The party immediately threw themselves at the boss.

A small grace period allowed all of them to get on the platform, before the Lord of Nothing absconded with it into the darkness below the city. A vortex of rubble and void surrounded them, making it impossible for the fliers to leave the borders of the platform. That was the smallest issue, however, as the prophesized barrage of attacks swiftly came.

Blocks of void energy smashed into the platform, laser beams cut across the sides, Void Chimeras manifested from the darkness and rushed diagonally, waves of nothingness claimed certain areas for stretches of time, and the Lord of Nothing slashed across with his giant scythe. Individually, all of these attacks were manageable. All happening in quick succession or simultaneously limited the safe areas on the platform immensely. As a matter of fact, it limited them so much that the few areas where one would not take damage were only big enough for a couple of people to stand.

They took unnecessary damage, not properly distributed and not knowing the patterns of the attacks that had joined the ones Ruhrszatch had previously employed. It lasted for a while too, a whole five minutes of constant attacks. That was incredibly low compared to the three-hour parkour earlier. As an intro sequence to a boss fight, however, five minutes were substantial.

First attempt, they lost Sylph in it. Fast as she was, Sylph had overshot on one dodge, gotten caught by the boss’ scythe, and knocked straight into a charging Void Chimera. Most in the party might have survived that damage, but not their dedicated glass cannon. With her dead, the attempt was practically doomed already. Her low health pool came at the benefit of making her the best single target damage dealer in the group against almost all enemies.

Damage that they then sorely missed in the second phase. The boss landed in the middle of the platform, his serpentine lower body melting and fusing to the altar. Exposing his core, he started pulling in the rubble that tumbled down into the void with them. That was the cage, drawing ever-closer.

They pelted the exposed core with attacks. As much damage as they could do, they did. The cage shrank much faster than John had anticipated. On a hunch, he ordered those melee fighters that couldn’t fit into the close quarters with the exposed core to hit the cage instead.

While individual pieces of rock were indestructible, the attacks did serve to slow the cage’s shrinking. They had waited too long to start attacking it, however, and did not have the damage to slow it down enough to damage the core to zero before they were crushed.

John had not experienced that particular variety of death yet. Usually, he was pretty happy to be mushed into a tight space with his loves. In combat mode, many of them were a lot harder than during sexy times, however. Particularly getting the pointy bits of Metra’s armour pushed into his stomach was painful.

They respawned back in the base and made a simple resolution. Because they already knew that was just the second of five phases, they decided it would be better to invest a couple of tries into hammering down their mastery of the barrages. They’d need to come out of that with, optimally, no damage taken. Since that goal was a tad unrealistic, John sorted the party members by health pool and made sure the flimsiest of the party were spaced out nicely over the platform. They would have first right to stand in the safe spots, while the tougher members were told to take the damage, if necessary.

They spent the rest of the day and another ten tries on nailing the first phase. Sometimes they pushed past the second as well. The Lord of Nothing covered his damaged core back up and fought them head on, dissolving the cage in the process.

Damage on the torso whittled away at the protective layer over the core, so they had to concentrate on that. With her accuracy and speed, Sylph was vital in that phase. Siena, Rave, Nia and Beatrice were also incredibly good at delivering the damage as was necessary. Everyone else hacked away at the body, dealing damage that was less effective but regardless did something.

They always wiped there.

Roughly speaking, there were three things to look out for in the third phase: the scythe, area damage, and adds. The scythe was obvious, a giant, naga-esque creature slashing with an equally giant weapon was bound to be dangerous. Area damage had slowed, but not ceased completely, so everyone had to be mindful where they stood. Like they had in previous fights, the pillars and sounds served as the primary warning system for these attacks. Adds came in the form of variously sized Void Chimeras. Handled properly, they could be killed in less than a minute. They did not have the experience with the fight yet to handle them properly in every instance.

