Collide Gamer

Chapter 286  – The Road to 100 is paved with greenskins.

Chapter 286  – The Road to 100 is paved with greenskins.

Out of his whole group, John was the one that needed the least amount of training (aside from Thana). A fact that was no excuse to sit on his bum. Reaching level 100 was beneficial for several reasons.

The most important reasons were that he would get access to another Class Level, which he would most likely put into Elementalist again, and that he would fulfil a Quest that would give him two SEP. Both Arcane Explosion and Mana Ray could use an upgrade, John found. The former because it started to fall behind on the practicality side of things (there was seldomly a reason to use it instead of his elementals or Arcana Strike), the latter because the 300-mana cost was really hard to swallow.

Mana Ray was still good, without a doubt, but the evolution should be able to provide him with something better, so was John’s logic. As a matter of fact, he would be happy if he could get his hands on either of the two previously suggested upgrades that had appeared alongside Arcana Strike.

It was the evening of the day, and John, having appeased Nathalia, was staring at the Monster Table. “What are we waiting for?” Momo asked, leaning against one of the brittle walls of the old house that was the exit point of the mansion’s portal. She regretted that decision a moment later, as the poncho that was also, practically, her skin was covered in grey dust.

“Thing is, I am level 96 now,” he explained.

“Ah,” Momo understood. Because Assault automatically updated to the current difficulty, him being level 96 meant that they would face harder opponents. To be exact, they were now on Tier 19. Which meant that they hit a new page on the spawning list.

Because Gaia had taken the liberty to rework his monster table a few weeks ago, John had been in the proverbial dark on a few things. For a start, the old core floors seemed to have been removed from Assaults.

Usually, every fifth Tier had some unique enemies and a boss that was somewhat harder than the run-of-the-mill ones that appeared between those Tiers. Previously, these core floors had signalled from where John could re-enter the I.D., but that had been changed when Gaia also buffed the content to be harder depending on group size.

The core floors still existed for everything else, Furtrue, the golem Rave had fought, was an encounter to Tier 18 for example. Which was also where everything else, including Waves (John had checked out of curiosity) had its unique encounters.

“So, it’s either that Gaia fucked up and missed designing a core floor for Assault, or the enemies will get upgraded right now,” he mumbled.

The fact that the supreme deity of the world could make such a blatant mistake was slightly discomforting. Then again, John didn’t know all that much about Gaia aside from what she looked like, that she was supremely powerful and that she was sassy. ‘I really have to wonder how she keeps all of the Abyss in line all the time if she is just one supremely powerful girl? Another automated system?’ John wondered.

Anyhow, he now had an answer to the question of whether or not the enemies would upgrade, since Gaia had just admitted that Assaults were supposed to run like normal I.D. from a structural standpoint.

“Well, I’ve had enough of cats for a while,” John mumbled and looked over his other choices. He didn’t really feel like fighting Undead, and Ogres sounded like they would ruin his established tactic of fortress building by virtue of being enormous in size. He also had had enough of burning trees, so Forest Elementals were also out. ‘City Elementals or Orcs?’ he asked himself and ultimately decided to go with Orcs. He had spent enough of his life grinding City Elementals.

So, with variety in mind, John created the Assault Dungeon (with a short run time of 10 minutes, testing the waters was important).

The Orc dungeons always had a rather simple design. The ground became a grass covered plain, an ocean of giant green waves that made it rather hard to observe the area from the depression in the hills they currently stood in. Only the occasional stone formation interrupted the monotony.

“Let’s get to a high point and see what the initial mobs are like,” John said as his elementals materialized. They were half up one of the many hills when Gnome stopped him.

‘I feel footsteps,’ she informed everyone, and her knowledge was shared throughout the mental network.

The steps came to a sudden halt just as John’s group did. The enemy had some way of knowing where they were as well and were waiting just over the edge of the hill. They would rush at whoever stuck their head out first. ‘There is an easy solution to this,’ John thought.

A moment later, the hill was split at the top; what was an even crest became a twin peak as a path appeared right through the mountain. Aclysia’s form, the dress removed in favour of her original body resembling a naked android whose skin-plating was crumbled off in a matter both enticing and censoring, darted straight forwards.

The six orcs that had been lying in ambush were completely taken aback by being assaulted themselves, and the fact that the ground beneath their feet itself had tilted and crumbled didn’t exactly help their footing.

The first one of the orcs was killed immediately when Aclysia rammed her dagger through the leather armour and into his heart. Another one, a female, got a Mana Ray straight into her face while the remaining three found themselves unable to regroup as they were bombarded by fire bolts and blades of air.

The one John had so quickly blinded was flailing around with her double-headed axe. The enormous thing was a savagely worked, singular piece of grey metal. Even aimlessly swung, it was a danger towards anyone who would have stepped into range.

