Marketplace, Meteo City

Once we've fully rested, and a shiny ten extra Resilience is added to my total, I send Jade back to the encampment to restock our potion supply and her ammunition after the higher than expected expenditure incurred taking down The Scavenger, we reconvene at the wide, western road between Tridor Plaza and the Market District; Cleaning up a couple dozen roaming mobs in the meantime.

I'm pleased to note, also, that our victory over The Scavenger has emboldened a few smaller teams to enter the city which has taken a little pressure away from us on our approach, though not by much, maybe one or two fewer patrols.

Jade hands over the potions to those who most need them, then stares straight at me, "Nobody's seen Rambling Rose since they marched off, but they've not turned up dead yet either, supposedly. At least, not while I was there."

"No news is good news, I suppose," I decide to be optimistic, choosing to believe that they're taking a slower, steadier approach to the fight than we did. That, or there's a truly biblical quantity of Subjugated Citizens milling around and they're having trouble getting close enough to kick The Brand in the shins.

"It's been more than an hour, they ought to have found the boss by now, at least," Jupiter muses, "Unless they decided it wasn't worth the hassle and started a company picnic amidst the ruins of the Residential District instead once they saw we killed the boss already."

"The look on that posh cunt's face must've been priceless," Jade snickers evilly, fully responsible for that situation.

"They don't strike me as the kind of people to give up just because they lost a bet," Windy says after putting her helmet back on, "If anything, that Hadrian guy'll double down out of stubborn pride, damn the consequences of rushing in blindly."

"Mhm," Miss Leovoldt concurs, "Seen his type once or twice before at tournaments. Losing is a foreign concept to them."

Hearing their damning observations of Hadrian, I feel compelled to bring the badmouthing to a halt, so I clap my hands to gain the team's attention, "We can worry about what they're doing after we've killed the three targets on the list. If necessary, we'll have to go down and clean up their mess afterwards - Geronil can't be touched until all four of them are dead."

Drawing my sword, I glance at everyone in turn, "If you're all ready, it's time to get to work. Conserve as much as you can, we don't know how the fight will play out if there's more to it than a demonic bull with a short attention span."

---

 

It'd be fair to say that the Marketplace has been flattened pretty thoroughly. Stalls, carts and goods crushed into the creases between the cobblestones, a pervasive stench of grease and sun-ripened flesh thick enough that breathing is more akin to stuffing my nose into a block of beef drippings emanate from the half-deflated soccer ball made out of innumerable body parts rolling mindlessly in circles around the centrepoint of the market square.

Despite sharing a common theme in form, Desperate Embrace is easily twice the size of The Scavenger in sheer girth alone, and a good 11 feet tall besides. Getting run over by this thing would be like standing in the path of a steamroller speeding downhill on a sharp decline.

"As a last reminder, if it stops moving and turns towards you, run to the nearest wall immediately," I instruct, "Last chance if you want to ask a question or take care of something."

"Ready as we'll ever be," Windy thumps her breastplate.

"Alright," I take a deep breath, then wait for the miniboss to move into a more favourable position, "Charge!"

As expected, Desperate Embrace doesn't even register our presence until a few attacks pierce it's toughened exterior. Although the skin covering isn't exactly the thickest or the most durable, with the sheer quantity of bone contained in the sack of meat, it's deceptively hard to cut through in contrast to The Scavenger - moreover, the creature stays in constant motion, which makes the job of us melee fighters a little more obnoxious. A silver lining is that I'm constantly gaining the benefit of Momentum for additional damage against it.

After a good twenty to thirty seconds of beating on the meatball, it stops rolling all of a sudden, turning - or rather, twisting itself around, making sickly popping and crackling noises until it stops to 'face' Miss Leovoldt.

"Ingrid, it's looking at you, run!" Angelus barks a breath faster than me, "Windy, Silver, scatter!"

Not paying any mind to the fact that he's giving me orders, I'm already moving out of the bosses path, and getting ready to follow after it. Angelus will make a good raid leader in the future, if he sticks around long enough for us to start on raids. The lowest level one I remember existing at this stage of the game is in the Forest of Warring Roots for level 40s.

