Collide Gamer

Chapter 217 – Multi-Quests and Grinding

Chapter 217 – Multi-Quests and Grinding

The last tablet was fizzing out as John got a pop-up.

Oh hey, that was kind of good. Being able to get multiple Quests was pretty useful now. Come to think of it, how many Quests had potentially been blocked out thanks to that ‘Clear 10 Floors’ thing he had had going on a while ago?

‘Ah, whatever, no use crying over spilled milk,’ he thought, dismissing the hypothetical before it could start to haunt him. What was great here was the rewards, and with great, he meant stupendously great. The experience alone was incredible. Accepted.

Now to…

…read through this one. Okay.

15 Categories he could… exactly clear without touching the new kinds of fights. Time was a bit of a bigger constraint here. Monsters of one category should be pretty easy, if he went for something with a lot of big groups of small guys. Tier 14 boss wasn’t impossible but really hard. No, wait, actually that was fairly easy. He had his secret weapon, he could only use that once in a fight, but he only needed to kill one boss. Better make sure he aimed correctly. Hours without sex… that would be the rest of the day. That clashed with his modern lifestyle, which was a wonderful thing to contemplate, but it was easily doable.

Probably. It was just 8 hours.

‘Ah, fuck it!’ John thought and accepted. It was only until about midnight; how bad could it be? Much better questions: How great would the rewards have to be? Personally, John hoped for some points he could distribute on his Skills. He wanted to max out Possession and, much more importantly, raise Artificial Spirit up. Momo getting a few more abilities would likely prove vital in the upcoming tournament.

The laughter finally ceded in the background as Undine’s insides finally went back to just being blue. “Nooooohhh,” Sylph lamented as she found no more tablets to tickle her sister with, “John, Johnny Cash, Money Johnnie, Money Money, let’s go, go, drai-go get grapes and more tablets!”

“Nope, we have to do some grinding now,” John told her.

“Whaaaa?” Sylph flew over. “No touchy times first? I wanted to fuck!”

“Yeah, no, I REALLY need to get grinding. Also, I have a quest that tells me to stay abstinent for 8 hours,” John informed her. They finally left the room and went towards the gate in the garden.

It stood as empty as before, just a black arch standing seemingly without purpose between two patches of grass. John marched right through. He reappeared inside a seemingly random house on the outskirts of actual Rome. It was shabby, the kind that had stood empty for a few years but was owned by some rich family that just refused to sell or do anything with it for whatever reason.

John turned to see the door he just came from. It was a closed metal door, it appeared to belong to an industrial building rather than this rundown shack. Interested, John pulled it open. Behind it were just piles of rubble in a room with a smashed window. He stepped through and nothing happened.

He closed the door and, following an obvious idea, put the key to the mansion into the door before pulling it open. The view was the same. Stepping through brought him back to the mansion this time, however. Of course, he had pulled the key off the door first. He wouldn’t want to leave that behind for some random kid to stumble in here and ruin everything.

That little experiment concluded, John went back into reality and checked his monster table.

‘Right, so I want to concentrate on one or two of the Quest goals, to make sure I fulfil at least something,’ John thought and looked at the three that were available. The ‘categories beaten’ and ‘monsters of one category slain’ goals did not harmonize whatsoever. He was somewhat confident that he could do one after the other, but it was best to set his sights on one goal that was surely obtainable.

‘Mhm, beating a Tier 14 boss should be relatively easy,’ John thought to himself; ‘And if I go for the monsters slain, that way I will get to try the same boss several times anyhow. That means I can try to do it without the glove a few times.’

“How about you just ask Thana for help?” Momo suggested.

True enough, with the help of Thana that quest would probably be a laughing matter. John had considered it for that same reason.

“I could,” John answered, “but…” pulling out a piece of paper, he handed it over to Momo, who read it.

“Taking Thana to the local hospital to get the whole ‘do-not-get-pregnant’ magic stuff done to her, signed, ya girlfriend…” she read out loud. John had randomly found that while leaving. Seriously, it was tucked away between the keys, he could have missed it quite easily. Either his girlfriend was dangerously whimsical or she lived in his head and knew exactly where he would pass by. Either was likely.

“When we try the new categories tomorrow, I will ask everyone to come with,” John announced. “New endeavours are best tackled as a group, but this is just the same old dungeon running. Doing this without the optimal setup won’t lose us too much. Anyhow, enough time wasted, let’s just start from the top and fish for some dungeon where the enemy density is good.”

