GRINDING (Saturday)

Three days. They had spent the past three days planning and training. Herman said he would take care of the logistics of getting that tank out of there as long as they were able to get it out of the Illusion Barrier, he also promised to ask some of his friends to help them. Which meant that John had one goal and one goal alone: Being stronger than Igor and Gent, the two most intimidating fighters in the Bloodfallen.

Funnily enough, that didn’t look at all unrealistic at this point.

Because he had learnt one thing, one easy and simple thing: His powers were bullshit. He contracted the other two elements, air and water, yesterday. Undine was a girl made entirely of water, or well, actually it was more some sort of slime. She was about the same height as Gnome, her light-blue form shifting most of the time but maintaining humanoid proportions. The only two things that interrupted her otherwise smooth surface were her short hair that twirled around a maelstrom at the back of her head and her glowing white eyes, the colour of mist. She was much like Gnome, only even quieter, responding with waves of emotion instead of words most of the time. She kept to protecting John from ranged attacks with her highly viscous body.

Which was direly needed as Gnome was simply not quick enough for that kind of job, especially in this environment. A sharpened steel pipe flew at John's head but was washed to the side as Undine sent one of her arms flying to protect him. Where was that steel pipe coming from? Well, there was this thing:

Which got promptly attacked by his other new acquirement. In a blindingly fast motion, a streak of pale green swirled around the Building Boar, raising him into the air the slightest bit as hundreds of small cuts slowly tore him apart until it fell to the ground as hundreds of pieces of rubble before despawning.

“What I was saying, right, are you listening? I think you are. So. What I was saying is that Sally is such a bitch, right? She only talks about burning stuff, all day, every day. You know what is going on inside your head all day? Because I sure do. Lemme tell you it is FUN. Because you thought about Tetris so much in your life, you actually have an Arcade machine up there…. Uh! Uh! Did I tell you about the high score yet, Gnome actually holds it and and and…..” The words of the small green girl started to meld together into the background noise slowly. Sylph didn’t seem to mind that he wasn’t actually listening, she just enjoyed talking.

‘Sylph.’ That was Gnome inside his head, ‘Get back to it.’ The green girl in the air saluted at the fellow elemental in the yellow sun dress. “Yes, ma’am!” She played obedient before turning in the air and flying at the next foe, of which there were more than enough. Gnome had turned into some kind of commander, John had no idea if that was because of seniority or some other factor at play.

With two more elementals at his side, his power had risen tremendously. Not only that but sadly also his Mana Consumption. It wasn’t alarming but cause enough for him to concentrate on getting Intellect 75 next after he had reached the 25+ mark in Agility. ‘Which was really disappointing.’ John sighed, all that milestone had gotten him was higher flexibility, and his reflexes were quicker by 10%. Not bad but pretty boring all things considered.

“Jane, how is it going on your side?” John shouted at his girlfriend. Rave was busy blasting light at the other kind of enemy in this Dungeon.

“I just love having a challenge for a change!” Rave grinned as another well-aimed laser burned the wing off a crow. “Amen, sister!” Salamander attested and finished the thing off with a ray of fire from her hands while giggling. “You could be more like her in fights, you know?” Rave asked Copernicus. “That would involve moving.” The cat said and rolled on its back as it lied on the top of a coffee table, “You got this, Lightbearer. Well, you or your friend there.”

Aclysia swung a sword that was taller than she was downwards at another Building Boar that tried to pounce at Rave. The sword was more a hunk of steel with edges than an actual sword. Well, steel was not the right description, let’s just have the description describe what is description worthy.

Something else worthy of description. Aclysia’s Stats and her ridiculous Health Regeneration.

She had +20 Strength. Fucking Twenty. Percental Bonus Stacking was insane. That was nothing new to John, but it was just something else to see it in action. John wondered what Gaia had in store for him at level 75 of Artificial Spirit but at the current pace that was still a bit away. It would be enough if he got it in time for the confrontation with the Bloodfallen.

Speaking of which there might be some context needed here. After Aclysia’s sudden evacuation of the Headquarters, Victoria and her companions had vanished. Literally. They had entered an Illusion Barrier, John (unwilling to give away the secret of his bird, which SecretBlonde had only revealed to the top paying customers yet, to which the Bloodfallen apparently did not count) had circled the area from the outside. He had not found them again yet.

This put a dent into John’s plans to take her out before reinforcements arrived but he simply filled that gap by training more. After having beaten the third floor of the Skaven Under Empire (Same enemies with ANOTHER 5 levels on top) John and Rave had decided to try waves instead, and as apparently Forest Elemental was blocked inside the city they had instead gotten a new option called City Elementals.

Aclysia’s new sword was a drop of the second wave boss; they were now on the fourth wave. They hadn’t beaten this boss before, they usually just repeated the first three. However, with the addition of the two new elementals to his arsenal, John felt quite confident. Especially because the enemies were once again the same as the previous waves, which meant that the Boss was probably also the same.

Despite the enemies being of similar or higher level to the group, they weren’t exactly hard. They were no stomp, like the previous three waves had been for the most part, but they were numerous and survived more than light tickles as well as being capable of attacks from close range and afar. He sent Undine some of this Mana to **** two Building Boars to his left as he himself helped Rave by taking down another Scrap Crow with Mana Ray. This ate away at his Mana a fair bit, but he was close to…

Exactly. Well, there were not a whole lot of enemies left so every second now….

…Would happen. Wow, he was on point today.

The streets cracked, bent and the rubble tumbled towards the same spot. New black and old grey asphalt, all the same, started to meld together, forming a 5-metre-tall humanoid. It had human proportions, long legs and arms marked with lines that looked like street markings. The primary difference between it and humans, besides the obvious size and material, was that it had no head but instead a slight bulge where its neck should be, an eye made of small white pebbles resting there.

