I evolved Slimerene into magic taster in order to hopefully get an anti magic monster.
Magic taster Despite being weak to magic, this slime decides to eat it anyway. A bizzare creature that probably won't survive long enough too advance again. Main stat stamina, sub stat strength
The description has no confidence in my decision, probably because she still has no magic resistance trained because despite being the actual baby of the group, the rest act like babies when it comes to resistance training, except Ratina she at least does some occasionally.
Slimerene possible skills Magic drain Minor max health increase Minor increased regeneration rate
I choose magic drain as that was the whole point of picking this class to begin with, the other options are nice standard tanky skills but I want a magic tanker that is immune to physical attacks to have the most op blob around.
Magic drain LV1 You can drain the MP of any target you are touching, the rate of drain is equal to your willpower/their willpowerx5 MP per second
That will be nice for draining MP from a tanker, but try it with a mage and slimerene will end up dying before they run out of MP.
Nasby's taunt won't stop aoe attacks, and Slimerene still takes increased magic damage from slime body.
This is still an amazing skill though, next time we have a drawn out fight with an explosion prone bear we can empty its MP pool so that it can't use super skills, unless it has a skill like Ratina's magic overdrive in which case Slimerene will be in huge danger.
As for Slimerene's changes to her body, she is still a blob that can shange shape into whatever, but isn't solid enough to stand up in a human form.
I check up the teachable options for Pythana and Slimerene
Pythana skills Dagger weilder Claw Incapacitate Minor endurance recovery Silent footsteps (she doesn't have feet though?) Charm
Slimerene skills Minor max health increase Minor increased regeneration rate Enhanced senses Dissolve mana Evade detection Taunt Slime spray
Slimerene seems to have lots of skills that Nasby and Pythana have, I'm not sure if it is just because skills are bound to overlap with 4 monsters or if mimicry has any hidden effects like monster teacher did. My taming skill levelled up when Slimerene finished evolving, but once again isn't giving me another slot yet likely until I advance my own class.
Tame LV4 Tamed monsters 4/4
We begin to notice the ceiling quickly begin going up after another 3 months, and finally we find an exit to the surface.
I only levelled up twice after all that time, Ratina levelled up 7 times, Nasby levelled up 4 times, and Pythana levelled up 12 times while Slimerene only levelled up 10 times as we were unable to get her the quick grower skill.
Auxentius new skills/ skill level changes
Wind and earth resistance LV3
Ice resistance LV2 same as other resistance skills but for ice
Battle advise LV3 Positive increase in moral when you are the leader of a party, when giving commands +3% stats to all allies within 30 meters of you.
Ratina
Higher tier attribute magic LV3 penalty is only 70% now
Ice magic: ice shard LV1 same as ball skills
Earth magic: Throw boulder LV3 Stronger and cooldown of 28 (56)
Magic overdrive LV2 Uses all of the users MP and temporarily allows them to substitute HP for MP to use a spell, Increase the strength of the next spell by 75%, cooldown 1 hr
Fire magic: Burst of flames LV3 Same as wind column LV 3 but fire
Water magic: Torrential downpour LV3 Same but water
Nasby
Minor increased regeneration rate LV3 0.3% per MP and 0.3 duration per MP now
Crushing bite LV6
Shield aura LV4 Allies within a 4 meter range get a defensive bonus equal to 25% of your stamina stat, MP cost 20 cooldown 15 duration 11
Counter-attack positioning LV4
Pythana
Coil position LV4
Assassination LV7 +56% strength on first attack
Camoflauge LV3
Swallow LV5 Can swallow creatures and objects 125% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 30% of all their stats for the duration of the skill
Lesser venom spray LV3 3 meter range now
Incapacitate LV1 When using this skill during an attack that would normally kill your foe, they instead lose consiousness for either 1 hour or until you cancel this skill
Minor endurence recovery LV4 recovers from fatigue faster
Dagger weilder LV4 Equipping a dagger increases your strength by 8%
Slimerene
Mimicry LV9 18% now
Magic drain LV3 You can drain the MP of any target you are touching, the rate of drain is equal to your willpower/their willpowerx9 MP per second
Taunt LV4
Evade detection LV1
Slime spray LV3 Cut off a portion of your slime body and shoot it on a foe, damage based on dissolve skill
I had Nasby learn the hide skill so that the entire party has it now in order to hopefully avoid the notice of ther regional lords that are practically at war with humanity in general.
Ratina and I have also tested how the attributes of magic interact with each other and figured out the basic type chart.
Fire magic has an advantage against wind, wind>water>fire>wind. Earth is bad against all the other basic elements, but is better at dealing damage to non magic creatures that aren't extra flamable.
Ice magic is good against water, earth, and wind, but super weak to fire and slightly weak to lightning.
Lightning is better against fire than water somehow, good against water and ice, but does almost nothing to earth and gets hit real hard by earth in return.
