8:15 AT, Day Three | Arena Of Legend Vesir The Great

  The landscape seems to have stopped changing. All the bisoclo are long gone.

  All that remains in the arena are my friends, Ray, Rigar, Linda and Emil.

  Along with the legendary beast known as Vesir the Great.

  A truly behemoth bisoclo, a strange bison-like creature.

  Vesir’s massive horns tower into the sky, looking ready to wipe us out at a moment's notice.

  It's currently turned away from us, still nibbling at a small patch of grass that remains in the arena.

  “Darling Ko, I think we may have done it real bad this time.”

  “Dont worry, darling, if your in danger ill rush in to rescue you once again!”

  “Please don't play the foolish hero again. I'd rather not be waiting for you to awaken again. I prefer you to be conscious and give me headrubs.”

  “You know what, I'd prefer that too. Let's both stay alive till the end, shall we?”

  “Of course darling, we are the moonlight duo after all.”

  “Yep and luce lunae per aspera ad astra et ultra!” [by moonlight, through hardship, to the stars and beyond!]

  “The Legend Raid against Vesir The Great has now begun. Challengers, prepare to fall to the might of the Legend.”

  Just after the system says this, a giant five-segmented health bar with ‘Vesir The Great’ above it appears at the top of my vision. There are also a few icons next to it, which according to the index are its skills that it can use. Thankfully, we are told when they come off cooldown instead of having to figure it out always. Though, unfortunately, there appears to be five skills listed, when we were only given information on four of them. Welp, guess we've gotta think fast.

  While there is a health bar and that would typically imply game mechanics. This thing is still a living being. Though with some cybernetics no doubt. So, if we were to, for instance, cut out its eye, it'd still take damage. But, it would lose health off its bar and would rapidly regenerate the wound after a time proportional to the damage.

  The only way to defeat it is to whittle its health bar down to 0, then kill it the good old fashioned way. So, it's more like a health-point bar, rather than the actual integrity of the body.

  A few seconds after the health bar appears, Vesir takes the last chomp of the grass it was grazing.

  It slowly raises its head, and then seems to notice that something is off.

  It slowly turns its head, and then it spots us.

  Its cold emerald-green eyes bore into our very beings. As though it is assessing what we are.

  We engage in a staring contest for perhaps fifteen seconds. Then, Vesir seems to catalog us as a threat.

  Guess it makes sense that it'd take a second, it's not like it's some game character. Whatever system is in its brain must take a second to give it its orders to kill us.

  The moment it recognizes us, it starts to turn around.

  Once it's facing us, it bows its head and lets out a world-shattering.. Moo?

  I, along with my friends, break out into uncontrollable fits of laughter. It mooed, like a cow, at the top of its lungs. The most unthreatening battle cry you'd ever hear.

  Rigar quickly regains their composure, but the rest of us laugh for several more seconds.

  The beast just stands there, looking at, almost as if it's confused at our actions.

  “Alright buddies, y'all know the plan. Let's go kill this big cow, shall we?”

  We all give words of confirmation, then we take off.

  According to the index, the beast has three key weak spots, its forehead, the center of its chest and its legs. Which kinda makes sense, if you think about it in terms of engineering and how unstable such a large creature would be.

  Naturally, it's very defensive of these weak spots. Good thing, I'm a strategic genius.

  I rise a few meters into the air, cautious of the ceiling barrier that is only a few meters above Vesir.

  I ready my spear and enhance it with a decent amount of inae. My first task is to test how well the {Lightning Barrier} skill Vesir possesses defends against head attacks.

  I charge in, spear poised to hit right on its head’s weak spot.

  It turns to look up at me and lets out another world-shaking moo. I will be sure to keep my composure this time though, and don't want to get thrown off by what is clearly an engineered trait designed to throw opponents off.

  Once I get within a meter or two, one of the skill icon’s next to its health bar activates.

  Instantly, I am met with a massive repulsive force and I can feel the nerve endings in my hands light up with electricity.

  Lightning arcs around my repulsor shields across the rest of my armor as I push myself ever closer with inae. I'm starting to lose ground though, I doubt I'll fully make it.

  I push as hard as I can, but once I'm about seventy centimeters away from contact, I lose grip with my inae and the lightning flings me away. I get scorched by a few stray arcs that manage to slip through my shield and repulsors. I can feel a large burn spreading across my back.

  That's gonna sting later I bet.

  I manage to remain on my feet as I land and begin evasive action.

  The moment I got thrown away, it activated its second skill. Dropping several bolts of lightning down from the sky. Though, im not sure what kind of lightning it is, cause it actually moves quite slowly, it's easy enough to dodge. Though a small screwup is likely to get one of us severely injured.

