Whether the old man was a giant by virtue of relation to giants or because it was a gaming custom to have Raid bosses scale up for visibility was anyone’s guess. In either case, he stood in front of a terminal and dramatically turned around after they entered through the only gate. “Aaaaaah, invaders, how lovely,” he croaked in a toad-like voice that did not fit his handso, if aged, face. “The master requires his new poisons tested. If you’re willing to play the part, do please step into the gauntlet.”
Both behind the entrance and where the console was, there were industrial platforms that were fashioned from sturdily welded pieces of iron. A courtyard, about as large as a football field, filled the space between. It was frad by a complicated knot of pipes. The pure glass they were used to from the outside intermingled with tal vents and outlets of several dark colours. Even the floor consisted of pipes, although a tal grate provided sure footing above the pipes.
For most of them.
“I will not partake in this ss,” Siena hissed, tapping her high heel on the solid ground. Not the first ti that she had to bow out because the particular shape of her feet transford grates into deadly foot traps.
John nodded and considered who would make for a suitable replacent. Beatrice was the simple answer, both being mobility focused damage dealers. Nia was the other option, since she was the other good assassin they had in the party. John decided on the pariah. A teleportation pad appeared nearby, allowing the two to switch places. After Nia, Lorelei stepped through.
“It would be my honour to be of use,” the seer said and did a little curtsy.
John no longer hesitated to let her function as his Raid guide. After researching the matter of her blindness thoroughly, he was certain they had a couple of decades minimum. Coupling that with the sporadic usage compared to her Order days and he was generally unworried.
“I foresee an ordeal… a trial of noxious clouds and limited tools. A challenge of pace and problem solving. Then, a fight of ease, of deep breaths… avoided… and of a battlefield soaking with filth. Then I see an explosion that ends it all.”
“Alright, so we have a puzzle in the first phase that we have to solve quickly before we take too much damage. Then in the second phase we fight a relatively easy boss that gradually fills the arena with damaging zones. We need to defeat him before everything fills up. In the end… well, I guess either there’s a DPS race against so instant-wipe cast or a ‘cutscene’ where the pipe system breaks down because we ddle with it too much.” After John had translated all of that into gar-speech, he gave Lorelei a kiss on the lips. “I’m really glad to have you around.”
Lorelei blushed and leaned against him for a couple of seconds. “Thank you for letting know that,” she whispered. “Truly know it… I will return to the other you now. I shall pray to the Lady for your success.”
“The Lady is putting through this trial in the first place,” John pointed out with a chuckle.
“The Lady puts us through all our trials, we pray for guidance and inspiration, sotis we pray for the strength the Lady believes we have. Why would she present us with a challenge that we cannot overco at all?”
“To teach us humility?” John suggested.
Lorelei hesitated for a mont, then stamred, “A-albeit you… are in… in need of the- of the occasional reminder of humility… such trials are only for those that forsake the opportunity to prepare… properly. Yes…” She hugged him tightly. Even after all this ti together, sotis she feared repercussions for her chastisents.
The nature of her hug shifted suddenly when John pushed a leg between her thighs. The chastity belt that had been blocking any touch for over two weeks now went epheral. Lorelei’s body failed to register the touch at first. Nerves that had gone unstimulated for a while registered the rubbing of cloth against her bare cunt with so delay. John pulled at her braid to make her tilt her head back. He wanted to catch the exact mont the pleasure dawned on her.
Lorelei’s mouth opened wide into an O-form. “Ah…!” the short, feminine moan left her and she imdiately began to grind her lower body against his leg. A change of his intentions, and instead of her swelling labia, John felt the smooth tal of the chastity belt. Lorelei bit her lips in wonderful frustration.
“What do you say when I give you a treat?” John asked, in a deep tone.
“Thank you for the reminder of pleasure, Master,” Lorelei whispered, genuine gratitude swinging in her voice. Honest submissives were the best. Brats were the best. There were so many flavours of the best, how was one to choose sothing that was truly the best?
