"Chrome! You traitor. How dare you betray lord, Nakshakh," shouted the shaman in anger as the troll killed the orcs. In its rage, it quickly fired a bunch of frost bolts that injured the troll and a thin layer of frost started to form on the troll because of it.
"Quiet Fire, blind this one too," shouted Shadow as the Orc Shaman came running towards them. His plan was to hinder and stop the shaman before it stopped the troll from taking down the rest of the orcs. That would be to their best advantage if the troll handled the other orcs and the aggro of the shaman remained on it due to this.
Mob, Grenadier and Merlin who could attack from a distance were the only ones who attacked the normal orcs and they stayed close to the troll to bring them closer to the troll. This would clearly help the troll to harm the other orcs faster. Bitter Beast being a druid was in-charge of healing the troll while Little White Feet being the main healer went with Quiet Fire as they were attacking the boss.
The pair of dwarves which had shown them the way also participated in the fight by attacking the orcs. This was more of a trouble than help. The players always had to protect these dwarves as they jumped into the orcs to fight and didn't listen much to the players commands.
Most teams usually let these dwarves die as they didn't have much use after the first floor and it was too much of an effort to keep them alive. But there were rumors that if they finished the end of the dungeon with the dwarves there would be a better reward.
Balthazar wanted to try it out and had asked Bitter Beast to keep a lookout for these dwarves health. As long as they didn't go after the shaman, it wouldn't be much hard to keep them safe. They were also quite good helpers and tanks at that.
After firing a bunch of dark bolts, Merlin attempted his subjugation skill again. But now it was on a normal orc instead of the boss. This was a good way to cause chaos, before the blind effect cleared on the boss, but sadly his subjugation attempt failed.
In the meantime, the troll killed another couple of orcs and the others were also attacking the orc shaman and managed to reduce about 2000 HP. Usually, the five of them all had unique equipment and their attacks would deal at least 3000HP damage. The orc shaman had a very high defence physical and magical and even their combined effort didn't have much effect.
Tetsujin and Shadow realized that they should concentrate on slowing down the shaman rather than dealing damage and worked together to cripple one of its legs when it was blinded. Still it wasn't of much use as the shaman started to release frost bolts and fire balls as soon as the blind effect was released in 3 seconds.
"Merlin forget the other orcs make it attack the shaman. Bitter Beast tank its attacks and drink a health. Little White heal the troll. Sultan can temporarily handle us," said Shadow. The shaman was crippled in its leg and wasn't able to move properly and it was focused on the troll. It had already gone berserk as five of the other orcs died.
Their attacks were disturbing the shaman's attacks and it had already started using its sickle-sword. It had the sword in one hand and staff in other, using both of them simultaneously in its berserk state. Tang and Sultan focused on stopping its sword while Quiet Fire attacked from a distance as Shadow and Tetsujin was mainly concentrating on disrupting its attacks.
Still it was clear that they were able to hold against the boss only because the shaman's aggro was on the troll. They were able to hold against it without much difficulty because it was only blocking and evading them, not actively attacking them. The troll had achieved its purpose of gaining the aggro of the boss. It would be best if it also joined the assault on the boss now. The troll though slow in moving its legs attacks very fast and viciously with its club which is the thing that they need most.
Merlin commanded the troll as asked. There were a few orcs in the direction of the shaman blocking the troll, but they smacked aside by the troll with its club. It took about half a minute to reach the shaman and by that time it killed three more orcs on its way. Once, it reached the shaman it continued with its swings at the shaman ignoring the other orcs.
Mob, Merlin, Bitter Beast and Tang were asked to hold back the other orcs from joining the fight. This was a matter of purely tanking and avoiding some attacks to hold them back. They actually were quite worried about this. By this time, they had noticed that the shaman was focusing obsessively on the troll and had gone berserk because these orcs were killed.
The shaman was held back because it was only focusing on the troll and this allowed Shadow and Tetsujin to cripple its legs. They had been attacking the same spot repeatedly till the troll reached the shaman to put up a physical fight with it.
They were very worried that if they accidentally killed an orc they might be targeted by the shaman. Usually most players would consider attacking such a boss as the hardest job, but these four considered this to be much harder. Merlin had already told Bitter Beast to keep track of their health and heal the orcs if they were about to die.
Luckily, the fight was progressing at a fast pace. The troll was very effective against the shaman. As the other players were disrupting the magical attacks of the shaman and there were two healers healing the troll, Merlin let it attack without consideration to its own health.
The troll's blows were very strong. Even when the shaman blocked it with its sword and staff, the attacks dealt a damage of 500 HP each. Within 10 seconds, the shaman had already lost half of its HP. The shaman's physical attacks weren't weak either, it dealt a damage of 400 HP each to the troll too. It became a fight of attrition and see which one will fall first.
The advantage that the team had was that the troll had high defence and physical attack. Its weakness was magical attacks which were currently being controlled by the players. Frost bolts and fire balls couldn't deal much damage and Sultan could easily tank them. The stronger spells required time which the shaman wasn't currently being given by the players.
So, the biggest advantage of the shaman was currently nullified and the aggressive nature of the boss which the game had designed had become a boon instead of a curse as it usually is to other players. It was all because of the sick skill of the sceptre of evil that Merlin held. Moreover, the troll had healers and the shaman didn't have any.
All this caused the shaman to be bitterly cornered and defeated by the group in another 15 seconds. A boss fight which was tedious and takes atleast 30 minutes because of all its minions and its aggressive nature concluded in two minutes.
