The diseased deer was a pain in the butt to kill. The level twenty-five required an [Empowered Attack] using nine points of stamina and mana to die in one shot. At level twenty-seven, ten. Nero burned through his resource pools like a madman but he was doing it for a reason. His clock was tallying all the mana he spent. He read the display.
> [Arcane Magician's Timepiece of Randomness +6] - purple Accessory (clockwork).
>
> [...]
>
> [...] Tallies mana spent during a Dungeon delve. For every 106 mana spent, temporarily increase your maximum mana pool by 7 until your limiter engages again.
>
> - Total Mana Spent: 2784 mana
>
> - Mana Required for the Next Increase: 78 mana
>
> - Total Increases: 26 times
>
> - Mana Pool Bonus: 182 mana
Now he could only hope the tally didn't reset on exit or that it didn't reset when he re-entered the Dungeon. With that bonus, his mana pool more than doubled. What was holding him back now was Stamina. And he suspected Rodther was already keen on his card-swapping habits.
But the rifle wasn't overheating at all now. The extra ice converters along the barrel left the weapon colder instead of hotter. It created another problem of its own. He might damage his weapon from being too cold if he charged too much. So far, ten was the limit he was willing to use.
His stamina pool was at 99 points but he usually recovered a few points between one deer and the next. Having to stop and rest every thirteenth deer was a bother. But it was the only bother he had to deal with so he decided to live with that. He did have a build to recover Stamina faster so their pauses were only for a few minutes each.
"Nero," Rodther called after they stopped to rest again. They were sitting on a fallen log, snacking on some rock-hard bread and jerky.
By Nero's estimates, they were halfway around the Deer area. Maybe he should build a tower at the edges of the now-burnt bear zone and scorch the deer as well. It would help greatly later on. He raised his head and shelved his musings.
"What is it?"
"What are you going to do when we leave the Dungeon? To me, I mean."
The scaled beast-folk was really paranoid. Nero knew where he was coming from. People would do almost anything to keep their secrets, and Rodther was obviously an information broker. Nero's information was valuable and Rodther knew exactly who would pay for it. Except Valanaegornif wouldn't exactly pay and just make Rodther his new bitch.
"There was a truth-teller with the group of soldiers that escorted us here. Let's do it like this. I'm going to ask you to make a vow. Once we leave together, I'm going to ask you, under the truth-tellers power, if the vow you took was sincere. If the truth-teller says 'truth', then we are fine. If he says 'false', you won't make it. Let me ask you one thing before I take your vow. When was your last recorded crime?"
Rodther didn't hesitate. "Decades ago. I'm staying clean and keeping my head low. Making friends instead of enemies, helping the guys. Collecting favors owed but letting people off the hook so they don't think it is bothersome to pay back or owe me favors."
"Good. Good, indeed," Nero mused. "Ready to take your vow?"
"You the boss," Rodther said and Nero couldn't help but grin.
"Do you vow to become my employee for life? To work for me and me alone, keep my secrets, protect my family with your life if you need to, look after my property and interests in the spirit of best intentions and cooperation, without subversion or corruption of these concepts?"
Rodhter opened his mouth wide, twitched his scaled muzzle. "What does it mean in layman's terms?"
"Work for me, don't betray me, don't quit the job, don't screw me, don't rat me out, don't doublecross me, don't sell my secrets, don't actively act to hurt me or mine, don't let harm come to me or mine through omission. No loopholes either."
Rodhter chuckled. "You never studied contract law, did you?"
"Look, you already know I'm going to get as powerful as I need to. Do you want to get on my bad side?"
Rodther was even quicker to shake his head. "Not at all. But how am I going to work for you? I'm a criminal convicted for life."
"Dude, let me worry about it. Are you in or out? Can you keep your mouth shut?"
Rodther shifted from his seating position to kneeling. "I'm your ietermahue, sir. Boss. Yes, I'll take that vow over a lifetime of imprisonment anytime."
"Good, good. You're hired," Nero offered his hand. Rodther took it and was pulled back on his feet. "Your salary will be a hundred thousand Essence per year plus food, board, clothing, sundries, and equipment as I see fit."
It was the wage of a good farmer or stablehand. Low for an Adventurer, but when the other choice was death, Rodther took it.
"Sounds good for me," Rodther shook Nero's hand.
