The Gamer Chapter 742 – Augusta 15 – Informal Stress Tests (Patreon)

The Gamer had four days for eleven levels, in order to fulfil the last Quest. Mathematically, that was possible, but extremely difficult. There were only two sources of experience that promised quick enough results. Number one was the Raid. Since John was pretty sure the Sicklemen were still too big of a challenge, he decided to not mess with that challenge for now. The other was running more absurdly long Assaults.

That was risky, although John currently sported a success rate of 100%; with only one instance attempted, that wasn’t saying too much. He had also gotten out of there feeling like a tissue that had been left in the pocket of pants during laundry. It was still the safer and overall more realistic approach.

Given the Quest reward, John was willing to try it. There were another 638 GP on the line. That didn’t put him anywhere close to the 5000 needed to buy a Max Class Level, but it was a start.

John started number crunching. The exact machinations of the Assault calculations, just like his experience requirement curve, were hidden to him, but he had been keeping notes and was able to make some educated guesses because of it. ‘Let’s see, if I assume that every level will take about 45’000 experience and I kill 225 enemies and 2 bosses per hour, with the multiplier at Tier 46 for regular enemies being 4,6 and for bosses being 37, then that makes the formula EXP=((225*hours)*4,6+(2*hours)*37)*hours.’

Going through the math, John quickly came up with a table of things. Just for ease of thought, he scribbled all of the numbers down on the notepad he kept in his inventory for times like these.

He could have continued beyond that, but he doubted he would clear anything beyond the sixteen-hour mark. A full day seemed like the right time to stop. ‘Maybe I should look into buying some cocaine or similar performance enhancer,’ John thought, only half joking. He wasn’t quite sure how drugs interacted with Gamer’s Body. Alcohol and cigarettes hadn’t given him some kind of addiction meter so far. Chances were that he was safe from physical dependency.

If that was true, using some to ensure he benefitted from a truly outrageous reward may have been worth it. Main question was whether him taking cocaine (or some magical equivalent) would boost his elementals’ performance for the required time as well. There was only so much he could do on his own.

He knew for a fact that they were minorly affected by him getting drunk. When he was really hammered, they got tipsy by extension. That was mostly because his senses were so confused it ebbed through the mental connection though. He hadn’t observed a similar effect from drinking coffee. Elementals aside, he knew for a fact that the Artificial Spirits were not affected by this, being not as closely tied to his soul.

If there was some Abyssal drug that let him and his elementals stay wide awake for 24 hours or longer, though, then using it would likely be worth some light to medium aftereffects. Running a single 24-hours Assault netted about the same rewards as thirteen 7-hours ones. Speaking from pure technicality, he could be knocked out for 4-5 days after that successful, super long run and cut even. Sleeping being included into those rest days.

Cutting even wasn’t the point though, doing something that would otherwise be impossible was.

He would set some of his many government underlings on researching the topic under the pretence that he wanted to suggest a law to the House of Commons that banned extremely harmful drugs. One strike, two targets down – he only had to be careful that the report was truthful and no bribery put the Abyssal equivalent of pot as ‘highly harmful’ on his table.

‘Best I put the resulting task force under Aclysia’s control so she can have a close eye on potential corruption,’ the Gamer ended that train of thought in favour of addressing the issue at hand.

The bare minimum he had to do in order to fulfil this Quest was run four Assaults of the 13-hours variety. John was even less willing to do that than the 16-hours hell he had already been through. Getting through medium hell once was way better than to go through minor hell four times.

The next break-even point was at two 16-hours Assaults. If he did one today, he would have two days to recover and then had to do a last one on the final day of his stay here. Then there was the ‘nuclear’ option of going for a single, 22-hours one. Although, with how far his experience bar was currently filled, 21-hours would also do it.

There was also the option to mix and vary in several ways, but if he started counting those, he would never get done. Best to pick one approach for now.

Since the 13-hours approach sounded incredibly exhausting and the 21-hours Assault was something he didn’t think he could beat, it had to be the middle option. Which meant they were going for a repeat of the start of the week. Only to do it again.

Resigning himself to the attempt, John and everyone else went for one last refreshment nap and a proper meal. Inventories were prepared to have some rations in them, liquid food of Beatrice’s making and jerky, for the most part, and a fair amount of drinking water. After the resource preparation came the pre-battle strategy.

First they picked out the Assault they would face. Since they had gotten to experiment around in the last three days, the Instant Dungeon of choice was the Feral ID.

It had only one major enemy type, being a kind of mutated deer that had giant, lipless maws and black fur. They were aggressive, easily killed and favoured gathering in waves of a few dozen before launching an attack. This created a natural lull between intense combat phases, which should be a tad easier to handle than constant stress. They had ranged attacks in the form of illness-inducing spit. In game terms, they threw debuffs, but they only affected John, because he was human, and Undine, because the liquid mixing with her body mass had ill effects on the slime girl.

The second enemy type was some sort of giant mole. It didn’t attack too often, but it was something that could potentially burrow under their defences and create weak spots that way. They had incredibly large claws and were pretty tanky. Thankfully, it was unusually passive for a dungeon monster.

As an added bonus, the boss spawned in predictable intervals of exactly thirty minutes. It was a stag variety, several times larger, healthier and smarter, with antlers strong enough that they could threaten the fortifications the Gamer would put in place. The most dangerous thing about the stag was that it was intelligent enough to retreat.

