After a year of inactivity (wow... just wow), here's a new chapter. Enjoy if you can

Eight O'clock in the evening, Underground Root Complex Boss Door

By the seventh attempt, clearing through the dungeon had become a fifteen minute routine of lighting torches and running the tunnels until they reached the boss door, bashing away any cave spider that didn't scuttle away at the sight of thirty some odd players with a combined level grossly exceeding its own. Right on schedule, the players in front arrived at the boss door before the clock struck eight, leaving them four hours to defeat the boss before it became nigh unbeatable.

Before the raid entered the boss room, Myrtenaster stood at the door, addressing her raid party.

"Alright boys, this is our seventh take!" she stated, her voice resounding in the empty silence of the tunnels. "I'm sick and tired of fighting this thing. All of you are sick and tired of fighting this thing. If we win this tonight and we won't ever need to fight it again. You all know the plan. Stick to it."

With that, the raid party entered the boss room, Rose already pushing forward past the others to trigger the boss introduction. The other members of the raid got into position.

Myrtenaster sighed and opened her settings menu. Upon switching to the Raid Leader UI, her compacted party list at the bottom right side of her vision expanded into several large floating windows that she could move and rearrange. Each window detailed the health of every member, with the cool-down timers of up to five of their last used skills and techniques.

The UI also had a stopwatch timer that could be used in tracking boss cool-downs.

When Myrtenaster first found out about this apparent UI feature, she wanted to scream. They had been manually counting cool-downs for nearly three months and this much easier method was apparently buried under a mountain of customization options.

No one was sure if the option was there from the very beginning or if it was introduced in the latest patch. Not even Torchlight knew and he was the one who suggested Myrtenaster look at the UI options in the first place.

The low murmurs went quiet as the chamber started rumbling. Rose, being the player to trigger the boss, would be the primary target and it was her job to lure the boss into the prime position for the rest of the raid team to strike. The main tank group would then intercept and get the its attention. Once that was done, everyone was open to attacking it.

There was a loud boom indicating that the boss had spawned. Immediately after, Rose sprinted towards the main tank group whose shields glowed a collective bright blue of the [Battering Ram] technique. With a graceful jump, she moved past the charging shields who all slammed into the incoming [Root Cave Scorpion]. The scorpion backpedaled, stunned by the impact.

Myrtenaster didn't even need to give the signal for her raid team to attack - they'd done this opening sequence enough times to have memorized the timing. Instead, she waited for the boss to attack, readying her hand over the start button on the timer.

The boss jumped forward to pounce on the tank team who were slow to react. They all found themselves stumbling back with their shields raised as the boss initiated a series of pincer swipes. Myrtenaster bit her lip as she watched the average health of the main tank group decrease by around twenty percent. They'd need to heal soon.

"Maintain formation! Tank Team B, prepare to switch!"

The [Root Cave Scorpion] was a much easier boss to deal with than the [Root Death Stalker]. It was only level 60 - not level 80 - and had a much more forgiving move-set. Instead of extremely powerful single attacks whose damage would bleed through raised shields, its attacks were combos whose goal was to break the guards of tanks and stunlock players. While the boss performed these combo attacks, it was susceptible to attacks from the side.

The boss began it's longest uninterruptible combo.

"DPS Out! Ten seconds!"

While the tanks blocked the attacks, the raid team attacked, dishing out as much damage as they could in the short amount of time they were allotted. They depleted a large chunk of the boss' health bar.

Upon the boss finishing its combo, Myrtenaster ordered everyone to back-off. Everyone knew what was coming - a tail-sweep that hit an entire 360 degrees around the boss. It always performed that attack whenever it was surrounded and had just received more than five percent damage over ten seconds. The raid team got out of the way long before the telegraphed attack came.

"Rose, Oobleck, keep it busy!"

After the tail spin, the boss would start reacquiring targets seemingly at random due to how varied the raid's damage output was. This randomness could be eliminated by simply building enough hate to gain aggro. Unfortunately, the tanks could not deal enough damage to ensure they'd gain aggro before the boss attacked someone. Usually, it wouldn't be a tank that'd be attacked so they'd most certainly die.

That's where Rose and Oobleck came in. Their damage output was high enough that one or two attacks would get the boss' attention. And since they were nimble and knew attacks were coming, they could dodge until the tanks could take aggro from them.