"System: Congratulations on obtaining the first kill of Gularg, the orc shaman. You will receive the first kill rewards in your mail on exiting the dungeon."
The way the first kill rewards were sent to the players changed after the first upgrade of the game. There were other some minor changes which were kept unannounced in the website as these didn't bring any disadvantage or advantage to the play of the game.
It was a very high paced fight and took a lot of effort from the players mentally. "It is a good thing that I chose players who were known to be mentally strong in the future," thought Balthazar. "If the performed in a similar manner, we would be quite successful in getting records," he thought gladly.
Once, the shaman died the pace of the fight reduced considerably. Six of them were freed and could concentrate on the orcs which were about fifteen in number. The troll was also free. The three players that could heal just cast heals on the troll and let it beat up the remaining forces. The troll easily moved through the orcs as the others went ahead to search and scavenge the body of the shaman.
The hands and the torso of the shaman were bashed in, by the troll. So, Balthazar was sure that its armor couldn't be scavanged. Luckily, one of its weapons was in decent shape. The sceptre was fine, but the sword was slightly bent and was definitely not in good condition. Apart from that they got a silver equipment and four bronze equipment from its pockets. The head was still fine, and they managed to scavenge a pair of tusks and the helmet.
[Gularg's Sceptre] (Gold sceptre)
Level 15;
Requirements: Intelligence: 30; Strength: 10;
Vitality +5; Intelligence +5;
Special Effect: Fire Conduction: All fire spells have 10% more damage.
Active Skill: Fire Vortex: Creates a vortex of fire that would attract and burn your opponent; Channel time: 3 sec; Max Duration: 4 sec; MP: 500 MP per sec; Cooldown: 10 min.
Durability: 32/35;
This was the first equipment which Merlin posted on the team chat. The active and passive skills impressed most of them. The active skill was actually the signature skill of the shaman which uses to attract players towards him if they maintain a distance from him for far too long in its berserk state. Though it didn't have the same duration. It was still enough for a player. But it was clear to them that the durability went down due to the attacks of the troll. The sceptre was given to Grenadier Mage as he was one of the two elementalists of the team and Quiet Fire already had a unique weapon.
[Gularg's Sickle Sword - Deformed] (Silver one-handed sword)
Level 15;
Requirements: Strength: 25;
Attack Power +25;
Special effect: 10% chance of inducing a bleed effect of 30 HP per sec for 3 seconds.
Durability: 15/30;
The second item that he showed was the sickle sword that was used by the shaman. From its description it was clear that the sword lost a grade and its durability during the fight. It was even slightly twisted near the handle. It was clear that using the troll would have a bad effect on the loot.
"I guess it is best if we don't use the troll from now on," suggested Sultan as he went through the description of the weapon. No one would want to intentionally lose their loot.
"I agree. Though it allows us to go through faster, it is better if we take our time and defeat the boss monsters so that we could get a better loot," said Quiet Fire. Even Grenadier and Bitter Beast nodded to it indicating their approval as they looked at Merlin who held control over the troll.
"No. No. No," interjected Shadow before they made any stupid decision. The troll caused them losses, but it wasn't without any use. Moreover, if they actually used their own spells and defeated the shaman, a majority of the attacks would be long distance ones mainly elemental spells. These would cause damage to the weapons and armor worn by the shaman too.
In fact, it was considered lucky if any player got the weapons of the boss monster or its armor in the first clear as the proper method to deal with it wouldn't be formed yet. Even with the proper method, it isn't an easy task to get a weapon in prime condition.
"Have your ever gotten a weapon from the boss monster in such good condition before?" he asked looking at the others. "It definitely harms the weapons and the loot of the boss but do you honestly thing that it is any better with us killing it. We also cause a lot of damage to its armaments. A prolonged fight by us would probably make it worse. It is not sensible to leave out a strong trump card as the troll for a something which we are not sure yet. If not for the troll's strength, who know how long we would have needed to take down the shaman."
"He is partly true," said Merlin supporting him. "Both of your arguments are just conjecturing at this point of time. It has no basis in fact. It is a waste to set it aside for now. We can only know if this is a good practice or not after some experimentation. Let us continue in this way for this run. I don't even know if I can have the troll in control in the next run as I failed to control one of those orcs during this fight," continued Merlin.
Shadow didn't care much about other's thoughts as the decision lied with Merlin. He was the leader of the adventurer team and also was the one who actually has control of the troll. He was glad that Merlin didn't agree with the others. Else, it would be wasting a good resource.
"We did get a decent haul actually. I think we just got greedy as the loot provided by enslaving the minor-boss was more than that of the boss of the floor. It is to be understood that enslaving would definitely give us all the things that the monster had," said Sultan. His words actually had better effect on the rest than the words of Shadow and Merlin as they explained the reason for getting better loot for the mini-boss.
"Fine, let us go through the corpses of the orcs before we go down the stairs," said Shadow as he went to scavenge the corpses of the other orcs. Only Merlin, Sultan and Mob helped him in that work and the others didn't as they found it extremely queasy to scavenge the dead orcs who had a large part of their bodies turned into meat paste by the troll.
They only found a few Iron grade equips and couple of bronze grade equips from the orcs which none of them wanted to use and were all given to Merlin. They decided to let him keep track of the equipment and resources and let him manage it as he had experience with it in his guild.
With that done, they went to the stairs. The stairs were a spiral one made of stone and went down to the next floor. The bottom of the stairs opened up into an atrium. It was not a complete stone construction like the first floor. The second floor wasn't like the first floor. It was much wider and taller. It had a bunch of wall decorations and even the stone brackets which held the lights were gilded in gold.