Having taken his time to aim as two Ravenfolk were arguing, they weren’t moving much, after all, he got a pretty good aim before his weapons made contact. The landing attacks were mostly critical hits, taking them both out instantly in an extremely dreadful sight as they exploded in cuts, blood and dismembered limbs.
Pulling his blades back, Sam heard heavy steps. It didn’t take long before a hulking, slightly forward leant Ravenfolk walked over to the two dead ones. It was easily twice Sam’s height and looked much heavier and beefier than the others. Feeling like this was a Strenght focused creature, compared to the Dexteriry focused the other leaner creatures were, it felt strangely more intimidating.
It smelled the two ex-allies before it let out three powerful cawing sounds. This should easily be hearable from a considerable distance.
“Fuck, attack it now!” Janilk commented in a slight panic. “It’s calling reinforcements, there’s almost 30 monsters left. We need to beat the dungeon and leave!”
Not waiting for Sam’s response, Janik adjusted the grip of his swords and dashed around the corner, heading towards the hulking creature.
Sam took the stealthy approach and peered from his hiding spot, sending his blades forward. Dia seemed to understand the situation and dashed around the corner, taking in the sight as she followed Janik without hesitation.
Sam’s blades reached the target first, three cheap daggers missed but everything else hit, the Vampiric dagger even triggered its Life Steal, and though Sam didn’t need healing at the moment it still did its damage.
However, only the named weapons seemed to bite into its body, the cheap daggers didn’t seem to do shit and simply bounced off its feathers.
Janik and Dia made it there about the same time, but the Raven stomped into the ground with a powerful cry, creating a powerful shockwave which not only stopped them in their tracks but sent them backwards. Both tripped from the force but before they rolled more than a few steps they had managed to right themselves to their feet and again closed the distance.
Before Sam could send his second volley of attacks, he noticed a dart slamming into the stone wall next to him, before he could react to the second one he felt the large spike pierce his right shoulder.
[ Armour, Defence 40 has lowered the damage. ]
[ HP: 151 / 165 █████████░ ]
He was very happy about his increased health, as the 14 damage that made it through would have taken about half his health before, this felt almost like a dream in a weird way.
Turning towards where the darts came from, he had to drop some daggers by dismissing some Psyhands, only to re-manifest them at his current location to intercept and deflect more incoming darts. He managed to handle the remaining four darts from the other two Ravenfolk, properly realizing that there were three of them that managed to show up behind him.
By the time their charge started, he had pulled in most of his weapons, all but the four dropped cheap daggers he needed to get enough hands to handle the darts. Though the darts weren’t meant to be used as stabbing weapons, they still had a damage rating, so it worked for his purposes.
His weapons had returned by his side but were sent forward like before, splitting up the attack between two targets to make sure he had the highest chance of taking them out.
Both of his targets exploded in a shower of blood, they were close enough that their momentum carried them towards Sam, forcing him to throw himself to the side to avoid getting crushed, though his dodging did nothing to stop him from being sprayed in bird blood. In doing so he was an easy enough target for the last attacker.
Not managing to grab Sam, he still landed his enhanced claws across his body, cutting him with the blades attached to the feet.
[ Armour, Defence 40 has lowered the damage. ]
[ HP: 116 / 165 ███████░░░ ]
The damage that made it through this time would have killed him, even with his armour. But this was not the time to relish his improved Health, he had moments left before the Raven, now having landed, stomped towards him with its wings out and beak ready.
Pulling all his weapons towards him, yanking the darts out of the corpses in the same movement. Not expecting the attack to come from behind him, most of the weapons landed and through pulling them towards him he again got splattered in blood as the raven burst before falling over mid-step, landing only a few steps away from him.
Not taking more than a few breaths of rest, Sam got back on his feet and rounded the corner, checking up on how his group was doing. There were four dead Ravenfolk, in addition to the two he took out before this started, but there were also two Goblins and three Harpies. They must have come in while he was busy. It was frightening how much a few seconds could change everything. As he tried to find out what target to attack first, the lord took a solid bite out of Janik’s shoulder, which looked to have hurt him considerably.
The answer was easy, the Lord needed to be focused.
Launching all his weapons at different incoming enemies, was mainly a distraction, although many of them landed surprisingly well, it wasn’t enough to make any kills but should make it easier for his allies.
[ Time remaining: 23 / 29 seconds ]
Gambling on this working, as birds had lighter bones and bodies due to flight, and the wings the Lord had looked like they had been used.
