When I looked up at the stone plinths atop the altar pillars, I saw Shield Warrior and PrettyGirl not with sword-and-shield or twin greatswords, but huge longbows drawn to the ear.
Forest Longbow, the whole bow-limb trimmed in green light. Arrows loosed from those bows. At the same time, Charming fired a Magic Arrow from her hand.
“Graaagh!”
The Orc Chieftain who’d been hounding me took both an arrow and light-magic at once and started looking around frantically. Not a direct hit to a weak point, so the damage would be small—but they landed, for sure.
The Chieftain lifted his head to glare at the stone plinths atop the altar pillars where Charming, PrettyGirl, and Shield Warrior were perched. So he does see them.
I prayed inwardly.
Please.
Let that bastard be thick as a brick…
***
Is this what it feels like to harvest rice heavy with grain?
Right now we’re harvesting a rice field called the Orc Chieftain.
I kept circling near the altar, slipping past those occasional flying fists by a hair, while from above, arrows and light magic rained down in succession, pounding the Chieftain’s back.
“Uuugh!!”
Loud as ever. He looks when he’s hit, but he doesn’t attack. Or rather, maybe he can’t. Either way, so far things are going exactly as planned.
We were past the charge phase already and into the roar phase—but even then, I nicked my own forearms with my blades to shake off the stiffness and kept kiting. I’m probably the only human who enjoys slashing his own arm with a sword without being a psychopath.
If the boss could evaluate on his own, he’d jump to attack, grab something and throw it, or climb up there himself.
But within its fixed move list, there’s plainly no method to attack players on top of the pillars.
“This really works.”
Shield Warrior sounded a bit dazed, but his hands kept launching arrows. His main stats were in STR and VIT, so his AGI wasn’t high—his draw-and-release cycle was slow. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use a bow.
If classes were hard-locked, this would be impossible, but here, if you’ve got the weapon and your stats permit, you can do anything.
Same for PrettyGirl—those dainty hands were hauling the bowstring back hard, over and over. Charming sat comfortably, leisurely full-charging her spells for maximum damage.
Every so often, when there was slack, she waved to show she was having fun.
Originally I’d planned to climb up too, but thinking it through, that wouldn’t work, so I dropped it.
At minimum, we needed someone to leash the Chieftain near the altar. If no player was in his attack range, his HP might reset.
That was Shield Warrior’s advice, too. He said in the 3rd-Gen game he used to play, if no one was around a boss monster, its HP filled back to max—so I was staying down here.
And out of the four of us, I was the only one who could reliably hold aggro. Shield Warrior was too slow, and Charming and PrettyGirl wouldn’t last at ground level.
Among the four of us I had the highest AGI, so I could dodge those fists or deflect with my blades as much as possible; I could read most movements and react.
This plan was something only I could do. I had to handle, alone, what normally forty players took turns soaking: the Orc Chieftain’s attacks.
Even if Charming, PrettyGirl, and Shield Warrior were free-firing from the altar, it couldn’t match forty people rotating in early and dealing damage.
Which meant I had to endure a very long time against a named boss.
Homework I assigned myself: how well I could use my RTP…
“Just a little more!”
“Fighting!”
Charming and PrettyGirl’s high-pitched cheers from atop the pillars made me feel like strength was pouring back in.
While cheering and attacking, the three of them tossed White Potions to the floor now and then. I scooped them up and chugged them on the spot.
Potions didn’t shatter when dropped; I could pick them up. My assigned role was to use the fallen potions first and hold as long as possible.
If all four players’ potions were funneled to me, the math said I could tank the Chieftain’s attacks to the end. I’d burn their potions now, then in the berserk phase, when everything went crazy, I’d survive on mine.
If it shouldn’t work, I’d make it work.
After a long stretch of dodging and parrying, the roar phase ended, and the Chieftain grabbed the glaive propped beside the altar throne he’d been sitting in.
Suddenly, Charming and PrettyGirl’s cheers cut off. The critical moment we’d discussed together had arrived.
Yesterday there’d been no such pattern—but we couldn’t be sure today.
“He won’t throw the glaive up here, will he?”
Charming, face tight with worry.
“That would be bad…”
PrettyGirl, fretting right along with her.
“If it flies, we’ll block it with the shield. That’s all.”
Shield Warrior looked the steadiest of the bunch.
But what if he does throw it? We’re screwed.
***
Worry proved baseless.
Once an airhead, always an airhead.
And there I was, matching that windmill-crazy storm of glaive strikes the Orc Chieftain poured at me, focusing everything to shave those swings off-line.
I’d felt it before, but—the brute was strong.
Even off-angle deflections bled HP. Horizontal sweeps, I ducked. When he raked the floor, I jumped. Overhead chops, I rolled.
I’d seen it yesterday, and now again today, but there was no fixing that swing speed—too fast. Avoid as much as possible, and only if there’s no other option, deflect, but even that was getting hard to handle.
