Dungeon Core Online 79 Chapter 79

"Bwahahahaha, I do say, good shot old chap." The Terminus was chuckling evil as he glanced at Z, who had just hit the boss's monocle with a piercing arrow. The projectile ignored 50% of the Terminus's base defense and hit for 71 damage. What's more, it cracked the monocle, which James was certain the Terminus had been using to better target the adventurers.

Since Z's newest plan, to survive, was enacted, the raid party had been doing its best to keep the Terminus occupied as the whittled down its life. The Knights, even down one member, were doing admirably. They were veterans of MMOs, they knew how to act without needed to call out their commands. Especially since James figured they didn't want to give anything away to the Terminus.

Skar's group, on the other hand, were a lot less organized, but were aiding in the best ways they could. Because of the difference in coordination, the Terminus seemed to be paying more attention to taking out the higher leveled Knight's first, though the boss was not missing opportunities to pick away at any member that was foolish enough to leave themselves open to an attack.

So far, the boss was sitting at a little over 1700 health, and the raid party was down to 8 members. That was because Manly the Dwarf had gotten himself caught in the Terminus's stun when it dropped below 80%. To his credit, the dwarf had tried his best to survive. The moment he was stunned, the Terminus had swung its mighty tail down at the dwarf, intending to crush the axe duelist in a single blow. However, while manly was stunned, there was still a cooldown the dwarf could activate, and he did.

The skill, simply called Rage, had a 10 minute cooldown, and only lasted for 30 seconds. During that time, the user's attack power was doubled, while his defense was halved. However, while rage was active, the user couldn't be dropped below 1hp, and he gained 5% life steal for all of his attacks. The ability also came with a cleanse. It was the type of cooldown usually saved for either the final burn phase on a boss, or one of those, oh shit moments.

So, as the tail came crashing down on the poor stunned dwarf, the adventurer realized it was an oh shit moment, and burned his cooldown. His dwarven form instantly became engulfed in glowing red energy, and either unintentionally, or as a part of the skill, the dwarf let out a ferocious roar. Then the angry dwarf rushed towards the Terminus, hacking and slashing away at the metal plating with his twin axes. Even with his attack doubled, the Terminus still had quite a high defense. That meant each axe swing, which took a little over a second for the dwarf to make, was doing a little over 30 damage. Which, 60 damage every 3 seconds, for 30 seconds, would still have equaled nearly 600 damage to the boss, if the boss had been standing still and taking it.

Instead, Manly got in about 6 hits, before the Boss swung his tail in a wide, rapid sweep, and sent the dwarf flying across the room. By the time manly hit the ground, and began running back towards the Terminus, his rage had failed, and even before he could get healed, a grenade ended his life.

Of course, Manly's actions had probably saved the tanks, who both had also been caught in the Terminus's stun. However, while Manly drew aggro, the healers had been able to use simple cleanse spells to remove the debuff and return the tanks to the fight. Needless to say, it was a war of attrition, and both sides were taking damage.

"Now I must say, your form is impeccable." The Terminus laughed as he stomped the ground, attempting to send Skar and Oak flying. The tanks stood their ground though, their shields glowing with energy as they pumped up their defenses. The tremor also sent Gno-more scattering backwards away from the boss. The assassin had been attempting to sneak up on the boss, in order to launch a flurry of attacks. The assassin class had the ability to ignore 50% of an enemy's defense if the strikes were deemed as sneak attacks. However, Gno-more had yet to be able to apply any attacks on the boss, who always seemed aware of when the gnome was near.

James, and it seemed Z, had figured out why. The monocle, though cracked, still had a flash of data streaming across it, and as James zoomed in on the accessory, he could see the data was providing an overlay map of the area around the boss. It seemed the top hat it was wearing, was also acting as a radar, feeding the information to the boss on enemy locations in real time. So, not only was it aiding in targeting, it was also giving the boss quite the unfair advantage on the battlefield.

"And yours is sloppy." Z called out, lining up another shot. The arrow flew true, smacking into the boss's monocle, this time shattering the accessory. The damage however, also dropped the boss below the 60% range, activating his AOE roar. And, Z's shot had caused him to leave cover, making him vulnerable to the stun this time as well.

