Chapter 178 Breezing through the floors. (Patreon)

It turned out that, fortunately, the dungeon was temperate. Also, every single floor was a fucking joke. John couldn’t stretch that enough. A real, fucking, joke. Floor five, breezed through, floor six, decimated, seven, annihilated, eight, obliterated, nine, massacred. John had almost felt bad for the cupids they were taking out, small little angels with cute wings and bows that shot pink arrows. Their appearance deserved to cover the front of a valentine’s card, not to be impaled by a bolt from Mono’s Lesser Lance of Longinus or by Lydia’s metal spikes flying about.

That wasn’t to say that they weren’t a threat. Like the Demon dungeon, the Angel one was multitude of towers connected via bridges, although everything was rather golden and shiny, instead of grey and dank. The enemies’ patterns were also inverted. Where the Satantyr had been holding each and every tower like a small fort, with the Cupid’s it was a fight from bridge to bridge. The flying enemies would start showering them with arrows, in groups from five to twenty. With Sylph in the group none of the arrows ever hit their mark though. The tempest elemental even went as far to redirect the arrows to hit another Cupid’s just because it was all too easy. 

Now, they were on floor 10, and nothing had changed. Sure, the monsters looked different and now they were inside one giant tower, instead of fighting their way between hundreds of small ones, but they were still whooping the asses of everything they came across. 

“Johnnie, where is my challenge?!” Rave, now level 62, asked as she kicked a Guardian Spirit, the monster of this floor. The animated suit of shining silver armour flew through the air. The Halo above his head wobbled when he crashed on the floor, flickered when Aclysia rammed her blade through the laying enemy and finally extinguished, like a candle’s flame, when it evaporated.

The way this floor was laid out was rather interesting. There was one of these Guardian Spirit’s (sometimes two, but that was a rare occasion) per room. They never left these rooms, unless baited out by a member of the group, basically they were free to take a break between every single encounter, which gave this more of a round-based feeling. The rooms in turn were situated around a giant circular hall, into which John and the group now walked back into. 

Like the previous floor, the colour scheme of the hall was gold and shiny. Ornaments curved through white marvel, a bas-relief, depicting the biblical tree of life, decorated the ground. So finely worked was that picture that the light from the shining crystal up above reflected in each everyone one of the uniquely worked apples of gold hanging from the carved tree. John didn’t doubt that the boss would spawn here, once they cleared the whole room. 

“Johnnie!” Rave repeated and flicked her fingers in front of John’s face a few times. “What?” he asked, then remembered her earlier question. “Oh, sorry, dunno, honestly I expected it to be easy, but not THIS easy,” he answered truthfully and looked around. Most of the doors already stood open, once they cleared all of it, the way upwards was sure to reveal itself, wasn’t it?

“I, too, am slightly surprised by the ease of this,” Lydia chimed in, checking her status at the same time. “What do you say the level of these enemies is?” “66 to 70,” John told her, “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised…how is your EXP gain by the way?” Rave was the first to answer that question, “I get around point 2 percent per mob, I guess?” she said. “0,1 percent,” the princess added. 

“And the last boss gave you…?” John probed, thinking he had figured things out. “1 percent,” Rave said. “And you don’t have flat numbers on display? Only percentages?” He probed further. “I have to deny that,” Lydia stated, Rave also shook her head. 

“Okay, so it seems that you earn more EXP for higher level enemies, but what you gain is capped at 1% max for bosses. Now, I would theorize that Gaia made that cap even lower for different kinds of enemies just to disable me from abusing this and get people power-levelled,” John spelled out his idea. 

“Certainly, sounds like her,” Rave agreed. “Is that so? I cannot say I have ever met her,” Lydia wondered. “Give it some time, I met her twice, also she is writing my Achievements and, believe me, the sass is real,” He said. “Gaia is a green haired woman, of girlish appearance but still visibly an adult. She is slightly taller than Sylph -in her big form-, with curly hair and a black dress that reveals almost all of her ass, due to its design, which slits the dress into four strands from the waist downwards. A google search has resulted in Tatsumaki from an anime called One Punch Man as reference,” Aclysia informed all of them.