Backing away with urgency, Miss Leovoldt runs quickly in the opposite direction, Desperate Embrace in hot pursuit, rolling just a little bit faster than she can move, which is concerning given our similar Agility attributes. With a last-ditch effort, she leaps forward and kicks off the wall, sailing directly over the top of the wrecking ball with a grunt of effort. Heedless of it's prey's change in direction, Desperate Embrace slams into the wall of the general store, causing the ground to quake from the aftershock of it's impact and sending meandering cracks spreading outward along the building's exterior, shattering the windowpane as well.

Perhaps winded, the mountain of flesh leans heavily against the storefront, losing a fair amount of it's cohesion. Already en route with Bull Rush, I slam my Horrorblade into the softened sack of bones, pleased to note that it's taking far more damage than before, even taking the buff from Brutal Strike into consideration.

"It loses armour when it fails a grab!" Windy calls out, stabbing wildly with her shortsword, spoiled for choice on surface area to attack.

"It's the fucking Nightmare again!" Jade complains loudly, firing off a Split Shot.

"At least we can still damage it in the meantime," I call back, moving away when it's surface starts undulating rapidly, 'standing' back up and rolling away.

"Rinse and repeat, yeah?" Miss Leovoldt mutters as she walks past.

"Seems that way," Windy agrees, as do me and Henna.

Trailing along behind it once more, the next unfortunate victim-to-be is Jupiter after another approximated thirty seconds.

"Oh, fuuuuck no," The Wizard drops his spell mid-chant and turns tail the moment he feels the danger, positioning himself between it and the same wall as before. Getting a bit of a premonition that he won't be able to move out of the way in time, I spur Windy into action with a jab of my elbow, since Bull Rush is on cooldown.

Thanks to Interceptor, Windy's speed greatly outpaces anyone else on the team, allowing her to scoop up the Wizard and carry him out of the path of the miniboss at the last second. The impact of it's charge obliterates the solid stone wall, sending a spray of destruction through it's interior, destroying what little remained of it after the looting.

Before I can move to capitalise on it's vulnerability, however, a keening screech of metal and anguished birds erupts in my brain, forcing me to stagger, the repulsion I feel being in proximity to the demon intensifies immensely, a gout of blood escapes my nostrils half my health gone in an instant. A pair of shambling, short bird-like humanoids covered in tatty, hooded cloaks carrying a small blood-caked birdcage like a lantern emerge from a nearby alleyway. Gritting my teeth, I yell out, "Soulcagers! Jupiter, Jade, KILL THEM!"

An Inspired Healing buffed Lifeforce Wave from Angelus provides me and the others with immediate relief, Windy, Miss Leovoldt and Henna took the Jailer's Release - an extremely hard-hitting AoE that deals percentage Soulbane damage based on current health - worse than myself, looking to be on just about their last legs before the healing Skill washes over them.

"Let them handle it," I order my fellow melee, powering through the pain to rain slashes on the stunned form of Desperate Embrace. Attacking a Menial Soulcager in melee range will cause it to immediately counterattack with a pulse of more Soulbane damage.

For a mercy, they're not very tanky, in spite of being Elites. Their function is to act as support units for other monsters, cracking open tougher opponents with Soulbane damage and letting their allies clean up the weakened victims. They cannot kill people themselves - assuming you don't trigger their counter-attack - which is why I considered them a lower priority. If Desperate Embrace behaved like a normal boss, their appearance might very well have caused a TPK.

Stay calm, Alex. We're still in business.

---

 

After what feels like an age, and several demolished buildings, I notice something decidedly off. A widening pit in my stomach forms as Desperate Embrace slows down it's apathetic patrol. I make the call, "Retreat to the perimeter, something's about to happen!"

Rolling towards the centre of the marketplace, the monster halts it's horizontal movement. But it doesn't stop moving entirely; rippling, undulating, stretching and contracting, I half-expect an arm to tear it's way out like emerging from a cocoon, anticipating a variant of Grasper to emerge for Phase 2.

To my surprise, tendrils start shooting off from it with the speed of a crossbow bolt, piercing the ground and buildings they come into contact with, forming anchor points. Thick, trunk-like cylinders of flesh branch out, lancing downward like tree roots, a final one reaching straight upwards, splitting into numerous smaller tentacles at it's peak, elongating further and further until they comfortably reach the ground, bony protrusions from the tip form spear-points, short blades a nd bludgeons, swaying and flailing wildly.

