The group wiped within 30 seconds on their first attempt. A gush of lava exploded from the cracks in the floor, just a weak one. A second of tranquillity, then a massive blast, like a magma geyser, had followed that ripped the entire floor open. John had narrowly escaped with Steam Step, the sudden explosion of force under his feet blasting him to the side.

A hole had been left in the ground where he had been, then he had landed, and the exact same had happened, but that time he didn’t have the luxury of a cooldown to save him. None of the elementals had been around either, many of them hit by the shower of molten rock from the first explosion.

The final result had been John taking a bath in lava. As one could imagine, that got rid of Mana Protection rather quickly, and before he knew, he found himself back in the grassy heart of the barrier. Everyone else fell half-a-metre onto the green carpet after him.

Thus began the cycle of learning. They stocked up their resources, went back in and were teleported back out after 20 seconds this time, courtesy of John falling into the lava immediately. Steam Step had been spent and he wanted to see if he could outrun the explosion. The answer was yes, he could, but that area of the arena just went ahead and exploded under him as well.

At attempt 5, John had figured that there were predefined segments to the massive central stone plate. Should anyone stand anywhere on them, they would start to heat up, sent out a ‘weak’ gush of lava after 5 seconds and explode properly after 10. At attempt 12, they had roughly worked out where the outlines of the segments were. They were about 10 metres wide each and followed an almost hexagonal pattern, twisted lengths to their sides here and there. Knowing that, it was much easier to dodge the explosions. They just had to keep running along the rims and avoid the centre. Two seconds after the weak gush, they jumped on the next plate and moved along that way.

The whole time, Presta was laughing at them from her throne. Any attacks thrown at her by the flying fighters, who were unbothered by all of this, bounced off a magical field. It was at that twelfth attempt that they survived long enough that they could see phase 1 properly. There were three core mechanics. One, the floor they had already struggled with. That was persistent and in answer to their movements. It wasn’t deadly now that they had figured it out, it was actually laughably easy to dodge. Once a segment of the floor had exploded, it remained a hole in the ground. However, if the number of exploded surfaces exceeded 10, the oldest hole would resume its original state over 10 seconds.

That mechanic just forced constant awareness and movement. It wasn’t going to kill them by itself, even over the entire span of the fight. At least not in phase 1.

The other two mechanics were directly linked to each other. After John had been running around for a while in the main arena, just getting used to the rhythm of things and mapping out the outline of everything in his head, a Dragonkin assassin suddenly assaulted him. The invisibility spell broke on first strike against Mana Protection, a somewhat fair showing real opponents seldomly mirrored. In John’s experience, real people that could go invisible would stay invisible even after they slid the knife in.

Just like the one they had encountered before in the preceding tunnel, this assassin was rather easy to dispose of, once spotted. Relentlessly aggressive, they only had their offensive going for them, so the group burst that assassin down and that was it. Well, until another one came out of hiding immediately. Then, about thirty seconds later, another wave of two.

As they gave no experience, as per usual for spawned monsters, they were a proper nuisance. They also chipped away at John’s mana. Although chipped made it sound almost harmless. Chunked away at it would have been more accurate, even if didn’t sound as good. The assassins naturally knew that he was the juiciest target. Everyone else was either flying or a whole lot tankier.

Still on that 12th attempt, just killing the assassins as they came and moving around, they worked out that the Dragonkins came endlessly from the two side tunnels. Sylph at one point spotted something invisible swimming through the lava moat, around the stepping stones, so that’s what tipped them off. Since Presta was still impossible to attack, it was obvious that they had to deal with those spawning areas first. Beatrice and Salamander were sent to scout them out. John kept Sylph from scouting duty since he had wizened up to the fact that she was just going to fall victim to some sort of area attack if he let her go in an uncontrolled environment. Glass cannons were best supported.

That revealed to them the third mechanic. Beatrice, despite being on foot, arrived in her side tunnel faster. Every stepping stone she used to jump over the lava moat sunk after a few seconds. She arrived in a sizable, elongated chamber. At the back was a red crystal, brimming with power, in front of it a guardian. A Dragonkin of the male warrior variety. On Salamander’s side of things, the west side, things looked basically the same, except there was a female mage on her side.

Didn’t take much imagination to figure that destroying those crystals would disable the shield. John told Beatrice and Salamander to ignore the guardians and just destroy the crystals to see what would happen.

