We ended up spending almost the entirety of Lily's remaining time in-game in the hot springs. No matter how long we spent in the water, it remained the perfect temperature and our bodies never got used to it to nullify the effect. We also discovered that it did not make our skin wrinkly, so none of us looked like raisins when we finally got out of the water.
Lily made sure to promise that she'd be back the next day, and then it was time for Thera and I to head over to our guild's hall.
I was surprised that they didn't kick me out of the guild yet for their own good. I was the only Sin-aligned player in it after founding my dungeon and the guild hall was located in a Virtue-controlled zone, so it was potentially dangerous for them to keep me in the guild.
My alignment meant that any Virtue-aligned player could attack me at any time. Not even safe zones would protect me if they were inside of Virtue-controlled territory. That extended to guild halls. All it would take is a single Virtue-aligned player to attack me inside of the guild's territory for all of the guild members to get flagged due to their association with me.
Basically, it was a huge risk for them to keep me around.
I figured that I should go ahead and leave on my own before word gets around, but there was no harm in one last raid run with the group.
Though, I intended on the last raid with them to be the last.
Oh well.
The night's raid was an easy one that was meant to help some newer members of the guild gear up, so it seemed like a perfect final raid for me. My last raid would involve me helping out newer members gear up so that they could replace me. One of them was a tank, so I'd even get to personally tutor somebody during the raid.
Tanks had to stick together. I never minded teaching other tanks the battles since I knew just how stressful it could be tanking something for the first time.
In total, twenty-five players were gathered for the raid. Five groups of five. One group was full of veteran damage dealers who didn't need anything but were there to make sure we met the battles' DPS checks. The next group was the healers. Three veterans, one member who was experienced but still needed gear, and a new member. Then there was the third group which was another damage-dealing group full of new members led by Jonathon, the floor-tanking lancer. The next group was also full of DPS and led by Thera. Finally, there was the group that I led. It was composed of me, the new tank, two support-class characters, and another healer.
As for the tank that I would be working with, his name was Kedrin. Whereas I fought with a sword and a shield, he fought with a large sword requiring both hands to wield properly.
"What's your build?" I asked him while the others finished going through their food, potions, and other buffs.
"It's a sort of uh… hybrid build. Sorry, I know it's not meta, but I have faith in it," Kedrin answered.
"Well, explain it to me. I need to know what it's capable of if we're going to be working together."
"Right! Sorry. It focuses on mitigation and absorption. I save my cooldowns for mitigating tank busters and have passive buffs that will heal me while I deal damage to deal with the smaller attacks."
"So, you don't bother trying to reduce damage from normal attacks at all, but you can still defend against the big stuff."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm guessing you have trouble with large groups of enemies?"
"Not as long as healers adjust."
I couldn't help but cover my mouth and laugh at that.
"Healers adjust."
Healers hated that phrase. After all, it basically meant "I'll play how I want even if it means taking more damage, so you better work harder to keep me healed."
Going by the explanation of Kedrin's build, it sounded like "Healers Adjust: The Build."
"Don't let the healers hear that or they'll try to get you kicked out. I'm not even joking. See the girl over there with the glasses?" I asked, pointing at one of the guild's original healers. "She is hardcore about doing mechanics properly. She'll probably demand you change your build or she'll refuse to heal the end-game raids if you're tanking them. If you're not using a meta build, you're a roach to her."
"I'll show her how great my build is."
I placed a single hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "It won't work. I promise."
"It's worth a try."
"Just don't die. If you die because you're not using a proven build, you're going to get stuck on her shit list for a long time. Anyways, since you won't be able to tank large groups on your own, I'll handle that. You can pick off any elites I mark and keep them busy while we AoE the groups down."
"Got it. Oh, I also deal more damage the lower my health is. Think it'd be possible to talk the healers into—"
"No. Seriously, don't even ask. Your job as a tank is to stay alive. If you don't want your health topped off at all times then the healers are going to let you die every fight until you beg for forgiveness."
