Chapter 986: Ten Minutes to Victory
The fight had dragged on for thirty minutes.
The longer it lasted, the more uneasy everyone became.
Ethan was struggling too. His vulnerability debuff had already reached sixty stacks. Each stack increased incoming damage by 10%, which meant he was now taking 600% additional damage. Every hit from the bosses was landing for eighteen to twenty-two thousand damage.
The two healers had less than a sixth of their mana remaining.
Thank God Ethan had more than three hundred thousand health. Otherwise, with both bosses attacking at the same time, he would have been taking over forty thousand damage every few seconds. If Leo had been tanking instead, he would have died instantly.
The healers were performing far beyond expectations. Under that kind of pressure, they were still barely keeping Ethan alive, but everyone knew they couldn’t maintain it forever. Even if mana somehow wasn’t a problem, sooner or later Ethan’s health bar would collapse under the constant punishment.
The two bosses still had twelve percent health remaining. Everyone had already used every offensive cooldown they had. The last twelve percent would have to be chipped away the hard way, and Ethan could feel exactly how little room they had left.
At most, he could survive another two minutes under the current conditions.
Burning through the bosses’ remaining health, however, would require at least three more vulnerability waves and three more repositioning phases.
The entire raid was growing nervous. Even Ethan had made a mistake in his calculations.
He had originally estimated that this group could clear the fight in around a dozen cycles under normal conditions, assuming they didn’t wipe. Once they started ignoring mechanics and entered a full stand-still burn phase, he had expected the bosses to die within seven or eight cycles.
As for himself, even while tanking in Dire Bear Form, his damage output was comparable to that of a dedicated DPS player. In a forty-man raid, his damage ranked seventh overall.
The players below him were thoroughly embarrassed. Every one of them was fighting desperately for every last point of damage.
Just as Ethan was beginning to wonder if they had reached a dead end, a system notification appeared.
His expression immediately relaxed. Opening his inventory, he looked at the Twilight War Spear.
The weapon that had previously been unusable was finally available to equip.
"How long until your offensive cooldowns are back?" Ethan asked.
"Small cooldowns, forty seconds. Big ones, two and a half minutes."
"No small ones left. Just used them. Big cooldowns are about two minutes."
"Same here."
"Yeah, same."
The replies came one after another. Ethan nodded.
"Alright. If we can’t kill them within ten minutes, we call it. This dungeon isn’t something we can clear at our current level. The level penalty is hitting us too hard, and our damage isn’t high enough."
His voice remained calm.
The problem wasn’t their gear. He had assumed their equipment would compensate for the level difference, especially since most of them were already better geared than ordinary level 130 or 140 players.
What he had overlooked was the impact of the level penalty itself.
The gap in levels was causing melee attacks to miss constantly. Casters were suffering from spell resists as well. Every missed attack and every resisted spell translated directly into lost damage.
The moment he said it, the atmosphere grew heavy. Everyone knew he was right, but no one wanted to quit.
They had been stuck on this boss for more than a week.
Even if they couldn’t clear whatever came after, they wanted to defeat this boss at least once and see what awaited them beyond the gate.
If they gave up now, the entire week would feel wasted.
Seeing the raid fall silent, Ethan realized his words had hurt morale more than he intended.
He smiled.
"Why’s everyone so quiet? Don’t lose heart. We can still kill this boss."
"Boss, stop trying to cheer us up."
"Honestly, we should probably start planning a retreat. Leave a few people behind to hold the bosses and let everyone else get out."
"That’s probably the safest option."
"Ten minutes? There’s no way."
Most of them assumed Ethan was simply trying to encourage the raid. Then Ethan suddenly let out a deafening roar.
"FORBIDDEN: ROAR OF WRATH!"
BOOM!
His already massive Bear body swelled even larger. Blood-red fur spread across his entire body in an instant.
A brilliant golden ring burst outward from beneath his feet, racing across the battlefield at astonishing speed. Within seconds, it had engulfed the entire arena and continued expanding far into the distance.
This was the forbidden spell granted by the Twilight War Spear.
—
[Forbidden: Roar of Wrath]
Empowers all friendly players within 2,480 yards, increasing attack power, armor, maximum health, and healing effectiveness by 300% for ten minutes.
Cooldown: 30 days.
Activating this skill places all other Form-specific forbidden spells on the weapon on cooldown.
—
A moment earlier, the raid had been operating on pure habit..People were still attacking, but their rotations had become sloppy. Their timing was inconsistent. Their confidence was gone.
Then the blood-red light washed over them. The same crimson glow that covered Ethan now covered every member of the raid.
"What the hell is that?!"
"Forget that! Burn the boss! Healers, conserve your mana!"
For a brief moment, several players froze in shock. Before anyone could ask further questions, Ethan’s roar snapped them back to reality.
Excitement exploded across the raid as hands moved faster. Cooldowns that had just become available were activated immediately.
Everyone unleashed everything they had. Their damage output tripled. The bosses’ health bars began dropping at a visible rate.
The healers experienced the same boost, their healing output tripled as well.
And Ethan benefited even more. His armor had increased by three hundred percent.
Before activating the skill, he had been taking eighteen to twenty-two thousand damage per hit despite all his defensive abilities. The vulnerability stacks had become overwhelming.
Now his incoming damage had fallen back to roughly six to eight thousand per hit. The pressure on the healers vanished almost instantly.
With the healing boost active, Heaven’s Dawn could comfortably keep Ethan alive by herself.
The priest immediately stopped casting heals altogether and switched to recovering mana.
Priests possessed the strongest in-combat mana regeneration in the game thanks to their high Spirit. Given a few minutes without casting, she would recover most of her mana pool.
Druids, while having lower Spirit, excelled at efficiency.
Their healing relied primarily on HoTs, healing-over-time effects that cost very little mana. Maintaining a full set of HoTs on the tank and refreshing them before they expired consumed far fewer resources than the healing styles of other classes.
The raid’s confidence returned almost instantly.
"Anyone with an execute skill, use it the second it’s available! Warriors, whether we finish this early is up to you!"
Everyone could already see victory ahead.
Leo swung his iron staff wildly, shouting as he attacked.
"I’ve been using Execute! They keep missing!"
"Then keep using it! One hit lands and that’s a huge chunk of damage!"
"That’s a waste of damage!"
Before Leo could continue arguing, Ethan cut him off.
"Don’t listen to this idiot."
The raid immediately burst into laughter.
"Ignore him and stick to your normal rotation."
Leo opened his mouth, then closed it again.
For the second time that day, Ethan had shut him down completely. Meanwhile, under the effect of Forbidden: Roar of Wrath, the bosses’ remaining health continued to disappear at a speed no one had thought possible just moments earlier.