Upon Myrtenaster giving the order, Rose and Oobleck pushed their way out of the group and charged the boss. Following that was a series of attacks, punctuated by brief flashes of light and arcs of fire that hit the boss for small chunks of its health bar. After which, the two nimbly jumped out of the way of the scorpion's swipes and lured it towards the tank group that was approaching the boss. After another quick dodge, Tank Team B took over and rammed it.

They rinsed and repeated for another thirty minutes until the boss' first health bar entered the red zone and it crumpled to the ground in a twitching heap.

"Everyone, disengage!"

Myrtenaster was quick to give the order and gave a sigh of relief when she saw that she managed to say it soon enough that the raid team didn't completely deplete the the first health bar. The boss now remained collapsed, not attacking or even reacting to the players surrounding it.

Normally, with the boss stunned as it was, the raid team would go into a frenzy and start wailing on it. For the first three times they fought it, they did not know that doing so was a bad idea. They knew better now.

Upon the depletion of the first health bar, the boss would enter a rage state and would be immune to parries and stuns for a full fifteen seconds while it repeatedly struck with its tail stinger at the player that did the last attack. When that player died, it would strike at the player who performed the second-to-last attack. When that player died, third-to-last, and so on.

In the first few attempts, it could never be determined who was the one who performed the last attack so they always ended up losing two or three players to the boss before its rage-state ended - and that wasn't including any collateral damage dealt to other players next to the target player. If a player knew beforehand that they would be targeted, they could get out of the crowd and simply dodge out of the way of the attack. Thus, it made perfect sense that their solution was to have a set number of players who would attack the boss and then try to dodge its tail strikes.

Rose would attack first, hitting it once with the blunt end of her scythe to minimize the damage. Milou would be the next one to attack, followed by Magnhild, followed by Wilting Blush, followed by Gambol Shroud, who would be the one to deplete the rest of the boss' health while the other four scattered. Once the rage-state began, the rest of the raid team would engage the boss once more, using as many of their strongest techniques as their fifteen second window would allow.

Myrtenaster nervously clutched the rapier sheathed at her belt as she watched Gambol roll out of a cloud of dust from the stinger impact. "Come on, Gambol. You can do this," she whispered.

In the corner of her eye, she could see the timer tick up slowly to fifteen seconds. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. She wasted too much time. She needed to give the order.

"Everyone Disengage! Rose, Oobleck, you're up!"

Upon the final tail strike, the raid team jumped back, just in time to dodge another sweeping attack that hit all around the boss. Immediately after that, the two spiralling lights of Rose and Oobleck's weapons came crashing down upon the scorpion's face. Once again, the two then led it to the tanks who took over aggro.

And thus began the second phase.

Eight-Thirty Three
Player Casualties: 0; Average Player Health (percentage): 91%
Boss Health: 0%, 100%, 100%

Gambol danced around the cluster of level 27 [Cave Spiders], stabbing all of them in the back with her [Beowolf Fang]. She did not use her [Back Stab] technique as it locked her in place for far too long. It was faster to just stab with a regular weapon technique at a critical damage area. Her knife's high critical-hit rating would increase her damage enough to kill the mob without need for the bonus damage that [Back Stab] did.

As her kills were rewarded with lien and a lightshow, Gambol scanned the battleground for more adds.

Upon the second phase starting, [Cave Spiders] would start dropping from the ceiling around specific spawn areas. They spawned at a set rate of eighteen spiders every thirty seconds and did not seem to have a spawn-limit. It took a little bit of trial and error but they had figured out where those spawn areas were and camped two-player group around each them. They'd kill the spiders before their numbers got too high and overwhelmed the raid team. There was a total of nine spawn areas and every group was charged with monitoring three.

"Yo, we got mooks!" Ruyi Jiyu Bang said unnecessarily when the timer hit thirty seconds. "I go left, you go right?" Gambol didn't reply but complied with the suggested course of action.

Gambol wasn't sure what to think of the person she was assigned to be teammates with. Ruyi Jiyu Bang, otherwise known as Gun, was assigned as her teammate when her old one died during a night-time grinding session in between the fourth and fifth raid. As far as she was concerned he was just some random guy who happened to be close with Rose.

It wouldn't be accurate say she knew nothing about him, though. She had limited interaction with him in the past. It was at least enough to know that he sported a similar build to Rose with high strength and agility stats. It was enough to know he wielded some sort of metal pole as his weapon and seemed to know how to use it outside of what [System Assist] allowed for. But other than information specifically regarding his combat competence, there wasn't really anything for her to base her opinion of him off of.

