The next day [Monday 2/7]

On normal days, he had farmed for about four hours, giving him enough times to clear waves one to four about two times. On the days where he had spent preparing for the Bloodfallen, he had spent about ten hours grinding, clearing the waves about five times. Yesterday he had grinded for 17 hours, the goal being to **** Gamer’s Body and only take the most necessary amount of sleep and food.

Well, that had brought him one level at least. It was a horribly inefficient use of his time, the Waves 1-3 barely got him any EXP (The items sold for good money at least) and although the fourth Wave was somewhat okay the only really worthwhile part was the boss. Nevertheless, he had needed the money to get out of the Fifth Wave in case things went south. Which he now had. Therefore, he stepped into one of the doors of light.

Magoi had been wrong regarding the way enemies would spawn. To his defense, it was nearly impossible to predict how John’s unique powers would interact with anything. Instead of just getting dropped into the zone he was thinking about John stood in a black void. It was a constricting feeling, standing in this space where the only orientation was the door he stepped from. Luckily he didn’t have to stay there for too long. The Create I.D. Monster Table opened, and he chose the Street Elementals, time to grind through the first four waves again.

The Asphalt Golem hit the street, and with that, he had earned himself the tiniest of breaks as well as another level up. About one and a half hours was what he needed to get to this point. It wasn’t hard but sniping all the crows from the sky and getting all the boars took time, less than before when he had just started doing this, but still time. Having the Elemental Girls with him was helpful without a doubt though, and Aclysia always pulled her own weight.

Between two waves he had about one minute to leave the Dungeon or prepare otherwise. This time around he used the minute to spend his Stat-Points. He had 10 of them right now, and all of his interest lied with his Combat Stats right now, so Libido and Charisma were right out of the window. He had no desire to increase either Agility or Endurance right now, making seldom use of them, and Wisdom was still high enough as is. So, it was either Strength or Intellect. Strength because he wanted to have the 25 bonuses covered and Intellect because he used Mana for pretty much everything.

The timer slowly ticked at the back of his head; he had to make a decision quickly. ‘Best to go for Int 100 first.’ He finally decided and raised his Intellect to 85. A few seconds later Wave 5 started with the flapping of plastic wings and Building Boars suddenly turning into the street he was in. He had already seen that happening and fun fact, it was the good old developer trick of spawning enemies where he simply couldn’t see them. Or at least he wouldn’t have been able to if he didn’t have his Verdin, this way he saw them simply popping into existence two streets over.

The other Possession he used on the Earth Golem he always created as part of the strategy to defeat the Asphalt Golem. One would maybe ask why John didn’t just possess two golems instead of the bird and the answer to that was: Cautiousness. Two Golems might have helped him more than the bird in combat situations but thanks to the Verdin’s eyes he always saw the next horde of enemies trampling towards him no matter where they spawned. It was simply the safer solution.

Besides, his party was stable enough as it was. Without Rave, they were missing a bit of firepower but not enough to make things look dire. Aclysia and Gnome were still tanky enough to keep enemies at bay, Aclysia confronting the bulk and keeping them occupied with that stupidly big Cleaver of hers which she whirled around like a light wooden staff, while Gnome took the few enemies that slipped through and slowly ground them down. Undine in the meanwhile was the one on defensive duty to protect John from the claws of the diving Scrap Crows, the few of them that managed to actually go into an unobstructed dive that was as Sylph and Salamander cleared the skies as two thin lines of light green and fiery red. John supported the whole maneuver by using his Earth Golem to squash weakened Building Boars, too slow to dodge, under his giant feet and occasionally shot a Scrap Crow with Mana Ray. Usually, it proved more effective if he handed Mana to Sylph or Salamander though.

His battle plan for the waves was simple: Get air superiority, clean out the skies and then grind down the Building Boars. It had proven well in the past, and even though the enemies were now of superior level to him, it was still proving good enough. The occasional level 45 enemy was a bit of a problem, but anything below was easily solo-able by each and every one of his party members. He kept a constant eye on his mana, unwilling to enter an unknown boss fight with less than half, which reduced the speed at which they finally got the skies clear due to a lack of strong AoE effects but he calculated that to be a worthwhile risk.

Finally, enemies stopped spawning so now all John had to get through was cleaning up the remaining enemies. ‘Watch out, Master!’ A sudden warning in his mind. Two Building Boars broke through, both level 45. This had the potential to get very ugly. The first one was intercepted by Gnome but the second one trampled right around her. The concrete Porcupine charged at John, Undine tried to get in the way but her slime body was not particularly great at stopping big things in full motion, she was more specialized in small to middle size projectiles, and so the Building Boar just ignored her and rammed straight into John’s Mana Shield.

The skill translated the 80 damage he would have taken into Mana. At the current level of the skill (23) every one point of damage, he would take lost him 4,1 Mana. This made the skill pretty shit, but he always kept it toggled because it would be 1 for 1 eventually, which would be really good. However, it wasn’t good yet, and so that one hit cost him 329 Mana, leaving him with a mere 6. His preparations were now officially in shambles and only when the Building Boar, confused by hitting his head on an invisible wall, was enveloped by Undine and cleaved apart by Aclysia moments later did John realize how bad the timing was.

Every single antenna in the city suddenly activated and sent a bolt of electricity towards the sky. John cursed his luck, the Building Boar that had attacked him was the last one to get killed, leaving him with next to no mana. The bolts converged into an electrical sphere that slowly sunk to the ground about thirty meters in front of John. He already knew that the bosses were invulnerable in their spawning phase, so he just watched as the boss formed.

