November 3, 2022
Day 14
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The first thing Ivan checked was the series of notifications he got regarding the battle with the beast bastions that had attacked Laysan Island. He went over them chronologically.
The sentinels had already eliminated three bastions before the group returned from the dungeon, and then Maya, Charlie, and Matt had eliminated two of the shark bastions. After that, Ivan saw a series of notifications all at once.
That was when Rahul had unleashed his Kinetic Cleave, and eleven bastions were wiped out within seconds of each other. The first among them was the dolphin bastion, the one that Rahul had fought for more than an hour and had all but annihilated before his cataclysmic attack killed the stragglers and finished the job.
Battle Rewards Consolidate Your Domain Quest advancement reward +1000 SP 193 level 10 Springtail Dolphins killed +19 SP 1103 level 11 Springtail Dolphin killed +121 SP 860 level 12 Springtail Dolphin killed +103 SP 53 level 13 Springtail Dolphin killed +6 SP Enemy bastion annihilated +100% to total reward Total 2498 settlement points
For every bastion that had been wiped out, Ivan saw three notifications - the battle statistics showing the death tolls and other such stats, the battle reward showing the SP earned, and the quest update with the updated number of eliminated bastions.
Ivan ignored most of them and focused on the last quest update message he received before the tutorial ended.
Quest Updated : Consolidate Your Domain
Eliminate, claim or subjugate every independent bastion in your settlement domain to upgrade the settlement from unranked to barony rank.
Progress - 18/26 bastions eliminated
An unranked settlement can only be associated with a single bastion
At barony rank a settlement can be associated with a single bastion called the barony capital and at most 100 other lesser bastions.
The last quest update that Ivan saw showed 18/26 bastions eliminated.
Before Rahul's attack, that number had been 7/26.
And then Rahul's attack had singlehandedly wiped out 11 bastions all at once. Granted, the beast numbers had already been thinned due to hours of infighting and the assault from the sentinels and Maya, Matt, and Charlie, but that attack was still seriously overpowered.
As Ivan thought about Rahul's attack today and recalled what he had told him about the events of the dungeon, he realized that Rahul was inadvertently gravitating toward a certain kind of fighting style - dealing devastating damage to a large cluster of weak enemies.
Ivan didn't know how he felt about that. This approach might be excellent for leveling and dealing with hordes of weak beasts, but what about life-or-death situations against strong enemies? What about human elites?
Ivan wasn't sure, but he set that thought aside for later, making a mental note to talk to Rahul about this. His friend had already invested too many points in endurance, and after level 25, it might be too late to change direction.
Ivan came back to the notifications and calculated that the total haul from eliminating the 16 bastions came to 38,511 settlement points. They had put a dent in the numbers of the remaining 8 bastions too, but the next notification Ivan received crushed all his hopes of getting any settlement points for that effort.
Quest Failed : Consolidate Your Domain
The tutorial has ended and you have failed to eliminate the bastions within your territory. The bastions have been disbanded and any ongoing battles involving them will be considered forfeit for both sides, resulting in no winners and granting no rewards.
The remaining beasts are now stray, directionless, and will compete for food and other resources. Only time will tell whether they will grow to become strong untethered threats or hunt each other to extinction.
The quest failure, the loss of both the SPs and the barony rank reward, and the general moroseness of the notification message might have been enough to lower Ivan's spirits on any other day, but given today's circumstances, it didn't even register.
With the failure notification, everything related to the tutorial and the beast bastions had been dealt with. Apart from that small fortune in SPs, there was nothing to be too excited about.
Ivan then moved on to other business and re-read the notifications he had received after exiting the dungeon, as well as the ones Rahul had shown him, starting with the first title he got.
You have earned a new title Name FIRST KILL I (COMMON) Condition
Be the first to kill at least 1 dungeon boss, individually or as a team.
The title is only awarded on a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if you enter the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Effect
All your stats will be 1% more effective against dungeon beasts and 2% more effective against dungeon bosses
Ivan and all his team members had received this title, as he had killed the first alpha before Rahul's team had even left their starting island.
That hurry had been a mistake in retrospect, or maybe not.
They were racing the setting sun, and there was no guarantee that Daniel would have received the Illuminate spell on his class selection even if he had waited to reach level ten in the dungeon.
Indeed, Ivan, Helena, Daniel, and Alex had all leveled up and chosen their classes when they went outside to fight the beast bastion attacks toward the very end, and Daniel had received the Weak Entangling Vines spell.
Ivan had chosen the melee class, Helena and Alex the ranged class, and all their class bonuses and other details mirrored what Rahul had told them based on their experience.
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Enough digression.
Ivan reprimanded himself, and look at the next notification.
You have earned a new title Name DAVID VS GOLIATH I (UNCOMMON) Condition
Be the first to kill at least 1 dungeon boss, individually or as a team, while being at a level lower than the boss.
If part of a team, this title is only awarded if all members of the team satisfy the criteria.
The title is only awarded on a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if you enter the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Effect
All your stats will be 2% more effective against dungeon beasts that are leveled higher than you, and 5% more effective against dungeon bosses that are leveled higher than you.
Ivan and his entire team had been level 9 before they fought what was almost certainly a level 10 alpha, and his entire team had got the title, just like the last one.
Rahul's squad didn't get this title, as he was level 11 when they fought the first alpha, and the alpha's level was 11 mirroring his own. Maya and Charlie had informed the group that the subsequent alphas had also been level 11, so they got no further opportunity to get that title.
Based on the two team's observations, the minimum level of the alpha appeared to be the dungeon level, while the maximum was equal to the level of the strongest team member. The way to advance this title again would be to fight the bosses of the next tier of the dungeon while at level 24 or lower.