“For real’zies?” Rave laughed. “Uhm, no idea about that One Punch Man part but the rest is correct, yep, yep,” Sylph chirped. “Met her right before fighting mister pickle, we did. A true hero of the world, the bestest, most awesome Space Marine and a pickle. PICKLE DIO!” “You didn’t tell me about either of those things!” Rave complained to John, barely holding back her laughter. 

“Because I am still not convinced it really happened,” John said, walking towards the next door. “It was too stupid. Anyhow, if this too easy for you, we can always just kill the rest and go to a higher floor,” he stated while entering the next room. ‘Shouldn’t you send in sister or Gnome in first?’ asked Mono in his head. ‘I normally would but, wooooaaah,’ he barely dodged a mace coming for his head, ‘I still have to beat the current challenge.’ 

John wasn’t particularly afraid of the mace. Even though it looked impressive, a silver shaft with starlight at the end, swung by the animated armour, against his health pool these guys needed several perfect hits to kill John. Even if an enemy managed to pummel and overwhelm him, Aclysia was right behind him, ready to intervene at any moment. So, he could beat his current challenge, to kill 50 enemies with Mana Blade, with relative safety. In addition, this was this was the last enemy he needed. 

Ducking underneath the next attack, John extended his arm so that his flat hand pointed at the being’s helmet. Then he cast Mana Blade. Instantly, the blade appeared and grew right through the enemy’s head. Pulling his arm downwards he split the living armour in two. ‘Should use it like that more often,’ John thought as the skill vanished, leaving has hand bare again. Having the blade appear only when his hand was already in position not only made the attack less predictable, at least the first time around, when the enemy didn’t know what the motion was about, but it also spared him a bit of time. With every Mana Blade only lasting 3 seconds, every moment counted. 

With the enemy defeated he only needed 5% more to achieve the next class level. One more challenge would surely do it.

“These things must be really easy if even ya can beat them in melee,” Rave teased, while John closed the window. “Oh, shut up, Jane,” John shot back, “poor guys are about 8 levels under me and really slow.” “I find the easiness of these adversaries concerning,” Lydia said, rubbing her chin in deep thought. “I think they are balanced around me trying to solo them,” John explained, “but, well,” he looked over to Rave, then Aclysia, Gnome, Salamander, Sylph, Undine, Mono and finally back to Lydia. “I found a way around that.” “I see…but you say Gaia dislikes you abusing systems, right?” the princess inquired. “She most certainly likes throwing stones in my way whenever I try,” John nodded. 

“Would It not be in her character to increase the difficulty by a rather absurd margin, then?” That comment made the Gamer freeze. “That totally sounds like her,” he admitted. “Wait…so assuming that is the case…and because she has been at least nice enough to delay taking my levelling powers away until after I fought Thana…” he mumbled to himself. Suddenly he ran out of the room and shouted. “GAIA, IF YOU STEALTH PATCH MY MONSTER SPAWN TABLE, AND OR BUFF THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING FROM THE NEXT FLOOR ONWARDS, I WILL TELL EVERYONE THAT YOUR ASS IS FLAT!” 

“You’ll do no such thing!” In the air, far above them, suddenly, opened a rift. It was a round window with green edges, two-dimensional, physics defying and hovering there without a care in the world. Beyond it lay what looked like a living room, and Gaia was sticking her head out of said rift. With puffed up cheeks she shouted down: “I have a great ass!” 

“Prove it!” Sylph said as she flew up there, “I wanna see, I wanna see! I also want to become bigger, please make me bigger, oh almighty world spirit.” “Go away, Sylph!” Gaia cursed when there was a second head appearing next to her. A girl with unkempt and curly hair, similar to Gaia’s, but not quite as rolled up, and a light brown colouration instead of the strong green of the supreme deity. She also wore a beige hat that looked like part of a pajama outfit. 