He sighed. "Alright, but I promise this build is better than it sounds. I'm just missing a couple of enchantments and then I'm going to prove that this build is one of the best."
I highly doubted that he was going to prove the worth of a new build when there were hundreds of hardcore, dedicated theorycrafters online who analyzed every single possible build that there was to determine what the best were, but there was no point in putting him down more than I already did. So, I smiled, nodded, and left it at that.
The Desolate City of Xinax, or as most of the players liked to call it, "Xanax Town," was a raid located in the ruins of a once-great city surrounded by badlands. Most of the enemies were undead – the physical kind of undead. Zombies, ghouls, skeletons, and so on. Because the trash mobs weren't that impressive on their own, there were a lot of them packed together. The very first trash pull of the raid involved nine zombies and three ghouls all wielding various weapons. The weapons might have looked ruined and ready to fall apart at any moment, but that wasn't how video games worked. They still did plenty of damage and never broke.
Fortunately, unlike Kedrin, I had a meta build that was designed to handle all aspects of tanking. Tanking large groups was easy as long as I had enough healers.
The trash groups following that only grew larger and larger. The only times that the groups weren't any bigger was because some of the weaker monsters would get replaced by stronger ones that Kedrin off-tanked for me. Even if had better gear than what the raid called for, and healers who were focusing on keeping my health topped off, I didn't need any tank busters knocking my health down while a dozen undead attacked me.
After enough of the trash groups, we made it to the first boss.
Vulg the Spoiled. A giant ghoul wielding a wooden club half the size of a tree covered in poisonous spikes.
"I already watched a guide, so I should be good," Kedrin said.
I was going to go over the basics anyways. It was my job to make sure that he understood everything and didn't make any mistakes. "How many raids have you done before?"
"Only a few in this game, but I have tons of experience tanking in other games."
"So, you already understand mechanics like tank swapping and all that?"
"Yeah."
"Good. This fight is full of it. Every special attack is going to apply a stack of poison that drains our health. Five stacks will instantly kill you. Four stacks is survivable, but it puts unneeded stress on the healers since it's going to apply constant damage. So, we're going to swap every three stacks. Other than that, this is a simple tank and spank for us. The DPS are going to deal with pools of poison all around the room and a ton of AoE, but as long as none of them drop a pool on us, we won't have to worry about it. If a pool of poison does suddenly appear under you, feel free to glare at whoever got close to you while they were marked."
"Got it."
"You ready?"
Kedrin nodded, so I checked with the others and began the fight once I had confirmation that everybody was ready.
Aside from the complete disaster that was everybody new other than Kedrin running around like cats stuck in bags because of all the poison AoE, the fight went… well. We still managed to clear it on the first try.
Though, a certain glasses-wearing healer made sure that all the new members got properly scolded for the stress that they put on the healers.
As for me, I spent the entire fight imagining monster sex.
When it came to undead monsters such as those we were fighting in the dungeon, they would make any sex count as necrophilia. Seeing as how necrophilia with zombie monsters was considered too taboo for most countries to allow, the game naturally did not allow that.
I personally thought that it could be nice. Some undead monsters had tentacles, so it would basically just be normal tentacle sex when it came down to it. It would only technically be necrophilia because the monster that the tentacles came from was considered technically dead.
And then I started thinking about what would happen if people came back to life in reality.
What if somebody died and then returned from the dead without a beating heart, no rotting or anything, maybe a little bit pale, and with their personality and intelligence still intact? If a husband died, would it be necrophilia for his wife to have sex with him even if he was still effectively a normal human in every way other than the non-beating heart thing? Would that be illegal?
Just like that, I got an idea for my next "discussion" video. My discussion videos usually brought on a guest who I'd discuss controversial topics with while trying to look at it from every side of the issue. For example, I was once made a video about what if legal lolis were real? Would a girl who is thirty years old but with an immature body not be allowed to partake in any sexual activities? Would she be allowed to marry or not? How would the people who entered a relationship with such a person be seen? Would they be given equal rights similar to regular women their age?
That video generated a lot of controversy for being a simple thought experiment. I expected that to happen, though.