Reaching out with all his Psyhands he grabbed the Lord and lifted him. The bird started cawing in a weird panic and tried to flap away, but couldn’t move his wings properly due to the Psyhands holding onto his body. Sam was slightly relieved as he felt the bird lift; his gamble was worth it. The bird was only lifted about Sam’s height in the air before triggering Force Launch.
[ Time remaining: 17 / 29 seconds ]
The force was aimed straight down, slamming the raven into the compacted dirt with surprising force. Sickening cracks of broken bones accompanied its pained squawk as it impacted the hard ground with a mighty thud.
[ Time remaining: 16 / 29 seconds ]
Managing to move and try to force itself back on its feet, it started shouting out another caw, but Sam lifted it yet again, using a valuable second to get it back into the air before forcing it back into the ground with the same force.
[ Time remaining: 11 / 29 seconds ]
Uncomfortable sounds of more bones breaking alongside squelching, coughing of blood and a heavier pained grunt escaped the lord. The battlefield had turned into an eerie silence as everyone was looking at the lord being helplessly rag-dolled into the ground with great force, becoming more and more broken each time it happened.
Sam repeated the process one more before he lost the time needed, lifting him again, like before, consumed a second before he Force Launched it back into the ground.
[ Time remaining: 5 / 29 seconds ]
Though it didn’t seem to have enough force in it to even squawk or grunt in pain, Sam didn’t want to risk it. Having only remaining ‘time’ for one launch, but not enough to lift him again, Sam aimed for a nearby ruin wall and triggered the final Force Launch.
[ Time remaining: 0 / 29 seconds ]
He could feel the boosted power leave him, it didn’t affect his normal abilities but the boost was now gone. The Lord lifted off the ground and was flung into the wall a few solid steps away from where it had been slammed. The raven coughed up a sizeable amount of blood as it impacted the stone wall, which in turn lost structural integrity and collapsed down away from the lord. Though the wall didn’t land on the Ravenfolk leader, this time when he fell to the ground there was no more movement.
This whole event took less than 10 seconds, and after it was done. Everyone somewhat snapped back into combat mode had the locals fled the scene and headed for height or the forest. The group chose not to follow them, although Dia looked at Sam to see what to do. As he didn’t react to them leaving she seemed to decide to wait, and rather opt to run over to Sam, looking at him with extreme worry as he was caked in blood.
“Sa!” Shouting his name as she moved, she gave him a once over as she spoke to him with a shaky voice. “Sa kirn. Sa krila?” He understood that she was referring to him, one of those words probably meant hurt or blood, he had no idea and didn’t know if he should respond positively or negatively.
Though some of the blood was his, 90% of it wasn’t. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” He smiled at her, knowing that the words might not mean much to her, but at least he could try and act fine. Checking the party health he could see that Dia’s was fine, slightly higher than his but since she had a slightly higher max than him it meant that she had taken about the same damage. Not bad given that she had shit-tier armour compared.
As he worried about HP, another window opened displaying Janik’s health. Feeling somewhat dumb for not considering that before, of course, he could see party members' health if they allowed it...
Janik was currently at a rounded 50 out of his 147 max,
“You took quite a lot of damage.” Sam commented towards his wounded ally.
“Yeah, but I also finally levelled, so don’t worry about it.” Janik smiled back as his health suddenly filled back up to full.
Looking at the status messages, he saw that Dia had also levelled up just now,
[ Dia XP to lv.15: 509 / 1946 █░░░░ ]
He put her point into Vitality, not only bumping her health to 170 but also restoring it to full. Also noting that Janik’s health was 157 rather than a bit lower, hinting that he put his in Vitality as well. This XP was a drop in the ocean of how much XP he needed to level up, but it was going to be interesting to check the next Floor soon. Picking up all his weapons around the scene, needing a few moments to find them all, he started getting the cores of the dead monsters.
As he worked, he had a glance at the quest log.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Ravenlord. 1/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 63/80 ]
It displayed as complete, even though the Optional clear condition was not yet done, asking him if he wanted to complete the quest or not.
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“Now...” Janik started to get Sam out of this thousand-yard stare. “I have to say that I’m grateful that you managed to take out the Raven beast... but Jesus that looked brutal...” He didn’t look at Sam as he said it, he was looking at the dead raven lord looking like he was run over by a truck.