“Who are you looking at, Ga- OH HEY, It’s the Gamer!” said the new being. “And who are you?” “Ferikrona, but just Feri is fine,” the girl introduced herself and yawned. That name John knew from the Patch Notes, hadn’t there been a third one though? Zone or something like that? “Really? The Gamer?” a new person popped her head out of the rift. This girl had purple, straight hair, about chin-length. That was all John could make out from the distance. “Hello, I am Zone-tan,” the purple haired girl shouted, “I watched you fap. Like, a lot. Grade A handwork, dude.” 

“Wha-?” John was dumbfounded. He had expected a sarcastic response, but apparently the supreme deity was not handling her ass as a joke subject. “Hey, hey, can any of you two make me bigger?” Sylph asked whirled between the two other girls up there. “Nah, and sorry,” Feri answered, “it won’t get better.” “What, how do you know? Maybe I’ll evolve into a beautiful super butterfly! Or a space moth!” “I just do~” Feri answered. “Whatever, I’ll show you!” Sylph cried and flew back to her summoner. 

“Joooohn, Feri is mean to meeeee,” she complained when she had reached him. “Yeah, well, nothing I can do about that, still,” John gave her the same answer as last time, when a similar scene had passed. “Okay, I wanted to buff everyone from the next floor upwards, so what?” Gaia screamed at him. “I let you level freely because I wanted to have you survive, now that that isn’t an immediate concern anymore I thought: ‘Hey, patch that in when he reaches the next segment of Instant Dungeons, that’d be the perfect moment.’ But if you don’t want to life by my rules, have it your way then, you ass.” With that a new window opened in front of John.

It wasn’t the new monster table though.

“And here, as your first buffed encounter, have an old friend!” Gaia told him, the tear in reality closing a moment later. John looked at the window while the whole room started shaking. Six pillars feel from the ceiling, slowing down a mere moment before hitting the ground and then, light as a feather, landing around the bas-relief on the floor. Following that hundreds of Guardian Spirits streamed into the room. They weren’t interested in attacking the group, however, instead they formed a wide ring at the outskirts of the room. Just as they closed rank, allowing no one to leave the arena formed from their bodies, the depiction on the floor came to live. Silver flowed into the air and branched out, first as a liquid but the quickly hardening into rough bark. For a moment it was just a bare tree, then glorious golden leaves grew from it and at the thick trunk appeared three faces under a golden barrier. 

“First, you kill younglings, then you kill me and now you chase me into my deserved rest!” The ancient voice whispered, it’s voice like the sound of leaves in the wind. As he did, John saw the three faces take familiar expressions, those of a man, a woman and a child. “Oh great, that guy again,” Rave complained. “Wasn’t that like the second boss we ever killed?” “Yup,” John answered. “Guess we are doing it all over again.” 

Everyone took battle stance as the Tree of Life shook its mighty silver branches. ‘If the arena is roughly the same, then his abilities are likely too,’ John thought. “Everyone be on guard for attacks from below, he might use his roots. Aclysia, Gnome, you knock out these pillars, I am pretty certain that those will start spitting out adds. If they do, ignore the adds, the rest of us will take care of them. Everyone ready?” 

Almost all of them nodded. “What is an add?” Lydia asked. ‘Oh right, she doesn’t game,’ John thought. “An additional enemy…and there is the first wave,” he answered, watching as, from the top of three of the six pillars, Guardian Spirits jumped down to the floor. Unlike their former brethren, these specimens were completely golden and swung maces that shone like the sun, and if Gaia could be trusted she had just buffed them. Surely, it couldn’t have been that bad, though. They were still 5 levels below John.