"A fair trade, in my eyes." The Terminus leveled his grenade launcher at the ranger, showing its teeth in an evil grin. "My advantage for yours." The grenades launched in rapid succession, and even though badgy, who had been steadily damaging the boss from its back, did its best to yank the boss's arm off course, the grenades still found their mark. The damage, one direct impact and two with splash damage, caused Z to burst into a white orb. The boss was now below 60%, but the party was down to 7. And, with Z's death, Badgy poofed out of existence.

"Badgy, nooooo." Rue cried out as the honey badger disappeared, and James saw his core chat was mimicking the pixie as well. That little badger had won everyone's hearts between the last two streams. And, its valiant attempt to save Z's life merely cemented its place in the memories of all who were watching the fight.

The Knights, of course, were calling out in angst over Z's death. With Z down, they had lost another of their DPS, and were now predominantly going to be relying on Elm and his magical arrows to pull down the boss's life. What's more, James could still see the mini boss respawn timer, which was now sitting at 2 minutes. The raid had 2 minutes to go, before the Terminus had its ally respawn, and the party wiped. It was like working against a rage timer in a raid, but so much more terrible.

"Do it now." Z's disembodied voice called out to the party, and James felt his heart leap in his chest. Of course part of him was looking forward to gaining even more experience from the party. Hell, with the death of Z, Manly, and Faust, James had already earned over 6,000 experience. However, as Z called out, James remembered the contingency plan he had enacted for the party.

"Order 66, got it." Oak and Skar both exchanged looks and grimaced, before they rushed the Terminus, one on either side of him. By the glow on their bodies, James could tell they were both blowing their cooldowns. Oak's, as a shielder, increased his defense by 100% for 30 seconds, and reflected 30% of all damage he took back to the abuser. That meant that not only was he reflecting physical damage from the Terminus's stomps and tail swipes, but he was also reflecting the burn damage.

Skar, as a Death Knight, had an even more interesting cooldown. His class created an energy field around itself of swirling bones and dark power. The shield was proportionate to his hp, and the more damage he took during the time it was active, would build the shield. As long as his hp did not to drop to 0, when the 30seconds were up, he would regain 50% of all health lost, and deal an additional 50% of true damage to any enemy within 10ft of him.

James had looked up the reference when Z had mentioned it to him, and knew it was from the Star Wars universe. Order 66 was the contingency order given to turn the clone troopers on the Jedi and eliminate them. Z, in his own witty way, had thought the order and seeming betrayal was an amusing code word for his own contingency plan. In it, his tanks were to blow their cooldowns to buy the healers time to cast their resurrection spells. He viewed it as a betrayal because it pulled the healers off the tanks for the 20 second channel time on the resurrection spells. However, if the tanks could survive the onslaught for 20 seconds, then the healers would be able to return to them and blow their big healing spells, and everything would work out. At least, in theory.

"Good show chaps." The Terminus started to scan the battlefield, the AI within it suspicious of what was going on. However, before its eyes could focus on the healers, and piece together the game plan, the Terminus let out a roar of anger. Using the destruction of the monocle as a que, Gno-more had rushed back at the boss, using this instance to activate his own cooldown.

The assassin's cooldown made two shadowy copies of the gnome, and all three ran atop the boss's back, until they were near its head. Then, all three, the real and the two doubles, began stabbing frantically into the boss. The shadowy forms each had 1/3rd of the assassins' attack power, but they did their damage as true damage, completely ignoring defense. Gno-more, meanwhile, was using his piercing daggers to punch through part of the boss's defense, allowing him to work down the monster's health as well. On top of that, Gno-more had applied his poison to his weapons, dealing poison stacks with his attacks. Each stack of poison did 5 damage per stack per second with a duration of 10 seconds, and James knew the game allowed for 5 stacks of poison to be applied at any given time. That meant poison alone was going to do 25 damage a second, meaning 250 damage over 10 seconds. Like James had thought earlier, Skar's group was meant to take down single target foes extremely quickly.

