Chương 97: Raid Boss Personal Tank

The only reason Meno did not panic when water filled his mouth was Bloodwake. His lungs kept working. The thing around his leg yanked him deeper, and Meno drew Vervenzal's Verdict while twisting to look below. A tentacle thicker than his torso had wrapped around his ankle, pulling him toward a shape rising from the dark water. [Jagged Sea Leviathan | Level 87 | Cephalid] The new prompts still showed level, which was mildly comforting. A massive dark octopus drifted below with tentacles thick enough to crush a mast.

Pale eyes opened along its slick mantle, and its round mouth spread with hooked teeth. In the old system, this thing would have been three question marks. Instead, it was only twenty-eight levels above him, the size of a building. found monster monster acquired 87 btw good luck Bloodwake value"True," Meno said.

"So true." If only it were smaller. Still, this was more viable than anything on Naraltan. Level eighty-seven in water was a problem, but a level one hundred twenty bird necromancer on land was a dead end. The Leviathan pulled him close, and Meno triggered Lost Temple Invocation. The water beside him burst with pale gold light.

[Lost Temple Invocation Activated] [Warden of the Second Dream | Level 60 | Raid Boss] RAID BOSS IN WATER NO WAY HE DID IT [Sleepless Grip resisted: Forced Movement] The raid boss lit up like a golden festival lantern, and the Leviathan was not so lucky. Its tentacles jerked inward as the entire massive body tried to mimic a kneeling posture underwater, which looked ridiculous and only slightly less threatening. The Warden of the Second Dream towered in pale gold-and-ivory plate.

No face showed behind the cracked visor. Black chains bound its chest, a smoking censer hung from its waist, and it carried a heavy sword with a tower shield carved in kneeling figures. Underwater, the knight sank fast, plate-first, dragging bubbles and pale gold light behind it.

"Okay," Meno said.

"First mechanic. If it glows, don't look." He triggered Panic Pump, then engaged the Leviathan with a Pursuit slash. The projectile cut through the water and struck the octopus, dragging Meno into the monster sword-first. His initial plan had been to let the level eighty-seven monster kill the raid boss, but the Warden was only level sixty. If Meno attacked it too, the boss might die before producing enough useful chaos. So he hit the octopus. The double-strike bonus from Vervenzal's Pursuit felt amazing.

Each real attack gave him four Chain instead of two. The Leviathan immediately flared with faint red light, wrapped several tentacles around the raid boss, and tried to crush it like an angry sailor handling rope. The Warden fought back, slow and clumsy underwater but strong enough that every sword hit shoved the Leviathan's body aside and churned the sea around them. Meno landed twenty-five solid hits before Pursuit's double-strike window expired, bringing his Chain to 200.

He started the next Pursuit swing, but it never finished. The Warden's sword lit up, and Meno was forcibly teleported in front of the blade, pinned against a tentacle despite his gloves doing absolutely nothing against the mechanic.

"Nope." He kicked away frantically. His Chain broke, but Break Surplus saved it, leaving Compound Swing active at 210 Chain. The Warden's sword struck the Leviathan instead. Meno fired Pursuit and charged back in, keeping damage on the giant octopus while the Leviathan squeezed harder. The Warden was down to 92% HP, while the Leviathan still had 96% HP.

"Good. Fight each other." He kept attacking from the side. At 310 Chain, the Warden lifted its sword, and golden circles appeared throughout the water at different elevations: one above Meno, another behind the Leviathan, several more at awkward depths, turning the area into a vertical positioning check. Meno had to choose between giving up Chain and risking the mechanic. With only a twenty-five percent shield, the wrong raid blast would probably kill him instantly. Chain Cannon might solve it.

It froze him in place, preserved Chain, and gave him a shot at the Leviathan.

"So annoying." He landed one more hit, then kicked fast toward the closest golden circle. The moment he entered its radius, he triggered Chain Cannon and aimed at the Leviathan still clinging to the raid boss. A second later, the Warden erupted in a golden dome of fire. The blast washed over Meno without damage. Correct guess. The Leviathan got scorched badly, thrashing beneath the water as its tentacles flung wide and its HP dropped straight to 65% HP. Meno stared for half a breath.