As per his instructions, Aclysia and Gnome ignored the attackers, and went straight for the pillars instead. This turned out to be a naïve endeavour, the Guardian Spirit that had just spawned in front of them attacked Aclysia. The attack was dangerously fast. Not quite fast enough for Aclysia to be unable to dodge, but still fast enough to hit her when she wasn’t careful. She sidestepped the attack, but the suit of armour actually kept up, delivering a second strike that Aclysia couldn’t dodge but had to parry. The mace’s shaft collided with Ashkandi’s blade. 

The Guardian Spirit may have been almost as fast as Aclysia, but the same could not be said for his strength. In a contest of sheer physical power, Aclysia pushed her blade, first upwards against the press of her opponent, and then pressed down on him, forcing the armour to retreat from the engagement. A smart move that allowed it to stall for time.

Gnome had reached the first pillar in the meanwhile, but John had no time to check on whether or not she actually was doing damage to it. There were two more Guardian Spirits too address. If they all were as fast as Aclysia that meant that they could deal some serious damage to John, Undine or Mono, the groups backline. Meaning they couldn’t be ignored. They would need to go about this more methodically, John actually had to strategize this. 

“Lydia, can you keep one of them occupied?” John asked. “Positive,” Lydia turned her attention to the closest Guardian Spirit. Sprinting at the enemy, she drew her rapier, while also extending her hand towards it. As if hit by sudden increase in gravity, the armour buckled. It didn’t break down to its knees, but its back was under an enormous amount of pressure, and it was moving slowly compared to the one Aclysia was duelling. Even though she was blessed with her powerful metal control powers, Lydia was still skilled in melee combat. If her enemy hadn’t been made from metal, the Guardian Spirit would have had the advantage in this fight, this way however the princess could easily shower the monster in attacks with her rapier. 

John was about to ask Rave if she could try and get the last one’s attention, but the techno-lover was already running right at the unoccupied enemy. Her aura flared up, a pale blue fire-like field that enveloped her body, boosting her physical attributes beyond their normal limits. Around her feet glowed two rings of light, the blessing of Copernicus. It was an extremely powerful buff, every kick of Rave that connected to a target created a ripple of light magic. That ripple grew in strength depending on how much momentum her feet had gone through since they last connected to an enemy or the ground. 

Rave knew that even better than John, and she was more than happy to abuse that knowledge. About four metres before actually clashing with the enemy, she jumped forwards, landed on her hands, pushed herself off the ground and did a somersault, ending in a dropkick aimed at the enemy’s position. 

Even though John knew that the attack grew in effectiveness that way, he couldn’t help but feel slightly amused at how much this overly flashy style suited his girlfriend. The kick missed. Even though, the Guardian Spirit wasn’t as fast as Rave, an attack telegraphed this clearly was easy to see coming. The monster wasn’t prepared, however, for the shockwave that spread over the floor, from where Rave’s missed attack hit the ground. Strong enough to rob the living armour of it’s balance, and make it unable to take advantage of whatever opening Rave might have shown, it allowed Rave to regain her own momentum and stay in the offensive. 

With all three enemies tanked John adjusted his battle plan. Salamander and Sylph were to act as mobile damage dealers, helping each of the three girls currently occupying Guardian Spirits in turn. Undine would closely follow them healing whoever needed. Mono would stay right where she was at the edge of battle, handing her mana over to whoever needed it. “Don’t you want to help too?” John asked Copernicus who was cleaning his golden paw. “Nyah, you got this,” The sun cat stated. He wasn’t wrong, this looked like a solid plan, it hinged on two things though. 

‘Gnome, can you destroy these pillars?’ John needed to know. If she couldn’t that would mean that the adds would eventually take over, they only had three tanks and John didn’t see a lot of hope in clashing their finite resources against an infinite flood. If Gnome couldn’t destroy these pillars than that meant they would need to rush the boss, which seemed hard with that golden barrier in place. ‘The one I am attack is crumbling, John!’ Gnome gave a positive response, ‘But I’ll need a bit.’ ‘That’s fine, I believe in you!’ John told. ‘T-t-thanks!’ the stone elemental stuttered and John heard a sudden, very loud cracking sound. If he had to take a guess, an embarrassed fist, probably, had just collided with and done massive damage to the first pillar. 