Well, that was at least until they were partnered.

Gambol once again chained several critical strikes at a small group of spiders, not even bothering to pay attention to the explosion of light that followed after.

A short distance away, she heard Gun give an enthusiastic cry. "Three under five seconds! New record, baby!" When he noticed Gambol's look, he grinned. "What did you get?"

"Four. Two seconds," was Gambol's curt reply.

"Sweet. Still amazing." He nodded slowly with an impressed smile. "My buddy, Scarlet almost beat your score last raid, you know? He got a lucky spawn with five of them dropping on top of him with their backs turned away. Almost managed to sweep them in under three seconds."

Gambol made no attempt at responding.

"You know, if you keep giving me the cold shoulder and you might hurt my feelings," he said with a crooked smile as he crouched down once more, readying himself for the next wave which would arrive in a few seconds.

"Oh! Dibs on the good spawn!"

Immediately Gun bolted for the spawn of four spiders to their far left, leaving Gambol with a spawn of two spiders to the right.

She managed a small chuckle and broke into a sprint.

Eight-Fifty
Player Casualties: 0; Average Player Health (percentage): 84%
Boss Health: 0%, 22%, 100%

Rose circled around the boss, a feeling of unease slowly building up inside her. Every single attempt they've had so far had ended with everything going wrong. So far, their current attempt was going about as swimmingly as she could ever have hoped. Therein was the cause of her unease. Call her pessimistic or perhaps paranoid, but she was convinced that something terrible was about to happen in the third phase of the boss fight.

She felt Oobleck put a hand on her shoulder. It seemed to steady her somewhat. "Miss Rose, I am sensing no small amount of anxiety from you. Are you alright?"

Rose slapped her cheeks. "I'm fine. Just getting a little antsy from standing around waiting."

Oobleck nodded, understanding. He withdrew his hand and walked beside her as she continued pacing.

An mob's targeting when facing multiple players was based on a number of factors such as a player's proximity to the mob, damage dealt in comparison to other players, and so on. All of those things were tracked and aggression was constantly calculated and recalculated. Due to Rose and Oobleck's unmatched damage output, the boss had a tendency to focus on them instead of the tanks. They had to stay back and refrain from building aggro else the boss would attack them and mess up the counterattack opening that the tanks were trying to set up.

They were also the raid team's strongest fighters - too valuable to lose in such an endurance challenge.

Rose blinked when she heard Myrtenaster's voice followed by a ping and the appearance of a large target icon over the boss' health bar. It was time for them to attack again.

"Let us go, Miss Rose." Oobleck said calmly, in stark contrast to the agile leap he performed as he spoke.

Not wanting to be told twice, Rose sprinted forward, activating [Nimble Feet] and [Rolling Saw] at the same time. With a short hop to start, she bounced into a forward flip and started spinning wildly until her weapon made contact with the boss. Upon landing, she rolled to cancel the end-animation of her last technique and immediately transitioned into spinning in place twice with her weapon outstretched - the [Hurricane] technique. By positioning herself with her back turned to the boss, she was able to get three hits instead than only two.

As she stood locked in place by [Hurricane]'s long the end-animation she looked up. Far above her, she saw a huge fireball surrounded by several smaller fireballs descend onto the body of the scorpion, all of them exploding on impact. Her end-animation finished almost too late. She had to rely on invincibility frames from dodging away to avoid getting caught in the blast.

"Time to run!" Rose said when Oobleck landed far to the left of her.

Oobleck wasn't able to give a response as he had to dash back from a pincer swipe from the boss. Rose too had to dodge when the other pincer came from the opposite direction.

"Switch!"

Right as Rose saw the boss aim its tail stinger at her, she heard a familiar voice from behind her. She instinctively crouched down and, just as she did so, Milou bounded over her shield raised to intercept the next attack. The other tanks also came sprinting past her.

Rose smiled wryly to herself as she once again moved away from the boss. That had to be the seventh time she and Milou passed each other since the boss fight began and every time it was to save her from a tail strike. It was an amusing coincidence.

"The next phase is about to start," Rose noted as she once again positioned herself far away from the boss. She could see the yellow health bar closing near the threshold for the red zone.

"Indeed it is. I do believe that this final phase is where our last attempt ended. I assume you and your party have come up with a solution?"

Rose winced upon remembering what their strategy for the final phase was. She shifted her weight awkwardly. "We've thought of something, but..."

Oobleck gestured for Rose to continue speaking. "Yes...?"

