The Grind Never Stops

We decide against trying the spider dungeon today. Eventually we’ll get around to it, but not today. We decide to rotate between the different dungeons until lunch time, as we want some enemy variety. After a few minutes spent debating which we should go with first, we decide to satiate Ivy’s curiosity by finally showing her the armoured chickens.

The result of entering our first dungeon of the day is a full minute of Mia laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of three dozen armoured chickens swarming towards us, the squawks of the individual chickens overlapping into a constant, high pitched, angry sound. Waves of amusement and confusion echo through my mental connection with Ivy and I look over to see the same mixture of amusement and confusion reflected on her face.

“Gemma what is this?” She asks, as Mia and I start to fight off the chickens. “Well Ivy, these are the first enemies that I faced. They’re a tad ridiculous.” I have to hold back my own laughter to focus on the fight, although seeing Mia cackling so joyfully is giving me have a hard time at doing it. Her laughter is infectious.

Despite the silliness of the dungeon, the horde of chickens still isn’t to be taken as harmless. At level 25, with their beaks seemingly reinforced with some kind of a magical metal, they can still do some serious damage. Their true strength doesn’t lie in their ability to deal damage individually, but in their swarm tactics. One peck might not deal much damage, but ten pecks sure does a decent chunk.

Mia tries the same tactic that she used on the very first day that we went grinding together, by raising all the chickens in the air so she can slam them back down again and kill the whole horde instantly. Gaia seems to have improved their design though, and the chickens stay rooted to the ground when she tries this. Instead, we resort to divide and conquer tactics. I use my ice magic to slow down the horde, Mia cuts off a small section with a wall of solid air, then Ivy and I work together to eliminate the few chickens that Mia lets through, while she continues to hold them back.

It’s a fairly effective strategy, and having slowed down the pace of the fight to work through the enemies at a reasonable and careful pace, we manage to get through the massive horde without much HP loss. The small amounts of damage that we do take, Ivy heals pretty quickly. She’s pretty much fully accustomed to her role as a healer by this point, and the fact that we have her in our party is doing wonders for our strength as a team.

To my surprise, there does turn out to be a boss. The fact that the boss is a giant chicken is unsurprising. Gaia has been a tad lazy with boss design so far, for the most part, they’ve all just been a giant version of the regular enemies. This boss is add focused, and summons small groups of chickens to keep us occupied while it lashes out with its metal reinforced claws and beak.

We adapt to the mechanics fairly quickly and it only takes us a few minutes to beat the thing. My ice magic is ever handy in slowing down the pace of battles so we can approach things a little more carefully and at a steady pace. Granted, the pace is still quick but it’s slower than it otherwise would be. Mia’s crowd control abilities also come in quite handy here, allowing her to take care of the adds fairly easily while Ivy and I focus on the boss.

1000xp

We take a break after the dungeon to recuperate our mana. Instead of watching shows like we did yesterday, we pass the time by having sex. I can’t get enough of the two of them, and I wouldn’t mind spending the entire day alternating between sex and snuggling with them. Unfortunately, we do still need to grind and get stronger. So we have a shower, and go back out for our second dungeon.

This time, we decide to fight through the skeleton dungeon. The simple structure of the dungeon means that we can be fairly relaxed as we fight, although we still have to be a little careful. I use this dungeon as an excuse to practice my axe mastery skill, by engaging in melee combat with each skeleton as they come to me.

I’m still not the most skilled axe wielder in the world, far from it. Probably a lot further than I can imagine, given what I’ve heard about the power levels in the abyss. But I’m definitely getting better, and every level in the skill along with every bit of combat experience gained, gets me a little closer to fully being able to embody the battle mage that I’ve wanted to be from the start.

When we get to the boss, I stow my axe and switch to using mana bolt exclusively. Currently, it’s the only mana based offensive spell I have, although I would like to change that at some point. The Overlord has resistance to ice magic, so mana based spells are what is most effective out of my current toolkit. Kiting the boss around, using Mia’s solid air trick to keep it off balance and having Ivy heal any damage done and support us with her thorns skill, allows us to defeat the boss with a minimal amount of effort.

