Rorik nodded to the female who had approached him and remarked with a question of space for players. He nodded as she joined their line and then followed along. The passing time and anticipation settled in for it's last moments as everyone finally drew in there last breath before the reckoning of the battle.

The ground began to quake, the walls shifted, stones fell from their places, the lake began to shiver, and the whole courtyard was now becoming unsettled as the floor shook loose and the foundation itself was rattling at the force of an unknown presence. The lake began to shiver greatly, creating miniature waves that strode across the reflecting surface before gliding over the stones of the floor. The air thickened with a sense of danger, distress, and anxiety. Fear rattled the minds of many players while the force of the incoming boss rattled the room. The lake erupted into a fountain of muck and green water that showered over the horde of players as the Boss grew closer. The water now misted through the air as the fountain effect shifted and the lake settled with a large, shadowed, drenched figure sitting in the center. The hulking figure was slowly emerging from the shadows as the thick, misting water settled the Boss' image became clear to the whole raid party and there stood death.

Muriel's muck-stained, red shell began to become visible as and her massive figure caste itself over the party. Her large beast body was tucked tight and her womanly torso was held high. He arms outstretched over her pole-arm as she whirled it around her oddly feminine torso and then stomped one of the ends in the stone floor and then raised her large beast claw up and snapped it quickly several times while her little arm whipped around and her legs spread out and stretched, lifting her body to it's full height. She stood two stories tall at her average height and her body was built entirely of muscle and shell. Her glowing eyes peered through the dark, open courtyard, but they flashed a moment and then a deep, dense fog began to flood the Courtyard, making visibility diminish greatly. Her voice was a very melodic, soothing, sound, but it was also giving off a sense of evil nature, like the death alluring song of a mermaid or siren.

"Come to me my players, and bask in the glory of your death. You shall taste nothing more then the water's of my home, and your final resting place." Her voice let off with a whispering end and her lips curled into a seductive chuckle that let the world know, she was ready for the fight.

Jason's focus on the lake broke somewhat as the entire arena sprung into life. The floor shook, walls crumbled and a couple of players began to panic somewhat, upsetting Jason's original analysis of the situation with changing circumstances. Jason's head turned rapidly side to side on his shoulders as he sought their foe and he moved back to back with Lucy both to protect her and himself. To Jason the move felt cheesy, like a bad movie cliche even in combat, nonetheless it was a valid tactical manoeuvre. Shield and dagger poised Jason awaited the shock that was sure to come.

Muriel, when she appeared, was jaw dropping on many many levels. The first was her awe inspiring hp line. Without some serious teamwork it was going to take an age to kill this thing! Second was her appearance. The queen was sinister looking, reminding jason of an arachnid upon first glance, and yet eerily seductive too. For a moment following her arrival Jason was lost in her voice as she spoke and his eyes traced the contours of her feminine humanoid torso. Jason shook his head, disgusted at his momentary attraction to this monster. She was a beast that would kill them in a moment given the chance and had to be slain.

Jason adjusted his combat stance to face the beast with disgust, determination and total loathing on plain in his character. He had lost friends to boss monsters before and wasn't about to again if he could help it. In spite of his rage Jason remained coldly tactical. Rushing forth wouldn't help now. His stats weren't geared for tanking as opposed to dps and damage evasion. Diving headfirst into combat now would earn him excessive aggro and make life harder or non-existent for him later on. Jason very much doubted he could take a direct hit from the boss and have favourable hp left afterwards. He would hang back for now and let tanking characters do their job.

Hatsu kept his eyes peeled the moment they entered the dark and desolate room. The floor beneath them began to shake, startling many of the new players. Hatsu remained calm, knowing that panicking in such situations could be fatal. He looked around the room, wondering what the boss could be. A massive spider? Or centipede? Then, while looking around, she emerged. A giant fountain of muck spewed from the lake, covering the surrounding areas in this muk. Hmm, that could be a trap Hatsu would try to not forgot about the muck, until the massive figure approached the crowd. His eyes widened, somewhat put off by her appearance. Her voice. Her voice was calling him to her, to walk mindlessly into death. Hatsu shook his head, releasing himself from the grasp of her alluring voice. "This isn't good, she's trying to get into our heads" He said to himself, gripping his hilt even tighter.

Fog surrounded the players, blocking their sight and shrouding herself in the shadows. It was a good tactic for such a massive beast. Hatsu waited in silence, wondering who the first player would be. Everybody was neglectant to, aware of how dangerous it would be. His eyes continued to scan the room, until he heard a very familiar voice speak. "If death welcomes me... Then it will welcome you as well." Hatsu leaped over the large crowd, quickly landing in the front. His eyes widened, seeing Arinda running head first into the fog. There was no moment to speak, to call her back or to ask for help. Rather, it was the time for actions. Hatsu quickly ran after her, matching her every step and in a way becoming her shadow. He was ready to strike and protect her at all costs. Hatsu had activated his meditation skill, no longer allowing any more tricks to fool him. He was on the top of his game, listening for any noises that could give him any hints to where Muriel was at.

