Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! MINIBOSS FIGHT TODAY!
ANYWAY, as I mentioned before, I plan on taking a one or two weeks break from Insania Online soon. Initially, the plan was for it to happen after the next arc, but since this one dragged a bit longer than I expected, I think it would be a good idea to do this when this one ends. It’s mostly because I’m actually running out of arcs to write and I find it easier to think when I’m not writing the story. HOWEVER, if I downright stop writing, I might create a lot of inertia and have a lot of trouble picking it up again, so I decided to write something else for that time and post it here. I have many ideas on what I want to write, as there are many stories I wrote that I’m still a bit fond of. The one thing that they would have, however, is smaller chapters, as I do want to take a break. For now, the one I’m most inclined to post is what I jokingly call Insania Offline. Same characters, completely different story-line using reincarnation, dragons, (real)magic and role-reversals. But even if I do this, there are still around 10 or more chapters ahead, as I plan on having Gon finish the dungeon and craft his new weapon before then.
ALSO, slight spoiler here, so read at your own will:
Spoiler :
As I want to be a bit mean with you guys, I will say it here. As some noticed, I plan on giving Cyg her own body before this arc ends or on the beginning of the next. So I will tell you guys this: I’ve already showed what I plan on using to give her a body in one of the previous chapters (and by previous, I mean ANY of the previous ones, not only the most recents). Now, let the guessworks begin!
ALSO(2), so, I will probably do another Q&A this Sunday or Monday, so get your questions ready. Same rules as before: Two questions per poster (up to three if there aren’t many questions in total, but the first two ones are the ones I will give preference), any character you want, no asking for spoiler.
Bomb-shells dropped, Have a good read!
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We waited not so patiently, as Yuu had a talk with her father about whatever it was that he wanted to speak, but since time is three times faster in here than the outside world, the time it took was pretty long for us. Knowing this I took my time by sitting a bit far from the group and having a petting session with Aura to see if I could cheer her up for a little bit.
It seemed to be working, but I wasn’t sure for how long it would last, which left me a bit worried. Still, having a chance to pet the extra fluffy fur by itself isn’t a bad thing.
As I enjoyed myself, I noticed a dead-pan looking Han-chan approaching me.
“So… are you always like that?” I tilted my head in confusion. “I mean, I guessed you would be a bit less… Impulsive on dungeons.” She said with some slight annoyance in her voice, making me smile awkwardly.
“S-Sorry… It’s just that I’m a bit excited, this being my first dungeon and all…” She sighed loudly and sat besides me.
“Now I see why Cygnas said that you and your friends are insane…” She said a bit disheartened. “If you are like that, then you really aren’t right in the head.”
“Actually, the Collection dungeoning isn’t like that.” I said, receiving a relieved sigh from Hanbei.
“It’s actually even worse!” Cygnas said cheerfully from my lap. Hey! The petting is for Aura!
“Is that even possible?” Han-chan said surprised. I blushed slightly, embarrassed, but Cygnas went on.
“Look, this guy is the main tank…” She pointed to me with her head. “The healer’s find normal healing normal and often tries to leave the tank on the brink of death before healing him. The melee dps don’t really care about drawing agro and keep spinning around the group hitting everything in sight. The ranged is the closest one to a normal one, but even then, the moment the pet dies, she goes berserk.”
“Ahh... Good old times.” I said reminding myself of our frequent dungeon runs. Hanbei, on the other hand, paled as she looked towards me.
Hmm… Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have her know that before we took her to dungeoning with the guys. It’s always fun to see the new one’s reaction at that.
Luckily, before she could say something, Yuu’s eyes opened as she had finished talking with her father at the cell-phone function of the D-lute. She turned towards me and nodded, warning us that it was fine for us to start the fight.
I raised myself and walked towards the area of the boss together with the rest of the group. As soon as we stepped into the center of the room, the two large unmoving drones sprung into life, with the foreman immediately turning towards Yagver, who was the closest one, and the miner turning towards me, likewise.
But they didn’t come immediately. Almost as if giving us a warning attack, the heavy-duty slammed the drills into the ground without spinning them, picking up huge crystal boulder with it and used his other drill to explode it, the debris falling a few meters away from us.
The foreman did something similar, by raising his right arm up and fusing the spear shape and shooting it towards Yagver, where the half-meter long crystal spear pierced the ground and stood there.
