Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

30 Departure

A giant brown oak came crashing down, followed right after by another. Dirt, grass, and leaves were kicked up when the giant limbs descended. Sam made sure to avoid being near those, but the female Knight down the way was not so lucky. She was brushed to the side by the lizard beast's leg and lost a sizable portion of her HP. Sam did his best to aggro the creature by stabbing its right leg with fervor. Finally, it attempted stomping down on him again.

"If she's having trouble with this part of the fight then there's no way she'll survive the next part."

Sam made sure to make eye contact with the Knight and knocked against the front of his own head with his knuckle. The Knight couldn't hear him, but Sam yelled anyway.

"Hellooooooo, use your head!"

The knight mouthed "sorry", healed up, and rejoined the battle. Sam found that fighting the Will of the Forest was even more difficult without King Herke's assistance. It was even worse trying to do it and help another player stay alive throughout. His partner this time, was CrushKills, the blonde, green eyed knight he had defeated before Survival Mode was active. She had a better shield now, the same one Robert had used and was using the same Broadsword that Robert and everyone else seemed fond of using. It was a solid weapon for those who emphasized strength in their playstyles, unlike Sam. She still had a long way to go, however, if she was going to survive this game. Her reactions were pretty slow and she seemed to struggle with spacing and timing her attacks. It was amazing that she had even come this far into the game. Judging from the way she played, this had to be the first time she'd fought the Will of the Forest. She was not anticipating any of its attacks, as telegraphed as they were. Maybe she was just terrified. Sam looked back and saw her slashing at the oaken leg of the monster with quick one handed light attacks. She would have been better off two handing her weapon and doing heavy and charged attacks. Sam had no way to tell her that though. He sighed and continued attacking.

"I may be doing this girl a disservice helping her like this. She'll never improve at this rate."

He left the leg he was attacking with a little over ten percent of its HP and jogged over to her. He rolled in front of her to get her attention and when she looked at him, he took his weapon in both hands and started attacking the same leg she was and doing much more damage. She slapped her forehead and again mouthed "sorry" to him. She must've been nervous or something. She equipped her sword in both hands and began a series of heavy slashes. Her damage output had outstripped Sam's own by about forty points a strike. That could only mean that she had upgraded her weapon at Barrington's, put a lot of points in leveling up her strength, or both. She could've also found some type of ring that upped her power, but Sam wasn't too sure about that. Together they crushed the left front leg and moved to the one at the rear. Sam had already weakened all of the Will's limbs so crushing each leg wasn't hard. Once they finally got it to the ground, Sam signaled for CrushKills to pull her shield out by pulling and lifting his own. She complied and Sam ran forward to attack the snakelike body of the beast. It took much longer to whittle the beast's HP down since they were lacking the damage output that Sam and the king possessed together. Sam was able to see some attacks that he hadn't seen the last time including a belly flop that nearly crushed and killed CrushKills.

If there had to be one thing Ms. CrushKills was good at, it had to be blocking. Her timing with blocking was actually on par with Sam's own, and her tower shield had made it even easier for her. She knew when to reserve her stamina and her dodging had improved a little since the beginning of the fight. Now that the battle was winding down, all of it was put to the test. Much to Sam's chagrin, the Will was much more interested in attacking CrushKills than it was him. Since he was the one that was summoned, CrushKills would have more to lose by dying here. He took advantage by getting in a ton of damage with heavy attacks and several Skyward Thrusts. Once the Will's HP was down to critical levels, it wrapped its body around CrushKills and initiated the same attack sequence that it had trapped Sam in before. Sam was struck outside the ouroburos that was its body. He quickly equipped his bow and took several shots at the creature's plant looking head, with only a few of his arrows landing. It was enough to stop that particular head from attacking and all CrushKills had to do was block or dodge the lizard-like head. He could see her health bar through the Will's massive body and it hadn't decrease yet, so she was at least doing well with her blocking. His arrows weren't doing much damage so he would need her to actually start damaging the creature if they were going to win this anytime soon. He saw the lizard head go down for a really fast attack and saw CrushKills health go down by a small margin. The entire red health bar was moving forward though so she didn't seem to be knocked back. Maybe it had only clipped her. His questions were answered seconds later when she unloaded some nice damage and finally finished the creature a minute later.