Panic-stricken, my eyes flew to the corner of my vision where my party menu hovered to see Ripley’s health. Before my inopportune lightning bolt blasted her backward, she had been at less than half health. With the bolt… Fear lanced through my heart. Did I kill her? No, she was still alive! Even better, it would seem, Ripley’s health bar was higher than expected, considering my average-tier direct damage spell could steal away upwards of thirty-five hundred health in a single attack. Thankful I hadn’t killed my friend, she should have been at below twenty percent health remaining, perhaps even closer to ten percent. Instead, her health hovered just over the thirty percent mark, but how could that be?
It’s because of her innate magical resistance, I realized with a start. As an undead and skeletal lifeform, Ripley naturally had fifty percent spell resistance. So, instead of suffering the full damage of Lightning Bolt, she was left with a decent chunk of health points. I couldn’t imagine she was too happy about her luck considering the spell had shot her smoking body tumbling in the long grass, but she was alive and still in fighting shape.
Unfortunately, the shock of accidentally knocking my friend senseless with a devastating bolt of lightning stole precious seconds of inaction as my mind attempted to process what happened. Even though I could ill afford to lose any more time, my addled brain struggled to keep up. We had two very angry Nagas running around, after all. Thankfully, even with my blunder, the fuming warden behind me, irate after being tied up for the majority of the battle, never paused in his relentless barrage. Arrow after arrow peppered into the Naga’s pallid human torso.
Sadly, the Naga, after expertly dodging my blistering attack, refused to be distracted as it sprung back to its feet, so to speak. Using its massive body as a fulcrum, the giant snake righted itself with blazing alacrity, turning to face Tallos and his unending stream of piercing arrows. Its enormous head released an outraged hiss, the previously terrified eyes narrowing in hatred. The look foretold an excruciating death if the snake was allowed to get anywhere near the now-backpedaling ranger.
There was another individual who did not hesitate when my untimely bolt streaked brilliantly through the darkening sky: the terror-filled Naga. Under the fearing effect of Vivisection, the gargantuan snake body never paused as it slithered onward toward its companion. In fact, it only increased its forward momentum as the last few feet were crushed under its massive frame. More potent than a barreling freight train, the Naga slammed into its friend with enough force to bulldoze a mountain. Just before impact, as the other Naga caught sight of its bum-rushing friend, it let out a startled, high-pitched shriek.
At the exact moment of impact, the ghostly wisps of blades covering my feared Naga multiplied and engulfed the new target. Vivisection had been successfully transferred, and oh, did the thing howl. Whether in pain, frustration, or anger, I couldn’t know, yet I hardly cared. It was free damage and my mana hadn’t dropped in the slightest as the spell latched to an additional target.
The pair of coiling Naga’s crashed heavily to the earth. It was like a two-thousand-pound linebacker had gone full tilt moments before tackling a previously jeering foe. Dirt, dust, and debris were thrown into the air as the two bodies writhed. Ghostly blades never slowed as scaled hide and pale flesh were ripped apart. Delighted satisfaction rushed through me seeing the pair somersault over one another. My spell was undoubtedly powerful. I was even more pleased when the fear debuff didn’t immediately disappear upon contact. In fact, it lasted a pair of seconds longer than I had initially expected.
The Naga previously entangled with Ripley hissed out a curse and, with a grunt of disdain for his muddled companion, pushed off hard against the other snake’s reptilian body. It timed the move perfectly, using its gargantuan body and powerful muscles to snap forward with frightening speed. The force was enough to throw the other Naga a clear ten feet away, an impressive feat considering how heavy I knew the damnable beasts were. With the fear effect terminating while the thrown Naga tumbled through the overgrown, it took an extra second for it to reorient itself as its momentum was spent. It looked around wildly for something it could vent its considerable anger upon. Its entire demeanor promised a crushing death for one of us.
“Xaz!” Stella shouted at my side, despondent at my inaction. “Get back into the fight!”
She was right! Mentally thanking Stella for the sound advice, I used my party interface to target Ripley. Even though I could not see her behind the wavy grass billowing against another gust of wind, I was nonetheless able to quick cast and dual cast my upgraded lesser regen upon her. A green-tinted shade of mana shot away from my hands, hurtling toward her unseen body as unerringly as a diving hawk crashing toward a field mouse.
