They kept strolling through the labyrinth unopposed. It was a tall construction, the walls so kind of waxed stone. The floor was slippery but not to a degree where John was afraid he would fall down at any given mont. This was the Tier 20 version of the Wall Shadow dungeon, and they had only been attacked once.
“Why don’t they co out, I am bored!” Sylph complained, flying from one wall to the next. Without a doubt, the monsters were hiding within the walls, sothing which they had confirmation for thanks to Siena checking. It was a short stint. Staying in these shadows would have been like taking a swim in shark infested waters with cut ankles.
“Because they are inherently cowardly creatures,” Momo told her. “Wall Shadows are the Abyss’ primary stealth assassin type monsters. They only attack when they think themselves unopposed.”
“In other words, they don’t see an opening,” John said; “The higher up we go in level, the smarter these things get. They must be heavily intimidated by us… or, rather, Aclysia.”
The artificial guardian tilted her head in a quizzical way as she looked at John. “Why would I be intimidating, Master?” she wondered.
“Maybe the way you turned the first few enemies that approached us into diced cheese?” he suggested.
Eclys wasn’t just sharp, it was too sharp. The blade went through the insectoid hides of the Nightlurkers (the local permutation of the Wall Shadow) like a hot knife through butter. Paired with an artificial guardian that had the knowledge of how to handle swords engraved into her subconsciousness, one got a rather dangerous entity.
John made a personal note to give her the level 2 version of Sword Mastery when it was available next ti. The results should be rather remarkable. Of course, Aclysia hadn’t taken the whole enemy group out alone. Even with stupendously overpowered equipnt, she was just one person and thus not able to be everywhere at once.
Between her offensive power, Undine’s defences, Sylph, Salamander and Siena’s mobility and John’s and Momo’s backline support, however, it seed that the Nightlurkers had taken the rather wise decision to, well, lurk around until so form of opportunity presented itself.
The fact that they hadn’t been attacked at all spoke volus about the current strength level of John’s group. ‘I wonder if they will get desperate enough to attack eventually despite their cautiousness?’ he wondered as they turned a corner; ‘If that one speaking boss is to be trusted, they believe they beco real if they kill .’
Beyond that corner, they found the boss. It was a pretty creepy one, a husk of a man half-mutated beyond human features nailed to a withered tree. Bone tubes stuck out of his body, out of which insects crawled at a constant rate.
They beat it rather easily. John used Arcana Strike above the boss’s position, and two minutes of delaying tactics later the guy was nuked from orbit. The fight, like usual at this point, wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t exactly outstanding. John had encountered most base chanics he had already known from playing MMOs inside the barriers at this point. All he did was apply that knowledge with the added difficulties and benefits of fully real movent options.
Unless the boss did sothing outstandingly interesting or was an actual challenge, they were barely worthy of rembrance. John ported out and looked at his Stat screen, letting out a sigh of disappointnt with himself.
“Man, I have been slacking off the last two days,” he mumbled. Between checking in with everyone and concentrating on loot over experience, he hadn’t gotten that level. At least he was richer now.
“Well, there will be a ga tomorrow. You being a bit slower probably isn’t going to change much,” Momo said.
“There will be a ga tomorrow if Lydia confirms that Undine is clean… speaking of which, let’s go see her,” John corrected his support, and the group went back to the mansion.
Lydia was still training in the arena, although she had moved on from simple distance training to fine tuning. What she was doing looked rather interesting. One of her knights was standing next to her, holding a deck of cards. He would pick one up to show it to her, and Lydia then would try to form the three-dinsional figure on that card with the pieces of tal under her control within 10 seconds.
It actually looked rather straining on the mind, and John didn’t want to intervene in an ongoing training section. Lydia let him know that she had noticed him with a quick glance and military nod but went through her current set before walking over. The knight just disappeared once John blinked.
“You co at an opportune ti,” the princess said. “I have gotten word from the research centre back in Berlin, and they have found no remaining corruption. Luna texted that they have co to the sa conclusion.” John felt several days of paranoia finally relax at the back of his mind.
Undine, being physically around for this, actually relaxed to the point where her form lost a bit of coherence. The sli woman’s chest partly sunk into a puddle that previously had been her legs. “Ah, that’s great, that ans I can go about the remaining combination efforts without worrying.” John had stopped those from happening out of fear that, if Undine was still corrupted, mixing essences would lead to so unwanted side effects.
“Combination efforts?” Lydia asked; she hadn’t been inford yet.
“Right, let show you. Anyone up for fusing with Undine?” he asked his gathered elentals.
Of course, Sylph imdiately raised a hand, “, , take , Undine, let fuse with you, , let !”
John actually kind of wanted to prevent this from happening, the fusions with Sylph had all been terrifying this far. Shadowfla had been an edge-fest of destructive proportions, but Edge (yes, that was the actual na of the combination of Siena and Sylph; all of Siena’s mixtures had so rather try-hard nas) was all kinds of sadistically insane.
Even Thana running amok had more sensibility than the erratic, babbling, super-sadistic knife fairy that was that mixture. Sylph still had had fun; Siena had complained about a headache afterwards.
He would still combine everyone once. Seemingly, none of the elentals actively disliked the process (despite Salamander’s initial worries), just to know what exactly his choices were. Might as well get it out of the way.
Everyone was up for it. The others just weren’t as eager as the tempest elental. “Okay then, you two go ahead,” John said and just wondered what was about to be created by that mixture.
Lydia watched as Sylph and Undine first overlapped, then swirled together and then beca a new person entirely. Her expression followed the developnt with curiosity, confusion and then downright disbelief.
“This should be impossible,” she said as the new girl appeared in front of her.
The combined elental was about the size of Sylph’s big form, so about 1,50 tres. The short stature made the D-cups and her wide hips stand out even more. A short and stacked woman, without a doubt.
Hair made from the cleanest water cascaded down to her feet, or would have if it would have regarded the common laws of gravity as sothing that should be obeyed instead of andering through the air like a river cut through the landscape.
She was fair-skinned, porcelain white with a slight blue tinge to it, and naked. The red scars of Undine chased even this form, albeit changed to a degree. Where they had looked swirly on top of Undine, on this new elental they looked more like soone had taken a ruler and tattooed sharp lines into her body.
Her golden eyes shone with power, and when she crossed her arms, John spied her fingernails. They had an interesting colouration to them, switching between light green and azure blue with each finger.
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