I was looking forward to seeing the sun after being in mana lit caves for 9 months, but instead I arrive in a haunted forest type place with gray colored mana coating everything and a cloudy, dreary atmosphere.
If only Ratina knew weather manipulation already, oh well.
WARNING! You are currently in undead tainted lands, all manners of HP recovery are significantly weakened
Glad the system told me that, and that explains all the gray mana everywhere. So naturally the first course of action is to have me and Ratina mess with it, while Slimerene MP drains it, to see what'll happen.
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Slimerene starts taking damage, but that is what a magic taster is supposed to do right? I have Nasby on standby with first aid and have her continue while using lecture on her while Ratina futzes with the mana.
Shortly after Slimerene gets two new skills before Nasby heals her and she stops for a bit.
Death resistance LV1 Takes less damage from death energy and suffers less while under its influence
Dissolve mana LV1 Eat raw mana and convert it into food to sustain yourself
Ratina is able to slightly influence the mana, but isn't able to do something even as simple as move it a few inches in any direction, she does get an interesting skill however.
Death magic: decay manipulation Able to influence decay attribute mana slightly
She is now able to move the mana around a bit, but it takes massive amounts of MP and the skill can't be levelled so I have her stop for now and see what happens when I let Slimerene eat in an area for an extended time, while Ratina and Pythana hunt some low level monsters nearby.
The nearby monsters turn out to unsurprisingly be skeletons, but they only find monster based skeletons and not any human based ones.
Pythana has difficulty damaging them as she can't hurt them with her venom based attacks, she can only stab them with her dagger or constrict them until they are crushed.
She tried swallowing one, but it apparently tasted terrible and dealt some damage to her so she canceled the skill.
Ratina has no problem because they burn well, and while I am hestant to use fire after the Steven incidents she can use other magic to kill them easily.
The undead don't have a core, soul flame, or anything like that, you just have to hit them until they die again, and the only way we have figured out to tell if they are dead yet or not is to use magic sense to "see" if there is a mana reaction from their bones.
After a day has passed Slimerene has managed to clear a 2 meter raidus of land from decay mana, levelling up death resistance once in the process.
The cleared area is less gray, but I can tell from magic sense that the decay mana from the surroundings is spreading back to the cleared areas, so I end the experiment so that we can explore the surface again.
Ratina has also practiced enough that she can now use wind manipulation to erase any smoke caused by her fire spells so we can hopefully use them without signalling to the whole world where we are every time we fight.
The undead are also much less aggressive than I thought they would be, instead of swarming the first living thing, us, most of them don't pay attention to us unless we approach them, and when we do most of them run.
Undead also don't need visability to detect us and Nasby is pretty slow so we usually need to use Pythana or magic to hunt them as we can't get the whole group to fight them at once.
Skeletons are the most common undead, I see some zombies but we kill them way before they get close, there are also some incorporeal monsters, but mana sense locates them with ease and magic seems to kill them super easily.
Pythana and Slimerene put their evade detection skills to good use, particularly Slimerene since she can use magic to deal substantial damage, but Ratina is still the best option to just blast them in one shot before they have a chance to get out of range.
I am still on guard though, some of these undead I can sense are up to rank 3 and we have no idea how strong the local ruler is, nor if a regional lord is usually active in this area.
I assume that the decay mana that fills this area is due to the influence of the local lord, and to be able to affect such a large area implies that they are probably more than our party can take on at the moment.
Though now that I think about it, I have a better alternative to mere speculation.
The next skeleton we ambush we don't kill, instead I use telepathy to interrogate it and tell it that I will let it live in exchange for information.
Unfortunately, it is stupid, and I mean can't even form a coherent thought stupid.
I thought they were intelligent for running away, but they apparently do that every time a creature with a strong enough life (or death) force approaches.
It doesn't understand my terms, much less my questions, so we just kill it and move on.
I haven't given up on information gathering though, I avoided chasing rank 3 undead to avoid a drawn out chase that may attract unwanted attention, but hopefully they will be smarter than the rank 0-1 counterparts.
A rank 2 might also work, but I really just want the sweet xp of a rank 3 at this point, Ratina is so close to evolving and I am leveling up so slow lately, 3 months to gain 2 levels is just too terrible.
The good news is that I found a rank 3 pretty quickly, the bad news is that there is a horde of undead, hundreds of rank 0-1, dozens of rank 2-3 and a rank 6 leading them by my estimates, unless it is a magic main in which case it is probably rank 5. They also just so happen to be headed strait for us.
"I haven't even made a big mess yet, why does the local militia already hate me?" (Auxentius)
"You mean besides the fact that as a living creature you have entered undead lands and been killing the locals since you got here?" (Ratina)
"Fair point" (Auxentius)
"Can I eat the huge buffet down there?" (Slimerene)
"The buffet fights back, and even without the op leader the sheer number of ghosts with magic attacks aren't something I think you could handle" (Auxentius)
The leader of the group is a giant skeleton with a crown on its head, it doesn't really have any other distinguishing features and if it weren't for the massive mana reaction it wouldn't seem like anything too special.
