Chapter 1162 – Prep Grinding 3 – Into the Darkness


    The Twisted City of Ohmior, that was the name of the Raid currently open. Raids were vastly more forgiving in regards to who got to tag along in terms of level differences without causing any detrimental effects. Despite that, Eliana and Nathalia had to stay out. Scarlett and Lee were non-combatants and therefore also stayed behind. Lorelei tagged along as per her request.


    When it came to actual allies, John had his elemental girls, the three maids, Metra, Rave, and Nia by his side, as well as Stirwin and Copernicus as situational reinforcements. A group with a total of twelve to fourteen members, fifteen counting Lorelei. A sizable formation, without doubt.


    “Been a while since we stopped this Raid,” John remarked, after all of them had spawned in. They stood inside a grey, concrete dome. As a boss arena, it worked oddly well, precisely because of how dull and hastily erected it was. One couldn’t help but wonder what was beyond the gate the boss had warded.


    The gate whose seal had powered the guardian. The gate that had burst open at the very end of the fight. The gate out of which darkness and tendrils had shot forth and pulled the guardian into it. The gate into which the air was steadily pulled, disturbing dark mist inside. The gate beyond which barely anything could be seen.


    John turned to Lorelei. “Fateweaving is active, so you won’t be killed by anything that’s happening here,” he told her. “It might be better if you stayed here until we made our way to the next boss.”


    “It would delay you to send for me, should that occur,” Lorelei said.


    “No, it wouldn’t. See that?” he asked and pointed at a teleporting pad that was outside the room. “There should be one in front of the next boss. If you use that and wait back at the hub platform, we can just fetch you when we activate it.”


    “I understand.” Lorelei nodded. She didn’t sound too disappointed. Much of her deployment in the Golden Rose had doubtlessly been accompanied by her being kept out of harm’s way.


    “You can tag along anyway, if you want to,” John told her and she perked up just a little bit. “Do you want to?” he asked, trying to probe her reasoning for this change in body language. She read that from his soul.


    “I would like to witness you fight... J-john,” she confessed. “I understand and accept that my role is off the battlefield and I do not yearn to enact violence. However, there is a tingling wish that is difficult to describe, that tells me to behold you in combat.”


    “Men who can fight are sexy,” Rave summarised what Lorelei was feeling. “You’re going to be disappointed with tiger here in that regard though.”


    “I do more of backline commanding,” John admitted. It wasn’t his most masculine trait, not that it bothered him too much. He was fine with having aspects to himself that didn’t fit traditional gender roles. They had their place in the general mind of a society, but an individual ought not to be shackled by their wide-sweeping claims, so he thought about it at least.


    “I have advised Moira many times while we studied the recordings of your combat during the succession tournament,” Lorelei informed them. “Witnessing it with my own eyes, proverbially, would be more rewarding.”


    “Alright then, come along,” John said and put an arm around her. “Let’s see what darkness lies under the surface of the Twisted City of Ohmior.”


    Although John was the first to get into motion, he would have been foolish to be the one to actually lead the way into the pulling darkness. A protective cocoon of combatants was formed around him and Lorelei at the centre. Aclysia and Gnome took the front, Metra the back, and everyone else scattered around the flanks to react swiftly to whatever would happen.


    Air, tasting of flowers and electricity, filled John’s lungs as he marched forwards. A strange mist drifted close to the ground, providing a little resistance with every step. Occasionally, the Gamer imagined he saw tendrils forming from the swirling black, but the pitch darkness of the place made it too difficult to discern whether that was happenstance, a trick of his mind, or the truth.


    Decrepit pillars stood in equal distance from one another in two rows, all of them broken before they made contact with the ceiling. The cracked walls were held together by threads of arcane magic. Blue light was oddly contained, creating sharp lines and failing to brighten the surrounding area. Light in general behaved oddly. Even the fire and the sphere Salamander and Rave summoned failed to make it more than a metre outwards.


    There was a simple rule that served in solving most mazes: stay in contact with the wall to one’s right and just keep moving forwards. Theoretically, doing so would lead towards the exit in some amount of time. The weakness of that strategy was that it required that the wall one followed was connected to the outer perimeter. When one applied it to an isle within the maze, it was useless.


    Since they had used it from the moment they had gotten into the maze, John was confident that they were following a sure-fire path. Not the most effective or quickest one, doubtlessly, but reliable and John loved reliable methods. If there were several isles within the maze, it wouldn’t get them straight to the target, but at least they would get around everywhere else.


    “Your coordination is admirable,” Lorelei said, the honest veneration she had for him so plain in her voice that it made John’s body tingle with delight.


    “Makes ya wonder what he can do while still walking, doesn’t it?” Rave asked, chiming into the conversation.


    John was considering just how far he could push the eroticisms inside the Raid, when Beatrice gave him a mental poke. “Warning: you should see this, Master,” the passive maid added to the simple sensation. Everyone in the group swiftly caught up to the front.


    Down a final stretch of corridor was a chamber. It’s true size could only be estimated, as the darkness inside it was too complete to allow any certainty of where the walls were. In the middle of that abyss was a purple sphere, its light containing five humanoid figures. Their size was impossible to discern, as there were no reference points other than one another. Clad entirely in dark robes, inscribed with large runes, the five chanted distant words.


    ‘Not sure I even want that Classbook, if the implication is that this is of the corrupting knowledge variety,’ John thought, while the group moved to the edge of the chamber. At the end of the corridor, they stopped. Nearby, a piece of the floor started to glow with the familiar pattern of a teleportation pad. “Alright, time to test your hypothesis,” the Gamer said to Lorelei.


    “I need to concentrate,” the seer responded meekly.


    Unwilling, but understanding, John removed his hand from her butt and left her to her devices. In the meantime, he opened the harem’s chat interface and dropped a message to Scarlett.


    John: The Tower Knight Blueprints required a Stable Void, right? You still need that?


    Scarlett: I can improvise around it, but I wouldn’t complain if you brought me some.


    John: We’ll see what the boss drops.


    They wrote a couple more messages back and forth, passing the time until Lorelei finally spoke up again. “I see a tide of creatures of the same kind you have fought on the way here,” the seer reported. “They distract as you attempt to tear down the shield. A collapse is followed by apotheosis. One priest is sacrificed so that the others may stand and so the void may devour you.”


    Lorelei’s suggestion had been simple: because she had future sight, she could tell John what a boss would do in advance. Although the details she had just given weren’t quite as extensive as an online guide on a boss’ mechanics, it was certainly a lot better than having to die repeatedly to scout out even a rough idea of what the boss did. Just as important was that she gave them a good guess at how long a fight was. There were no health bars in real life and fighting under the illusion that there was no next phase was highly inadvisable.


    John translated what the seer had said to gamer jargon, “So, this is an add-focused fight where we have to balance killing the additional enemies and keeping the damage up on the shield. Once the shield cracks, we get an extra strong enemy that we have to defeat. There’ll probably be some kind of DPS-check there, so we don’t just ignore the boss monster.”


    Time to test if that was accurate.