“Good girl.” He released her braid and placed a kiss on her hot, red cheeks. “Don’t you worry about criticizing , Rel, you’re allowed to find and voice faults with . I’m yours, after all.”
Lorelei nodded, her body still quivering from the taste of pleasure that she had just gotten. Then she turned away. For half a step, she seed to hesitate and stick her rear out. Tempting as it was to tap the bubble butt that rose out of the conservative drapes of her grey dress, John had to decline this particular invitation. It was going to turn up his mild horniness into a clear need to press her against the wall and this was neither the ti nor the place for that.
Instead, the ten of them turned to the boss. The Master of Pipes was having a generous smoke out of the utensil that could have been the reason for his na. Each ti he puffed, he created rings of different colours. Red, green, and blue, a clear warning sign that there was more than one poison involved in this boss fight.
“This’ll be a fight appropriate for our level, so let’s dedicate this first try to information gathering,” he told everyone. “Sylph, I want you to try and reach the boss. The rest of us will spread out and see what this puzzle solving segnt is all about.”
“Roger, roger.” The harette saluted and waited for him to lead the way.
To enter the courtyard, there was only one way down: to jump. John took the dive and everyone else swiftly followed. “And so the testing begins!” the Master of Pipes shouted, then cackled maniacally and turned back to the console.
Sylph turned into a bunny-eared lightning bolt. What minimum acceleration ti she needed to break the sound barrier still was too much for Gaia’s anti-cheese chanics. At supersonic speed, Sylph slamd into a wall of goo that spawned in near instantaneously. John could practically sll the skipped animation.
The purple goo stretched like rubber. If this had been a video ga, John would have burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the scene. It was like he was following a Looney Toons skit. The goo kept on stretching and stretching, then rebounded and launched Sylph backwards against the now closed door of the boss arena. On impact, the glass canon disappeared. Vaguely, he was aware that she was ported to the Interdiary Barrier by the Fateweaving.
‘So that strategy is out,’ John thought. It was expected, but he had to try anyway.
Simultaneously to Sylph having made her attempt, the yard had gone through a transformation. Segnts had risen out of the floor all over in a nonsensical pattern. Goo of different colours was spilling out, spraying areas with noxious fus and pooling underneath the grate. If nothing was done about it, it would soon enough rise to a level where constant contact was guaranteed. That was their tir for the first phase.
Salamander and tra did everyone the honour of attempting the first thing everyone should when seeing a Raid chanic: smash it. A teorite cracked against one raised cluster of pipes, Rex Magnar against the other. The weapon scread in confusion when it hit sothing it couldn’t even dent. Such was the nature of Raid chanics: reasonable interaction was not possible.
John and Undine convened by one of the raised segnts, a pillar, and looked at it from a safe distance. The rising sludge wasn’t too much of a concern since there was no intent to win. “Is that uncomfortable, by the way?” John asked, looking at Undine’s lower body, bloated into a broad base that only turned back to her womanly features by the hips. The question was due to the sa grate floor that had made Siena leave.
“My surface strength is high enough not to be bothered by it,” she responded plainly. Her mind nudged John’s back to the task at hand. When he got a basic idea of what he was supposed to do, he extended a hand into the spray of poison. It all landed on Purgatory, but seeped into his body regardless, prompting a debuff warning. It described the damage he was taking and how much exposure was needed to get to the next stage of it. ‘So green is just pure damage,’ he made a ntal note. Other sources of poison around the room were either red or blue. Aclysia and Gno identified those to have a mind-diminishing and physical slowing effect respectively. ‘So red is really nasty.’
John charged into the spray and closely inspected a set of symbols and lights atop the pipe. He found a valve in the guts of the knot of variously sized pumps and shut it closed. That removed the spray from imdiately in front of him, but the sludge continued flowing elsewhere on the segnt. Moving over to there, John took the symbols there in as well.
Rapidly he worked out the language in use here. Once translated, there was a rudintary set of instructions on display. Following the steps, he moved around the pillars, filling in the gaps wherever it was needed. With three leftwards turns of a vent, John caused a series of clunks within the raised segnt that were almost lodic. Then it lowered itself back into the ground.
