Getting the maximum amount of information out of the Raid before engaging in any further activity was what John insisted on. Standard game design philosophy told him that this Raid would have three bosses of roughly equal power. Otherwise, presenting him with three branching paths from the start would have made little sense.

Salamander, Sylph and Jack were sent to explore the plateaus, while the rest of the party trotted down one valley path after the other. Each was several kilometres long. In an effort to not waste too much time, they jogged most of the way. As a bunch of superhumans or otherwise extremely capable entities, jogging for them put them at over fifty kilometres an hour. Because of the texture of the floor, being wavy and craggy, and the amount of backtracking they had to do, exploring each of the three valleys still took them about two hours.

The first discovery he made was that the three plateaus were all part of the same extended landscape. Stretching out towards the borders of the Raid, there was nothing but rock. This meant that, contrary to John’s initial impression, the plateaus were not an elevation, but the chasms depressions. Effectively, this made no difference and John wasn’t overly irked about being wrong about this. Given the spawn location, it was all too easy to make that mistake.

As for the content of the chasms, the Gamer’s instincts had been exactly right. At the end of each of the three paths was a ‘boss room’. None of them actually qualified as a room, but gaming jargon had him use that term anyway.

To the north was a giant lake. At least a dozen kilometres across and sparkling under the sun, it would have likely been a beautiful and very tranquil sight. The only issue with that was the steady waves caused by the gargantuan turtle in it.

Following good old cliché design, the turtle had an island on its back. The many shades of lively green were a nice change after the endless grey stone everywhere. Then again, the same grey covered seven spires on the turtle’s back. Six were curved and equally spaced out over the rim. The seventh was at the centre and grew straight upwards, like an obelisk. Each spire had a dark blue, crystal core and was covered with stone plates.

The turtle had an uncharacteristically long neck, making it seem like a snake was reaching out of its shell. Also odd was that the neck wasn’t one continuous thing, but rather seven segments of stone that hovered in the air, connected through magic. The thick head of the thing looked vicious. On normal turtles, that jaw could have crushed watermelons, on that thing, John almost felt as if its diet had to be mountains.

Large as it was, the Titanturtle made the lake feel less like something that almost qualified as an in-land sea and more like a small terrarium. The scale was quite absurd. John wasn’t even sure how they should start fighting that thing. He had an idea that the seven spires and seven head segments had to be connected somehow, but only trial and error would reveal that.

They turned around when the boss gave a warning shout that caused the walls of the valley to tremble. “Finally, some proper bass,” Rave had joked at the time. It had been a nice laugh while they went back to the centre.

Next, they went east. Before they arrived at their target, the flying members of their party hit some major complications. Both Sylph and Jack independently discovered a group of five Sicklemen in the north and south eastern corners of the map. They immediately retreated from those clusters upon spotting them, but they didn’t seem to care or follow. Either they were just there for flavour or they had a purpose John couldn’t decipher yet. Whatever it was, they avoided them for the moment.

At the end of the eastern valley, they found a large cave. Perhaps hole in the ground would have been more accurate. Either way, John just had to stare into the darkness for a little bit to make out the shape of the second boss. A large creature that was similar to the Sicklemen in many aspects, but different in others. Rather than four arms and two legs, it seemed to have eight limbs that could serve as either. It was also twice the size and had an attached abdomen. John really didn’t like looking at it.

“If that thing can also sink into the shadows, that arena is going to be our worst enemy,” John thought out loud, while they retreated to check out the last boss.

Tracking all the way to the southwest, they soon spied some sort of tower in the distance. White with red-tiled roofs, it seemed like the home of some sort of magus. For a moment, John wondered if they would face some kind of proper humanoid. Then their approach caused the spawning animation of the boss to activate.

The sky was darkened by suddenly appearing clouds. Lighting crackled in the sea of black above. A thunderous roar followed the blinding impact of a single strike of electricity into the top of the tower. A crackling caw followed, as white and blue lightning rushed out of every window and arch the tower had to offer, all coalescing into the shape of a large raven that beat its mighty wings, circling the tower.

Not engaging with this boss either, the group then left the Raid for the moment to have a strategy meeting in the comfort of their temporary home. John visualized a map of the area as he thought about things.

“Any thoughts so far?” he asked around the table.

“If you are able to acquire a Worldturtle Hatchling through your ludicrous loottable, I will act the part of a proper sex slave for a week if you give it to Germaniae Rex under the pretence of a diplomatic gift,” Lydia declared and looked John in the eyes to underline that she meant every word of it.

“Define proper sex slave for me,” John requested with a raised eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure we already have sex in all the way I wa-“

“Public impregnation.”

“…You make an excellent point,” the Gamer conceded and leaned back with a thoughtful expression. Through sheer force of will, he suppressed his imagination and prevented his dick from rising up. Having his lustful mind siphon blood from his proper brain at this moment could have been quite detrimental. “Although I am not quite sure I want to publicly impregnate you. Something that intimate feels like it should stay in the bedroom.”

“It is your decision. Several other things are possible within that time frame, all of which I would give my consent for. I trust you to do things that will merely cause international scandals,” she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip, “such as writing ‘anal queen’ on my stomach and claiming me before a crowd of envious onlookers.”