We start runung away from the army at a diagonal angle, I won't run directly the opposite way so that we aren't chased into a trap.
"Ratina, their strongest are staying in the back line so blast them with some flame bursts, don't bother holding back to remove the smoke either because stealth is out at this point. Nasby you are the slowest so just keep moving, if they have any hidden tricks to counter-attack us we will regroup by you. Slimerene and Pythana use evade detection and see if you can't manage to kill some rank twos in an ambush, Slimerene should use the escape skill to return near Nasby if ever discovered, Pythana is fast enough to get away on her own. I will moniter the battle while providing buffs as needed." (Auxentius)
Ratina uses a 3/4 power flame burst while keeping magic overdrive on standby in case of retailiation, leaving a 3 meter diameter hole in their forces. The commander being less than pleased lauches a giant sphere of what feels like decay energy back at us.
Havina the boss be a mage class disrupts my plans somewhat, but it is good to know that we likely aren't dealing with a rank 6. I use both my buff skills on Ratina and have her use magic overdrive and electric shock to retailiate, I also call back Pythana and Slimerene while having Ratina run after retailiating so that we don't fight an extended magic battle that we don't have the MP to maintain.
The giant masses of mana collide in between us and the army, the magic spheres obliterate each other and leave the forest as a scorching crater several meteres deep near the center.
Yeah we might be able to take on the mage if it was all of us vs it, but with the giant army blocking the way we would run dry of MP way too fast.
The ghost like undead are the fastest and appear to be charging us in retailiation to slow us down while the army catches up, but me and Slimerene still have most of our MP and can blast them while Ratina recharges enough for a coloumn of wind that makes another whole in their forces.
It seems like our opponent is quick to learn however, not only do the ghosts pull back, but all the rank 0-1 creatures appear to retreat so that the faster rank 2s and 3s can chase faster, with the mage leader close behind.
I could have Ratina prepare a cave or terrain to hold them off, but thier mage would likely blast it before they do much.
I let Pythana set up an ambush on her own, while keeping very close attention in case she needs support, I am however very plesantly suprised.
The undead not only don't detect her before the ambush due to evade detection, but they look as though they can't "see" Pythana ambushing their allies unless they are within a meter or so.
It must be like how Slimerene can only see things within a meter of herself, but the undead are used to "seeing" farther with their life sensing ability, an ability that evade detection evidently counters.
Unfortunately the boss seems to be able to see her just fine after the ambush, and she retreats quickly after killing a rank 2 with the help of my monster buff skill, and she can outrun the mages spells from her current distance.
Pythana's ambush forces the mage to keep his forces close to itself further limiting its mobility, but this still isn't enough for Nasby to outrun them even if they weren't undead that didn't tire or sleep.
Now that they are more clumped up, Ratina should be able to punish them hard with a good flame burst.
But they would likely scatter a bit more after that, so I take a gamble and wait for magic overdrive to recharge so that we can go all in and have Naby bunker down with sheild aura to take the counter attack. In the mean time I have Ratina use stone manipulation to cover the path behind us with obsticles so that our mage isn't suspiciously inactive.
All the obstacles we make are easily flattened by the enemy mage, and when I try to use telepathy to talk with them they somehow block it.
Maybe I should have tried diplomacy before blasting the enemy army, but where is the fun in that?
Slimerene also uses slime spray on the ground which amusingly causes some of the undead to slip and fall, better yet when their mage uses magic to move it I can feel via magic sense that the mana dissolve skill make it use more mana then normally would be needed to remove it from the path.
We continue like this until Ratina has magic overdrive prepped again and begin the plan. I use monster buff and awaken hidden potential on Ratina with the extra boost put into intelligence and Ratina uses her full MP reserves with magic overdrive and 7/10ths of her health to make a massive flame burst skill.
The bosses eye sockets widen, something I didn't know skeletons could do, and it makes a massive wall of decay energy between flame burst and the soldiers.
I smile as if it had used a ball skill to block, than Nasby would have to block it when I initiate phase 2 of the plan, and I can tell based off the massive amount of mana in the wall that it wasn't holding back to make it.
Me and Slimerene use fire manipulation to move the spell mid flight in a different direction, it takes far more MP to use a manipulation skill on magic attacks than to use it regularly, but we just alter the flight path to curve around the wall and hit them directly.
The boss however also does something unexpected.
It launches some of its rank 2s at the inbound flame burst and while the spell won't prematurely detonate, this does reduce its power before the aoe effect.
Some of the rank 3s also appear to have shield aura like tank skills that they activate to mitigate the damage.
These all weaken the impact of the spell, but a massive swarm of flames still erupt within their ranks and based on the level ups we get, we did plenty of damage.
However a weakened aoe skill even with it having an advantageous element against the enemy with Ratina's fully buffed force, won't kill a rank 5 that easily, and I definately just made it take us seriously if it wasn't before.
The fight isn't over yet, but I think we are off to a good start.