The name was very literal in this case. The form the sphere eventually took was a tall man made out of yellow energy that bolted around like a mixture of sound waves and electrical current over the surface of what looked to be a moderator suit. The boss adjusted his crackling tie with both hands, the left of which held a microphone, which he raised to his head next. Or to be more exact to the speaker in the center of his head, which depicted an old-school radio with a single speaker, a short antenna rising from his head and turning like he was searching for a signal. A gong sound came from his speaker followed by an announcement, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the main event!” John could not believe what he saw, much less what he was hearing as every single piece of metal in the copy of Springfield turned into a miniature audio-relay. “Llllleeeeet’s get ready to RUUUUUUUMBLLLEEE!”

Half a dozen wrestlers in speedos appeared out of nowhere and started to run towards John at full speed while Radio Head started dancing like Elvis in the background. “What the fuck is going on?” John shouted as he dodged the first muscly dude that jumped straight at him. Once the wrestler hit the ground, it vanished. The next one tried to hit Aclysia but was quickly cut apart, his body vanishing. The other four went for each of the elemental girls, who in turn took care of them by getting out of range or punching them.

“Nice!” Radio Head commented, “How about this, baby?” He performed another perfect copy of a song, “Caviar and Cigarettes, well versed in etiquette, Extraordinarily nice.” His voice switched into the chorus, and from his microphone, small energy bolts darted over the place. “She’s a Killer Queen,” A lady jumped at John and tried to stab him with a dagger. Gnome blocked for him as Aclysia engaged the Radio Head. “Gunpowder,” a small explosion ripped apart the street between them, Aclysia tried to run to the crater, unsure what else might lie in the blast site. “Gelatine,” Gummy bears started raining, a nice surprise amongst the madness, “Dynamite with a laser beam.” The gummi bears turned into sticks of explosives which then exploded (big shocker) into laser beams (Actual big shocker) none of which hit John, which was a good thing because judging by the way they cut into the buildings they were guaranteed to blow his mind.

“Love is a burning thing.” Radio Head started a new song, “And it makes a fiery ring.” Around John appeared a ring of fire that threatened to burn him in a few seconds. With Salamander and Undine around the fire was the least of his worries though as they made a path for him to run outside quickly. Radio Head recognized his mistake and changed yet again, “Soooomewheeeere,” He sang in a soft voice, and John was catapulted into the air as he saw Aclysia finally reach the fucker. He was above a rainbow and while that was beautiful and all of that he needed a landing strategy. ‘SYLPH!’ He thought desperately.

“Yeah, hey, hello, moin, Salut, Bonjour.” Sylph easily caught up to him and started babbling, “What other greetings are there? Ah, whatever, hey, John, Johny, John Walker, John-Tron. UH-UH, can I call you John-Tron? I have a question, see, I was born like, ehm,” she loudly counted on her tiny fingers, “One, two, three, four, FOUR days ago and I don’t get any of these references, could you…Oh geez, you are moving pretty fast now that we are moving downwards, is something wrong? Should I…” “PLEASE SLOW MY FALL!” John screamed in a panic; Sylph giggled, “Why didn’t you just say so, just give me a bit of Mana and TADAA!” about two meters off the ground a strong wind blew into his face slowing him down enough to make a running landing. He turned around, he had landed not far away from the fight. Aclysia had engaged Radio Head in a melee, which the boss absolutely didn’t like apparently as he just could not sing. Bad thing that John was out of Mana again, otherwise he might have been of some help.

“Keep him from singing!” John instructed Sylph and his other Elementals as he kept his distance and looked for a place from which he could fire his Mana Ray without running into danger of hitting his allies. He spotted a tall building nearby and hurried inside. Once at the roof, he pointed his palm at the nimbly dodging Radio Head, the metal handrail he was leaning against vibrating as they relayed what the boss was saying. “Today’s Lotto Numbers are 77-3-2-69-7 and 32 if you have won my congratulations. Back to the music.”

A change went through the enemy. Accompanied by bad spaceship ‘Pew Pew’ sounds his body turned from yellow to blue and as he dodged he once again raised his microphone. “I am blue, da ba dee da ba die,” at the last word he conjured a lance that looked like the Eiffel tower and thrust it at Aclysia. This stopped his dodging for a moment, meaning that he got hit by all the elemental girls, the energy that made up his body distorting for a moment. However, his attack also connected and it was terrible, reducing Aclysia’s health to little more than half. He pulled back and started dodging again.

John knew that song, as most who hung around the internet (or reality, really) did so he knew that wasn’t the last attack. “Da ba dee da ba die,” the Eiffel lance appeared, as predicted, with such absolute speed that Aclysia could not hope to dodge, reducing her health to a mere sliver only thanks to her insane HP Regeneration. There was no way she would regain health quickly enough to survive a third strike, but the Radio Head also looked hurt. His skin looked like a TV without signal, black and white dots dancing erratically over the otherwise blue surface, and his voice had a certain distortion to it.

The boss was bent on not going down alone and if he got a third attack in he wouldn’t. John, however, had also recognized a pattern in his movements. “Da ba dee,“ Radio Head sang as he dodged then he planted his foot on the ground, ready to strike, “da ba di-“ He was hit by a Mana Ray John had started charging immediately when his mana allowed him too. The attack struck just in time to stop the boss from hitting Aclysia a third time as his head evaporated and the rest of his body quickly followed.

He put the points into Intellect, left the Instant Dungeon and instantly recreated the Fifth Wave. This was his life for the day.