Thunder Snegg

Author's Note: I do briefly interrupt your program to remind you that I do indeed need to eat - if you have any spare coin you can throw my way, I would be much obliged.
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“Balance the need to strike with the foresight of where he will stand next. The storm gathers with every huff and will strike inevitably. It behoves you to prepare, by your own health and his damage, for the moment upon which it all will become a chaos of thunder.” John pondered Lorelei’s words. “Sounds like a fight where the second phase comes when he reaches a mana threshold rather than a health one. We’ll want to try and keep our own HP high during the comparatively easy phase and also try to get him as low as possible before it triggers.”

“Maybe you can just aim to burst him down entirely?” Lee asked.

“I doubt we have the damage to pull that off. Gaia usually balances these decently,” John answered. “Given the trident-teleportation we also have to watch his positioning. Sounds like he will start smoking when he isn’t actively involved in a fight.”

“Any adjustments ya wanna make to our lineup?”

“Let’s get a first try in before I decide that,” John said.

The majority of the harem wandered to the viewing stand after he said that. “We will pray for your victory, Master,” Claire declared.

“Just a little,” Momo echoed.

“Very little,” Delicia drawled.

“…What’s that about?” Jane asked, watching the trio go.

John hadn’t told anyone about the hypnosis yet. Everyone knew that he had done something, a Gamer did not go to the bath with those three without washing some brains, but the details he had been elusive on. Even now, he simply smiled. “It’s not that hard to guess,” he told his first wife.

She would have to think about it later. Now it was combat time.

John took in the land. There was a large central boulder, three smaller but still massive ones clustered to his right, two similarly sized ones close and distant to his left, and a number of mossy stones all over. The mossy stones only mattered insofar as they were poor footing. Since Raid arenas were indestructible, terrain like this actually mattered.

Just like previous battlefields simulated in the fighting pit, it was 40 by 40 metres large. Quite a lot and yet also somewhat small for their level.

“Alright… let’s see what he got!” John gave the command.

Thunnabad reacted to their intent. The small, blue fellow charged forwards, leaving one trident behind. He stabbed twice at Gnome. The first she narrowly avoided, the second sunk into her stomach. Electric energy crackled through her, dealing relatively little damage to the woman made of animated soil.

The Sneggi warrior danced back two steps, twirling his trident. The spin knocked aside both Rex Magnar and Ehtra’s Astrotium blade. With a soft thud, the trident was then stuck into the earth.

Jane’s claws swiped through blue-tinged air. A half second later, Thunnabad manifested by his second weapon. He picked it up. He extended his right arm forwards. Jane had the combat instincts to realize what was about to happen, but the speed of a Raid boss was something else.

The second trident was called to the empty hand as a blue arc of electricity. It crackled through the feline Lightbearer, burning hair and organs. John watched his first wife fall to the ground, equal parts angry about watching her take any damage at all and respectful of how tough a cookie she always proved to be.

Siena and Nia were upon Thunnabad. The Sneggi drew his left arm back, throwing the trident with all his might at Siena. The projectile tore a hole through the animated shadow. Siena was thrown back, pushed by the strong gust of the attack.

Soundless, Nia’s blade clashed with Thunnabad’s second trident. The Raid boss’ biceps tensed, then swept Nia aside. The pariah’s back hit the central boulder hard. Calmly smiling, Thunnabad thrust his weapon at the meteor flying at his head. “It’s almost like Goat-Hi is here still!” the boss declared.

The reference made by the NPC went over John’s head. ‘Well, I remember the first boss was called Go-Hi,’ he corrected himself, watching as Ehtra and Metra once more descended on the Sneggi warrior. They managed a short exchange of blows, leaving both sides effectively unharmed, before Thunnabad once more switched positions.

“Let’s spice this up a little!” The warning cry of Takaria reached John’s ears. The Saintess leapt from her position by the throne, then unnaturally hung in the air above the battlefield.

They needed to relocate. Undine looked to Siena, too damaged to move in time. The copy she had manifested from her fellow elemental’s shadow did not have the necessary healing capacity to fix her up in time. The only way to reach her in time was blocked by the lightning arc brought about by Thunnabad recalling his weapon.

The Raid party evacuated the area without Siena. A moment later, Takaria dove down, creating a firestorm all around her. Hellishly hot winds persisted, tearing Siena’s already diminished HP bar down until Fateweaving kicked in.

The group had moved with poor coordination, splitting left and right around the boulder. John, Jane and Gnome circled around the north, following the sounds of fighting. Thunnabad had similarly evacuated the burning area, suggesting he wasn’t immune to the effects.

The trio arrived just in time to watch Thunnabad’s spear driving into Nia’s chest. Rather than destroy her heart, it merely ejected her from the arena and into the Intermediary Barrier.

‘This is going about as well as expected,’ John thought.

Thunnabad disappeared again, teleporting over to his second trident. He picked it up with his left, as before, recalled his main weapon with his right, as before, and then prepared to throw with his left, as before.

“Nobody approach him!” John ordered.