Okay, that part of his plan was secure. If Gnome could destroy the pillars, what they needed to do, was to keep taking care of the adds and remove the spawning points one by one. ‘This is the one time I miss Victoria and her rocket launcher,’ a cynical thought crossed John’s mind. He felt bad for speaking this way about the deceased sniper, but it was true and the Bloodfallen had been cold for a few months now. The loss of life wasn’t a good thing, but if he was honest with himself, the Abyss was properly better off without those indoctrinated psycho’s around. Maybe if he had had more time, he could have convinced them…

But this was hardly the time to be thinking about morals. There was a several elephant’s sized tree in the middle of the room, waiting to be addressed, and it looked at John with three pairs of hateful eyes. Unlike the old tree, this one wasn’t hiding behind a protective layer of branches, meaning that its main body was vulnerable, safe for the protected three faces, which had been the weak point last time around. However, it also meant that it had something planned. It wouldn’t put himself into harm’s way, if there wasn’t an attack to prepare.

“How nice of you to wait for me,” John taunted as he stepped closer, “Were you just waiting for me to get my plan set-up?” ‘What are you doing?’ Mono wanted to know. ‘Well, we are out of tanks, so I’ll have to kite,’ John responded with a nervous smirk, feeling the minor vibrations in the ground below him. After making sure that Mana Protection was active, he added, ‘Just keep some mana ready for me, would you?’ His whole body was tense as he got ever closer, watching through Mono’s eyes as well as his own.

“Arrogant meat heap,” echoed the Tree of Life’s voice, “You may be able to handle the spirits, here to protect my eternal soul, but what will you do about THIS!” The marble floor around and under John broke and tentacle like roots came forward. John was prepared for this, as a matter of fact this was the best-case scenario. ‘So, he just put the old second and first phase together?’ he thought as he jumped out of harm’s way. All of the roots collapsed at where he had just walked, from the way his mana shrank by several hundred points John was sure that at least some of those had hit him. 

He desperately flailed about, trying to get his balance back as he ran for his life. “You can run, but you will still get crushed under my branches!” the faces taunted as the tree brought one of said branches down. In the past these had been dangerous due to the sheer force behind the whip of a branch thicker than young trees. That still helt true, but to it had been added that this version of the Tree was several times bigger and the gold leaves on it’s silvery branches were like thousands of small knives. 

‘It would really suck to get hit by that,’ John thought and turned heel. He would much rather dance the dance of dodging tentacles, then get crushed under a metric ton of metallic wood. He heard the branch crash onto the floor behind him, saw, with Mono’s eyes how hundreds of pebbles flew through the air, many of them landing in his path through the whipping roots. He dodged most of them successfully, but some still connected, his Mana Protection siphoning away Mana with every hit. 

Then he was out and continued running, eyeing the branches up above. His eyes fell on one of the pebbles in his path. Following a quick idea John calculated, ‘New passive cost for the elementals is 1,9% times four is 7,6%, 1,9% from Artificial Spirit, so 2,97 mana per second minus 3…that’s still barely negative, good enough!’ He grabbed a pebble and then ran far around the next descending branch, a smaller one that he could easily dodge.

The stone wasn’t unique, but it was a nice piece of marble that fit into his hand, comfortably, ideal throwing size. After staring at it for a moment longer than necessary, he threw the pebble at the Tree of Life’s three faces. It hit, but was uselessly reflected by the golden energy field and landed on the floor, just in front of the faces. The boss burst into laughter. “Ahahaha, a measly attempt, what has become of your Mana Power Attack, John Newman?” 