We all tensed up at their display. It seemed to me that they were saying that if we cross that area, they will start attacking us seriously.
I answered for us, by picking a small peeble in the ground and throwing it a the big guy.
-0 (7000/7000)
Was that even necessary?
Thus, our fight began. Sir Yagver used his leap attack towards thin one while I cast Tactical charge on Xredder and he landed the first heavy blow. Yuu and Han-chan tried to land a few hits on heavy-duty, but the damage was mostly insignificant, so I told them to keep attacking the light one with the others.
Meanwhile I did my part of running away from the huge drone with super-heavy plate armor and spinning drill arms the size of my head. And by running away, I mean leisurely walking, as the guy couldn’t even dream of reaching me if I did that.
Since getting close to him was pretty much a death sentence, I decided to go with my bow, occasionally poking him with an arrow to keep him focused on me.
Twice he used his crush boulder skill, which was the same as what he did before we begun fighting, but all I needed to was to take my distance while he picked the boulder from the ground and most of the debris would only fall down harmlessly. Although there were three larger pieces that flew much farther, they weren’t all that worrying, since it was easy to dodge them.
Even with that, I immediately got bored of this and decided to focus on the thin guy, since he was our main target. However…
HE’S ALREADY AT FORTY ENERGY? There’s barely even twenty seconds the fight started! What the freaking hell is that? His health had barely been reduced by fifteen percent! How the hell are we supposed to kill him before the safety measures go out?
I watched worried at the fight from afar while also raining down my arrows to try and deal some damage to him, but it didn’t seem to be helping too much, as his energy quickly raised. If it wasn’t for that, he was a fairly easy boss to take on, as his melee attacks didn’t seem to hit too hard.
Even if from time to time he would use his rapid-fire skill on someone at random, then do the same with his other arm aimed at another person. But once the aim was set, he couldn’t move it, so they just needed to move out of it with ease.
I grimaced while looking at that, his energy was almost reaching one hundred and we couldn’t find a way to kill him quickly enough, so when his energy reached ninety, Yuu immediately started making as many ice-walls she could while Yagver quickly took his position, protecting the group from the shrapnel.
However, right before his energy got to one hundred, he suddenly turned towards me while casting his rapid-fire skill. I immediately back-pedaled to take some distance from it, but this made me distance myself from the walls and put the big guy in the middle of the way, blocking my path. I grimaced at this as I saw the thin one’s energy reach one hundred after less than a minute of fight.
The crystal on it’s whole body started to shine stronger and stronger, the others braced for the mana explosion while I could only grimace and ready myself by raising my shield. I couldn’t even use tactical charge as there was a fat drone on the way.
After around five seconds, there was a flash of light coming from the foreman, and I raised my shield and activated nature’s bastion in a feeble attempt to survive the blast. I saw as the other’s HP completely vanished without even a trace as the explosion rumbled even stronger than the ones from the smaller drones. I paled and waited for the impact behind my shield. But what I got wasn’t a huge shockwave hitting me, but the sound of metal falling to the ground.
I raised my head from behind the shield and saw as the big guy in front of me flinched for a moment as some of his armor plating fell down to the ground and his buff stack went down by one.
I blinked, taken by surprise at the scene, and was caught by surprise as he suddenly advanced even faster than before and landed an uppercut on me with his drill-hands.
-532 (138/670)
I coughed in pain as I was thrown to the other side of the room through the sheer impact of the punch, and slowly slid down the wall, only to be finalized by a rapid-fire from the foreman.
I saw as the whole world turned grey and I felt myself being pulled back through the sinuous path of the dungeon, back to the starting point, where I saw the others standing there as spirits waiting for me.
“Took you long enough!” Han-chan said with a smirk as she saw me reaching them with a shocked face.
“Shishou! Are you alright?” Yuu hurried to my side and asked me worried. “You were not here with us and I got really worried!” I nodded, still a bit confused and gently petted her head to soothe her.
After some time, a strong light consumed all of us and we immediately found ourselves revived back at the entrance with the usual window warning us of our deaths. I sighed a bit downhearted for having lost half of a level and be back to level fifteen…
Huh? Why I’m still at level sixteen? And I only lost fifteen percent of my experience?
It seemed that Yuu and Han-chan were as lost as myself when they noticed their experience, but Yagver laughed loudly.
