Might as Well

Two legs were down, only eight more to go.

Adam looked over the looming monster as it waved two of its stumps around, using the crystalline marrow visible to unleash even more devastating lightning on the guild.

Thankfully, they were far enough in the fight that most people became familiar with the type of attacks the monster was dealing out and moved and acted appropriately. They either dodged, moved out of the way, or used their skills to mitigate or cancel the damage from the incoming attacks.

Still, the amount of people who died from totally avoidable attacks was rather high. He would need to add some exercises that helped with these kinds of battles in the future. Or just weed out those who were not capable of looking up…

He would probably save himself a lot of time, effort, and, most importantly, headaches.

‘Lara does need a lot of construction workers…’ Adam mused as he simultaneously watched his guild set up for another attack and kept an eye on his messages as Tim kept him appraised about their enemies.

Apparently, several smaller guilds banded together in the hope of getting the prize that way – though he knew from long experience that the moment the loot dropped they would be at each other’s throat like no tomorrow – and joined in the chaotic mess the bigger guilds created as they tried to make their way to the battlefield and claim the spoils for themselves.

Tim assured him that there were already battles raging between some groups and the guilds were slowing down as they tried to ascertain what kind of opposition they were going against while also wanting to make sure that they left the majority of the battle to Chrysalis to weaken both Adam’s guild and the boss monster at the same time.

According to the guild’s spymaster – who played one of his aides – there were already assassin-types skulking around to scout the situation. He made sure they caught a few of them, just to pretend they cared about security per Tim and Sam’s wishes. Adam didn’t really understand the purpose, as he was more for organizing full-on assaults, physical and magical defenses, and putting together functioning groups. All this skulking around just gave him a headache…

But seeing that Tim and Sam were visibly knowledgeable about the game and those types of things, he didn’t really question them. Or at least he didn’t question in the middle of an operation, as that was just asking for things to go wrong…

For example, he would be demanding that Tim at least share some of his playbooks with him, as this ad hoc planning gave him severe anxiety.

Before he could work himself up over it, he was distracted by two explosions.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMM

BAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM

Just for efficiency’s sake, he split up the teams tasked with destroying the legs of the gigantic monster. Looking over the scene, he saw the monsters surging, but none of the legs they aimed for were truly destroyed. They were cracked significantly enough that they could see a little dark red crystalline marrow peeking out instead of blood, lightning sparked around the wounds.

“Good job!” he called out to the people around him. All of them were responsible for herding the players around for these tasks. They all grinned and cheered a little before returning to their jobs. The monsters still had six healthy legs covered in exoskeleton.

The plan was very simple. Instead of destroying the legs one by one, thereby triggering the monster and causing it to increase the damage, they would simply damage them just enough that one more serious attack would destroy them.

Then, when the timing was right, they would assault all of them at once. That way, they could minimize the death by being crushed – not that some of the ‘geniuses’ wouldn’t try to tank it – and minimize the chance of enemy sabotage.

Adam was very hopeful about all of that, but he knew that no plan survived meeting with the enemy, and there were just too many of those around…

“How long until the next strike?” he asked out loud, not taking his eyes off the battle. For now, he stayed out of it, but by the end of it, he planned to personally go there and join the fun.

“Repositioning in a minute, but cooldowns are three minutes,” came the calm and measured response from one of his aides.

“Good, then I want the…” he began to give orders but somebody interrupted him.

“Look, sir! The legs are regenerating!” Another aide called out, pointing at the first leg they mutilated with their strikes.

His head whipped around and he instantly focused on the leg, seeing that it was indeed true. The stone dust that seemed to permeate everything around the monster seemed to be slowly drifting toward the chunk. Adam watched as another layer was added to the stone-like exoskeleton of the humongous beast and couldn’t help but frown.

‘Because of course it regenerates…’ he grumbled inwardly.

He straightened out and turned to his underlings. “Tell Team Sixteen and… Twenty-two to go around and keep the legs from regenerating. Sixteen on the left and Twenty-two on the right!” Instantly, people began moving to execute the commands. “And find me two more teams after we damage the remaining legs!”

The planning area of the boss raid speedily turned into a hive of activity as Adam and his staff began to reorganize the fight and strike teams to prevent the giant monster from regenerating.

The Core Dimension of this titan was pretty basic in the first part.

Sam met some shadowy monsters infected with demonic energy and simply cut them down. The timer he affixed to his HUD in a moment of lull was steadily counting down, though it wasn’t helping much.

The moment he crossed the threshold into the dungeon, he was cut off from the outside. No messages, no calls (except for mental or physical emergencies per the terms and conditions of the game), nothing that would give him any kind of advantage. He couldn’t even livestream the fight.

Kinda annoying, but Sam understood.

Even if there was a delay on the stream, enterprising players would find ways to exploit that or even stream snipe.

Thus, in important dungeons, fractures, raids or quests would have a communication blackout imposed. Good protection, but at this time, pretty annoying for Sam.

