OldBegginings:[Okay, well chapter one becoming a 'hot' topic was kind of insane, thanks alot guys for reading and especially for those who followed. I hope your enjoying the series so far, I've been updating weekly, but since school has ended, I reckon I can increase this rate, although I have started to get into Xenoblade Chronicles X, so I can't promise anything...
Well, anyway. Hope you enjoy the chapter, see you in the authors notes.]
*'Doki'*
Well. That was a hassle... After dealing with her personal issues, Alice demanded to be near us at any opportunity. Apparently, the noobs we beat earlier were to hurt by my mean, mean words, so ganged up with another guild to get us to apologize...
Really? I mean for fuck's sake. An idiot does a stupid thing for a silly reason, and it somehow doesn't work out... And I'm the fucking bad guy! HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?! He could have just NOT done the STUPID THING WITH OBVIOUS FLAWS, and I wouldn't have needed to kick his arse... But NO, he did the stupid thing and blames me for having the fucking tenacity to call his idiotic act idiotic. Just... WOW!
... Well, in better news, we're actually finishing the dungeon today. We just sorted out our shortlists, and for those interested, mine looked like this. Jeehan told us about the stat menu, so I made some adjustments to that as well.
Name DokiDoki19 Class Succubus Level 19 Class skills ['Bind' = Mass_Leech.], ['Bolt' = Leech.], ['Heal' = Blood_Transfusion.], ['Intimidate' = Vampiric_Bite.], [passive = Life_Absorb.], [passive = Attraction_Resistance.], [passive = Attraction_Increase.] Sub-class skills <"What the hell is that?" = Object_Examination.>, <"What's this?" = Mob_Examination.>, <"Possess" = Mob_Tame.>,
Stats Level 19 AP 12500/12500 Defense 29 Damage 74 HP 30/NA Speed 62 Stamina 44 Spare 0
Yeah, I know I only have 17 out of a total of 20, but I feel like I have a good balance with this set of skills, also I gather I'm going to level up, and would rather be able to add one or two interesting skill I get on the move, rather than taking up time removing one to add another. I also haven't got any weapons equipped. And as for the underwear, please don't ask why it shows up.
Doing this also gave me a good chance to take a look at my sub-classes. Herbalist seems like a 'hunter' subclass in other games, I was surprised by this since 'Herbalist' from the name alone seems like a sub-class that only appraises herbs. But I'm also able to tame and examine mobs and examine any ingredient type item. So it seems like it is more useful than I gave it credit for. Additionally, Preacher seems like a mainly passive sub-class, for making speech more eloquent and efficient.
Anyway, the other three and I were now outside the dungeon. It didn't look as big and daunting as it did yesterday... It must be because I now don't care about how many enemies could fit inside such a structure since they all sucked at fighting anyway. We equipped ourselves with weapons, and walked in, our aim being the Mumble Tree itself.
The first two levels went far smoother than yesterday, due to our higher levels, and memorization of the mob's move sets. The third level was just sad, though... The only addition it had was having no chests and mining zones, and only one new mob type... A hobgoblin... With a bow...
'SO MUCH ORIGINALITY! Not,' were my initial thoughts, they didn't change when looking at them in action either.
They acted similarly to the other hobgoblins, although these had such a low accuracy that they were even weaker. And at our levels, we just crushed it in ten minutes and went to the next level, which had more chests and mining zones than the first two floors combined, but didn't have any new mobs. Although Jeehan did fool for a mimic, so it was at least slightly comical.
And that was it, an entire dungeon apart from the boss, done in... About 50 or 60 minutes.
Whilst walking down the staircase to the next floor, we heard the doors close behind us. After telling Alice what happened, she realized that we were at the boss, so said 'Good luck' and left the area with her guild. We were all alone and had no escape. It was almost tense.
It was almost tense because I could see the boss... I mean, I'm not pink gumball, but I think this tree boss with big apples in its branches, won't be a challenge. To test this hypothesis, we just walked to the area lit by... A sky inside the cave? Oh yeah, this was a game, fuck logic...
The tree didn't move and didn't give the intention of moving, so we all attacked.
...
