“Hell yeah!” Nicholas shouted, pumping his fist up into the air in excitement. “Looks like we all just jumped to level eight, and Elijah is level nine.”
Sasha giggled. “It’s too bad there wasn’t one more skeleton in that group. I’m only ten XP away from level nine now.”
“That went a lot quicker than I thought it would. Did you really get through all those menus that quickly, Elijah?” Bo asked as he stepped from shadows that Elijah hadn’t even realized were there.
“I got lucky,” Elijah responded. “I unlocked a new skill that lets me adjust multiple menus all at once if they’re all the same.”
“Alright guys. We have probably another eight or nine minutes until the dungeon opens. Let’s wait it out this time instead of Elijah pulling his little trick. How’s everyone’s mana looking? Sasha?” Nicholas turned to face their healer.
“I’ll be back up to max before the timer runs out. Benjamin?”
Benjamin nodded. “Thunderclap doesn’t use much, but I should be good to go. I still have plenty of potions and my crystal if I run low.”
Nicholas nodded, then tapped Elijah on the shoulder and led him away from the group. “You sure you’re good, man? That was a lot of physical exertion, and I know you caster classes can struggle with endurance. You can tell me if you need longer to rest.” Nicholas’ eyes went to where Sasha was still standing, talking with Bo and Benjamin.
Elijah understood immediately the reason for pulling Elijah to the side and where his concern was coming from. He was worried about Elijah pushing himself too hard in order to show off for Sasha. He was glad that Nicholas was such a good leader, and didn’t call him out in front of the group.
“Yeah, Nic, I’m good. I think I could do with putting a few more points into Dexterity, but I’m fine.”
“Alright, but if you need to stop and rest, just let me know.”
Elijah nodded to him, and they returned to the rest of their team, chatting idly while they waited for the dungeon entrance to open.
The portal rose from the ground, the misshapen bones and blood-red stone ominously appearing as if being grown from the ground itself. The portal flickered to life, more stable this time than the last. Elijah noticed, but the party didn’t say anything if they had noticed as well.
“Alright… I’m going in first before anyone gets any bright ideas about shoving me.” Bo snarled, glaring at Benjamin. “Directly into a tripwire trap!”
“Wait,” Elijah told him, placing a hand on the rogue’s shoulder and stopping him before he entered the portal. “I may not be able to enhance your ‘Trap Sense’ ability, but I can do the next best thing.”
Elijah reached his hand forward and cast his one true spell, watching his minuscule mana pool drain away. In front of him, Bitter Root once again formed.
“Ay Boss! Who new meat?” Bitter Root asked, looking around at the gathered party.
“These are the new friends I was telling you about, Bitter Root.”
“Dude,” Bo said, looking Bitter Root up and down, “your familiar is a goblin?”
Elijah shrugged. “Yeah, it is sorta hard to explain, but he sort of came with the class.”
“Not hard explain,” Bitter Root stated as he walked over and inspected the portal. “Boss kill Bitter Root. Brutal murder, blood everywhere. Bring Bitter Root back, make Bitter Root watch as Boss kill whole family. Then force Bitter Root to serve.”
His friends’ eyes all shot wide with surprise at Bitter Root’s pronouncement, turning to stare at Elijah.
“He’s joking!” Elijah shouted, grabbing his familiar and spinning him around. “Tell them you are joking.”
“Yeah… Yeah! Bitter Root only kidding,” the goblin hastily said. Elijah sighed a breath of relief until he spoke again. “Bitter Root say he joking, now boss not need lock Bitter Root in spikey cage, right?”
His friends eyed him wearily again even as Bitter Root began cackling like a maniac and jumped backwards through the portal.
After less than a second, Elijah felt his connection to his familiar snap as Bitter Root died in the dungeon. He sighed and waited for his mana to regenerate a few more points before summoning him again.
“Boss not tell Bitter Root whole place booby trapped.”
Elijah rubbed his eyes. It was going to be a long dungeon crawl.
Bo stepped up next to him and patted the goblin on the head. “I like this guy.”
The Dragontooth King’s Abandoned Fort was both much more difficult and also much easier this time around. Elijah had found that he could add the ‘Find Trap’ skill to his companion through use of the debug menu. This opened up various new possibilities once he experimented with it more.