And because he was in a sub-dimension or pocket dimension – he wasn’t very clear on the terminology – he couldn’t even feel the explosions of the legs which would at least give him a starting point to estimate things.

Alas, he had to work without that…

Sam grinned and cut down another batch of shadowy spiders.

‘Why the spiders? Can’t it be a little more imaginative?’ he mused as he steadily forged forward with Lucky sitting in his shadow, watching his back for any monster that would try to backstab him.

After a few minutes of mindless monsters, the cavern slowly began to transition into stone that was not natural, roughly worked with primitive tools, though looking pretty worn down.

And the number of shadowy monsters, of course, increased.

But he simply switched from solitary precise strikes with his sword and magic into using smaller areas of effect magic, summoning small storms or balls of supercharged wind mana to explode, taking out the swarming monsters, all the while using his senses to find the source of demonic mana.

Then the rough stone corridors widened before the area widened and he found himself in some kind of building. Looking around, he saw that it was a simple home, not modern by the game’s standard, missing everything organic, like cloth or wood, and the stone worn down, with only a few cobwebs appearing in some of the corners.

After doing a thorough search, even going so far as to check every wall for hidden spots, he stepped outside of the building to find himself in a giant cavern.

Not far from his entrance, he saw more houses, some bigger, some smaller, some in better condition, and some in even worse condition. Over his head, the ceiling was covered in shadows, leaving him guessing the true size of the space.

However, what grabbed his attention immediately was the ominous chanting coming from beyond the decrepit houses.

“Well, in we go to see if the ominous chanting is a bad thing or not…” he muttered under his breath, doing a small spot check on his equipment, then off he went…

He walked carefully through the ruins, ready for an ambush at any time, but surprisingly, nothing tried to eat him. Or skewer him and then eat him.

However, the very ominous and creepy chanting did get louder.

Soon, he reached a part of the cavern, where he found free-standing stone walls filled with carvings.

Some were crumbling, but otherwise, they were in surprisingly good condition…as if somebody or something was taking care of it. Sam shuddered at the thought and forged forward.

The stone walls were numerous on both sides of the road he was taking and as he walked forward, he took a good look at them for later review, but he made sure not to touch the reliefs.

That way lay madness and triggering whatever mad being took care of them for countless ages.

The reliefs and carvings on the walls depicted a rather basic story.

First humanoid-looking figures living in meadows and forests, a mountain in the distance. Then they transitioned to living in the shadow of the mountain.

The next few ones were a little more crowded. It showcased the humanoid figures fighting some kind of monster, maybe a dragon, but the carving wasn’t detailed enough for Sam to figure out its identity. The humanoids were, of course, destroyed by the monster, but according to the walls, a few of them survived, finding refuge in a cavern.

Where, naturally, they ran into spiders, whom it seemed protected them or healed them, the pictures weren’t clear enough.

‘I should show this to Lara. She's into this stuff…’ he mused as he walked forward.

The next few walls depicted the spiders and humanoids living in harmony with the monsters always depicted flying over the mountain.

Then another fight.

This time, the spiders and humanoids worked together, facing the monsters as they tried to destroy the mountain to get to them.

A long battle, depicted by the changing of the moon and sun symbols on the top of the walls, the moon even going through several phases.

Finally, the monster was defeated, blood running everywhere, and the spiders and humanoids celebrated for a few cycles, before the walls were suddenly replaced by rubble, preventing Sam from learning the end of the story.

Not that it mattered. The things he saw gave him a few guesses…

Walking forward, the ominous chanting reverberated around, filling him with an uneasy feeling. A minute later, he found himself a wall of something that may have been a building, the wall crumbling, with only the parts around the empty gate remaining intact enough for Sam to recognize what it was.

Beyond it, there were only shadows and some gently swaying light that he instantly recognized as candlelight.

Sam took a moment to take a few breaths, do a last equipment check, prepared his potions, making sure they were still in easily reachable places, added a few runic plates to his pockets, and did a few stretches.

Then with a big breath and a confident step, he walked through the crumbling gate.

Inside he found a lot of interesting things.

Around the wall were countless crumbling statues depicting spiders, big and small, while covered in burning candles and eons' worth of dried wax layers.

At the wall opposite of him was an altar with some kind of relief that he couldn’t see.

Mostly because of the monster standing between him and the altar.

Unsurprisingly, it was a spider with eight legs, made of tangible shadows with the occasional red lightning flashing through like a thunderstorm.

However, the monster didn’t stop there. Where the head should have been, there was a humanoid torso the color of the stone, with two arms and a head that was half spider and half humanoid, with eight red burning eyes and almost translucent-white hair, braided into a very elaborate form.

And in the middle of the chiseled chest was a shard of obsidian protruding, as if somebody tried to stab the monster with it. From the shard, several dark veins originated, turning the gray skin into black and disgusting looking.

Then it raised its hand, ending in long, sharp nails, and pointing it at Sam while opening its maw that had several pincers and releasing an unholy screech.