Jim sighs, “Well, at least that fight went better than the last fight against those things.”
Jeremy laughs, “We’re going to have to warn people about them before others start arriving on this floor. The fact that we are having problems against a lone enemy says something about our defenses against this kind of stuff.”
Bill shrugs, “Too much to defend against. There is magic, psionics, and who knows what else out there.”
Kelly shakes her head, “No, we should be able to manage it. While there are a ton of different power types, most of them can affect one another. Plus, they tend to not do pure damage in the first place.
“A good example is this very monster. It uses psychic powers, yet one of them is fire based. We can defend against that just as easily as we can against our own fire magic. Though even the more pure psychic attacks can be countered by more generic defenses.
“Reading our minds? Who cares if it is magic or telepathy, just defend the mind. I’ve done some tests with our emerging Talent and the only benefit from countering like with like is efficiency. Blocking a telepath is a lot easier with psychic power than it is with magic.”
Bill rolls his eyes, “So what? We have to have some kind of overcharged defenses to counter every type of power?”
Tess shakes her head at her boyfriend. “I’ve been keeping up with her research. To start, she just simplified it as stuff like water blocking fire is still a thing. However, it is rock paper scissors all the way down.”
Bill, “What does that mean?”
Kellinger takes over at this point. “RPS, rock is strong against scissors, equal to other rocks, and weak to paper. For defense, this mostly determines how strong a defense needs to be to work.
“Take fire as an example. Strong against wood and weak to water. If you are defending against fire with fire, you need about an equal level of power. However, if you defend against fire with water, you can do so with less power. And of course if you try to defend with wood it will take a lot more power.”
Kelly sighs, “It isn’t that simple! Life doesn’t actually have elemental weaknesses like some kind of video game, no matter how things look with the system being around.”
Kellinger shrugs, “But you can’t deny that defending against fire with water works. I understand that such things aren’t set in stone. However, powers like magic work to some degree based on how we expect them to work and so classical elemental weaknesses are built right in. This is especially true since they seem to be pretty universal.”
Jim sighs, “And this is why pure defenses are the way we are going. I don’t need to worry if some attacker one mindedly believes fire can penetrate everything to the degree that it is strong against a water shield. Instead, just throw up a Mana shield and juice it a little.”
Bill, “Then why are people using elemental defenses and such? If pure Mana shields are so good, why doesn’t every magic user use them?”
Kelly sighs, “It is a lot trickier to use pure Mana as a shield. So, when in the middle of combat people use what defense comes the quickest to them. After all, a weak defense that is right on time is better than a strong defense that arrives late.”
Bill sighs, “I’ll stick to my clubs. Now, how are we handling the next one?”
Jim gestures at the next flower ring. “Well, we first figure out if it is a monster.”
Bill grabs a rock, “Screw it, here’s how you test if something is a monster.” Then he throws the rock at the closest sunflower.
Of course, what he is aiming at is an actual Udoroot and so once the stone gets in range of the monster’s telekinesis, it begins to slow down. Almost as if it had hit a cushion or pile of fluff. After that?
Well, turnabout is fair play. So the Udoroot sends it screaming back towards Bill with a little extra mustard to boot.
Since it is coming back along the same path, Bill is able to causally bat it away with his offhand club. “So I figure that there is a monster.”
Tess rolls her eyes, “That now knows we are here.”
Bill shrugs, “I doubt it was ignorant of our presence. While its psychic powers do seem to be limited in range, it should at least be able to detect us from much farther away.”
Jim, “Whatever, let’s begin our attack.”
Kelly nods and starts charging up a fire ribbon as the group cautiously approaches. Then right on the edge of the monster’s range, she wraps the ribbon in on itself and sends it spinning off.
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The fire chakra arks to the side and sears through three of the stalks to the left of the group. Though only two of the stalks end up falling, the third manages to resist the damage.
While that is happening, Bill and Tess charge at the monster. Tess manages to reach it and her quarterstaff is spun around, smacking one of the stalks over and over on opposite sides. This isn’t enough to break off the stalk, but the damage is enough to cause it to fall over.
Bill, on the other hand is alpha striked. It seems the Udoroot was less than pleased with having a rock thrown at it. He gets stunned and then the plant spikes him with multiple mind thrusts.
Despite being stunned, Bill falls over and loses consciousness for a moment. Though he wakes back up as he hits the ground.
Good thing for him that Jeremy was following behind. With Bill stunned on the ground, the Udoroot tried to take him out with a hefty rock. Jeremy is able to block the blow, though Bill was just lucky that the plants have telekinetic force instead of something with more finesse. Otherwise, it might have managed to curve the rock around and still strike him.