Whenever they made it to the third phase, they focused on gathering more intel. For those ten tries, they weren’t pushing to defeat the boss, only to master what they could.

Day four of the grinding session saw them continue with this tactic of gradual improvement. Attempt 15 was when John deemed they had improved enough on the first phase to push for the third one in every attempt. The second was reasonably easy to deal with, thanks to the power of cheese. Combining Gnome, Salamander and Siena into Shadowflame, they had the optimal person to damage the shrinking cage. Every rock had an unlit side and Shadowflame’s Unleash ignited every shadow in her vicinity. That the rocks were unfazed by this didn’t matter, only that the cage was stagnant, since the amount of damage done technically was so incredibly high.

Time bought this way was used to regenerate much of the resources expended during the first phase. Between the improved performance and that cheese, they got to phase three in a very comfortable state. The first few times, they still wiped, due to the attack patterns being unfamiliar.

First time they got to phase 4 was during attempt 21. The torso of the Lord of Nothing expanded. It bloated and bloated, the chiselled form made up of rocks and void soon resembling a balloon more closely than a human body. Forcefully, all of the rocks were catapulted outwards, fist-sized shrapnel, and the body burst into a myriad of tentacles and snake heads. The arms and head of the original body still stuck out of that mess.

The fight got incredibly chaotic at that stage. All of the area attacks doubled in frequency and the tentacles lashed out, grappling whoever was in range and tossing them into the next explosion of void energy. Lesser Voidspawn erupted from the Lord of Nothing’s body at five second intervals, landing at the edge of the arena and crawling towards him. When they reached him, they visibly healed him. Ten seconds was all they had to defeat or immobilize these blobs.

Between all the damage and the extra mechanic, they wiped swiftly. All they could do there was to keep putting their face to the grindstone and they did so eagerly. Thirst for difficulty had not yet abated, the state of frustration was far away. Over and over again they grinded their way through the first three phases. Each time, they got a little better at dodging the area effects. Each time, they got better at estimating the health pool of the Void Chimeras. John got more last hits in, letting him regenerate additional mana, which eased the rest of the group as Undine and Gnome could heal more. Since the attacks in phase 3 and 4 were the same, they got better and better at both.

They only stopped to eat and to let their adrenaline rush calm down. Continuously, they iterated and improved on their strategy. Tiny optimizations could have great effects. They dissolved Shadowflame before they were actually done with phase two and turned down their aggression in phase three, all so Combination was off cooldown again for phase 4. They figured out who was best to deal with the adds. In the case of the Void Chimeras, any tank would do. All they knew for certain was that Aclysia was best to keep the attention of the main boss. For the Lesser Voidspawns, Nia’s mobility and damage made her an obvious pick for the job. Metra supported her, using Rip to deal damage at range and Tear to get to her targets.

They got to attempt 30 and decided to call it a day there.

Sometimes proper rest was all that was needed to advance on a difficult project. Sleep, sex, and two good meals later, the party was rested and ready to go in again. The 31st try was treated as a warm-up, but they made it to phase 4 regardless. On the 32nd try, they got to phase 5.

“I see now… even this power… can be controlled,” the voice of the Creator whispered all around. The tentacles of the boss came to a sudden halt, freezing in position, then the entire storm of rubble around also stopped. An unnatural cold filled the air, dread that seeped into the skin. Only the Artificial Spirits with mind control immunity did not feel it, letting John know the effect was magical in nature. “Let my city shatter and be reforged in the void.”

All of them were bound by the magic of ‘do not target the boss mid transition’ (the literal words of the debuff that John was afflicted by). Then the platform turned around and shot upwards. It had been impossible to gauge just how far they had fallen into the endless void, until the bottom of Ohmior came into view once again. A spot smaller than a pixel grew to the truly imposing sight in a matter of ten seconds.

A purple energy shield surrounded them, while they slammed into the shaft that had previously served as the travel point between the second and third segment of the Raid. Too large to cram fully in there, the shield cracked open the walls. With supernatural power, the destruction rippled further and further outwards. A cacophony of cracking stone and shattering metal accompanied them.