Nero sighed in relief. "Good, good. Now, I don't need to hide the fact I can change Classes anymore."
"YOU CAN WHAT?" Rodther gasped.
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Rodther thought it should be just a bad joke, but it explained everything. The brat, no, the boss-to-be should not have a Class. Any Class requires at least level one, even if the information is omitted.
He had no idea how Nero would rescue him from his sentence. Maybe a favor from the prince? Wasting it on a white-grade prisoner like him was stupid. Introspective, Rodther considered his build. He thought it was well-rounded but it clearly lacked focus. In fact, it was scrounged with what he could scavenge from his kills and trade in his home. To pay the debt of his Arbitrium, he came to Bast to smuggle some high-paying targets.
Despite that, Nero would rather spend political capital on him than just point that gun at his head. It spoke a lot about the young man's character. On top of that, he offered him a paying position. The salary was bad but the Essence was pocket money. Two meals a day and a clean bed to sleep on was a luxury for a prisoner. Maybe the gun was coming at the exit. It was a possibility.
The [Acrobat] didn't resent his position as loot gopher. A few deer later, Nero's screen lit up again. The minnid clicked his tongue in annoyance and tapped the device. "Endurance at least. Good. Less time resting," He said to himself and walked to the next deer, trusting Rodther would pick up the crystal and card. He dutifully picked up the crystal. If he wanted to live past this delve, he needed to prove himself useful.
At the end of the day, they returned to the tower. A few wolves respawned but this Dungeon was one that forced the Adventurers deeper into the more dangerous zones by denying them low-level respawns. It couldn't leave itself undefended, though.
"Rodther, get ready to fight. I won't kill a pack of wolves unscathed. Abuse your mitigate Skill if you need to. We'll work on raising that Willpower of yours later."
"You're the boss. I'll do my best to keep the wolves busy," Rodther answered at the same time he drew two long knives in an icepick grip and activated [Quick Strike] as an afterthought, increasing his damage and attack speed with daggers.
"My rifle has an automatic aiming correction. I won't hit you. Stay next to me and engage any wolf that reaches us."
Nero leveled his rifle and fired shots as fast as he could from his darkness-clad rifle. Rodther crouched and waited for the wolves to come. Half of the pack died by the time they were close enough and he let go his ranged Skill.
"[Flying Dagger]!" He threw the two knives in his hands for two points of Stamina. Moments after the weapons were flying true toward their feral targets, he had another two in his hand. Decades of practice allowed him to perfect the maneuver.
Without fear, Rodther shouted and ran toward the alpha wolf with the knowledge the other wolves would attach the threat to their pack leader. The muffled sound of Nero's rifle sang as a metronome behind him. Fear of feeling the cold and shock from his shots on his back paralyzed Rodther for a moment. A wolf tried to bit his shin in the meantime. With his weigh on that leg and out time to dodge, his stamina dropped by 3 points and his Vigor soared from twenty to sixty-nine for a bit more than two seconds.
One of the racial advantages of the ietermahue was their scales. They granted a natural armor that scaled with their Vigor. Many of his brethren choose the path of a tank, focusing on that Attribute to become nigh-invulnerable. It works on the lower tiers. At the upper echelons, however, most enemies can pierce defenses. Rodther was sure Nero's rifle did that already. But for Rodther, doomed to remain in the lower levels forever, the boost was more than enough to turn a rending bite into just teeth scratching his leg scales.
"Rod, duck!" Nero shouted from behind.
Rodther chuckled inside at his nickname. It wasn't the first time. At the same time, he tossed himself left, curling his body and doing one full rotation over his spine and tail to end back on his feet. The rifle rang louder than before. Glancing over his shoulder, the wolf alpha's head was frozen and the body tumbled back with the impact, sparks running down its coarse fur.
The remaining three wolves charged Nero, snarling and slavering disease-ridden drool.
"[Cougar's Speed]!" Nero shouted and turned on his bayonet.
The young minnid danced between the wolves, swinging that sawing bayonet and tearing chunks off of the wolves. Even Rodther with his hundred points of dodge would be troubled with three wolves but Nero moved faster than ever. Soon these last three wolves dissolved in motes of white light.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
After picking the drops, they made it back to the watchtower. Nero pointed up and the two men climbed the ladder. Once they reached the observation platform, Nero sighed.
