John stood atop the gate of his mighty fortress, which sat at the heart of a sea of liquid fire. The fortress was a hastily cobbled together structure. Even calling it a fortress was actually a bit of a stretch. It was more of a ring ford by a tall, thick wall on which the group could stand. The gate in the front was guarded by Aclysia, with Momo and Sylph acting as air support.
Around this ring was a trench filled with lava. This trench was the lesser of two reasons why the forest of the Feral I.D. was currently on fire. The major reason was that John had sent out Salamander to burn whatever she wanted, without engaging the enemies.
After arriving in the I.D. John had done what he did last ti and created a ring of lava. This ti, however, he went all out on that. A deeper moat, a wall behind it, and a chokepoint to invite the mindless enemies to their own demise. With all of his and Momo’s mana, the creation of Fortress Ocelot Alpha was child’s play.
They had left the gate open for the Bugpanthers to be able to attack them. Which they did, despite their disadvantageous position. In a manner true to NPC logic, they followed their instinct to attack John relentlessly, no matter how badly the odds were stacked against them.
With the one bridge of stone that crossed over the trench guarded by the fire immune tank that was Aclysia, the Bugpanthers were quite handily defeated by a simple strategy: throw them into the lava. As the lava was technically part of Gno’s and Salamander’s toolkit, the panthers that were burnt to death counted as kills for John.
Sylph saw this whole thing as sort of a miniga, like fruit ninja. Swipe left or right to toss the panther into a flaming pit of death.
For the reason why they were burning the forest though, it was because the Bugpanthers weren’t smart, but they still had so helpful instincts. One of which was to climb into the trees and jump from there.
Very few of them made it onto the fortress wall that way. Most of them hit the wall, yes, but climbing it was a whole different thing when Gno could push them away by having a stone spike form underneath them, consequently following the core strategy of this encounter.
Whenever one DID make it on top of the wall, John had Sylph and Gno take care of it with his mana. Not that this was a problem at this stage, the forest fire had consud all of the trees that had been jumping points. They had been in here an hour already.
Now John was waiting for a boss to spawn. The kill count was currently at 97, sothing that he knew thanks to a little window he could summon that told him how much longer he was going to be in here as well.
He first had anticipated it to spawn with a tir, but now he was pretty certain that it would co after they had killed 100 basic enemies. With a roar, a Bugpanther stord out of the burning forest, accompanied by three more of its kin.
Another advantage of the fire was that it got rid of the monster’s stealth advantage. Their chitin bodies were coloured to be nigh invisible in the dim green of the rainforest, but in the bright light of fire, it was like soone was pointing a flashlight at a dull tal plate. They also couldn’t wait for optimal opportunities to strike, as their natural habitat was vanishing around them.
John had thoroughly eliminated each and every single one of their ho advantages and had created his own. ‘Manipulating the landscape is so unfair,’ he thought, having not done a single thing, aside from distributing mana and acting as the group’s planner, for the past twenty minutes.
The first Bugpanther of the current wave pounced at Aclysia. A horrible mistake, as he was now in the air. “And whooooosh,” Sylph giggled, and the monster was thrown completely off course, landing in the lava. It roared in anger and pain.
‘Being scorched by and drowning in molten rock is probably one of the least enjoyable deaths,’ John admitted. ‘I’d feel bad if they were real… then again, if they were real and coming at like this, I’d probably still do this. I’d feel worse if I was the one dying.’
A red firefly hit Aclysia shortly before she raised the giant claymore, Vol’jin’Zul, and swung it from left to right. Honestly, the sword could have been an oversized pan for this motion. It barely cut into the flesh of the Bugpanther, their exoskeleton was extrely durable, but the force of the strike made it fly into the designated killing ground. Two more attackers were left to go.
The narrow bridge barely allowed the two monsters to run next to each other. One pounced at Aclysia. The guardian was still recovering from her last strike and thus couldn’t raise her sword into parrying position in ti. Recognizing this, Aclysia changed to the considerably lighter Ashkandi at the speed of a thought.
She blocked the attack with her bare arm. Given that she wasn’t just made out of magical tals (the material that Refined Body II currently generated was called Zertztin) but also had the Steelskin attribute, the limb was harder than most shields.
The fangs and mandibles of the insectoid feline gnawed on her arm, but it had next to no impact. Aclysia had figured out the monsters’ weak spots a while ago and aid for a gap in the panther’s chest plate. As its last act, insides getting cut apart thodically, the panther spat his acid onto Aclysia’s arm.
She had little defences against this kind of attack, and so her arm started lting even as this panther beca ash. ‘Undine, get down there!’ John instructed. Aclysia would have no problem healing by herself. Like yesterday with himself, however, the healing wouldn’t co through as long as the acid kept eating away at her. Therefore, Undine was needed to neutralize the liquid, at a minimum, and to top Aclysia’s health up again, optimally.
The nding elental went into action as Sylph, who had been keeping the last panther busy, received a boost from John to get that problem cleared with quickly. ‘We have the big one coming in!’ John warned everyone.
As the description threatened, at the roar of this nightmarish creature, a dozen of the normal Bugpanthers rallied to him. ‘Okay, so it seems like they keep spawning even when the boss is there,’ John thought as he saw another Bugpanther pop into existence through Jack. ‘Salamander?’ he reached out to the fire elental.
‘Burn, baby, burn,’ a singing voice filled his thoughts, ‘Burn, baby, buuurrn.’
‘Salamander!’ John shouted louder.
‘Whaaaat?!’ ca the annoyed voice; ‘I am singing Disco Inferno and burning stuff. Why the fuck do you interrupt my happiness?’
‘The forest is pretty much ash, help with this boss instead!’ he inford her.
‘Oh shit, new target?’ Salamander said and started her journey back.
In the anti, the enemy monsters ford a neat little line and sat down. John was imdiately alard, as he realized what they were planning. ‘Aclysia, get inside!’ he told his artificial guardian, everyone else either flying away or searching for so other form of cover. His prediction ca true a mont later.
Like a row of biological artillery, the monsters vomited forth a wall of acid. A single one wouldn’t be concerning, as the reason why the insectoid felines got close to spray their acid was because it spread in a large cone over a big distance. Singular drops were painful but not dangerous.
An acid shower of more than a dozen of these bastards? That was a different story. Their range was limited, but the dissolving cocktail hit where Aclysia had been a mont earlier, eating holes into the ground with a hissing sound.
The Tropico Highmane growled sothing that John interpreted as orders in animal speak. Through Jack, he saw them advance their firing line. He looked at his glove, ‘Last resort ti? No, there are still two hours. Maybe I should bombard them with Arcane Explosion to cause so confusion?’
“I am back, what did I miss?” Salamander said, now right next to him.
“Thank God for incorporeal movent,” John sighed in relief. With Salamander here, the fight just turned into sothing very easy. “Do the usual, please,” he said, giving her and Gno mana as he saw fit, investing so of Momo’s as well.
Salamander flew over to Gno to conduct the spawning of another lava pool underneath the firing line. A second shower of acid made its way downward. So of it ate through John’s cover, a heightened part of the wall, and dissolved on his Mana Protection. Thankfully, that thing was overcharged right now, but even if it hadn’t…
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