They emerged on the other side, the entirety of the Twisted City splintering into shards. Some were the size of entire villages, others just a single house, and many, many of them were just rocks floating in the space the Raid existed in. All of it was basked in the light of the moon and stars. As the dilated time passed outside, so too did it pass inside Ohmior.

Hand raised to the sky, the Lord of Nothing forced his will on his domain. The firmament tinged blue and the moon was replaced by a pale blue sun that shone coldly on the destroyed city.

Simultaneously to the sky’s transformations, the boss underwent one final change. His body consolidated, all of the tendrils becoming the shapely muscles of an incredibly muscular humanoid. The lower body of a snake thinned as a pair of regular legs took their place. Instead, it became a tail, growing a proper serpentine head in the process. While blue light ignited in the eyes of the corrupted Creator, the draconic wings turned into a black mist that streamed down his back like a cape.

“Then let us end this, let the void touch your world upon your death, Gamer!” the Lord of Nothing declared and charged at them with his scythe.

The final phase boosted his considerable physical power even further. All varieties of area attacks were replaced with a single type: cold stars descended down on the platform they stood on. First time around, John thought they just had to soak that – which led to an instantaneous wipe. Those who didn’t die from the impact fell down into the Abyss.

Without large issues, they got back to the phase on their next attempt. If staying underneath it wasn’t the solution, the obvious alternative was to go elsewhere. There was enough rubble hanging in the air to travel, after all. The moment a star started to descend, the entire group relocated to a different platform. The Lord of Nothing harassed them with rays of void, arcane, and ice magic, flying alongside them until they reached a new area big enough to continue the melee on.

The mechanic forced them to keep moving every minute. John’s whole job was to keep track of it. No one else could, since they had to keep their single pair of eyes on the boss. The Lord of Nothing’s tail could act at a seemingly unlimited range and continuously attempted to bite random targets. It only stopped to retract after missing an attack.

The mounting cold continuously dealt damage as well, forcing them to continuously heal or find other solutions. Conveniently, Aclysia’s Frozen Core made her immune to this, so she could keep tanking the enemy in all situations.

They eventually resolved to use Stirwin, who was Unleashed with all of the mana spent in the previous phases, as the frontline heater and Salamander for the backline. Standing clumped together like that was often a drawback, but as long as Aclysia stood as the wall between them, the scythe could not reap them all.

That was also the reason why they wiped several more times.

Aclysia could not, on her own, sustain the physical damage the boss dealt. They needed two or three tanks to rotate. They theorized that Smlere could fill a secondary tank role, but that plan failed miserably. Without a Combination in the fourth phase, they lacked the damage to get out of it before losing too much mana to healing. Plus, it got rid of their backline heating.

Stirwin was an obvious candidate. He was already in the frontline during that final phase and, Unleashed, he had respectable Strength, Endurance, and size. As a third, they went with Metra. Astrotium exterior made her durable and she was instructed to not use her Fury spenders, keeping her damage mitigation topped up at all times.

With their tanks set up properly, they went through several more tries, before stopping for lunch and the question of how to finish the boss off properly. There was still optimizing that could be done, specifically in the form of Babel Phrases.

Rave’s had to be carefully coordinated with the rest of the party. The friendly fire Perk John had did not extend to her actions and the five slashes of superheated light did cover a large area. Beyond that, even though she could use it repeatedly these days, it was still a drain on her resources and there was no sunlight for her to easily recharge. As a rule of thumb, John assumed that they had six uses of it, throughout the fight.

Nia’s Babel Phrase was more precise, a slash in a straightforward line. It helped that the pariah had a more tactical mindset than John’s girlfriend. She could time the attack better, so coordinating with her was simpler. They had about three of these throughout the fight.

