Whether it was the mental reset, the additional Perks, or just the experience they had gathered over the previous three days, they managed to finally push into the second phase during their first attempt that morning. Or, rather, they pushed into one of the second phases.

“For the glory of Astria!” Rudeus shouted, raising his lance high up into the air. Immediately, a glorious golden light spread out from his feet. Evenly in every direction, stopping only where it hit the edge of the arena. The light kept crawling on slowly, until only a sickle at the opposite side of the room remained untouched.

John didn’t need to bark out any orders. Immediately, everyone coordinated to leave the radiant area, hastening into the untouched segments. A single safe path led through the middle of the room, where Metra step for step retreated from Amadeus to get herself into the safe sickle. That several of them could fly was particularly handy here because they were cramped into such small areas.

The golden light on the floor consolidated into a runic circle, a four-pointed star at its centre. The holy energy exploded upwards in a torrent of energy that practically spelled out the words ‘Instant Kill Mechanic’. It only lasted a second, then Rudeus stood alone in his corner of the room.

A factor that would not remain like so for long. Ooze dripped from his offhand, quickly consolidating on the floor as a slime monster that now joined the fight. With each passing second, it seemed to grow, steadily nourished by green energies flowing out from the portal the knight had originally emerged from.

The observation of that slime would have to wait as the party’s tempo had been violently disrupted by the forced repositioning. Anti-tank buffs were stacked too high and Metra didn’t manage to manoeuvre the King back into position before the first of them fell. It was Beatrice, whose defences were overwhelmed first, followed by Gnome, then Rave and Siena.

Planning on how to handle this began immediately. That the additional bosses in the room had their own second phases was expected. First and most important was whether they could take out the bosses one by one without triggering the others’ second phases. With that question in mind, they went a couple of attempts focusing all of their damage on Rudeus.

Before they could get an answer to that first question, they needed to learn how to optimally handle the phase transition. Moments like this were when the lack of an HP bar became most annoying. They could not measure their DPS with absolute certainty, instead playing it by the ear and gradually learning to intuit when an enemy was hurt enough to change into their second phase. Gaia gave them some pointers, like the amount of scratches that stuck to the enemy’s armour. Not as reliable as a big red bar that gradually depleted, but better than nothing.

Once they managed to get a good rhythm down, the phase transition could be overcome without guaranteeing a wipe right after. There was a whole lot of difficulty going into those ten seconds. First, a tank swap had to have occurred just moments earlier so the stacks were low enough. Second, the people had to move the bosses without getting hit in the process. Third, they had to fight the bosses with much decreased room to manoeuvre. Fourth, they had to execute a tank swap as they got back into position.

After they managed to get all of that nailed one time, they were hit by a nasty surprise. A minute of regular fighting later, scouting out Rudeus’ new mechanics, Amadeus shouted, “My loyal knights, show them all the might of Astria!”

““”Yes, my King!””” the three that hadn’t gone into phase 2 yet all answered. Simultaneously, the golden light spread out from their feet. Individually, they would have left the party a sickle to stand in on the opposite side of the room. Together, they covered everything. There was no escape and so the wipe was inevitable.

Then followed the investigation of whether there was an exploit that could happen there. After about ten attempts, they had confirmed that the trigger for the unified phase transition was the first knight going into phase 2, with a delay of sixty seconds. Alternatively, they could also focus entirely on Amadeus, and when he went into his second phase, all the knights did as well. Obviously they hadn’t survived that, so they had no idea what Amadeus did in his second phase yet.

Armed with the knowledge that the fight demanded they fought all knights on phase 2 simultaneously, the question then became how to handle it the most efficiently. The theoretical answer was easily found. During the ten seconds that it took the first target to unleash the attack, the second target had to be pushed to the second phase. Shortly after the first knight was done with their area attack, the third would then be pushed over the edge. Then, that would be repeated with the fourth after the second had concluded their cast. The entire party would move together into the final safe area, before scattering out into their original positions again.

In the presentation John used, everyone was in their original position at the time of this occurring. It was unlikely to be the case, with the constant tank swaps, but it didn’t matter either. Important was only that they got the timing right and that everyone survived the journeys. Similarly, it wouldn’t always be Rudeus that went into phase 2 first.

What this plan did not account for yet was what actually happened during the second phases. Before they could worry about that, they had to master this careful dance. Something that took them the entirety of the day.

Day 8 of 27 of the grinding.

They were now 467 attempts deep. An additional 87, which was cause for a good mood. A measurable decrease of about 25% of new tries meant that they died later in the fight, which reflected a growing mastery. With increased efficiency in the first phase of the fight came the option to pull off some shenanigans during the phase transition.

In order to pull off the movement required to set off the second phases in quick transition, they had two options. One was to move around the areas left behind by Amadeus’ cone attacks, the other was to move through them. Trying to move during the cone attacks was also, technically, an option. It would let them avoid damage entirely, as the areas did despawn before the new ones appeared. However, it was deemed too difficult. There were too many moving parts to that and the margin for error too narrow, plus the areas would be in awkward positions afterwards and that would make the rest of the fight difficult.

Between the two viable options, both had their pros and cons. Moving around the damage areas saved Undine mana, which was always valuable. Moving through was faster, which meant they could more reliably set off the attacks in the timing they wanted, which was incredibly important. The entire phase transition was a twenty-five second affair that could not be anything besides flawless.

They decided to go forwards with the variant of moving through the damage zones. It would be incredibly tight, but if Momo could spam her shields and Undine execute a group heal when everyone was bunched up during the final area explosion, they could just about scrape by.

