The Grindfest Ends

John darted past the Troll that lumbered toward him, putting several bullets in its back in the process. It roared its unintelligible response and swung its wooden club behind, knocking his breath away and dealing some damage.

“I’ll have Rocky distract it, get to its back!” Amy ordered, riding in front of the beast with Ignis. Rocky crashed in through the thick trees that surrounded the swampy clearing, immediately locking fists with the Troll. Neither wanted to back down, and Rocky started sinking into the soft ground.

Putting away his guns, John took his chance to **** Precise Strike, raining blows on the behemoth’s back. Each accrued until Vital Strike kicked in and the giant exploded into viscera. John quickly used Clean, which became effective on people at level ten, to clean them off. “That wasn’t pretty,” John stated bluntly as Amy dismissed Rocky.

“Tell me about it,” came her response as she stretched toward the sky. “So today’s the last day before that big test right?”

“Yep! I should be getting those guns I ordered today too. I got a message on the Auction earlier that said they should be coming. That was the last one before the boss, so after that I’m probably going to head to Keith’s and see Jenny,” John replied as he took his guns back out. Between grinding for a month and selling most of the drops on the Auction, his stats and wealth were looking amazing.

Of course, with such an increase in health and mana, enemies started to hurt more and Gaia made his spells cost more. Still, he thought he was far above what any ordinary human could attain. Despite that, he had yet to beat Keith, Jenny, or even Amy in a sparring match.

He was broken out of his thoughts when Ignis nudged him with her nose. “Let’s get a move on then! I want to see this Troll King I’ve heard so much about!” Amy exclaimed, rushing ahead of him on Ignis’ back. In order to prepare for the tryouts, Jenny had taken to training with Keith whenever she wasn’t grinding with (or on) him. Whenever she couldn’t, he had started training with Amy, who worriedly texted him a dozen times in a minute when he had missed school four days in a row. She was mortified to learn he had dropped out but interested in the prospect of putting her skills to the test as well. That’s why she applied to the Waites behind her father’s back.

“So you still don’t know if they’re going to let you try out tomorrow?” John asked, keeping pace with the Firefox easily. Implacable March seemed like a perk far too good to pass up when he had first seen it, and how easy it made sprinting long distances attested to that.

“Still on the waiting list,” she shot back as the foot-deep water they were running in suddenly became knee-deep and much thicker. Discordance rang in his head, and John glanced around, noticing stones had been arranged in a circle around the pool they had just ran into. Just as he did, a Troll bigger than his house burst from the deep, naked save for the crude pyrite crown it wore and a loin cloth that didn’t cover much. Amy immediately averted her eyes.

“Forgot to mention that part,” John called as the Jolly Green Giant swatted at him with a giant arm. Leaping onto it, he used Advanced Spy on the boss.

Running up the arm of the beast, John shot at its eyes. The Troll King’s response was to jerk its arm, which would have sent him flying if he hadn’t tied a knot around its finger with Magic Rope. Instead, he held onto the end of the rope and let go when the motion carried him toward the boss, drop kicking it in the stomach. His feet sank in… and in… and in…

He exploded out of the king’s trampoline stomach as it roared in pain. Amy, meanwhile, had gotten over her apprehension and began pelting it with fireballs from Ignis’ mouth. “Have you ever seen ‘The Empire Strikes Back’?” John called over, readying another rope.

“Totally! But I wasn’t paying any attention. Why?” Amy called back, realizing his idea as he tossed the rope to her.

“Let’s pull a Hoth!” he yelled as they circled the giant, who swung the club to and fro across the water’s surface to try to get them. Unfortunately, Ignis and John had it beat in Agility by quite a large margin. It didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late and crashed to the swampy ground in a heap, dazed. A hand cradled his crown, covering his head to make sure it didn’t fall off.

“Get it while it’s down!” John exclaimed, barraging it with bullets, Mana Bolts, and punches. As it got up, he decided to knock it down once more. He grabbed onto its shaggy hair and charged up a Fist with two hundred mana. Just as it used its club to get up, he pummeled it back to the ground with his supercharged attack. The recoil hurt but was nothing compared to the pleasure of watching Ignis melt it. “It’s going to enter rage mode pretty soon!” John remembered, leaping away from it.

