章 58: 057 An Unbeatable Dungeon?
"Divide and conquer! Keep an eye out for the green acid! Don't let it hit you!" James commanded.
The twins were already in position to attack the first one Seed that had spawned. Karma and exited stealth while swinging a danger incased with a purple hue. His Veiled Strike left a deep gash across the monster's back. A large amount of green acid spurted out causing his sister to stop her pending attack to pull him out of the acid's range.
When they were at a safe distance something weird happened. All three Seeds screeched out and turned to the twins. They sprinted at full speed towards the twins; when they were close enough they started glowing green!
Each Seed self-destructed just within range to hit the twins with a rain of acid. With three poofs the Seeds blew up and acid shot everywhere. Totem was able to create an Earth wall protecting them from two of the explosion of acid.
Karma and Destiny were hit by the acid from the Seed Karma had cut. The amount of acid was much smaller than the other two.
James was observing the fight from a distance and quickly concluded, "No one may attack the Seeds with melee-based attacks unless you feel confident you can escape their suicide attacks! It appears the seeds carry a finite amount of acid; the more they lose the weaker the explosion!" he called out.
Karma and Destiny were panicking; while the explosion itself didn't do any damage the acid that got on them was taking large chunks of health points from them. Only two ticks of damage happened but they were down 1/10th of their health points, there were still 18 ticks of damage left. They didn't want to experience a full-strength acid attack; if three attacks hit there would be no chance of surviving.
Destiny appreciated that Totem saved their lives, "Thanks, Totem!"
"No problem!! He replied.
"Talon, Totem, Dregg, and I will try to take out the Seeds before they get close! Everyone keep your guard up!" said James. The tree he called out all agreed and the attack continued.
Now that they knew what they were up against they were not as cautious as before. Totem took a position near one of the Vent Pods. He used Invigorate to minimize the damage he would take. Mercury was ready to attack the Vent Pod that Totem opened. Talon, Dregg, and James were ready to launch attacks from the distance.
Once the Vent Pod was open and expelling the miasma both Totem and Mercury started their attack. The Vent Pod was finished off quickly and Totem used Earth Wall to block their escape from the Seeds that were to spawn.
The ground rattled and cracked. Once again the Living Seeds crawled their way out of the ground. Once more, something changed. Instead of three Seeds there were now six Seeds in total. No one noticed that their levels increased to Level: 40 + 19 => 59; their health points also increased from 4,000 to 4,750.
James kept his cool and directed his friends, "Quick attack! Everyone focus on only two Seed!."
James was the first to attack. He hurled a fireball towards the two seeds closes to the retreating Mercury and Totem. Shortly after the attack hit all of the Seeds screeched out once more and sprinted towards James.
James started backing up to create space between him and the incoming Seeds. Talon used Double Shot to attack his two Seeds. The arrows hit the Seed's legs causing them to topple over.
After the two Seeds hit the floor they blew up! The remaining 3 Seeds all turned away from James and starting running towards Talon this time.
Dregg and Totem both attacked a Seed each. The group split up into two groups with a single Seed, which ran towards Totem, and two Seeds running at Dregg. James took the time to use his Flamethrower ability to attack the two running towards Dregg; it quickly whittled their health points down as they ran towards James.
With only one Seed remaining Mercury approached the sprinting Seed and sliced the Seed into two; it instantly exploded. She crouched down to minimize her surface area and used the blunt of her axe to block the incoming acid. Only a few drops of acid managed to land on her; she only suffered minor damage as time went on.
"What now?" asked Mercury.
It was obvious that things would continue to get worse as things went on. If the number of Seeds continued to double with each Vent Pod they killed they would have to deal with over 100 Seeds at once after the final Vent is killed.
"We are in some deep shit with this fight," Talon commented.
James took a deep breath and started thinking. He noticed that his Aura was not damaging the Vent Pods nor the Seeds. Since he was thinking about it, it is probably a good thing that it wasn't. He would be the only person that would ever pool their aggression. "Reaper and Talon, which one of you two feel confident kiting the Seeds the most?" he asked.
Mercury was curious, "Kite them?"
James started to elaborate his plan, "Yeah, if we have to deal with a huge number of Seeds we will need someone to kite them around until we deal with all of them. I have a few ideas but the success of them would depend on a few variables."
"Reaper is faster than me; my Fleeing Shot has a cooldown that would prevent me from kiting them efficiently with how fast they sprint," said Talon.
James looked at Mercury, "Are you confident?" he asked her.
"If you can boost my agility I am 100% certain," she replied.
"How are you going to leach any agility? The seeds are not affected nor are the Vents and Ivy," asked Karma.
"He can leach stats from allies too," replied Mercury.
Talon looked at James, "Is that true?"
James replied with a yes. "I can but for the best result I would need to leach the fastest person."
Talon looked at Karma, "Your sister is faster than yourself, isn't she?"
The group looked surprised, isn't Talon the fastest of the group?
He saw their looks and continued, "Don't look at me like that, I am an Archer and they are Assasin classes. They naturally have higher agility than me; I have also been watching them. If I were to fight both at them at the same time I would lose; Destiny would be able to outpace my kiting if she got close."
Destiny finally spoke up, "I have 15 more agility than my brother… He told me it would be best if one of us focused on speed and the other offense. It is why he has Tendon Cutter and I normally follow up directly after him." she was still shy talking in front of the group.