In the raid parties, anyone under Level 12 basically died here. Low AGI couldn’t dodge, low STR couldn’t meet the force—you just handed over your life.
There was a limit to shaving off the blows; my HP kept draining. The only reason I was still standing was the four players’ potion pool, funneled to me.
Now it was purely a battle of time. Either Charming, PrettyGirl, and Shield Warrior put him down, or I go down. If I fell, the Chieftain’s HP would probably shoot back to full, right? So I couldn’t fall. I mustn’t.
Another razor-fast horizontal glaive strike.
Was I thinking too much? I was late.
“Haah!”
A shout tore out of me before I knew it.
Edge-of-the-knife focus. I saw the glaive’s blade carving air, careening in at me.
The instant I saw it, I crossed my longswords and slid the glaive’s blade up and away over my left shoulder, scraping it aside.
Skreeee!
A hair-raising metal scrape drilled my eardrums, and then the blade sprang off.
I just nearly died. This time.
If I hadn’t caught that, it would’ve scored as a head split straight down the middle. No matter how high your HP, no matter how tough your armor, that’s unsoakable. Even at full HP it would one-shot or at least inflict seconds of stun—either way, you die.
My whole body buzzed with pain from the extremity of focus. Felt like my RTP had just spiked higher than I realized. Definitely. Team Leader Yoo Hyesun’s words about keeping it stable brushed past my ear.
Clearing the crisis, some tension unwound and I found my rhythm again.
Up on the pillars, I couldn’t even hear breathing—only the twang of bowstrings and the whoosh of spells flying. The cheering had cut off long ago.
They were firing for their lives up there; I couldn’t rest. If I let up, the Chieftain would start dodging the arrows and magic.
“Graaagh!!”
Berserk phase.
Looked like I’d survived all the way to the glaive phase. Checking my potions, I still hadn’t used a single one from my inventory. I’d made thirty people’s worth out of the potions Charming, PrettyGirl, and Shield Warrior had dropped.
Now I had to do ten more as the ace. With the three above free-firing, I really only needed to hold a bit longer. In berserk, the Chieftain’s HP pool was smaller.
I hefted both blades again with effort.
Already tired. How long could I keep this knife-edge focus…
***
With a bellow that seemed to shake the altar loose, a red aura began pouring off the Orc Chieftain’s whole body. At the same time, all those bronze muscles bunched and swelled.
“Power up moderately, will you. It’s hard enough as is.”
I clenched both swords tighter.
From here on, I had to truly focus. A single failure to block wouldn’t just be HP loss—it meant death. Every ally who could cover a mistake was up on the altar. If I made a mistake, it was game over.
“Graar!”
“Watching the whole transformation is something you do in a comic.”
I bolted straight at the Chieftain mid–Second Form charge-up.
Turtling and enduring on the back foot was too rough for this phase. Once momentum flipped, you had to eat endless strings of attacks—at my current AGI, even I couldn’t handle that.
Even if it cost me some potions… I had to meet him head-on.
My blade sank straight into the Chieftain’s nape as he transformed. If not now, you could barely ever aim for the neck.
The Chieftain, muscles bulging with power mid-transform, could do nothing as a long cut scored across his neck, and only then did he raise the glaive and stand.
“Really did get tougher.”
I felt through my hands it was a clean hit, but he didn’t even flinch. As soon as I started, support fire poured down from the altar.
When the transformation time ended, the Chieftain gripped the glaive and charged me. His gaze had been blood-red for a while now.
The glaive carved wind sideways, screaming in at brutal speed, and I dove into it, not at the blade but the shaft—bringing both swords together, I slammed up on it, very hard.
Ggrrkk!
Metal grated; the glaive’s path skewed wide and went whipping past. The Orc Chieftain staggered hard, losing his stance.
If you strike at the point where the rotation starts, you can bend the trajectory with less force. And I had the eyes to catch that instant.
With his middle thrown wide open, I surged into his chest and stabbed for the eye.
“Graaagh!”
“Tch!”
In that sliver of time, he jerked his head, offering his face instead of the eye, and slipped back in a flash. With his backstep speed, my AGI couldn’t keep up.
“Nice!”
“Hang in there!”
“Fighting!”
After a clean entry, cheers rained down again from above, and with them, endless magic and arrows.
I lifted my blades and beckoned him in, a little ‘come on’ waggle. Maybe he didn’t understand, but he charged anyway, whipping that glaive so fast the air seemed to rip.
The longer the fight and the deeper the tension, the more strangely my senses expanded to something enormous. The curve of the swing became stark—I could see it. I could feel the flow of air shoved aside by the arc.
Some odd intuition said I wouldn’t need to slam up as hard as before. I extended a sword in a straight line into a single point along the glaive’s path.
This was insane to anyone watching. Jamming a blade that didn’t look like it had much force into a massively arcing swing? Even I felt crazy doing it.