The only thing that me and my discussion partner were able to agree on was that boys who look younger than they are would be treated more fairly than girls who look younger than they are. Because, of course, nothing is as serious when it involves an underage boy.
One of the only videos of mine to reach equal levels of controversy to the legal-but-looking-underage video was the video I made calling out abuse against underage boys and how people don't treat it as seriously. Of course something like that generated controversy.
It takes a lot to sicken me. I mean, I'm not into it, but I wouldn't blink an eye if I accidentally came across scat porn. As long as everybody is a consenting adult and being safe, I don't care about what they do. But people who don't treat the abuse that underage boys go through as seriously as they would treat it if they were girls? Now, those people are far more disgusting to me than any literal shit lover.
I went into such a long ramble about those topics to Kedrin that we arrived at the second boss without even realizing it.
"I can't say I disagree with you, but I'd probably vomit if I accidentally saw porn like that. I don't know how you couldn't blink at it," he said.
"I've spent a lot of time on the internet. A lot of time. You sort of just get desensitized to it. Just like with brain penetration and guro. Not into those either, but they're strictly fictional, so nobody is getting harmed in them."
"Did… did you say brain penetration?"
"Yeah. I'm fine with all-the-way-through as long as it's consensual and extremely unrealistic to the point where whoever is getting fucked doesn't die or suffer serious injury from it, but brain penetration isn't my thing."
"All – all the way through?"
"Yeah. Dick goes in through one hole and comes out through the other. Usually done with tentacles or giant monsters. It's hot when the girl is enjoying it and, you know, not dead from it."
"I thought what the others told me about you was an exaggeration. They undersold you."
"Only Thera is going to tell you everything you need to know about me. The rest can't handle the lewd."
"Is she like you then?"
"Oh, no. Not in the slightest. It wouldn't be right for me to say much about her, but I can tell you that she's just really accepting and open."
"Really? All of us new members are terrified of her."
"That's adorable, but you don't need to be as long as she's on the same side as you."
"What if we end up not on the same side?"
"Then yeah, you should be terrified."
"I – I see."
"Anyways, let's go over the strat for this boss before the others get impatient."
Boss after boss fell before us. While there were struggles at times, especially in regard to the new DPS members, we eventually made it through to the final boss of the dungeon.
The Grand Lich, Former Ruler of Xinax, Valren Essa.
While I wasn't much of a roleplayer, I still found the lore behind him interesting. His city was under attack by demons and he knew that they were going to lose. Nobody from the surrounding nations had any interest in coming to their rescue as that would have meant getting on the demons' bad side. So, what did our future lich do? He turned to forbidden magic that promised to empower him and his people with the strength needed to defeat the demons.
Unfortunately for him, he was manipulated by a demon in disguise into doing that. The magic that was meant to save his people doomed them, turning them undead and him into a monster that would be feared for centuries – that would be feared until us brave adventurers came to defeat him.
A lot of the lore-loving players loved him. Those same players were extremely upset by the abrupt end to his story. The most closure there is to his story is the battle in which we kill him. When he dies, all he does is play a death animation without a single word.
The developers really screwed up the end of his tale.
At least there were rumors for those who loved him that the developers were working on a fix that would satisfy them.
But that didn't matter to me and the others. All that mattered was that we killed him before the timer ran out. Only fifty minutes were left before we would get locked out for the rest of the day, and each attempt at killing him would take about fifteen minutes if everything went well.
Given the previous bosses, everything was not going to go well.
"Alright. Other than it being more of the same for us, he's going to summon adds that you're going to need to tank. I'll let you know when it's time for the tank swaps, but those are only going to happen a few times. It's the adds that need dealt with. They're both going to have cleave attacks and will be immune to physical damage, so you have to make sure that you're facing them away from the others and you won't be able to use normal attacks to hold threat," I explained.
"Got it. So, when the adds spawn, I'll gather them, run to the edge of the arena, and have them face out so that their cleaves don't hit anybody," Kedrin confirmed.