As I pondered my next course of action, Stella spoke again as she hovered near my face.
“Your Naga is redlining,” she called out helpfully, the sweet tone of relief in her voice reaching my eardrums. With one of the two furious beasts soon down, we could focus all of our remaining ire upon the sole surviving Naga.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Disappointment and surprise washed through me as something new, something magical, triggered the moment my Naga should have dropped dead as the behemoth snake swayed to its side as if on the precipice of falling into eternal sleep, its enormous human eyes going vacant, a cord of blazing emerald power shot in from the side. The Naga immediately stood at attention like a soldier suddenly spooked when a commanding officer burst in unexpectedly. In an instant, it straightened to its full height, several feet taller than I was, before going completely motionless as if it had been turned into a statue.
Words to my latest spell faulted as my widened eyes followed the corded thread of shimmering energy to its origin. The beam of luminous energy originated from the other Naga! It, too, was erect as a board in a mirror image of the other. The brilliant ribbon pulsed as if alive, and something, vitality I soon realized in horror, was transferring from the healthy Naga to the other.
As I watched, the health bar of the healthier Naga slowly drained away. Wiping my head back to the other, I stared in bewilderment as the near-death Naga’s health rocketed upward! In a pair of seconds, the bar passed well beyond the fifty percent mark, each pulse along the energy cord transferring more vitality from one to the other. Throughout the entire ordeal, neither Naga so much as twitched a muscle even as the process began fading. Double checking where the pair stood, shock sliced through me as I realized the abominable creatures both had their health bars close to seventy percent capacity.
“What… the hell?!” I stuttered out the words as my mind furiously attempted to understand what just happened. Damn it all, I cursed inwardly. I was letting myself get distracted again, and my friends needed me!
Tallos, on the other hand, never relented his unending assault. Magically infused arrows sliced through the night air like shots from a sniper rifle. One after another, all varying colors of red, blue, white, and green crashed onward and seemed to go completely unnoticed as they bit deeply into the Naga’s unprotected flesh. As the flaming arrows struck, tiny conflagrations instantly sprouted, running up and down the beast’s serpentine body. The ranger’s water arrows created light bands of constricting energy, locking up elbows and joints and forming between the fist-sized snake scales. Arrows pulsing a dark olive caused black lines to appear beneath the creature''s pale skin. And, while potentially the least exciting of the bunch of imbued projectiles, Tallos’ brilliant bleached arrows struck with deadly precision, striking exactly where a man’s heart would be. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell if the creature’s vital organ was positioned there, and, by the look of it, it wasn’t as if the monstrosity still lived.
At the same time, Ripley’s gray skeletal form blasted away from the long grass across from her target and was now wielding her sword and shield combo. Or had she been using the pair this entire time? I couldn’t be sure, but it really didn’t matter. Dislodging the consideration from my mind, there were far more important concerns to be contemplating at this moment, I came to a conclusion as to what the entanglement between the two snakes represented.
“The healthy one is transferring health to the other,” Stella stated, having come to the same conclusion I had. Unfortunately, it was far worse than a simple transfer of health points.
Upon gaging where the two health bars above our foes now stood, it was not a one-to-one ratio. In other words, one health point from the healthier of the two Nagas didn’t restore a single point for its fellow. Instead, seeing as both creatures had roughly seventy percent health, it was closer to a three-to-one transference. As a result, instead of having a single opponent to deal with, even if it had been close to full health, we instead faced two very hale Nagas regaining their mobility. And they looked pissed.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath. My mind jumped back to an earlier thought when I considered the Naga''s apparently weak magical resistances. It would seem the giant snakes forgo this type of protection in favor of being able to siphon health from one to the other. It was a potent ability, especially given the significantly stout vitality they appeared to have. Combined with their prodigious strength and potent venom promising a painful death, their ability to heal one another was making an already difficult situation far worse.