When the curving blade met the straight thrust of my sword, the glaive didn’t knock my blade aside; it stuck to it like they were one piece, then slid upward along the direction my blade was already pushing.
“Huh?”
“What… is that?”
“No way…”
The Orc’s glaive, instead of cutting along its arc, rose just slightly and passed by without touching me at all.
What was that?
My body just told me. This works. Do it. You can. Don’t set limits.
If the Orc Chieftain were human, he might have been horrified watching a swing with that much force get carried harmlessly upward.
I’d done it—and I was still dumbstruck.
“Well… anyway, now it’s your turn to get hit. Bite down hard.”
Strength flooded the blades in my hands.
***
Thud!
What a nasty brute. I’d love to file a ticket and ask how much HP he had. The Orc Chieftain, crisscrossed with wounds, finally collapsed onto the cold floor.
“Oh? He’s going down.”
At Shield Warrior’s call, Charming and PrettyGirl—who’d been attacking like mad—clutched each other and shrieked.
“Kyah!”
Their high, ringing voices filled the altar, and it sounded beautiful.
“Uh… how do we get down?”
Charming hesitated when it came time to descend. The pillars were higher than they looked. If she wanted, I could catch her if she jumped—but Shield Warrior preempted that.
“Grab the lower rope and climb down.”
Sigh… bad man. Give up early on things that won’t happen.
I moved to the base of the pillars and steadied each of them as they came down. With no interference from the Chieftain, everyone took their time and landed safely.
Then I just sprawled on the stone floor. Exhausted. Maybe it was from focusing so hard to dodge and deflect with lower AGI than the Chieftain’s, but my skull felt like it was ringing.
After everyone came down, thirty or forty seconds passed, and the altar ceiling opened. The dark clouds above pulled back beyond the village boundary all at once. Warm, blazing light poured through the gap like a flood and got sucked down into the altar.
“Wow! We actually did it!”
Charming beamed the brightest, happiest smile imaginable. PrettyGirl, seeing the light stream down from the sky, wore a dazed, stunned expression. Both of them, haloed by that light, looked like angels stepping out of a movie.
Shield Warrior came over and offered a hand.
“I’ve got no strength left. Mind helping me up?”
He hauled me to my feet.
Clever trick or not, the four of us really did it. I could already imagine the notice going up tomorrow.
Then Shield Warrior tapped the side of his head with a finger.
Ah—recording. He’d asked for permission earlier, and I’d granted it. I’d completely forgotten.
“I’ll keep both the edited cut and the raw. Anytime you need them.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t thinking about it.”
“I got the OK and started from the very beginning.”
“I’ll let you know if I need it. Good work.”
“What do you mean we worked? Watching you fight the Chieftain below—no way. How did you dodge all that alone? If I’d been down there, I’d have died dozens of times. And that thing earlier—what was that?”
Shield Warrior looked at me like he was spooked—shock and awe mixed together. He must’ve meant the technique where I lifted the glaive’s blade away.
“Haha, it just kinda happened. Spur of the moment—I can’t do it often. Try it sometime; the jolt is… fun.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I could never replicate that, not even if I died and came back. I had a few near-deaths myself—I’m not doing that. I’d rather block.”
“I really almost died a few times.”
A few hair-raising moments flashed through my mind. If I hadn’t caught them, I wouldn’t be smiling right now.
Charming and PrettyGirl came up, smiling wide.
“You really worked hard. I didn’t think it would actually work. You scared me earlier.”
“I can’t dodge stuff like that… seriously, thank you.”
“You two as well. If you hadn’t dropped him fast, I would’ve been the one down.”
All’s well that ends well. We traded compliments and went to check the Orc Chieftain’s drops.
“This is… the glaive.”
Shield Warrior hefted it. With his strength, lifting it wasn’t an issue. But who would use it? If only that spear were a two-handed sword instead. Could PrettyGirl use it?
“There’s a spellbook I don’t recognize!”
Normally calm, Charming looked very pleased. A new spellbook would definitely be good for her. As long as it wasn’t a duplicate, better to learn them all.
And thirty Weapon Reinforcement Stones, plus forty Armor Reinforcement Stones.
Reinforcement Stones. First time I’d seen the real thing. A fist-half-sized transparent cube, gleaming, with a carved icon—weapon or armor—so you could tell them apart at a glance.
That’s a lot. Do we really get to keep all this?
Loot forty people were supposed to split—eaten by just four.
There were plenty of other weapons and armor too. Those were obtainable outside as well, so their value wasn’t sky-high. Bows, staves, chestplates, and leggings could fetch a pretty good price, though.
The real core drops were the Orc Chieftain’s glaive, the spellbook, and the Weapon and Armor Reinforcement Stones.
“Ah… come to think of it, what about the toll-fee commission?”
At Shield Warrior’s offhand remark, everyone froze.