The orc female was extremely ugly, which shouldn’t make the fact that he was murdering any easier on the mind, but (aside from the fact that these factually didn’t exist for any other purpose than to fight against him) he would have lied if he had said that it didn’t have some sort easing effect. Killing beautiful girls was just a shame. It couldn’t be helped if Gaia decided to send a succubus his way again, but it was harder. Just a base instinct sort of thing.

John stepped closer to the flailing orcess. ‘What are you doing?’ Momo demanded to know.

‘Running some tests,’ he answered. The flailing stopped, and the Warhog reared her head, the wings of her broad nose widening as she took a deep breath and suddenly looked directly at John, the closest person around, with her seared eyes. ‘Okay, so they were able to locate us thanks to their sense of smell,’ John noted just in time to get jumped at.

The overhead strike was not what John was looking for, and with his miserable Agility, he wouldn’t have managed to dodge even if he wanted to. The attack crashed uselessly against the pre-charged part of his Mana Protection.

He grabbed the weapon by the shaft with his Purgatory-clad hand, and the Warhog, confused as her axe had been blocked by something she couldn’t smell, tried to pull it back. She succeeded with only mild inconvenience, while he was almost pulled from his feet as the weapon escaped his grasp.

Neither on the front of Strength nor Agility, currently at 65 and 32 respectively, did he even hold a candle to the orc. Pretty much expected of the enemy, but John still had wanted to try. In the background, Aclysia and his elementals killed the rest of the group. John decided this one could be disposed of as well. The experiment had been concluded, and he would try again whenever Purgatory was fully stacked.

A few minutes, and dead orcs, later, they found themselves back in the run-down house. “Five-minute break,” John said, watching his mana tick up rather quickly thanks to the use of Whisper of Mana. The experience from that short Assault wasn’t even worth looking at. Once his mana was topped off again, they went back inside, this time for the usual 3 hours real-time version.

They went with the formerly very successful strategy of ‘Build a fortress, defend that fortress’. However, there were a few more complications this time around. ‘They are digging underneath us!’ Gnome shouted in his mind.

‘Enemy amassing forces to the west,’ Momo reported.

‘Decoy force currently assaulting the bridge,’ Aclysia added.

The most important difference between fighting feral beasts that were relying on sneak attacks and humanoids with a language was that the latter could easily coordinate something like a strategy. ‘ARCHERS TO THE NORTH!’ Undine warned John who looked up and saw a swarm of a dozen or so arrows fly into the air.

‘Salamander, if you would,’ John instructed, and the hail of arrows turned into a useless shower of metal arrowheads amongst the ash of formerly wooden shafts. ‘Gnome can you bury them alive? Siena, go interrupt that gathering to the west.’

‘Y-yes!’

‘Fine,’ came the answers, self-assuring and eager respectively.

Torture or not, Siena was eager to dig her claws and blades into something, and because the enemy had no magic caster that could get her out of the shadows, she was safe as well. Truth be told, denying her torturing things was maybe the best punishment John could have thought of.

Not only was she clearly bothered by it, practicing with the violin whenever she had a chance to escape that fate, but it made her so hungry for battle that she was fairly easy to control. She even sounded sort of thankful whenever he did allow her to go for a rampage. ‘I will think of you as I turn their innards into floor decoration,’ she said in her overly sexy tone. That was also part of the routine.

John ignored that as Gnome siphoned away a bit of his mana to kill the orcs underground. Then Salamander took away a bit to eliminate another hail of arrows. Sylph also barged in as she helped Aclysia by creating a violent gust that swept a charging Warhog off his foot and made him fall over, head sinking into the lava ring.

Due to the geographical waviness of the terrain, that ring was way thinner than John would have liked. They had needed to create a basin to keep it in place in addition to the thing itself. The alternative would have been to set their base into one of the low-points, but there they would just have been endlessly assaulted by archers.

Purgatory flared up after John used Mana Ray to finish off the orc that had taken a rather violent burning to the face. ‘These guys are sturdy,’ John thought. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but the sheer number of them wasn’t to be underestimated either. Right now alone, he could see around 30, the company that Siena was harassing, and another dozen, the archers who were keeping a loose formation even as Salamander was bombarding them with fire from above.

John was stretched out to his maximum capabilities; he actually had to deny Sylph a bit of mana as she tried to take it and zap someone Aclysia was already handling quite well. ‘But why? let me electrocute him with a bit of a shocking display. A daring diddle of dilly-daddling dunder doming dilly hilly fully-kully, yay, these are fun noises!’

‘To answer your question…’ John sighed, certain that she had already forgotten about it, ‘…I need to conserve my mana here. We are barely 30 minutes in, and I am fairly certain there will soon be a…’

‘…boss,’ John thought as a blue flash galloped over the hills on stubby legs. It would have looked pretty funny if it hadn’t been so damn terrifying. It stormed over one hill, then another, and within a few seconds, it was now trampling over the bridge and crashing right into Aclysia.

