Jack and The Man arrived at the same time and started to send attacks aggressively. Their respective teams were still on their way. The Ogre whacked at The Man who managed to dodge aside, but its free hand then grabbed onto his legs. It pulled him up and then slammed him down hard. The slam caused him damage and stunned him as it forced out the air in his lungs. The Man was yet to recover fully from the previous engagement, so his health had fallen to a third. The Ogre lifted its club high to deliver a lethal blow to the dazed The Man.
Jack came to the rescue by parrying the lethal blow, he fell to his knees from the force. The Ogre then grabbed his body with his free hand and threw him upwards. As Jack was defenseless in the air, It struck him using its club like a baseball player scoring a homerun. Jack was sent flying far away passing John and Bowler.
The Man's teammates arrived at the time and pulled The Man out of his dangerous situation. Flame and Trap also arrived and started to harass the Boss while the Fighters were engaging it.
"Arggh..! Damn it all to hell! Everyone attacks at your will!" John yelled as he saw the situation was getting out of hand.
He took out his last energy potion and drank it. It was also the time when his Heightened State skill went off cooldown, he immediately activated it again and cast Energy Bolts followed with normal range attacks. His wand's energy was also getting low. Bowler and Tip had long depleted their weapon's energy, they were just relying on their natural mana recovery and cast spells whenever they got enough mana. Hence their DPS were greatly reduced.
As he cast Mana Bullet, he saw five Energy Bolts rushing from behind, followed by Mana Bullet which slammed into the Ogre. He assumed that they were cast by Bowler, but then he remembered that both Bowler's and Tip's Energy Bolts only fired four bolts. And the damages were impressive, much higher than the damage usually caused by them. Hell, the damage was even higher than him.
He turned to look, there were no Magicians here apart from the three of them. At this time, Jack jumped past him, sword in hand ready to engage the Boss again. John glanced around again, was there another Magician player hiding in the dark? Trying to take advantage of their battle? He walked back a little bit and looked around, there was no one. The cave hall was not a place where people could hide around completely. Although there were stalagmites, the stalagmites here were not large enough to completely concealed a person.
"Hey! Where the hell are you going? Sight-seeing!?" Bowler screamed at him.
He then remembered his Heightened state was still in effect. Not to let it go to waste, he threw the idea of the mysterious Magician out of his mind and went back to throwing offensive spells at the Ogre.
When Jack clashed back with the Ogre, The Man who was nearby said to him, "thanks for the help!"
"Thank me when we defeat this son of a bitch," Jack replied.
"Agreed!" The Man replied with vigor, despite having only half his HP left.
When Magician used the Heightened State skill, there was no glaring visual effect. The only visual cue of a Magician activating this skill was the air around them appeared to be distorted by heat, but the effect was very small. Only when one stood near said Magician would they noticed such distortion. Thus, no one noticed such distortion around Jack, while the Fighters who were fighting nearby him couldn't spare him the attention.
When Jack was knocked flying far away, he had taken a basic healing potion and medicine to recover his health. He had also taken the opportunity when he was behind everyone's line of sight to threw a couple of Magician's spells and activated Heightened State. One thing that he had learned from experimenting with this skill was that it did not only affect his Magician's skills cooldown and MP recovery, but also his Fighter's skills cooldown and Stamina recovery. With the skill in effect, he could dish out more Power Strike and Swing than the other Fighters, hence scoring more DPS on the Boss.
Now that everyone was crawling around the Boss, he could spare more time delivering damages then kept on trying to dodge. The Ogre's HP was dropping at a faster rate. They, however, also suffer casualties more easily. Tip was killed in the process as with another one from Men of Solidarity. The gang only had five members left in the group, they had lost more than half of their numbers.
Despite the casualties, they managed to bring down the Boss to a critical state. It let out a furious roar. However, it didn't affect them with Disorient status this time. But John felt like its roaring animation was similar to its previous one, hence he immediately told the others to retreat, "Get back! It was going to make the stalactites fall again!"
The Ogre didn't let them down, it really started to stomp and cause earthquakes. Fortunately, they weren't afflicted by Disoriented and were warned by John early, so they managed to get out of the earthquake range before the stalactites hit the ground, except for one Fighter who was hit by one as he jumped out of range. His health was already low, but he still survived that one hit. When they looked back, they realized that Jack didn't join them. Instead of running away, he dashed further in.
"What the hell are you doing?" The Man shouted at him.
Without replying, Jack arrived at where the Ogre was as stalactites started falling around him. He had noticed from the previous time the Ogre activated this skill, that the stalactite only fell around it, but never hit the place where the Ogre stood, so the safest place was actually the center of the skill.
As the Ogre continued with its stomping animation and summoned more stalactites down. Jack slashes at it frenziedly. Using all his skills whenever it came off cooldown. As he was still in the Heightened State condition, he executed Power Strikes after every two normal attacks. His stamina was dropping fast despite the increased recovery rate.
The others could only watch in awe as Jack continued to take away the Boss' HP.
When the skill ended, the Ogre looked at Jack angrily. It couldn't believe that its ultimate skill had failed to kill anyone this time. Instead, the most annoying fly had slashed at it like nobody's business. Not only was his HP was hurt, but his pride had also suffered humiliation.
It used its free hand trying to grab Jack, but this time Jack had anticipated it. He deftly moved aside. Using the Ogre's low position when trying to grab him, he stepped onto its thigh and jumped upwards as he climbed the Ogre's body.
The others' jaws were smacked close to the ground when they saw his stunt.
Jack climbed onto the Ogre's back and grabbed its hair as a handhold. He then stabbed at the back of the Boss' neck, causing critical damage. The Ogre turned around with hands flailing around trying to reach Jack but its bulky hand prevented him to reach its own back.
Jack continued to stab his sword onto its head, causing continuous damages. In desperation, it ran backward and smashed onto one of the stalagmites hard. The stalagmite broke to pieces as Jack HP fell, but he didn't let go. He sent a Power Strike again to the back of the Ogre's head.
It caused critical damage as the Ogre roared out loud. As the roar ended, its limbs became limp. It fell to its knees, before it fell forward with its face flat on the ground. Jack was thrown forward in the fall. He dropped to the ground in a roll, and quickly got up as his adrenaline was still pumping, he expected the Ogre to rise again, but it didn't.
