“Haggard Attention.”

Trix charged forwards with his giant hammer, the golden glimmer of his skill aggroing all the mobs in the room towards him. His muscles flexed through his armour, and the hammer was swung around, catching the jaws of the Ruined Soldiers and casting them away. The soldiers’ silver masks glinted blue-green in the light of the torches as they fell, casting fractals of light skipping over the stones walls.

“Earth Shaker.”

Like a golden meteor, the hammer arced down and slammed through the ground, stunning a dozen soldiers under each strike.

“Candle Flame!”

“Attack!”

“Speed!”

I cast support skills one after another, buffing Pam and Adam as they, too, charged into battle.

“Fireball!”

“Flurry!”

Pam’s iron sword glinted in the light as it sliced through the stunned soldiers, their flesh quickly disintegrating into dust as the extra deterrent damage from the iron dealt its effect.

“Petrify!”

Just as the soldiers recovered from Trix’s stun, the ground began to rumble. Adam lifted his staff high and cast an AOE spell. The rays from the spell pierced through the soldiers, turning them to stone for a brief few seconds.

“Boost!”

Pam shot forwards and parsed through the enemies in a zigzag pattern, finishing them off faster than I could draw Omen. Soon, the floor was cleared, and we were left standing among a pile of drops.

“Good job there team!” Trix’s large hand thumped down on my shoulder. “I knew it was the right call to listen to the speedrunner. We cleared that faster than ever before with the new rotation.”

“It was just faster by a minute…” Adam remarked, leaning on his staff. “Yes, we were more organised, but gather and stunlock isn’t anything new.”

“I mean, it was just a theory after hearing your skillsets,” I shrugged. “I’m just surprised I was able to keep up.”

“A theory that worked,” said Pam, grinning. “Any improvement is good improvement. At this rate, we might be able to get to the top within the next hour.”

We were currently on the 94th level of the Fortress of Ruin, finishing off the final wave of Ruined Soldiers that were thrown at us. The strategy that I’d proposed was to gather up the mobs with Haggard Attention and then stunlock them so that they’d all be grouped up nicely for AOE attacks.

It wasn’t anything new, as Adam had said, but hey, what worked worked.

All I did was point that out, and after a bit of rearranging of roles, we began blazing through the floors at efficient speed. Adam was no longer on DPS duty, but on stunlock duty, in charge of stunning the mobs while Trix’s Groundpound was on cooldown. Pam took up the majority of the damage dealing, using her iron weapon to deal big damage to the mobs.

I, of course, still stayed in the back playing support, buffing my teammates’ attack and speed with the only two support skills I had. Occasionally I’d throw out Candle Flame to block some hits for Adam and Pam, making sure that all our bases were covered.

At first, it was a bit messy, since my tendency to mess up aggro got in the way a few times and interfered with the stunlock strategy. But eventually I learned to avoid attacking before Trix drew aggro, and things were smooth sailing from there.

With the new rotation, Trix no longer had to take the brunt of the hits, which I felt he appreciated, especially with the addition of the pain feature.

After the fight, I went around inspecting the drops while the others sat down for a break. While I didn’t feel too good about just waltzing in and taking other people’s hard work, having first dibs did do wonders for improving my setup. I’d already replaced nearly all of my beginner’s equipment with much better variants, all that either boosted my speed or my MP.

I’d even managed to get my hands on the Ring of Dimensions variant that I wanted, the one that allowed me to equip two weapons at once.

Still hadn’t run into a dagger better than Sorrow, though, so that was something to look out for.

This time, all I managed to get were a few HP and MP potions. I made sure to take only my share, leaving the rest for the others.

“All done?” Trix asked, and stood up.

I nodded, and the rest of the team began divvying up the drops.

Since everyone else was just about Level 100 with good equipment, none of their stuff got replaced as often as mine did. Pam replaced her iron sword with a rapier, but that was about it.

Eventually, we were ready to advance on to the next level.

“There’s a boss up next,” Trix warned as he pushed open the doors. “Everyone on your toes.”

The scenery around us crumbled as the doors opened, teleporting us to the boss room.

We emerged in a large, circular amphitheatre, surrounded on all sides by stone and glimmering blue torchlight. The floor, though, seemed to be made of black sand, causing our feet to sink a few inches into it as we walked.

In the centre of the amphitheatre was what seemed to be a burrowing mass circling the theatre. With every circulation, it kicked up a cloud of sand that hung in the air for a few seconds, obstructing our vision.

“Ruined Depths,” murmured Adam.

“Ready?” Trix glanced back at us. “I doubt the stunlock strategy will work this time, so let’s go back to the usual.”

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“Ready,” I raised Omen, Sorrow floating in the air next to me at the ready.

“Let’s go!” Trix charged down into the amphitheatre, towards the burrowing mass of dirt.

“Haggard Attention.”

The golden gleam of his hammer shone in the darkness as Ruined Depths reared up out of the ground in a spray of ink coloured sand. It was like a centipede, except with feelers that functioned like whips, and an armoured exoskeleton that pulsed with the dark veins of Ruin.

In front of its face was a large, silver, moth mask, the trademark of the Decay.

The centipede shrieked, crashing down upon Trix, its hundreds of legs waving like steel daggers.

“Gaia’s Protection!” shouted Adam. A stream of curling ivy shot out of his staff, covering Trix in a bright green bubble right before the impact.

“Return to Sender!” Trix roared, and glowed golden once again. Ruined Depths reeled, a chunk of its HP knocked off by the skill. It crashed to the floor, writhing about along the ground.