  I do note that the lightning barrier skill didn't go into a recharge, it's a constant skill that can defend one attack anywhere on its head. Guess we aren't meant to try to decapitate it. Not that any of us have a large enough blade to try something like that.

  “Hey Ko! Are ya watchin me? Look at how cool I am!” Ray says through the comms. I can spot her near the beast’s feet. It's stomping around a bit, so Ray is performing some cool movements to dodge it before it smooshes her like a pancake.

  Hmm, I could really go for some pancakes right about now. I think we have the ingredients back at the castle. I'll have to make some later, a little post-raid treat I suppose.

  Ray raises her spear and moves to lunge at one of Vesir’s knee joints. She manages to score a pretty nice blow and retreats nicely.. Right into a stray bolt of lightning.

  She gets a bit of a shock and I can see a bit of smoke coming off her as she recovers and dashes away.

  “You alright darling? That looks like it hurts.”

  “Eh, I've had far worse from our demon friend. The armor absorbed most of it. But, my poor hair is going to have to be repaired. But look Ko! I managed to knock 5% off its health!”

  True enough, a quarter of the first segment (of 5 total) of its health bar is gone. With one attack. I guess it looks far mightier than its health pool actually is.

  I got distracted by Ray’s cuteness and almost got hit with a bolt of lightning. Thankfully the skill is ending in a few seconds. It goes on cooldown for five whole minutes. Though, I doubt we can kill it that fast.

  “Alright Rigar and Emil, you're up! Go knock that thing down a peg or three.” Ray orders as she continues to dodge around its feet, nicking its toes a few times when she can.

  They charge in from opposite sides of the arena. Katana and warhammer at the ready. They throw several pulse-grenades up at its face, and they work to briefly stun it. We were right to assume that it wouldn't have adequate emp shielding in its brain systems.

  Too bad we only have very weak emp grenades and nothing better. They are only meant to temporarily disable stronger shields I think. But, we got creative, as we do.

  Rigar manages to land a hard blow that resounds with a crash across the arena. It seems that Vesir’s front right knee has pretty much collapsed.

  Similarly, Emil manages to cut a giant gash into its front left leg, not quite disabling it though.

  The health bar drops by a whopping 15%, leaving only 4 segments (80%) remaining.

  Vesir The Great falls forward a bit, struggling to stand on its two and a half functional legs. It stops moving around, momentarily stunned until its regeneration kicks in.

  “Linda & Ko! You're up, do your thing now!”

  “Ah, alright miss, right away!”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Off in the far corner (or whatever the corner equivalent is in a circle) Linda has set up a little bunker. Surrounded by several portable shield generators, she is protected from the lightning strikes and most of the other skills.

  She has mounted her rifle firmly in the ground and has gotten into position, sitting in the seat that has deployed out of its side.

  Several reticles and other fancy stuff coat her hands and face, it looks like she is fully locked and loaded into the gun. Though, I'm pretty sure most of it's just for decoration, since a lot of the actual aiming and stuff happens through the neural interface.

  Heck, she could probably mount the gun, go several hundred meters away and still shoot it perfectly fine. But, style points do matter, especially in combat.

  After all, can you really say you won, if you didn't win in style?

  I am standing next to Linda, having made my way next to her. My assignment is to enhance the bullet with a bit of the good ol’ inae.

  {Lightning Barrier} or not, we are gonna blow that thing's head clean off.

  I take the round from Linda’s backpack. It's quite heavy, for a bullet. It weighs like five kilograms. It's practically a tiny tank shell.

  I throw a ridiculous amount of shifter inae into the enhancement. Our goal is to get Vesir down to below 40% health with this one shot. Which will activate the rest of the skills. Once the great beast has its full playbook open, we can finally get serious.

  I take the enhanced shell and load it into Linda’s rifle. Giving her the signal that all is ready to go.

  She does whatever stuff she has to do. Then, after a few seconds, the air stills and I can hear the coils inside the gun start to charge up.

  Moments later, the projectile goes flying out of the barrel of the gun, far surpassing hypersonic speeds straight out of the barrel. Thankfully, the shield also serves to dampen the shockwave as it comes toward us.

  Vesir’s {Lightning Barrier} activates, and it slows down the projectile quite a bit. Massive arcs of lightning jump away and scorch massive black marks across the arena.

  I think Rigar almost gets hit by one.

  But, the bullet is still traveling supersonic as it impacts, dead in the center of Vesir’s skull.

  The sound it makes is unsettling as the air warps around the impact.