“Are ya sure ya don’t want this yourself?” Rave chimed in. The exhibitionist leader of the harem was squirming in her chair, even more turned on at the mention of these things than her boyfriend was.

“It doesn’t particularly tickle my fancy, no, but neither do I mind it in principle,” Lydia responded in her usual regal tone. “Hounding journalists are what keeps me from agreeing to such actions under normal circumstances. I don’t carry any shame for my relationship with our beloved, in all of its facets, caring, saddening and ecstatic, as you all well know and experience on your own.” She glanced over to Aclysia and the weaponized maid poured new tea into the cup the queen was holding. “On the promise of a Worldturtle, I will be able to stomach the harassment of the paparazzi and I am certain I can smooth over the disgruntlement of the great nobles on acquisition of this gift. In return, John gets to live out whatever he wants to do with my body.”

Not a great number of things came to mind that John wanted to do that he couldn’t do normally. However, the few things there were all made his male instincts shake his reason. “You wouldn’t also happen to promise me that you would only be there for me during that week, would you?” John tried to find things to fend his perversion off with.

“I would ignore Romulus himself during that time frame…” Lydia stated and moved in for the finishing blow. Her perfect red lips, glistening still from the hot tea, curved into a soft smile as they formed a single word, “…Master.”

“I…” John began suddenly, barely managing to stop himself and taking a slow breath. “…will… consider it.”

“Congrats,” Salamander threw into the room. “You didn’t immediately cave to the promise of sex.”

Siena giggled, her sensual voice almost finishing off John’s resolve. “Always amusing how easily manipulated you are by that still. Given how easily you come to it, one would guess you would be satiated.”

“Look, if it was any normal women offering that, I would be pretty clear headed about it,” John retorted and gestured wildly over the room. “But have you LOOKED at any of you? This is probably the highest concentration of quality women in history.”

“That is accurate enough,” Siena hummed.

“Back to the topic at hand,” John put an end to this tangent. “Whether or not the egg drops will be a pure RNG thing. I’m more interested in what that special condition is. My guess is that it does have something to do with the Ravenstorm or lightning in general, given the name of the special item.”

“Any way to confirm that?” Rave asked.

“Nothing but trial and error,” John rolled his neck. “You’re about to experience the wonderful thing that is ‘dying to the raid boss over and over again to get a good grip on his mechanics’.”

“Not really looking forward to that,” his girlfriend sighed. “Knowing that ya lost is super unpleasant. ‘Specially if ya ‘die’ to giant spider fangs coming for your skull.”

“You get used to it for Raid bosses,” John shrugged off. “Death is a core mechanic. You played Dark Souls, you know how it goes.”

“Guess so. So, we fighting the turtle first?”

“Depends on how we approach this,” the Gamer raised both his hand in a weighing gesture. “We only have nine more days, so I am not sure I want to spend all this time experimenting for an item that I might do nothing with. Just because it’s Legendary doesn’t mean that it’s useful for any of us.”

“Ya can always make money off it,” his girlfriend pointed out.

“Uhm,” Gnome raised her voice. “Don’t think it would be too wise to put super powerful items on the open market…”

Nodding, Scarlett picked up what the shy elemental was saying. “As much as I love money, your loot is approaching the point where it’s better for our national security to lock it away in some vault.”

John also found himself in agreement. “Better to keep it around for the day we might use it or give it to our allies,” he explained to those of his girls not yet understanding what they were getting at. “If I just sell items, particularly weapons, that are absurdly powerful, that might cause problems. Granted, most of the more powerful weapons can’t be wielded by just anyone, but there is no reason to put them into the hands of people I wouldn’t approve of.”

“Right, so we’ll just throw them into the Guild Bank?” Rave asked.

The Gamer stroked his chin and hummed, “I’m thinking of building some high security facility to display them.”

“Why would that be the chosen approach?” Lydia wanted to know. “However unlikely, you create a chance of having these valuables stolen. The Guild Bank ensures that there is no way for this to happen.”

“Why have all of that shiny stuff if I don’t show it off?” John responded with a question.

“You are being guided by your pride.”

“He has a point, however,” Siena chimed in.

Warningly, a crocodile hatchling squeaked from his aquarium in the corner.

“Splendour does have its value,” John defended his position. “Anyway, we should debate this another day.”

Honestly, John didn’t care to debate this at all. He was quite certain he would do it already. He knew it wasn’t the most logical decision he had ever made, but he really did want to show off what he got. Items just gathering dust in his inventory was all fine if it was a case of standard crafting materials. The Shiny Star of Gorgrammeth +12 deserved to be on display.

Likely sensing that he was stone-walling the issue, Lydia took the discussion back on track. “How do we deal with the Raid, then? Rather, I should ask, what is the minimum we hope to achieve within the remaining nine days?”

“I would like to beat at least one of the bosses,” John told them. “Optimally I would like to kill all of them, but I think that’s too tall a requirement. My suggestion would be that we do five test runs with each boss, check whose mechanics we feel most comfortable with and see if any of them seem as if we can beat them in the time that remains. Sounds good?” No disagreements were voiced.