There were two ways to grind sensibly, in John’s opinion.
One could either find trivial content, that was repeatable extrely quickly and that gave a moderate amount of experience and gear, or beat content of high difficulty, that rewarded the effort greatly, and just concentrate on getting that done without dying. The forr was easier, but the latter was the usually intended experience by ga developers and was, thusly, heavily encouraged or downright mandatory to get so of the better stuff.
If one were to ask which content John preferred, he would have had to go with the harder content in general. It was simply a more rewarding feeling, to get levels after beating a series of challenges, instead of just grinding down on mobs for a few hours. Or picking herbs… or sothing else stupid.
Then again, in so gas, Diablo 3 for example, endlessly grinding was stupid fun, and the Instant Dungeons were conceptually close to the portals of the hack and slash ga.
Trivial content being more rewarding than hard content usually had one of two reasons. Either the developers had fucked up, in which case it was going to get fixed eventually, or the content was quite literally ant to be skipped. MMO’s liked to do that, making old content very easy to beat just so everyone could get through ASAP and play the new content.
‘I wonder what I will get access to,’ John wondered as he finally beat the last challenge of the Fateweaver class: to make a barrier that was an exact cube with 100-tre long sides. It wasn’t the hardest thing to do, after John figured out how he had to go about how to work Illusion Barrier better (which he did thanks to the Skill getting higher giving him effective muscle mory on it).
He opened the class window and spent the level in Fateweaver.
Not enough to justify switching from Elentalist, with its Stat bonuses to all of his elentals. What were those increased dungeon customizations though?
‘Now to find out what the sticking bonus even is,’ John thought and switched back to Elentalist.
‘Let’s try Feral,’ John thought and created the I.D. The Skill reacted, as per usual, to his intention to create it with the new settings in mind. However, he was presented with a window to put in the amount of ti he wanted to spend. ‘Let’s say 10 minutes,’ John thought and wrote it in, a number in parenthesis appeared behind it.
’12 minutes, 30 seconds… that’s the ti dilation in action,’ John realized. ‘So it’s taking the ti I will be out of reality, not the ti I will be inside, as its base, good to know.’ He accepted, and the run-down house disappeared.
He was now inside a tropical forest. The tall trees competed with each other for the sun’s rays. The canopies towered far above, all manners of different plants, from mushrooms to lianas, hanging from the bark and branches. The air was warm and humid, uncomfortably so, a stark contrast to the winter cold he had just left.
And he was instantly pounced by sothing that looked like a horrible fusion between a panther and an insect. Plates of chitin covered its muscular body, black fur growing out of the small gaps. Its four black eyes each looked at a different part of John’s body, and its maw was wide open, parted mandibles frad sharp fangs
“Watch out!” Gno shouted as she materialized between him and the monster. The earth spirit threw a sucker punch that hit the panther straight on the nose. The impact of the earthen fist cracked the bug-panthers face-covering chitin and threw him right back to where he ca from. “S-stay grounded!” Gno said.
The panther flew back a few dozen tres, crashed onto the ground and was then caught in an updraft. Being carried high into the air as soone blabbered over it with comntary. “Hihihi, is that the best you can co up with? Gno, Gno, Gno, should, like, try sothing more creative. Like ‘Sorry to rock your world’ or ‘Your scissor is nothing against my paper’. Here let show you,” Sylph’s voice rattled the words down like she was a sportscaster that had just finished powdering her nose with cocaine.
The poor panther flew further and further up only to then make a really awkward and unnatural turn in the air. Roaring in confusion and anger, it was slamd into another one of its kind. Then another one. This went on until Sylph had gotten five of them into a ball that was tumbling through her winds.
The insectoid felines fell down to the ground as the tempest elental finally stopped the storm. “I will end this in a flash!” Sylph announced with a face of pure determination. Raising her hands above her head in an epic manner a single spark of electricity danced between her fingers. “Eh?” the air spirit gave her hand a confused look.
The pile of panthers threatened to recover while Sylph was busy trying to summon her lightning. Before either of the two parties could act, the monsters were bombarded with fire.
“Kekeke,” Salamander cackled; “You dunce, Sylph, have you still not learned that you need to keep track of your mana? Not everyone can just throw that shit around like John.”
“You kill stealing bitch!” Sylph complained. “Those were mine, I wanted to be totally cool and electrocute them! You didn’t even use a cool one-liner.”
“Like I give a tosh about one-liners,” Salamander waved off. “These guys are toast now, that’s all that matters.”
“Yay, you used a one-liner!” Sylph chirped, causing the blaze elental to look confused. “Toast, you know, you made them like crispy toast, toasted them crispy, crisp-crisp, you know. Do you get it?”
“Urgh,” Salamander let out a frustrated groan. “That’s really reaching for it, airhead.”
“Whatever, let’s just fucking kill these dudes!” Salamander announced.
“One thing after the other,” John told them. “I want to dictate the terms of this engagent.” He turned his head to look at Gno.
The earth spirit was busy drawing little circles into the ground with her finger. “I think that line was cool…” she muttered, all pouty and adorable. Sadly, this was not the ti to squish her cute face.
