They went after their five attempts in the same order they had discovered the bosses in. Following this logic, the first encounter was the Granite Titanturtle. The first issue was how they could even approach the boss, given that there was a vast lake separating them. Swimming was the first idea, but understandably unpopular. Getting flown over was the second. That had the issue of the limited number of flying party members they had. It would take several trips back and forth until all of them were over there. Both solutions faced the issue of the vast distance. Resolving to just try to reach it by whatever means at their disposal, they entered the water.

Initially, things went fine. The Titanturtle only swam in small circles and occasionally let out warning shouts. It turned out that the lake was shallow enough to run for several hundred metres. There were no secondary beasts in view either, not even when they got far enough in that they had to swim. The water was lukewarm, not hot enough to be comfortable to stay in forever, but far from any stamina sapping coldness.

Once they were within a kilometre of the boss, it upped its aggression levels. Using its four fins, it created giant waves that only got worse the closer they got. It likely would have used its head as well, if Sylph hadn’t distracted it on that front. Playing a risky game, the thunderstorm elemental darted around and occasionally threw an attack at the enemy. Although she was much faster than the giant head, a single mistake would have finished her off. That the turtle had a laser beam in addition to its jaws and simple thrashing attacks made it quite dangerous.

Salamander and Jack helped the less physically able members of the party out of the water and onto the back of the Titanturtle. They found interesting flora there: palms, birches, pines and all other kinds of trees existed next to each other, completely disregarding that each of them preferred a different biome. They didn’t get to enjoy it too long as they were suddenly assaulted by a large number of beasts.

Like the trees, the animals were of a large variety. Penguins, wolves, feral cats and other critters all assaulted the group. The unifying elements between them were stone shards that had melded with their skin and the fact that they were all level 250. That made them surprisingly easy, each one could be beaten by a single party member. The sheer mass was what made them dangerous. At least at first.

At some point during the fight, the Titanturtle loomed over them. Its long neck had rotated 180 degrees and now overlooked its back with relative ease, ignoring any further harassment by Sylph. Its mouth opened and a shard of stone dropped from the inside. A shard of a creature measured in kilometres was a rather sizable thing. Landing between the trees, the rock pulsated with magic that buffed up the surrounding animals and made them incredibly difficult to deal with.

In an effort to get some immediate relief and try to destroy that rock, John poured a lot of mana into Salamander. The endflame elemental put the mobs and the surrounding forest to the torch. Surprisingly fragile, the trees around them were consumed within moments by the intense heat, as was the majority of the animals. A moment to breathe seemed to have been gained, then John noticed an intense flare of light above them.

Moments later, he was murdered by the Titanturtle’s laser attack. He and the rest of the group found themselves back in the barrier proper.

They immediately moved back into the Raid, discussing their individual observations on the long way back to the boss. In the second attempt, they had a much easier time approaching the boss. Because John now knew that they could get relatively close before fearing attack, he felt confident enough to deploy some more advanced distraction. Combining Stirwin and Undine (and adding Sylph and Siena into the mix for extra power), John put Dendepthr on the battlefield.

The growing crocodile-pliosaurus mixture first aided them in bridging much of the distance by letting them ride it and then, once it became big enough, it assaulted the turtle. Even at maximum size, Dendepthr was ‘merely’ about 130 metres. It attacking the Titanturtle was like a midget getting into a brawl with the world champion in cross lifting. As non-threatening as that was to the Titanturtle, it was cumbersome enough to bind its attention more strongly than Sylph alone had. The two giants fighting still caused waves, but considerably less annoying ones than those deliberately caused by the boss’ movements.

Dendepthr vanished well before they arrived on the turtle’s back, but the process had become a little simpler. The four elementals used to form it went incorporeal and returned to John. If there was anything easy about the boss fight, it was that the elementals could change between states unharmed for most of the approaching phase.

Sadly, the story on the back was much the same as the first time around. Their approach was a lot slower, as they wanted to test what triggered the laser. It wasn’t time, it wasn’t dependent on how many animals they killed either. Even when they destroyed the stone shard, there was no laser. They even got to approach one of the seven crystal spires on the creature’s back without being molested by more than adds and buffing stones. That was taxing, but with proper resource management, they could do it.