"Huge." HP BASED raid fire cooked it circle safe Leviathan fried The AI had apparently overlooked HP-based scaling for raid boss mechanics. Otherwise, there was no way a level sixty raid boss ability should have chunked a level eighty-seven sea monster that hard. In its own room, the Warden would have been miserable with shifting ivory and gold tiles punishing movement. Underwater, with another monster doing the tanking, it was somehow useful.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Chain Cannon fired, and the ivory-gold shot punched into the Leviathan, dropping it to 64% HP. Meno immediately swung again to trigger Pursuit, and the charge pulled him back to the octopus just as the Warden's head started glowing. Meno ignored it. Sleepless Grip resisted the forced movement, leaving the Leviathan to curl around itself again under the kneel effect while Meno kept hitting.

The teleport slash came next, but this time he was ready. He kicked forward out of the sword path as the Warden struck the Leviathan, then returned to chopping until his Chain reached 410. The Leviathan attacked the Warden again, dropping the raid boss to 77% HP. Meno attacked from behind the octopus, using its huge body as cover. The Leviathan got smarter and swept at him with a free tentacle, but he dodged under it, kicked off the water with Bloodwake speed, and resumed cutting.

It was not clean DPS, but it was working.

"Raid boss personal tank." personal tank octo tank hire him best summon toxic genius Golden circles appeared again, and Chain Cannon was still on cooldown. Disengaging normally would break his Chain, and Meno could not afford that, so he activated Chain Madness for the break prevention and kicked away into the nearest circle. The golden fire erupted, burning the Leviathan again and dropping it to 44% HP.

"I should have replaced the axe with a dagger." Too late. Chain Madness had pulled the Ashwake Cleaver into his hands, and he could not swap back without breaking his Chain. He reengaged with Pursuit, forced to use the axe while the skill ran. The cleaver's durability was already suffering from the Lost Temple clear, and every hit against the Leviathan made Meno imagine cracks spreading through it. Still, ten attacks per second was ten attacks per second. His Chain climbed to 570 before Chain Madness ended.

The cleaver survived, probably because of the Grave Crown durability buff.

"Crown value." The pattern continued. The teleport slash was annoying but manageable, the forced kneel mechanic got hard-countered by Sleepless Grip, and the golden circle remained the main problem. Chain Cannon came back for the next one, letting Meno preserve Chain while the Leviathan got blasted again and dropped to 15% HP. The Warden was down to 48% HP. With higher Chain and the Leviathan in execute range, Vervenzal's Verdict started doing serious damage.

Meno triggered the Panic Pump charge he had gained from Break Surplus and went into another Chain Madness for the next detonation. The Leviathan survived the golden fire at 2% HP, so Meno rushed in with Pursuit to unload the Madness. Before he finished, the Leviathan died. [Hostile Defeated: Jagged Sea Leviathan] [Maximum XP Applied] [Level Up! Level 60] [Class Evolution Available] Class evolution selection required before further level progression.

Meno barely had time to read it, but he already knew he was not going to like it. Losing a bunch of XP to arbitrary level-cap nonsense felt like climbing out of the capsule to find an empty fridge. The Warden turned toward him at 41% HP. This thing was tanky as hell. The difference between raid boss and normal monster was not subtle, even with twenty-seven levels between them.

The Leviathan had hit harder and died faster, while the Warden had taken crushing tentacles, Meno's attacks, and its own underwater clumsiness while remaining almost half alive. Meno started attacking the raid boss. Bloodwake let him move fast enough around the Warden's strikes to force it to turn, but once Chain Madness ended, the axe's unimpressive damage disappeared and Vervenzal's Verdict returned with the crappy offhand dagger. The fight became tighter immediately.

The teleport slash was harder now without the Leviathan's body blocking the swing. Meno nearly got grazed, twisted away, and retaliated, but the Warden angled its shield well, making too many attacks strike the tower shield and lose value. He circled, kicked, ducked under the shield edge, and kept trying to stack Chain. Then the golden circles appeared again, and the Warden did not politely stand still while Meno waited inside the safe zone. It followed him into the circle and started swinging.

