The Grind

Now that he was finished with school for the day, John thought about what he should do next. History had only been his third class, so it wasn’t even noon yet, which meant that he had plenty of time to kill. He would need to call himself a ride to leave the school grounds, but the question was, where should he go?

‘Hmmm, I could always go back to Blair’s house and ask her to teach me more about the Hells and demons in general.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. It was painfully clear that he needed to learn as much as possible about demons, considering that they were directly tied to his powers. John opened his stat sheet.

’I should also see about asking Blair what would be the best way for me to kill demons. If the imp Wentworth summoned got me almost halfway to the next Point, then one, at most two more would let me unlock the next skill in the skill tree. I think I remember Blair wanting to see me kill a demon after we cleared the Barrier, before she passed out. So all I need to probably do is remind her and see what she had in mind.’ John decided that this would most likely be his best course of action.

There was the alternative of going out somewhere by himself, and creating a Barrier to grind out his level and current skills. However, it was the knowledge paired with the potential increase in demonic powers that felt more valuable to him at that moment. John nodded to himself as he dismissed his stat sheet and pulled out his phone. He would go to Blair for teaching and further training.

With everyone either at lunch or in the middle of class, the hallways of the school were mostly empty. As a result, John was thankfully able to continue his lucky streak of avoiding Vanessa and Frank. As he walked through the school towards the exit, he began to call Blair. The phone rang for a little, but instead of her picking up as expected…

This is Blair Hollmey, I’m busy right now. Either leave a message after the beep or just send me a text, I’ll get back to you when I’m available.

‘Huh, I guess she was expecting me to be at school for the next few hours, so she could be busy right now.’ John thought to himself as he sent her a text. ‘Hmm, she may or may not actually be home then, but just assuming she’s not… what should I do?’ he asked as he opened the door to exit the school building.

’Well then, that settles that I suppose. Guess I know that Gaia supports me on this one. Let’s see here…’ John checked to see how many types of monsters he had to go through. ‘Right, so including the Grass Samurai I did before with Blair, I have four options I can access right now. Since it’ll just be me, the difficulty level should be lower as Blair isn’t here to increase the level of the monsters. There’s still a chance that a boss can spawn at the end, but the skill description doesn’t tell me what the actual percentage is.’ John looked at his options, but decided that maybe he should first find a place to open a Barrier. His mother was almost definitely not home yet, so perhaps opening one around his house wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

John left the school grounds and called himself a Bluber. While they drove home, he looked at his phone and stared at the last text he had sent his mother, marked as read. John felt his chest tighten as he wiped his eyes with his arm. He had done something terrible to her, and then avoided her, something that he now figured probably only made her feel worse. With a deep breath, John began to type out a message, delete it, and type it out a new one a few times over until he finally settled on something.

Mom, I’m sorry, what happened between us wasn’t your fault, just mine. I was able to finish school early today, and am on my way home now. I know you’ll be at work for a while still, but can we please talk when you finish and come home? There’s an explanation… it may be hard to believe, but it’ll be the truth, and you’ll deserve to be angry with me afterward.

John sent the message and put his phone down. He laid his head onto the seat as he let out a sigh. There was no way to know how she would take it or respond back, but at this point, he had committed himself to whatever would come next. All that was left now was to wait.

Eventually, the Bluber dropped John off in front of his house. He then cast the Create Barrier skill, and same as before, the notification for his options popped up. And since he was in a similar environment to when he had cleared the Barrier with Blair, the monster types available were also the same.

Illusion Barrier Monster Population Options:
Tier 0: Grass Samurai, Asphalt Rats, Puddle Slimes, Concrete Ants
Tier 1: Skill level not high enough
Tier 2: Skill level not high enough
Tier 3: Skill level not high enough
Tier 4: Skill level not high enough
Tier 5: Skill level not high enough

“Alrighty then, where do I wanna start?” John asked himself aloud. “I did the samurai before, so I know what to expect there. Though rats and slimes are the most basic of basic monsters usually, so they should be easy enough.” John looked at each one, they all seemed to be similar in premise based on his past experience. With each individual enemy small and easy to deal with, but the risk of being overwhelmed by numbers if he got too careless. “Well, let’s do slimes first since they’re probably the easiest,” John decided.

New Barrier Created
Type: Suburbs
Enemy type: Puddle Slimes
Population: 16

’Huh, didn’t do the max population that time, interesting. Quite a bit less actually,’ John thought to himself as he cast Soul Weapon. He then switched over to his armor set and surveyed his surroundings. He was in a fairly open and flat area, so there shouldn’t have been too many places for a group of slimes to hide. He began to look around, making sure to check drain gates first for any hidden monsters.

There were only a couple within the Barrier, but no slimes were ultimately found. ‘Okay then… where else would I hide if I was a slime…’ John asked himself as he dismissed his scythe and scratched the back of his head. ’Maybe somewhere kinda hidden on the ground, like in between bushes or something?’ He then went to check each bush and also tall patches of grass, but still, nothing was found.

