"How long do you think you'll need to get the ore out?" I asked Hephaestus in the guild chat, so that everyone else would hear his reply.
"I’m not sure," he said. "Without breaks, somewhere around twenty to twenty-five minutes."
"Oh, that's not that bad," Ares said. "I bet we can hold off for that long."
"Do you mean twenty minutes for all the ore we need?" I asked, fearing his answer.
"Oh, no, of course not!" he exclaimed. "I mean for each piece."
"And we need twenty-four of them…" I said. "So it looks like we'll be spending the rest of our training day here."
The timer ended and this time three golems rose from the lava at once. I attacked one of them as soon as it appeared and so did Artemis and Ares. Not more than a couple of seconds later, and before any of those first golems were destroyed, five more started emerging.
At this point, we all triggered our stunning skills at the ones we’d been attacking initially and focused on damaging the new ones. Since there were more than one of them for each of us, we all triggered our strongest offensive skills. Luckily, my massive stun skill caught two of them at once so we were able to take them out before they moved against Hephaestus.
"Let's all focus on one at a time!" I shouted at them. "But no two stuns on the same one."
"Copy that!" Artemis shouted and Ares nodded as well.
Aphrodite used one of her spells to hold a golem that had just shed the stun effect in place. Fiery tendrils of magma wrapped around its feet, making it impossible for the golem to move forward. Since it now wasn't able to reach its original target, who was still trying to release a chunk of orichalcum ore from the cavern's wall, it turned to strike the one closest to it.
I barely had time to see the strike coming, and it flung me forward. The force was so strong that I barely felt the burns on my shoulder. It also helped that my full attention was on the fact that I was rapidly approaching the river of lava, face-first.
In an effort to minimize the damage, I threw my hands forward. An incredible pain shot through my arms all the way up to my shoulders as my hands made contact with the molten rock. Thankfully, the magma was thick enough for me to push against it slightly and throw myself backward again.
The damage to my HP was clearly visible. It wasn't enough to put me in danger just yet but I hadn’t seen my HP bar this low since the time we’d fought the hundred-headed dragon. At this rate, this was going to be a real challenge, especially since we needed to protect Hephaestus, not just keep killing the golems.
As if on cue, seven more golems started emerging from the river.
"Are you alright?" Aphrodite shouted, and her healing light touched my body.
I didn’t offer a reply as I cut down the golem responsible for my almost taking a lava bath. Then, without wasting any seconds, I looked around me to check if any of the previous enemies were still alive. When I was sure none of them were, I focused my attacks on one of the new golems at a time, according to Artemis's directions.
Whenever an arrow that wasn't one of her stunning attacks hit a golem, it meant that we would continue hitting that one until it stopped moving. By doing this, we were able to make sure no more golems made their way toward Hephaestus for the next couple of waves. He was getting close to releasing a chunk of the valuable ore when the prompt for the end of the fourth wave appeared.
* * *
The fourth wave has been successfully cleared.
This is a new record set by Zeus.
30 seconds until fifth wave starts.
* * *
"If the difficulty continues rising like this," Ares said, "there’s no way we can last for twelve hours."
"I don't think we'll be able to do it either,” Artemis agreed.
"I'll rebuff you after this wave," Aphrodite said.
"How are you doing there, Hephaestus?" I shouted behind me.
"Almost there," he said with a grunt. "I’ve almost got one."
"Aphrodite, you sit down and regain some more MP at the beginning of the next wave," I suggested.
"Yeah, I think I will," she agreed, right as the timer ended.
The ground started shaking and large bubbles burst on the lava river's surface. So large in fact that small chunks sprayed toward Ares and me and we had to dive away to avoid them.
"What is happening?" Ares asked as a sinkhole appeared in the middle of the river.
The hole sucked in the lava from around it, and turned into the gaping maw of a much larger monster than the golems we had been fighting so far.