As the last vestiges of energy dissipated, turning from a vibrant emerald to a bright lime shade, my mind flashed through the implications their healing bond meant for the rest of the battle. In computer games, I played back on Earth if you ever came upon a boss duo with this particular type of ability, the general consensus was to wear both opponents down simultaneously. In doing so, you could take such an overpowered ability completely off the board. Otherwise you risked extending the fray unnecessarily long and, in some extreme cases, caused an all-out wipe with your side dying one by one. As we knew all too well, there was no reset button here. Dead was dead, permanently.
There was a strategy in simply brute forcing it, though. While less optimal and potentially problematic in its own right, you could focus all of your DPS on a single boss. That could work, but only if you had a compelling fighting force. Still, between the two options, it was less fraught with risk to kill both bosses at the same time. If we could, that would be the path we would try to take.
Since the Naga I had been fighting had a trio of my strongest DoTs currently wrecking its innards, I needed to help Ripley with hers as it only had the recently transferred Vivisection slashing at its health pool. Looking at my buffs, Quintessence Empowerment had just shy of thirty-five seconds before disappearing, so it was important for me to chase as much benefit from the ability as possible. Ripley reengaged with her Naga as the words of a spell breached the relative calm over the battle field. Her sword and shield worked brilliantly as she expertly parried and blocked a particularly skillful combination from her opponent’s twin blades. Soon, Lowki would make his presence known and, hopefully, in a profound way.
Opting to send out some potentially lifesaving magic to my teammates, I neared the end of my casting of another Pyroclastic Funeral Pyre. The spell had a great one-two combo of high damage to my target while simultaneously sending regenerative heal upon any nearby friendlies. My eyes didn’t leave the back of Ripley’s aggressor as another burning ash cloud appeared between my hands before crackling away. When it impacted the Naga’s back, it expanded in a semi-transparent whirlwind encompassing Ripley as well. Now, combined with the lesser regeneration I cast on her earlier, the AoE healing should replenish most of the damage my inopportune lightning bolt had caused.
Sure enough, Ripley’s health bar began refilling at an appreciable rate. Before I could complete the casting of my next spell, Gnawing Blizzard, my former opponent, the now revitalized Naga, rushed in my direction with angry determination to spoil my next incantation. Apparently, it understood how bad it would be for the pair if I were allowed free rein to cast my devastating magic. The bum-rushing Naga slithered off to my side, meaning I would quickly lose sight of it from the periphery of my vision. If I didn’t adjust my aim, it would blindside me. I couldn’t allow it to do so, so I was forced to turn and change the focus of my upcoming spell.
Thankfully, I could modify the target of my building spell on the fly as long as I didn’t lose sight of my foe. I did just that. The air around my hands chilled as tiny snowflakes formed around my fingers as I deftly wove the spell’s magic. My opponent seemed not to care, content with barreling through me as it had previously done to its friend. Gnawing blizzard completed, sending a ball of freezing ice shards away from me as the miniature hurricane streaked toward the onrushing Naga. Targeting halfway between us, since the spell was completely static once cast, a billowing cloud of razor-sharp ice bloomed into existence ten paces before my opponent. As the beast entered the area of effect, crystalline ice formed all along the snake’s slithering body. The pale humanoid torso of the Naga grew even more colorless as flesh desiccated under the spell’s frigid assault.
The Naga continued its advance and would reach me in a second. My earlier decision to evenly split our damage between the two Nagas was stolen as I was forced to meet its indomitable charge. If I needed to kill this dastardly foe three more times, then so be it. At least, that thought burned through me as my feet carried me closer. It was important to keep the Naga within the blizzard’s area of effect. If I opted to retreat instead, I would only pull the mighty creature away from the gnawing winds.
With the decision made, I shouted out to my friends in hopes we would do as much damage as possible to one of the snakes, “Help me with this one!”
As I hoped Tallos and Lowki would be able to hear my cry over the increasing din of battle, I withdrew Frostrend from my inventory and prepared to defend myself. My foe still only had its single curved blade; its twin was lost somewhere on the battlefield. When my damage caused the healing link to trigger once more, it would at least cause the pair of Naga’s to lock up momentarily as health was shifted from one to the other. Perhaps we could use those few seconds to our advantage. At the same time, I hope there wasn’t more to the Naga’s powerful ability.