"That's a lot of 'fuck that' right there," Miss Leovoldt comments blithely, flexing her fingers.

"Yep," Windy nods, "I'm gonna go smack it with this sword until it stops existing."

"The fuck do I even aim at?" Jade looks the second form up and down quizzically, bow drawn, "Whatever - when in doubt, hit the centre of mass."

"This is perhaps the strangest day of my life," Henna mutters under her breath, before running back into the fray, and I follow closely behind her. I'm as good as blind from here on out as to what the hell this thing is capable of, but it goes without saying that after such a drastic shift in outward appearance, it's not going to behave in the exact same way.

Our approach isn't without difficulty, multiple tentacular weapons bear down on each of us, and while Miss Leovoldt has the speed and acrobatic experience to avoid them entirely, Henna, Windy and myself are forced to confront them directly in order to get closer. Dodging the swift if clumsily executed swing of one of the bludgeoning tentacles with a quick backstep, the bony weapon kicks up a cloud of stone dust, leaving a small crater - it's damage is predictably high if it can damage a City's construction. I redirect the two spearpoints that follow up and counter with an upward slash, intending to slice the tentacles apart.

A sharp 'pang' resounds, sending heavy vibrations through my sword, arms, body and down to the soles of my feet. The durability of even a more exposed limb is ridiculously high, like trying to mine through a block of reinforced steel with a rusty iron hatchet - in fact, I actually took more damage in recoil than I actually dealt. Chopping through these tentacles is going to snap my sword like a twig before I make any progress.

Henna faces similar difficulties, but her weaker Beginner's Bronze Zweihander takes much more damage than my more level-appropriate armament, evidenced by the semicircular divot bitten out of it's edge where she struck out.

Great.

It's one of those fuckers: A Gear Eater.

So named for their tendency to turn weapons and armour utilised by their opponents into scrap while fighting.

"Don't attack it's tentacles!" I call out a warning, Henna rolls the hilt of her sword in her hand to bring the undamaged edge to the forefront, "Jade, probe for weakpoints! Henna, Windy, don't attack!"

Miss Leovoldt should be fine, as will Jupiter, since they don't rely on weapons like we do, and Jade obviously isn't about to start beating on this disgusting faux-Mangrove tree with her longbow, making her the best equipped to figure out what we should be attacking. I refuse to believe a low-level miniboss is completely protected against physical damage. There's got to be a way around it.

"It's all stupid tanky!" Jade reports, cursing.

"Nothing-" Miss Leovoldt dodges a spearpoint by rolling underneath the boss, "Nothing underneath it!"

The Scavenger had a gimmick, Desperate Embrace will have one too.

With that thought in mind, I back away, taking in the full scope of the arena in between attacks from the pursuing tentacles. If there's not a weak spot on the body itself, there'll be something different about the arena. Narrowing my eyes, I stare at the anchors spread around the marketplace.

It implemented them first. Assuming there was a reason it absolutely had to do that, then that might be our solution. Noting the steadily increasing length of each tentacle, a sense of urgency spurs me to test the hypothesis. For safety's sake, I order a complete retreat from the main body of Desperate Embrace and make my way to a tendril reaching far off into the distance in reach of my sword, but outside of the minibosses attack range.

Breathing in sharply, I settle into a power-focused stance, Terrorsteel Horrorblade raised high over my shoulder. A Brutal Strike - for security - chops down on the forearm-thick strand of flesh, snapping the taut flesh back like an overstretched rubber band.

"GROOOOOARR!" The main body of Desperate Embrace shakes and sways, and a trio of Pathetic Graspers claw their way out of it's tree root-esque supports. That definitely did something, alright.

"Clean them up and I'll cut another!" I order, feeling the pressure of the unknown recede markedly. Picking out a second target, I chug back a mana potion and await the cooldown of Brutal Strike. I'll try cutting the next one without it, but I'd prefer to keep some insurance ready.

"Got it boss!" Windy salutes, engaging the adds ahead of the rest of the team to establish aggro.

While under normal circumstances, the five damage dealers would make short work of the adds, the threat of the high-damage tentacles that care little for the concept of an aggro table steadily reaching outward makes standing still a risky proposition, and the Graspers seem reluctant to move outside of Desperate Embrace's reach, exhibiting a surprising level of tactical awareness.