“You see, since most of the dungeons don’t actually expect you to beat the boss on the first or second try, the death penalty is smaller the higher ranking the boss is.” He explained to us. “On some of the strongest dungeons, some bosses don’t even have a death penalty, or so it seems.”
Hmm… I see. It does makes sense. When we get to higher levels, fighting against unknown bosses, it’s pretty much a given that we are going to die to them. If we kept losing half a level every time, these dungeons would be pretty much unbeatable.
“But how come you survived?” Xredder asked me confused. “We were all blown away by the blast, but you took almost a full five seconds to die!”
That is actually a very good question, actually. How on Insania did I survive the blast? I don’t think that it was my skill or shield, as Yagver had even better defensive abilities than me… Something I need to work on if I plan on tanking, now that I think about it…
Wait, now that I think about it, didn’t that big guy stand between me and the foreman? Maybe he stopped the blast! And that made his plating break, taking out a stack from the buff! And it actually made sense, because if the only way to surve the blast was to hide behind magic walls, then it would be something far too specific to do, something that shouldn’t happen, since the dungeon felt a lot more game-like than the rest of the world!
I quickly explained them my strategy while summoning Lieutenant back to life. He woke up dizzily , confused and with only half of his health, but otherwise he seemed to be perfectly fine.
It seems that Aura gets unsummoned when I die too, so I quickly re-summoned her too. She looked a lot finer than Lieutenant, but she immediately turned towards me and jumped at my arms while looking worriedly at me.
I soothed her with some petting the same way I did with Yuu, as we walked back to the mini-boss area. Since we had already cleared the way to the mini-boss, our way back was much faster, taking only ten minutes, since we didn’t have to fight every few steps nor worry about patrols, so we made our way quickly.
“Still, our damage on the boss was too low. We need to finish him faster if we want to avoid a disaster with the rapid-fire.” Lenny said with a slight grimace, and I looked at her confused.
“But that skill seemed so easy to avoid?” I said to her, but she shook her head.
“At first, its fairly easy to avoid. But the more he uses, the bigger the area is and the faster he shoots.” She said with a grimace. “If we take too long, it will become nearly impossible to avoid it.”
Damn, these guys are nastier than they look!
“So, how are we going to increase our dps?” Xredder asked. “I’ve pretty much blown all my cool-downs, but it still wasn’t enough.” He said annoyed and Lenny nodded in agreement.
I stopped to think for a moment, but the answer came a lot easier than what I expected.
So, they have an ever increasing heavy-hitting AoE attack, a one shot explosive blast, an armor plating that stops any kind of attack and drills that ignores armor. Well…
We have Yuu!
“Disciple…” I said in my serious tone, making her sharpen her gaze as she looked back to me. “Your ban on using your spear is lifted.”
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There, damage problem solved.
She nodded seriously, and closed her hands in expectation as we ran towards the cave. Fun fact, though, is that I tried using nature walking on the cave, and it worked just fine whenever we were on the cave ground, but as soon as I stepped on the lab-like chiseled stone, the skill would stop and I would fly ahead with inertia, almost hitting my head on the wall a couple of times.
We finally reached the mini-boss area after some time, and made a quick review of the strategy just to be sure, before entering the room once again. The room was just like the first time we came here, without any crystal standing around and with no boulder debris laying around, making me feel that this really was a game.
We immediately turned towards the thin one as I lured the fat one away. Since these guys were much bigger than the other mobs, there wasn’t much problem with the melees crowding together near each other and starting to hit each-other when using their skills, so Yuu could join Xredder and Han-chan on the front lines.
Yuu started to spin and slash away with her spear like there was no tomorrow, and the boss health’s started to drop noticeably faster. I even made Lieutenant use dismantle on the guy stacking with Han-chan’s and Yuu’s armor debuff, as well as allowed him to use some of the elemental knifes to try and stop the boss’s from casting the rapid fire skill. I told him to prioritize when there was someone who was taking the attack, but left him to decided when to use it.
After around one minute, he started to cast the safety measure, but everyone had already stopped attacking him and ran towards me, and we hid ourselves behind the fat one. Just to be sure, we used the walls strategy, and hid ourselves, but the blast never reached us, and we heard the clanking sound as the armor from fatty fell down.
They immediately got out of the way as fatty started to gain speed. This time I wasn’t caught by surprise and started my kiting job once again while we focused back on the thin one.