Two hours into day 8, they began actually pushing past the phase transition and into the second phases. Which, of course, brought with them a whole new set of mechanics to learn, understand, and solve.

The knights remained as easily taunted as before. A challenge spoken and they fixated on a new target, with enough of a cooldown to the effect that it couldn’t be relentlessly abused. Not that anyone besides Siena and Rave really had enough people around to even attempt abuse. Those two rarely tank-swapped as they fought a boss. Typically, it was just Rave keeping the attention of whatever knight they were fighting. Siena only jumped in if she needed time to recover.

It took many wipes and observations to plot out everything the five bosses in the room did during their second phase. After all his knights, Amadeus himself always went onto the second phase as well. Thankfully, without casting another area attack immediately.

Immediately being the key term. Amadeus no longer used his cone attacks on tank swaps. Instead, he cast them on a fifteen seconds cooldown. After he threw one of each cone towards whoever his knights were currently targeting, he then used a smaller version of the area attack from the phase transition. All of this was relatively easy to avoid. The cones were a matter of timing correctly. Although the speed of the preparation for each attack had halved, as seasoned veterans of many fights, the party was used to this kind of mechanic enough to not be too affected by this. The circle attack at the end was only a problem for Metra, everyone else just hugged the wall of the arena.

The only problem here was that the cones were now always on the ground somewhere.

The commonality between the four knights was that all of them now affected the area they were in, activating the portals and connecting them to their respective bases to invoke various effects.

Rudeus spawned the ooze from his glove, which was then steadily fed by noxious fumes that wafted out of the portal. The ooze would start relatively harmless, but grew to be immensely dangerous within a minute. Killing it was difficult while it retained a connection to the portal and it refused to be kited away from the Poison Knight. However, the Poison Knight did not care at all about the ooze and it was too slow to keep up. Whenever the Poison Knight connected to a new portal, he spawned a new ooze.

Ina was more straightforward. She gradually chilled her quarter of the battlefield, dealing ramping ice damage and making the floor more slippery.

The Metal Knight caused pieces of metal to fill the air. They weren’t an immediate threat, but they did also move with each of his attacks, which gave him more reach and made little cuts and bruises unavoidable.

Finally, the Shovel Knight caused heaps of dirt to appear in his area. If he came into contact with them, they would unearth a treasure trove that he would then absorb to permanently increase his damage.

What all of this came down to was that they had to do even more frequent tank swaps, to prevent the build up of the area effects. Every fifteen seconds was deemed as the proper timing. Through clever manoeuvring, they could avoid the damage of the cone attacks entirely. By not moving clockwise, as they had so far, but instead meeting at halfway points.

By standing like that, they could make Amadeus throw his cone attacks in overlapping areas. He executed the combo and they moved the bosses to new corners. Then, Amadeus would do his circular attack again, forcing them all to the walls.

They would then fight normally for fifteen seconds. Sylph would be on duty to kill the old slime. Once the cooldown was up and Amadeus ready to start his next combo, they’d execute the same manoeuvre to the left and right of the arena, rather than the top and bottom. They would shift back and forth like that, always keeping the bosses moving around the room. After forty-five seconds, whatever build-up had been in the corners was cleared.

All of that was doable on paper, but once again required precise timing. Moving the bosses, while fighting them, dodging the cones at the correct time, hugging the walls, all of that required constant attention. Everyone had to play their part perfectly and move along to the rhythm. They all had to measure their DPS evenly, so they had the resources to spare if something went south and so the phase transitions unfolded exactly as they wanted them to.

If this fight had even a single unpredictable mechanic, it would have been undoable. In the second phase, Amadeus no longer cast his seekers, so there was no randomly distributed damage. It was all a tight dance. Every death was because they had been insufficient along some dimension. A single screw-up from any of them would lead to a cascade of events that meant the inevitable wipe.

All together, they learned. Learned, wiped, and learned, until the 8th day turned into the 9th and the 9th into the 10th.

563 attempts deep and then they finally killed the first knight for the first time. It was the Shovel Knight that went down. The body within the armour turned into gemstones, which hurled up into the air in a winding cascade of sparkling beauty. They turned ephemeral, once they reached Amadeus, fusing with his body and bestowing him with new powers. Every other attack, he unleashed a scattershot blast of gemstones, striking any party members behind Metra.

Then there was the next cone combo attack. Still, there were four cones, with the one dedicated to the Shovel Knight aiming towards the boss’ final challenger. After the combo, the gem attacks stopped.

That was all the death of the first knight seemed to cause. Spurred on by their success, the party finished off the other three one after the other. Covering all of them with equal damage allowed them to execute that part of the fight within a minute. Each knight felled was another buff given to Amadeus. The power of his vassals, he cycled through, always possessing one for fifteen seconds, changed after each cone attack. Where one of his allies was still alive, he only wielded his own power.

Soon he possessed all four. He spawned an ooze that grew and could only be killed when he did not wield noxious might. He was enveloped in an aura of chilling winds. The air around him was filled with metal scraps that extended the reach of his swings. Finally, he blasted a scattershot of gemstones again, the cycle completing once.

“I will not let these deaths be in vain!” Amadeus declared, surrounded on all sides by the party. The last area effects, cones or caused by the four knights, faded away, as the king glowed with holy power. His eyes, most of all, reflected the wrath of a sovereign. Streaks of colours of his subjects wove through his golden hair. “The King of Astria shall wield the power invested in him! Come at me, challengers that bring existence!”