There was nowhere to dodge properly inside the limited space. Meno failed to clear the hit, and his shield dropped to 3% HP. The golden fire erupted around them, protecting him from the mechanic but not from the boss standing inside with him. The Warden still had 39% HP. Not good. Meno had no Panic Pump ready unless he let Chain break, and without Chain, his damage would sink. Staying meant getting chopped to pieces inside future safe circles.

Leaving meant losing stacks but living, and the raid boss would not reset anyway.

"Not worth." He swam away at top speed, let Chain break, and immediately triggered Panic Pump to restore his shield to 25% HP. Then the Warden's sword lit. Meno remembered too late as the teleport slash yanked him back.

"Idiot." He barely brought up Vervenzal's Verdict in time, caught the strike enough to redirect it, and kicked away as the impact shoved him through the water. His HP survived behind the refreshed shield by an amount he did not want to check. RUN kite it to another leave leave boss glued Meno focused on escape, but the Warden kept following. The raid boss moved through the water with slow, relentless steps, sinking and rising as needed while dragging its shield and sword through the current.

Meno swam toward the cliff, reached the rock face, and climbed. False Wings kicked him up to the top, and he looked down. The Warden was still coming, walking along the underwater slope toward the cliff.

"Why doesn't this thing stop?" It clicked a moment later. The water near the shoreline was probably still considered Naraltan, or whatever sub-zone this edge belonged to. Lost Temple Invocation constrained the summoned raid boss within the zone, not the water. He had summoned a persistent weekly raid boss, and now it belonged here until killed. The Warden reached the cliff, put its shield on its back, sheathed its sword, and started climbing. Meno stared down.

"You cannot be serious." it climbs raid boss climbing zone pet you made this run inland Meno looked over to find Fiku still fishing like nothing interesting had happened. [Fiku — Level 120 — Harku Champion — Necromancer] Meno considered kiting the Warden to him as a gift, then rejected the idea. The necromancer would probably kill it easily.

As a level one hundred twenty summoner, Fiku might even get contribution because he was an intelligent NPC, and Meno did not want to risk losing the loot from his own invocation to a bird with a bone rod. Maybe he should jump back into the water and find another Leviathan, but he had spent an hour swimming before finding nothing. They were sparse, or the first one had been attracted by something specific. The better play was lightning.

Naraltan lightning hit hard, and if he kited the boss long enough, it had to get struck eventually. Meno tried to summon the Gravewurm, but combat blocked the mount.

"Of course." He started running inland with zero Chain stacks and a dream. Meno used a series of False Wings kicks to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Warden, then stopped to check. After a while, the raid boss appeared in the distance, lumbering toward him across the glowing stone. It had climbed the cliff and kept coming like a loan shark in armor.

"Great." Meno ran deeper into Naraltan, where lightning almost fried him twice. The post-impact homing projectiles chased him across the stone, forcing low slides, side kicks, and one ugly roll that made chat spam about style loss. The Warden, naturally, avoided being hit. For a giant raid boss crossing open ground under constant lightning, it had extremely lucky timing. It took fifteen more minutes before a big combined lightning bolt finally slammed into the Warden and wrapped its armor in blue light.

HIT FINALLY storm boss free damage Naraltan wins Meno waited for the glow to fade, but the blue light only concentrated. The Warden stood perfectly still as energy pulled into the chains across its chest. Then its armor began to break apart. The tower shield cracked and dissolved, the heavy sword vanished in sparks, and the plated body stretched taller as the gold-and-ivory shell fell away.

"What." What remained was a two-story-tall bald monk with gauze over his eyes, a bare scarred torso, and simple pants. His HP returned to 100% HP. [Harbinger of the Second Dream | Level 80 | Evolved Raid Boss] EVOLVED ESSENCEFRUIT EFFECT AI HATES YOU LIGHTNING BUFFED HIM Meno stared at the new boss.

"There is no way." The Harbinger slowly turned his blindfolded face toward him as blue sparks crawled along the monk's shoulders.

"I am being trolled by the AI at this point for sure." Meno lifted his sword.

"Very funny. Perfect. Thank you."