As they fought, I started to notice that the attacks area do get bigger the more he casts the skill, and soon Lieutenant started to use the daggers to stun him whenever he turned to Lenny, as she had to spend the most time standing still.
The fight progressed stably afterwards, and when he was at around fifty percent of health he started casting the explosion again, and we all gathered behind big guy once again. The cast time was notably faster. Not much, but enough for it to be notable. But we still had enough time to hide.
Afterwards, we started having some problems, as the rapid-fire started to hit a really large area, and we were barely managing to avoid it on time, so I started to use tactical charge on the guys to help them. However, Lenny had a serious lack of melee skills, so she had to holster her crossbow and then use her wings to fly away.
Well, she IS a harpy, so her wings and arms are kind of the same thing, and to flap wings when you have a heavy weapon on your hands is a tiny bit difficult. Just saying.
Still, she was a whole lot faster flying than running, to the point of being scary. Still, since she couldn’t use her weapons, it wasn’t all that helpful during battle.
When he turned to me to cast the skill, I stepped away, and had the big guy take on the attack for me. Lenny noticed this and started to shoot from near me, hiding herself whenever the barrage came.
After some time, he cast the explosion for the third time, taking out another stack from the big guy. Sadly, even if the attacks do land on him, they still don’t deal too much damage, so the whole fight the Heavy-duty didn’t lose more than 700 HP.
Still, after the third explosion his speed was noticeably faster and I was having a bit of trouble with kiting him, but I still managed to land the occasional attack on the foreman.
And before the fourth explosion came, we all saw as the foreman slowly fell down to the ground. There was a general celebration as we pretty much considered the fight won, since the problematic one fell, now we could take our whole time with taking down fatty.
Except…
Heavy-duty Mining drone C4-T [lvl 20] [Boss]
Equivalent level: 24
(aggressive)HP: 6248/7000
-Heavy-duty plating
-Drilling protocols
-Crush boulderHeavy-duty plating (6) (infinite duration)
Awaiting orders (1 minute 58 seconds)
A wild countdown appeared!
AND IT’S DROPPING TOO FAST!
We all focused our firepower on the big guy, but even then we weren’t able to kill him on time with all the stacks of the skill still affecting him, so the countdown came to an end. As soon as it happened, the boss stopped on his tracks and crouched down, a new skill appearing in place of crush boulder.
And it was called: Quake protocol.
He stabbed both of his drills into the ground, and the whole area started to shake as he did something to the ground. At the start, all we had to worry was to keep our balance, but soon after, the ground started to shatter, with the cracks running to all directions, climbing the walls and meeting back together at the ceiling.
We all paled at the scene and tried to run away from the area, but it was futile, as we were barely able to walk on the quaking ground, and soon the whole cave fell on our heads, instantly killing all of us.
“Shishou… Is that a hard enrage?” I heard Yuu asking as a spirit besides me.
…
“CYGNAS FREAKING DAMMIT!” I shouted angrily as I stomped my way back to the cave, where much to my dismay, the whole area had been reset to its previous state. Bosses included.
Lieutenant and I were both steaming with fury for having lost our level, and we were raging for another go at these guys. The others also seemed a bit angrier this time, but we still didn’t charge in mindlessly.
We made a slight change to our plans and nodded in agreement at the idea before entering the room in a silent march. I didn’t eve wait for the warning shot before landing an arrow right on the big guy’s eye-socket-thingie.
The beginning was just the same as the first time, with everyone focusing on street pole while I kited wrecking ball around. He exploded three times and was down to ten percent of his health like before, but instead of killing him, everyone but Yagver turned towards the other drone and started attacking him while I kited him in a closed circle. They made sure to always keep him between themselves and the ever-growing barrage of crystals, and when I was the one targeted, I would cast tactical charge on myself to run away from the skill.
We survived the fourth explosion with ease, but I was starting to have trouble pulling the big guy around while attacking, but at least he had a lot less health than before by now.
The fifth explosion came and I stopped attacking altogether, only running away and casting the occasional taunt to keep him on me.
Then came the sixth and…
“HEY, MIND KILLING THE OTHER ONE ALREADY? I AM BARELY MANANGING TO OUTRUN HIM BY NOW, YOU KNOW?” I shouted angrily at them as I ran away from the fat guy. They all laughed at me, but kept attacking the miner without minding me.
The seventh explosion came and I literally was running away by now. Luckily, I still had Yuu helping me by stopping her attacks and using frost-emission to freeze the guy’s joint and slow him down significantly.