"For the most part. A third add will spawn with them once the boss is below half health, but you won't be able to tank that one. It'll randomly follow around a healer and cast cleave attacks until dead. Once the boss dips below twenty-five percent health, it's going to start casting an ultimate. We both need to get in front of everybody and use our AoE protection skills. If either of doesn't do that, we all die. If anybody isn't close behind us and inside of both of our fields, they're dead. Other than that… I think it's about every forty-five seconds that the boss casts a death glare spell. You have to either shut your eyes or turn away. If you're looking at him when the spell goes off, you die and your corpse gets turned into another add. It's not that big of a deal if one of the DPS gets it since they can be revived once the add is dead, but if it happens to one of us – well, it'll be time for the healers to adjust."
"Anything else?"
"One more thing. If the ground underneath you starts to glow purple and look distorted, move. A bunch of hands will pop out of it to grab you and hold you down if you get hit by it. Also, are you any good at the Heroics system?"
"I love the Heroics system. Can… can I—"
"Yep. It's all yours as long as you're confident enough to pull it off."
Hearing that lit up his expression with bright eyes and a wide smile. The positive energy coming from him was contagious and spread to everybody else who noticed it.
The battle begun as soon as explanations were over.
We wiped. Twice.
The first defeat came before we could even get the boss under eighty percent health. The DPS were just dying too frequently and draining the healers' mana, so we let the boss kill us to restart.
The second attempt went much better. We got the boss down to seven percent health thanks to a certain healer shouting and threatening everybody after every single little mistake they made, but because of the DPS still getting used to dodging all the AoE during the fight, our raid-wipe DPS was too low to meet the final DPS check.
Then came the third attempt. We barely had any time left and nobody wanted to get locked out after making so much progress. Honestly, if the raid wasn't composed mostly of veterans, there was no way the new members wouldn't have cleared it. All raiders had to start somewhere, though, and the guild was as successful as it was because of the process that it used to scout for undeveloped talent.
The talent of the new members came to light once they were motivated enough. There were still deaths, but we got the boss down to only three percent health left when the final attack began.
If the boss finished casting its spell before we killed him, we were all dead.
"Keep it up!" I shouted. "We've got this!"
It was a race between our DPS and the boss's casting speed.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Kedrin smiling at me.
He activated a skill that dropped his health down to one percent. It was a valuable skill for tanks that made them invulnerable to all damage for a few seconds at the cost of dropping to almost zero health. In other words, it was a panic button saved for worst case scenarios.
Or it was a damage-boosting button for the end of a battle that was especially helpful to people who did more damage the less health they had.
Boosted by his low health, Kedrin gave our DPS the final push to finish the boss off.
The grand lich's skeletal staff dropped to the ground as he reeled back in agony, dark mist flowing out from his body.
A glowing circle appeared on the ground next to the staff – a Heroics circle.
"It's all yours," I told Kedrin.
"Got it!"
Kedrin jumped into the circle and began the event.
Similar to dancing games where certain movements had to be done in a specific order, the Heroics system allowed players to deliver unique, final attacks to bosses in exchange for a bonus reward. Such final attacks were not possible through normal combat. They were more like scripted, mini-cutscenes driven by instinct given by the game.
Kedrin, standing over the unholy staff, thrust his sword into the demonic gem embedded within it. The crystal exploded with foul energy, causing the boss to drop to his knees as it was bound to his soul. As part of the event, though, the boss was not yet done. He swung an arm out to attack Kedrin, but it was lopped off by Kedrin's sword.
Next came the beheading.
Kedrin swung his sword horizontally toward the boss's neck, severing the undead head from its enchanted corpse of a body.
And that was it.
The battle was over and a chest of loot appeared in front of us as a victory fanfare played.
Kedrin got a guaranteed drop from performing the Heroic finisher, and the rest of the raid would have to roll on whatever items were inside the chest.
To my surprise… there was even an item in the chest that would be perfect for my dungeon if I won the roll for it. I completely forgot that the item even existed and never saw it drop before, so I was more than a bit excited when I saw the item.
And it was a very… handy item.