Still, fodder is fodder, and in such small quantities, incapable of providing much of a challenge on their own under their combined assault.

Cutting the next anchor away, the miniboss repeats the process, only with four Graspers this time. Come the third out of maybe a dozen, which introduces a fourth Grasper that sinking feeling is returning. On the bright side, the mass of the creature birthing them is starting to visibly diminish, meaning it's sacrificing portions of it's own health to create defenders, which all in all strikes me as self-destructive, as before that we couldn't even scratch the thing.

Come the eighth, which I had to swap places with Miss Leovoldt for due to it being out of my reach and difficult to climb up to with my bulky equipment, rather than spawning a squad of Pathetic Graspers, Desperate Embrace shudders, spawning double the amount of bone-tipped tentacles from all over it's body, the frequency of it's attacks increases markedly with little heed as to whether it's attacking one of us or a bit of debris from the wrecked shops. Considering also that it reaches almost the entire marketplace by now with those tentacles, the danger this presents is drastically superior to spawning cannon fodder.

"It's taking damage now! Kinda!" Jade reports excitedly, skipping over a low sweeping bludgeon, "Still like, half off what it should be but it's getting weaker for some reason!"

Windy's transitioned to protecting our backline from stray attacks, "Get the next ones all at once then, I'm starting to run out of Stamina here!"

"Veto that," Jupiter ducks under a spear-point, "Holy shit that almost took my eye out."

"Silver, your call," Angelus shrugs from behind Windy, rattling off a quick Minor Succor to top me off after almost being blind-sided by a pair of spear-points and getting my thigh punctured for the trouble.

I grit my teeth against the pain, realising that if we continue to drag this out we'll end up losing, "All together then! Miss Leovoldt, Henna, north and east, I've got the southern anchors! Everyone else, get ready to drop your best damaging abilities on the boss itself!"

Starting off with a slight limp, I break into a run, slashing apart the anchors as I encounter them without stopping, meeting up with Henna to help her finish off her assigned target. Desperate Embrace recoils violently with each snapped strand of flesh, roaring and screeching with pain and frustration.

With the last one snapped, it's tentacles thrash with yet greater alacrity demolishing any building in range still standing, slamming a blocking Windy into the ground and batting me away for close to 400 damage, almost half my total HP. Bouncing off the floor and collapsing in a heap, I struggle to breathe, feeling like my ribcage has been flattened, though I don't think any of them have straight-up broken - thank you video game logic, I don't have to worry about specific problems like that for another year when Alchemical Marvels drops. The disease and injury system for players is pretty rudimentary until then.

Crawling to my feet a few seconds of recovery later, the enraged flailing of Desperate Embrace ceases and I receive the notification of it's demise.

Congratulations, your party has defeated Desperate Embrace!

Awarding 11600 experience and 1000 Siege Contribution Points (Temporary-Limited).

The remains of the flesh-borne monstrosity deflate and collapse, the crisp peal of two bells precedes the reveal of a pair of gloves and a small chunk of ossified bone - presumably a crafting material of some kind.

 

 

---

 

Astral Reckoning's Official Forums

Thread: Event Miniboss Race!

Commandant Kold:

I guess that settles that. Silver 2, Rambling Rose 0.

--

Old Skinner:

Apparently not satisfied with winning the race, he's decided to rub their noses in it.

I approve of this vigorous slapping.

--

Tommy Curt:

@Cream Cheez What was that about Silver being screwed?

--

Cream Cheez:

bro ill happily eat my words

brb getting a fork and a printout of that post :x

--

Loqua Banks:

@Cream Cheez upload a vid or it didn't happen

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Hex Check:

World Announcement!

Silver has found a penny on the floor.

--

Erica Molli:

World Announcement!

Silver tied his shoelaces for the first time ever.

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Jotun Nutjob:

world announcement!!

player silver is the first person to breathe

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Great Sage:

@Silver Nosster Leave some content for the rest of us bro

We're starving out here.

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Tantalus Oberus:

Who the fuck is this Silver guy and why do I keep getting spammed with World Announcements about him?

I'm on fucking Panopla smh

Devs please stop spamming us with irrelevant bullshit

--

Clancy Satro:

@Tantalus Oberus Why are you even in the Meteo City subforum?

Go read one of the older threads to be enlightened as to the truth and glory of Bronzeguy.

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