Even the name of that attack made him cringe. ‘Jesus, those were darker times,’ he thought as he ran around a dangerous looking bulge in the floor. Anyway, that pebble wasn’t meant to hurt the Tree of Life in the first place, so John wasn’t particularly annoyed by its failure to achieve anything. The bulge exploded to turn into a whip behind him. ‘Well, that is going to cost me some more mana,’ he resigned himself when he saw it coming down through Mono’s eyes. 

The root suddenly slowed down, giving John the breathing room he needed to get away. He only had to question what just happened for a moment. Lydia, in her full 18th century military glory, appeared at his side. “3 pillars have been taken out,” she reported, “the spawn of ‘adds’ has been reduces to two. I chose to intervene, is this compatible with your strategy?” “Yes, absolutely, you saved my ass there,” John thanked her. In this moment of relaxation he added, “…You are surprisingly good at being not in charge.” “Subordinate is the word you are searching for there. Selbstverständlich bin ich das, I was trained in the Prussian Noble Korps,“ Lydia explained. „Your German is leaking there,” John commented with a broad smile. Lydia gave him one of her poisonous glances, but slowed down the next root all the same. 

“It is awfully convenient that it is made from metal,” she admitted. “Well, if it were actual wood I could abuse Salamander. I generally beat my enemies through exploitation of weaknesses,” John said. The princess raised an eyebrow, “You plan to do the same here?” “Kind of,” his smile turned into a smirk, “depends on whether or not there will be another recycled mechanic. Let’s just say, I got the tools in place.” 

With Lydia slowing down the attacks, dodging whatever the Tree of Life could throw of them was child’s play. “So, how do you regenerate mana?” John asked, merely jogging at this point. The boss fight had been hard at the start, when the sudden difficulty spike had hit them. Now that they knew what to do, it was group content they were slightly over levelled for. Sure, if they fucked up, that’d be bad, but they got room for mistakes, so John was happy to chat a bit. 

“Why do you ask?” Lydia looked questioningly at him. “Well, Jane uses a breathing technique, I do it by existing, how do you do it? I see your mana slowly depleting, but it seems to be A LOT, so I was wondering is all,” He explained. “…Everything that happens today…” “Will stay classified, yes, yes,” John interrupted, “will you tell me or not?” “I absorb metals,” Lydia said after a moments hesitation, “my mana pool, as you call it, is quite vast and it does replenish slightly over time, but for the most part I do it by ingesting metals. I guess this as good a time as any to reveal to you the ace up my sleeve.” She suddenly stopped running.

“Now I got you!” The Tree of Life creaked and brought one of its giant branches down to squash Lydia. John, who was not entirely sure if this was good idea, decided to trust Lydia that whatever trump card she had would allow her to survive that. As the branch descended, the princess pulled back her vest, and reached into a pocket on the inside. What she pulled out was a veil filled with a mercury like substance, glowing in a light blue. The metal cap that kept the veil sealed quickly flew off and Lydia drank it in one gulp.

Her mana bar refilled within a mere moment. That wasn’t the end of it however, as Lydia simply looked at the branch and it ceased to move. “This,” Lydia explained, showing the now empty veil to John, “Is a mercury mithril liquid alloy. It is worth quite a sum, so watch and listen closely.” Accompanied by the annoyed sounds of the Tree of Life, the princess raised her left hand. It looked like she was struggling against an invisible force, and John could just imagine how she tried to push her magics to the limit, as he saw the branch above her actually move upwards. Creaking and screeching it bent into an unnatural angle. 

“Mithril is one of the rarest metals out there. It is hard to create and extremely rich in mana and for metal users like me, it doesn’t just refill our own mana,” the branch bent past the 90-degree point, the bark splintering at the edge. “CURSE YOU!” screeched the Tree of Life and roots exploded from the floor around Lydia. The metal tentacles were pushed back, unable to enter the sphere of the princess’ influence. 

“It temporarily boosts them to accomplish great feats!” She finished her explanation with a loud CRACK! The whole branch had been forced far enough and broke from the main body, at which point Lydia took several steps back and let out a heavy breath. “This comes at the usual price off overexertion, however, and is taxing on the body.” 

