Battle Start! Squire's Party Versus AbyssalWolf Alpha!

  It's difficult to judge just how powerful that newly earned ability is, but it's certainly convenient. It activates with a mere thought, not even requiring a combat round to use, covering myself and my new allies in a shimmering field of transparent blue energies. The 'spirit' costs appear to be negligible as well, meaning that keeping it up for as long as I need to shouldn't be an issue.

  "Let Slave take all of the hits. You, focus on keeping her healed up, and attack whenever you can. I'll focus on weakening him and inflicting damage." Vile says to me. I nod in agreement, deciding to trust her to take command of the battle.

  "Heh, this little kitty actually thinks that it can stop me?" the alpha chuckles, looking down at the feline standing before him. "This should be good for a laugh."

  "Huh?" the large wolf leaps back, spitting out a bit of tooth, staring at the barely damaged opponent.

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  "Seriously? Is that all you've got?" The black cat purrs. "My mistress bites way harder than that!"

  I can't help but frown a little. Only bad dogs bite. Maybe the rules are different for rats, though? Either way, it's the obvious difference between a loyal, domesticated canine and a wild wolf.

  There's a flash of fury in the eyes of the muscular wolf, but it fades in an instant as it shakes his head and chuckles. "Looks like I underestimated you three. I guess it's time I started fighting seriously."

  "Good." Vile says, leaning forward, her elbow rested on a bent knee as she stands near the back of my neck. "Because we're just getting started, too."

  I say nothing, as trash talking has never exactly been my area of expertise. I must admit, I'm feeling much better about our prospects than I was the previous evening, however.

  As tempting as it would be to go through the many, many combat rounds, as exciting as they were, it would take a very, very long time. I quickly learned a great deal about group combat, however, namely how downright broken healing powers are. I was hesitant to rely on my divine strike early in the fight, and that had proven to be a wise decision. As impossibly tough as Slave was, I still needed to heal her very frequently, only occasionally finding myself free to land a sword strike of my own.

  It is clear that my paladin powers work best in a group. In the past I had lamented that in order to heal, I would need to take a break from the fight to do so, which would result in my taking more damage, and thus undoing much, potentially all of said healing. When used on others, however, they could continue to attack and I would remain undamaged.

  Naturally, me and Vile were still somewhat vulnerable, at least in principle. In reality, the small, agile feline made an excellent defender, as I had experienced myself. As quick as the alpha wolf may have been, he was no match for the speed of the cat. I had been a little bit concerned that Slave would only focus on guarding Vile, but she protected me as well, either out of a desire to follow her mistress' wishes, or understanding the necessity of maintaining the proper combat formation.

  Meanwhile, with me mostly spending my time healing, and Slave somewhat lacking in physical strength, it was up to Vile to do most of the work. Her spells didn't hit the hardest, of course, but they were constant, usually in the form of barrages of magic missiles, but regularly re-applying debuffs like slow and weakness whenever they happened to expire.

  Even considering all of this, the wolf wasn't weak, however. Apparently, he had been going easy on me before, and even Slave with her abundant defense found herself taking a lot of hard hits, and early in the fight I found myself concerned with our apparent lack of progress.

  But, a lack of progress does not equal no progress, of course. Every single round we slowly chipped away at his massive health pool, and as powerful as the wolf may have been, he didn't have a wide variety of techniques, thankfully. He could strengthen himself, but couldn't weaken any of us or utilize any manner of ranged attack, so he was basically stuck attacking Slave until he could defeat her, which, thanks to my paladin abilities, wasn't happening.

  There were some frightening moments where Slave took a few devastating hits in a row, and my Spirit was exhausted, but the alpha wolf couldn't hit at his hardest all the time, and I found myself able to catch up on healing her. Vile also seemed to have some issues as the fight went on. At first I had wondered why she wasn't using her bigger spells, but then I realized that she has a finite amount of mana. Even just using the small ones, she'd regularly need to rest for a turn to recuperate before attacking once again.

  Vile really knew what she was going. Our party arrangement was practically invincible, and in the end there was nothing that our opponent could do. It was a long battle, but he just kept getting weaker while we remained at near full strength. The final result was an inevitable one.

  ---

  Squire: "Huh, that was a little anti-climactic."

  Vile: "Yeah, boss battles might make for a neat spectacle, but they're usually kind of boring. They're just a numbers game, where it's your parties HP and healing versus the bosses damage output, and whichever is higher determines the winner.

  Slave: "Sometimes there are more gimmicky mechanics, too, but those tend to be more obnoxious than exciting."

  Squire: "Huh..."

  Vile: "It's true. This especially applies to singular bosses. Unless an opponent can take out party members with a single blow, or has the ability to inflict massive, group-wide damage, it will usually just be a battle of attrition where the group with healing abilities is essentially invincible."

  AbyssalWood Alpha: "Could you guys stop talking about me like I'm not here?"