  Within the blink of an eye, there is nothing but a large hole in its forehead, and the worst part?

  The bullet comes out the other side.

  It flies, still going at least the speed of sound, and hits the red barrier, With a resounding boom that sounds as though a nuclear warhead just went off.

  The shell seems determined to push into the barrier and sparks, inae and arcs of lightning fly everywhere. But eventually, the shell gives out and disintegrates in a massive fiery explosion.

  The air stills and everything goes quiet.

  After a few seconds, Vesir’s health bar starts to dwindle, and then accelerates before finally stopping with 5% remaining.

  The great beast collapses to the ground, even with health remaining, the damage is so catastrophic that it cannot move until it regenerates.

  “What, the klack was that! Anti-material rifle? More like an anti-everything rifle! Ko, I think you gave it a bit too much gas.”

  “Hmm, I think so too. That was a bit much. Though the bullet just went all the way through, I'm not even sure how much the enhancement did.”

  “Hows Linda doing? She doesn't look so hot from where I am standing.”

  I turn to look at Linda, to say it politely, she is not good at all.

  Her face is covered in soot, and her hair is sticking up in every direction. It seems like her hand has some slight burns on it.

  She tries to speak, but only manages a faint croak, “This gun is craaaaazy cool.” Then, she passes out.

  Instantly, a green barrier encases her and the ground opens up. She is whisked away into the dark depths of whatever the klack happens under the arena. Presumably to be taken back to Arce Lunae to be respawned. A screen appears in my vision, ‘Lethal Damage for party member: Linda Skla detected. Respawn process initiated.’

  “Welp, it appears we have lost Linda.”

  “Whaat! She died from that little gun firing?”

  “Uhm, I don't know if you've noticed darling, that gun isn't little. And it just cored a hole straight through a legend with seemingly not much resistance.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess that's fair enough. Perhaps, we should put a limiter on that thing or something.”

  “I wouldn't be surprised if the game masters do it for us, I can't see them intending to make such a strong weapon.”

  The screen changes to display another message, ‘The weapon is working as intended, however, an unintended synergistic effect with the Elvan psyche caused unintended power. The weapon shall be modified to alleviate this effect to a smaller degree.’

  “Woah, did like, the game master people just send us a message?”

  “Maybe so, it's like we just got a live patch notes. It makes me think this is a video game more and more.”

  “Pardon the interruption of your mid-raid conversation, milords. But, it appears that Vesir is getting up.” says Emil, ever the regal one, keeping his focus on the important stuff while we goof off. Par for the course though, that's one of the reasons why we love to have him around!

  Surely enough, I turn away from where Linda used to be, and Vesir is starting to stand up, seemingly fully healed from that catastrophic damage.

  For Kek’s sake, this technology is just klacking insane. Surviving the shot was one thing, but regenerating this quickly?!

  I ready the spear once again.

  “Hey darling, you still got some fight left in ya?”

  “Of course, I'm still rearing to go! Emil, Rigar, are you buddies good?”

  “All is well, General Rayleigh.”

  “Affirmative, milord.”

  “Great, let's finish this legend fella off!”

  Well, it sounds simple. Until you remember the other three skills. You see, two of them only activate after 40% health. We also have no clue what the last one does. Though, I doubt we will have any problem handling it.

  I charge in, taking a similar approach as to my original time. Straight for the weak spot on its skull. This time, I massively amp up the enhancement on my spear and give myself a massive boost forward.

  Im getting quite close to my inae limit, all this fancy acrobatics and enhancement really drains me fast. We should wrap this thing up quickly.

  I accelerate quite quickly and thrust my spear directly at the weak spot. Of course, the lightning barrier appears to try to impede my movement.

  Lightning arcs all around me, straining my repulsor shields. But, I manage to break through with a massive shower of sparks.

  My spear impacts its skull with a nice thwack. I cut through some of its fur and leave a nice dent behind.

  I fly backwards and land back on the ground. I watch as the health bar ticks down to 0%.

  “Woohoo! Ray, look at how cool I am, I got rid of all its health!”

  “Showoff. Alright, what's next?”

  “Im not sure.”

  What's next is chaos.

  The arena erupts into lightning. Everywhere.

  The next two of its skills trigger simultaneously, {Lightning Terrain} coats the ground in waves of electricity that you have to jump over. The other, {Lightning Air} does something similar, but all through the air.

  All four of us immediately jump into a complicated series of movements. All that dance practice is sure coming in handy right about now.

  I get hit and get a few extra scorchmarks. But nothing major.