Salamander was successful first. It disabled the assassin spawn, so that was nice. Presta’s shield flared visibly and weakened, at which point she shouted, “Now this is getting interesting!” and begun to throw fireballs at random parts of the arena. She did so without any effort, remaining seated. Although they rarely hit anywhere close to anyone, the explosions were obviously dangerous. Additionally, they triggered the hit area’s own explosion cycle.

Beatrice was successful moments later. There were no more assassins, but Presta, with her shield downed, decided to jump into the main arena. Fighting with black claws on her suddenly scaled hands, she assaulted the group. Beatrice and Salamander were suddenly ignored by the guardians they themselves had done their best to get around. Both Dragonkin headed for the main arena as well.

The 12th attempt turned into a pretty quick wipe at that point. The group was crushed between the mage, the warrior and their lady. Presta alone was a force to be reckoned with. She was as quick as Beatrice and punched as hard as Gnome. Her fighting style was wild, but had little wasted movements. Physical slashes and punches were mingled with destructive fire magic. Furthermore, she didn’t approach anyone herself, she didn’t chase anyone either. It seemed beneath her to move towards an opponent at a speed quicker than appropriate for a leisurely stroll.

Ignoring her wasn’t an option because of this. Left to herself, Presta threw fireballs that were even stronger than the previous ones. Their explosions covered a wider area and, worse, every segment that destroyed itself because of that impact stayed broken for the remainder of the fight. At one point or another, she would have caused the entire arena to sink into the lava.

While also having to deal with those Dragonkin guardians, the group didn’t have the power required to keep Presta occupied at all times. A constant rotation was necessary to prevent lethal injury.

So, obviously, those guardians had to be defeated first.

Before the 13th attempt, John created a visualization of the entire battlefield in his head, one that he shared with everyone in the group. It would be immensely helpful for future strategies and commands.

Attempts 13 to 26 were all dedicated to testing several strategies at approaching this first phase. Since they couldn’t ignore the guardians, the question was in which order to kill them best. Mage first, warrior first or, maybe, try to kill both at once? That last one was soon discarded and it turned out their group had fewer problems with killing the mage than they had with the warrior. Likely because they had cheesed out the three that had been in the tunnel with dirty tactics, while Dragonkin female had been fought straight-up.

At 27, they had a pretty working strategy at taking out the westside guardian. They would let the first wave of assassins spawn and defeat them, then Beatrice, Sylph, Salamander, Aclysia and Siena would go deal with the western guardian. John, Gnome and Undine were left behind to attract the new spawned assassins and defeat them. As to why the three of them, the answer was quite firmly that John and Gnome weren’t good at getting across the stepping stones. Not as good as flyers or more agile builds anyway. Two extra, even a little bit clumsier people would cause more of them to sink, robbing them of a way back. Well, not quite true, Aclysia and Beatrice could have walked through the lava, maybe even leapt across in the latter case. Really, it was just Siena who would definitely be stuck, something that could be fixed by going incorporeal. Regardless, they would be slowed down by that, and that was bad efficiency.

The problem was then that Sylph still had a habit of dying against the area attacks. Siena also got caught up quite a number of times. Without those two extra fighters, defeating the male Dragonkin became extra difficult, especially since John, Gnome and Undine still couldn’t skip over to help. With one assassin less to fear, he dared to send the Mandala Sphere in to support, but that was about all. As long as assassins spawned, John also didn’t have the mana to support the girls, even ran into danger of getting completely beaten out of mana.

Normally, under such circumstances, he would had disabled Mana Protection and just taken the physical damage. However, the assassins let him know, the one time he tried that, that they were perfectly adept at cutting off heads from invisibility. The interesting thing for John to find out there was that he would indeed die if someone took his head of his shoulders. Might seem like an odd thing to wonder about, but Gamer’s Body’s limits were poorly explored, due to the necessary injuries he would need to sustain to see those limits.

Anyway, how well the group performed in the west-wing dictated how much mana John could conserve and how many fighters continued the encounter. From attempt 27 forwards, they spent their fair share of attempts dying at the second guardian. The first was usually beaten, but not easily so.

At attempt 40, they called it for the first day.

Day 2 of the boss tries started with Presta complaining that this Fateweaving thing was such absolute cheating. She wasn’t wrong. “But, whatever,” she sighed in a forcefully unbothered fashion, “seeing you insects die again and again is entertaining in its own right. Go ahead then, do continue. You can fail over and over again and amuse me. Being a ‘temporary’ existence here isn’t bad in its own right, you know? I have an entire palace at the back.”