"Too many wolf packs respawned. I'm going to [Fireball] everything again. Bonus if some of those burnt trees fall down just from the fire."
Nero rose a storm of ash and cinders all over the Dungeon. The packs of wolves and bears that respawned died and the fires raged again, burning the wood left from the last time now that it had time to dry. Not many trees were left in a mile around the tower. Nero didn't go down to pick the drops this time. All of the monsters died on the stone platform and the stars above were mirrored in red sparkles below.
"No monsters in sight. Rodther, could you go pick up our loot?" Nero asked after surveying the whole Dungeon around them.
"You got it, boss," Rodther answered with a mocked salute and climbed down with a smile. He didn't miss Nero casually calling the carpet of crystal and ash with a dash of cards downstairs as 'our loot'.
Upstairs, Nero reloaded the rifle and shot the trees that didn't fall after burning for a second time. He was still shooting after Rodther returned and the [Acrobat] noticed the rifle couldn't shoot as far as the fireballs. After wasting a lot of bullets, he cleared the entire wolf zone from any obstacles.
They prepared their bedding on the platform. After eating dinner, cleaning up the ash, and talking for a while, Nero declared something that shouldn't have surprised Rodther as much as it did.
"Tomorrow I'm going to find the boss. Then the fun will start."
Rodther took too long to sleep, wondering what could Nero consider fun.
----------------------------------------
Nero's 'scorched Dungeon' strategy worked like a charm. Once they woke up, the wolves were all in plain sight, without a single tree to block their sight. He wanted to stretch this delve the most he could, to accumulate a large tally on his timepiece. The most mana he spent the biggest bonus to his pool. Although these raw bonuses didn't help with his regeneration, a larger pool was always helpful. It made him wish he had something like that for Stamina. He hoped that maybe when he returned to the capital and the Lyceum, one of the senior [Gadgeteers] would help him tackle the same function on his timepiece. As a purple-grade gadget, it should accommodate for thirty-six modification points, plus his thirty percent stability bonus for another ten or eleven points.
After sharing breakfast from his consumable cards with Rodther, he put himself to work again. Unwilling to swap Classes, he thought on how to defeat the packs of wolves. They were very protective of their alpha as the fight with a pack on ground level yesterday showed. Maybe that could be used to delay the packs. Nero took aim and shot the leg of one alpha. They were always the highest-level monster in the pack and thus always bigger than the others.
With three stages of [Empower Attack], he severed the alpha's foreleg and paralyzed him. The other wolves started to bark and howl looking for an enemy. Nero used that opportunity to shoot the legs of the other monsters as well. Once the pack had a direction to their assailant, they followed the alpha's lead as the big wolf limped toward the tower. Nero crippled the whole pack and moved on to the next. He didn't want to kill a single monster outside the slab of stone marking the clearing to make Rodther's job easier.
"I can go downstairs to finish these limp wolves," Rodther offered. "No need to waste bullets on them."
"Wait," Nero quickly shouted as his companion was almost halfway down the ladder. He didn't stop shooting the wolves. "I want to spend the mana. Just chill. The ammunition is summoned and I got a new piece of equipment that might give me a huge boost to my mana pool. All we're wasting here is time, and we have plenty."
Nero shot the wolves tirelessly, adding [Empowered Attack] if he felt like. Limp wolves couldn't jump and they clustered underneath the tower, unable to climb the ladder. Once the gaggle became too much, he switched to his fire mage build and summoned flames to toss down at the mutts. He regretted after the first volley. Burnt wolf fur wasn't a good smell as the flames took too long to kill the wolves.
The almost mile-long range of the [Fireballs] was perfect for pulling the bears and even a few deer. Behind him and against the backdrop of his rifle shooting to cripple the monsters as they entered the weapon's range, Nero could listen to the crystals clinking against one another as Rodther tallied their earnings from the last fight. The environment shifted from black charcoal to ashen gray as it was repeatedly burnt. It now looked like dirty snow from where they were on the tower.
They climbed down and Nero took the loot from the last killing session as well as what Rodther had before. They returned to the deer zone but this time Nero felled the trees as they went, cutting a wide path through the forest. His intention was to completely destroy and flatten the Dungeon for the next hunting iterations with [Dungeon Breaker]. Once they progressed for an hour or so, he'd shoot a fireball down the open path, setting a forest fire behind them. It was dangerous if it spread in their direction but they could flee to the cleared bear zone to their side if things got too bad.