Ignis wasn’t so lucky and yelped as she was batted away. Amy felt lucky that the boss had hit her companion in the stomach, as any hits to the legs surely would have pulverized the bones under its might.

Ignis jumped up, none the worse for wear, and Amy struggled to stand back up in the boggy water. David, now! John thought as his companion dropped from the sky like a rocket, knocking off the Troll King’s crown and revealing a comically large, roughly hewn bandage.

The boss slowly got up, water cascading down as he swung his club at John. Afterimages trailed behind him as he dodged at superhuman speeds. “Come on, you big lug, you can do better than that!” John antagonized the Troll, causing him to slam his club down on another Afterimage. It instantly shattered; Obsidian shards exploded everywhere, scratching him and embedding themselves in the substantial stomach. It grunted in response, blood dripping down its torso.

John leapt up into the air, wrapping a Magic Rope around the Troll King’s hand and using it to propel himself further. At his apex he was just a few feet above the Troll King’s head.

Charging up another Fist, John hit the behemoth on the head and shattered its skull, dealing a critical hit and killing it instantly. “That felt good!” John sighed, using Clean straight away to make sure none of its blood landed on him. Gaia was probably joking… but he didn’t want to find out.

Level Up!

“Yeugh” was the only noise that came from Amy as the chartreuse blood dripped off her. Ignis recoiled, and John used Clean on her to save her the trouble. “This stuff reeks. What’d you get?”

David landed back on his shoulder before he could reply, dropping a sword and a dirty sack from his talons. “Apparently the sword, the money, and the lunch,” John replied, taking the sword from his pet and letting him drop the sack onto the ground. Though the tutorial-ending patch had stopped loot from being automatically added to his inventory, the money was still being automatically added. At least there was that.

“How come you never got a sword-wielding skill?” Amy asked, dismissing Ignis. When she bent down to inspect the Giant’s Lunch, John noticed a small yellow speck on the back of her neck.

“That’s Sparky isn’t it!” John exclaimed, causing her to quickly hide the creature behind her ponytail. Without the light helmet of her armor, the small creature was obvious.

“Fine… yes. But you can’t tell anyone about it! I don’t know exactly how it works, but when he attaches to my spinal cord and discharges, it lessens the strain of having my summons out,” Amy explained, allowing the small yellow creature to crawl onto the tip of her finger. It looked a lot like a Joltik.

“That doesn’t sound like it should work,” John replied, thinking back to his biology knowledge, “but I am questioning the impact a magically charged insect has on the mental strain to allow other magical animals to exist, so I guess I can’t really argue against it.” Dismissing his arguments, he used Advanced Spy on the Giant’s Lunch, since it was his first time getting it.

Huh, I wonder how strong that edible luck is… probably not very. It’d be broken if it were any good. He opened the sack to see what appeared to be a cross between an orange and an apple and a mish-mash of shredded meat between a crude biscuit. The fruit was bigger than his head and smelled citrusy despite having the peel of an apple. The sandwich was the size of his torso and smelled vaguely like dog food. The meat didn’t look much better. A normal person would probably have trouble carrying it, but to him it felt no heavier than the .50 Desert Eagle in his other hand. Doesn’t look very appetizing. At least the sack protected it from the water.

“Aw, look at that guy! I remember when I first started grinding with you he was so small, and now he’s all grown up!” Amy gushed, petting the hawk. In response, he puffed out his chest and ruffled his feathers. John decided to give David the meat while splitting the fruit with Amy.

“Alright, one more sweep through to see if we missed anything, then back to the entrance,” John told David, joining in the petting. With a gust of wind, David took off. “I’m heading back for the day. I’ll see you at the tryouts tomorrow,” John explained, noticing David swooping through the swamp. After a few minutes, he came back empty handed, or rather empty talon-ed.

“See you tomorrow, John!” Amy called as they both left the barrier. She left westward, in the direction of her mansion. He left eastward, toward Keith’s apartment. Under her breath, as he walked away, she whispered,