Bounty And Boss

We walk towards the corridor, keeping alert for any hidden enemies. We round the corner and I’m already prepared to fire an icicle. We find a suspiciously empty, smaller room around the corner. “Doesn’t look like much.” She comments. “Worth checking closer though.” I reply, looking around at the walls. We search around for anything hidden, and after a few minutes, our patience is rewarded.

“This wall is a slightly different colour than the others!” I exclaim excitedly. “You realise how much of a nutjob you sound like right now, right?” “Shut it! This place operates off video game logic. That means that if something is a different colour, it’s for a reason!” I shout, channelling my inner crazy conspiracy theorist and Mia cackles at my reaction. I pat the wall carefully to see if anything happens. Nothing. I shrug and kick at it, hoping both that an actual attack will do something, and that my boots will protect me from the impact as they have done with enemies so far.

The wall fades away to reveal a small alcove with a chest. I turn back to Mia. “HAH! Told you so!” “Shut it.” She replies, parroting one of my expressions. I grin and she shakes her head, unable to keep herself from doing the same. I turn back to the chest and open it to see what’s inside, half expecting a mimic like the ones from Dark Souls.

Luckily, there’s nothing like that. Instead, there’s a small stack of hundred dollar notes, along with one other item, a ring. I pick up the cash first, and it dissolves in my hands. I check my inventory and I’m now $5000 richer.

“Hey cool, $5000. Also, damnit.” I say. “Why are you complaining about $5000?” “First world problems. It’s not the money, but I levelled up. I got XP from finding the secret.” I say. “Isn’t that a good thing?” “Well because I’ve levelled up now, the boss probably won’t give me a level up, which means we’ll need to take a break afterwards so I can heal properly.” I explain.

“Oh, that is a bother.”

“That’s alright, more time to cuddle…snookems.” I snicker, laughing harder as Mia walks over and punches me in the shoulder. “You’re lucky that you’re cute.” She grumbles. I giggle as I take out the ring and observe it.

I stare in shock at the window. “What?” Mia asks, waving her hand in front of my face after a few seconds of me not responding. “There’s no way that ring is that good.”

I look at her, trying to collect my thoughts. “It’s not the ring itself. Mia, the observe description says this thing was created by Gaia. It mentions that she is the one who facilitates my powers.” “WHAT?!” She shouts. “That’s why I have no idea how to react.” I say, uncertain of my words. “Dude, the freaking Goddess of Creation is directly helping you and running your powers. This is your biggest bullshit yet.” She declares, shaking her head.

“That is like, unheard of. NOBODY gets stuff from Gaia. It’s literally her thing that she doesn’t seem to intervene in anything, at least as far as I’ve heard.” I manage a cocky grin, despite the shock. “Guess I’m just special like that.” “You’re definitely special alright, just not in the way you think.” Mia retorts.

“You wound me!” I say, putting my hand to my chest in mock offence. I put the ring on, and allocate the new statpoints I have, pushing my base Wisdom up to 35. I check my character sheet to see how everything looks after the substantial progress I’ve made.

The progress I’ve made is really insane, and despite what I said about my shock not being due to the ring, the ring is actually really really good. In the time spent in this dungeon, Cryomancy has levelled up, along with Icicle and Freezing Blast. I’m getting more powerful and I’m loving it! My mana regen is now at 4.62 per minute, which is getting better. It’s still not to the point where I can throw out spells without thinking about it, but that’s okay, still early days. I’ll get there eventually.

“Sure you don’t want anything?” I ask her. She waves me off. “Maybe later on, after you’re better equipped and the loot gets a bit better. As I said, right now you need that stuff much more than me, including the money.” She says. “I just feel bad, me getting all the loot from these dungeons and you getting nothing.” I reply. “Think of it this way. I get a more powerful and better protected girlfriend, not to mention that I get more powerful myself from training here.” Mia reminds me. “Okay that’s true. Fiiiiine.” I relent. “Are we ready for the boss?” “Ready whenever you are.”

We walk back the way we came and enter the gate, ready once more for whatever this Skeleton Overlord is. A roar echoes around the large chamber we find ourselves in. The chamber is dotted with a multitude of rocks, crevices and even a small stream flowing around the room, all of which makes the ground incredibly uneven to walk on. Clearly, one challenge of this boss will be keeping our footing.

Another roar echoes around the cavern, and the sound of something made of stone moving. My eyes land on a coffin sitting on a raised platform at one end of the room. The boss steps out of the coffin as the lid falls aside, and a thought crosses through my head. “There’s no way this whole dungeon isn’t a Skyrim reference.” I voice out loud, as I use observe on the monster.

“Nerd.” Mia responds. I ignore that, and relay the important information from the observe. “Level 25, uses ice magic as well as that axe. I’m guessing the axe is enchanted with frost effects too. Be careful not to get hit.” I say briefly. Mia nods, taking flight. “Same strategy as the rats?” She asks. I nod in response. “Try to keep it off balance.”

