12. Tilarack’s Tower pt. 2
Each floor grew progressively harder. The imps on the ground floor had been level fifteen, and on each new floor they gained a level and an additional imp to their total number. I was the highest level party member, although my level was reduced to level 20 by the dungeon. The imps gave inflated experience to my party members, or at least it seemed that way to me, because everyone leveled by the fifth floor except for me, bringing Lyle to level 19, Serina to level 17, and Azarath and Wren to level 16.
I was gaining experience as well, but I had a larger experience bar to fill, and I think they all came into the dungeon with half of their level already completed, because I had only gotten a quarter of the way to level 24.
I was expecting the fifth floor to have even more imps than normal, but instead it only had two very large imps. By very large, I mean the size of a person, which is large considering that the regular imps were the size of a small child.
“Right, so according to the guide, one of them is a rogue, and the other a mage,” Lyle informed us. “We’ll kill the mage first because it’s more dangerous, and also squishier. But we won’t know which is which until the fight starts.”
“Right, got it,” I said, and I activated [Enrage] before [Charging] in at the nearest of the two large imps. I still had some Anger left over from the previous floor, so I led off with a [Furious Strike] as well, and when it began casting a spell, I used [Shield Bash] to shut it up.
Unfortunately that left me out of anger and with [Charge] on cooldown, so I had to chase the giant rogue imp down the hard way and dump a tenth of my Energy in gaining its attention. Once I had it focused on me, however, its rapid attacks quickly brought my anger up, allowing me to run on [Furious Strike] for the rest of the fight and save Energy for [Shield Bash].
The fight was longer than I’d expected. Both imps – perhaps I should call them demons, because they were too large to be regular imps? - both demons had larger than expected health pools, and although everyone focused on killing the mage demon, the task proved surprisingly difficult. It cast a slow effect on both Lyle and Serina, limiting their DPS, and it had a habit of suddenly switching its attention from me to Wren, forcing me to interrupt it if I could. Even so it got off several fireballs at her, dealing a third of her health each time.
The spells were less devastating to my own health bar, both because I had more of it for the mage to eat through and because I kept [Ignore Pain] active throughout the fight. That Rogue Imp was a pretty good Anger battery.
A surprise twist came when the mage finally died, as with its last breath it cast an spell on the rogue that resisted our attempts to interrupt it. It was a haste/enrage spell, which both increased the speed at which it attacked and the damage that each attack did, almost tripling its dps. I was forced to focus even more on avoiding and blocking its attacks than before, and what attacks did land were putting greater stress on Wren.
The final spell of the mage lasted for the rest of the fight, but there were no more surprises. Wren was almost out of mana when we finally drove the demon to zero health, and I was running low on Energy, as I had been mixing in [Shield Bash] to get a few seconds to recover whenever my health spiked too low.
“What the hell,” Azarath asked once the fight was over. “That fight is supposed to get easier when the mage is dead, not harder.”
“If Hagi weren’t level 20 and really good at tanking a single target, we would have wiped,” Wren agreed. “I was really struggling to keep him alive even with only one in five attacks landing.”
“I’m searching the forums now to see if anyone’s ever encountered that enrage before,” Lyle said, his fingers moving as he typed on a keyboard only visible to him.
“You don’t need to bother,” I said, coming to a decision. “I know why it was so difficult.”
Everyone turned to look at me, and I let my illusory disguise fade, and told the system to stop hiding my real name.
The others exchanged confused glances. Azarath was the first to speak. “So...how did you change your screen name halfway through a dungeon? Was that a skinchanging potion? Did you have that avatar saved or something?”
“Yeah. Honestly, I like the other avatar better,” Serina said. “This one is kind of pretentious.”
“You were going to tell us something about why the boss fight was harder than normal?” Lyle asked.
They didn’t recognize me at all, I realized. That was … a surprisingly strong blow to my ego. “Um, you haven’t heard of me? I’m Hail Jeoran?”
The group exchanged more confused looks, but nobody had a spark of recognition in their eyes.
“And you’re supposed to be famous or something?” Lyle asked.
“Um, kind of, yeah. You have the forums open, right? Try searching for my name,” I suggested.
Lyle did exactly that, his head tilting slightly after a few seconds. “I guess he is famous. The search gave out a lot of responses.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Let me check too,” Azarath said, and he began poking at the air to bring up the forums and conduct a search.
“You shouldn’t believe any of what they say on the forums anyway,” I told them. “But, yeah, the truth is that I’m really an NPC. Except in my case, it means Native Player Character instead of non-player character. One of my abilities, if you can call it that, is that when I party with someone in a dungeon, I make the dungeon more difficult, but also a lot more rewarding. If, um, you guys choose to go forward with me as your tank, you should expect the dungeon to get harder from here on out. If you don’t want that, I understand if you kick me.”