The entire Raid team stopped in their tracks. Thunnabad held the throwing pose for a beat longer than expected, then launched the weapon at Jane. A notable though somewhat confusing target, since the feline Lightbearer was neither closest nor furthest away. Was she the one in the middle distance or was there another targeting parameter?

Even prepared, Jane’s dodge was a close call. The trident pierced the dirt a couple metres behind her. “We’ll just watch,” John declared.

Thunnabad took the pause to pull out a pipe, igniting it with an electric spark. The scent of a herb similar to marijuana filled the air – the Slowgrass from the Loottable most likely. Every huff and puff provided the Raid boss with a swelling of an aura of blue-tinted mist.

While he charged up, John walked over to the trident. He gave it a lift. Immediately, his MP started to drop at a steady but overall manageable rate. “It can be carried,” he informed everyone. “We’ll need to reposition this to be advantageous to us.”

“Let’s make this a bit more… intimate!” Ikoria laughed, still seated in her god-husband’s lap. She slowly raised her hand. The tips of blood-rubies pierced through the ground, stopping for a moment, long enough to let them all evacuate.

It wasn’t long thereafter that Thunnabad took a final hit of Slowgrass. “Aaaallll… RIGHT!” he shouted. The mist around him crackled with electricity. “LOGITUR! I AM ALL CHARGED UP!” The Sneggi warrior recalled his trident again. One electric arc turned into a crackling heart of a divine storm. The very heavens darkened as Thunnabad rose two metres into the air, his magnificent hair flying in the turbulent winds. “I WILL MAKE YOU PROUD!”

“I know you will, son of storms!” Logitur bellowed.

Strong gusts and lightning strikes would have stopped anyone from approaching even if they had tried. A final beat of the electric heart, then Thunnabad began to fall. He caught himself on one trident, gliding fluidly to the ground, then catapulted himself forwards like a pole vaulter.

Metra stood closest. She barely managed to fire the Extreme Plasma Burst up to defend herself. The meeting of two polearms launched Thunnabad high up into the air. At the zenith of his height. He threw both of his tridents. Ehtra managed to dodge, Gnome did not. The kinetic force alone ripped her left arm off – then divine thunder struck.

The dual weapons absorbed the electricity, then returned to Thunnabad before he even landed. Metra, Ehtra and Jane were all upon him, but he danced and weaved through the multitude of attacks. The way he jumped and twirled reminded John of Yoda while all of the lightning strikes and greater combat prowess moved his mind to the second phase of Slave Knight Gael. A peculiar and quite threatening combination.

Thunnabad wiped the floor with the trio rapidly and chewed through the rest of the Raid party afterwards.

“For a first try, that was pretty solid,” John said in the strategy meeting after. “Let’s start planning this out. Do we feel he is beatable in melee?”

“Just a question of getting used to him,” Metra answered. Her pride wasn’t even hurt by the loss. The supreme deity of the world designed these encounters specifically to need several tries. Clearing them in one go was a sign of lucky cheese or of them being overlevelled. “He has Stats on his side. We can learn his mannerisms.”

“Not like the snail creature can adjust them,” Ehtra added.

John nodded. “Alright. Then, as far as mechanics go, we have the frequent repositioning, then the recall and the throwing. In the second phase, the throwing also had thunderstrikes attached to them and he did it with both.” The Gamer hummed. “Pretty light on outright game mechanics. Seems to be more of a Hellboar style fight where the main challenge lies in the melee. Still, we can optimize this.”

“Any changes to the line-up?” Siena asked, her arms crossed. Metra’s pride wasn’t hurt but Siena was visibly rankled by her own performance. “I would not moan about being switched out.”

John shook his head. “No, no changes yet. I’ll decide after four more tries.”

And that was exactly what they did. Over the next thirty minutes, they went in, tested the mechanics as much as they could, then gathered back up to reflect before trying again. After the fifth try, they had learned a few things.

The throw attack operated on a timing window. If he was being attacked in melee, he would always launch it at the attacker. If there was more than one attacker, he had a strong preference to whoever was on his right, overwritten only by someone being notably closer. If no one was attacking him, he would choose a target at random after 5 seconds and take out his pipe.

Thunnabad similarly did not relocate on a set cooldown. There was a minimum timer of 7 seconds, after which he could teleport whenever he had too many enemies in melee. At a maximum of 30 seconds, he would always teleport. However, an exception was carved out for Saintess attacks. He would always teleport even before the minimum timer was up if it took him out of the affected area of the Saintess intervention. If it would teleport him in, he would hold past the 30 second limit. If he was both and it would teleport him in, he would swiftly recall his trident and run.

Armed with this knowledge on patterns, John made a few decisions.

First, the fight did not need this many tanks. Thunnabad attacked whoever was close to him, so there was little to no point in having anyone be the dedicated damage-taker. This logic was reinforced by him having a low capacity to deliver one-shots, which let injured parties retreat to Undine to heal.

