Mishap in the Dungeon

It was finally time for the group to meet up for dungeons. They went in to the level 40 dungeon this time. Everything progressed smoothly on the way to the final boss. Before they entered the the final boss area Julie halted the team to cover their strategy.

"This boss has wide AoE attacks, avoid standing behind it. Standing behind it will trigger a rear tail swipe that can oneshot you. It will also occasionally trigger a targeted attack at a random player. The boss will hint the direction of the attack based on which wing twitches. If you're standing on the side that twitches move behind me so the boss doesn't turn. Once the animation finishes you can return to your original positions. Amy you'll be on the right side, David the left side, and Heals you'll stand at about the 4 o'clock position so that you can still see the entire fight. Any questions?"

"Nope," Amy replied immediately since she was used to the way Julie would make strategies on the fly.

"I'm good here White Tiger," David responded right after.

They waited a second for Heals to respond, but didn't know HEals was lost in thought.

"Heals?" Julie called out after not hearing a reply from him yet.

"Oh, sorry, I'm ready." Xavier replied in a rush after being called out. He couldn't help but be reminded of the past listening to Julie's strategy.

Getting everyone's confirmation Julie was ready to begin. "Alright everyone, let's begin. Use this first run to get familiar with the strategy so the rest of the runs will go quickly."

They proceeded into the open space and watched a wyvern drop from the sky. Julie immediately taunted it as it landed before commanding the team, "positions!" The team moved to their assigned positions and started fighting the boss. Julie took a quick glance at the other members and noticed Heals position was slightly off. "Heals your position is wrong. Take one step forward and two steps to the right."

Hearing her command Xavier's mind went blank as he followed her instructions.

***

"No no no! Your pathing is wrong, you needed to end up one step forward and two steps to the right." The girl had been chiding him for the past hour as they practiced their runs. "If you end up here you'll trigger a forced encounter before making it through, reset it."

***

"Watch the random target ability, the first one will happen soo," Julie called out in voice chat.

***

"How are you still ending up in the same spot? Do it again and let me watch," the girl said while looking over his shoulder again.

***

"David pay attention! It's targeted you. Heals move to Amy, it's too late for David to move. Heals!"

The boss turned to david and blasted him with a fire ball while turning its back to Xavier. In Xavier's daze he missed the call to move and the boss triggered a tailswipe killing his character.

System Message:

Heals 4days has died.

"David move behind me and activate your Soothing Pressence aura. Amy move closer to the rear of the boss. As soon a Aerial Assault is off cooldown trigger a tailswipe and dodge it with Aerial Assault. Repeat that evertime it comes off cooldown to lower its damage through animation locks." Julie ordered the other two to adjust the strategy since they were now without a healer.

The three remaining players slowly depleated the HP of the boss while Julie's HP also started falling. When it it dropped close to 50% Julie made another call. "The boss is targeting you again David, on my signal step in front of me and activate Empty-Handed Counter. Now!" David followed her orders and his character negated the damage of the fire ball and retaliated thrusting both palms forward into the boss. "Now step back behind me, reactivate Soothing Pressence. Amy when you activate Aerial Assault again combo it with Breath of the Wyvern to heal me while damaging the boss." Just like that Julie's HP regenerated back to 75% while the boss' HP dropped towards 25%. "Last random target coming, it's targeting you Amy. Use Lunge Dash to move to this side and then Aerial Escape to dodge the attack." About a minute later the boss' HP finally dropped to 0 while Julie's HP was sitting at 30%.

System Message:

Congratulations you defeated the boos.

Stream Chat:

User1111: Holy **** White Tiger is so awesome, she single-handedly controlled the flow of the battle even after the healer died.

******: Yeah for real that was amazing.

DarknessIncarnate: Am I the only one who wants to know what happened with the healer?

*********: @DarknessIncarnate nope, I walso want to know.

While the stream chat rolled by Julie was also wondering what happened. She had paid close attention to Heals both last night and during this run and he seemed like a professional, but this time he made such a rookie mistake. All he had to do was take a few steps to avoid triggering the tailswipe but he just sat there.

"Heals what happened?" Julie asked the question directly because she didn't want to make any random guesses.

At this moment Xavier came back from his reverie and realised he made a huge mistake. "Sorry, I fell out of my chair just now so I wasn't at the keyboard," he lied with ease.

"I see," Julie replied slowly.

Everyone heard Amy trying very hard not to laugh when she asked, "how did you manage that?"

"Lets not talk about it, it's rather embarrassing."

"Alright, are you good to continue or do you need to call it."

"I'm good," he replied, but his mind was anything but good. 'Why does she keep reminding me of her?'