The Gar turned to the remaining battlefield. There were about twenty of such pillars around the field. Assuming he needed roughly 60 seconds for each of them, he was looking at a wipe by goo pool. What he needed was for everyone else to solve these issues with a similar degree of expertise.
Good then that everyone around was a genius by mundane standards.
Undine had already bead the translations of the symbols to everyone via telepathy. Missing or new pieces joined the collective knowledge, while John hurried over to Nia and Rave to teach them. The pariah picked up what he said with the usual efficiency. His girlfriend, however, had issues to understand. Issues that paled in comparison to the total lack of understanding she would have shown when they first t.
For as much as Rave’s Intelligence Stat had grown over the past two years, it did not change that her brain dealt much better with deciphering emotions than objects. A number did not describe properly the varieties between different minds.
Even if it took her two to three tis as long to understand the instruction, she did participate to the best of her ability. When a random segnt disappeared under the floor, every other one suddenly followed and a new selection suddenly shot up. They imdiately got moving despite not knowing what had triggered it.
While running towards the third segnt of this attempt, John noted two things. One was the sound of wetness under his feet. The sludge had risen to a level that kept him in constant contact with it. The second was a previously missed detail with the pipes underneath.
Through the swirling blend of different kinds of sludge, John spotted a pipe that had the sa colour as the purple goo wall that kept them separated from the boss. Stopping dead in his tracks, he followed it. A difficult task at tis, as it vanished into the knot of other tubes. Eventually, it brought him to a segnt, where it was hooked up to a variety of other pieces.
John ignored the instructions on display for a bit and instead pulled the levers that manipulated the pressure of the purple pipe. After a few deliberate motions, the wall that separated them from the boss began to thin. “Argh! No, no, stop! I am in control here!” the Master of Pipes shouted in the typical ‘you have found the proper chanic to beat the boss’ way.
‘We’ve been approaching this wrong,’ John thought and backed away from the rectangular segnt, as it began to spray poison from all potential openings. ‘Closing the segnts is just to buy ti. What causes the resets? A tir? Are there certain other ones?’
The question would have to wait for the next attempt as they shortly succumbed to the build-up of the three poisons.
Attempt two followed shortly. Rave was happy to be swapped out for Beatrice, not caring for a fight that had a puzzle as a preamble. Sylph was replaced with Lydia. The queen was a much better problem solver and damage was only a secondary concern, at least until they had mastered the first phase.
First insight of the second try: segnts and pipes were randomized each ti. The symbols, however, were the sa, so they could utilize that knowledge between attempts. It took until the fifth attempt for them to make it through the wall the first ti.
“I guess it’s close quarters testing!” the Master of Pipes declared, after they had made it up to his platform. All of them had so ticking poison damage from the work they had done, so that put a tir on things.
A tir that would be their demise. The Master of Pipes kept refreshing or worsening the poisons, by using either the smoke he exhaled or the pipes around the platform. As Lorelei had advertised, the boss’ actual move set was very straightforward. Aclysia had no problem tanking him on her own, dodging the swings of his cane and his attempts to grab her. Still, they wiped on that attempt.
Another ten were spent repeatedly getting to the second phase, but always succumbing to the poison afterwards.
‘YES!’ John thought when he made it out up the stairs with a re 2% on the poison build-up to the next phase.
“I guess it’s close quarters testing,” the Master of Pipes declared his usual line. After three hours of grinding against this guy, John was sick of that line. While the tanks rushed towards the Raid boss, he took a deep inhale of his pipe.
John often wondered what this had to look like from the outside. Aclysia’s charge outpaced most cars and the draw of the boss on his pipe was sped up to a similar degree. To John’s senses, all of these hyperspeed motions slotted into an equilibrium that was almost mundane, speed demons like Beatrice excluded. For everyone else, it must have been like following motions under flickering lights. Only what lingered for a mont would be more than a blur, making things choppy.
