Bab 17: Grinding
And so for the next 20 hours, the grinding continued, after the first couple of hours, most of the party members were able to contest against 1 worm. Their stats may have been way below that of the monster, but with their combat stance, and the occasional AOE damage James provided, they could stand their own ground.
After 20 hours of grinding the last monster of the final group fell, and everyone in the party lit up in a golden light, indicating that they all leveled up, to level 19. Now that they were only 1 level away from reaching the needed level to do the [Tier 1] promotion quest James started speaking to everyone.
"Now that we are level 19 we are going to do something special, we are going to hunt the level 50 field boss, scorching worm. It is going to be difficult but the rewards for being the first will be generous, so follow me."
Everyone looked a little nervous, they could barely hold their own against a common level 50, how were they going to do anything against a field boss-ranked monster.
"don't worry everyone, he should have around 2 million HP, nothing I can't Handel, you guys just need to act as support."
Everyone was kind of relieved by these words and started following James deeper into the desert, to some big cave made out of sandstone.
The cave seemed rather small and they could clearly see all sides of it, no worm in sight, but before anyone could complain the ground started shaking.
"Okay everyone here he comes, guardians stay in front of everyone, I will be keeping agro so just defend the stray attacks. Damage dealers, try to get in some ship damage, and be careful not to get aggro. Healers, mainly focus on me but top off anyone that needs it. Everyone ready let's go.!"
James then ran towards the place he knew the worm would appear from, and when he was only 50 yards away he came up. He was at least 10 times as big as the normal ones and lava mixed with some kind of rock kept slowly flowing outside his pores.
[scorching worm (field boss) Level 50]
2.500.000/2.500.000
James didn't waste any time and immediately used his most powerful skill combination, and sticking his lightning filled Sword in the ground.
-103.000
After that he also instantly used [time absorbing slash], slowing down its movements significantly.
-90.000
The worm kept limping around trying to hit James, but unsuccessful, where it did succeed is in the fact that with all that moving around lava now covered the ground, doing little damage to James every second, but at the moment he didn't have time to worry about that, the time on holy aura was running out and that was a big part of his damage.
-49.000
-49.000
Every second James manages to get of a couple of hits, it could be more but dodging the lava and attacks at the same time was a big waste of time.
The field boss seemed to be getting angrier and angrier when it continued to miss James, even more so when he realized that all the damage he was able to do thanks to his lava field was being healed instantly by the healers in the back. It had noticed this earlier but the moment he turned around to go after them James could do so much damage that it wasn't worth it.
After about 2 minutes of this 1 sided assault continuing James suddenly yelled something.
"EVERYONE MOVE BACK, it'd about to use an AOE attack."
Every party member then proceeded to move back in a hurry, just in time because only a second later the field boss had activated his special skill, lava breath.
Previously the floor was only covered in a thin layer of magma, and a lot of spots were still dry, but now not a single piece of ground in the entire cave could be considered safe. This made it extremely difficult for James to deal damage. Letting his thoughts drift James was searching for ways to deal more damage, the only way he could think of at the moment were combat techniques, special techniques to utilize the body. They were split up in a lot of different grades, basic, advanced, Bronze, silver, and finally gold. They say that mastering a gold grade combat technique gives you the power to transcend tiers, but finding one was close to an impossible task, but that wasn't the most difficult thing about acquiring one. Learning the thing is multiple times harder, after all a lot of big powers had acquired such a combat technique, but having people capable of learning it was a whole different problem.
James at the moment could only sit in sorrow when thinking about combat techniques, he himself had only ever managed to get his hands on Bronze grade ones, and at the moment, with him being in the beyond Domain Realm, his normal movements were already on that level, so using them would just be a waste.
Thinking about this James concluded that the only way to finish this big guy was to brute force it as fast as possible, ones his holy aura ran out it was going to be close to impossible to outpace his healing, which was 5% per 5 seconds for field bosses, meaning he would regeneration 125.000 health per 5 seconds.
Nevertheless, James started getting to it, he had a total of 3 minutes left on holy aura, normally this should be right about enough.
And he was right, for the next 3 minutes James managed to do as much damage as possible, sacrificing some HP when needed, and only 20 seconds before holy aura was supposed to run out.
World system announcement: congratulation to the "one" guild party with leader one who managed to be the first to defeat a level 50 field boss, as a reward all boss drops will be doubled, everyone will gain 1 level and a level 50 fine-gold treasure chest. More personalized rewards will also be distributed.
