The colossal Sli Lord suddenly burst apart, splitting into four elite slis. The abrupt transformation caught the unprepared party off guard. For a mont, they stood frozen, eyes wide with surprise—until instinct took over and they bolted toward Ryan.
Their intention was clear: get the tank to pull aggro—fast.
Ryan smiled to himself.
The instant the Sli Lord had collapsed, he could’ve intercepted the elites before they got anywhere near the group. His timing and positioning were perfect. But sothing mischievous held him back. He watched, amused, as the four elite slis surged toward his scrambling teammates.
Let’s see how they handle a little pressure.
And to his satisfaction, they handled it well.
Rather than scatter in panic and make the fight ten tis harder, they converged around him. Their first instinct had been to group up behind the tank. Not bad.
"Group up!" Ryan shouted, watching them dodge each incoming attack with practiced precision.
Once they were in tight formation, Ryan stepped in. He raised his shield, and with a sharp swing, his Avenger’s Shield ricocheted across three of the elite slis, staggering them. A split-second later, he followed up with Reckoning, dragging the fourth one cleanly into his orbit.
"Excellent! Focus fire on one first!" he commanded, planting his feet as all four slis surrounded him.
Each of the elites had a different hue—red, green, blue, and yellow—and each carried its own threat.
The red sli radiated heat, burning nearby players with each attack. The green one lobbed volleys of poisonous arrows—individually weak, but relentless, constantly sapping health. The blue sli burned mana periodically, draining a hundred points at a ti from anyone with a mana bar. The upside? Killing it restored everyone’s mana to full.
But the real danger was the yellow sli. Its attacks had a chance to inflict a mortal strike effect, cutting healing received by 10% per stack. Left unchecked, that could make Ryan nearly unhealable.
That’s why he’d called for a focus fire. If he went down because the healer couldn’t keep up, the team was toast.
Each elite sli had 5,000 health. And the clock was ticking—after one minute, no matter what, the slis would re-rge into the Sli Lord. For every elite they managed to kill, the Boss’s health would drop by 10%. Two slis ant a 20% cut. Three, 30%. Four? A full 40%. If the reduction would bring the Boss to zero, it would instead stop at one HP—forcing the group to finish it off properly.
But if they didn’t kill even one?
Then the Sli Lord would return to full health—and that, paired with a winded team, was a recipe for a wipe.
Riverbank Grass—still busy healing—was keeping the group topped off. They’d taken so intentional hits early on to test spacing and response. Ryan hadn’t had ti to brief them on the elites’ exact chanics, but in an encounter like this, staying alive ca first.
"Guild leader, you’ve got a healing debuff!" Moonlight Beauty called out. She was the first to recover and rush back into the fight.
A quick glance confird it—Ryan’s buff bar had the unmistakable red slash of a mortal strike effect. The yellow sli’s doing.
"Yeah," Ryan said through gritted teeth. "Hurry and burn the yellow down! It’s already at twenty percent!"
Bad luck. Only a few attacks in and he’d already picked up two stacks of the healing debuff. Any more and Riverbank Grass might not be able to keep up. And with the tir ticking, every second mattered.
Given the red sli’s splash damage, and with the rest of the group still catching up, Moonlight Beauty quickly made the call. Gritting her teeth, she broke formation and moved wide, away from Ryan’s imdiate range.
Ryan hesitated for a second, then spotted what she was doing.
She wasn’t trying to hold the yellow sli’s aggro—not really. She was just kiting it, keeping a faint thread of threat while maintaining her distance. Smart.
The tactic worked. With the yellow sli briefly drawn away, the Mortal Strike debuff on Ryan faded out after its ten-second duration. The others, now healed and recovered, rallied back to him.
Ryan smirked, stepping forward to re-establish aggro. He intercepted the yellow sli mid-chase and pulled it firmly into position. This ti, the group didn’t wait for orders—they unloaded. Skills flashed like lightning, damage numbers flying in every direction.
Five thousand HP might’ve been a lot for lesser teams, but against this crew? It lted in seconds.
The yellow sli burst apart just as the thirty-second mark passed since the Sli Lord’s split.
"Everyone, take down the blue sli! Its mana burn has almost drained !" Riverbank Grass shouted from the backline, her voice cracking with urgency.
The group blinked. They’d been cheering for the kill, but now turned and stared. Her mana bar was nearly dry—barely 100 left from a pool that started at just over 600. She looked shell-shocked.
"I said don’t heal anymore! I’ll handle myself!" she snapped, nearly in tears. Her panic snapped the team out of celebration.
Ryan’s expression darkened. Ignoring the slis still clawing at him, he started casting Radiant Light.
Protection Paladins in the early ga had a clear edge over Warriors for this very reason—they could heal themselves. A good Radiant Light could restore over 700 HP, not that far off from a full-blown Holy Paladin’s 900.
The downside? Spell interruption. Protection Paladins had none of the Holy spec’s resistance to it. Every hit could delay the cast—and with slis pounding on him, Ryan’s three-second spell was stretching to six.
Still, he got it off.
The light burst around him, and Riverbank Grass steadied. anwhile, the group had already shifted focus to the blue sli. It was halfway down and dropping fast.
Ryan could feel it—the worst was over.
When the blue sli finally collapsed, a thin mist shimred out from its corpse, engulfing the area in a cool, ethereal glow. The team stood at its center, watching cautiously as the haze settled over them.
No debuffs. No dots. No surprise stuns.
Just... mana. Flowing in fast.
Everyone watched their bars rise in real ti, eyes wide. Riverbank Grass looked ready to cry again—but this ti from relief. Her mana was back to full, like soone had hit a reset switch.
Fifty seconds had passed since the start of the split.
There was no way they’d kill a third sli in the ten seconds left.
"Too bad. We’re out of ti," Ryan muttered. "Still... not bad. We got two."
And that ant the Sli Lord would co back missing 20% of its total health—a huge edge moving forward.
Ten more seconds ticked by. The remaining red and green elite slis began to pulse with light, then slowly moved toward each other. The mist faded.
With a low, echoing growl, the familiar form of the Sli Lord re-erged—colossal, glistening, and still dangerous.
The next phase had begun.
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