Afterlife Dream

"Do you know the moral of the story, guys?" ZhaoYun asked us thoughtfully while we followed Princess Shi Ran to the topmost floor of the Cursed Temple. Other than the Second Prince's family, the emperor, and his elite soldiers, the whole temple was empty, looking a lot like an abandoned building. We easily climbed from floor to floor without any monsters to fight.

"What?" DragonTalon and I asked in unison.

"Not every stage is cleared through killing," ZhaoYun shared a piece of his wisdom

"I disagree," DragonTalon said. "If we had all gotten killed, that one is considered a cleared stage too. For the Dark Fairy, I mean."

ZhaoYun broke into laughter. "If you look it that way, you are 100% right, my friend."

Once we arrived at the top floor, Princess Shi Ran took her place in front of the double door, turned around to face us, and stood still. The very picture that we expected before the raid was modified. The entrance NPC was finally back at her original place.

"Oh my God, only one hour left!" Cecilia shouted in terror. "Click in, you guys!"

We almost forgot about the time. I hurriedly clicked myself in. My surrounding slowly disappeared and was replaced with a new one. We were inside a huge, empty hall. The floor was made of white marble and a huge red carpet extended from one end of the hall to the other. At the back of the hall stood an empty throne. I reckoned that this must be the emperor's throne.

While I was gazing at the empty throne absent-mindedly, dark smoke emerged from thin air and started to engulf the throne, making it look like it was swallowed by a big ball of black smoke. The smoke particles moved very quickly around the throne for some seconds before they dissipated and reveal a beautiful lady who sat on the throne.

The Dark Fairy had long, curly, and purple hair that reached to her waist. She wore a fitting black dress, and the pair of wings that grew at her back was huge and colorful, but translucent butterfly wings. After she emerged, she rose to her feet and eyed us with a pair of eyes that were as dark as the night.

"So here you are," she said with a cold smile, before spreading her wings and flying above us. The wings cast a huge shadow over us. Her backlit figure was all I saw before a bunch of sharp leaves rained down on us within an instant.

DragonTalon pulled me closer to him and shouted, "Fire Shield!!!"

The other players also summoned their shield skills, effectively burning the leaves to ashes before they managed to cause harm to any of us.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

The Dark Fairy's laugh echoed throughout the hall. She flew smoothly from one end to another, from side to side. Eventually, she landed in the middle of the hall with a loud thump and sent out a hurricane of leaves toward every player. The players that protected each other in parties ended up spreading around to avoid getting hit by the sharp leaves.

I hissed from pain when one leaf grazed my leg and another slashed my cheek. The wounds healed as soon as I cast Heal, but the heat of the pain still lingered.

"ATTACKKKKKK!!!" Cecilia shouted while pointing at the Dark Fairy. "HIGH PRIESTS HEAL! DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE CUTS! JUST HEAL!!!"

I was not the type of person who liked to play a heal slave, but I also never envisioned myself being stuck with a boss that threw sharp leaves like she was dealing cards in a casino. All parties surrounded the Dark Fairy in a circle. The melees at the front row, attacking the Dark Fairy from all sides and inching closer and closer to her. This was a common tactic when facing a ranged opponent. By game design, ranged boss or ranged players were only able to use their attacks once they were within a certain distance from their enemies. Otherwise, all they could do was smack their enemies using their weapons, such as bows and crossbows. Those without weapons like the Dark Fairy would be quickly overwhelmed.

Then again she was a raid boss. How easy could it be to defeat her?

The Dark Fairy raised both arms and a strong gust of wind blew, knocking all of us off our feet. We ended up slamming against the wall and sliding down with loud groans. DragonTalon just happened to be next to me when it happened. He turned his head toward me and pulled a grimace.

"Heh. And I thought we finally..."

He never brought the sentence to an end. Sharp leaves whizzed through the air and one of them ended up stabbing DragonTalon into his neck.

"DragonTalon!!!" I shouted in horror.

"MOVE MOVE MOVE! DON'T STAY AT THE SAME PLACE LONGER THAN HALF A SECOND! DON'T MAKE YOURSELF INTO A TARGET!!!"

"Tch."

I gritted my teeth and started to run around, healing my party members as much as possible.

"How many people died????" I asked as I passed by Cecilia. She cast a grim look at me before answering. "No chance here, Antares. Resurrection causes both caster and the resurrected player to be suspended from moving for a while. During that short period of time, they would all die from the sharp leaves. Just heal and don't think about resurrecting anyone."

Maybe it was not such a bad thing to be unable to resurrect our dead squadmates, because one hour was not even enough to bring the Dark Fairy down to 50%. We fought valiantly to the last second, and then we got teleported out of the map and back to the highest floor of the Cursed Tower with the double door in front of us. Princess Shi Ran was nowhere to be found.

"What happened?" a player who was engrossed in the battle asked dumbly.

"We ran out of time, that's what."

Lazarus sighed. "Two hours were not enough time to do all of that!"

He was naturally referring to the extra mission that we had to complete in order to access the real raid.

"The scenario change is new. Naturally, mistakes are unavoidable. Now we know how to beat it. We just need to be faster tomorrow," Cecilia said in a placating tone.

"What? We have to go through the same hell tomorrow?" a player asked in a whiny tone.

"Do you see Princess Shi Ran anywhere here?" another quipped. Indeed, the NPC had disappeared from her spot again.

I stepped closer to the double door, almost expecting it to open again. Maybe we could do the mission like the pre-cursor raid, and finish it before the actual raid time. Unfortunately, it was part of the raid.

"I am sorry, Adventurers. The raid time is 10.00 and 16.00. Please come back at one of the aforementioned timeslots."

Everyone was dejected because we had to redo all the painful missions one more time to access the raid. To make things worse, we only had two more runs to do so.

The outlook was rather grim with still around 5 people who wanted to earn their Dark Fairy Gloves. How likely was it to get five sets of gloves dropped within two runs? And were we going to be able to complete the next two runs successfully? After what we went through, everyone was doubtful.

A message came up from Ingenious, requesting an emergency meeting at the Oakstone Tavern. We were surprised to meet not only the Twelve players but also the Dominion players. They stood facing each other, with the high-level players crossing their arms in front of their chests with a frown on their foreheads. One would think that they were proposing a guild war.

"So," Ingenious started as soon as all relevant players were present. "Just now Twelve ran the level 90 raid and Dominion ran the 110 raid. If I understand correctly, both raids failed?"

All those who just failed the runs nodded with a grim expression.

Ingenious pursed his lips. HinoKun sighed.

"How many players from your side still need gloves?" he asked.

"Five," Cecilia answered. "And yours?"

"Seven."

Twelve people altogether needed gloves, while a maximum of three sets of gloves dropped every run. There were only four runs left before the raid was deactivated.

ArrowRain spoke up, "Even if we join forces, there is no guarantee that every run will drop three gloves. Some players just have to go gloveless."

The question was, who would want to go gloveless?

"This makes no sense," Ingenious said with a frown. "Both guilds do raids diligently every day, and Dominion already did theirs this morning. How come you still have seven gloveless players?"

"We have not had too much luck with drops recently," SakuraChan answered.

Cecilia hummed.

"Are we planning to join forces to do raids again?"

Ingenious cleared his throat.

"Yes, for both 90 and 110. The 110 raid's countdown hasn't begun yet so the problem at hand is the Dark Fairy Raid. Should we join forces for the raid... I fear that we need to establish a new looting plan."