Chapter 26
James had a new favorite memory for his dungeon. His only regret was that they didn’t record it. Even still, he had no doubt in his mind that he’d never forget it for as long as he lived.
The area around the door into the dungeon had been clear of mobs. However, that didn’t mean it was safe from their aggro range. The moment Oak stepped out on the slightly grassy expanse that served as the Demonic Farm of the first floor, the red glow from the lights above causing him to gain a scarlet tint, he aggroed multiple mobs. The poor tank had no chance to react, to realize what had even happened, before events were set in motion. The players were no strangers to long range attacks from the gun wielding mobs on the fifth floor. But against demonic animals… well, logically there was no way in hell they should have to worry about mobs over thirty yards away. Logic though, never really applied to the Random Dungeon.
A loud bawk was the only warning anyone got. Oak was three feet out of the door, Z just behind him, in the process of summoning his animal companions. A shadow appeared over Oak, and the tank looked up just in time to watch a six foot dicken come crashing down, its raptor like claws tearing a glowing red line across his arm before he could get his shield up. Then, as the dicken hit the ground, a red and black wave of crackling energy erupted outwards. James grinned to himself as he remembered just what the skill, called Demonic Leap, could do.
Demonic Leap (Max) — Infernal energy radiates from a Dicken’s claws, seeping into the ground around them. When this skill is activated, it emits a burst of demonic energy around the Dicken, empowering any Dicken within 1+lvl yards. Empowered Dickens will immediately activate Demonic Leap, attacking the same target as the initial Dicken. On impact, demonic energy will ripple outward dealing decreasing amounts of damage, based on distance from impact, to all non-demonic entities. This damage has a 5% + 0.1xlvl chance of applying Infernal Bird Flu* to players.
*Infernal Bird Flu — Decrease player’s stats by 1%, per 2 seconds, until cleansed.
More loud bawks as six more dickens took temporary flight, leaping and targeting Oak. The tank had his shield up now, and was attempting to activate his skills. Z was dashing away, Med Ic was casting heals from the other side of the door, and Elm was shooting the first dicken as fast as he could. Unfortunately for all, the dickens themselves, with their passive Birds of a Feather skill, were tough. Much tougher than a level 50 mob should be, considering their stats were doubled when five or more of the creatures were within a certain proximity of one another.
To his credit, Oak survived the next incoming attack. His massive Indra Form crackled to life as he grew in size, a visage of a Hindu god essentially cloaking him as he wielded weapons in four arms made of pure lightning. The attacks crackled with power, and the Knights Who Go Ni worked rapidly to shift the ambush against them into a battle they could win.
Then came the next attacks, that pushed the tide of the battle back in the favor of the farm animals for the moment. Seven white-hot beams of power blasted into Oak’s glowing form from different angles, as more of James’s dickens joined the fray. These dickens, which had been outside of the range of the initial demonic leap, opted to use their long range breath weapon granted by the Yakitori skill, rather than demonic leap.
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The weapon, with an attack range of 51 yards, did 101 damage per second, and ignored 50 percent of all armor. The dickens could channel it for a total of five seconds, which increased the overall damage by 10percent per second channeled and increased the armor pen by an additional 1percent per second channeled.
Between the, er, dicken pile that had crashed down on Oak, the birds literally pecking, scratching, flapping, and all sorts around his massive form, looking like he’d been tarred and feathered, and the beams of energy burning into him, cooking him from all angles, Oak fell. Screaming in rage and horror, while also laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all, the party found itself without a tank within the first minute of stepping onto the floor. Luckily, with Oak serving as the point of interest for all of the mobs near enough the entrance to aggro the area, Z had managed to summon his three animal companions. Elm had also left the entryway and moved out, opening up his angle of shots, and making room more importantly, for the true start of the party when it came to clearing out masses of mobs quickly.
The dicken ambush had won contact. But the Knights Who Go Ni, would win the war. Power crackled as Faust finished channeling his AOE cooldown. A massive storm cloud appeared in the sky above the dickens, and Oak’s fallen body, which was now a death orb. Bolts of energy struck down, causing the very ground to shake with the force of the attacks, as one dicken after another found itself the target of Faust’s elemental fury.
James, still standing with Faust, Med Ic, and Rue on the other side of the doorway, marveled at the sheer feeling of the energy in the air. His skin prickled from the electricity, and Rue’s hair was rising slightly from the static charge. A nice touch, really, that the developers had placed into the game for realism. If that realism hadn’t been all part of creating a world to trap the players in forever, James would have appreciated it even more.
He pushed that thought from his mind though, as the dickens fell, one by one. They were strong, their stats doubled, and yet, he knew, just as the Knights did, that magic attacks were extremely effective on early floor mobs. Even in the hard mode, that still rang true. At least… for some of the mobs.
That being said, these dickens still had a trick or two up their non-existent sleeves. With each death blow dealt by Faust’s cooldown, the dicken would burst into fiery death flames, causing an AOE burst of damage around their body. It left behind a fiery core, that, James noticed as the AOE attack continued, wasn’t targeted by the spell. After all, the core itself wasn’t an enemy, it was simply a passive, floating object, very similar to the death orb of dead adventurers. If James had to guess, that had been an effort by the developers to ensure such rebirth skills were actually viable, and not easily thwarted by large area DoT skills.
“Should we tell them?” Rue whispered from behind James, as the lightning strikes slowed, the bodies nearly all turned to floating cores, while Med Ic cast a resurrection on Oak. James nodded, preparing to open his mouth, but stopped. These were the Knights Who Go Ni. If he had to warn them about something as common as a rebirth skill, well, that just seemed silly.
He turned his focus back to the fight, and sure enough, his faith in the Knights held true. Already, Z and Elm were going to town on the orbs, with Turk and Badgey joining the orb slaughtering fest, while Hornz stood guard, prepared to tank any incoming attacks. The Knights had been caught off guard, but if there was one thing James knew about them, it was showcased by this very moment. You could knock them off balance, but you could never knock them down.
That resilience, that resourcefulness. That coolheaded, calculating nature of the Knights, amongst all their other amazing qualities, was what made him confident they were the only ones he could rely on, to help him get his dungeon to Tier 7 before the night of immersion ended. But first, it was time to see the rest of his new and improved, hard-mode floor, in action.