“HEAR, HEAR, the prosecution has arrived!”
The loud voice greeted the Raid party, as they stepped onto another large cobblestone plaza. It was surrounded and filled up by a construction of tal plates that was odd along every level. In very basic terms, it looked like a tal football field attached to an open courtroom. Given the sizes involved, perhaps it was more accurate to say that the chamber was attached to the field, but the way the structures of the chamber were elevated above the fields equally elevated it in John’s mind.
The courtroom consisted of two tables and a stand. At the right side, a further raised sitting area was being occupied by the jury. At the far end, a judge sat, his bald head and long, white beard making him as venerable as a screaming NPC could be.
“Step forward, prosecutor, and bring your two assistants! We have many cases to get through today!” The exclamation wasn’t aid at anyone in particular.
“I suppose that is a side chanic for the boss?” Lydia asked and made an offhanded gesture towards the creature standing in the tal yard. She was a human, probably, but her figure was so beyond bloated with muscle that John lost any kind of attraction he had to the female form for this one. She looked like a four-tre strongman with tits. Her outfit was that typical dieval combination of leather, tunic, and a sack to cover the face that was popular in representations of executioners.
“Ready when you are!” the judge shouted over.
“So, looks like we’ll have seven people fighting and three people making sure no innocents get fed to the Executioner, preventing her from getting buffed?” John theorized and rubbed his chin. “We’ll now know when Lorelei gets here.”
A few minutes later, the seer stood in Gno’s place. Even for a quick visit, the limit was ten. At least the switching out was always easy. “I foresee… a chaotic ss of cases, solved with relative ease… and… boons for the many that save the innocent and for the one that slays the innocent. Three will not fight, but only talk.”
“Hmm, interesting,” John tapped his chin. He could have deduced that much just by what he was given visually, but it was nice to have confirmation without wasting the first attempt on it.
“I shall now take my leave,” Lorelei bowed her head, only to find that John took her by the shoulder. “You wish for to stay?”
“I don’t think I have soone who has more experience at judging whether soone is innocent or not,” he told her. “You’ll co with to the judge. Best case, you can just straight up see whether they’re innocent or not. Worst case, you’ll still be able to hear out their argunts.”
“If that pleases you.” A little smile played around her lips. It wasn’t often that he got to invite his other harettes to his Raid activities. Getting a break from her constant enchantnt practice would do her well, he reckoned. This was the third day, and they hadn’t done anything else so far. Scarlett was still busy recovering from two days of unrelenting pounding anyway, and likely would be so for… not that much longer, actually, since Delicia was treating her.
Maybe it was a waste of ti, but what was life without the occasional indulgence?
“Do you know if I can still support the main party from the court?” Momo asked.
Lorelei shook her head. “The visions are clear, you may not participate in the fight if you are part of the prosecution.”
That made the second choice harder and easier. Momo and Undine, the two more intellectual mbers of his current combat party, were both too valuable as supports to withdraw from an intense physical confrontation. Lydia was the best of the present won to accompany him to the courtroom.
The queen realized the sa. “Unless you believe you ought to replace , I believe I am most suited for this task. My magic will not be of specific use against this enemy.”
John nodded. The Executioner’s massive axe was the only piece of tal on her and it was doubtful Lydia could overpower the sheer physical prowess of a Raid boss. They wouldn’t be much of a challenge, if she could.
Since this promised to be a heavily physical fight, Nia was switched out for Gno, and with that they had their line-up. Aclysia, Gno, and tra on the front line, Beatrice and Rave as additional damage dealers, and Undine and Momo as support. Really lee heavy, which might beco a problem. They would have to find out.
They separated into the two groups. “Are we ready to begin then?” the judge asked, once the trio had sat down at the table. “I see you send an entertainnt squad to the Executioner. Thank you very much, she gets cranky easily. Oh, also, a reminder that we deliver our verdicts after exactly one minute each ti.”
John ran the numbers in his head. A successful fight against a boss took between ten and fifteen minutes on average, so they would hear sothing in the realm of 12 cases. ‘Lorelei said they would be randomized, so I suppose there won’t be learning on which person is actually innocent,’ he thought. “We’re ready, your honour.”