“PAM!” shouted Trix.

“On it!” Pam shot forwards in a blur, clearing the distance between her and the centipede in a flash.

“Attack! Speed!” I cast the two skills over Pam as she activated Flurry. Her iron rapier gleamed silver in the light, spearing between the thick armour plates of Ruined Depths and into the fleshy parts beneath.

“Break its exoskeleton! Mountain Crusher!” Trix puffed, and brought his hammer down again. There was a loud shatter as one section of the centipede’s armour broke into a million pieces. The pieces flew across the arena in the form of shrapnel, which Adam managed to block by throwing up shields around all of us.

The centipede writhed. It lashed out with its tail. The attack whipped across half the arena, shattering her shield and catching Pam by the cheek. The force of it sent her flying across the room, crashing into a wall.

I grabbed Adam and snapped my fingers, Short Range Teleport launching us up in the air out of range of the attack.

Trix activated Return to Sender again, negating the damage he would have taken with the reflective skill.

“Oww…” Pam groaned, staggering to her feet. “Damn this pain feature.”

“I got you,” Adam cast a healing spell in Pam’s direction. Her and Trix’s HP bar glowed, before being topped back up to full.

I cast Gift of the Wind and Gift of the Sun again, giving Pam a speed boost as she recovered and shot towards the centipede. With a chunk of its tough exoskeleton gone, she and Adam were able to pepper it with attacks, slowly chipping away at its health. Trix barked out orders as he held Ruined Depths’ aggro, trying his best to keep its attention away from Pam so she could focus on attacking.

Eventually, our onslaught paid off. The HP bar dropped lower and lower with our combined efforts.

Ruined Depths shrieked and dove underground, leaving a trail of sand in its wake.

“On your guard!” Pam and Trix gathered together down in the sand pit, back to back as they watched the trail of sand circle around them.

Adam and I waited on the sidelines, skills at the ready.

There was a tense moment of silence.

Then a sudden eruption of sand as Ruined Depths reared up out of the ground behind them, its giant pincers outstretched in one last stand.

“Poison Ivy!” cried Adam. Ropes of green sprung up from the sand and snapped around its body. Ruined Depths’ charge was stopped short, the skill holding it back.

Trix raised his hammer and brought it down in one last heavy strike, an arc of gold coming down on the centipede. It shrieked and crashed to the floor, dissipating into fine dust.

“Good job team,” Trix panted, stretching out. “Pam, you need a break? You took quite a heavy hit at the start there.”

“Yeah, I think I do,” Pam slumped to the floor.

“Go get your drops, Luck,” Trix turned to me. “The rest of us will get a breather first.”

I headed over to the spot where the centipede died and sifted through the pile of drops, looking for something I could use. There was a lot of good stuff, plenty of high quality crafting materials, some iron weapons, and other equipment.

Ooh, this was a good one.

“Hey, guys, can I have this?” I called, holding up a long, thin wand made of bony white wood. Black veins ran along its length, pulsating to the rhythm of an unheard heartbeat.

Ruined Ash (A)

Speed + 5

MP skills do increased damage that scales with total MP.

MP skill cost decreased by 10%

“Sure,” said Trix.

“Dang, I was eyeing that,” Adam slapped his knee.

I offered it out in his direction. Trix scowled at Adam.

“No, no,” said Adam begrudgingly. “You can have it. First dibs.”

“Then I’ll help myself,” I gleefully discarded the bow and equipped the wand. The curved handle fit snugly in the palm of my hand.

The rest of the climb through the remaining floors was fairly uneventful. It was just more Ruined Soldiers, albeit in bigger waves than before. After we cleared the 99th floor, however, Trix stopped.

“Well that’s the end of the road,” said Trix. “Mission complete.”

“Whew, that was a long run,” Pam stretched and rubbed her shoulder. “That spot where I got rammed into the wall still smarts.”

“Pain system is terrible,” Adam waved his staff away into his inventory and pulled out a sword. “I’m going to blow off some steam, Trix.”

“Sure,” Trix’s expression darkened. “Do whatever.”

“Wait up, Adam,” Pam sheathed her iron rapier and followed after him. I was about to follow too, when Trix stopped me.

“There’s no more dungeon up ahead there, Luck,” he said, his hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to grind the lower floors now?”

“Yeah sure,” I said, almost turning to leave when I spotted Pam and Adam slinking through the large doors at the end of the hallway. “Where are they going?”

Trix shrugged. “They have business there. We don’t have to follow them.”

I stared up at the large double doors. They were ornately shaped from what seemed to be black obsidian, with delicate carvings of leaves and ivy all over them.

From what I remembered, these doors were usually inaccessible outside of story mode. They led to a place that I remembered very well, one that I’d had to enter over and over again.

The Decay’s boss room.

“Business? With the Decay?” I asked.

“More or less,” said Trix. “They just want to mess around a bit. They’ll be fine.”

“If you say so…” I said somewhat doubtfully, before remembering what I had to report to Trix. “Oh! And Trix! I made some progress with the magic thing!”

“You did?” Trix’s grim expression went away, replaced by a look of surprise. “That’s good news! Tell me what you’ve found.”

I engrossed myself in recounting my experiences with the feeling and how I coaxed it to move to my will. Trix would occasionally add to what I had to say, mainly ideas for how it might be able to work, but otherwise mostly stayed silent.

Occasionally we’d hear muffled shouting coming from inside the boss room, but Trix told me to ignore it.

Which I ended up doing, against my better judgement.

At least, until I heard the scream.