Second, he wanted to de-clutter the melee field. Since Thunnabad moved when he was being ganged on, having too many melees meant that one or two fighters were always running after the boss without ever hitting him.

With that in mind, he had Gnome and Ehtra bow out. After some further consideration, he also asked Salamander to make room for someone else. Thunnabad always seemed to see her projectiles coming.

In their stead, he brought in Fianna, Nightingale and Scarlett. The first and the last were good at precision ranged damage while Nightingale would hopefully be able to distort the boss’ senses enough to make his melee a bit more manageable, especially in the second phase.

They got 20 more tries in over the next 2 hours. As was usual, the number of tries per hour diminished gradually, as each pull saw them persist for a longer time. After their 25th attempt, John called for a thirty-minute break, followed by them properly formulating their approach.

The basic idea to tackling the fairly basic mechanics of this boss was simple: put his back to the rock.

Getting him there was just a matter of manipulating his character data to start the fight with a trident throw, preferably at Siena, since she had the best dodge chance. Once that was ensured, Metra could engage the melee. Jane and Nia would hang out on the flanks. Nightingale, Fianna and Scarlett got on top of the big central boulder, using the elevated position to attack from relative safety.

It was then John’s job to grab the trident and carry it over to the next of six positions around the boulder.

Once the trident was where they wanted it to be, Jane and Nia would close in on Thunnabad, inevitably triggering his repositioning. Simultaneously, Siena would be moving ahead to be right of where Thunnabad would be.

The recalling of the trident would only cross a short and predictable distance, something that could easily be gotten into the rhythm of. Once he was ready to throw, Siena would be right there. After the shadow spirit dodged, John would use Magus Step to get where the trident was as quickly as possible and place it at the next designated spot along the boulder.

This would be repeated until Thunnabad went into the second phase.

That was the theory anyway. The reality of the matter was complicated by three things. Two were learning curve related. Siena dodging the trident every time was not as easy as a strategy map made it seem. The timing on that was tight, certainly more difficult than John’s job after to carry the thing. Combining Siena’s speed with Nightingale slightly adjusting Thunnabad’s aim yielded good results, they just had to get comfortable with it.

The second one there was the matter of the melee fighters generally learning Thunnabad’s fighting style. He was a kind of short that even Metra had little experience with and as a Raid boss he was both incredibly capable and powerful.

The third was a headache: the Saintesses.

John understood what Gaia had wanted to do, he really did. Throw a mechanic in there that was a persistent thematic throughline. The problem with this one was that it SUCKED.

John hated it. Each of the Saintesses had their own series of targeting triggers that was so layered that they might as well have been random. All that was persistent was the timing and the order. That was better than nothing, but with how much the fights in this Raid (or any Raid, really) depended on good positioning, throwing in the interventions created a degree of variance between attempts that was just horrific. The Saintess cycle was also saved between attempts.

John just LOVED deliberately going for a 2 minute delay wipe just to make sure the right Saintess was up next – or specifically not the wrong one. If Ikoria went first and put her bloodruby cluster in the wrong area, their whole strategy was fucked from the outset.

Never in his life would John have thought he could have had this much hate for a group of hot redheads, but here he was.

Ranting and raving aside, they did progress through the fight fairly consistently.

They spent the entire day grinding up against the boss. They managed 60 more pulls (not counting the anti-Ikoria ones) before the end of the day. They kept wiping, but they also kept getting more comfortable with the fight. The second phase was hard, but it wasn’t all that complicated in terms of broader strategy. It was basically just a matter of everyone being at their A-game for one run.

They cut Thunnabad down on the 86th try – the first try of the next day.

The Sneggi warrior vaulted over Metra, stabbing the wolf woman in the head midair. Metra was sent out of the area, following Siena, Nia and Scarlett, all of which had already been stabbed or struck by lightning. Jane was down for the count for the moment, getting patched up by Undine.

John sought to make up for the lack of fighters by flooding the field with summons. Sprites spawned in clusters of four, throwing themselves at Thunnabad with all of the self-preservation instincts of a Pikmin. It worked to stun Thunnabad, in a way. Dual-wielding his tridents, the rapidly stabbed and stabbed, thunderbolts and lightning filling the air as he shredded the Sprites with ease.

They really did not perform that greatly in equal Level combat.

John’s mana bar was draining.

Fianna dropped from the boulder, landing right next to Thunnabad.

Whirling around, the Sneggi warrior knocked the muzzle aside before the sniper maid could pull the trigger. Turning with the direction of the impact, the seasoned mercenary fluidly brought her left arm up. Her palm opened, revealing the limited-use cannon integrated into the limb. The White Tiger’s Claws were loaded into it. Tibetan metal magic, honed to perfection, mixed with the greatest artifice the current age was capable of.

The bullet blew Thunnabad’s brains out.

Greymatter turned to ash before the show could get gory. The blue-skinned warrior staggered back two steps, a clean hole going through his head. Both tridents dropped to the floor, beginning to disintegrate. Thunnabad pulled out his pipe again and took one final huff of Slowgrass.

With a relaxed puff, he turned to nothing.