The artificial guarding was impaled on a metallic tusk, a pained outcry following as the boss stomped around on the spot until she finally glided off the tusk and was thrown into the air.

She reached the highest point of her flight and then began falling right back into the empty yard at the centre of the makeshift fortress. Its single occupant was opening its beastly mouth wide, omnivorous teeth sticking out of dark gums.

John started running from the outer edge of the upper area and made a jump for it. His body felt light, incredibly so, thanks to the bonus stats Echo of Destruction provided him with. Still, when he caught the fully metalized maid, it was far from heroic. He succeeded in his goal, to change her flight path away from the jaws of the pig, but the impact made his ribs create a crunching sound that sounded anything but healthy.

The landing was worse. Together, they rolled over the ground; each time the artificial spirit’s heavy body was on top, something flared up in pain and was immediately fixed by Gamer’s Body, only to torment him again. John thanked his past self for raising Endurance to 100, otherwise he would have probably experienced every single one of his brittle bones break. Mana Protection did nothing against all of this as it wasn’t an enemy attack either.

They hit the wall and got battle ready again just in time for the pig to charge at them. However, now that it had lost its initial momentum and had to fight in a relatively small area, its size and strength became a massive drawback for it. ‘Gnome, seal the entrance!’ John shouted as he and Aclysia ran in different directions.

The command was meant to keep any orcs from meddling as they beat the boss, but it proved absolutely useless as the Battery Pig rammed straight into the wall. Against what the commonly used video game mechanic would make one believe, the boss wasn’t stunned. Not by the impact at the very least.

No, the pig ripped a giant hole into the fortification. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the falling debris blinded the boar, giving Aclysia enough time to completely heal the hole in her stomach and then jump on the back of the creature with Vol’Jin’Zul.

With an entirely unmaidenly scream, Aclysia grabbed the giant weapon with two hands and rammed it into the creature’s back. It let out a pained squeal and started to thrash, trying to throw off the artificial guardian. However, Aclysia wasn’t this easily to shake of; indeed, all the boss managed to do was to make the wound in its back even worse.

But it wouldn’t kill the monster, not quick enough to stop the 30 orcs from the west to reinforce it through the gaps it would create. John had no other choice but to risk getting close and deal some damage himself.

The boss’ left flank was completely exposed to John, even though the kicking and random biting made it dangerous to come close. Nevertheless, he used a Mana Blade, pouring 500 mana in, a rough 60% of what he had right now. The blade sliced through the boss’ leg, separating tendons and muscles and causing it to topple over, allowing Aclysia to finish it off.

John left her to it as he quickly climbed back up the wall and threw out an Arcana Strike with his remaining mana. The true horror about this boss wasn’t its own power. It was the amount of damage it had done to John’s little fortress that proved the real challenge. Fixing that would take mana. Mana he didn’t have right now as he had sacrificed it to keep himself safe.

Instead, he directed resources from Momo to Gnome. The fortifications were patched up with only a thin stone layer, to be reinforced whenever they got some breathing room; Gnome had to get back to denying another underground assault.

John waited only 5 seconds after the Arcana Strike was ready to pull the trigger on it. It hid the main force of the enemy battalion in a ten-metre radius explosion of pure arcane power. John had no idea how many orcs exactly died to that attack, but it had to be at least 4 as Whisper of Mana kicked into full effect, increasing his mana regeneration by 400%.

That was exactly what he had been after. The sacrifice of a chunk of mana to up his regeneration to 31 for a whole minute was worth it without a doubt. Now he could go ahead and spend his mana a bit more leisurely. ‘Momo, keep a buff ready for the next one of those, I don’t want it breaking in again. Siena, Sylph, keep harassing the surviving orcs. Salamander, get in there as well; Undine will block eventual arrows in the meantime. Aclysia…’ John continued to hastily give commands.

As everyone changed their positions on the battlefield, John caught himself smiling. Widely smiling. He was having fun. The Bugpanthers had been such a boring but efficient encounter that John almost had forgotten how much he loved using his abilities. This was challenging, it asked of him the optimal usage of his items, good resource management and that he actually got into the thick of things himself if needed.

He considered tipping his hat for a moment, giving him yet more mana regeneration. For every 1000 mana he spent, he got a stack of Tip which gave him 2 to 20 flat MP/Reg depending on the number of stacks he had. However, as he only had 2 stacks at the moment, he decided against it.

Either way, no matter how hard this dungeon was, he wouldn’t even look at the other Assaults. The simple reason was that he was having fun, and no amount of safety was worth spending hours just being bored over. Also, he always had Escape Rope if things actually got heated.

“I am going to grind you people to dust and use that experience to get to level 100!” John announced.