The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Marissa

"Burn! We burn together? Burn, burn!"

[Rruk's] voice lines continued to play over the monstrous echoing hyena laughter.

"Y'all, he's on fire." Evan said. "Like, he literally has the burning debuff."

"So he does…" Firo said, tentatively. "Does that mean we're looking at a battle of attrition, here? Whichever side burns to death loses?"

"I've seen fights like that before." Nyx said. "Admittedly, the boss doesn't usually give themselves the bleed until well into the fight in those, but…" Marissa could practically hear the shrug that accompanied the end of the sentence.

"Well, the actual damage from a single stack isn't all that much. If he starts stacking it on himself early to build it up into a dangerous effect later on, that would make sense." Kieran said, while going through the maintenance section of his rotation.

Marissa eyed [Rruk] carefully, while going through the dead portion of her own rotation as well. The boss was going through a short phase between mechanics where he did nothing but smack the tank. That was a pretty common phase for bosses in this game, and while it was 'mechanical' downtime, it still required everyone to pay attention.

Attacks in Mag Mell nearly always cleaved, so the tank had to be careful to face the boss away from the party. They also needed to always be aware - especially in these portions of the fight - of the boss's attack patterns to dodge attacks that were avoidable. There were actually very few attacks in this game that were strictly unavoidable when it came to the enemy actually swinging at you.

Most of them just weren't worth avoiding for tank [Paths] with a block effect, like [Aegis] or [Ebon]. One tank [Path], [Fencer], was actually built around dodging as much as possible, in comparison.

"Next mechanic should be in a second here." Ash called. "Aleister, you keeping threat for now?"

"Yeah, I got him. Swap after he hits me with the buster. Want to try something." Jazz said.

"I gotcha." Evan replied. "Eyes up, everyone."

Marissa spent the few seconds it took to fully charge her [Master's Shot] and land the hit on the weakpoint before once again widening her focus to be ready for whatever mechanic was next.

When she saw [Rruk's] hands go up over his head to slam his weapon down, she quickly shouted, "Get outta there," but everyone was already moving. They had all recognized the tell for the slam that left the puddle of flames on the ground, and reacted well.

When the attack went out and no one walked away with any stacks, there was a chorus of "Nice" and "Good job".

"Tanks, make sure you keep him near the edge of the puddle so we don't lose too much ground." Evie said. "Those puddles are going to be a problem if we get too many."

"I know." Jazz responded earnestly. "He's at 75% though, so I don't think it'll be an issue."

"Why you gotta jinx us like that…?" Marissa sighed.

"If we die again, I blame Aleister." Ash chuckled.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Seconded."

"Agreed."

"Alright, guys, focus up." Evan called, as [Rruk] moved into whatever phase was next.

"We burn faster!"

Marissa was really getting tired of the voice lines all being so similar. Even if they may be actually giving mechanical clues. But she supposed she shouldn't expect every boss fight to tell a real story. Some better, though.

[Rruk] raised his staff up high again, and flames from the nearby buildings began to reach toward and gather above him. It looked a bit different from the storm of fire he had gathered before; more like he was simply gathering a massive fireball this time.

"Big raidwide?" Evie wondered aloud.

"That doesn't match the voice line, though?" Nyx said.

"I bet a lot of burning stacks are incoming. Gather by the fountain." Firo said.

Most of the group appeared to agree and began moving quickly over to their spots by the fountain. Marissa did as well, and counted herself lucky that she got to keep her damage uptime while moving. The perks of being a physical ranged attacker; no range issues, and no cast time. She grinned to herself, watching the other fight to keep some of their damage up.

[Rruk] let everyone move away at first, then turned to face the group. With everyone arrayed around the fountain as they were, it was difficult to see exactly who he was singling out, but he clearly looking at either Mellody, Nyx, or Hibiscus. And then he threw the fireball forward with his staff.

It landed squarely on Mellody - so at least they knew who the target was - and exploded outward in a wave of flames. It appeared to expand about a third of the distance of the arena, and it gave everyone it touched 5 stacks of [Burning].

"Five stacks isn't too bad. We can heal through this." Ash said, getting up [Aria of Healing], a healing [Musick] that gave healing over time to the party.

"As long as it doesn't get worse." Evie said in agreement. "And not long term, either. We don't have that kind of group regen indefinitely."

"Then let's just -" Kieran said as he had Caoimhe swing at the fountain. She landed the hit the same way as she had earlier, but the fountain just dribbled a bit to no real effect.

"There's probably a cooldown on the water effect." Firo sighed. "Otherwise it would be too easy, right?"

"Fair." Kieran muttered. "Then we just need to live for now."

"Heads up." Evie called, as [Rruk] prepared a second fireball. This time looking in her direction. "I think it's probably targeting me."

"Healer one, then healer two. Makes sense." Ash agreed.

"Spread out. I want to see what happens." Evie said, as she began moving away from the currently defunct fountain.

The rest of the party spread a bit further away in different directions. Evie unexpectedly chose to move toward the boss, and Fiona ran that way as well. Caoimhe split off, running a little off to the side to make some distance while Firo ran directly away from the boss. The other half of the party ran off to the left side of the field, and just generally away from Evie.

When the fireball landed on her head and exploded, it expanded outward far enough to only hit Fiona in addition to herself. They both gained the same 5 stacks that everyone gained previously, but took a fair chunk more outright damage than the first time. It was survivable, but only just so with the addition of the [Burning] ticks.

