Mutanus The Devourer

Mia and I are on either side of Skylar, which is very useful when it comes to protecting her. Anything that she misses or that looks like its about to hit her, both Mia and I are easily in positions to step in and help her out. Each time we do this, she looks both appreciative that we did, and annoyed because she wishes she was more powerful.

I make a mental note to have a conversation with her regarding that after this dungeon. I need to ask her if she wants us to support her the same way we support Paige in these dungeons, by carefully regulating the number of enemies that she gets to fight.

Currently we’re still largely letting the umbramancer fight on her own accord, and while it’s definitely what Skylar would prefer, I’m also not sure how sustainable it is. She clearly is thinking along the same lines, and gives me a grimace as I take out another murloc for her, that’s about to stab at her side.

“I hate this.” She says, and I smile sympathetically. “I know, I’m sorry love. We’ll figure this out.” I tell her. “I know we will. I love you.” She replies. “I love you too.” We continue to fight our way through the horde of murlocs with relative ease, all things considered.

We rarely get hit, thanks to our tight formation and the fact that it’s just about impossible to sneak up on us. And when we do get hit, Ivy is right there to heal any one of us at a moment’s notice. Once we get to the last murloc, I start to kite it around the area to give time for my girlfriends to recover.

Technically Mia has a higher agility score than me, but as we discovered from a race the other day, she’s only faster than me when she’s flying. When it comes to general movement speed on the ground, I’m still faster. That, combined with the fact that Mia can’t rest to recover mana when she flies, means that I’m the one on kiting duty.

Once we’re sufficiently rested up, I kill the murloc with a swing from my axe, and we ready ourselves for the boss. Nothing happens for a few seconds, before my now near superhuman senses pick up a shape moving in the water. The rippling of the surface of the water and the bubbles rising to the top indicate something big.

We regroup as the boss bursts out from the water with a giant leap and a roar. It’s a giant murloc, coloured white as opposed to the regular green enemies. The spines on its back are still red like the regular murlocs, but unlike them, its limbs are coloured white like the rest of its body, instead of red like its spines.

The observe labels it as Mutanus The Devourer, and I’m happy to see a familiar face. I’m also happy to see that the boss drops water elemental armour, although since we don’t know any water mages, I’m not sure what we’ll do with it. Having killed the boss twice before in World Of Warcraft, I know the general strategy.

“Keep away from it as best you can, hit it from range. Ivy, Mia, the three of us will take turns kiting it around to tank. Everybody else, hit it with spells!” I call as the thing charges towards us. “Me first!” Mia yells, taking flight and whizzing past the giant creature, raking her swords across its body.

The boss wails in pain and immediately moves to chase her, leaving the rest of us to hurl as many spells at it as we can. Within seconds, its body is pockmarked with burns from mana bolt and little wounds from Skylar’s spears. It doesn’t chase Mia for long, identifying the rest of our group as a bigger threat.

It turns away from her and heads towards us instead. Mia takes the opportunity to fly past it once more, again raking her swords across its body. I run to one side, away from Skylar and Ivy, hurling ice bolts in its direction. All four spells strike true, and the devourer chases me around the area. The grassy solid ground is a smaller area than I’d like, so I end up having to come pretty close to the boss.

As I do, it starts glowing for a second, before a large blue shockwave shoots out from its body. I’m the only one close enough for it to do any damage, and I let my health take the hit, deciding to preserve my mana for more offensive spells. Mia flies toward the giant murloc, hitting it with a solid wall of air to take its attention from me.

The boss turns and starts to pursue her and I yell a thanks to Mia, before running to Ivy for her to heal me. The shockwave took out a solid 150 or so HP, so it definitely has a punch to it. Skylar keeps chipping away at the boss’s health while Ivy focuses on healing me. I hold off on helping for the moment to make sure it doesn’t focus on us before Ivy’s done healing me.

Once Ivy’s done healing me, I rejoin the fight, taking the devourer’s aggro off of Mia by bombarding it with spells. We keep going like this, taking turns getting the attention of the boss while keeping it as far away as possible. The tidbit of information about murlocs being slower and clumsier on land than in the water rings true for the boss.

In the end, thanks to our strategy of taking turns kiting him around, we don’t sustain much damage at all. The boss also isn’t super interesting past that shockwave attack. We figure out easily that it’s triggered by getting too close to it. It only manages to use the attack twice more before we kill it though.

Along with some of the pieces of the water elemental armour, we also got a glowing shard, a murloc scale and a deep fathom ring, giving a +3 bonus to both intelligence and endurance. It’s an easy choice to give the ring to Skylar and sell the relatively low level crafting materials, as we walk back inside our palace.

Ivy and I both levelled up from that dungeon, and I distribute our points the way we decided before. Mine go into agility and Ivy’s go into wisdom. With every increase of my agility stat, I’m feeling a substantial bonus to how fast I can move. It’s exhilarating to be able to move with such speed, and it’s intoxicating to know that I’m only going to get faster.

The stat allocation done, Ivy and I remove our clothes and armour with a thought. Mia and Skylar take a little longer with this. We flop down on the couch, and our kittens meow a hello at us. Having thought ahead, I bring out blankets from my inventory to put over us, so they can snuggle with us.

I toss Ivy a blanket as Sol jumps up onto the couch. As soon as Ivy puts the blanket down over her lap, the orange kitten is all over her, sniffing and meowing happily. I put my blanket over my lap, and Luna mews at me from the ground, wanting to be picked up again. Smiling at her, I pick her up and place her down on my lap, where she starts to purr contentedly.

Skylar sits down next to me and snuggles with me, resting her head against me. I put one arm around her, petting my cat with the other hand. I sigh dreamily, because life really can’t get much better than this. I kiss Skylar on the forehead before turning on the tv to put on something to watch. Mia snuggles on the couch with Ivy, as the healer plays with her cheerful kitten.

After half an hour of resting, relaxing, recovering and snuggling with our kittens, we get up and put on our armour once more to go out grinding again. This time we’re going up against the skeletons dungeon, to see if we can get the last remaining piece of the frost armour for me. We have everything but the ring.