“Yeah... I thought about when you mentioned that you would have taken damage when we tested it, and since he was resisting my smaller weapons, not to mention that he cawed some orders before, so I thought to use another tactic.” Sam replied dryly. In his mind, this was just what he felt was the most logical way of handling it. Stopping him from ordering or informing the others, making sure he was ‘taken out’ of the fray while he was being killed. He originally considered sending him upwards but since he had wings, he didn’t expect that to be as practical. And slamming him into the ground could also perhaps negate some of his damage resistance. Based on his earlier experience, the Defence rating didn’t trigger on all forms of damage.
“Yeah... I get that, I just kind of feel sorry for the guy... you know?” Janik didn’t look like he meant it sympathetically, perhaps he was just recalling his moment being flung into a wall.
“Though I understand the paradox of us being the invaders here, he attacked you.” Stopping himself from going into more details he realised that the issue that happened in their earlier sparring sat deeper than he expected. Though... in a strange sense, all the Players were at fault for attacking the Dungeon creatures, they were the invaders and whatnot, but at the same time it was how the system was built up and... It was a strangely complicated thought.
But, now that he was there, he felt that it was him or them, and if the system was going to fuck with him with all the shit that had not only happened lately but earlier in his life; then he was in his full right in returning the favour.
“Well... Yeah, I don’t know. On one hand, I’m all for it, it just looked a bit brutal.” As Janik turned back to Sam, his smile looked honest again.
Sam understood what he meant, but then again, if this brutality worked as a kind of fear or deterrent for the others, that worked fine in his book.
It didn’t take too long for the core retrieval was complete, both Dia and Janik had been on guard the entire time that Sam used to get them, which wasn’t a bad way of handling things.
“That’s the last of it.” Sam stated having bagged the final core. “Should we hunt down the others, or just leave?”
Janik thought about it for a few moments. “I think we’ll just leave. Sure we’re losing out on the Experience but... the time we use to chase them down can take... a while, as most of them can fly.”
Sam nodded, it made sense, also to him 10 000 XP wasn’t an insane amount anymore. This whole dungeon didn’t give him that much compared to a few kills on the island. And considering this had him realize what Janik meant making PvP a slippery slope...
“Yeah, I agree.” Sam commented. He was more eager to see the second Floor than continue farming in this place.
“Then let’s confirm this completion and get out of here.” Janik smiled. A crystal appeared in his hand before a few seconds later he disappeared in a white flash.
Sam accepted the completion which manifested a crystal in his hand, Dia levelled up and he got 6153 Experience as his share. Since it was more than the 5000 he should have gotten, meant that Dia had again hit the level Cap and would remain there until he levelled up again.
Putting her extra point into Vitality, he felt that he wanted her Health on at least 200 before he went too deep into other things, at least for now. He made sure that everything looked fine before accepting the question about leaving the Dungeon.
Manifesting back out in the path towards the entry to the Dungeon, he found Janik there as expected. Since none of them got any neat gear and only the crystal, both failed the 10% chance to get it. However, he did see that Dia had picked up a large feather and was fastening it to her hair, she looked oddly happy about this process so Sam didn’t draw attention to it.
Nodding downhill, Janik motioned for them to follow him. “I think this was a good test, and I feel that we can start looking around on the second Floor.” Taking out his phone he starts looking into things. “Yeah, see here.” He shows some information about the second Floor compared to the first.
Though the levels of things are much higher, starting at 21 out in the wild, they went all the way up to the higher side at 40. The first Floor started at Level 1 and went up to 20, with the highest level boss being 25. Likewise, the highest-level boss on the Second Floor was 45. In general, things were higher ranked and even at the same rank and comparable level between the Floors, everything was a bit harder on the second Floor, more Health, hitting harder, and the introduction of Defence ratings on most things.
“Well, I suppose this means that I need to learn that consolidation attack or upgrade my gear.” Sam commented dryly. The consolidation attack, or whatever it would be named, would probably be the smartest to learn, after all, it would be something that he could use for any level. Getting better weapons would just make learning it easier. In a way throwing money at the problem rather than learning to work around it. As Janik stated, learning the special attack really only benefits multi-weapon users, which wasn’t as normal as just hitting with a single powerful weapon or attack, so it didn’t come along with general information.
“You have some time to try things out on the way, it’s going to take us a while to get back, as we need to be in the transport area to change floors or leave.” Janik smiled. “Though... having said that-” he mused to himself as he looked to the sky in thought. “-I don’t know how you’ll get a confirmation of it working if you use a tree or something...”
“Oh... what did you use?” Sam asked. Janik explained that he trained and tested to find a way to trigger it, but he didn’t detail how he did that safely.