I had plenty of mana available still meaning I could rely on my Aegis to help keep me alive against such a frightening opponent. As the gigantic snake approached, I shifted my normal fighting style when my enemy got this close. Instead of relying solely on my physical prowess, it would do me little good against such a monstrous foe, and I would continue leveraging my magical talents. As we began exchanging devastating blows with one another, the bit of my axe crashing into the hardened steel of my foe’s sword, I split my focus to simultaneously cast my spells. It was a difficult proposition, to say the least.
With how relentless my Naga’s strikes were, I was entirely unable to focus enough to quick cast or dual cast any of my spells. I learned this the hard way with one nasty sword strike crashing heavily into my side. I couldn''t spare the extra mental faculties needed to use either skill. It was only thanks to my long practice and perfected knowledge long-ago imbedded into my brain which allowed me to weave magic as I brought Frostrend to see me through the Naga’s punishing assaults.
My defensive prowess with a weapon was certainly not up to the task of fending off all the Naga’s attacks on its own, unfortunately. While my fingers danced through the intricate and necessary gestures to form my spell, my Aegis took multiple brutal blows, stealing large chunks of mana from my rapidly dwindling mana pool. For every spell I managed to complete, two others either fizzled out or were wholly interrupted as I danced around my opponent. Without the slowing effect of Gnawing Blizzard, I doubted I would be half as effective in landing spells.
Not long after we began our dance of death, so too did arrows arrive to sink deeply into my frightening foe. Tallos, at least, had heard my plea. Unfortunately, Lowki was nowhere to be seen, so they must have gone to aid Ripley with her Naga. Even without the panther’s help, my Empowerment trickled down to its last few remaining seconds as Ignite Bones, Wyvern Sting, Lesser Soul Leech, and Lesser Arrested Affliction bloomed inside my Naga’s body.
My adversary had long gone blood frenzied with the pain of so many powerful spells ravaging its inside. Its ungodly fat snakehead was screwed up in a mask of utter hatred. It was close to death once more and we would soon find out if there were anything new to the healing bond as it was moments away from triggering. My magical defenses had taken quite the battering, meaning a significant amount of the force of the Naga’s sword was now bypassing my Aegis and crashing into my body. I was well below twenty-five percent mana, yet I believed it to have been worth it as my opponent’s health dropped precipitously before bottoming out.
Counting on the approaching stun effect, I relaxed as the Naga’s health reached zero. It was a mistake. From the corner of my eye, the Naga facing Ripley went erect as a board when vivid green magic streaked away from its body. I errantly eased my defensive stance, expecting my two-thousand-pound opponent to similarly freeze up. Unfortunately for me, the magical bound took a second to connect due to the distance separating the two Nagas. My blunder afforded the Naga a clean strike upon my shoulder. Instead of partially deflecting or evading its sword strikes up to this point, my opponent was given free liberty to levy every ounce of its mountainous strength in a single, powerful, downward slash.
The sword crashed into my shoulder with crushing force. While my Aegis stopped the blow from cutting through my armor and shredding me like a cheese grater, I felt nearly the entire force behind the attack. I was lucky it didn’t break my clavicle. In an instant, I was thrown to my knees. The inordinately powerful attack, thankfully, hadn’t laid me out entirely. It had been dangerously close though, and I was grateful it hadn’t. I needed to respond while the Naga was momentarily dazed while healing magic coursed through its body.
Thankfully, my fate had not yet been sealed by my overconfidence as brilliant emerald energy crashed into the Naga, causing it to instantly go as rigid as a plank as waves of healing magic pumped furiously into its reptile body. I had only a pair of seconds before the ability’s work was completed. I was not about to let it go to waste.
Even as one of my hands twisted through the necessary motions of my Stinging Swarm spell, my other hand released the grip of Frostrend as it was recalled into my inventory. In the next instant, it was replaced by my ornate crescent-moon dueling pistol. It swung upwards as I touched the barrel to the underside of the massive snake head.
“Dodge this,” I said through gritted teeth before pulling the trigger.