Ivan looked at the last notification his squad had received.
You have earned a new title Name DUNGEON PIONEER I (COMMON) Condition
Be the first to enter a dungeon, kill at least 1 dungeon boss, and come out alive, either individually or as a team.
The title is only awarded on a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if you enter the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Effect
You will gain 1% more experience on all future dungeon runs. If you enter a dungeon before any other party has entered and exited the dungeon, the experience bonus will be 2% and all your stats will be 1% more effective.
As was the case with the previous title, his team had earned this one only by virtue of their timing. They exited the dungeon before Rahul's squad.
Individually the small bonuses these titles gave weren't much, but collectively, they mattered. If Ivan went up against a dungeon boss that was a higher level than him in a virgin dungeon dive, all his stats would be 8% more effective, and he would get a 2% experience bonus. If the stat bonuses stack multiplicatively rather than additively, then the stats would be 8.17% more effective. An insignificant fraction of a percent now, but as these titles level, the nature of stacking would come into play too.
The virgin dungeon dive condition was common to all the titles, and Ivan could see why. If not for that, it would be possible for resourceful individuals to exploit the titles by sending an exploratory team first and discovering the nature and weaknesses of the dungeon and the dungeon bosses before going in.
Being the first team to enter the dungeon wasn't necessary, you only had to make sure to enter the dungeon before any other team walked out of it.
Now for the notifications that Rahul and his team received.
You have earned a new title Name FIRST KILL I (COMMON) Condition
Be the first to kill at least 1 dungeon boss, individually or as a team.
The title is only awarded on a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if you enter the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Effect
All your stats will be 1% more effective against dungeon beasts and 2% more effective against dungeon bosses
This title was the same. Ivan guessed that the threshold for FIRST KILL II had to be 5 or 10 bosses, because Rahul's team had been the first to kill 3 of the dungeon bosses. All the bosses except the Whiptail crocodile, that is.
Then he looked at the next notification they got.
You have earned a new title Name DUNGEON CONQUEROR I (COMMON) Condition
Be the first to enter a dungeon, kill all dungeon bosses, and come out alive, either individually or as a team.
The title is only awarded on a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if you enter the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Effect
You will gain 2% more experience on future dungeon runs. If you enter a dungeon before any other party has entered and exited the dungeon, the experience bonus will be 5% and all your stats will be 2% more effective.
When Rahul had first shown this notification to Ivan, he had wondered why the title was ranked only common and its stat bonus was 2% while David vs Goliath was uncommon and had up to 5% bonus.
The answer came to him once he realized that unlike tiered dungeons, normal dungeons had fixed-level enemies, and an E-grade could blitz through hundreds of them and game the titles. The system might have countermeasures in place, and there wouldn't be hundreds of virgin dungeons lying around, but Ivan was sure he was on to something.
Defeating a single boss leveled higher than yourself was tougher than killing all bosses of an easy dungeon.
And then there was the fact that the bonuses of the David vs Goliath title applied to more constrained circumstances compared to the other titles, so maybe the bonus wasn't that lopsided after all.
Then, realizing that he was going on a tangent again, Ivan looked at the last notification that only Rahul's team and Daniel had received.
A settlement quest.
New Quest Received : Conquer the dungeon
A tiered dungeon has spawned in your settlement. Complete the multiple tiers of the dungeon by defeating all the bosses to unlock new capabilities for your settlement with every tier and grade of the dungeon. There will be a bonus reward if the dungeon is defeated during a virgin dungeon dive, i.e. if a party belonging to your settlement enters the dungeon before any other team has entered and exited.
Progress
* F-grade Tier 1 conquered (Virgin dungeon dive)
Rewards
* F-grade Tier 1 reward: A new sentinel unit is available for recruitment - Level 10 Saltwater Crocodile. A maximum of 100 units can be deployed at a time.
* F-grade Tier 1 bonus reward: On recruiting a full regiment of Saltwater Crocodiles, you will get the opportunity to recruit a level 10 sergeant for the company from among the four alphas.
This was possibly the most important among all the notifications Ivan saw.
Not because the reward it gave was exceptional, it was not. At his current level, Rahul could easily kill the entire regiment of Saltwater Crocodiles, alpha included, without breaking a sweat. It was not the current reward that was attractive, but the potential future rewards.
100 level ten crocodiles were not that great, but what about 100 level 25 beasts? What about E-grade beasts?
But that was not within their reach just yet.
Ivan recalled the tutorial statistics. The fact that someone was already level 47 was alarming, but that person could be someone like the president of the United States, backed by all the resources of a world superpower. The buildings and technologies might be gone, but if the institutions from before the integration were still being respected, the President or any high-ranking government or army official would have had unlimited access to beast bastions and grinding areas.
Ivan wasn't worried as much about the one level 47 individual as much as he worried about the fact that more than 1% of the population had earned their specializations and were level 25+.
40 million humans stronger than Rahul.
If war came to Laysan Bastion, Ivan was sure the enemies would be elites among elites and leveled much higher than just 25. And while level 25 beasts might not be their match, they'd be a lot better than the standard sentinels the castle has access to right now, which were level 10 at best.
And hopefully, these beast sentinels too could be purchased and replaced for cheap.
This new quest chain was not a game-changer, but out of all the notifications he had seen, it was the only one that had any use outside of a dungeon.
And with the threat looming over all their heads, Ivan would take every advantage he could get.
This brought him to the final two notifications, the one he had received when Inertia upgraded to Immutability and the one he received when he became a representative of Laysan Bastion.