บท 439: Nuking the nursery
Blue jumped towards the storm guardians ignoring everything else in the way. While she was doing that, the rest of the party gathered around in a defensive formation. They had no idea what the monsters here could do, and rushing like that was a way to get hurt. Hera went to the front to be the first one to fight one of the elementals. Her idea was to test the waters using her court. That way, if it was something too dangerous, they could come up with a better plan. When the first monster got closer, Hera told Beam to fire at the closest elemental. In a single movement, her blade shot out a concentrated beam of light that hit one of the storm elementals square in the chest. The spell dispersed the cloud entirely and even continued to pierce another two elementals that were on its path. In fact, the only reason the spell didn't do more damage was that Beam's skill reached its maximum range.
"Huh," Hera frowned. She knew the creatures here were much weaker than her, but this felt a bit excessive.
"Is that normal?" Bonnie asked.
"What? If that skill is really that strong? No, it's really not. It could hurt some monsters on deeper layers, but it was very hard for it to kill one of them in a single hit. Much less several at once."
"Bonnie, try attacking one of them. A weak spell," Helena suggested.
Bonnie nodded and created a pair of small mana spheres in the air. She then made two elemental motes, one of fire and one of lightning. With a flick of her wrist, the two spells she created flew towards different targets. The fire slammed against one of the storm elementals turning the clouds into mist, dissipating it completely. While the lightning one went towards one of the Eel elementals, the electricity seemed to ricochet inside its form before it became too much, and the creature exploded in a ball of lightning, losing its body in the process.
"Weren't they supposed to be resistant to lightning? Here asked.
"Well yeah, but they should be resistant, not immune. I guess if the spell is strong, it will be enough to kill them," Bonnie scratched her head.
They looked back towards blue. She was now creating a pair of giant cloud hands to fight against the two monsters that seemed to be protecting the palace. Instead of changing her focus from grappling, the controller decided to double down, and now she used the storm clouds clip created by the legacy as makeshift limbs when facing monsters that were much bigger than herself.
"Should we just split up? That way, we can kill the monsters more quickly," Alex suggested.
I think it's better. Those things don't seem to be too much of a threat for us," Helena nodded.
The mage was now level 34. Seeing Hera and her friends level up and get closer to her own level made her a bit wary of lagging behind. During this past year, despite everything she was working on, she decided to push herself to level up so she could keep up with her friends. Despite being an explorer for about a decade already, Helena ended up lagging behind the people she started with because of her research that was ultimately completed by Bonnie. After that, she worked on her project to improve the guild's training program. However, even that was now over. There was still a lengthy process of meetings and discussions with the high-ranking people inside the guild, but none of that would require her to be in a specific place. Most of those meetings will be done inside the guild in one virtual meeting room that allows people to communicate across the MAZE.
Now that all her objectives were seemingly completed, Helena wanted to find a new passion. She still had about a dozen smaller research projects that she had started a long time ago, including ways to make her spell stronger, deadlier, or more accurate. However, those all required testing, and staying inside a lab wouldn't do much for the results. Not to mention the idea of improving her spells. Elemental Sight was something that she believed to be extremely useful, and when Hera managed to get a thermal vision of sorts, the mage wanted to include that on a spell, maybe even change the spells so that each type of mana would appear as a different color under its effects. Despite having those possibilities at hand, Helena didn't have the same passion for any of them as she had for the elemental mote spell. Her goal was still to somehow change part of her mana so that she could finally become the shadow-light mage that she had always dreamed of. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one would look at it, as far as anyone was aware, there was only one thing that could give her what she wanted. A single way for a mage to change the mana it had synced to, and that was completing the test in the tower. The one that was supposed to exist in all rooms across the 26th layer. In order to do that, Helena would have to get at least to level 70, and that was being very generous.
Doing dungeons, going to deeper layers, and traveling with Hera and the others should be the perfect opportunity to do so. After all, Helena didn't have a single doubt that this party would soon be moving away from Boothudurn to explore the MAZE for one reason or another.
All of this crossed Helena's mind while she started fighting the Storm Elementals. She was using her shadow magic as whips to grab and pull the creatures apart. Even better, she could create those whips from within the monsters. A big disadvantage of being a creature made of clouds is that there was an awful large amount of darkness inside you. That wasn't all. Helena had also created a couple of motes of light mana to change her spells from shadow to light. It was nowhere near as effective as she wanted it to be, but it gave her a small glimpse of what she could do as a shadow light mage. Her obsession wasn't just because of style, but because she understood that light made shadow stronger, and a shadow was able to make light clearer. Both elements had a symbiotic relationship, and if any mage was smart enough to mix them in the right ways, each combined spell could have the potency of something much greater than the sum of its parts.
While that was going on, Bonnie was proving to be a big problem for the elementals. Each of her attacks carried a different element, and the level of strength behind them was nothing to scoff at. She wasn't using her fist series of spells anymore. Instead, she used simpler elemental blasts. For some, this might seem like a downgrade; however, for a well-versed mage, this was much more mana efficient. Her current style revolved around using the elemental motes to catch her enemies off guard with different elements. She had ten different motes flying around her, and each of her blasts would pass through one or two of the motes every time she attacked someone. Not that it would help passing through the 2nd mote. Doing so would only change the element, not mix them together, but it was a good way to be less predictable with her attacks.