“Still pretty impressive,” John admitted. For a moment he wanted to ask whether or not she got mercury poisoning, but then he remembered that she was part metal elemental, so that question became redundant. He wished he had a way to overcharge spells, there had been quite a few occasions where he would have much rather used a big attack to get a decisive victory earlier. As they watched the boss writhe in the agony of having lost a limb they heard the last pillar crash. 

“Adds have been taken care off, thoroughly, all been beaten, yup, yup, I am the best. Sally was somewhat useful too, I guess. But not all that much. So, keep that in mind if you hand out rewards later, Johnnie, cause I am willing to trade some ‘oral favours’. Wink, wink,” Sylph palavered, leaving John with only one question: “Why are you naked?” The air spirit giggled, “You don’t like it?” she asked. Making a pirouette, her foot-reaching hair following her like a flag in a breeze, she showed up her milky skin. “I felt like it, don’t you just want to take me to bed and take me like the cute courtesan I am. Come on Jonnie, get some inflation in that dick and fuck me right here, I don’t mind!”

“Quiet,” that was actually Undine speaking up. “Yeah, shut up,” Mono agreed, “that boss is still alive, am I the only one here that DOESN’T immediately gets distracted by sex-stuff?” “I would claim to also keep a level head,” Lydia stated. “Oh, is that right? Well, I guess you didn’t just look at Sylph with keen interest then,” Mono drily stated and made a toss away gesture. “What? Is that true? Did you look at my hot bod and were like, all enticed, princess?” the tempest elemental blabbered before Lydia could answer. The boss stopped wailing in pain and everyone’s attention went back to the Tree of Life. 

“You insects,” it growled, “you will see my true form! Fight my guards until then!” The pillars started reconstructing, in a way that looked like time reversal the broken pieces lifted off the ground and slowly put themselves back together. Meanwhile, the Tree of Life hid itself behind the golden barrier, that previously protected it’s faces, which now expanded, until it enveloped all of the boss in a large bubble. “B-but,” Gnome looked at pillars and frowned, “I just got done destroying those…” “and you did a very good job,” John patted her head. The stone elemental made a very pleased face, then she remembered where she was, noticed her fellow elementals grinning at her, and blushed deeply. “Wh-why are you all starring at me?!” she demanded to know. “You are just so adorable when you are happy and embarrassed,” Salamander cackled, her laughter growing even stronger when Gnome turned into darker shades of red. “Now look at you, unable to say a thing! HILARIOUS!”

“What now, we wait for him to go into the next phase?” Rave asked, interrupting that little chat, “by the way, this was WAY better. Guys were actually a bit hard.” “Well, I guess it was adjusted to be group content, so they were meant to be taken by one person each, instead of all three of them by one. But no, I guessed that he would recycle the barrier mechanic in this or a similar way, so I made preparations. Mono, how much mana do you still have?” “About 600, why?” “Mhm, I still have 413… that makes 5 attacks, should be enough.” 

Inside the protective barrier the Tree of Life was going through a change. Soon its roots would no longer be bound by the earth, and its branches would turn into many arms, wielding blades of golden leaves. Soon, it would destroy the Gamer, once and for all!

Well, that is what John thought was going on in the boss’ mind. He had no intention of letting to get to that point though. From the position as the pebble he saw the three faces grinning widely, and John would have loved to punch each and every one of them. Sadly, he couldn’t do that as a pebble. He could use Arcane Explosion though. Hurray for Spellcarrier.

One, two, three, four, five of the balls spawned. They were supposed to be thrown, but without a hand that fulfilled that purpose they spawned right on the ground, resulting in 5 almost simultaneous waves of arcane energy. The boss had no idea what even killed him. His weak points had been hit by sudden and rather extreme amount of damage.  Then he was starting to disintegrate.

As always there was a small flood of windows.