They started therefore, alphabetically, with the Alchemic Creatures dungeon. While interesting to look at, an underground laboratory with glass tubes steadily pumping fluorescent liquids through the vast, clinical looking science complex, the enemies there were not what they were searching for. They were plain grey-skinned humans. Naked, without any sexual traits and no mouth, face or ears, only a pair of empty black eyes.

Called Lesser Homunculus, these enemies stalked around in groups of one or two, not attacking unless attacked themselves or if they were approached too closely. Their physical prowess was slightly worrying, but nothing Aclysia or Gnome couldn’t deal with, especially as they were dealing with enemies roughly 7 levels below them.

The boss, a Homunculus’ upper body stuck and bolted to some kind of machinery that gave him control over several contraptions inside the boss room, was also quickly dealt with. Not quick enough for the Quest, but within 15 minutes or so.

Skipping Angels, who John already knew were no good for this endeavour, they went over to Aquatic. As always, water levels SUCKED. They started at the edge of a giant lake, with nowhere to go but into it. Sure, the water was so beautifully clean that it made the one that came out of one’s tap look like mud, and acceptably warm to boot, but that didn’t make wandering through it a nicer experience.

There were two kinds of enemies here. There was the Coral of Bubbles, a plant that grew in regular intervals along the lakebed. This one was pretty easy to beat and spawned a bubble they could breathe and stand in once they did. The other one was some kind of carnivorous fish that attacked in swarms of about 6, which there were a lot of.

While that did make them a prime contender for the Quest goal, it was a pain in the ass to kill them. Fighting them in the water was annoying because of several reasons. Salamander couldn’t be used, for obvious reasons, Gnome was too heavy to get off the lake’s floor (same for Aclysia and Momo), Sylph had the opposite problem where she was constantly fighting against the fact that she was getting pulled up because of how light her body was and John had to fucking breathe.

There was another strategy that worked quite well. They attracted the attention of one or two swarms before making their way over to one of the corals, popping it and then killing the fish that were now helplessly stuck inside the air bubble.

The boss, a giant jellyfish, was just a really annoying tank and spank with lots of HP and slow attacks. The biggest threat in the fight was John’s lung capacity. He vowed to never set foot into an Aquatic I.D. again before he didn’t get a way to breathe underwater. Also, maybe a combat evolution for Undine, as a mending elemental she wasn’t nearly as useful inside her element as one would think. Sure, she created distortion with some minor streams that threw attackers off, but generally her attacking capabilities were really, really bad. Her fizzle-tickle induced good mood was gone once they left that dungeon.

Avian was less horrible but still far from fun. They climbed a spiralling path at the side of a mountain while being periodically assaulted by women with wings instead of arms and sharp talons as their feet – or harpies as they were more commonly known. They did have nice tits but ugly faces, so John had little remorse as he shot them in the sky with Mana Ray while Sylph and Salamander argued over who had killed more of them. At the top of the spire there was a giant bald eagle they had to kill. His American heart bleeding, John did.

And next on the list was…

“Ah, good old City Elementals,” John said as he opened the dungeon and was NOT transported into another landscape for a change. Instead, the dungeon simply took the overlay of the existing city and put itself on top. There were probably some changes, but John didn’t really notice.

He left the shabby house and found himself in a wonderfully booming neighbourhood. There were flashing signs everywhere, depicting the outlines of a woman raising a leg, pictures of women in sexy-bunny outfits, videos of women dancing around a metal pole.

Never mind, John totally noticed the changes. “Okay, so we are in a red light district now,” he said, looking through the sign-lit night streets. The Aquatic dungeon had taken a long ass time. Thinking about it, the lake had been surprisingly well lit.

“I wonder what kinds of enemies they have here,” he drily stated as he waited for the first wave to assault them. Looking at the area… it was going to have tits, that much was for certain. Which was semi-bad because getting horny right now would have made moving about a pain. He wasn’t afraid of losing control, his Wisdom was too high for that, but jumping around with an erection? Unpleasant.

A movement inside the entrance of a nearby building caught John’s eye. He threw an Observe before anything else.

‘That’s a lot of loot,’ John thought as he read through the sheet, ‘and almost all of it is underwear.’

Then the storm broke. Sexy women poured onto the streets like he was the richest man at a Victoria’s Secret party. They besieged John from all sides and would probably have drowned him in a sea of tits and ass if it weren’t for Mana Protection.