Alex, on the other hand, was a completely different beast. The moment they decided to start attacking, the assassin simply vanished. It was hard for anyone to tell if she was even doing anything, but the evidence of her attacks was clear for all to see. In the middle of the pack of elementals, some of them simply split in half before dissipating. Those were all kills made by the assassin. She knew that there were a lot of her friends around, and because of that, she avoided using her long-range wind blades. Instead, she just coated her weapons in elemental mana and focused on carving a path in the middle of the horde. Alex was never someone who focused too much on spells. She focused on using combat styles and fighting techniques to move quickly and be a deadly force against her enemies.
Lastly, there was Hera. She and her court were like a spinning carousel of death. Any elemental that even got close to one of her blades was instantly cut down. She even told Beam to stop firing its lasers so that more of the creatures could get closer and she could focus more on working alongside her court. After killing about five of the monsters, she realized that she had forgotten to activate her boots. When she rectified that, her mobility increased by leaps and bounds, and now she could skate around the area almost like a saw blade destroying all the monsters in her path.
It had barely been 10 minutes since they started doing this dungeon and each of the five party members had killed at least 20 elementals. There was a lot of loot littering the ground in this dungeon already, and the monsters finally stopped appearing. After Blue defeated both elemental guardians, two more showed up, and both were a little bit bigger. When the second set of monsters was also killed, another horde of storm elementals poured out from the palace. This new horde didn't have any unique features compared to the other one setting already fighting. If anything, some of the elementals seem to be a little bit smaller than the others.
After killing the last of them, the group just waited for a moment. Blue and Alex started looting. They looked at the ground, which was mostly filled with single pieces of gold with a few puffy cloud balls sprinkled in the mix. That's when the true boss of the dungeon appeared. A pained roar echoed coming from the palace, but it quickly became clear that the noise didn't come from the palace, it was the palace. The creature got up, the four wings on its back unfurling from the columns that held the structure up. The stairway retracted and shifted into six sets of arms. And the pointy tower that came down formed a long beak that seemed to be the face of this creature. The monster roared and opened all its arms as well as its wings wide while gathering lightning on the tip of its fingers.
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Storm Elemental Scion - level 10 - Enraged (Storm affinity)
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Before it could do anything, Hera, Alex, Bonnie, and Helena flung spells at the creature. The projectiles hit it on different parts of its body, causing the monster to instantly die before it could even react.
"Hey, I wanted to have a go at it," Blue pouted.
"Well, you can do it next time. Don't worry. We're gonna do this a few times anyway, aren't we?" Bonnie rolled her eyes.
"Besides, you were the only one who fought the guardians. I think it's fair that we have a chance to fight something you didn't," Alex added.
The notification letting them know about the completion of the dungeon quest appeared, and all the clouds started to be blown away by the wind, revealing the mountain top just as Hera and Blue saw once a long time ago. It was a beautiful sight, but there was nothing else to do here. The group left the dungeon and took a small break. After a couple minutes, they would head back inside. While doing that, Stormcloud talked to Blue for a moment, and apparently, those puffy cloud balls could be used by the legacy in some capacity. From what she understood, it was similar to how Hera had her court, but instead of being something that could fight for her, it would be something that she could use to make her own spells more efficient. Everyone kept one of the clouds, but the remaining ones they got from the dungeon all went to Blue so she could become even stronger. Another unexpected thing was that Stormcloud had an idea on how to beat the dungeon even faster. It was something only Blue could do, but if she managed to perform as they expected, it could be something that could help in several situations.
Blue was being very cryptic about it, and the group's curiosity got the best of them. They quickly went back inside the dungeon after seeing Blue absorb all the cloud balls. Inside, Blue just walked a few meters towards the palace before the moment where the elemental would start to appear, and she started to focus. A heavy cloud appeared above her head, and it started to grow until it was about five meters wide. Then, she sent the cloud up, vanishing beyond the purple storm. A few moments passed, and Blue started to move her hands down, almost as if she was dragging that massive storm cloud above them. What happened next was very different from everyone's expectation. The cloud she created seemed to appear in the sky again, almost as if the purple storm became somewhat translucent. Then, little by little, the purple started to become dull, and the entire dungeon field started to lose its color, becoming no longer purple clouds. That was no longer clearly part of a dungeon, but a heavy storm cloud much like one could see even back on Earth. When the entire dungeon became the same color as Blue's initial cloud, she simply opened her hands and spread out her arms, making this heavy gray cloud dissipate and reveal the mountain top the same way it happened when they killed the boss. At that moment, the same notification they got when they finished the quest for the first time appeared, and a pile of loot was in the center of the peak with what seemed to be half the amount of items they had gotten the previous run.
"Are you kidding me?" Bonnie crossed her arms.
"You… completed a hard mode dungeon in less than five minutes?" Hera asked.
"Apparently, yeah," Blue chuckled in a weak voice. The controller was clearly exhausted after doing whatever she had just done.
"Soo... what is this about, can you like clear a storm now? " Alex asked.
"That's the idea. But it takes a lot out of me," Blue stumbled back to the group.
"OK, this is just ridiculous. But it did give me a fun idea. How about we all beat this dungeon on our own? Of course, everyone should go inside, but we leave this all for a single person to deal with. I think that might be more effective to train than everybody trying to do it at once," Helena suggested.
"That actually seems like a fun idea, and Blue can just do that again if she wants to. Next time we'll even time you," Hera added.
Everyone agreed to that suggestion, and they headed out of the dungeon once more. Not only did they see what the hard mode of Hera and Blue's dungeon looked like, but they could do something just to relieve some of their tension. Most of all, Hera was craving a distraction like that.
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