From his measurements at the tower, he estimated the length of the deer zone somewhere between twelve and eighteen miles. They would take another two or three days to complete one lap around it. He earned one or two Accolades each day. Nero was happy he got two points each of Dexterity and Perception. He desired the latter Attribute a lot.
On the fourth day since he started killing deer, Nero found the boss room. The deer zone was four to five hundred yeards deep and the Dungeon boundary was marked by a tall and almost impossible to climb cliff face as if the whole valley was at the bottom of a crater. On one corner of the Dungeon, an opening in the cliff led down into a cavern system. Nero could hear monsters shuffling and screeching around.
"A fourth zone," Rodther gasped. "That wasn't on the reports."
"This Dungeon is transitioning to the orange-grade," Nero replied. "It happened with another Dungeon I cleared near the capital. Once I knocked the dungeon's grade to reasonable levels, the fourth zone and its monster vanished."
"Which one?" Rodther asked, curious. He knew most lower-ranked Dungeons near the capital after being forced to go inside many of them as a prisoner miner.
"Rafflesia's Meadow, do you know it?" Nero answered casually.
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Rodther erupted into a fit of laughter. I can die now, He thought in jest. He was forced to believe Nero had knocked down a "few" grades the most lethal Dungeon below rank-V near the Capital.
"All the way down from orange, right?" He joked between his manic and raucous guffawing.
"And all the way into gray. It is no more than a garden with cute plant monsters now. And turtles. I even tamed one as a pet," Nero said with a straight face.
Water-spitting turtles that can punch a hole in people. Right. Rodther promised to himself to Rodther calmed himself. He steeled his resolve to work and serve this strange minnid. What else could he do, what else could he achieve? And to what heights would Rodther rise if he followed Nero?
"Get your ax," Nero said after Rodther recovered his wits. "We are clearing every tree between this cave mouth and the bear zone and then making another tower in the bear zone."
They worked all day long for a week. Nero's plan was even greater than what his initial declaration sounded. He made four towers, forty feet tall in the bear zone, and a path of stone linking the central slab to these. The deer zone was thoroughly burnt as well, denuding the whole Dungeon. In some places, the fireball had compacted the ash into gray slates of brittle material. One thing Rodther noticed was that although the fireball expanded from the bead Nero shot, it only generated heat as it expanded without much pressure. When he asked Nero, the young man explained that the spell probably spread mana in the area and then ignited it along with the ambient Essence at once starting from the center.
He did mention being a research assistant at the Lyceum once, didn't he?
"What do you think?" Nero asked pointing at the new towers.
"The deer might damage the tower if they ram the pillars directly," Rodther answered. "You might want to raise a barricade or some kind of obstacles to keep them from reaching it."
"Some sharpened logs pointing forward? I have a lot of logs in storage," Nero replied. Although they would all vanish once he left the Dungeon.
"That can work."
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Shaping the stone so the logs would point at the charging deer, they made a defensive ring around each tower. Finally, the last phase of Nero's Dungeon reform could be put in motion. From the new towers, Nero burned the deer area. Instead of the rifle, he used the fireballs and flames. Due to his improved Attributes, the flames' strength was increased tenfold. The damage-over-time component from his fire spells now lasted almost a minute, dealing a tenth the main damage of the spell every second. The number of flames summoned by casting also soared from ten to thirty and the range now reached three hundred feet.
Burning deer soon ran across the Dungeon, eager to kill their assailant before they perished. It was futile. Divided into quadrants, each new tower reached a quarter circle slice of the Dungeon with room to overlap. The deer perished to the fire magic as well as the wolves and bears that respawned.
Two days and two Accolades for his Reason Attribute later the Dungeon was entirely flattened. Not a single tree stood up. The whole area, a circular crater four miles across was covered in a white-gray crust. Respawns were easy to spot and for the first time, Nero could see how does a monster respawn.