With Bitter Root checking for traps, Bo was freed up to remain on the side of the tunnel shrouded in ‘Stealth’. He was able to use this to his advantage when skeletons came from concealed alcoves, hitting them with sneak attacks before they could even get close to the rest of the group.
The party continued to work on their teamwork. Nicholas provided point guard while Elijah moved in and out of the enemies, grabbing them just long enough to access their debug menus. In small groups like this, it almost wasn’t worth it to adjust their XP multiplier, so he experimented with adjusting other factors.
It seemed like the best bang for their buck when a medium-sized group attacked was for Elijah to get around towards the back and adjust their faction tags. He would set the tags and then watch the fireworks as the skeletons in the middle would get attacked from the rear where they didn’t expect. It meant less XP overall per group, as the party didn’t receive points for any skeletons killed by other skeletons, but it was effective.
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Bitter Root even got in on some of the action, able to move through the skeletons with ease and take out ankles and knees. He didn’t gain much from the action, as his level was directly tied to Elijah’s summoning skill, but the little maniac seemed to be enjoying himself.
By the time they made it back to the library, the whole party was feeling good.
“I say we have Elijah grapple the stupid thing and drop its Constitution down to 1, that way the first hit we land on it kills it,” Bo suggested as they huddled at the entrance.
They were taking some time to relax and recover from the fights with the skeleton menace, and Elijah was trying out his ‘Stew Pot of the Dungeon Connoisseur’ that he’d received the last time they fought the Acolyte mini-boss.
“No good, Bo,” Elijah responded as he dropped some roots he’d harvested into the pot and gave it a stir. “120 HP means it has a Constitution of 24, firmly in the range of Journeyman tier. I won’t be able to affect it at all.”
Elijah had levelled up to level ten during the fighting to get here, which meant his class was now Apprentice tier, but his skill was still lagging in Basic tier at level 9.
“Same with its intelligence. That’s up in Apprentice tier if I remember correctly. Unless we can find some more mobs for me to train my skill, the only two stats I’ll be able to do anything with are its dexterity and strength.”
“Would it be worth it just to jack up the amount of experience it drops?” Sasha asked, watching as Elijah added another item to the pot, this time some type of mushroom he’d scavenged from a dungeon generated corpse.
“It’s got a pretty high modifier already. I think it’s a six? At level five, that gives us 30 XP; even raising that up to the max of ten, that’s only an extra 20 XP. Is it worth it, Nicholas?”
Nicholas looked at the stewpot with a grimace. “I’m not sure. If we were lower level, the extra twenty points would be worth it, but we’re pushing up towards the higher end of Basic tier now. I don’t see a better use for it right now, though. Maybe dexterity? If it can’t avoid our attacks as easily we can kill it quicker.”
“And you can’t just adjust its stats and change the XP modifier?” Benjamin asked.
Elijah shook his head, keeping his eyes on the bubbling concoction in his stew pot. “I don’t know if it’ll change when I hit higher levels, but right now I can’t change more than one thing in each menu for entities.”
“What about our equipment? You changed both enchantment slots, why are entities any different?” It was a reasonable question for Sasha to ask.
“I’m not sure why it’s different, to be honest. I’m still learning the intricacies of my abilities.”
Bitter Root sniffed deeply at the pot and looked up at Elijah, his mouth watering. “Smell good boss, like Boss Babe feet. Me eat?”
He had to hold back the bile rising in his throat at his familiar’s words. “Don’t eat that Bitter Root, it isn’t for eating.”
Sasha looked down at the pot again as Elijah dished it out into a large vial. “If it isn’t for eating, then what is it?”
Elijah pulled up the debug menu on it and made a few adjustments to it before handing it over to Sasha to check its attributes.
[Poison]
Poison of the Dragontooth Fort
Attributes: Strength +5, Constitution -5, Dexterity - 5
“It’s going to make it hit harder, but if I can get my hands on it, then I can adjust it back down to a 1. If that’s what we want to do.”
Nicholas grinned and turned towards the library, staring down at the Acolyte who had been staring up at them since they had come to the entrance. Its glowing red eyes stared, unblinking and resolute.