The others finally decided to kill the foreman, but the fat guy was already down to twenty percent of his health and with only twenty percent of damage reduction he fell down like a rock into a pond.
At least defeating these two managed to recover my lost level, so I wasn’t all that mad…
Okay, I’m lying. I’m really mad at them.
I approached the thin one and started to slam my feet onto his head until it made a large dent. After relieving my stress, I turned back and saw a small line behind me as each one wanted to also vent out their stress. Starting with lieutenant.
I swear that if it weren’t for the sweet lootz, I would have exploded their bodies right here and now.
After everyone who wanted to take their turn with slamming, scratching, cutting or rending the drones had relieved themselves, we finally reclaimed them.
Sadly, these two drones counted as a single boss, so we only got one single item from them, or two, thanks to the first players bonus.
Crystal shooter (Crossbow)
(requires level 18)Attack44-48Extra:(none)Quality:ExcellentDurability:30/30Description
A crossbow made with the same technology of the Pk-1 Foreman Drone. Its shots are powerful, but its beauty is unmatchable. It can consume Crystalized mana to generate arrows.
STR +10 AGI+5 VIT+3
Weapon skill: [Rapid fire]
Remodeled heavy padding (legs) (Leather)
(requires level 18)Def18M.res :17Quality:ExcellentDurability:45/45Description
This was once the padding used within the armor of C4-T Heavy-duty Mining drone. Its abilities in stopping shockwaves are unmatched and its toughness are one of a kind.
STR +5 TGH +7 VIT+5
Knock-down resistance +15%
Quake resistance +15%
We had a few interesting items on our way here, but these two were simply unmatched. The crossbow, which went to Lenny, was an amazing piece of work, with the whole bow-wing made of a beautiful spiked crystal and the body of the weapon being made with a golden plating, reminiscent of the drone’s armor. The damage was ridiculously high, but since this is a slow weapon, it wasn’t as overpowered as it seemed.
The other was a dark grey pants, with some thick paddings on the thighs and ankles. It looked really cool, and the resistance were pretty charming too. Han-chan and Xredder rolled for the loot with the system on a 0 to 100 point scale. Xredder landed a five and became depressed, but Hanbei managed to outdo him and land a four, so we were left with a happy grumpy tiger, and a grumpy happy catgirl.
Finishing with our loot distribution, we approached the room to this wing’s last boss and opened them. The joints were a bit rusty, so we had some trouble with it.
Okay, rusty was an understatement. After making a ten centimeters opening, the huge double-doors fell down, with one of them managing to land on me as I forgot to let go of it when I jumped back surprised…
-143 (487/630)
Ouch…
After helping me up and I mined the door in anger, we crossed a small corridor and found ourselves before even bigger doors, but in a much better state and made entirely of crystals. I gulped loudly and pushed the doors open, revealing a large circular room, with all the walls and ceiling covered in crystals, as well as a single object in the middle of the room.
It had a golden shine to it, and looked about as high as myself. It had a slightly trapezoidal shape, with the smaller part on the botton and the large part up. Although the others were confused, I immediately recognized it. It was the chest-piece of Excel-Loran, the drones last boss. Although it looked a lot bulkier now seeing it up closer.
Actually, it kind of looked like there were arms on the side, sticking closely to the body and merging into a single object. If I had to say, he looked like one of those transformers, with the body all folded up nicely.
I looked towards the others and nodded before we all cautiously approached it, and as soon as the name-plate appeared…
“Dammit!” Me and Xredder said together. Yuu looked at us confused and noticed that everyone else seemed to be sharing our feelings.
“What happened, Shishou?” She asked us after some time. I turned back towards her and said.
“Did you take a look at the guy's health?” I said, and she nodded slightly confused.
“I did… But what does it matter?” She asked even more confused.
“Well… It’s…” I turned back to the boss and gulped.
Excel-Loran [lvl 21] [ELITE dungeon Boss]
Equivalent level: 26
(aggressive)HP: 6000/6000
-?????The only remaining security drone from the times when Yksar’s mine was still functional. Its workings are as much of a mystery as its abilities, as no record remains from the time it was built. However, its known for sure that he is the strongest drone to live in this mine, as no other drone dares to thread the same path as him.
“It’s too low.” Xredder finished for me.
“I don’t like this. Not even one bit.” I said with a grim feeling.