“Then bring in the first accused!” the elder declared and slamd his hamr down.
Behind John, the Executioner let out an inhuman roar and charged at the other seven mbers of the party. The massive axe slamd down on tra, making the First of Wrath buckle and sending a shockwave through the tal floor. It looked like the solid grey turned liquid for a mont. The massive wave caught everyone off guard. Getting caught off guard for the battle hardened harettes only ant a slight delay. They were generally too capable to be sent on their butt by that little.
Even if this was a single phase fight, the Executioner wouldn’t make it boring for the combat majority of the party.
John’s attention snapped back to the current situation. A farr with bad teeth and even worse posture appeared in a flash at the podium in the stand one level down from the judge. Picking up a sheet of paper, the man quickly read out, “McFarmson is accused of farming a field that belonged to his neighbour for years and lying about it.”
“I didn’t do it, that was part of my farm, swears!” the man declared.
“He’s lying, John,” Lorelei whispered. “His soul is tainted with the noxious green-yellow of selfish greed.”
“He is guilty!” John declared, just so see what would happen.
“The proof?!” the farr shot back.
“Yes, we will need so argunts,” the judge backed up the accused.
“How did you co into possession of your farm?” Lydia asked.
“Was handed to by the lord, it was.”
“I see. Is there a common acreage assigned?”
“Ay, each peasant gets 20 acres.”
“How do you acquire your seeds?”
“Also provided by the lord, they are,” the peasant responded, not realizing the pit Lydia made him dig.
“And seeds are provided for 20 acres?”
“Yes.”
“And did you not notice the lacking amount of seeds you had compared to the amount of land you had?”
“I brought in an extra large harvest every year!”
“I see. Did you not question that in turn, then?”
“W-why would I?”
“Did your neighbour ever complain about his fields yielding less?”
“Neighbour didn’t tend his fields in a long ti, his land was going fallow.”
“Was going fallow? A particular choice of tense.” Lydia turned her iron gaze to the judge. “Your honour, I suggest that this farr simply decided to farm his neighbours land, using what excess seeds he could siphon away or acquire otherwise.”
“Jury?” the judge asked.
“Good enough for us!” one of the people in the stands shouted. “Guilty!”
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” the farr’s shout rang out, until the minute was up and they were teleported out. Back in the field, the combatants were pushed back for one mont by an unstoppable force. It distanced them from the enemy for long enough that the Executioner could cull the person. Then, the combat resud.
It was a fairly usual encounter. Wide swings of a massive axe constantly kept the fighters moving. In MMOs, tank and spank fights had a tendency to be dull affairs. For DPS classes, such fights often ca down to executing their rotation in the best possible way and nothing else. In reality, there were so many moving parts no one had any ti to be bored.
All of that started with the fact that reality had unit collision. Really difficult to be bored when one had to manoeuvre not only around the enemy’s swings but also the motions of one’s allies. As a trained unit, the harettes had no problem coordinating by and large, but they still had to execute a proper battle strategy.
Which, more than the stand, eventually caused the wipe. The Executioner did not have any surprise chanics, but she did have unknown ones. The exact limits of her speed and power had to be discovered, the various special attacks she did gauged for their impact, and the way Undine rationed her healing asured.
So, they wiped. A straightforward boss was still a boss. It was the mark of good ga design that even the direct challenges weren’t so easily overco.
John left all of that side of the combat to Momo. The sassy support was the secondary commander of the party and for good reason. Like him, she typically occupied the backline, so she had a nice and distanced view and the ti to contemplate plans. Her Intellect was also high enough that there was not that big a difference between their analytical ability. In raw numbers, she actually exceeded him. Only by about 10%, but still.
While she refined a battle strategy around circling the attention of the boss between the high-regeneration mbers of the combat squad, the Gar just enjoyed the ridiculousness of the courtroom.
Granted, Lorelei made this encounter unfairly easy. Without her, they would have gotten it wrong on so occasion just by chance. Always knowing what the right answer was took a threat out of this that otherwise could have sent the situation on the field below down a death spiral. It was a nice excuse for Lorelei to exercise her second sight. This particular activity she did not need much further training in. The Varniks had been the Order’s primary source of reliable information for generations, so she was quite schooled in the reading of people.