A faint white glimmer coalesced in a spot, the image forming like ripples in a still lake. A haze glowing with faint red light formed and the ripples solidified in the shape of the monsters. In less than three seconds from the start, a new wolf pack walked the Dungeon, all of them formed at once. Eleven seconds later the fireball hit the alpha's head. The burning wolf pack ran toward the tower. Three hundred feet away from the tower, ghostly flames flew from the top of the construction and struck the wolves, five for each and ten for the alpha, rekindling the fire consuming their flesh and finally snuffing the monsters' lifeforce, causing their bodies to dissolve in a burst of anima particles and their Essence to coalesce into crystals and a few cards.
With the danger of surprise respawns gone, Nero took Rodther to the central tower.
"I'm going inside to hunt the boss. You will stay here in the tower and try to not draw the monsters' attention. Don't worry, I'll use my most powerful attack on the boss."
Nero didn't want Rodther near the boss for several reasons. There was a good chance the boss would be above level thirty and he didn't want him to earn an Accolade. And more importantly, the Essence in the crystal from the boss increased by a factor of fourteen if Rodther wasn't around. If the boss was level thirty-one, the amount wasted would be close to nine thousand Essence. The same applied to the whole Dungeon but the only choice was to kill the ietermahue.
He recast his buffs, [Shadow Coating], and both stages of [Cougar's Speed] before entering the cavern. The boss' cave was dark and stank of rot. He attuned his goggles to show him Essence flows. It gave him a rough outline of the tunnels and displayed the monsters' aura in the distance. The tunnels were larger and taller and reminded him a bit of the rat caverns zone at the Goblin's Den. He heard movement and readied his rifle.
The monster was some kind of rodent that walked with short stubby legs and long and scraggly forelimbs. Some ragged leather flaps linked the arms and torso. Before Nero could identify the monster, he shot with eleven stages of [Empower Attack]. The monster made a sharp screech and died, beheaded. Nero turned on his Essence lantern and looked. It was a putrid bat. With its wings ruined, it could only crawl along the ground.
He felt something warm along his neck and touched it with his hand. Blood. His ears were damaged by the monster's invisible sonic attack without his knowledge. Nero triggered his [Ring of Health] and healed himself. Then he took two handkerchiefs soaked in water, folded them in a square, and held them over his ears with a strap of leather going under his hat-goggles. It wouldn't prevent the attack but maybe would grant him some modicum of protection. His crystal told Nero what he needed to know. It was a level twenty-five monster.
The next bat died just as it appeared over a bend of the cavern, its body devastated by Nero's shot in close quarters. A few bats later, Nero found out his improvised ear protection did mitigate some of the damage but not as much as he hoped. Once the last bat died, he heard a low growl reverberating in the cavern ahead.
The silhouette of a horse-sized wolf was staring at him, two red eyes glowing in the darkness of the cavern. Nero readied his gun and aimed. The boss didn't attack, challenging Nero to enter his den. Nero kept the gun steady, waiting as his Skill charged. One minute and he poured everything into that shot. Twenty-five points of mana and stamina, the most he ever charged into a single [Empower Attack] along with [Piercing Shot]. The defense reduction amounted to 191% before the boss' Vigor mitigated it. Nero pulled the trigger.
A wave of cold spread down his arms as his weapon froze. A thin line of ice linking the mouth of the barrel to the boss shattered moments later. The bullet slammed the boss' rump, freezing the left haunch and leg entirely. The lightning charge burst as the ice broke, shattering the ice and the frozen flesh and burning a Lichtenberg figure over the boss' whole body. The warg was left without its hindquarters and Nero without a weapon. He could only hope that the rifle would be fine after thawing.
The warg tried to lunge out of his cave but he had to drag the ruined hindquarters, leaving a bloody smear behind him. Nero could easily move backward. He stored his rifle in the dimensional pouch and put some distance between him and the monster. Fiddling with his build cards, he settled into the [Mana Bolt] basic build. Once everything was set, he let loose spell after spell at the boss.
> Compatible Boss Anima detected. Grade yellow. Energy absorbed above the threshold. Processing upgrade. Weighing Attribute strain.
>
> For defeating a foe thirty-nine times your level, you gained +3 Endurance.
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> Nero [Jester 0/0] (Attribute Values outside/inside a Dungeon)
>
> Strength: +64/72
> Vigor +95/103
> Endurance +78 (Stamina: 103)
> Agility +61/68
> Dexterity +91/98
> Reason +90/102
> Willpower +98/110 (Mana: 146/161)
> Perception +68/75
> Charisma +54