**Boss: Hollow Warden - HP: 48,000/48,000**
48,000 hit points. I did the math without thinking, as I always did just before something terrible, and the number didn't get any friendlier the longer I looked at it."Positions!" Dario called, moving already, and the drilling of the last thirteen days took over before panic had a chance to.
The Warden moved first. One downward swing of its grown-not-forged weapon cratered the stone where I had been half a second before. Dust and rock shrapnel sprayed wide enough to catch Tommy's shield from twenty feet off.For something that size, it's fast!" Tommy shouted, bracing."Everything's quick when it wants to kill you personally!" I yelled back, already circling wide, Hunter's Hatchet up, doing exactly what a Vanguard was built to do—get its attention and hold it.
[Threat Created: kenistoocoolforu69]
**[Target Locked: Hollow Warden]**
It did do. The Warden's head whipped around, and for one very long, very stupid second I remembered throwing a hatchet at a boar on day one, and I thought, *at least this time I still have the weapon in hand.*
It attacked. I didn't dodge, not completely. Vanguard wasn't designed for dodging, it was designed to take the hit and stay standing, which was either the smartest or dumbest design philosophy I'd ever bought into depending on the next four seconds.
[ -410 hp. ]
[HP: 890/1300]
Steep but manageable. A wave of pale gold light from Sana's healing pulse filled the party behind me, and Alex was already circling to the flank, bow drawing."Joints!" Alex shouted. "Look out for the shoulder plating, there's a gap when it makes the big swing!"How do u know that already!" "I DON'T, I SUPPOSE, BUT BELIEVE ME!"
He was not wrong in guessing it. The next time the Warden wound up for that same crater-the-ground swing, Alex's arrow hit the exact gap in its shoulder plating he'd called out on pure instinct, and the damage number that popped was easily triple what his normal hit would be.
[Hit Critical Weak Point!]
**[Hollow Warden HP: 41,200/48,000] (THERE IT IS." Tommy roared, absolutely gleeful, every ounce of the fear of thirty seconds ago vanishing instantly. "AIM FOR THE SHOULDER, EVERYONE AIM FOR THE SHOULDER—""Focus fire on the wind-up window!" Dario called over him, darting low from the Warden's blind side. Ken, bait the swing, give us the opening!
I saw the plan and in half a second I hated it. Swing-baiting meant standing still long enough to take one on purpose, on a hit that had already taken out almost a third of my HP in one hit."Ken, do it, or don't do it, but make up your mind quick! Sana screamed, healing wave already built up on her side.
I made up my mind.
I stood my ground, hatchet raised in a guard position, not an evasive one, and let the Warden lock onto me the way it wanted to. It was over. The shoulder plating shifted, opening the gap right where Alex had said it would. I held on to the line.
**[-520 HP]**
**[HP: 370/1300 - Critical Threshold]
**[Rally: Vanguard Passive Triggered]**
[All Damage +30% for 8 sec]
Then everything happened at once. Dario's dagger found the exposed gap from the blind side, a crit landing so clean the Warden actually staggered, an animation I hadn't seen it do once in the entire fight up until this point. Alex's next arrow shot into the same opening a half-second later, Sana's damage-over-time spell ticking through the stagger window, Tommy slamming his shield into the joint as if trying to end the fight through sheer stubbornness alone.
**[Hollow Warden Trips!]**
**[Window for Critical Damage: x2 multiplier]**
**[Hollow Warden HP: 22,900/48000]**
Half its health, disappeared in one coordinated window built entirely off the plan we'd drilled for thirteen straight days and one deliberate hit I'd chosen to take on purpose.
**[HP: 370/1300]
My own bar was screaming red, low enough that Vanguard's second passive finally flickered active on the edge of my HUD, primed and waiting.Another window!Dario shouted, already moving to cover. "Same play Ken, can you run that again!"
I looked at the Warden, weapon rising for a second wind-up, shoulder plating already beginning to open. I checked my HP bar, thin and red and one hit from something I wasn't sure I wanted to test yet.
I planted my feet anyway."Do it," I said. "Rally ain't gonna trigger itself.
*To be continued....*