Rose couldn't meet his eyes. "Well, it's simple... but kinda crazy..."

Nine O'Four
Player Casualties: 0; Average Player Health (percentage): 75%
Boss Health: 0%, 0%, 100%

The second health bar was depleted after another grueling thirty minutes. In that time, the second rage state began and was dealt with in the same manner as the first. No one had died yet and everyone's health bar was in the green. So far, everything had gone all according to plan.

But now that the third and final phase had started, the plan had only one step left and it was not a pleasant one.

"Everyone fall back!" Myrtenaster ordered. "Deal with the adds!"

The final phase was, to put bluntly, an absolute mess. The [Cave Spiders] that fell from the ceiling at a set interval would now fall in greater numbers at a higher frequency. The exact numbers were never figured out - the teams assigned to deal with the adds were always overwhelmed too quickly to count them. It was probably something like twenty four every ten seconds. Either way, it was madness.

If there was any consolation in such a sudden spike in difficulty, it would be that the boss would not be as aggressive as it was in the previous phases. They had noticed that the interval between the boss' attacks were quite a bit longer than they used to be and did slightly less damage. Had they not been overwhelmed by adds in the previous attempt, they would have easily achieved victory by exploiting this change in behavior.

However, due to the number of spiders they needed to deal with, they were forced to split their forces, concentrating more of them against the spiders. The few who remained would be a small team tasked with defeating the boss. Call it nepotism but Myrtenaster believed she and her party were the only ones qualified to be that team - it helped that Rose and Maggy were completely on-board with the plan from the very beginning.

Thus, they grouped up once more and engaged the [Root Cave Scorpion].

"Rose, aggro reset! You and Milou are tanking! Oobleck, help the others! Use as many wide-sweep fire spells as you can to keep them at bay!"

Even as Myrtenaster spoke, Rose was already bounding for the boss, leaving a trail of spiraling lights in her wake. Oobleck also moved, making his way towards the largest clump of [Cave Spiders].

Myrtenaster nodded in satisfaction before turning to the group standing behind her.

"Alright, you guys. We need consistent but low DPS - low enough not to steal aggro from Rose and Milou. Rose's damage output is ridiculous so we can keep the pressure up without much trouble but when I tell you to disengage, disengage." She looked pointedly at Maggy. "Am I clear?"

"You're the boss, boss," Maggy said with a shrug. She then brandished her hammer, grinning. "Let's smash some big bugs!"

Myrtenaster smiled. "Indeed." She turned to the boss. "I suppose they've built up enough aggro by now." She pointed Tailor's Tail towards the ceiling and exclaimed, "Charge!"

The next following minutes was a blur as the chaos of the boss fight continued to escalate.

Cries and crashes sounded all around her even as she herself cried out, barking orders to her party members scattered around the boss. She moved through the motions of her system assisted attacks, lights and particle effects radiating out of her weapon. She felt the distinct sensation of hitting a critical damage location, a wet and satisfying crunch, every time her weapon pierced the kinks in the scorpion's armor.

There were also the voices of the rest of the raid. Groups in a pinch were requesting for backup, other groups announcing how they were en-route to assist, all of it accompanied by a ping sound and a small notifications in the corner of her HUD. They rang in her ears and flashed across her vision, an ignored but ever present distraction.

That wasn't even accounting for the background music which consisted of frantic drumming and a shrill chorus of chanting.

The combination of all of it made for an experience so chaotic and overwhelming that it circled back around, elevating Myrtenaster to a state she would honestly describe as zen-like. Her thoughts were clear and the world was still. All that existed were the boss and her party.

"Hold it for three seconds!" Rose yelled as she recoiled from a successful parry. Milou quickly dashed in front of Rose to parry the follow-up attack. During that time, Rose dropped to her knees and popped two potions from her belt. She downed both vials and her health slowly began to rise.

Rose was doing well. She had been successfully parrying or dodging every attack and counter attacking with devastating force. They had been grinding almost non-stop for two weeks. Rose had reached the upper soft-cap for the region at level 56, no longer gaining exp from even creatures of Grimm. With the scaling on her weapon and the heavy stat investment into strength and agility, her damage output was absurdly high.

But with every successful parry, a percentage of damage bled through. A scythe wasn't supposed to be used in the way she was using it. Slowly but surely it was wearing her down.

And since Milou was having trouble taking enough aggro to switch, Rose did not have much time to rest and heal. She had barely enough time to drink her potions. Her health would still be climbing back up even as she returned to the fray.