In all honesty John thought the thing looked more ridiculous than intimidating; still, it was 5-metres-tall and capable of pretty high levels of destruction. Then again if he wanted to, he could probably level a building at this point as well.

“Usual strategy?” Rave asked, “Yep. Sylph, Salamander, if you would.” John gestured towards the two tiny woman elementals. Sylph took this as an invitation to get talking again, “Let’s go! Of course, only if you are ready. I know how much of a slow burner you are. Heh. Get it? Slow burner? Because you are made of....” “Get fucking going!” Salamander kicked her fellow elemental in the butt and then followed her to the Asphalt Golem’s arm. There the two elementals started to rapidly circle around, blasting their individual attacks at the arm of the beast.

The strategy was easy. Sylph and Salamander would circle around one of the limbs, slowly cutting it off while the rest of the group kept the Golem occupied. Once that was done the destroyed limb would morph into two smaller Golems they needed to quickly defeat and go to damage the boss' exposed side before he could completely regenerate.

The Asphalt Golem moved in to swat the little elementals away like mosquitoes, but John was already on the case. Gnome took a good third of his mana and a pillar of earth enveloped the arm at the wrist, stopping the Golem in his movement. His priority shifted to getting this arm out of confinement, which Aclysia took care of. With a mighty jump, she interjected the Golem as he pulled his fist back to smash the earth pillar. The Cleaver of Streets extended she crashed into the fist, the sword penetrating through and ripping the Golem’s balance apart.

Now Rave was the next to attack the enormous foe. While Aclysia and John had spent time controlling the beast she had climbed a nearby building, from which she now jumped. “Woooohooo!” She shouted as she made a double-somersault that ended with her extended heel landing in the Golem’s face. The kick already inflicted damage upon the creature, but the shockwave that followed thanks to Copernicus enchantments **** it on its knees.

Sadly, all of this was not of particularly big use. The Asphalt at the creature’s knees got sucked into the main body, and the dents the attacks had caused started to fill up again. What was more was that the left arm, the one in John’s earth pillar, started swelling breaking apart the structure moments later.

The Golem swung its now club like giant appendage around. Aclysia jumped away, through the window of a building and hid inside. Rave, on the other hand, did her best to keep her balance at the top of the Golem, “I have a lot of experience with rodeo, ya stupid dust head!” She said, and John could actually feel the wink that followed that innuendo.

John himself just looked at the whole thing with a nice big grin on his face from a pretty safe distance. The few scattered asphalt blocks that the flailing sent his way Undine took care off. One could say that he was barely contributing to the fight, but he preferred to say that he used his skills tactically. On top of that, technically Aclysia’s and his elementals contributions were his, so he was actually doing a lot. He was about to make an even bigger contribution though.

The Asphalt Golems frenzy came to an abrupt end when his right arm finally fell off. There was only so much regeneration could do against melting and cutting. The arm fell to the ground with a loud crash that scattered the dirt the Golems absorption of the street had uncovered all over the ground. As per usual the arm broke into two pieces and formed smaller foes. One of which was immediately killed under the impact of Aclysia jumping from a third story window. There were many nice things you could say about Aclysia, that she was cute, that she had a great figure, an awesome arse, clean skin, radiant eyes, all of that jazz, but not that she was light. Especially if she didn’t want to be. Therefore, the first Golem got crushed by a whole load of Titanium and Dragonscale forged into human form.

The second one Rave quickly took care off much in the same manner. She jumped off the Boss-Golem as it tried to regain balance and landed on the smaller version's shoulders. Before the Golem could do as much as react, Rave was already stomping down on his head over and over again, each connection sending out a wave of light like ripples on a pond.

John sent Gnome more of his mana. Moving earth was a lot cheaper if he didn’t need to break through the street first and exactly that obstacle the boss had removed by absorbing the Asphalt underneath him. Earth piled up around the pillar until it was as large as the Boss, at which point it started to meld into a giant human. “Whatever you can do, I can do better.” John declared and used Possession on Gnome’s creation.

Sylph and Salamander, the cutting-edge duo of this fight, moved on to sawing off the Golem’s left leg as John, now a five-metre-tall Earth Golem, attacked his brother in appearance. Although John was not exactly experienced with this kind of body or punching as a whole, he had four unfair advantages. First was the fact that the Asphalt Golem only had one arm, which was oversized and slow to swing, allowing John to get easy punches in. Second were Rave and Aclysia who now attacked the wide open right side of the Golem, large chunks of it being cut or kicked out. Third was that John had made this fight on easier difficulties before and the strategy was executed flawlessly this time around and lastly was that the Golem fell towards him as his leg became undone.

If a Boss Monster could have looked annoyed, the Asphalt Golem would have been a grimace of saltiness as the final uppercut was delivered to its pebble covered face.

“Did it drop anything of interest?” Rave asked as she brushed some of the rubble of her clothes. John went over the whole thing. “Well, we got Hundred-thousand bucks.” He said and put them away. “I asked INTERESTING, Johny!” “Has been a while since you called me that.” John laughed while he went over the rest of the stuff. Mana Mixed Tar and Polutium Bar were somewhat interesting crafting materials that he would keep for the moment, but aside from that, there was really nothing interesting, not even in the rare drops. Although there was this one thing.

He read the description to Rave. “Well….think it’s enough to just put it on the floor in the bedroom?” Rave was intrigued and asked. “Possibly? Want to find out?” John already knew the answer, but he shot her a glance anyway. “Who do you think is your girlfriend, tiger~.”