While the forums were going mad about the second world announcement of the day by an unknown guild named one, James was focused on the personalized rewards he had obtained.
System: congratulation for being the party leader and major participant in the killing of the first level 50 field boss, your personal rewards are as follows. A [Tier 4] teleportation scroll and a full set of [Tier 1] Swordsman set equipment.
James was stunned by the rewards, normally only getting the [Tier 1] set equipment would already be a bit of a stretch, but a [Tier 4] teleportation scroll, that was insane, the system clearly saw James's actions of nearly soloing a level 50 field boss at level 20 as an achievement greater than an epic quest.
Before James could even start dreaming about what to use his teleportation scroll everything around him started to rumble, so much that he could see the air shake. In a bewildered state James looked at his teammates, they were all waiting for him to collect the loot, and not a single one noticed the strange phenomenon.
The rumbling got worse and worse, while James was trying to figure out what was going on the blasting sound of the whole words shaking kept increasing in his ears, until.
POP
After a popping sound in his ears, James couldn't hear anything anymore, his first though was that his ears were damaged, but he quickly abandoned the thought when he saw the scene that was happening around him.
Space shattered all around him leaving him in a dark void, James wasn't scared because he had a pretty good idea of who was paying him a visit, this phenomenon was extremely similar to when he first entered the game after all. Even if he was wrong and Cronus wasn't the one visiting him, there was nothing he could do anyway, so why panic and struggle, a being that could break space at such a fundamental level as this was invincible to players below [Tier 6], even then only the top of the top of that Tier will be able to hold someone like that of.
James's worse thoughts were quickly put away when seeing the all-to-family old guy with a scythe walk out of one of the spatial cracks that appeared all around James.
James quickly composed himself before asking questions.
"To what do I owe the pleasure, mister Cronus."
Cronus just let out a deep laugh when he heard James being so formal, the laugh even made the endless space tremble a little.
"No need to be so uptight young one, you are my disciple after all, but all of that besides. The reason I summoned you has to do with your [Tier 1] promotion."
James just nodded, he had been wondering about the exact same thing too, normally when someone gets a certain special inheritance before [Tier 1] they use the inheritance item by fulfilling the unlocking conditions and start their [Tier 1] promotion quest, most of the time with classes requiring an inheritance to get it would teleport you to a certain miniature world to complete your promotion, but since he got his class from the beginning, he didn't have such an item.
"I have forgotten to give you an inheritance item, so I'm here to deliver one to you"
Cronus then stretched out his hand, making an old-looking pocket watch appear in the palm of his hand. It seemed to be a fairly normal watch, only the back plate was replaced by an endless deep purple space. Cronus gave the watch a slight push in James's direction making it float slowly toward him.
"With this watch, you will be able to challenge your [Tier 1] promotion at any time, just activate it. Normally I would have to put an unlocking condition on such a thing, but in light of all your achievement until now, I think it is only fitting I give you a little present, so I have unlocked it for you."
James was extremely relieved that the watch was already unlocked, even with his knowledge he would probably have to spend weeks trying to unlock an inheritance items of a powerful God like Cronus.
"Thank you, sir, I really appreciate it."
"no problem, but I must be going now, I can't stay long down here and it seems I have already outstayed my welcome. "
Cronus said while the space around them started to slowly reconstruct. He then left the same way he came, by moving his hand diagonally through the air, seemingly cutting open space itself, and walking through said portal he just created.
Soon after the world around James started to reconstruct itself piece by piece until he was standing in the cave back again, non of his teammates seemed to have noticed what happened, hell, it looked like not even a second had passed.
With all his teammates looking at the loot of the field boss with big eyes, James put the pocket watch in his inventory and started sorting through the loot. It dropped over 150 items, 120 being crafting materials. Quite a few materials were epic grade, even 2 inferior-legendary grade ones dropped. Regarding the rest of the loot, it was all amazing, but pretty useless at the same time. 10 pieces of dark-gold grade armor 3 Dark-gold grade weapons and even 2 epic weapons dropped, a staff and daggers. The sad thing was that all of them were of level 50, which was only normal due to the boss's level, so non of them could equip anything.
James just threw all of it in his inventory, planning on depositing it all in his bank vault, and was about to command everyone to go to the city to and log off to read up on promotion to [Tier 1], he expected them all to get at least SS+ Grade, but then he got a message from a worker in his office building on the outside.
"The dragon-Phoenix pavilion corporation wants to have a word with you."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone