Prodding The Gargoyles

"You know, I wanna push on." Belle suggests.

I look around and see the broadening smiles on the faces of the beautiful women around me.

"We finally did it! Onto the next one!" Mia declares cheerfully.

"We got everyone thorough. I'm proud of that." Ivy says, with a warm grin on her face.

"Thanks to you love, we did it." I tell her.

None of us were able to interrupt the flow of the Channeler before. Ivy's powerful plant magic is what made the difference, and she didn't have the mana to spare to use it before today.

Our healer beams with pride.

"I tend to agree." I say, looking back at Belle. "Wanna go check out the next enemies before we get the loot?"

Amped up from the fight and the excitement of finally beating it, everybody choruses their agreement.

With that decided, I lead everyone up the stairs, which go around the room we've been fighting in. Eventually, we get to a ladder, leading up to the roof.

"Oh this is gonna be fun." I say with a grin. I head up the ladder first, with the others following me one at a time.

As we reach the top, we find an opening out to the roof, with a fog gate in front of it. I know exactly what's behind that gate.

As everybody makes their way up the ladder and into the room, I brief them all on the likely enemies we'll be facing.

"I think we're fighting the Bell Gargoyles next. In the lore of Dark Souls, they're the guardians of the first Bell Of Awakening. There's two of them, they use giant halberds, they can fly, and they can breathe fire." I say.

"Hell yeah." Belle says, cracking her knuckles.

"Be aware, we're probably going to be wiped. Let's check them out anyway." I say.

With that, I lead my guild through the fog wall, out onto the tiled rooftop of the church. In front of us lies the bell tower, standing tall, right where I thought it would be.

The Bell Gargoyles announce themselves with cracking stone and a magically animated roar, diving down, one in front of the other, brandishing their halberds.

We ready ourselves for the fight ahead, if only to test how strong they are.

The first gargoyle storms towards us, raising its halberd into the air.

"Move!" I yell, throwing myself out of the way.

Belle and Mia are just behind me, with Olivia being only slightly slower, as we all dodge out of the way of the blisteringly fast attack.

The gargoyle slams down its halberd, smashing into Paige, Skylar and Ivy all at once, sending them crashing to the ground.

Plants immediately sprout around them, healing them all from the dangerous strike.

Fire washes over me, burning my health bar away as the second gargoyle lands, bathing a massive area in flames. I scramble to get out of the way of the attack, conjuring a shield of ice to hopefully block off some of the attack and activating mana shield in the same moment.

The first gargoyle swings again with its halberd, knocking down Paige and Skylar, who are both still injured. Ivy only just manages to roll away.

In the chaos, I forget one of the other mechanics of the gargoyles, as the sharp tail axe swings wildly, catching me and sending me flying through the air, landing dangerously close to the edge of the roof.

Olivia in her Tetramand form charges towards the fire breathing gargoyle, winding up to unleash a devastating punch directly to its face.

The gargoyle simply beats its wings and flies backwards, avoiding the attack entirely.

More wild attacks from the first gargoyle take Paige and Skylar out of the fight entirely. There just isn't enough space, and they have nowhere to go. The tail axe catches Olivia as well, and she goes flying.

With no other choice, Belle and I charge towards the first gargoyle, trying our best to catch it off guard as it recovers from the other attacks.

It launches itself into the air, bringing down the deadly halberd again, as the second gargoyle charges forward, bathing the area in fire once more.

My mana bar empties fast from the powerful flame, as does my health bar, and with one more strike, I find myself outside the Raid.

"Yes! New enemies! More power!" Mia shouts, and Belle looks over at her, nodding.

"Couldn't agree more. Let's kick some stone ass. When we're healed." Belle says, looking to Ivy.

"On it." The sweet and dutiful healer replies, her magic flowing all around us, healing our injuries and restoring our vitality.

"We should check the loot before we try again." I remind the others.

With the agreement of the rest of my guild, we head back into the Raid and backtrack to the inside of the church, where the chest lies, sitting unopened and ready.

I open the chest and pull out the first item, which happens to be a cool $6,000,000, the common drops from all 3 Balder Knights.

The money fades into my inventory, and I enjoy the simple satisfaction of ‘number go up’, knowing that if I ever do return to a mundane life, I’d never have to work again.

The next few items are the other boring common items from the Balder Knights, two bucklers and three light crossbows. Nothing much worth anything.

We also get a set of Channeler’s Robes, which are mostly useless to us, due to their low power and protection.

We also get more Balder’s Cloaks and Rapiers from the uncommon category. Again, nothing much worth anything.

The Helmet Of Seeing dropped from the Channeler, and inspecting it a little further, we find that it’s a helmet meant for a servant or summon, that binds itself both to the servant and to their master.

As on the Channeler, it allows the master to see what their servant or familiar sees. It could possibly have been useful, if Ivy were able to wear armour or wield weapons, but she can’t do either, so the helmet is relegated to my inventory for now.

The Balder Knight Armour set is another repeat drop with nothing particularly interesting about it.

The first legitimately interesting drop is the two chunks of Vibranium that dropped from the Balder Knights, which get added to our slowly growing collection of Vibranium. We’re only about a third of the way towards another ingot, and I’m happy with that.

The Channeler’s Trident doesn’t drop, which is a shame because I’d have been interested to see what that does.

With a stroke of luck, we find that the Arcane Spellbook has dropped. As I pick it up and out of the chest, a window appears.

Holy shit that’s powerful.

I read the window out to the rest of my group, and by the end of my description, Olivia stretches out her hand.

I give her the book with a knowing smile. “I was about to say the same thing. Maybe Emma and Ivy can try to learn that buffing skill the Channeler had.” I say.

Olivia nods approvingly. “Smart girl. We will get what knowledge we can glean from it first, then you can consume it to add to your powerset.” She says.

I nod in agreement. With the loot done, we head back to the barrier to rest and recover from the fights, in preparation for our next attempt at beating the Bell Gargoyles.

While the others are walking back, Ivy and I decide to allocate our statpoints from the 5 levels each that we gained.

Ivy’s points go into Wisdom, which is a quick and easy affair. It’s the first time one of us has gotten a base stat above 300. There’s no bonus at 300 unfortunately, I’m assuming the next one is at 500. It’s still cool nonetheless.

My points go into Agility, and I stare at my character sheet with the number taunting me. My Agility stat is now at 232, a mere 3 levels worth of points away from the magical 250 that will give me the next agility related perk. I’m excited to see what it’s going to be.

The milestone coincides with the two of us reaching level 150, which I find somehow fitting.

Having finished everything we needed to do, we head off to relax with the others.

Olivia immediately finds Emma and Lena, and sits them down to read the Arcane Spellbook together.

Most of the spellbooks available on the abyss auction are for fairly common spells and types of magic, which also means they’re fairly weak in the scheme of things.

The fact that this was a legendary drop off of a level 200 Raid Monster gives us all some excitement for the potentially powerful magic the book could contain.

After flicking through the book, Olivia does manage to find a chapter on the buff the Channeler was casting on the Balder Knights.

The text is dense with spiritual sounding language though, along with reverance towards Seath The Scaleless and the concept of Sorcery itself. Olivia, Emma and Lena start with the difficult task of reading through it.

Besides that, the rest of the day is filled with attempts and failures at beating the Bell Gargoyles.

The tantalising thought of the boss makes our entire party antsy to fight them again, and we get plenty of attempts in, though by the end of the day, we’ve still only managed to be able to kill one of them consistently.

Tomorrow is another day though.