"Would you mind if I leach your agility stat? You, your brother, Dregg, and Talon won't be part of my plan. We need some large AOE damage. Totem will be the person in charge of setting up a trap for each Seed spawn." said James.
He continued to explain his plan to the group. "Based on your plan the biggest bottleneck is Reaper's battle skill?" asked Talon.
"Yes but I hope she won't have to use it much," said James.
"I like it, should we start?" asked Mercury.
James agreed to start, "We can start, to speed this phase up how do you feel about killing multiple vents at once?"
"The next three vent kills would total to 36 Seeds at once, right?" she asked.
"Yeah, it would be a good warm-up and we can test the theory out," he replied.
The group agreed and Totem started the preparations. It took a few minutes to set up but it looked like it would be successful.
"Remember, if something goes wrong use your Trapping Vines," James reminded Totem, who nodded his head.
James didn't want to leave the others completely out of the fight so he had them kill the three vents and Mercury started to kite every seed that spawned.
Mercury was easily able to kite the 36 Seeds with the help of Destiny's agility that James was leaching to Mercury, Totem, and himself.
Mercury got all the Seeds to follow behind her in a line, she ran into a funnel that Totem prepared. It was made up of Earth Walls that Totem created. It funneled all the seeds into a single patch way that had more Earth Walls preventing them from going in any direction over than straight ahead.
Once she had kited them halfway she jumped high into the air and James blew on the flame about his hand. A very large cone of fire erupted from his hand and bellowed down the tunnel. Since Mercury was no longer being followed she repositioned herself at the entrance and readied herself in case she needed to attack the seeds.
The tunnel made James's Flamethrower longer than normal so his attack was able to fill the tunnel with flame. The Seeds only made it a few more steps before they were killed.
After each death there was an explosion of acid, fortunately, Totem made the walls high enough to block most of the spray.
The others cheered at the success. "Looks like a solid plan!" cheered Destiny.
"How do you plan on dealing with the remaining acid left over by their deaths?" asked Dregg.
James looked into the tunnel, his fire did deal with most of the acid but there was still some left. It made the ground bumpy and uneven. He looked at Dregg, "Can you use some water magic to wash away the acid?" He had no clue if it would even work.
"You want me to be a cleaning service?" Dregg half complained and half-joked.
James looked a little awkward, he did ask him to do something rather unorthodox, didn't he? "Err, please?"
Dregg just laughed, "I'm kidding, I'm happy to help out if it makes this go faster. I want to rejoin the battle sooner rather than later!"
After cleaning the acid out everyone got ready to go again. This time they were going to do the remaining five Vent Pods. It would cause 120 Seeds to spawn, they were hopeful but also worried. It was just over 3 times the Seeds as the last run.
Mercury was not able to get all of the Seed to follow her at first, she needed the help of Talon to corral them together then she took over. Totem had taken the time to repair any damaged walls just for good measure.
Mercury once again entered the funnel and ran into the tunnel, this time it was jam-packed. It was harder for the seeds to move so their speed was reduced significantly.
Once again she jumped out of the tunnel and James used his Flamethrower again. This time the seeds took way less damage. They were getting closer and closer to James, he started to sweat.
Mercury saw that James was getting unconformable and readied her axe. She held it over her head and swung it down. She used Crushing Assault with pull power, he had buffed herself with Maddening Strength and James leached Karma's strength attribute.
Mercury had moved closer to the tunnel so that her attack would land without being too close. The shockwave of the attack cut into the ground and struck the Seeds at the back of the line. One by one they started turning around, it looked very clumsy. After the Seeds were nearly out James attacked again with his Flamethrower.
They were taking ages to die so James used his Identify skill, their levels were 95 and they had almost 24,000 health points! (40 + 55 => 95 and 95 * 250 => 23,750).
"What the f***!" James swore.
"What's wrong?" asked Talon.
"They are not taking less damage but they have higher health points! They are level 95 with 23,750 total health points. That is just over half of how much the boss has!" he was panicking.
"Talon move to where Mercury is and be ready to fire an arrow. We will need to bounce them around a few times! Totem prepare to use your Trapping Vines!" James called out.
"How did this happen?! Isn't this just a level 35 dungeon? The monsters started at level 40!" Karma was also panicking.
James did some math… He swore again, "We have killed 55 Cursed Plants! The levels of the damned monsters are going up with every additional plant we kill!"
They all saw how pale James's face was as he looked towards the Devi's Ivy. Its actual level was also level 95 and its health had been boosted to almost 80,000!
"How bad is it," asked Mercury.
"Bad… The Ivy is level 95 and has almost 80,000 health points… We have been fighting this boss wrong since the start. The 120 Seeds here will boost the boss all the way to 215 and if my estimate is right around 140,000 health points.." James felt defeated.
The group's morale was dropping by the minute. What are they supposed to do? If they have to find Cursed Plants this whole dungeon it will be impossible to defeat…
クリエイターの想い 
Envision
Envision It shorter chapter today, been a busy morning at the office. A big thank you to those who stay active with powerstones over the weekend when I can't write!
I hope everyone was following the fact the plant's levels were increasing from the start of the dungeon. I thought it might be an interesting mechanic for them to navigate. Let me know your opinions. The levels will reduce in the upcoming chapter(s)!
週次パワーステータス
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