A cascade of red enveloped Aclysia. Exactly the colour John wanted to see. Aclysia’s ntal Stats dropping had barely any impact on her combat efficiency. As long as her regeneration outpaced the poison, they were good.
Unflinching, the boss took the hits from various directions. Much like the environnt, the upsized human body was apparently indestructible. What damage was accumulated on his form seed almost carefully curated, like a model breaking only at those points it was allowed to.
Repeatedly, Aclysia dodged the strikes of the Master of Pipes. The swings of his cane were interrupted every 10 seconds by a swift exhale of poison. The Raid party stayed spread out. Avoiding the cone attacks was near impossible, even with teleportation, so all they could do was stay apart to minimize the people hit.
Every minute, he would instead hasten over to the console and pull a number of levers, press a few buttons, and cause sludge to spill on the platform. Each ti, there was more, until there was as little space to stand up there as there was down in the courtyard.
“I have resistance; you will lt!” the Master of Pipes croaked and then turned back to the combat. His face made close contact with the spike-side of Rex Magnar. “AAAAAHHHH!” he scread as he tumbled back against the console, blood pouring down his forehead.
“YES!” tra shouted with a triumphant grin. “LET GUIDE YOU TO THE AFTERLIFE!”
“No, this is not how I die!” The Master of Pipes released a wave of purple smoke that swiped tra away before she could get another swing in. The smoke turned into two walls that pushed everyone else off to the sides of the platform. Hastily, he pressed a number of buttons. “I am in control here! I am…” There was a deep clunk, followed by sothing shattering. “Uh-oh.”
The central operating unit burst open, washing the boss away in a tidal wave of poisons. Conveniently, the very sa wall he had erected saved everyone in the party from being swept up in the sa release.
All over the place, pipes burst open. There were screams in the distance. ‘I don’t like Raids that make feel like the baddy,’ John thought, as he drowned out the shouts of beings that did not exist. The purple goo walls collapsed soon enough, the sludge dissolved at impossible speeds, and where the console had been, only a chest remained.
“One level for all of that… well, it was a gift boss, all things considered,” John said.
“It doubtlessly was a poison boss, yes,” Lydia stated.
“Did you just…” John blinked at the stern queen, who looked back with a bit of mischief in her eyes. Laughing out loud, John walked over to the chest. “Just for that, I’m giving you first dibs on what loot you want today.”
“You should not hand out treasures for translingual puns,” Lydia chastised him. “Although I am uncertain whether this is better or worse than our traditional arrangent of performing fellatio for favours. In either case, I have earned my keep. What is on offer?”
“Sludge, sludge, and more sludge,” John said, pulling out bottle upon bottle of potent poison of different colours. “The Pipe of the Toxin Smoker… interesting, I guess… lets you turn whatever poisons are in your body or the pipe into a breath attack. Hypolias Herb… okay, this is just nicotine on steroids, including the drawbacks. Now, this is interesting!” John pulled out a second potted plant, this one was pink and had heart-shaped leaves. “Increases Libido, can be turned into incense, oil, or literally anything else.”
“Dibs!” Delicia shouted. The alchemist had teleported in from the viewing platform. She’d been excited for the loot, for obvious reasons. “Did it drop the Alchemist’s Hand?”
“Matter of fact, yes,” John said and pulled out a pair of elbow high, black gloves. They were shiny, like latex, and would probably sit about as tight. “Ward off toxic effects, automatic asurent of reactions, capable of creating windows to zoom in on alchemical processes… definitely for you… and so is this.” He pulled out what seed to be four brass pipes welded together. Delicia took it and unfolded them, squeaking in delight when they turned into eight pipes, then two of different sizes, and so on.
“I’m going to have so much more storage space without all of those different pipe sizes clogging my back rooms up!” she declared. “Infinite Cauldron?”
“Not in here,” John said apologetically, then turned to Lydia. “Nothing really useful for you either.”
“There’s always another encounter,” Lydia dismissed.
User Comments
0 comments from readers