Chương 117: Chapter 116: Acrobatics

We were fifteen minutes into the fight when the Spriggan changed. Its body convulsed, bark splitting along its torso in jagged lines that leaked emerald sap.. The roots that formed its legs thickened, anchoring deeper into the ground. The health bar sat at roughly eighty percent with the regeneration still ticking, undoing damage almost as fast as we could deal it.

"Phase transition!" Alice called. The Spriggan drove both arms into the earth, and the entire clearing erupted. Dozens of roots, each as thick as a man's torso, burst from the soil in every direction and whipped through the air in devastating arcs. They didn't target specific players; they swept the field at random, turning the clearing into a maze of deadly wood. A root caught a Vanguard Berserker across the chest and launched him into the dome wall, where he dissolved on impact.

Two King's Glade Rangers tried to dodge the same root and ran into each other, and the follow-through took them both. I was on my elevated rock when the roots reached me. One came from beneath, punching through the stone and shattering my vantage point, splitting the boulder in half beneath my feet and sending me into freefall. I activated Leap Attack and launched myself skyward, firing a powered-up shot into the root that had just destroyed my perch.

The arrow punched through it and it recoiled, but two more were already swinging toward me while I was ten meters off the ground with no surface to land on that wasn't trying to kill me. I switched to the Threadweaver and fired Silk Shot at the highest point I could see: a thick branch of the dome canopy, fifteen meters above the battlefield. The silk anchored, and I swung across the clearing in a wide arc, two of the boss's attacks passing beneath me close enough to feel the displaced air.

At the apex of the swing I released the silk, flipped in mid-air, switched back to the Emberwood, and fired Burning Arrow downward into the Spriggan's exposed shoulder node. -412! -48! -48! The fire caught and spread, and I landed in a roll on the far side of the clearing, already moving.

"Did that Ranger just swing across the entire field?" I heard one of Vanguard's members say. I didn't have time to appreciate the compliment. A root came at me from the left, and I Quick Stepped through it, feeling the wood graze my cloak before dropping flat to let another pass over me from the right. I rolled to my feet and Shadow Traveled backward through the nearest patch of shade, reappearing five meters behind where I'd been.

It might have looked chaotic at first, but there was a pattern to the attacks, and I'd already learned it. The root phase lasted thirty seconds, and by the time the Spriggan pulled its arms free, we'd lost another twelve players, leaving fifty-two standing. Alice and Gaul had found their rhythm. Alice called macro-strategy — positioning, rotations, retreat signals — while Gaul handled the frontline, directing the tanks of both sides. Neither stepped on the other, and the combined raid functioned better for it.

Denxy had taken position at the crescent's weakest point and hadn't moved, his Mythril shield absorbing impacts that would have killed most players twice over. Every time the Spriggan committed to a heavy swing, he was there bracing and holding, buying the DPS windows that kept our damage ahead of the regeneration.

"Heal priority: Denxy, then Gaul, then the off-tanks. If a DPS is below thirty percent and no healer has line of sight, they drink a potion or they die. I won't waste a cast on someone standing in the roots," I heard Desirae order the healers. Harsh, but effective. I stayed mobile. I'd lost my rock, so I used the terrain — fallen logs, scattered boulders, the stumps of trees the Spriggan had uprooted — as temporary platforms, never staying in one place for more than a few seconds before opening fire again.

Piercing Shot into the shoulder node, Burning Arrow into the chest, basic attacks aimed at the glowing veins wherever they were exposed. I cycled through my cooldowns with mechanical precision, keeping the fire debuff active as often as possible. The Spriggan's regeneration was the real enemy, but thankfully active fire damage cut it in about half. The difference between winning and losing this fight came down to whether we could keep it burning. At sixty-five percent, the boss summoned more dryads.

These were bigger than the first wave, level 24, and they came in packs of six.

"Sarella, north! Gaul, take south!" Alice ordered while engaging a Dryad Rootling that had broken through to the healer line. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Sarella's group made short work of their wave. Three copies of her split off from her body, occupying them, while the real Swashbuckle dismantled them with a combination of Blade Lunge and Dazzling Strike. Her Mirage Waltz was devastating in a multi-target scenario.

I kept my fire on the boss, because every second spent on adds was a second the Spriggan's health crept back up, and as long as someone else handled the small targets I could keep the pressure where it mattered.

"Arrow of Ash & Flames!" -1, 448! The charged shot exploded against the Spriggan's knee joint, fire and cinder erupting through the bark. The creature buckled, and Alice seized the opening by Lightning Stepping in and carving a deep wound into its side with her weapon skill. Fifty percent. We were winning — slowly, painfully, but winning.