Though Jeremy’s defense wasn’t able to stop another cheeky stun from sneaking through. The good news for the rest of the party, though, is the fact that after focusing so hard on Bill, they easily took it down.
As Bill gathers himself, Jim shakes his head. “If you’re planning on taking aggro, tell us first. We don’t have a healer with us right now. Though that reminds me, Kellinger, how is your attempt at learning healing magic coming along?”
Kellinger shrugs, “I can see why all the roleplaying games tend to portray healing magic as being divine in origin. It isn’t impossible, but I’m going to need a better foundation in medical knowledge. Though give me a month and I should be able to at least stop a wound from bleeding.”
Jim, “Damn it, I don’t want to let anyone who worships another being into the inner circle. I have nothing against a man of the cloth, but they put their gods ahead of themselves. It would suck if part of that was sacrificing themselves to reveal info about the inner circle to their church.”
Kelly nods, “They might not even do it on purpose. An errant prayer at the wrong time or the god taking a peek at what is happening could reveal our secrets. Though that does bring up the matter of pre-existing risks.”
Jim smiles, “You can rest easy on that matter. While there were a few faithful types in the original two towns, there weren’t many and the wolves sorted them out easily enough. Though if what Ace has heard turns out true, this isn’t by accident.”
Jeremy, “What has he been hearing? I’m not exactly able to be at all the secret meetings.”
Jim shrugs, “While the system isn’t biased per se. It does group like with like and some deities basically bribe it to make sure their most faithful all end up in the same settlement. Though luckily, it doesn’t place all those settlements together.
Tess sighs, “That should slow down the forming of any theocracies to start with. Though if they have easy access to healing magic, it might not be all that long till one does pop up.”
Kellinger, “And they do have access to healing magic. At least, some of the deities can grant it. The cheaters do all the heavy lifting so the faithful caster only needs to channel the magic.”
Bill snorts, “You’re just jealous that they don’t need to actually learn the spells.”
Kellinger laughs, “Most certainly not. Even if I did follow a god, I would take the time to actually learn what is going on. To depend on your god for spells leaves you at their whim.
“I’ve read enough myths to know no matter what some of the modern faiths might say, most gods are capricious. I don’t want to need a heal spell only for some god to say no because they don’t like the person I’m healing. Better to know the actual spell and simply channel a god’s power.”
Jim sighs, “There are going to be a ton of people falling for a bunch of tempting deals. It won’t even be limited to gods as that crazy person who Ace banished proved. Any being with even a modicum of power that they can share will be trying to get in on the fun.”
Kelly nods, “It is going to be a pain figuring out all the ways on which people will try to hide the affiliations. At least Ace went with the more permissive approach. Sure, we might end up letting in literal devil worshipers, but at least we will know who they are.”
Jim, “Meh, let’s kill some more stuff. We can talk about heavy stuff later.”
After that, the group manages to make it to the second ore vein. It takes them a while, of course, and they still haven’t figured out a good way to handle the Udoroots. Though the instances of actual danger have dropped.
The most dangerous aspect however hasn’t even come close to being figured out. They still can’t tell the difference between a group of sunflowers and a monster. As far as Kelly can tell, it should be easy in theory.
All you need to do is scan the area below the flowers for the giant root of the monster. The problem is that the monster’s false sensory input power has an interesting quirk to its range. It only needs the thing you’re using to sense stuff to be within range.
That means that while it can’t completely hide as your eyes could still see the sunflowers up top. By sending out your magic to detect the ground under the monster, you are putting yourself in range and it uses the power to hide itself. This even seems to be a form of passive defense for the Udoroot.
Though the power still needs to be channeled through the sunflowers. Once they have been cut off, it is quite easy to detect the monster’s root.
Of course, the team can just alpha strike every patch of sunflowers they come across. The only problem with that is the other monsters on the floor aren’t going to sit back and let them rest afterwards. About the only thing the party agrees on, is to not use Bill’s method of checking.
Sure, it works, but the Udoroot seems to really hate having rocks thrown at it. Good method for taking aggro, mind you. The party just doesn’t have any good defenses against the Udoroot’s various psychic abilities.
Down in the dungeon’s last floor Ally can’t help but laugh at their attempts. She has nothing against them, but they’re missing proper magical defenses and nothing short of a mystical power is going to block a similar level of power. It was especially funny to her since they had literally just went over how such things worked and yet expected to find some kind of loophole.