“Why would we do that?” Lyle asked. “Wait, it says here that you destroy dungeons when you complete them?”
“Not always,” I said. “I’m going to evolve this one. It’s going to be harder from now on, but I’m not destroying it like I have others.”
“Will others get angry at us if they know we were involved?” Wren asked.
“So what if they do?” Azarath asked. “I say we do the hard mode challenge. You said we get extra loot?”
“Yeah. And usually a unique reward, like a vanity pet,” I said. “But the truth is we have a pretty high chance of wiping, I think. I, um, usually do this with players who are a lot better than you guys are. No offense. And I was a lot stronger until just recently too.”
“It says here you died,” Wren said, having pulled up her own version of the forums.
“Yeah, but I have a few abilities that let me come back to life,” I explained. “I don’t really want to talk about that, and there are a lot of things I’m not going to tell you. So let’s either keep going, or, well, If you don’t want to party with me anymore I’ll leave and you can find another tank.”
“Why aren’t you using magic?” Serina asked, her eyes focused in the distance as she did her research. “It says here that you use magic, not that you’re a tank.”
“I’m not going to talk about that,” I told them frankly. “Look, if this is going to be a big deal then I’m going to leave. Do we keep going or not?”
“I vote yes,” Wren said quickly. She made a wiping motion to close her menus and turned to the others. “It sounds like a rare opportunity. And we can always pretend we don’t know what happened if people get angry when this dungeon changes.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Serina said. “Worst case is a wipe, right? We were risking that already just by coming here. Even if it’s a little harder than we anticipated, it’s not the end of the world, is it?”
“What’s it like, being an AI?” Azarath asked me.
“What’s it like being a cluster of cells?” I asked him. “Do you want to keep going, Azarath, or are you quitting?”
“I’m not going to quit now,” he said. “It’s just weird to know you’re not a real person. You had me totally fooled.”
I bit my lip holding back a response to that. “Lyle? Are you coming with us?”
“Huh?” he said, looking at us for the first time since he had begun searching the forums. “Oh, yeah. I can read up on you later. Let’s keep going, guys.”
With everything decided, we addressed the loot boxes that the bosses had left behind. There were two items, and fortunately nobody could dispute where they went. Serina got a new set of gloves which increased her dexterity, and I got a new cudgel which raised my strength by +2 compared to what it had been before, and my weapon damage rating from a D+ to a C-. It would have been a C if I could use [Blade of Eclipse], but the lack of strength on that item meant it still wasn’t worth equipping in this class. Everyone else was surprised that there were two drops, as normally this boss only gave one.
With everything decided in regards to loot, and the party on board with challenging the core instance, even if I didn’t think they really understood what they were doing, I led the way to the sixth floor.
I immediately noticed that the décor had changed completely. While the lower levels had been unfurnished, the sixth floor was lavish, with a patterned rug, a large stone table decorated with a silk tablecloth. It was set as though for a feast, and at the center of the table was a large silver platter with a cover that suggested something lay within.
“Um, this is wrong,” Lyle said, looking around. “It’s supposed to be wooden constructs from here to floor ten. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Who cares?” Azarath asked. “If the floor is clear, then we had might as well just skip it, right?”
“There might be loot,” Serina said. “Look, there’s boxes in the corner back there, and--”
She was interrupted when Azarath, who had been walking towards the stairs to the next floor, was abruptly attacked by the table. It changed form into a seven-foot-tall monstrosity with multiple eyes and mouths. The items which had adorned it in table form continued to stick to its skin.
“Mimic!” Lyle called. “Hagi, get it under control. Hail. Whatever, just--”
I had already [Charged] forward, attacking the mimic first with a [Shield Bash] to give Azarath time to escape – he had to run as he hadn’t mastered the use of [Blink] yet – and following up with six [Crushing Impacts] in a row. It used up fifteen percent of my energy just in my opening attack, but it got the mimic’s attention.
Rather than turning, it simply shifted, its arms that had been reaching for Azarath withdrawing into its body and new ones launching out towards me. I took a few hits to start generating anger. It hit hard, but not so hard that Wren couldn’t keep my health from going below fifty percent, so I focused on dealing damage to it with [Furious Strike] rather than mitigation. It was a strange monster to fight, I’m always a little awkward in the first few seconds while fighting a non-humanoid, but I settled into a rhythm while the rest of the party began to blast it down with their own abilities.
It had a lot of health, and it took a while to kill. But it gave the others a full tenth of their experience bar when it died.
We sussed out three smaller mimics once the large one had fallen, including the boxes which, according to Lyle, should have been warning in the first place. I warned them to expect more surprises the further we went, but nobody talked about turning back.