Rose couldn't take much more of it, though. The boss' last health bar was still green, nearing the threshold for yellow. She would run out of potions before the bar turned red. She wouldn't last. They needed a change of strategy.

Rose seemed to be of the same mindset.

"Guys, I'm gonna try something! Start running!"

As Rose said those words, she began running to the right of the boss, towards where Myrtenaster was. Normally, Myrtenaster would react with an aggravated yell with a tinge of panic at this. But not now. No, she felt surprisingly calm about it. She began to run clockwise around the boss, the same direction as Rose. Somehow, she knew exactly what the new plan was.

"Maintain formation!" Myrtenaster ordered. The rest of the party followed.

Keeping directly in front of the boss was not sustainable. Perhaps for a tank character like Milou, someone whose role was specifically to parry and block, it was possible. But Rose's primary role was not that of a tank so she had to use different tactics.

Running to the side would force the boss to waste time to turn to face her. It'd also use different attacks - attacks that were easier to dodge than to parry.

For a normal tank, parrying was the most effective means of maintaining aggro as it was viewed by the AI as "dealing massive damage" even if it didn't deal any damage at all. For Rose, someone who could actually deal massive damage with her attacks, building hate via parrying was unneeded. And since the group fighting the boss was much smaller than it had been earlier, there was no danger that a group of players' combined aggro would exceed Rose's.

The boss jerked its right pincer for a backhand swing. Rose continued to run and it missed by a relatively wide margin, allowing her to stop and chain a few of her scythe techniques. She then resumed circling and the boss resumed turning. The cycle repeated for the next several minutes.

It took some time but the boss's health eventually reached the red zone and it collapsed in a twitching heap.

"IT'S DOWN! DPS OUT!"

Myrtenaster gave the order to the entire raid. Said raid switched targets and charged the boss, ignoring the cave spiders they had been keeping busy earlier. With the combined and sustained damage output of over thirty players, the boss' health turned from red to dead in a matter of seconds. The cave spiders weren't even able to take advantage of the players turning their backs before they died with the boss.

The [Root Cave Scorpion] was slain with burst with blinding light, with a cacophony of shattering mobs following it its wake. A congratulatory message appeared shortly after, accompanied by the victory theme they had last heard after killing Ilfang, the first gate dungeon boss.

Nine-Forty Seven
Boss Defeated
Player Casualties: 0

With a smile, Rose watched Gun test out the weapon reward he had received for performing the last attack on the boss, a three-segment nunchuck. He seemed utterly ecstatic by it. It was a new weapon type too. Amusingly, it was a dex-scaling blunt weapon. Normally dex weapons were thrusting or slashing weapons. No doubt the crowd watching him with interested smiles shared Rose's sentiments.

Rose shook her head and turned away from Gun's antics, focusing on the list of items she received from defeating the boss. She scrolled through, looking specifically for a new scythe or spear. Sadly, she had mostly gotten armor pieces and strength weapons like hammers and axes. One particular reward in her list popped out to her, though. It was a crafting material with its own category called [Dust].

"No description," Rose muttered, materializing it in her hands. After a brief flash, a clear crystal roughly the size of her fist fell onto her palms. "And pretty light for a gemstone... Just what are these things...?"

It was unsurprising that it had no description. Crafting materials generally didn't have them - usually they just had a list of attributes like "Flammable" or "Edible". The dust item only had one attribute and it was one Rose had never seen before: "Aura Conductor"

Aura.

She had heard Oobleck say that word before when she was grilling him for info about magic - he alway seemed so reluctant to talk about it. Was it somehow related? Surely he'd answer her now that she had something that was supposedly an aura conductor.

She scanned the crowd until she found Oobleck's white NPC cursor. The mage was crouched against the corner, content to sit and watch the players celebrate. Curious, Rose approached him.

"Miss Rose, congratulations on finally defeating the foul beast that defiled these tunnels." Oobleck flashed her a proud smile which Rose returned in kind.

He faltered, however, and looked away. "Alas, in due time, another one will take its place - one always does. But until then, the local fauna will be far less agitated. I still have time to continue my search for the ancient relic before I will need your people's help again."

Rose blinked suddenly remembering how their first meeting had been for a quest - one she had never been completed.

"You've always said we'd know it's the relic once we saw it," Rose said. "But you never said what it was. Why do you even need it?" She presented him the dust crystal she had materialized. "I've been asking you questions for two weeks now. You keep putting them off. When are you going to answer them?"

