The trio opened the door and entered the room, only to be greeted to the sight of a giant Murloc with a staff within its hand, sitting on a coral chair with seaweed being used as cushions.
"WHO DARES TO ENTER MY DOMAIN," barked the Murloc Shaman. In its anger, it rose from its coral chair and gave the trio a vicious look.
Looking at the giant Murloc before them, the trio simultaneously sucked in a breath of cold air after looking at its stats.
Monster: Murloc Shaman Rodrick (Boss)
Level: 17
HP: 57500
Mag Attack: 250
Def: 150
Skills: Holy Water, Frost Ray, Water Prison, Water Armor, Summon Minions, Berserk
He still had the same level as the monsters the trio just killed outside the door, but that's about it when it came to similarities. While he still had the same skills as the normal Murloc shaman, the extra skills made Kirou furrow his brows.
Kirou has met a boss with the berserk skill already so he knew exactly what to expect, but that summon skill gave Kirou a bad feeling.
While maintaining his sights on the giant Murloc heading their way, Kirou asked in a hushed tone, "You ladies have any second thoughts about taking on this boss just yet?"
Both women formed wry smiles on their faces in response to Kirou's question. Of course, they were having second thoughts about facing this boss now, especially after they took a look at his skills. Unfortunately for them, the door to the boss room closed on its own after the trio entered.
Navi was the one who spoke up after releasing a sigh, "Even if we do, we can't do anything about it. In that case, let's kill this creature so that we can get out." Reya nodded her head in agreement with Navi's words.
Hearing those words, Kirou inhaled deeply before releasing that breath. The look on his face changed from his usual playful expression and adopted a serious one in its place. Kirou then equipped all his weapons at once in their respective places, a perk of the weapon master class's trait, 'Master-at-Arms.' At the moment, he had on his clawed gloves with the gunblade tonfas in his hands and the chain wrapped around his waist. He wouldn't be able to make use of his wires or knife in this situation as both require the use of his hands as well but is something he can get around later if the need arises thanks to his other class trait, 'Fast Hands.'
Following him equipping two more weapons, Kirou dashed towards the Murloc shaman. Even though he had the lowest level of the trio, he was the only one who could act as a tank, or at the very least keep the monster's hate locked onto him without trouble.
When Kirou got in range of Rodrick, Rodrick immediately cast a frost ray in his direction. Kirou made no attempts at blocking that attack and instead opted to use a charged attack to propel his body closer to Rodrick, effectively dodging the attack and closing the distance between both Lycan and Murloc.
Rodrick never noticed his attack had missed but the moment he was about to step towards the two elf women, he was hit with an attack from behind.
[-110]
It was an insignificant damage figure when compared to its total health but it did cause Rodrick to pause in its tracks to go after the women and made it turn around to see Kirou pointing the barrel of his gunblade tonfa at it. This enraged Rodrick and caused him to release a water prison to trap Kirou, followed by releasing a frost ray to finish him off.
Kirou knew that if he got hit with either skill, he would be dead and the women would soon follow so he made sure to dodge both. He barely managed to dodge both by once again using a charged attack to propel him backward. After steadying his landing, Kirou fired a few more attacks on Rodrick, earning his ire as all the attacks landed, and kept dealing [-110] damages on it.
It was only after Kirou had been landing attacks on it for over five minutes did he shout towards the elf women, "I've got its hate locked on me now. Hit it as hard as possible."
Following his words, both Reya and Navi sprung into action. Reya started their assault with a few arrow attacks, dealing [-20] damage each. She then switched up her strategy and started using her skills and aimed for unguarded areas on Rodrick.
[210]
[240]
[190]
As for Navi, being a melee class as she is, she got in close and attacked Rodrick from behind. She made sure to target Rodrick's back and head with the rogue skills 'backstab' and 'concussive blow.' Both dealt decent damage to Rodrick even though they weren't critical hits.
[-520]
[-410]
While the attacks themselves weren't anything strong on their own, together, they started to chip away at the boss's health. Going at it for over five minutes, Rodrick's health finally got to the 91% mark. Immediately Kirou shouted to Navi to get back. As she did so, both Kirou and Reya's ranged attacks dropped Rodrick's health to the 90% mark, which caused it to stop firing frost ray and water prison at Kirou. Instead, it started waving around its staff and speaking in an unknown language. After doing that for ten seconds, six elite murlocs spawned within the room and started attacking the trio.
"So it's gonna use summon every 10% health drop. Navi, you take half while I continue to kite the rest and Rodrick around the room. Reya, you help Navi finish off her set then pull one from the group chasing me. Let's do this until it's just Rodrick left." After Kirou said this, he threw an object at the group of murlocs that just spawned. It caused an explosion that did [-250] damage on each Murloc. Kirou then started running in the opposite direction of the women with Rodrick on his tail.
Both women followed Kirou's orders as Reya pulled half of the murlocs from the group chasing Kirou and Navi attacking them from behind. They kept the murlocs trapped between them and killed them off without facing much danger. Reya then pulled more murlocs and this continued until it was only Rodrick that was left chasing Kirou. Both women joined in and resumed their attacks on the Murloc Shaman Boss.
