Of all Nightreign‘s new and returning bosses, there’s probably none quite as reviled as the Bell Bearing Hunter. Our old friend Elemer of the Briar is at his worst when lurking beneath the Limveld castle, pairing brutal aggression with stats that can feel so overtuned that some traumatized players would rather immediately end their run than fight him. And I haven’t even mentioned his magic flying sword.
For a certain class of Elden Ring sicko, however, a challenge like Bell Bearing Hunter is an invitation to shame the rest of us for our cowardice and general incompetence. And after watching FromSoft aficionado and God’s strongest soldier Ongbal solo Elemer at level one, I’m more than happy to acknowledge the miles-wide skill gap between us.
In his standoff with Elemer, which you can watch embedded above, Ongbal played as the Executor, the parry-centric samurai whose cursed sword lets you play Nightreign like Sekiro. Given my own sordid failings against the Guardian Ape, I was already impressed watching Ongbal flawlessly deflect each of the Bell Bearing Hunter’s attacks in a way I could never hope to—but as I paid more attention to Ongbal’s inputs, I realized just how many orders of skill magnitude separate us.
You see, Ongbal hasn’t just mastered the timings to each of Elemer’s attacks. He’s also internalized exactly how many hits he’ll need to parry throughout the boss’s attack patterns, as well as how many successful deflects it’ll take to drop the boss into a stagger for a critical hit. As a result, if you watch closely, you can see that Ongbal isn’t just parrying before attacking—when he knows there’s an upcoming window to attack, he’s instead sheathing the Executor’s cursed sword and parrying using a brief deflection window during the sheathe animation.
That’s because Executor’s cursed sword doesn’t do much damage on its own, especially at level one. With those perfectly-timed sheathe deflections, he’s able to switch to his default katana instead, which has a higher attack rating and builds up crucial bleed status that’ll cash out for additional damage. Meanwhile, a single mistimed parry would mean instant death.
It’s an incredible feat of dexterity, boss knowledge, and mechanical proficiency. It almost makes me want to give Executor another spin myself. But I think we all know how that would turn out.
If you’re looking to hop back into Nightreign yourself, you’re in luck: FromSoft is currently rerunning the first three Everdark Sovereign events, so you can face any of the souped-up Nightlords you might have missed.