana investment, especially from their healer.

Aside from Metra, the only viable, although not quite as safe, way to deal with the Fanboys was to tag them and then run or teleport out in the short gap before they exploded. One would have expected Nia to be the prime candidate for this. Either for balance reasons or because her pariah powers messed with whatever magic the Fanboys used for their senses blanking her out, her touches didn’t work. She could cut them down with her two-handed sword, but that took too long to be efficient.

In terms of people that could do a quick tag and retreat, the reliable choices were himself, Beatrice and Sylph, due to immediate repositioning tools or just sheer speed. Not quite as reliable were Rave, Siena, Salamander, Momo and Metra. Rave would have been perfect if she had proper mastery on how to turn into light for a flash of movement, but that was something she could only really pull off when Eclipse was active and therefore did not qualify as a proper solution. As it stood she, like Siena, had to rely on her speed and they did not quite have the rapid movement of Sylph on their side. Salamander and Momo were even slower, but they could fly. Something that would have been beyond incredible to just have them or Sylph set off all of the Fanboys, if a prudent experiment hadn’t shown that the explosion of three stacked to increase the radius threefold. Metra did have access to a teleport. Hers required her to open and then jump through the portal, though, which made it a speed question again.

At 1 minute 45 seconds, the Pop Queen conjured a pink lasso and caught Rave. “You know you want, know you want, you want me. You know you want me. ‘Cause it’s all about me.”

“I ain’t making out with lips that produce tunes like this!” Rave shouted, tearing herself free from the lasso. That enraged the Pop Queen and she drew the torn lasso back, using it like a whip to hit each of the party members once for exactly 25% of their max HP.

John wasn’t even done running all the experiments when the beat faded away, after exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and was replaced with a new one. The Pop Queen’s tone shifted slightly, singing over the more erratic melody. “I got all the bling, all the money, all the dollars. Money, money, money, dollars, bling, bling!”

As a very uncreative representation of her lyrics, dollar signs rained from above. Each of them stopped about a metre above the ground, low enough that someone could run into them. The good news of that phase was that the stream of Fanboys slowed down. The bad news was that, as Lorelei had warned, Agents entered the field instead.

They were, much like the Fanboys, dull grey entities, with the only real difference being an incredibly plain suit covering them. As one would expect, they were drawn to the dollar signs and did receive massive combat buffs while around them. With five punches, one of them managed to diminish Gnome’s health to a quarter.

Usually tanking them in the unaffected areas would have been easy, but the spinning battlefield and Fanboys made that a lot harder in practice. John was certain there was a trick to it. Carving lanes into the crowd, maybe. The Gamer would experiment with that on later attempts. For now, the Agents absolutely kicked their asses, killing several haremettes.

Exactly 1 minute 45 into the song, again, the Pop Queen summoned the lasso again. “I have the money, baby, I have the looks, baby, just come and please me, baby, just come and please me!” she sang and, this time, caught Aclysia.

John was torn in that moment. Obviously, he wanted to know what the boss did when they did satisfy her. Aclysia would have readily obeyed and, more than likely, succeeded at that task if John had asked her. As a matter of fact, not asking her would have probably made her feel bad, because she knew she was hindering efficiency. At the same time, she did absolutely loathe the Pop Queen, as did everyone else (even Sylph had soured to the music at this point).

‘Master it is…’ Aclysia started to assure him.

‘Break the lasso,’ he told her. ‘Yes, I am certain. That’s not worth the victory.’ They all took 30% of Max HP damage in the aftermath, a notable increase.

The song finished, just like the previous one, after 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Over the course of it, the speed at which Fanboys spawned decreased gradually, the agents became fewer, but were buffed even more by the money.

The third and final beat settled in. It was a lot slower and more melodramatic than the previous ones. “Oh, oh, many tried, none were ever worthy, oh, o-oh,” the Pop Queen sang, almost reaching a music genre John would have actually liked had it not been for the hint of autotune in her voice. “I’m the lioness alone, alone, alone, alone.” And then the repetitive lyrics started again. “Untamed and unbound and a loving soul, soul, soul, soul.”

‘This really strikes that balance between desperate and arrogant,’ John thought, feeling any last bits of attraction he had towards the Pop Queen fade away. The spawning speed of Fanboys was reduced to a trickle, but they were incredibly aggressive now. The desperation of their Pop Queen made the fans evidently upset and they swung wildly at everyone around. They no longer exploded on contact, but also had their defences reduced considerably. They could be killed in twenty seconds or less, which would have worked out positively, hadn’t most of the party been wiped out already.

So, the rest of them followed pretty swiftly.

“Well, I hope you’re all ready to hear those three songs for the next few days,” John told everyone, after they recovered back in base. “Because that’s what we’ll have to do.”

“Can I just put on an extra pair of headphones and blend it out fully?” Rave requested.

“No, because you need to follow the beat and lyrics for some mechanics. Plus, you need to hear my orders,” John told her. She, along with everyone else, sighed. The explanation meant that none of them could go for the easy out. “Well, the quicker we get back in, the quicker we can get this boss behind us,” John told them.