**************
The trio has been at it for over half an hour now and Rodrick was nearing the 50% mark with its health. As usual, Navi backed off when it got close to the 10% mark and waited for it to do its summon before resuming. This time, however, the Murloc shaman didn't immediately cast summon and instead used the water armor skill. Following that, Rodrick cast holy water on him, raising his health back to the 70% mark before finally casting summon.
Seeing those actions caused the trio to scowl in anger. It was already hard enough just to shave its health down to 50% and now it started healing. What kind of BS action is that? That was the thoughts of the two women, at least. Kirou, on the other hand, was wondering why it took so long to use that skill. He got the feeling he wasn't going to like the answer to that question and he was proven right less than ten minutes later.
Once Rodrick got to 60% health, it used its summon skill once again. Immediately after, it tried to catch holy water on itself as well. The keyword here being 'tried.' The moment Kirou noticed signs of Rodrick wanting to cast holy water, he threw a grenade towards Rodrick, which caused an explosion that interrupted Rodrick's spell cast.
Seeing that its heals could be interrupted, the trio grew excited and started beating on Rodrick much faster and harder than before. There were a few times when Rodrick managed to get holy water off, regaining 20% of its but the trio made sure its health never made it back above 70%.
After figuring out all the tells and timing their attacks properly, the trio managed to keep Rodrick from gaining anymore heals on itself and steadily shaved away its health.
*****************
Rodrick's health was currently hovering just above 15%. It had taken the trio quite a while to shave Rodrick's health down to this level and they were in no rush to finish it off. Partly due to the water armor cutting a whole lot of their damage and partly due to what Kirou expects will happen when its health gets to 10%.
"Ladies, I advise you to keep watch of your cooldowns. Its health is about to reach the 10% mark. After that, it will go berserk. When that happens, it's gonna get a whole lot faster and stronger in that state while its defense will take a nosedive. I suggest you use your strongest attacks then as it's busy trying to maul me." Kirou said this in between attacking and running. He made sure to land as many critical hits as he possibly could, as fast as possible before backing off to keep Rodrick's rage aimed at him. This wasn't all that easy when he has a teammate that deals twice the amount of damage as him in total but he was making it work.
"Got it," shouted Reya while using regular attacks on Rodrick while Navi acknowledged by slowing down her attack frequency.
As the trio was shaving off Rodrick's health dangerously close to the 10% mark, a mistake occurred. It wasn't on purpose but Navi managed to land her first critical hit on Rodrick that entire fight.
[-2300]
That one damage figure managed to shift Rodrick's hate from Kirou and towards Navi. Worst of all, it immediately entered berserk mode, causing its body to swell to dangerous proportions. In this state, Rodrick no longer tried to cast magic but instead rushed towards Navi and attacked her with its staff.
Navi got into the stance to block the attack but Kirou immediately shouted at her, "DODGE!!!"
His shout came too late as Rodrick's staff slammed into Navi in that instant.
[-2150]
Pretty much all of Navi's health was removed with that one swing of Rodrick's staff. Navi was left with just 5 health and her daggers were in poor shape, obviously from taking such a powerful hit head-on.
Navi was in momentary shock from what she just experienced and Reya herself wasn't in a position to help her out. Rodrick raised his staff once again, intending to slam it down on Navi, finishing her off. Just before Rodrick could slam it down on her, however, it stopped in its tracks.
Navi was surprised that she wasn't being slammed to death. When she looked up at Rodrick, she noticed that Rodrick was currently shaking. Its eyes were red, signifying it was still in its berserk state but there was a terrified expression on its face.
Just as Navi was about to move, she felt a very oppressive aura wash over her. It caused her body to freeze up and she felt the threat of death invade her mind. In just a second she pictured herself dying in various ways. Reya wasn't facing the brunt of the aura but she too was feeling the dark aura. She didn't have any visions of death like Navi did but she was shaking in terror from the dark aura.
Seeing the effect that his skill was having on his teammates, Kirou rushed towards the berserk Rodrick and used both his wires and chain to bind it in place. Following this, he created two shadow clones and had them attack Rodrick while he deactivated the skill. By the time the skill effect wore off from Rodrick and the two women, Rodrick was only left with 3% health.
Having the effect of terror worn off, Rodrick started to thrash about again, but his limbs were locked in place by Kirou's wires and chain. Feeling the restrictions, Rodrick started thrashing even more in an attempt to escape his bindings.
Feeling his wires and chain breaking, Kirou couldn't help but shout out to the women, "Attack Rodrick now. He's almost dead."
This shout snapped both women out of their stupor. They looked around to see where they were and realized that they were still in a boss fight. While they were unsure of what just happened, they knew that they'll have to put it off until Rodrick drops dead. With that thought in mind, both women resumed their attacks on the big Murloc shaman.
After another 20 seconds, Rodrick finally collapsed on the floor. Kirou, who was holding Rodrick in place with his wires and chain from behind collapsed on the floor. Both women looked at each other before going over to Kirou.
When they saw Kirou collapsed on the floor, both women were wondering just what happened to put him in that state.
Reya was the one who voiced that question, "What the heck happened to you, Mr. Wolf?"
While lying with his back on the floor, Kirou looked up at both women for a few seconds before answering, "Just consider it a consequence of forcefully using a skill on a stronger target."
Kirou then ignored both women for the next five minutes while they sat down beside him in confusion.