“Gno!” John called out to her.
“Y-yes!” she jumped to her feet. “S-sorry to slouch off in the middle of battle.”
“Yeah, don’t do that,” John agreed. “Anyway, I need you and Salamander to do sothing for .” He ntally sent her the details.
“That…is…” Salamander said slowly. “AWESO FUCKING HELL YES!” the fire spirit flew over to Gno with a fire in her coal coloured eyes. “Let’s do it, co the fuck on!”
“Sure?” Gno was less enthusiastic about this plan, but she and Salamander, who changed into her big form, folded their hands together.
Their mana intermingled, and John poured his own into the mix graciously. The ground trembled, John spotted more of the bug-panthers stalking around, distancing themselves from what they thought to be an obvious source of danger.
‘Jokes on them,’ John thought; ‘You are playing right into my hands.’ The humid air beca even hotter with each passing mont until, suddenly, the ground cracked open in a ring around John’s group. Lava splashed upwards as pieces of the earth surrounding it fell inside.
It wasn’t the biggest of rifts, maybe two tres in width, but filled with molten rock, it was quite the imposing thing. This was especially true for the panthers who hadn’t evacuated fast enough and fell straight into the deadly trap.
‘There, a nice and easily defendable position,’ John thought, as he was now on a secure island in the forest. The heat of the lava caused nearby wood to ignite, much to Salamander’s delight.
“Look at it! Look at it burn!” she laughed.
“Mhm, look at how pleased you are,” Siena, materializing from John’s shadow, moaned. “If you like things hot, our next fun ti should involve so candle wax.”
“Oh, fuck off an- John, above you!” Salamander’s warning ca just in ti. One of the monsters had climbed a tree and was now jumping at John. It had already crossed the ring of lava by the ti anyone could react. Everyone else was too far away, but John wasn’t worried in the slightest, the destruction of the surroundings, caused by his elentals, had pumped Echo of Destruction up quite a bit.
He was getting ready to fend off the assailant by himself (until Gno was ready to take over) when a blue shape intercepted. ‘Undine?!’ John thought, surprised. Not only should the nding elental have been able to feel his intentions, she should also know that what she was doing now was a terrible idea.
The wall of sli didn’t even pass a hindrance for the panther. Too heavy and too fast, it broke thought the blue liquid, tearing a hole through the soft mbrane. A ntal scream of pain rocked through John’s consciousness. For a mont, he was back in a chamber, getting sward by rats, then the image was gone. This ti, it wasn’t his mistake.
Whoever’s mistake it was didn’t matter to the monster. John had hesitated and now the panther crashed right into him. Mana Protection had been deactivated, MP being more useful than HP, so he was slamd straight to the ground. In a hurry, John used a Mana Blade to cut into the monster’s stomach.
It didn’t care, snapping at his face with its mandibles. The razor-sharp extension clacked close re millitres from his face, held back only by the Purgatory-covered arm holding it by the throat. John continued to cut through the insectoid feline with the bright blue sword. The mandibles opened up. He would not be able to keep it back for the second bite. He was strong, but not stronger than the monster.
The sharp things reached his face, barely. Cutting thin, symtric trenches into his cheekbones, they fixed his head in place as the creature’s mouth opened wide, stinking hot breath followed by a green liquid spilling forth. Then blindness.
The monster had spit a load of acid on his face. Not even Gar’s Body could just recover from the slow damage that did to his head. The pain of his flesh being seared, healing and then searing again was cruel but nothing he couldn’t bear with for the mont.
John quickly shifted his eyes away from himself and concentrated on scanning the battlefield through Jack. His freedom was imminent in the form of Gno charging at the panther above him. The feline was ripped off him, the mandibles sheering so more of the liquified flesh off his face, and launched by the impact of the earth spirit’s attack, carried all the way into the ring of lava by a gust of magical wind.
John was still blind, remaining acid keeping it that way. ‘And this is with goddamn Acid Resistance,’ he thought, resisting the urge to wipe the stuff off his face with his It was painful, yes, but in the midst of battle, healing was cheaper than repairing his jacket.
The elental that was supposed to do the healing had gathered herself back together. Undine looked calm on the outside, but a sense of defeat and deep sha radiated from within her. ‘Co over here,’ John told her as calmly as possible.
‘Are you angry?’ Undine wanted to know as she started healing him. Patches of healthy skin replaced wherever Undine wiped the acid off his face.
‘Yes,’ John told her truthfully, as he had taught her to be; ‘The fuck was that supposed to accomplish?!’
‘I wanted to be useful,’ Undine said, her voice a sad little lody.
‘You are always useful, you are our safety net!’ John reminded her and stood up. Now with a functioning mouth again, he said, “You are the group’s healer, never think that is a useless occupation!”
‘I don’t… but…’ In that mont, John felt sothing break through. Envy towards everyone else, anger towards herself, ugly things that she had buried deep beneath. It was gone before John could make sense of it – before he could properly take hold of the root issue.
“You will tell exactly what this is about once we are out of here!” John demanded and turned to help the rest of the group.
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