  I watch as Ray basically walks face first into a massive bolt of lightning. She dances out of it only to cough up a nice bit of smoke. The ends of her beautiful hair look a bit singed. Now, that just won't do.

  Just as I am about to charge up my spear for a blow that will annihilate this entire arena in one hit, the two skills end and go on cooldown.

  Just as I am about to call out to Ray, I notice the last, unknown skill activate.

  Vesir, who is mostly healed from my spear, only a tiny bit of fur is gone. Lets out a reality-shaking moo.

  The ground under us shakes and I feel something coming at me from behind.

  I dodge to the side just as a massive bolt of lightning passes near me. Once again, I'm not sure what kind of lightning this is, but it's convenient that it doesn't move at the normal ~100km/s. Makes it hard, but not impossible to dodge.

  The lightning continues on and collects into the horns of Vesir. Lightning also begins to arc from all across the arena. I see the others perform similar dodging maneuvers as some passes by them.

  “Hey darling Ray, I think this is the point where you should use that thing on your back!”

  “Oh right, I've got a klacking gun, I should use that. Thanks darling, you're super cute and cool and all!”

  “Anytime, darling, you're super cute and cool as well!”

  She takes the railgun off of her shoulder. It's nowhere near as strong as the anti-material rifle. But it should still do something decent to the beast.

  Before she gets a chance to fire, Vesir finishes doing the skill known as {Lightning Rod}. From the name, you can probably guess what it does.

  Its horns are now glowing a bright white, charged with who knows how much energy. It bends down to point its horns at me, and Rigar who is not far behind me.

  I don't have time to move, I quickly grab one of the shields from my belt and throw it down and inject a health pack. I'm hoping I can just tank the damage and not die, what's the worst that can happen?

  Vesir lets out another reality-breaking moo and releases its charged lightning.

  My entire vision goes white and I lose all sense of anything.

  It's quite strange, almost as though I've temporarily been transported to a realm where nothing exists but my own consciousness.

  The flash clears within a few seconds and I am greeted with a quite interesting sight.

  It seems I am, in fact, not dead. But I have been thrown back several meters, and after a brief buffer zone, all around me the ground is scorched black and smoldering.

  It seems like the shield generator absorbed most of the blast, thankfully. I only got a few minor burns from some stray arcs. Which are quickly healed by the health pack I injected.

  I look behind me and Rigar seems to be fine. I think they somehow diverted the lightning with their warhammer, given by their stance.

  Ray and Emil are ready and poised to strike at the great beast.

  Just as Emil slashes at one of its knees and causes it to collapse, Ray fires her railgun, directly into the bottom of its chin.

  The great beast strangles out one final moo. This one is not quite as intimidating as the previous ones.

  It falls to the floor with a giant thump, and remains still.

  I rush over to Ray and wrap her into a large hug, being sure to give her a few head pats and kisses for good measure. The scent of her slightly burnt hair lingers around us as we embrace.

  “Darling, we did it. Thanks to your brilliant strategy!”

  “Oh, don't let me take all the credit. It's thanks to your wonderful leadership that my strategy was carried out, darling.”

  Rudely interrupting our super cute and romantic moment of grand importance, the system issues a message.

  “Legend Raid: Vesir The Great has now been completed. Rewards have now been dispersed into their respective inventories. Fallen challengers shall also receive their compensation, given they lived for more than one quarter of the fight.

  Congratulations, challengers, today marks the day when your first Legend of many has been slain. May your journey bear ever more of such achievements.”

  So that confirms it, this is only the start of our legend hunting career. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fun. I'll have to make sure Ray gets her required headrubs, of course.

  No matter what comes next, Ray and I shall overcome it, together. Plus, we have a lot of fun friends to bring along with us on the journey. So, bring it on.

  End of Chapter 88

  Next: Chapter 89 | Gacha & Commendations

  Skills of Vesir The Great

  Note: Lightning produced by Vesir’s skills is slower, less dangerous and easier to predict than normal lightning.

  {Intimidating Moo}: Reduces active effects from equipment and injections.

  {Lightning Barrier}: Passive. A barrier of lightning around the skull, resists force applied and discharges energy proportional to amount absorbed.

  {Lightning Terrain}: Coats the ground in waves of lightning, must be dodged by jumping.

  {Lightning Air}: Fills the air with arcs of lightning that must be dodged.

  {Ultimate: Lightning Rod}: When sufficiently enraged, the beast channels energy from all across the arena. Stray bolts may strike challengers. Once it has accumulated a tremendous amount of energy into its horns, it discharges it at the opponent judged to be the most dangerous. The effect is devastating.