A wall of players rushed forward into the fog as Muriel arrived, every man woman and child raised their arms in combat and began their push. Many did stay back though, whether out of fear or tactic, with a sense of anticipation for the first wave of players to meet Muriel. Arinda and Hatsu led the charge a decent distance ahead of the horde, but to a lack of heavy support it would be nearly useless. Muriel emerged from the thick of the fog before Arinda and Hatsu, smashing her massive claw to the ground like a chitin wall, while her feminine figure spun the trident around her upper center and then cast one of the trident heads downwards at the pair, leaving the other end standing tall and upright in the air like a signaling flag, while her smaller claw whipped forward at a small group of players that had caught up to the halted pair. The heavier units threw up a defense against the smaller arm, but it still whipped with enough force to send one of the lighter shield units flying back several feet, and was then left bracing against the arm and trying to push back on it while Muriel used it to distract that small group. She lifted her double-headed trident once more and began unleashing a flurry of pool stick-like pot-shots at the horde of players around. Several of these shots killed the lighter players in a single strike, and several of these shots were met with heavy armor or heavy shields. She began to focus her trident strikes on the more easily dispatched lighter players, while occupying the heavier units with her massive claw, which she began to use like a massive tank, by sliding it back and forth to push the horde back and away from her position. Her body reared up as the horde began to enclose around her and her legs lashed out with heavy stomps as her body fell back down, and a good fraction of the raid party fell as well. The massive amount of damage she was able to deal with wide attacks, heavy hits, and sweeping tactics caused some of the raid party to run in sheer terror of a frontal assault and maneuvered around behind her. Once there they began to jump onto her back and attempt to strike at her more humanoid-half. This was a general failure though, because the moment any of them jumped onto her back she would began to cycle her trident around her figure and either kill the players, or at least fling them off of her once more. Everything seemed faulty, frontal assault, attack from behind, flanking, it all seemed useless, but even with her attacks several smaller groups were able to get hits in as she would be preparing to start another attack. That was her biggest weakness, her moves could decimate the grand majority of the payers in single hit without a good defense to stop them, but her moves were slow to initiate and left small windows open between each strike or movement.

Rorik had launched himself just to the side of Arinda and Hatsu, his body beside their, but his shield before them taking the initial strike Muriel had cast at them. The massive trident slid off of Rorik's defense and into the ground and then he slid himself in front of them with his shield ready, while he raised his hammer over his head and then dropped it on the wall of a claw she had dropped before them. His hammer impacted thick shell and then bounced off leaving little more then a skid mark in it's place. He gritted his teeth and braced his body, while a few other heavy units joined him and prepared their shields for her enlarged appendage. They stood stalwart as she raised her body up into the air and flailed out with her legs, one of which connected with Rorik and caused his foot-hold to slide back a short distance, but he quickly stepped forward and back up to the line where he unleashed another hammer strike at her settling leg, which collided with the curled joint and created a small burst of red light to flash and remain radiant on her form. He then quickly braced again as her trident shots had made their way from one side of the horde to the other, and then began to go back once more. None of the shots were ever aimed at Rorik, but they did hit and kill a few players at his side, which thinned the shield wall occupying the large claw.

Jason stood back, his eyes flicking from one spot in the battle to another as he tried to absorb as much information as he could about his enemy. He snorted in anger for a moment as he watched the first among his comrades fall feeling more than a twinge of guilt along with the anger for not being in there fighting alongside them. It just went to prove he had been right not to run in straight away though. The other players as light as (and some slightly tougher than) him had been wiped out in single hits in a barage of blows that would be very hard to evade. An ill devised attack would be worse than no attack at all for someone as fragile as Jason. Eventually, after the first few bouts of attacks between the players and Muriel, during which one after another of Jasons ideas was shown to be difficult or impossible, he began to notice the pattern.

"Look, just then." He said pointing at muriel at the relevant moment. "Most of the time she is launching flurries of area effect attacks that make it insanely dangerous to be near but just then she stopped. She's done it a couple of times now. If we can predict those moments we should be able to attack safely hit and run style. We need heavy players to keep her still so she can't use rush attacks but with the right timing everyone can overwhelm her."

With this confirmed in his head Jason paced forwards ready to leap into action the moment she provided an opportunity. "If we can deal with that massive claw we can get much closer in theory." He added.

Lucy was silent as she took in everything about the room. Despite her accent, she had been going to school for programming, and while it wasn’t especially useful in real world situations, it was very useful here. For her, it was easy to see things in a coded way. It allowed her to predict what would happen easier. Her eyes moved around, looking for somewhere to hide a boss, somewhere it would be easy to code its arrival. The lake. It was the only thing she could see that would be simple enough.

