They spun to see the first zombie emerging from the trees. Half rotten flesh hung from its bones as it shambled towards them.
“Ok girls, stay calm, Rosa, use your sword to slash it then back out of its reach, rinse and repeat.” Marty explained calmy. “Hun, I want you to jump, and flap our wings a few times to gain height, then shoot a few arrows over Rosa’s head. Extra points if you time your shots for when Rosa backs off, as the slight knockback may spare her a hit. We can’t remove the wings anymore, so it’s probably best they feel natural”
The first round of attacks went smoothly, the second time an arrow hit Rosa in the back of the head, rather than go over. It did no real harm on its own, but the moment of surprise was enough for the zombie to claw the slime girl. It did much more damage then the slimes had been earlier and Rosa screamed out, Rayne froze up. So Marty took control and dashed to the side gaining a clear shot on the zombie, then quickly put flaming arrows into it until it went down.
“Ok girls, you can’t harm each other unless we activate a special player versus player mode. I wouldn’t have asked you to shoot over her if you could hurt her.”
“Roooaaahhg”
He spun, firing into the next zombie. Asking, “Rosa, could you switch to your bow for a second while we talk.”
Rosa did, Marty handed back control to his wife and the two girls quickly took down the next one with flaming arrows.
Marty Spoke again. “Ok, so, Rosa, you took more damage from that then I Expected, do you have any abilities that affect how much damage you take?”
Rosa responded uncertainly. “I take less damage from slimes, cause I am a slime, 50% it says. I also take 25% less damage from physical attacks. I don’t see anything that would make me take more though.”
Marty checked several menus “Oh fuck, I hope I am wrong.” He took control again, he ran straight up to the next zombie. Stabbing it twice, and watching it’s health bar tick down with each hit. Then just tanking the Zombie’s counter-attack.
He stabbed it once more before backing off. Running back to the center of the clearing while waving for the slime girl to finish of the one he had been fighting.
He gave control of his body back to his confused wife while he checked menus and did some math. They killed three more zombies before Marty came back.
When he took back their body’s face controls, the face twisted from Rayne’s look of concentration to Marty's annoyed and a bit scared expression. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, this is actually pretty bad, I thought this seemed too hard.”
He finally explained. “So the game has multiple difficulty settings for both the players themselves and for the randomly generated worlds made within it. Originally our character was a softcore character, who only drops money on death.”
He continued as they torched zombies from range, occasionally gathering up dropped loot. “Rosa’s earlier comments about dropping everything when we die is true though, because of whatever Jux did to us and the world. We are a mediumcore character now. We lose everything on our person on death, although all the things are recoverable. Unless the items fall in a lake of magma or something, even then it will depend on the item if it’s actually destroyed. Hardcore characters are deleted on death. I’m glad the NPCs and us can respawn, even if losing all our stuff is going to be annoying.”
“What does this have to do with how much zombies hurt us?” Rosa asked.
“That’s the real problem” Marty sighed. “I would have noticed earlier, but we were in end-game gear with enough defence to stop all or most damage from creatures in the area, even with our problem. Then you seemed to take the right amount of damage from the slimes, so I didn’t question it. The world itself has a difficulty setting as well, between Journey, Baseline/Classic, Tough and Expert. I picked Expert because of the high-end gear I was bringing, but also because bosses drop little pet versions of themselves on that difficulty and I wanted to test that function in the merged game.”
“Still not getting the unexpected part,” Rosa said after, as she watched a burning zombie finished off by the fire covering it.
“I’m getting there, jeez.” Marty said a little petulantly, then visibly calmed himself for a moment. “Whatever pushed us up to a harder difficulty did it to the whole world too. Apparently, since we were on the hardest difficulty, the game, or Jux, created two more, even harder difficulty modes. Each Mode harder than baseline, has the monsters doing 50% more damage and having 100% more health. After Expert, the next hardest modes seem to be called Nightmare, and 9th Circle. Meaning that the world is set to '9th Circle' mode now. All hostile monsters deal 200% extra damage to us and have 400% extra health. In exchange, we get special items from bosses, not seen in easier difficulty modes, maybe some more accessory slots, or things to give us more slots. The weapons and armour we make do the same damage and prevent the same amount of damage regardless of world difficulty. So if or when we activate hard-mode, my super awesome 'end game' stuff, here, or in the vault, will likely barely be enough to keep us alive”
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“So my slime damage reduction hid what you perceive to be a big change, then you assumed that I took extra damage from the zombie, even though I probably got that 25% reduction to physical on the attack.” Rosa said, making sure she understood.
After some more of Marty’s ranting about how they didn’t get how bad this would be later. The girls switched to careful melee attacks, taking turns hitting a zombie until it fell. Occasionally too many zombies started to surround them and they dropped groups into a pit to deal with later.
Once the pits were full, and the girls were getting tired. Marty took over and re-equipped the summoner gear from the chest. Soon his little tentacle-brain pets were back in the sky hunting prey. Tearing zombies apart in melee and sniping further away targets with a rain of deadly lasers from the ranged brains.
He moved over to one of the odd towers he had built around the clearing. When they got close to the tower the girls could hear a cacophony of flapping wings coming from the wooden room at the top.
They watched as an eyeball with bat wings flew out of the woods, it zigged and zagged in its approach, eventually bumping into the pillar of wood holding up the tower. Then, rather than go around, it flew a bit higher then bumped into the pillar again. It did this a few more times until it passed through the thin wooden platform floor of the room.
After the girls saw his “traps” do their simple yet effective work. Rosa shot Marty a questioning look for them both.
He explained. “Monsters always try to spawn in a cardinal direction from where you stand, North, North-east, east, you get the idea. So by placing the towers like that it ensures fliers bump into the tower first. Monsters prefer to go over an obstacle rather than around, zombies can’t climb the towers, so they just go around with no problem. The Demon eyes though, they keep trying to go over, then they pass through the platform. Pure fliers can’t drop back down through a platform like walking monsters can, so they get stuck. Just waiting to die. I wanted you two to get used to the zombies before I made you deal with fliers, now that we know about the extra damage they deal, I’m extra glad I did.”
He got even closer, then his little minions shot up into the room. Gore dripped through the floor as the flapping ceased. He grappled up to the platform, poking his head through to suck up any loot they dropped.
After they cleared the other 7 flier traps they activated mirrors, taking them back to their respective bedrooms in the underground base. Marty led Rosa back out into the crafting cave.
He ignored the moaning in the cave, taking the lenses dropped by the demon eyes to a workbench. He then crafted a pair of glasses, just a simple cosmetic helmet.
He put the glasses on in triumph. Turning to show off his accomplishment to Rosa. “look, now I can wear the glasses, and Rayne can put the flower in her hair. This way you can tell which of us is in control.”
He turned to see Rosa ignoring him with her one hand playing with her nipple and the other sliding down her skirt. She was watching three wild slime people having their way with the poor little squirrel Shopkeep.
One was giving him the enveloping, slimy “handjob” that they had done in their first fight with Brooklyn. One was kissing the squirrel, massaging his breast. The last was a male slime, standing behind the squirrel, fucking his ass, while also boxing the little Shopkeep in from any attempt at escape, not that the little man looked distressed at all.
In less than 30 seconds they watched a jet of white fluid be absorbed into the hand slimes arm. The three slime girls moaning out their own climaxes at the same time.
Then they let him collapse to the floor, circled around him. Then Picked him back up in the same position, but with each of the slimes having switched places, the male slime now giving the red squirrel boy a handjob.
Brooklyn stood there stunned for a minute. Unsure of how to deal with the scene before them or if they even should.