They managed to destroy one of the pillars through extensive physical effort. Immediately upon the thing toppling, the entire surrounding flora wilted. There was an angry roar like a series of train cannons firing in succession, followed by the sound of one of the Titanturtle’s neck segments bursting. Magically, this only caused the two adjacent segments to be shoved together, shortening the creature’s reach but keeping the head otherwise attached.

Arms and legs burst out of the fallen spire, but John didn’t even have time to contemplate that as the boss opened its gargantuan maw and they were wiped by yet another laser beam. At that point, John had a hunch on what triggered the attack and they sacrificed their third attempt just figuring it out. The moment they landed on the Titanturtle’s back, John had Salamander torch the surroundings. Without fail, the Titanturtle immediately blasted them with another laser.

It seemed that the boss did not want to hurt the plants living on its back and would therefore avoid any area attacks unless those plants were already destroyed. Knowing this made the fight a tad simpler.

The fourth try was more optimized. John only used a three-way Combination, upping Dendepthr’s duration from 5 to 10 minutes at the cost of some Stats. A lower combat potential wasn’t too important, as long as the boss was still distracted. On the island, Salamander took her item form. Since her usual attacks threatened to incinerate the surroundings, it was better to give John access to the rapier and the more guided, if limited, access to her flame.

They again managed to knock down one of the seven spires and retreated back into the forest quick enough that the Titanturtle stopped charging its laser. While this meant they survived, they also got to encounter the mechanic they had only glimpsed at previously. Arms and legs split out of the fallen shape of the spire, allowing it to rise as a lanky humanoid golem. Seemingly at random, the creature of rock and crystal locked in on one of the party members, Nia in this case, and started stomping towards her.

The group’s first instinct was to try and destroy the golem. If they could make the spire fall, surely the thing that spawned from it could be destroyed as well? The answer to that was that, yes, it could be, but it took them an entire twenty minutes of mindless hacking and slashing, during which Nia had to run around in circles. Like all other enemies they had encountered in the Raid so far, her anti-magic wasn’t exceedingly effective. She could have, perhaps, instantly deleted one of them, but normal pariah rules still applied. Killing a Raid enemy at the cost of her fading was not worth it since this form of ‘dying’ was not covered by Fateweaving.

Not only did killing the golem take way too long, it also ravaged a whole lot of the landscape in the process, creating yet more areas on which the Titanturtle felt comfortable to throw its laser at them. They were also still getting assaulted by the animals, although there seemed to be less than before. John theorized that less of them spawned the more of the island was destroyed, so there was an advantage to it as well.

Regardless of the gathered information, they had seriously mismanaged that run. Half of the group was eliminated by one of the white laser beams, when they tried to migrate to the next spire, and that spelled the end for that attempt.

The fifth attempt ended before it even really started. Dendepthr made a mistake in the opening moves, got caught by the Titanturtle’s jaws and had its head crushed. That instantly put Undine, Stirwin and Siena out of commission. Losing the crocodile was almost a non-factor and Siena could have been handled in theory, but fighting without their only healer would have been suicide. Because Gnome was only able to supply any healing in certain environments, they couldn’t rely on her.

With the agreed number reached, they moved to the Sicklebrood Matriarch next. Not having to swim to the boss was a nice change of pace. The inside of the cave was separated into two segments: a central arena and an elevated ring five metres above that. Both were made from a dark brown rock, a minor deviation from the ever-present grey. Large spots, up to two metres in diameter, of white broke the monotony of the inside of the cave. John would have happily taken a dull environment, once he identified that those spots were eggs, secured with silk. Sometimes it was just one egg, sometimes a cluster; regardless, it was an indicator that the fight would be add heavy.

Nothing that had the aesthetic of a spider seemed to ever be an encounter without broodlings.

Not that they even got to face any broodlings, as the first encounter with the Matriarch had them wiped within ten minutes of regular combat. Unlike the Sicklemen, the boss was relentlessly aggressive. Thanks to her ability to change her reach and speed depending on how many of her limbs she used as arms or legs, she retained some of the unpredictability. Combining that with extreme speed, strength and durability made her extremely difficult to control.

Metra was the first to be defeated. Although the Matriarch lacked the ability to punch through the armour, just getting slapped around and stabbed at by the boss was enough to eventually decrease her health. Someone else might have been defeated first, had it not been for the boss mindlessly focusing on only the First of Wrath. Once Metra was defeated, the Sicklebrood Matriarch picked her next target and one by one defeated all of them. Whatever chance they may have had was squashed by a Sickleman that appeared on the ridge five minutes in.