John and Lydia quickly hooked into the intel she fed them, asking pointed questions that created enough circumstantial evidence to convince the jury. The chanics of the fight demanded that the judge and jury were necessarily easy to sway and that the cris weren’t too complicated. Often, it was the set of odd laws that was more to fault for confusion than the cases. Had this been an actual court with actual people getting executed, John would have opted out of the system out of protest – and then promptly started a revolution.
A few of his favourites:
A woman owed rent money to herself for occupying a building that had been erected before the land was given to her via inheritance. By law, any failure to pay rent for over ten years was a cri punishable by death. The judge also ruled her guilty of tax evasions.
A group of quintuplets had been signing loans off on each other’s nas. They were all ready to testify against each other, so the case was pretty easy all around. Difficult was the part of proving that one of them was actually innocent. Three n got killed, one was left with a lot of debt taken out in his na, then executed when he confessed to not having the money.
Although a holess man was completely guilty of extorting travellers crossing a bridge, it turned out that the bit of river the bridge crossed over was not claid by either of the neighbouring lords. By squatting under the bridge for ten years without being removed, he had effectively made the bridge his ho, and since the land was unclaid, he left the court a lord himself.
Beyond these amusing happenings, the fight unfolded with a basic strategy. It was called: keep the boss in the sa area so local effects could stack. Primarily, Momo put down her Fountain of White. The construct of white mana boosted all kinds of resource generation by 5% in a 15-tre area around it and it made Momo’s White spells 50% more effective. Pretty important, since her other White spells were her two barriers.
Aclysia, tra, and Gno took turns getting the attention of the boss. They would each get a double layering of the White Barrier and the Directional Defence, take about 25% of their health bar as damage after they were broken, and then tag in the next person. While the combat was happening, Undine was spreading her healing sli around the Fountain of White. That way, her own mana regeneration and the health regeneration of her targets benefitted from the increase. Shields were reapplied and the tanks re-entered the fray at full health.
The damage dealers, all the while, moved in and out at their own discretion. Momo would call them back when she thought they weren’t paying proper attention to their HP. Otherwise things just progressed smoothly.
The boss was down in twenty tries, only costing them about four hours. John got two levels out of it and they went back out to check the Loot.
They got two of the Executioner’s Mommy Figurines, which John both put on the Abyss auction for soone with a love for massive, thick ladies to pick up. They had enchantnts, but only of the aesthetic kind. ‘Would be ironic if soone bought them and made an Artificial Spirit out of them,’ the Gar thought.
Among the Uncommon items, he got an Iron Gallows, The Pillory and The tal Horse, all three of which were torture items at the base. John saw the potential, with a bit of modification, for them to join his sex dungeon instead. All he needed to do was sand down the edges, pad out so surfaces, and then it would be just torturous enough to be enjoyable. Not that he really needed extra bondage fras, pillories, or wooden horses. Just for the aesthetics, having choice was nice.
In the Rare category he got two Bloodsteel Ingots, which was life force reinforced tal in the sa vein as Eternal Iron – the incredible material Arkeidos had used for his armours. Also, a highly immoral tal to create the regular way, as it required to turn souls into energy slurry. As a drop, John was okay with using it. He handed them over to Lorelei, for her to then use in coordination with Scarlett.
In the Epic departnt, they got the Immortal Judge. It was a chair. A chair that, once activated, would spawn an ethereal judge that always knew the entire code of law of the country of the person that had activated it and would then deliver impartial judgents according to that law. Basically, it was a magical law AI.
“I would appreciate it if I could be the recipient of this item,” Lydia requested. “At least for the ti being.”
“A lot of small cases to solve?” John asked.
“No. The law code of Rex Germaniae is a convoluted ss. Of the many accusations that are leveraged against Germans, the tendency for overregulation has rit and apparently has held true for over a millennium.” Lydia let out an annoyed sigh. “I wish to use this entity to weed out all manners of contradictory law that exist on the books.”
“That sounds reasonable,” John agreed and handed her the chair. It was a bit awkward, but she managed to get the big, wooden thing into her pocket dinsion.
That was the entirety of the Loot for the boss.
It was ti to face the king.
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