"I thought so." Evie said triumphantly, while she and Ash were scrambling to get some healing out.

"You thought what?" Nyx asked as everyone tried to close in again to resume damage.

"That fireball gave the boss burning stacks, too." She answered.

And sure enough, when Marissa looked back at the boss's status display, he now had 6 stacks of [Burning]. There was even a slight fire effect surrounding his body, which was a nice touch.

"Oh. Do we just win this by stacking the burn on him as much as possible, then? Hang on." Jazz said, and then started dragging [Rruk] over toward the fire puddles.

"Good idea. See if they burn him." Evan said, as the melee half of the group trailed after the boss, still trying to get damage on him. It didn't take long for Jazz to position [Rruk] in the puddles, but it didn't seem to have any effect at all.

"Guess that would've been too easy." She scoffed, pulling him back out of the puddles to give the party a little more room to work with.

"It's all good." Kieran said. "We're dealing good damage. With the addition of the burning effect, this is very doable."

"Well, we still need to keep our guards up. We're not even at 50% yet." Ash said as Firo entered a burst phase, made obvious by the sudden massive blasts of light purple and silver energy that exploded all over the boss. Marissa couldn't help but feel like the [Invoker] particle effects really sold the whole 'blaster caster' fantasy.

"Yessir."

"I guess we should try to hit him as much as possible with his own attacks? And then periodically gather around the fountain to cleanse the burns, hopefully." Marissa said.

"Sounds like a plan." Ash said. "Everyone use your personal mit for whatever comes next. The DoT really -"

Ash was cut off when [Rruk] screeched, and once again wound up for the tank buster. This time though, his staff had more fire on it than before.

"I don't like the look of that." Nyx said, unhelpfully.

"Get ready to rez me." Jazz said flatly. "I'll take this so we can see what it does."

"Ok. Provoke is on standby." Evan said, [Provoke] being the standard 'attack me' skill. "Good luck, Allie. Godspeed." He joked.

"You little ass." Jazz said. She hated being called 'Allie'. So of course it was saved for moments exactly like this. Ash even snickered as Aleister was blasted with the tank buster.

He survived the attack itself, with 9,000 HP remaining. The twenty stacks added after the tank buster brought Aleister up to 39. When the DoT ticked, it brought him down to 300 HP.

"Run!" Jazz yelled, "Get away from me!"

And to everyone else's credit, they did. Fiona, Nyx, and Caoimhe all used movement skills to make as much distance as possible.

They all saw the [Kindling] debuff on Aleister, and no one knew how big the explosion AoE was yet. Nyx even doubled down, using a second skill to get even further away.

[Rruk's] Hyena laugh resounded loudly when Aleister exploded. Thankfully, the AoE wasn't as large as anyone was worried about; they had really bungled the first pull by staying so close. The damage completely deleted Aleister's HP, however, leaving him dead on the ground.

"Oh, hell yeah!" Jazz shouted. "The explosion gave him a couple stacks of burning!"

'A couple' in this case was five more stacks - which was not nothing. And every bit of damage helped, as always.

"I've got you." Ash said, already working on casting [Refrain]. "Evie, focus on keeping everyone else up."

"No problem. But no one's really taking damage." She called back. For the moment, thankfully, she was right. Fiona had picked up [Threat] with [Provoke] immediately when Aleister went down, and was handling the boss well. Between Mellody's regen [Musick] and Evie's other regen spells like [Triage] and [Refresher] were covering the DoT damage just well enough to keep everyone's HP on the mend.

"Burn, burn, burn!" [Rruk's] demented voice echoed over the battle again. Marissa wasn't sure what the effect was, but she was sure that as the fight went on his voice was getting more and more altered from what it sounded like at the start. And she was also pretty sure that his model was becoming more and more covered in flames. Bigger flames, too.

"It's that big attack, again." Firo said, pointing out the same overhead storm of fire gathering.

"Alright, everyone get near the fountain. Fiona, Aleister, stay a little closer to the boss just in case we can tag him with more burning stacks." Ash called, as everyone began to migrate to their spots.

"Gotcha." Evan said. Fiona still only had 3 stacks of [Burning] after taking over for Aleister's death, so she was in good shape, all things considered.

When the storm finally hit everyone, it functioned the same as before. Everyone was given five more stacks of [Burning] and the [Kindling] debuff.

"Burn, burn, burn, you mother-"

"Fiona, language!" Kieran yelled, as Caoimhe hit the fountain again, cleansing everyone's [Burning] and [Kindling] debuffs.

Except for Fiona's, who decided to run away to the far side of the boss, well out of the fountains range.

"Fiona, what are you-?"

Fiona tapped [Final Vigil] right before the [Kindling] explosion went off. [Final Vigil] was one of [Aegis's] best defensive skills, completely negating any and all damage for three seconds. When the skill ended, it also cleansed the [Aegis] of all negative effects. The tradeoff for the incredible skill was the entirely too long 20 minute cooldown. It was guaranteed to only be used once per fight.

And Evan had opted to use it offensively. When Fiona's [Kindling] explosion went off, it applied more [Burning] stacks to [Rruk], while Fiona walked out the other side of the fireball in better shape than before it exploded in her face.

"If I could do a magnificent hair flip right now, I would." Evan laughed.