Collide Gamer Chapter 921 – Rest of the Grind

A silver stream of mana shot from John’s finger. Almost imdiately, it was discontinued, leaving a thin blast, about the length of a ruler, flying towards a powdery monster. It was a ghost that possessed bone dust and ash, manifesting into an oversized skull pulling a stream of raw magic and its particle components behind it. Letting out a deep screech, it dodged by quickly flying to the side.

That was when a second Blast Ray collided with the first. They joined in mid-air and beca a stronger one with an adjusted trajectory. Slamming into the monster, the spell unleashed the majority of its energy as physical power. The skull was blasted apart, the powder flying in all directions and then disappearing.

‘God, I love this spell,’ he thought. It had taken him the last three days of the grinding to get a handle on it. There were several oddities and inconveniences involved with aiming fusing Arcana Rays. For Blast Rays, the first and foremost difficulty was that the speed of the attack wasn’t adjustable. If he wanted to hit an enemy at an angle, he had to commit to it from the start. There was no way to just shoot the first one, watch it miss, and then fire a second one to adjust things.

The more general drawbacks had to do with angle calculation and actually making two or more rays overlap. Since Arcana Rays were generally quite thin, colliding them was harder than one might think. Putting all of his fingers into the right positions had taken so getting used to. Even worse was the massive impact even small movents could have on the final trajectory. Luckily for John, he had steady hands and high enough Wisdom to stay calm in basically all situations. Otherwise, aiming the rays reliably, even with practice, would have been gambling on his pulse.

John walked around on the top of the stone tower and repeated the shot a mont later. The enemies, Dustskulls as they were so aptly called, were one of the three enemy varieties of the Undead Assault Instant Dungeon he was currently in the process of completing. Their wailing could be infused with magic, launching arcane attacks at people at a range. One of those attacks was only minorly threatening, but ignoring the Dustskulls ant there would soon be a lot of them. Being able to fly and keeping up high made them difficult to catch by the majority of the group. Their near immunity to magical damage, regardless of the kind, only made them more difficult to deal with.

Of their group, only Salamander, with her well-balanced Stats, and John, with Blast Ray transforming Arcana Ray into a mostly kinetic attack, and Jack, being John’s flying Extension, were well-equipped to deal with these enemies. The apocalypse elental flew around and punched the Dustskulls apart, while John stood on top of the fortified tower they almost always erected in Assaults and sniped what he could. The monsters having highly repetitive dodge patterns made things easier.

John let his mana regenerate for a little bit and looked around the battlefield. A shuffling mass of zombies, lded together into a shape closely resembling a slug, slowly made its way towards his position. It was the base monster of this Assault, the Crawling Horde. They were slow, but there were many of them and they could take a lot of damage. Salamander took care of one of them whenever she could use her Unleash, but she alone wasn’t enough to stem the tide.

Sylph’s lightning, Gno’s ground manipulation and Undine’s own Unleash combined to either kill the Crawling Hordes or at least push them away from their goal, being John’s position. Rather than wasting their ti repeatedly hitting these damage sponges, the group had adopted a simple strategy: delay them and wait for the Combination cooldowns. Either Smlere or Shadowfla were optimal to kill the Crawling Hordes, drowning them in lava or taking advantage of the dark environnt they found themselves in. It was a desolate and cold landscape, with a sky covered by thick clouds that occasionally let soft rain fall on the defiled, tombstone riddled ground.

‘Not exactly a place for a vacation,’ the Gar thought and shot another Dustskull.

Much of their strategy hinged on Salamander, but even without her, they would have done fine. Aclysia and Beatrice whittled down the enemy numbers by descending on Crawling Hordes that got close to the tower. While Gno’s ground manipulation wasn’t as effective as lava, it was still an effective area of effect tool.

Between the Dustskulls and the Crawling Hordes, they were pretty comfortable. It was a smoothly progressing Assault. Sothing they could spend six to eight hours doing and know they would get out exhausted, but victorious. Even the boss monster hardly proved an obstacle towards that ultimate goal.

John heard a couple of clicks in his ear. “Speaking of the devil,” he said to himself, looking over his shoulder. The Vision of Calamity lenses in combination with Observe allowed him to reveal the monster standing behind him. It was an undead insectoid creature, with four legs, a spider-like abdon, a lanky torso, long arms and an oddly human-like head with way too many, way too large teeth. Perhaps the oddest part of the ghoulish monstrosity, however, was the extre amount of dark grey hair that cascaded down to its hips.

Under the impression that it was still invisible, the monster reached up to the Gar with its three chitin covered fingers. They were thick and sturdy, better for grabbing than slashing. The Darthspider Phaser was a monster that shifted through walls and remained invisible to reach their target. They also had a habit of making excited sounds in the very last monts before they attacked.

John let the monster believe it was still invisible, instead focusing on defeating yet another Duststkull. He had all the trust in the world that he would be safe. After all, there was an assassin standing behind his would-be assassin.

The only sound Siena caused was the surprised, pained yelp of the Darthspider Phaser when her tail burrowed its way into the monster’s back. The tip erged from the stomach of the creature before it turned slightly translucent and phased away.

“Don’t be shy now.” The midnight elental grinned, whipping around her tail and making purple blood splatter across the stone floor. Like her claws, the spade-shaped tip of her tail was covered with smooth crystals, sharp and ready to cut. “I’m not done with you.”

The Darthspider let out a high-pitched shout after manifesting again. The wound in its stomach was more of an inconvenience than deadly. The sa would have been true for a lopped off head. This undead had enough endurance to survive many things it shouldn’t.

Siena and the monster charged at each other. They seed equally matched. The brutal strength that boss monsters usually had, the Darthspider had exchanged for its particular gimmick. While the swipes of its arms weren’t as threatening as Siena’s claws, the fact that the creature possessed an extra pair of pointy legs allowed it to fight with four limbs against the midnight elental’s three.

It was an exchange not of blows but of aggression between them. Two Agility based assassins, neither of them could afford to get hit, so they concentrated on dodging. There was no contact between them until Siena Unleashed. Her entire body turned into a mass of midnight blue, coalesced darkness, only interrupted by silver constellations and her intensely glowing eyes. Her Unleash, always usable and only costing her mana to sustain, boosted her speed beyond the lock they found themselves in.

Siena ducked away under a swipe of the Darthspider’s arm and ramd her tail into the weak spot under the shoulder. The arm was cleanly separated, letting Siena wind away from the retaliating strike of the other arm. Wide open on its right side, the monster could only try to hit her with one of its legs, but the spider-like things were only good for stabbing, not up-close kicking. Siena just grabbed it with her left hand, dug the claws of her right inside the hole in her opponent’s stomach she had made earlier, kept the Darthspider from moving away and then slamd her raised tail against its neck.

Also a limb better at stabbing than slashing, the impact only cut the outer layer of the monster’s carapace. Finally, the Darthspider managed to whirl its second arm around and reach Siena. The shadow spirit dropped to the ground, landed on her upper back, let the arm pass over her, then launched herself upwards feet first. A high heel slamd into the opened neck. Siena’s montum made the Darthspider topple over backwards. It hit the ground with the back of its head, only for Siena to stand over it and ram her second high heel into the functioning arm.

From there, it was just a bunch of tail stabbings to assure the death of the monster.

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