Trials of a VRMMO Healer

Chapter 17 - Raid

We assembled about an hour's walk from the gates of Illium, about two hundred meters from the massive stone goliath that had made its way toward the city. Other groups from Illium had been battling other goliaths, but there were enough to go around that we had this one all to ourselves. The raid leader was a human man named Edwin Blacktalon. Edwin was wearing heavy armor and had a great shield as tall as he was. The skills he had developed had unlocked the Paragon title. Paragons were defense-specialized tanks. Lily was here, as were Rika and Viero. It was a weekend, but Devlin and Kiira rarely played in the mornings. They had been placed in different groups, though. We were divided into five groups of five, and I wasn't in the same group as the others. My first encounter with Edwin had gone somewhat poorly. He asked what level of healing I could use. I still had my [Light Magic] at 10, and [Heal] was my most powerful burst heal and I told him so.

Edwin scoffed. "Dammit. Why'd she bring someone useless to a raid? Fine, you're in the offtank group. We shouldn't need one but if we get any wandering monsters, keep them busy and off our main healers and DPS."

When I tried to explain my skill set, he cut me off and moved on. Well, whatever, I hadn't raided in ages and even though Edwin was kind of a dick, he did seem to have experience fighting in EO so I deferred to him.

Our little group of five consisted of Zlazh (pronounced 'slash', of course), a young-looking human who had a polearm as his main weapon. He seemed both excited and nervous and told me it was his first raid, too. He had messy brown hair and wore copper-colored armor that consisted mainly of chain but with an additional breastplate. Dawn Snow was also a healer, though she was a light mage. She was an Elv and despite being about twice my height, she was slender and graceful, with silver hair and white robes. Very elf-like. She had experience raiding with Edwin, so that was good. Durgin was a dweorg Fire-Breather, a crafting class that specialized in making potions and beverages that had additional effects in battle and, as the name implied, could breathe fire. Mostly, his job was to buff the main group while staying out of harm's way, but he could contribute a little to DPS. Finally, Marjorie was a human archer. She wore mostly leather armor and hides and had her long black hair tied into braids. It all gave her a very wild appearance. Archers were not seen as particularly useful against a stone enemy, and Viero was stronger than she was, so she'd been dumped into our group.

I was instructed to stand back and periodically throw heals on the tanks as I could. I wanted to explain that I was far more useful if I was in actual combat, but, again, Edwin did not seem to want to listen and it was my first time raiding, so I supposed I could try and do that. The rest of the party was organized relatively in a fairly straightforward manner, with at least one member able to heal and most of the rest being damage or support. It seemed reasonable but it was a bit rigid. Still, Edwin acted confidently enough that he probably knew what he was doing.

We had very little intelligence on the stone goliaths so we were going in blind. The death penalty in EO was harsh enough that we couldn't just throw ourselves at it, so we had to be careful. Each one looked more or less human, or robotic anyway, with elaborate carvings of battle scenes across its angular body. From the first reports, they mainly fought with their massive size and weight, rather than clever tricks. Beyond that, we had to figure it out for ourselves. After giving out a round of buffs (something I unfortunately needed to let Dawn Snow handle, since I didn't really have any), we charged in. For the first few minutes, things went well enough. As massive as the goliath was, Edwin was able to deflect its blows or dodge them and the healers had no issues keeping up. We didn't seem to be doing much damage, but that was expected. Raid targets were meant to be taken on by large groups. Since the amount of damage they could do to one individual was limited, their main advantage was in toughness. After all, if a raid target did enough damage it could kill any player in a single hit, at which point it would become an unwinnable fight. EO might have more flexibility than other games, but it seemed like these kinds of events were, like the quests, designed to be doable by players. After my experiences in Or Din, going back to this game-like encounter was a bit of a shock. But any experienced raider knows that bosses don't dump all their abilities at the beginning. We had to be ready for anything.