The table of loot in the observe sheet is something I’m still getting used to, but I’m glad it’s now shown. I note the slightly uncreative recycling of loot from the regular skeletons. I really hope that I get the ice spell book or the axe though. I don’t think Mia or I could use the axe, but it would be nice to have at least another potential weapon choice. And a new spell for my repertoire will always be appreciated.

I fire some mana arrows at the Overlord, reasoning that any ice based attacks will be significantly less effective against a monster that can use ice magic itself. They don’t seem to bother the boss, but I’m hoping little damage will add up over time. It looks towards me and charges, axe raised. Against something that has a weapon and clearly knows how to use it, I decide to learn from my past mistakes and keep my distance.

I run to the side, careful about my footing, as Mia slams down on the Overlord with a wall of solid air. I take the chance and fire off a few carefully aimed mana arrows. I’m getting pretty good at aiming spells, with all the practice I’ve been getting in dungeons. They all hit their marks, and I’m beginning to see small cuts open up along the body of the Overlord. At least the spells are actually doing damage, instead of it just completely shrugging them off.

The fight turns out to actually be fairly easy, despite the boss’s high level. It hits me a few times with hails of freezing magic, but my frost resistance skill makes sure it doesn’t do as much damage as it could, even though the damage reduction is still technically minimal. The skill even levels up through the course of the fight, confirming that this dungeon is going to be a good way to grind up that particular skill.

At my current level, I couldn’t ever take it down on my own. But with Mia periodically doing damage using her solid air trick, whilst also keeping it off balance enough that it can’t ever get close enough to me for it to use it’s axe, all we really have to do is kite it around the room and whittle down it’s health.

That process is made quicker by my now largely increased mana bar, thanks to the ring, meaning I can throw out a ton more spells. It does take a lot of time and damage to kill it, but apart from that, it really doesn’t manage to deal much damage itself.

1500xp

“That was surprisingly easy.” Mia remarks. I nod. “I was thinking the same. It seems a great way to train my frost resistance skill and get some easy XP.” We gather the loot, I put it in my inventory and we exit out of the dungeon, walking back to Mia’s house. I check my phone for the time, and it’s only 10:30AM. “We could probably do another one of these before we have lunch. Skylar said she’d join us around 1, and that dungeon only took us an hour.” I remark. “Break to regenerate, then go back in?” She asks. “Seems about the best strategy here.”

Once we get inside, we take a look at all the loot we got. Another $5000 from the boss, plus a bunch of $50 bills from the regular enemies, now puts the money I have at $21,548.45. Pretty not bad, all things considered. I take out all the necromancy based stuff (most of the loot) at once, and dump it onto a pile on the table.

We got the weak and regular versions of the undead bones and teeth, as well as the necromancy fragments and shards. The fragments and shards are both crystals filled with necromantic energy that help in necromancy spells and rituals, according to the observe description, with the shards being the bigger and more potent of the two. No necromancer robes, and neither did the necromancy skill book drop.

“I’m assuming you don’t want any of this? It’s all necromancy stuff.” I tell Mia. She shakes her head. “Me neither. Is it safe to sell on the abyss auction?” I ask. “It should be. None of it looks particularly powerful, which means it’s all common stuff most likely, which means you selling it does no more harm than the fact that it’s available already does, if you follow.” Mia replies in a long winded explanation.

I nod, putting the pile aside for the moment and retrieving the last item of loot from my inventory. It’s one that I’m especially excited about, being the ice spell book. I’m not sure whether to hope that it teaches me a new spell in the field of cryomancy, gives me a boost somehow to my existing spells, or does something else entirely. Either way, I pick up the book, eager to find out what it does. A popup opens as soon as I pick up the book.

I hit the yes button almost immediately upon reading the description. Whoever would say no to free power? I excitedly observe each of the four ice based skills I have, only to learn that the mana cost of icicle and freezing blast is still the same as before, sitting at 3MP and 8MP respectively. Sucks that they don’t go down further with higher levels but they’re already pretty cheap as it is.

My frost resistance skill now lets me resist 5% of frost damage, and my cryomancy skill now boosts the damage of my ice spells by 5%. All in all, the numbers are looking pretty damn good. I relay the changes to Mia, and she responds in her usual straightforward demeanour. “Bullshit.” I cackle, very happy at the boosts in power that I’m getting today.

I store all of the necromancy related items back in my inventory, with the intention of selling all of the loot I’ve gotten after the next dungeon run. I still haven’t sold the loot from the rat dungeon, although that’s mostly because I’m not entirely sure how. Making a mental note to ask Mia later, I rest with her a little more before we go back out and enter the dungeon again.