* * *
Name: Elder Magma Elemental
Type: Magic Creature - Elemental (Raid Boss)
Level: 54
Disposition: Passive
HP: 182,881/182,881
Physical Attack: 820
Magic Attack: 126
Speed: 60
Attack Range: Melee
XP: 2,422,283
Description: Magma elementals are the personification of the raw power of extreme pressure and heat. They are categorized according to their age, since they concentrate and condense more mass in their cores the longer they live, making them stronger as they grow older. The rankings of elementals are minor, small, medium, large, great, greater, and elder. Each tier can command a larger area, and absorb more and harder materials from the earth, while only great magma elementals and above are able to travel the planes.
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* * *
"A fucking raid boss?" Ares exclaimed, unleashing the most powerful of his attacks.
"Throw all your stuns first!" I shouted.
The elemental's head was large enough to almost fill the entire width of the river. As soon as it had emerged up to its neck, it turned its head to face me. Its features vaguely resembled a humanoid face, but it was obvious that its mouth was filled with something. And what else could it have been except for magma?
Its fiery, glowing eyes flashed as it pulled back in preparation to spit out everything it had. I didn't want to move just yet, as I was sure it would be able to follow my movement, so instead I waited for the last possible moment.
The geyser of lava that erupted from its mouth was massive and traveled at high speed. Since I was prepared for such an attack, I was able to roll to the side to avoid the first scorching heat of it. But I hadn’t considered the duration of its lava-spitting skill.
The molten rocks continued to come out of its mouth in a steady torrent that didn't look like it was going to end anytime soon. I turned my initial somersault into a run, doing my best to avoid the flow, when it suddenly stopped. Not slowly, like it ran out of lava, but instantly.
"Got it!" Artemis shouted. "How do you like my stun?"
The elemental’s eyes were moving rapidly around the chamber, but the creature itself wasn’t able to move anymore. The remaining lava in its open mouth now fell freely into the river. It was the best possible timing, both in terms of avoiding the damage and also being able to find out more about this new enemy.
I slashed at its head as I looked around it at the same time. The flow of the lava in the river was disrupted around the neck still protruding from it but I noticed something more—a similar pattern was barely visible on each side of the river.
"I think this thing has arms!" I shouted at the others, right as the stun effect ended.
It turned out the elemental did have arms, or something that was very reminiscent of them. They just didn’t bend the way I was expecting them to. As soon as its limbs emerged from the river, it turned to punch Ares, only its arm bent the other way round. I continued striking at it, moving slightly to the side to see if Ares was able to parry this unexpected attack. Thankfully, he ducked just in time to avoid the force of the strike, though chunks of molten rock and metal still fell on him.
At first I was impressed that he was both fast and perceptive enough to get out of the way of the strike, but then the elemental did a one-eighty turn. I was surprised to see another face on the back of its head. Ares had been able to anticipate the attack because he thought the elemental was facing him. This meant we wouldn’t know for sure which direction it would attack next, assuming that it could probably bend its arms any way it wanted—on top of literally having eyes in the back of its head.
"One down!" Hephaestus shouted, right before something hard hit the ground. "Want me to help?"
"We’ve got this," Ares replied, piercing the elemental’s arm while Aphrodite healed him.
I was confident we would eventually be able to kill this small raid boss by ourselves too, but I wasn’t sure we would also be able to continue protecting Hephaestus after this wave.
"No, let's end this fast and take a break!" I shouted.
"But we—" Ares started.
I cut him off. "Just do as I say and we can argue about it afterward."
Hephaestus placed the ore in his inventory and took out a war hammer that was coated in ice. His weapon left behind a thick, steady trail of steam as he charged the elemental. The monster tried backhanding him but he slid underneath its limbs, ending his charge right at the edge of the riverbank.
With impressive speed, the god of the forge brought his icy hammer right down on the face of the elemental. The sound it made was horrendous. It was clear that the weapon had a bigger impact than Ares’s or mine, due to its elemental affinity.