“Alright team. We get in, Bo poisons the bastard, Elijah knocks his strength stat down, and then it’s just like last time.”
Internally, Elijah was nervous, but he was ready. They had a course of action and had already beaten this boss once. They could do it again. He slipped the poison to Bo and turned towards the library.
“Ready, team?”
“Ready.” They all responded.
Nicholas dropped ?out of sight, followed quickly by Bitter Root, who let out a high-pitched scream as he launched himself off the cliff edge into the library.
Elijah rubbed his eyes as he felt the connection to his familiar snap once more. “Fall damage is a thing, you little moron,” he murmured to himself as he followed Nicholas down the slope.
He was close behind Nicholas this time and watched as the library began shifting around them, blocking them off from the rest of the party. The Acolyte moved quickly, a sword of necrotic energy forming in its hand. It swung for Elijah, but the Warper didn’t flinch. Nicholas jumped between the two of them and took the hit directly on his shield, twisting his body in a parry before slicing forward with his sword. The blow missed, but Nicholas was on the offensive.
Elijah watched for an opening. A few times he nearly got hands on the mob, but had to pull back at the last second to avoid getting them chopped off.
Bo appeared from the shadows behind the Acolyte and with a lunge buried his knife deep in the creature’s back. Elijah could sense the poison taking effect and watched the creature’s health bar plummet.
[BOSS INFO]
Acolyte of the Undying Library (Level 5)
HP: 76/95
And it looked like the stun effect had activated. Elijah lunged forward, putting his hands on the creature before the stun could wear off. He cut it too close though, and the necrotic sword swung forward and raked him across the chest, causing him to rocket backwards into a bookshelf.
[STATUS]
Damage Taken: 78
Remaining Health: 22 / 100
As he slammed into the bookshelf, Elijah let out a pained groan. Adding insult to injury, one of the little bat creatures flung a book at the bookshelf that Elijah slumped against. It smacked into his head before landing in his outstretched hand.
[Item]
Book?
Description: It’s a book?
Elijah was mildly concerned by the questioning tone of the description, and why his debug menu had activated when it normally didn’t for basic items. He tried to put it out of his mind as he focused on more serious matters. He was losing health fast and saw that the boss’ sword strike had inflicted him with a nasty status effect.
[DEBUFF: NECROSIS]
Description:
Causes 1 HP of DMG every 2 seconds for 300 seconds.
He tried to reach out and adjust the affliction with his ‘Reality Warp’ skill, but the box disappeared before he could grab at it. A soft light washed over him quickly, and he realized it was Sasha’s ‘Remove Disease’ skill. They were in the fight now.
Nicholas took a glancing blow to his shoulder, and Elijah watched as his health dropped dramatically. The creature’s bolstered strength was letting it dish out the pain.
Elijah needed to do something about the creatures’ bolstered strength. He pulled the menu for the acolyte back up and dropped the creature’s Strength stat to 1. He was slightly annoyed when he saw its strength jump back up to 6 from the ongoing effects of the poison. It traded a blow with Nicholas, but barely scratched the fighter, while Nicholas’ undead bane sword chipped more of the creature’s health off.
[BOSS INFO]
Acolyte of the Undying Library (Level 5)
HP: 67/95
~~~
[Player]
Name: Nicholas
Class: Fighter | Level: 8
HP: 23/55
He watched as his health shot up to just below the halfway mark at the same time Nicholas’ health also rose to almost full. Sasha must have used her staff on Nicholas while dual casting her spell at him.
Bo came in for another backstab, but his blade only grazed the creature, taking off minimal health. The creature’s long bony fingers shot out and slashed across his chest. The rogue’s health plummeted, but it opened up an opportunity for Nicholas to strike back, carving out another fifteen points of damage.
“Sasha, ‘Magical Bunker’ now!” Nicholas shouted as he retreated to the rest of his party.
Elijah reinforced her bunker, but not by much. He placed his hand against the shimmering green bubble. It wasn’t so much a spell effect as a magical building, and the only thing he could affect was its durability.
The mob’s spell fell down on them, and Elijah had to ratchet the durability back up to max as the spell tried to bore through the bunker.
Dust and books and broken shelves swirled around them in a cacophony of motion before the spell finally dissipated, leaving them untouched.