Well, this is dull. We had no fire-type moves to burn it down and looked like the worst people right now for continually slashing a tree. Sometimes apples would fall from the tree, but there was no real indication we were doing any damage or any attacks were being done.
"Who dares wake me!" said a booming voice. Oh, the tree grew a face... At least it wasn't like a bad CGI monstrosity. Its voice seemed intimidating, making the LOD and Titanious shake, due to them not being above level 21 I guess.
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Jeehan and I were fine, so I rebutted "Us? We're wanting IDs. Will you give them to us, or will we have to kill you?"
"Strong words, but you are not enough to beat me..."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up with your egotistical taunt and fight us you coward!" I yelled, making the tree visibly twitch.
"Fine then. Die."
Hm. The battle right now was pretty interesting. In the regards that I've never fought a boss like it.
The boss started off by awakening the falling apples into small mobs and dropped more. This quickly crowded the field. Not because we weren't dealing with them, I was just using "Possess" to get them on our side. It seemed like it didn't work on the boss since he was about our level, but since these enemies were only about level 5, I was able to tame them almost 100% of the time, so before long, we had about 20 on our side. The others were getting close to the tree, cutting it's low-hanging branches and making visible slices in its bark trying to do damage to it.
Hm. We didn't really have any trouble so far. Bits of minor damage from the other's attacks built up with time and numbers. And even though we did get hurt minorly sometimes from me not taming these mobs quickly enough, we got through a quarter of its health in with relative ease.
It's at this point the tree's attack pattern changed. It started to shed it's leaves, to limit our vision, and blow some leaves into us, causing damage. It was only able to do this on its face side, so I kept a lookout and warned the others before each attack. It had limited height and range, so it was pretty easy to duck under and get out of range. It still dropped the apple mobs, but I was still matching their rate of release with my rate of taming, so there was no real challenge. We got the tree down another quarter of its health without any major injuries.
It changed it's attack pattern again. But it wasn't as fast or as obvious as before. It started to bind us and attack us with its roots. With the previous attacks ongoing, this was pretty hard to control. My mob army had almost completely died, and it was able to use multiple roots simultaneously to attack us. This was very hard to dodge and attack at the same time. If the roots grabbed us, we weren't able to move freely, meaning we had to get through the roots, to be able to dodge the myriad of other attacks. I was still trying to tame the mobs that came down, but the leaves, and a constant need to watch the ground made me slow my rate of taming. We now weren't doing much, if any, damage to the tree, and were completely overwhelmed.
"Oi! Get close to me!" I came up with a plan.
Knowing what it was, the others came to me.
"Bind." A projection of tentacles came to surround us, and since the tentacles came from underground, and didn't affect my health when attacked,
I gathered this would block the roots from attacking us from underground... This worked... Too well. It blocked the boss's roots, leaves and most of the apple mobs from reaching us, and somehow the bind affected the bosses health, gradually lowering it as it continued.
The tree's trunk was also in clear view of us, so the others attacked, as I maintained my bind, causing the tree to lose lots of hp. I was keeping a lookout to see if the wall got breached, and took care of the apple-mobs who dropped in it too. Unfortunately for my apple-mob army, no more did...
Soon enough it's hp was in the red. That was good and all, but we had a problem. I almost lost all of my AP. We stupidly only brought one mp potion, that I already drank, and the rate of the tree's attacks increased, so we would be bombarded if the bind stopped working... Fuck! We had no alternative but to speed up out attacks.
"Go all out, spare no AP, we need to kill this tree soon. Don't stop attacking even if the bind stops, I'll heal you all." LOD went all out, attacking in sync with my dual sword attacks to try and get it's hp lower. Jeehan had enchanted all of us with a damage bonus, and Titanious was with him using swinging as much as possible. My remaining apple mobs which were also attacking. But it wasn't enough. My bind had ended, and the boss still had about 200 hp left. I transitioned to healing the others since I had about 20'000 hp by now, so they continued to attack unfazed to what was behind them.
In about half a minute the tree had lost all of its hp. There were no casualties since I still had about 3000 hp, maintaining the other's HP and tanking for them. I also had two apple mobs survive, so I called them Pot and Luck, and dismissed them, equipping the summon skill to my shortlist, and saying "Stop summon" which reverted them to summon stones in my inventory.