The DPS burn was doing its work, and with the Terminus occupied on the tanks, unable to shrug the assassin and its shadow doubles off of its back, James could see the fight was turning in the favor of Z and his raid party. However, the DPS was a bit too efficient, and 15 seconds into everyone's 30 second cooldown burns, the boss hit its next benchmark. As the boss dropped below 1120, it let out another roar. This roar stunned both tanks, sent Gno-more and its doubles flying, and caught Troll'd in the stun as well. Luckily, both the healers where still behind cover, having bunkered down as they prepared their resurrections.

"At first, you had my interest." The boss shook his massive frame as his eyes narrowed. The cooldown on his grenades had finished, and with a wide sweep of his tail he caught both stunned tanks, and sent them flying into his lair. As both crashed to the ground the Terminus launched all three grenades into the lair, completely wiping both tanks from existence. So what if the damage reflected to the boss, he was beyond caring. The AI was pissed.

"And now, we have your attention?" Z's cocky voice called out, and where his orb had been, the ranger was once again standing, his bow raised as Badgy sprang back into existence.

"Quite right." The Terminus growled, and its massive form began rushing towards Z. Its eyes flared red, and James knew the Terminus had a personal problem with the ranger and his badger. They had, after all, been the ones to break its monocle, and Z was the obvious leader of the group.

"Nothing personal." The Terminus was almost to Z, who was standing his ground, launching piercing arrow after piercing arrow in the boss. The arrows were doing just under 100 damage per arrow, and with the boss on his final 1/3rd of his life, they were bringing it ever closer to destruction.

"Same." Z grinned as the Terminus reached the ranger and chomped down, eating the raid leader.

"It's just business." Z was laughing smugly within the mouth of the Terminus, the type of laugh that signaled the ranger knew something the boss didn't.

"And we are in the business of killing." Faust's voice seemed to crackle with power, as his eyes glowed white. A massive storm cloud darkened the entire arena.

"Oh, bloody hell." The Terminus mumbled around Z's form. "Well done." And then, a massive thunderbolt leapt from the sky, crashing into the boss's form, sending electricity dancing all along its body. The mage's cooldown, thunderstorm, had a 10-minute cooldown as well. It completely drained the mage's MP pool, and did 4x MP consumed damage to a single target, and 1xMP damage to every target within 50feet of the first target. Faust, having just been revived, was at full MP, a whopping 245 when he activated his cooldown. That meant the lightning bolt did 980 damage in an instance. Sure, it wasn't as much damage as if Faust had been launching lightning bolt after lightning bolt. However, the mage's cooldown had a 5 second prep time, and then launched the attack instantly. So, when it came to a single target burst spell, that cooldown took the cake. Even with the Terminus's 10% reduction, the damage was still more than its remaining hp.

"They did it." Rue's cry was one of surprise and excitement, and James could already see chat was going to be a nightmare to slog through. The amount of comments, the amount of views and likes and notifications people were saving screenshots and clips from it, was overwhelming. However, James simply turned his head and motioned back to the Terminus's fallen body, his grin widening. Sure, they had defeated the boss, but as Z stepped out of its maw, as Faust and Med Ic and Olivia all moved closer to the body, likely to loot it, the Terminus's body suddenly began to glow.

"What the-" Was all they got off before the body detonated in a bright flash, wiping the members from existence, instantly turning them into floating orbs, even as the coliseum's doors opened up, signaling the fight had ended.

"Whelp, at least I get to loot it." A single voice said, moving out of the Terminus's layer, holding a hand up, a hand covered in blisters. Gno-more had ducked into the lair when the Terminus had fallen, likely checking to see if a loot box would appear where the boss had been sleeping. As such, the assassin had managed to escape the blast, but still seemed to be afflicted by Dino-aids. Sure enough, James could see the assassin's life was cut in half, and seemed to have a bar blocking it from healing any higher. The assassin's stats also seemed to be cut in half. You definitely didn't want to catch dino aids.

And so the assassin of the group became not only the first to be killed by a toilet mimic, but also the first to catch dino aids, and to loot the Terminus. His reward, some high-level crafting pieces, some gold, and a top hat that looked quite proper.

Chapter end