’Wait… what’s that?’ he asked himself as he noticed something off about the tree across the street. “Ahah! There you are!” John said aloud as he found one of the slimes. It had been hidden between the thickest branches, no wonder he didn’t immediately find it, since he didn’t think to look up for them. It wasn’t very big, somewhere between a squirrel and cat in size. He cast Observe on the monster.

Puddle Slime
Lvl 5
HP: 40/40
An only semi-sentient pile of goo formed from dirty puddle water, these creatures wait for their prey in high places and drop onto them. Will dissolve anything that comes in contact with its acidic insides, and can split itself into multiple parts as a defense mechanism.

“Okay, the dropping down part is a little worrisome, thank Gaia I never walked under one of them. But otherwise, they do seem just like your generic slime monster. Splitting apart does remind me of Digcraft though,” John said as he made a mental note to eventually play that game again. He approached the goopy thing, and resummoned his scythe as he got closer.

’Now, how do I get to you? Even if I jumped, it looks like it’d still be outside of my scythe’s reach. Hmmm. Ah, fuck it,’ John thought as he had a dumb idea. He adjusted his grip on the handle, aimed, and tossed it straight into the tree towards the slime. The magical weapon twisted in the air, bounced off the top of the trunk, and landed back onto the ground near John’s feet. However, in a prime example of the slime’s intellect, he watched it slowly ooze through the branches before it suddenly fell and hit the grass with a plop.

‘Oh. Guess it just considers a certain level amount of movement as “prey” being underneath it,’ John surmised as he picked his weapon back up. John held his nose with one hand as he raised up his scythe with the other. Even though it had only been on the ground for a few moments, the slime had already begun to melt the grass underneath it. The smell was a mixture between a freshly mowed lawn, charcoal, and burning trash. John was more than happy to bring down his scythe and split the monster in half, right down the middle.

But rather than simply die from the blow, it had stuck true to the Observe and split into two smaller slimes. The two monsters slowly crawled towards John inch by inch. He took a step back to give himself a moment to safely think.

’Alrighty then, in that case, is it a one-off split or repeatable? They’re pretty slow… so my money is on Gaia making them split multiple times, just to make them annoying to waste time.’ He was already in motion to test his theory, as he twisted the scythe in his grip, and swung sideways at the two slimes. The blade cut through both of them horizontally in one strike, and like before, each monster split in half into two smaller copies. This now brought the total amount to four mini slimes.

“Hmmm.” John cast Observe on one of them.

Puddle Slime (Fully Divided)
Lvl 1
HP: 10/10
A puddle slime piece that’s one-fourth of the whole. If neither it nor its fellow pieces take damage within an hour of the initial separation, then they will begin the processing of recombining.

With that useful tidbit of info in mind, John quickly hacked away at them.

+10 EXP
+10 EXP
+10 EXP
+10 EXP
+20 EXP

Now that he had found the one and learned about their behavior, it was relatively easy to spot the rest as he knew where to actually look. He found some in other trees, others attached to roof gutters, and a few even on the underside of cars. To put it simply, they were as easy as it gets with basically no real way to fight back.

He dispatched them as he found them, and completed the Barrier in less than half an hour. As he finished off the last slime, John noticed something left on the ground in its place. An item! He quickly picked it up to cast Observe as he inspected its appearance. It was around the size of his fist, a sticky ball of brown slime.

Puddle Slime Jelly (Common)
A sample from the Puddle Slimes, the outside is sticky while the inside is acidic.
The acid within this ball is equivalent to the combined potency of five slimes.
Durability: 10/10
Creator: Gaia

With one Barrier down and three more to go for his quest, John began to meditate to refill his mana. After that, he decided he would clear the rats next, followed by the ants, and save the samurai for last.

Some time later

Both the asphalt rats and the concrete ants that followed were more or less the same. Each one of these monster types had its own gimmick, but the strategy John needed to use remained the same regardless. Simply find one, cast Observe to learn said gimmick, and then take them out a few at a time until he eventually got them all and the finished dungeon. After he had finished the ants, John checked his notifications.

Create Barrier lvl up
Lvl 2→ lvl 3
Two options have now been made available for Tier 1 Barriers, and the maximum barrier population has gone from 22 to 25. The spawning of boss monsters for Tier 0 dungeons can now be toggled.

In total, he had gained 2742 experience points from these last three dungeons, which brought him to 2855/3600 exp until his next level. In terms of drops, John had only gotten one more, from the ants he had just cleared. It was one of their concrete mandibles, which he had already put in his inventory with later plans to write in his notebook.

John was then curious about whether the last dungeon would be enough exp for him to level up. He began to do the math in his head. First, he assumed the final Barrier would have the max population of 25. Then that the average level of each monster would be five, and lastly, that he would toggle on the boss. The 25 enemies at level five would give him about… 1250 experience points.

’Huh, in that case, the normal monsters alone would be more than enough for me to level up.
So from that perspective, there’s no reason for me to toggle a boss fight, is there?
But on the other hand, I could get a good drop from it. I would get a copy of it from the bonus reward. And if Wentworth doesn’t want to keep one, maybe I could sell both of them on the Auction and make some money off them…’ John considered. He looked to check the time, he still had a good while until his mom came home, and Blair still had yet to call him back.

He recast the Barrier skill, he would do the Grass Samurai with the boss.