It took them seven days to defeat the boss.

Because they were back in the intended level range, they needed to defeat the Pop Queen with mechanical perfection. No sloppiness allowed. A difficult task, with all of the moving parts in the boss arena.

The primary problems they had to solve were the Fanboys, the Agents, and the question of when to damage the boss. Beyond that there were the usual issues of how to best mitigate the damage and how to use their resources. There was also the charm, but that was a manageable effect. It was cast every 30 seconds, lasted for 5, and did not affect two targets in proximity of each other. They could just pair up and stop each other.

Problem one: the Fanboys. There was no upper limit to them, aside from the physical one, so letting them spawn in endlessly was not an option. The pivotal moment when it came to handling them was the start of the third song. When they had them under control then, the spawn rate was so low that Metra and John could keep them at bay with Rip and Magus Step, allowing everyone else to finish off the lamenting Pop Queen. The best strategy they came up with was to continuously pick away at the Fanboys in a ring between the core and outer areas of the disk. They would let the Fanboys at the centre stay in their dense pack, keep a broad lane open in the middle, and manoeuvre around those that remained in the perimeter. Then, at the end of song two, they would do the utterly honourless thing of all retreating as far from the centre as possible and have Momo sacrifice herself by setting off as many of the Fanboys as possible without increasing their stacked explosion radius to a level where it reached them. They had done this with Undine clones at first, but it turned out that having Momo just spend her mana unsustainably and then having Undine keep a chunk of hers was more effective. Afterwards, all those that were still around would be burst down by all cooldowns, Unleashes, and Babel Phrases they had available.

Problem two: the Agents. This one was a lot easier to handle thanks to the lane they opened up in the Fanboys. Regardless, they did have to dedicate anywhere between three and eight people to tanking the agents, which was above the number of truly worthwhile frontliners they had. What helped here was the result they had come about when it came to Momo. The sassy support could just unload all of her mana in the first seven minutes of the fight, because she wouldn’t be around for the last three. That added to general tankiness.

Problem three: when to damage the boss? That one was the trickiest. Even with viable strategies established for both the Fanboys and the Agents, their resources were tied down almost completely. They only had the luxury of testing tactics regarding this problem once the other two were solved. Their first idea was to just deal damage whenever any of them had an opportunity. Unsurprisingly, that was not tight enough of a strategy. They got through the entire fight, went past the third song, and were wiped out by the Pop Queen wailing like a banshee. They needed to properly allocate their damage. What they ended up with was to have Metra solo damage the boss for the first five minutes. Then, when the Fanboys were under control, they unloaded all they had during the second use of the lasso. After that, as the fight entered the petering out later stages, they gradually sent more people from dealing with the remaining adds to dealing with the Pop Queen instead.

This was founded on the revelation that it wasn’t a strict drawback to dismiss the Pop Queens soliciting for sex. While everyone did take a hefty chunk of damage, the boss’ own damage resistance was lowered during that time. Her body was made from energy, so that had been difficult to ascertain, but John had noticed signs of damage throughout the combat. Her hair got shorter, her bodysuit more torn, and her nail polish was ruined. The first was the most obvious and even that had been hard to tell, as he needed to look for differences in the specific time window. He had followed the hunch that, in a well-designed boss fight, no available choice was ever without its merits.

So, they had Metra, with her rage bonus, solo fight the boss on the stage. The Pop Queen rarely hit back and her attacks were, for a boss, weak. The First of Wrath kept all her proper damage cooldowns ready for the first lasso phase and blew them all at once, while the rest of the party kept on dealing with the adds. That continued until the second soliciting for sex, where the situation was under control enough that everyone could capitalize on it. Afterwards the rage bonus was broken, as Metra was no longer fighting the boss on her own, and they could deal damage again without issue.

Easy enough on paper, but a set of strategies that still demanded perfect execution and coordination with Metra. They still needed the First of Wrath to Rip Fanboys on the 10 second cooldown. Even choosing the same as her would immediately break the rage bonus for the rest of the fight, as it went dormant for a chunk of time after its rule was violated. They had to coordinate a total of 30 of those interactions over the span of the five minutes. Not a single bit of damage could be wasted. Metra getting a second wave of her fully enraged attacks during the second lasso phase, while everyone else prepared their attacks, was vital.

Lastly, there was a bit of RNG involved. The positioning of the Fanboys, where they spawned, and in which order the Pop Queen lashed the party, were all random. What the Agents did and where the dollars spawned, that could be manipulated to at least fall in favourable areas.

It all had to come together in order for them to eek out the victory. Which, eventually, almost unpredictably, they did. After 121 attempts, many breaks spent listening to music they liked, and over a dozen attempts where everything went almost right, things aligned and the Pop Queen died. John was surprised when it happened, because they had done nothing special that time around and he was convinced they would just be swept away by the post-song’s mechanics again. Instead, the scream she let out was short and full of pain.