Whilst in my inventory, I saw what I assumed were the boss drops...
'Well, most of them make contextual sense, but what the hell is this!?' I thought, noticing an odd addition to the list.
As assumed, we all got our ID's for all beating our first dungeon, and four drops from defeating the boss. This was probably because with a full party you'd get three, or that's what I heard, but since we had 4/6, we got a bonus one. But that's not the weird part, what was with this book I got?
It was called 'Warp smith Grimoire'... The others drops were seeds, fruit, and equip-able items, which weren't bad. But I had no idea what this book was.
So, I tried using it, and it said 'Do you wish to add Warp Smith to your sub-classes. This will use up your only extra sub-class space.'
Seeing this, my immediate thoughts were, 'WHAT!? This is a thing? Why the hell wouldn't I!?'
I accepted the sub-class, with a cocky grin plastered on my face. This was going to be fun.
-
After returning to the Jeehan family home, we told Alice and the others how it went.
"Wow, I wasn't expecting you to be able to do it the first time. Congrats." Adam said his congratulations and added "Sorry for doubting you guys. You passed my test, so please look after my brother."
"Yeah, that boss gets pretty hectic at the end, I didn't expect Doki's bind to be that effective. And he also tamed all the smaller mobs? For four people to beat the boss anyway is pretty ridiculous. Well then, what did you guys get as drops for winning?" Alice added.
She left as we got to the boss, probably to console us if we died, or she actually trusted us to win... Either way, it felt like we did a good job.
"I got two 'Logs of the Great Oak', a 'Wooden ring of triumph' and an oak sapling." said LOD.
"Wait, that's... Oh yeah, you get a bonus drop for having less than six members. The logs are a unique crafting item, making a tool or weapon from that will give you a unique enchant. I think the 'Logs of the Great Oak' gives an item regenerative abilities... But I don't quite remember." Alice replied.
"I got one log, two oak saplings and one 'Crown of the forest'. It supposedly gives me a bonus in a forest environment..." said Jeehan.
"Hm, that crown is worth about 50k if I remember correctly. It's a pretty rare drop."
"I'm next?" Said Titanious, I nodded, so he continued, "I only got three oak saplings and 'Robbin's bracelet'."
"Unless you're going to use a bow, I'd suggest selling the bracelet. It increases your accuracy at range, so unless you use ranged attacks, it's pretty pointless."
"Well, I got an oak sapling, a ring of triumph and a bag of herbs."
"Wait, that's only three Doki. What's your other drop?"
"A grimoire... By the way, guys, I've already used it..."
There was a moment of silence. trying to decide whether or not I was joking...
"Impossible," Alice muttered. I heard a various paraphrases of that sentiment going from person to person. LOD, Titanious and I were confused since none of us knew what it was.
"Is it that rare?"
"'Is it that rare?' THERE'S ONLY THREE IN THE WORLD FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" Replied Adam.
"Really?" I shrugged.
'Welp, I just used up something that would probably be worth billions... Good job me,' I thought, finally putting my potential fortunes together.
Adam put his hand over his face, and the others joined him, realizing that I used it up already.
"What? It seemed cool so I used it... I felt like the additional sub-class could help me out."
"... You know that the starting price for one grimoire is like ten trillion gold, right?"
"Wait, ten times ten to the power of twelve or ten times ten to the power of eighteen?" Well, in Angletarian a billion was a million million, and a trillion was a million billion. But to Ameikagasshukans, a trillion was a thousand, thousand million, which made no sense to me...
"Ten and twelve zeros," Alice replied with a cold expression... Well, that dashed my spirits... Well, it's less money that I lost I guess.
There was another moment of silence, but it wasn't as tense as before.
"Oh, by the way, Hiiro's already left..." Alice said, breaking the silence. "This means that you can't use his carriage to get to Skimmington. Well, you can wait if you want, or go in and risk being in the middle of the fight between the two clans... It's your choice, but you'll have to walk since no other transporters are willing to go there..."
Crap. A choice of dying of boredom, or dying of exhaustion or PKers.
Since it was noon, we decided to sort out our equipment, shortlists and supplies and go to bed, to decide what to do tomorrow.