“I used a special training dummy at TAC. They have special training rooms with special dummies, you can somewhat set-” Janik used air quotes when he said ‘set’. “-the defensive value and damage of your weapons. Sure you won’t actually do that damage to the dummy but it can simulate the damage through the System... somehow. I never really got how it works but it helped me.”
Sam thought about it for a moment. Without some feedback if it was working or not, he would have to just try again and again, hoping that it would work out enough for him to unlock the skill, but... That was proably not going to be the smart way of doing this, it would be highly dependent on luck, and he wouldn’t learn much that way.
“An alternative.” Janik added. “Is to find a monster or something with armour, and try again and again that way. Though you’d need a monster with a defence rating so... it’d be more dangerous.” He didn’t seem too good about that idea, and Sam couldn’t fault him.
This was an important skill to master, especially if he was going to succeed against targets with Defence later in time. And if they were heading for the second Floor now, he might need it as soon as tomorrow. But without any good way of learning it in time, he would just have to work around it.
“Though, according to the information app-” Janik had taken out his phone and was scrolling something. “-It seems that the first areas we’ll be in will only have a few targets with Defence, but every dungeon has it so... That might be a good place to learn?”
This gave Sam a slight sense of relief, at least he would get to use his blade swarm in the start, and Janik did have a point, finding a target with a defence rating and somehow abusing their existence for this, could be the way to go. Sam realised that he didn’t consider this kind of potential torture to be a problem, he considered them just a monster in the Tower. Though this was fine in a way, it also had him consider Dia’s existence. Sure, she was different but at the same time...
Sam decided to mimic Janik and took out his phone. He hadn’t taken the time to play with the new device that Janik helped him get, but that was mainly due to focusing on other things. There wasn’t any internet in Aetheria but at least he could use the pre-loaded apps and information, he focused on the information app that TAC had created. It was well structured and had a lot of good information, right now he looked into the Beastfolk and tower monsters, looking for information surrounding their differences, since some lived and worked on Earth, but most of them were killed on sight.
Dia was interested in the device he was holding, though she seemed more interested in the pictures and videos, being somewhat surprised when they moved and the sounds they played. He spent a bit of time playing with that, taking a picture of himself to show her that his likeness was captured, then doing the same to her. She took a moment to realize that it was her, but afterwards, she was incredibly interested. Sam couldn’t imagine that she had seen more than herself in still water, so this might have been very weird to her.
Elara also seemed interested in the device, but she seemed to understand it differently than Dia. Perhaps that was due to the age difference as Elara had, in her short life, seen these as normal in almost eveyrones hands. Dia hadn’t seen this kind of thing before recently.
Almost suddenly, darkness had crept up on them, and Janik had steered their path towards a forest rather than keeping in the open where they could see far. It didn’t take them much effort to find a good place to camp, and as they were setting up everything, Sam wondered just how normal people sneaking up on you are, he had only camped once in Atheria, and it happened right away there.
“Sooo.... Should we expect company?” Sam asked Janik after the camp was almost done.
“No, not this time. Though it turned out positive... all things considered, last time. I don’t want that to happen again. So I got myself an alarm.” Janik replied as he took something out of his backpack. It was a simple tripod with segmented arms, as well as what looked like a 360 camera.
“This is a simple, but bit expensive trick, a 360 camera with infrared mode and a good battery. This model has a movement triggering recording, which has been wired up to an alarm.” He looked proud of himself as he moved it around while looking at his phone.
Sam knew of the kind, many action cameras had these kinds of apps you could connect with and see a live feed. If this thing could see in darkness and trigger an alarm, it was pretty good at keeping a lookout.
There were plenty of uncertainties, like if something was invisible or just got them faster than they could react, but in those cases, it would be a problem even if they wer both awake... So this wasn’t a bad compromise, to be honest.
Discussing a good spot to put it, and testing it out a few times, which startled Dia every time, they eventually got their little safety measure set up. As they finally decided to go to sleep, Sam realised he was happy that the TAC camping kits came with a large sleeping bag, probably to have a one-size-fits-all kind of deal when handing them out, as there were enough large men and women in the world. However, Sam’s modest build made enough room for Dia, who was almost aggressively adamant about her choice to crawl into it next to Sam.
At least he wouldn’t be cold tonight.
They all had opted to sleep in their armour, a recommendation from Janik, at least for now. Based on the last time they slept outside, Sam didn’t have a problem with his idea. Dia refused, not seeming to like this kind of clothing much. Sam didn’t mind though he had to force himself to pretend to not notice Janik’s smile as they crawled into the sleeping bag.
The night was surprisingly calm and nice, but the next morning Sam woke abruptly to the sound of the alarm!