The battle took longer than I would have liked but we were ultimately able to bring down the elder elemental without getting into too much danger. The monster's attacks were very powerful but because of its size, it became quite easy to see the direction it would strike ahead of time.
Most of the damage we sustained was from the magma that flew around it as it moved or attacked, but these minor injuries were easily healed by Aphrodite. As for its magma-spitting attacks, they were very obvious and easy to prepare for since it submerged into the lava with its mouth open before coming back out to spit at us. The moment it started its special attack, we all unleashed our stunning skills and since our level was quite a bit higher, at least one of them would land each time, rendering its attack useless—the magma it had collected would just leak out of its open mouth.
Once Artemis landed the killing blow, the elemental's jaws slacked open and it started melting into the river.
"Let's cross over by stepping on it," I said to Hephaestus.
Once the elemental's head was submerged enough, we ran to the edge and jumped onto it together, launching ourselves back to the same side as our companions.
* * *
The fifth wave has been successfully cleared.
This is a new record set by Zeus.
30 seconds until sixth wave starts.
* * *
"Let's get out of here," I said.
"Don't you want to set a better record?" Ares asked. "I bet we could get more done if we all fight together."
"This isn’t why we came here," I said. "The XP isn’t that great, and we need to see if we can get the orichalcum without the fear of being overrun.”
“Zeus is right,” Aphrodite agreed, joining me in heading for the exit. "We can't expect Hephaestus to help us if we want to have all orichalcum pieces in time."
Ares didn’t like the fact that we were breaking our wave combo but eventually followed us into the tunnel just before the cavern. The moment he left the chamber, a new notification appeared for all of us.
* * *
You have successfully lasted 5 waves in the Heart of Mount Olympus endless waves dungeon.
This is a new record set by Zeus.
You have been awarded 1,000,000 XP for clearing 5 waves.
You have been awarded 250,000 XP for clearing 1 wave boss.
Current record: Zeus - 5 waves
* * *
"Hey, that's not bad at all!" Artemis exclaimed. "That’s slightly better than what we normally get from our regular XP farming."
I was expecting the wave counter to reset once we left the cavern, but had no idea we would be getting an XP bonus based on our performance. When I looked at my XP total, I saw that the bonus was split among the five of us and despite the fact that the monsters so far hadn’t provided much XP by themselves, and neither had the raid boss, accounting for this bonus on top brought us above what we needed to gain to meet our goals.
"In terms of net XP gained per hour, I think this is indeed better," I admitted. "But if we also count the time we need to get here and to go back home, I don't think it's really worth it."
"Luckily, that isn't our main focus," Aphrodite said, and sat on the ground. "Let's rest real quick and go back in again."
We waited until Aphrodite's MP had completely recovered before she stood up and buffed us all anew. With a good grasp now of how long the five waves would take us, we figured we just might be able to finish them in the duration of one round of buffs so we ran back in.
* * *
You have entered the Heart of Mount Olympus.
This is a level 55 endless waves dungeon.
The current record is: 5 waves by Zeus.
* * *
Hephaestus and I crossed to the other side of the river again, him getting to work straight away on retrieving another piece of orichalcum, and me putting myself close to where I knew the enemies would start appearing.
* * *
10 seconds until first wave starts.
* * *
"Let's do this." I smiled at my companions, who were all ready to attack too.
* * *
It took us almost eleven hours in total to gather all twenty-four pieces of orichalcum ore. Not only that, but we were also able to hit our daily XP goal. Ares was eager to continue our last run and see how far we would be able to get, but nobody else wanted to continue the game after so many hours spent in the exhaustingly hot cavern.
After all, this wasn’t the best time for games. We’d come down here with the purpose of getting the last materials we needed to craft the titan-killing weapon and perhaps also to be able to fulfill our daily XP quota. Since we’d managed to achieve both goals already, and considering the imminent attack from the armies of Cronus, staying down there just to beat a record seemed trivial.
And so we took the path back up the mountain, hoping that the preparations we’d tasked our citizens with were well underway or perhaps even already finished.