John had no way, or interest, to confirm the validity of that. Instead, they went ahead and continued the fight. Having slept over their mistakes, everyone was performing considerably better. In that 41st attempt, they had figured out the little hints the female Dragonkin gave before throwing her big area attacks and the way they spread as well. It was vital information, allowing Siena and Sylph to survive that encounter.

For the east guardian, they had resolved to use Combination to put Gnome, Salamander and Stirwin together into the 3-type version of Smlere. The volcano elemental could cross the moat quickly even without the stepping stones and was of bigger help than Salamander alone would have been, while allowing Gnome to partake in that part of the fight in some way (and one to make Stirwin partake just generally). It did, however, put them on a 10-minute timer to get in there, beat the guardian, and get back out.

To protect himself against the assassins, John kept back the Mandala Sphere in return. If only it had been a perfect copy, then the Dragonkin may have tried to murder it instead of him at least some of the time. However, its washed slight translucency was enough to give the difference away. That and, John guessed at least, the Mandala Sphere reeked of metal, while John smelled of sweat.

Smlere failed to get out in time, but they did beat the guardian in that 41st attempt. Also at the cost of Beatrice and Sylph. Leaving John alone with Presta when she jumped over the moat. Which, of course, had John running away from fireballs and occasionally send in the Mana Double activated Mandala Sphere for harassment. He failed to do that with the proper care one time, causing the Extension to get heavily damaged as it was punched into the floor.

John saved the Mandala Sphere from getting destroyed by flying it into his inventory. Although the rest of the group soon managed to return, Presta made short work of them. Every misstep in melee range against her meant the person was already one foot in the grave. Undine strained her mana to the utmost, just as John gave her everything he had, but the rate at which people were punched out of the fight just exceeded their combined mana regeneration. Eventually, Gnome got teleported out, having been about to be blasted into a million pieces by a terrible strike. From there, the 41st attempt soon ended in a wipe.

Regardless, they had made progress, so they were in high spirits. Once the Mandala Sphere had gone through the repair function of Create, they were right back at it. The west guardian felt like relative child’s play now. As it did in the next 15 attempts, during which they slowly optimized their east strategy. Eventually they had it so far nailed that Smlere would retreat before the enemy was actually down, arriving at Presta’s usual jump-in point by the time the group defeated the guardian, which automatically disabled the crystal.

With three people, the Mandala Sphere included, already at the scene, going into melee with Presta wasn’t that scary. It still got them wiped though, because Presta pulled off a number of moves and spells that they simply had to analyse first. Arches of lava suddenly cutting through the sky, a stomp that made all segments adjacent to the one she was currently standing on instantly explode, fire breath and claw extensions.

At one point they had dealt enough damage that tails and wings were added to her human form. It luckily didn’t make her any faster or stronger, but it did give her more mobility and an extra limb to attack with. Also, as John noted as the sole surviving member of that attempt, the number of maximum holes in the ground rose from 10 to 20. That did complicate things a little bit.

Then they were suddenly in a slump. Sylph, Siena and Salamander all managed to get themselves killed at the first guardian. Whether they had gotten complacent or plain unlucky, John couldn’t quite discern, but fact of the matter was that it happened. That attempt was doomed from there. As was the next one, as the good mood had been burned away by the hours and the vacuum was filled by a sudden depression. The next two attempts had a death at the first guardian each, so John called it at 63 attempts for that day, even though there was more time.

They had seven more days in the time-dilated barrier. With fresh minds and after a fantastic breakfast (bacon and eggs), they went into the Raid once more. Attempts 64 to 71 weren’t anything special. They took it slow, got back into the rhythm of things, and cleanly pushed to Presta each time and to her winged phase sometimes. If there was one thing that allowed this whole thing to work out, it was that, despite being intelligent, the dragoness was stuck with the behaviours Gaia had created her with. She never tried to innovate around their strategies. Neither did she make feints that looked like things she had done in past encounters.

As such, as hard as it was, if they just did it often enough and watched closely, they could improve little by little.

Attempt 72 was when they finally got her to turn into a dragon. That was where the real challenge began. She was huge, she was mean and she put them on a timer. Every time dragon-form Presta took to the air, she let down a barrage of fireballs from her mouth. Like her fireballs in phase 2, those caused holes that were unaffected by the limit for collapsed segments. This way, more and more of the battlefield was transformed into swiss cheese.

Presta, she was totally fine with landing in the lava. As a matter of fact, she seemed even quicker when she was standing in the lava, plus her claw and tail swipes caused lava to fly everywhere then and that was just a very mean kind of cleave attack. Most of John’s group? Once most of the battlefield was gone, they were in trouble.