The notification arrived when the boss had less than 30% of its health remaining. It appeared in the center of every player's vision, a kingdom-wide announcement in golden text. KINGDOM ANNOUNCEMENT Congratulations to AVALON for becoming the first officially registered Guild in the Kingdom of Ravenloft! Guild Leader: Ryder | Region: Ravencrown All hail the pioneers! For two seconds, most of the raid members froze.

Every player in the Kingdom of Ravenloft had expected Avalon to be the first, but a notification like this in the heat of battle was problematic. It could be dismissed instantly, but even a fraction of a second meant danger. The Spriggan drove a root through two distracted King's Glade melee fighters before they could close the pop-up. A Vanguard healer took a thorn volley to the chest while her eyes were on the golden text, and an Arcanist was mid-cast when the announcement blocked his targeting.

Five players died because of a congratulatory message.

"Dismiss it and focus!" Alice's voice cut through the chaos. She hadn't frozen for even a heartbeat, and neither had Gaul, Denxy, Desirae, or myself — I'd dismissed the notification with a thought and was already drawing. But the damage was done; we were down to forty-four. Ryder, I thought grimly, loosing a Piercing Shot into the Spriggan's flank. Even just by existing, you're a pain in the ass. At twenty percent, the Spriggan changed again.

The emerald glow across its body darkened to something closer to black-jade and the creature's movements became faster. It launched a Verdant Decay beam without the long charge-up.

"Beam! No wind-up!" I shouted, and the warning came barely in time. The cone swept through the eastern flank and caught eight players — three survived with the debuff, five didn't. Thirty-nine. The adds came again in two waves simultaneously. They swarmed the backline, and Desirae lost another healer.

"I'm down to four healers!" she called, her voice tight for the first time in the fight.

"If I lose one more, I can't sustain the tanks!" Alice made her decision.

"All melee not on tank duty, adds! Now! Ranged stays on the boss! We have to push through this phase before it overwhelms us!" The melee fighters peeled off the Spriggan and threw themselves at the rootlings. Gaul was among them as he was the add-duty tank, his warhammer pulverizing two of them in a single wide swing before following up with a Holy Ground.

I stayed on the boss with Nature's Howl active, pouring everything into the Spriggan's chest: Piercing Shot, Burning Arrow, basics, and Withering Light, the golden beam lancing across the clearing and striking the same wound Alice had carved before. -660! The Spriggan recoiled, then whipped a vine directly at me while two more came from different angles in a three-pronged attack designed to pin me in place. Since the melee were off the boss, my sudden DPS burst took the aggro.

I Leap Attacked upward and to the right, firing a shot into the nearest vine mid-flight. At the apex of my jump a fourth vine came from above, hidden until now in the dome canopy, and I had maybe half a second before it connected. Once again, I switched to the Threadweaver and shot a Silk Shot onto the Spriggan's shoulder. I could bind Silk Shot to the Cape of Tidemark, I thought. Its utility is still second to none.

Instead of pulling myself toward it, I used the tension to swing underneath the overhead vine, then released the silk and free-fell for a heartbeat before Quick Stepping by using one of the attacks as a foothold, landing in a roll. I was standing on the boss. I switched back to Emberwood, drew to full, and fired Fan of Arrows point-blank. -109! -108! -107! -111! -109! -112! -108! -110!

The Spriggan thrashed, trying to shake me off, but I used Catapult Legs to jump away before it could, landing cleanly twenty meters from the boss, and once again, a round of compliments and disbelief came from all around me. Alice didn't comment. She just smiled and kept fighting. The Spriggan recoiled, and the regeneration finally seemed to stall as the fire debuff and the sustained pressure from the remaining ranged DPS overwhelmed its healing. At eight percent, the Spriggan did something it hadn't done before.

It stopped moving entirely, and the rootlings froze mid-attack and crumbled to dust while the roots went still. The dome above us pulsed once, and the creature straightened to its full height as bark plates closed over its wounds and the jade-black light concentrated into a single point at the center of its chest. The sudden quiet after thirty minutes of chaos was worrisome at the least.

"What's it doing?" Gaul asked, and even his voice had an edge now. I watched the energy building in its chest. It was pulling from everything — the dome, the earth, the trees, even the air itself — funneling it all into a single point. I could see the mana saturation climbing the same way it had before Verdant Decay, but orders of magnitude stronger.

"Everyone," I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could manage, "whatever this is, it's going to be the worst thing we've seen tonight. Tanks in front, everyone else behind them. Healers, save everything you have for this one." Alice added immediately: "Shields, barriers, defensive cooldowns — everything you've got. Use it now." Gaul raised his warhammer and activated a skill I hadn't seen from a Paladin before, producing a dome of golden light that surrounded the tank line.

Three other Paladins followed suit with Light Curtain, the skill Lothras had used back in the dungeons we'd run. Denxy activated Bulwark Stance, planting his feet with his shield forward. Desirae raised her staff and cast another mass barrier across the backline. The Spriggan opened its chest.