Oobleck watched her with ever intensifying interest. "I admire your curiosity, Miss Rose. If I were able, I would wholeheartedly answer each and every question you asked me." He sighed. "But I am broken, Miss Rose. I can drone on and on about trivial knowledge but every attempt to speak of things of any importance to me has always led to an insurmountable mental block. Magic, details of my past, what the relic is - I can never seem to articulate my thoughts on them. It is... frustrating."

Rose nodded automatically. "You can't tell me anything... because you literally can't." She pursed her lips. It wasn't the stupidest video game plot contrivance she'd heard but it was still pretty stupid. "At least they try to explain it," she muttered.

"If it helps any, I hypothesize that the relic I am searching for is capable of overcoming the block."

She sighed. "This relic... You're sure it's here? In this dungeon?"

Oobleck stood up to answer. "I am absolutely certain."

"And it'll really fix your, uh... head?" She shifted her weight, pointing vaguely at her own head.

"That is what I hope, yes."

"And, uh... is this related to your big... quest...? The one about finding out why the world got split apart?"

Oobleck's face seemed to show signs of strain, however slight. He did not respond.

Rose watched for a moment before suppressing a another sigh and a wry smile. "I'll take that as a yes." She equipped her spear. "Alright then. Let's get going and find your relic. There can't be much more unexplored tunnels to cover."

Gratitude was obvious on his face as he bowed. "Thank you Miss Rose. It will be an honor to continue exploring this cave system with you."

"Ditto," Rose quipped, already walking back into the tunnels. "If that relic really does let you start talking about magic, you are so gonna teach me. Come on."

Appendix

The [Raid Leader UI] is a [UI customization preset] that is optimized for use in boss fights requiring multiple parties in a [Raid]. It can only be used by the the [Raid Leader] and aims to present more detailed status information of raid teams and party members. This preset undocks the [Party List] UI elements from the raid leader's HUD and shows status information that is relevant to a player directing multiple parties in battle. Much of the information provided is normally hidden in the default UI, such as party members' cooldown timers for [Active Skills] and [Weapon Techniques]. The preset also provides utility stopwatch and calculator functionality.

⸺Remnant Online In-Game Manual, "Raid Leader UI"

End of Chapter

To those two guest reviewers, you're probably not even reading this but I have two things to say to you: Firstly, I'm sorry my fic wasn't to your liking. Secondly, while I'm open to suggestions, if you wanted a completely different fic from the one I wrote then you should have written it yourself or paid someone to write it for you. I'm under no obligation to write the story that you want to see.

Now that that's out of the way, hello dear reader, it has been a long time. How have you been? I've been real busy being dead... Wait have I done this joke already...?

A year is a long time to be gone but it gave me a bit of perspective regarding this fic.

For one, Remnant Online is a fucking broken game.

Experience points are given away like candy and the early game can be a cake walk if you grind enough levels. Money is almost meaningless and people who care about it are literally just trying to get the number to go up. Bosses hit too hard and take too long to kill. Boss rewards are also too strong. Remnant's PvP system is just its PvE combat jury-rigged to work against other players - and it kinda sucks since players literally have instant-cast, infinite-use-and-duration invisibility magic. Lots of things are broken.

And, frankly, I like it for that fact. Playing around broken systems and exploiting them is something I find fun and I want to explore it in this story. Expect more of that.

For another, I just really don't like writing plot.

In the first arc, Ruby and Jaune decide to progress through the game and try to figure out what exactly they're supposed to do now that that they're trapped. The arc ends with a tentative "I guess progressing through the game might as well be what we're supposed to do."

In this latest arc, Ruby goes on a quest with an NPC and discovers the Gate Dungeon. Everyone drops everything they're doing to take it on. After seven tries, they beat it.

All of the arcs have simple plots. The over 70-80k word count of this fic is mostly just characters faffing around in the early game zones and exploring game mechanics. Plot takes up less than a quarter of that. It's an aspect of this fic that's not gonna change.

It's probably never gonna change, in fact. The way I've written this story gives me exactly what I want out of it. I'd need a very good reason to stray from it.

I didn't talk about this chapter but, to be honest, there's not a lot to talk about. I wanted the boss fight to feel similar to Chapter 12's battle with Ilfang but also be different. I achieved that by making the boss more complex but allowing characters to try again after they die. And with that complexity, I explored a whole slew of mechanics. What fun.

I hope you all enjoyed that chapter. I'll see you in the next one.