System: Please continue to prevent the fiends from destroying the matrix. Attack commences in: 120 seconds...
Taking advantage of the two-minute breather, the raid immediately sat down to eat and recover their mana.
The golden dome shielding the array had intensified, its light now pushing back the darkness to a radius of five hundred yards.
Based on the last wave, Lila had a solid theory: the monsters only rendered once they crossed into the light. She ordered the vanguard to push out further, establishing a perimeter two to three hundred yards away from the core.
With forty seconds left on the clock, idle chatter filled the raid channel.
"That was way too close," Hazel sighed.
"We're fine," Grace replied. "Norlun and the boss ants didn't even have to lift a finger."
"Yeah, it wasn't as bad as I thought," Peppa agreed.
Rena chimed in. "Those cow guys were just stupid. If I were them, we would've wiped."
"Hehe, bragging again, Rena?" Hazel teased. "Would you magically be a super-strong cow?"
"I wouldn't need to be strong. I'd just ignore the tanks, put my head down, and sprint straight for the shield."
A heavy silence fell over the raid channel.
"Actually..." Grace started, "if they did that, we really wouldn't be able to stop them."
"Yeah, you can't chain-CC that many mobs forever," Peppa added.
Just then, a chorus of loud quacks echoed from the darkness.
The girls blinked. It sounded exactly like the ducks back on a farm.
"Did the ducks mutate?"
"They just look like regular ducks."
"I wonder if they drop cooking ingredients. I love roast duck."
"I'm a duck gizzard fan myself."
"Wait, look at their stats. That's so weird."
"Yeah, they have zero attack power."
[Placid Mallard]
Level: 39
HP: 20,000,000
Physical Attack: 1
Physical Defense: 15,000
Magic Defense: 15,000
[Vigorous Teal]
Level: 39
HP: 20,000,000
Physical Attack: 1
Physical Defense: 15,000
Magic Defense: 15,000
Two ducks spawned from each cardinal direction. They waddled forward at a leisurely pace of about five yards per second, looking completely ridiculous.
The girls giggled, walking right up to the birds without even drawing their weapons.
"Oh my god, they're so cute up close!"
"My sister has a pet duck!"
"Do they bite?"
"Ducks don't bite, only geese do."
While the raid was busy playing petting zoo, a cold sweat broke out on Lila's forehead.
"Start DPS immediately!" she screamed into the raid channel. "They don't have an aggro table! They're pathing straight to the matrix! Rena called it!"
"What?!"
The realization hit them like a truck. These harmless-looking ducks were a DPS check bypass mechanic. Weapons flashed as the raid finally opened fire.
-18,145
-9,787
-13,021
Sure enough, no matter how much damage they took, the ducks didn't retaliate. They just kept waddling steadily toward the center.
Even though each lane had twenty-five players, only about twenty of them were actual DPS classes. A full skill rotation from the squad only shaved off about 200,000 HP.
At twenty million health, it would take them a full hundred seconds to burn one down! A hundred seconds. At five yards a second, the ducks would cover five hundred yards. They would literally reach the core right as they died.
And there wasn't just one duck per lane—there were two!
Panic set in as the math clicked.
"CC them!"
"Drop slows!"
A flurry of crowd control spells blanketed the area. Frost traps, Cripple, ice magic, taunts—everything they had. But the results were abysmal. The ducks had massive hidden resistances.
The [Vigorous Teal] practically shrugged off movement penalties. A 50% slow barely reduced its speed by 20%.
The [Placid Mallard] was immune to rage mechanics. Even when Hazel popped her heavy-duty Intimidating Roar, the taunt lasted less than half a second.
After some frantic trial and error, they figured out the gimmick: use hard CC on the [Vigorous Teal], and use slows on the [Placid Mallard].
They finally managed to kill both ducks when they were barely a hundred yards from the matrix. The girls let out a collective sigh of relief.
"Those things are so annoying."
"This is all Rena's fault. She jinxed us."
"Right? The system definitely heard her."
Lila cut off the banter. "Get back to your perimeter spots! The next wave is coming."
"Got it!"
They sprinted back to the edge of the light. Shortly after, the familiar quacking echoed again. This time, there were three ducks per lane.
A new variant had joined the flock.
[Skittish Fowl]
Level: 39
HP: 18,000,000
Physical Attack: 1
Physical Defense: 12,000
Magic Defense: 12,000
Armed with the mechanics from the last wave, Crimson Bloom didn't dare underestimate the new arrival. They opened fire immediately.
They split their crowd control, locking down the Teal and slowing the Mallard just like before. The [Skittish Fowl] drew their immediate focus.
"This one's kind of squishy."
"Yeah, it doesn't have slow resistance."
"Taunts work perfectly on it, too."
"And it has two million less HP."
"Basically a free kill."
But the game had another curveball waiting for them. The moment the [Skittish Fowl] dropped to three million HP, it suddenly flared with a bright white aura.
The raid scrambled as the duck's mechanics flipped.
"What's with the glow? My slows aren't doing anything!"
"Taunts are being resisted!"
"Look at its legs! It's speeding up!"
"Crap, it's sprinting!"
"Focus fire! Kill it now!"
The squads dumped all their remaining cooldowns into the sprinting duck, narrowly executing it just before it crossed the hundred-yard threshold. Because they had to divert so much DPS, the other two ducks barely died in time, collapsing right on the edge of the inner perimeter.
There was no cheering this time. The tension in the air was palpable.
"How many waves are in this phase?"
"The last one had ten. Is this ten too?"
"No way..."
"If they add an extra duck every wave, there's no mathematical way we survive to wave ten."
The raid retreated to the frontline in grim silence. Before long, the third wave spawned.
Just as they feared, four ducks waddled out of the darkness. And one of them was an entirely new breed.