Presta flew up after every minute, staying in the air for thirty seconds, then landing again. Her scales were so hard that they had to slowly hack through them. Even Marath did nothing more than crack the surface. Killing her was a long-term project. One that they failed on repeatedly. More tries, more slight innovations and perfections there, getting the transition between phases perfect.

They found all the little exploits they could. Like delaying the end of the first phase until John ended it perfectly with 4 Whisper of Mana stacks from killing assassins with Mana Blade. Synchronizing all of Aclysia’s cooldowns in such a way that she could use Master’s Shield twice at the start of phase 2. Sure, one version was much longer in duration than the other, but the taunt was the only way to get Presta to move anywhere in that phase. Even the dragoness knew that getting hit by the 1000% buffed attack by Aclysia would hurt her quite a bit.

When Presta went into the air the second time, they utilized a particularly mean Combination of Sylph, Siena and Stirwin called Skyslaver. A dragon of its own right, although of a warped appearance. It was lean, making it graceful in the same way a missile is graceful. On its four legs hung such massive claws that it made landing impossible. John liked to call it the Dendepthr of the air. Unlike the deep-sea predator, Skyslaver didn’t grow with time, though, it was just the same kind of cruel and cold creature.

Even as a pressure elemental, the Combination was inferior to the black dragon in the air, only about half as big as the twenty-metre long dragon. Regardless, it was a challenge and a damage source up there. As to why they did it the second time Presta was in the air, the answer was that they could afford some holes in the ground. The fireballs, permanent terrain damage aside, were quite easy to dodge, so those were 30 seconds the group could regenerate mana in and do some healing.

Little optimizations like that went a long way. Combined with the learning process of getting around enemy attacks, they got closer and closer to the kill. Scales they had only been able to scratch were soon burst by the time they succumbed. Then Presta was actually bleeding when she hunted down the remains of the group.

Day 3 came to an end at 110 tries. They had optimized everything they thought they could. Now it was just to execute it all as well as theory allowed. To do that, it was best to be rested, fed and ready. Day 4 started. 111 wasn’t it, they knew that immediately when the transition to phase 2 had Smlere return to position too late, leaving just the Mandala Sphere to spar with Presta and causing it to be damaged again. 112 wasn’t it, John let the Whisper of Mana stacks drop.

Then, at the 113th attempt, it finally happened. Everything went perfectly. The guardians dropped without any deaths. Mana was as full as it was realistic according to calculations John had run while falling asleep. They took almost no damage from Presta, weaved in and out of her attack range, tagging each other out. They got her to dragon form without taking any casualties. They chipped away at her scales, around face and back particularly, trying to blind or ground her by hitting her eyes or wing muscles.

Then, they succeeded.

Skyslaver, about to separate back into its components, descended on the black dragon’s head to get in some last damage. Normally that would have gotten it chomped in half, but Presta reacted just a little bit too slow from exhaustion. Her maw caught half of the pressure elemental’s six wings, broke them between her razor-sharp teeth, but the left side of her face was turned into mincemeat by the arm-long claws of the monstrous elemental.

Most importantly including her eye.

Three elementals, all sharing the hurt of their combined state, fell to the ground. “This hurts, you insolent creatures!” Presta roared, raising her right front leg to squash the three elementals now in front of her. “Die, I’ve had enough of this round of playtime. Die so that I may be healed!” Unlike other enemies in the raid, the bosses (and the enemies directly related to the encounter) were completely rejuvenated at every attempt.

Blind in her left eye, the black dragon should have raised her left leg for any action instead. Now she was using the same side to support her weight as she was already vulnerable on. So, when she twisted her head to see better what was in front of her, posture delayed her reaction to the Aclysia, Beatrice duo that came flying into the corner of her halved-vision.

Her entire body contorted, to use her long neck like a whip, but Salamander, Sylph and the Mana Double all grabbed her by the horns mid motion. Together, they were able to at least stall the massive dragon. Beatrice rammed her spear into the already obliterated hole where her eye had been, cracking through the weaker bones behind. Presta screamed, not quite dead, then Aclysia’s attack hit as well. Servant Strike and Marath’s energy wave combined with the slash of the extremely heavy, sharp and massive weapon to create one slash that cracked what little remained of her scales in the area. The little damage that Beatrice had caused to Presta’s skull suddenly became a massive gap as mithril chopped through dragon bone. A last tension went through the black dragoness’ body, then she began to keel over ever so slowly.