Just as she thought this, everything started to shake, and Lucy just tried her best not to fall on the boy beside her. It was as she had predicted: The boss had indeed come from the lake. Though, Lucy thought her entrance had been overplayed. Then again, this whole game was meant to kill them. So, she supposed it made sense in a way. She forgot this when the beast spoke. Her voice so beautiful, alluring that she found herself wanting to step forward to her death. Death. Thinking about death again, snapped her out of it which was great because now players were running forward.

Wait! she wanted to scream after them, but it wouldn’t matter. Those players were reckless and thought themselves invincible. That or they didn’t believe that you would die in real life if you died here. Sure, there wasn’t exactly any proof, but Lucy always thought it was better to be safe than well… dead. So instead, she cringed as she watched the players get hit, many lighter armored characters dying in one shot.

When the boy next to her spoke again, she looked to him looking for anything to distract herself from the death of those players. “I saw it, but I ain’t quick. Although..” at this point, she picked up her sword in both hands and held it over her shoulder, “I ain’t squishy like you. Hard to believe, lookin at the armor, I know.” Lucy gave him a grin and a wink, as she joked about the skimpy outfits games gave females. “Alright. It’ll help if we can find someone with a shield, but I can take a couple hits if you stay behind me!”

Lucy's reference to her skimpy outfit was not lost on Jason and prompted him to look her over again. Damn her body was exposed but boy did Lucy look hot in the minimalist garments she was wearing. Despite the appearance of Lucy's armour it probably conformed to rpg conventions and provided protection comparable to more conservative male clothing Jason figured before snapping his mind back to more relevant matters.

"The armour looks good on you." Jason jibed unable to resist the tease and infected by Lucy's seemingly lighthearted approach to combat. "That seems like a plan to me. If you need healing just yell and I'll throw a crystal your way. If I spot an opportunity I'll call switch and get my "squishy" ass by you to deal some more "sophisticated" damage. You can do the same if you need or want to switch anytime. Here's hoping we find a shield user willing to play along too." Jason said running out of breath from a rapidly spoken monologue.

Muriel's onslaught was relentless, and all those who were uncoordinated or with a shield user were practically easy targets. People began to scream out in anger, fear, desperation, and sorrow as friends and family fell to their deaths, but they stilled seemed to tighten their lines and filled the seams with tanks. The crowd became a wall, and the wall was mounted with men and women willing to throw their lives at this monster. This monster, a terrible being, a conduit of destruction, a beacon of evil, but it wasn't Muriel. The real monster was the game, and Kayaba. The creator of this death game was the real monster, and everyone knew it, they fought Muriel for their lives, and for the chance of seeing themselves alive long enough to discover who did this to them. The crowd illuminated in a series of long, red marking that spanned from player to player, this was due to Muriel's trident. She had been whipping it at them for minutes now, and eventually she did as she intended.When the crowd had tightened up, she had grown happy and began attacking over the shield users with her trident. She was now pushing back on the men and women, forcing them back until the center was cleared and the players were all pushed against the western wall.

She let out a maniacal laugh as he raised her trident again and then spun it around her torso before taking more pot shots, but to no avail. The shield users put their best foot forward and protected all those behind them with their wall of metal separating Muriel from the other players. She raised it once more to go over their heads, but Rorik and another slipped back into the crowd and began to raise their shield up into the air to catch the trident before it could harm anyone else. This height advantage of her's was a problem, but one that could be worked around. Rorik yelled out to the crowd, alongside a few other shield users who had come to the same conclusion.

"Raise your shields, and follow her trident, she will not take anymore lives!" Rorik hollered to the wall of men and women. Several heeded his call and broke from the wall, which quickly closed in again, and began to stand in the crowd to have their shields ready for Muriel's trident. Rorik then took a moment to try and think, and while doing so he raised his shield to catch another shot from Muriel's trident, which was barely the case. The trident grazed off the side of his shield and was retracted while a young woman screamed out in fear behind him, he had saved her, but she was so paralyzed by fear. He turned to her, and looked upon her face, to see tears streaming and her voice barely crackling in sorrow filled whispers. His mind was drawn to her, she appeared to him as a sign, the true sign. The ideal of her, a midst the battle, was more then just a fight for their life. This was a war, a true war of the modern era. It was mankind versus technology, and the madmen behind it. He whipped his head around to a series of screams, only to see her massive claw dropping down on a few of the shield users in the front, with a killing weight. Rorik lunged forward and used all of his might to brace his shield against the massive claw, as she began to try and push the crowd with it, and a few others took to his side. The group of shieldmen were slowly being slid back, but then they pushed forward themselves and the claw halted in it's place. Rorik yelled out once more to get the attention of a very select few people, while moving away from the beast.

"Those who stood stalwart with me at the door, I need your sword arms once more!" He shouted as he passed through the group and out of the right side, placing himself just at the corner of the room, where the western wall and the southern wall meet.