A straightforward confrontation having been ruled out in such brutal fashion, the party spent the second attempt looking for gimmicks. First thing they tried was kiting. Inside the cave, they had limited success, so they tried to goad her to the outside. This only worked for about five minutes, then the Sickleman spawned in and started bombarding them with spears. Barely manageable. Another five minutes later, a second one joined and at that point the encounter was unwinnable.

On attempt three, they went into the cave and prodded the eggs to see if that would cause any reaction. The answer was yes, a rather violent one. The Matriarch not only changed targets but went completely berserk towards whoever threatened her eggs. Oddly enough, she was easier to handle in that form. Because she would focus all of her limbs on attacks of opportunity, she didn’t run as fast. Threatening other eggs while in her line of sight would cause her to switch targets, if the original offender had been driven away from whatever sack they had been attacking.

Actually, destroying the eggs caused whatever was gestating inside to immediately join them on the battlefield. In the best case, that was a swarm of hand-sized Sicklebroodlings. In the worst, that was a half-grown Sickleman, completely capable of throwing spears. They tried to stay clear of popping any eggs, after the addition of a Sickleman caused them to wipe on their third attempt.

During their fourth try they then learned that the Matriarch would occasionally go and rip eggs open herself. Because she hadn’t done so on their first attempt; John quickly gathered that she would only do that with those eggs they had used to redirect the boss’ attention. Just counting had him realize that she would open an egg exactly a minute after it had been used to taunt her. Having used that mechanic liberally on that attempt had them getting swamped pretty quickly.

Attempt five, they tried to optimize their strategy, using as few eggs as possible to distract the Matriarch while also playing it safe. The end result of that, in both cases, was that they survived long enough for the Sickleman up on the ridge to spawn in. It seemed it was a fresh hatch as well, but it was at full size and power, nailing them with spears. They did find out that they could pop the responsible egg to weaken the spawn. Even with those mechanical understandings, they failed to do any meaningful damage to the boss.

John wasn’t sure yet whether the optimal strategy would be to keep kiting the Matriarch until they destroyed all the eggs in the room, tiring her out while preparing a final, uninterrupted burst phase, or if they should focus her while only handling the adds as needed. Further tries would have been needed to find this out. For now, they put a pin in it and went over to the Ravenstorm.

Compared to the Sicklebrood Matriarch and Granite Titanturtle, the Ravenstorm was refreshingly straightforward. It was a giant raven made out of electricity that threw electricity-based attacks around. Attacking it was an issue at first, but they soon found that the inside of the tower held several platforms that gave a temporary flight buff. A thing that would have never been encountered in day to day Abyss, at least Lydia commented that the mana required for something like this would have been ridiculous, but Gaia evidently saw fit to deploy in the limits of his game mechanics.

Their first attempt ended because the non-Gamer members of the group had difficulty keeping tabs on how long it lasted, causing several members to take a plunge to their death. The second to fifth attempt were all purely due to them underestimating the boss in one fashion or another. Reach, speed, intensity of attacks, opportunism, all of these characteristics had to be studied. Although the bosses of the Gamer’s Raids weren’t quite as shackled to mechanics as the usual video game ones where fire breathing always affected the same cone area, there were patterns in their behaviour. That much could be expected of anyone – even world class martial artists had a few moves and strategies they specialized in.

“So?” Lydia asked when they had retreated from their trial attempts. They were having a pre-dinner snack. A bit of food and a short pause would calm their nerves and then it was right back into the fray. “What is your judgement of our situation?”

That was a good question. John felt somewhat annoyed with their current situation. “The Titanturtle will take probably twenty tries just for us to get the moveset down. Because the Matriarch’s add spawn locations are randomized, that entire boss fight will be a long fight of optimized reaction. Ravenstorm seems like the best bet we have, as long as there isn’t some second phase that makes things harder than everyone doing their best individually. Well, it’s also difficult for Undine to heal us at range in the air…” He put a new slice of bread on his plate and looked over the table for a topping. “I’m pretty sure we could beat any of them, I’m just not sure we can do it in the current timeframe. I want to run a few more tests before we pick something to continuously die against.” He chose his topping and waved it around for a little bit. “Maybe we’ll find some nice cheese.”