1500xp

I’m now that much closer to level 25. Levels are getting more difficult to attain these days, but that’s understandable, if not ideal. Such is the reality of increasing experience requirements. We exit the dungeon and once more, break to regenerate, before heading out for our third and last dungeon before lunch.

For our third dungeon, we decide on the goblins dungeon, as it’s a fairly quick affair and although it doesn’t give a whole lot of experience, I’m close to levelling up and this dungeon should get me over the line. We spawn in and take a look around. I immediately use my freezing blast skill on a few goblins that are coming our way, in hopes of slowing them down enough for us to be able to hit them.

From there, the rest of the regular enemies are a frantic rush to keep up with the fast pace of their attacks. They only come in small groups which does make it easier than if they came all at once, but the challenge for this dungeon comes from their speed. We contemplate trying the funneling tactic to try to make it easier on ourselves, but ultimately decide against it, as experience fighting enemies quicker than us is necessary.

Despite the rapid and almost panicked pace of the fight, I find that I’m enjoying myself. This dungeon is chaotic, and I can’t help but revel in the change of pace from the careful, planned out fights that we usually engage in. Still, if I hadn’t already resolved to focus on levelling my agility stat next, this dungeon would have convinced me.

We manage to dispatch of the regular goblins, taking much more damage than either of the previous two dungeons. It’s still not enough to be concerning thanks to the presence of our ever diligent healer. The boss spawns and we take our ready positions, quickly resolving to use the same tactics as with the Overlord boss fight.

Within minutes, we strike down the Goblin Chieftain and I’m rewarded with the window I’ve been waiting to see all morning.

1000xp

Picking up the loot and exiting the dungeon, I allocate my new stat points towards agility, happy at how balanced my stats are starting to look. Something I’ve always enjoyed about the battle mage class in video games is that once you get to a high enough level, it’s often equipped to deal with most threats that are faced. What battle mages lack in stealth and subtly, they make up for with adaptability to most given fighting styles and raw power. The stronger I get, the more I become able to handle whatever is thrown my way.

“Do you mind if we have lunch with my father?” Mia asks out of the blue, as we walk back to her house. I look at her, surprised. “Uh sure. Why now though?” “You two are practically living here by this point, and he sent me a text saying that he wants to meet you. You too Ivy.” The healer nods. “I’m okay with that.”

“When are we going then?” I ask Mia. “I’ll let him know and see what he says.” We get inside and sit on the couch together, Mia texting her father. I give Ivy some of the loot I have in my inventory to munch on, as we wait for a response from Mia’s father.

“Are you okay if I put the points into endurance?” I ask Ivy. “Of course Gemma, if you think that’s the best option.” “It’s just that we can get endurance to 25 when you level up next, and that’ll hopefully get you a lot more health.” I tell her, tapping the button to allocate the points. Ivy’s HP increases to 120 points, which I’m pretty happy with.

“He says in about half an hour, so he has time to make some food for us.” Mia reports and I nod. “I almost wanna suggest a quickie but I’m not sure there’s enough time for that.” “One of you could always eat me out, if you like.” Ivy suggests nonchalantly. Mia and I both snap our heads towards her in surprise.

“You’re getting bold.” I comment with a raised eyebrow. Ivy giggles softly, a blush rising on her cheeks. “I’d like to try being dominant, and the best way to do that seems to be to be more confident.” A blush makes its way onto my face, and Mia notices, cackling. “Go on honey, isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Well if you’d like me to be your sub…” I trail off, getting on me knees in front of Ivy. “Good girl.” She teases, simultaneously testing out the phrase. I blush harder and a wave of satisfaction reaches me through the mental connection. “Not fair.” I mutter, and Mia snorts. “Just do it, brat.” I greedily start eating Ivy’s pussy and she moans gently.