“Hey, you strapping young lad,” one of them purred, pushing her chest together and seductively licking her lips. The pink, glossy things seemed to be made for dick-sucking, and John had to muster some willpower to ignore the call of his erection. ‘Thank god that I focused on Wisdom this much,’ John thought as the never-ending tide of willing pussy kept coming.

Same could not be said about Aclysia though, who was effectively lust-stunned. Sure, she maintained (barely) enough self-control to not engage in immediate eroticisms, but she also didn’t raise Ashkandi to stab them in the meaty bits.

“Hey, want to hire a courtesan? I am cheap, just a load of your semen and I am yours for the evening,” another girl, a redhead, sighed.

“No-no-no-no-no-no,” Sylph announced and electrocuted that one with a swift attack, “I am John’s courtesan! My title, bad horny, young woman! Bad!”

“I thought you were John’s concubine?” Salamander asked in a dry tone as she set a blonde on fire.

“I can be both! No problem! I can be concubine and courtesan, because those are cool words, and I want to be called cool words!”

“How about whore then?” Salamander suggested. “Silly Sally, that isn’t a cool word, I also don’t sleep with Johns who aren’t John John. Silly Sally.”

“I swear to all of the fire in this plane that you are insufferable,” the fire spirit sighed as the aggressive duo went to clear John’s direct perimeter.

“G-g-g-get off me!” Gnome shouted and scattered a pile of women through the air as she broke out from under them. The stone elemental had been similarly besieged, it seemed. Momo wasn’t being attacked at all, she just looked at the whole scene with judgemental eyes.

“Sister, I must say I am slightly disappointed in you right now,” the support announced as she watched Aclysia continue to struggle with her nymphomania. “Then again, this is all your fault, John! What the hell were you thinking, increasing her Libido to such levels when she gets a 140% increase!”

“I was curious and she agreed!” John defended himself as one of his Mana Blades cut through a group of assailants. He adjusted his pants afterwards. “Can we postpone the judgements until after we have dealt with this?!” The situation, as ridiculous as it was, was pretty bad. The stream of women was seemingly endless, and John’s mana wouldn’t support him forever. A quarter of it had been missing before they had even entered.

Normally, he would have just waited for his mana to regenerate in-between dungeons. With the Quest giving him a timer, however, he had decided to toss caution aside for once, and it had worked out, without great problems, until now.

It would have worked out even longer if this wasn’t essentially a swarm encounter, and he wasn’t all that great with those. Arcane Explosion was a good tool here in theory, but what he really needed was to get this over with quickly and Arcane Explosion needed several casts to really deal with these masses. He looked at his glove for a moment, there was his trump card if this all came crashing down on him.

‘Better exhaust all other lifelines before I pull that, recharging it is a pain,’ John thought. “Momo, how much Mana do you still have?” he asked the supporter, who was busy trying to drag two women off the still stunned Aclysia. “About 500, if you are going to do it, do it fast!”

‘Everyone, duck!’ John warned his group as he dumped a total of 1500 mana into Mana Blade. The result was an about 3 and a half metres long arcane edge that originated from his right hand. Without grace he spun around, screaming “Demacia!” for full effect. Everyone in his group who would have been in range fell to the ground just in time.

It was very effective. Not only did he instantly kill everything that was inside that radius by cutting them in half, but he gained all 4 stacks of Whisper of Mana from it. The passive increased his MP recovery by 100% for a minute for each enemy killed with an Arcane skill and it kicked his regeneration up to almost 16 per second.

Sure, he was at 0 mana right now, but he would be back to a sizable amount within the minute thanks to the passive. ‘Definitely the best choice there, although I still cry a bit after Overload,’ John thought. Sure, Mana Blade was extremely effective at being a finisher, scaling both in size and damage with mana. The amount it devoured made it unsuitable for anything but an AoE finisher though, he would have liked it if he could have gotten Mana Ray and Arcane Explosion a similar treatment to be more adaptable to a broader range of situations.

Anyhow, with most of the wave taken care of and the sparrow above unable to spy more enemies coming towards them, it now was clean-up time. “Sorry, not sorry,” John said, punching one of the assailants in the face with his clawed gauntlet and sending her flying into a nearby building. A rush of power went through him as the body crashed through the glass door.

He clenched his left hand a few times and smirked. “I just love the things this thing does,” he said and set after the enemy. He wasn’t nearly strong enough to kill an enemy in one punch, especially with the group balance active. Although said group balance seemed to have come down in pure numbers this time around.

Just meant the clean-up would take longer.