They spent the tries 41 to 44 on finding out how much they could conserve the energies of those two. Devastating damage was necessary to get through phase four, but if they could skimp out on one more or less use, that’d be a huge boon in the final segment. Besides optimizing their way there, they also formulated a strategy to optimally hit the boss with these super-powered spells. Rave or Nia would leave a platform ahead of everyone else and start the incantation when the rest of them followed. That way, they could hit the Lord of Nothing the moment he landed in the new area. After the hit, they could all rush in.

That strategy, once employed, seemed highly successful. Whittled down so far that his tail fell off, the Lord of Nothing was obviously struggling. So were they, however, so the 47th attempt also ended in a wipe.

They went for one more try that day.

The Lord of Nothing swung his scythe with less energy than before. Even the confirmed hit only drove Aclysia back several steps. The blade of void energy (or what Gaia sold them as void energy anyway) grinded against the black scales of the weaponized maid. Serious as this combat was, she and Beatrice had left behind their uniforms to get the full advantage out of their forms. While she pushed against the blade, she spewed a torrent of ice at the Lord of Nothing’s torso. It did little, but it was free damage.

‘Looks like another wipe,’ John thought. More than half of their party was dead at this point, most of them sniped during the travel between platforms. Undine’s and his own mana were depleted, Nia and Rave had used up all their energy as well, and a star was already descending on their position.

“All or nothing!”

John turned, surprised at the origin of the raised voice. A streak of white, undirtied cloth and long blonde hair, Nia rushed forwards. It was the first time he heard her shout like that, filled with adrenaline and drive. “You heard her!” the Gamer yelled in support and rushed forwards. He had no mana left, but he still had a pair of working hands.

They were on a tight timetable. Since they had opted not to relocate again, they either had to kill the boss in the next ten seconds or get obliterated by the falling star.

All of the remaining party rushed towards the Lord of Nothing. John could feel the icy air on his skin, rapidly diminishing his health points. The effect slowed and stopped as he approached Stirwin. The Celestial Devourer bit into the boss’ shoulder. Nia charged up his back and slashed at the Lord of Nothing’s head. The attack was executed with the entire force of her motion and went right through.

That was another sign that the boss was about to die: his magic was weakened to the point that Nia’s weapons were able to slice through it.

John followed her example and used Stirwin’s back as his road upwards. Struggling, the Lord of Nothing made the scaley back difficult terrain to ascend, but John managed anyway. Like Nia, he hit the head with the full force of his charge. The loosened magic burst on impact and the head became a scattering shower of ooze.

It was a satisfying moment, but meant nothing definitive. The body of the Lord of Nothing was just energy, the core was what they had to destroy. A barrage of attacks followed, preventing the boss from regenerating. Aclysia executed her three-hit combo, cutting deep into the boss’ shoulder and torso. Gnome and Metra hammered against the back of the boss’ legs, making him collapse. Rave used the last of her power to slam her fist into the boss’ injured shoulder, blasting it off with a martial art.

On his knees, headless, one arm in the jaws of a solar crocodile, the other removed, the boss was truly helpless. They were also, however, out of attackers. There was no one else who could muster another powerful blow in time.

So, at least, John thought, as he looked up at the star. It was ‘only’ as big as a wrecking ball. On impact, it would release a shockwave of magic that sent all of them back to home base. In front of that appeared Nia. Her paleness was only emphasized by the blue light, her long ponytail fluttered as she fell. Her hands were raised, her two weapons turned into a sphere of complete black. The true void, the void of John’s world, a piece of Nirvana made manifest.

What normally took the shape of a long-bladed lance and a curved dagger now shaped into a two-handed sword. Pointed downwards, the anti-magic void sunk into the magic void of Gaia’s creation. Blackness eliminated blackness, the two-handed sword sunk down to the hilt. Nia landed gracefully on the shoulders, even as her presence thinned and the body under her was negated. John could see the descending star through her. She twisted the blade. The core shattered audibly.