Regardless of that, with the normal enemies lacking ways to overcome fortifications, this dungeon provided the opportunity to rest inside a safe room in the centre of the tower. They also made some changes to that tower in order to be a better defence against this particular dungeon. The first step was to make it something else than a tower.

Because the only way the stags could break into their fortification was through ramming it with their reinforced antlers, going for a less tall target was preferable. They would, instead, use something closer to a bunker. Its roof would describe a flat curve making it hard to ram. Inside the bunker, they would have the resting room and some sort of makeshift toilet. Within 16 hours, John was bound to need it at least once.

Going completely underground was also a consideration, but John respected the moles too much. Gaia had doubtlessly put them in to avoid exploits like this and he wasn’t about to run face first into the trap.

Once the bunker was reasonably secure, Gnome’s job would be to change the floor around it to be a stone grid, rather than forest ground. Supernatural or not, a deer was a deer. If they slipped into the gaps between the blocks and broke their legs with their own momentum, then that was a cruel but entirely effective tactic.

If they had the mana to spare, some lava under that grid would be worth a thought, but that was an extra, not a base tactic.

With those specific adjustments planned, they then moved to put their plans into practice. Although John was more confident about this than having to go into a random Assault, he still wasn’t entirely sure if they could make it.

For good reason.

The hours one through five were unremarkable. They moved along like always. Only when there was a Horror spawn did they have some problems. The buffed up deer got stronger and larger the more of its fellow monsters died around it. Focusing it was always a priority. Luckily, this dungeon was weak against aerial manoeuvres, so Salamander and Sylph were their main carries for this round, with back up from Jack/the Mandala Sphere.

As far as Combinations went, they used several. Smlere was combined in the beginning phases, creating lava pools to force the enemies to funnel through certain locations. Well, that was the secondary bonus. The main reason for doing this was to torch the forest and make it more difficult for the enemies to gather into herds in relative secrecy. If John could thin out the enemies with Arc Lances before they got into the proper attack stage, then that had a positive effect on the people that guarded the bunker’s entrance. In today’s design, there was extra stone already located around it for emergency closing.

Aside from that they used Shadowflame (Salamander + Siena) for specific burst situations and Nadine (Gnome + Undine) to create new plants in advantageous positions. Those three Combinations were used, effectively, as damage and utility cooldowns.

Hour six was where things started to get straining. Having learned his lesson from last time, John started the resting circulation there. Salamander was the first to go, since he wanted to have his fliers as rested as he could for the harder late stages, when everyone was getting tired.

Hours seven to ten were eventless. The only thing notable was the increasing difficulty due to energy levels draining.

Hour eleven had a giant blunder at the start of it, which continued to cause issues down the line. They failed to kill the boss at the turn of the hour; the stag retreated, badly hurt but still able to fight. The group continued to fend off the deer, unable to spare anyone to chase after that boss. Something that would come to haunt them, once the next one spawned and they suddenly had two to deal with, even if one was hurt.

For the next half hour, they had to carefully handle their resources, pick their targets optimally and make sure the bosses didn’t break through. Even if charging the bunker was pretty difficult, due to its shape, they could still scratch away at the stone pretty effectively. The antlers were just that hard.

They barely managed to kill both by the time the one at the start of hour twelve spawned.

Hour twelve was a stabilizing time. As in, they struggled to stabilize. Undine was in need of regenerating her mana and a pause, which was why they sent her to sleep the moment they had half of a handle on things. They managed to keep their grip on the situation, no matter how often it tried to slip away.

Hour thirteen went by relatively well. Sylph had to use her teleport cooldown, having carelessly gotten herself in a pinch while finishing off a boss. Beatrice also needed to use hers, otherwise she would have gotten skewered by a stag. Since there were so many ends on the antlers, the chances of them hitting the vital core was uncomfortably high. Better to expend a teleport than to have Beatrice teleported out by Fateweaving. That, or have her experience the extreme pain of getting her core cracked.

The destruction of it would be her death, but those things could take and recover from some damage. It just hurt a whole lot.

Hour fourteen was marked by one of the moles attacking their position out of nowhere. Previous problems like this, they had been able to anticipate thanks to Gnome. As it so happened, this was Gnome’s resting period. The mole destroyed a good chunk of the floor grid, making it easier for the deer to attack. Aclysia and Beatrice held out as best they could, but they weren’t able to stem the tide of the mole, a swarm of deer and a new boss spawn.

Only thanks to Sylph using her Unleash, getting enough negative emotion from the idea that someone would interrupt Gnome’s rightful nap, did they manage to take out the swarm. The Mandala Sphere got hit by a stag in the process, becoming too damaged to be safely used for the remainder of the encounter.

Hour fifteen was a cascade of bad events. Gnome woke up just in time to warn them of another mole attack. A Horror spawned along the boss, making prioritizing targets immensely difficult. Just as Aclysia and Beatrice moved away from their guarding position, the stag knocked over one of the half-burned trees. The thick trunk provided a path for an entire swarm of deer to safely make it over the grid made specifically to inhibit their movements.

John could have handled one or two, but he was facing a whole sixteen of the things. Aclysia, Salamander and Siena all used their teleport cooldowns to come to his defence. While they managed to clean out the insides of the bunker, they did so at the cost of surrendering the outside. The boss and the Horror were still alive, with the latter having grown immensely powerful.

And so hour sixteen was a desperate clinging. They got their second wind, thanks to the end being in sight, but all of that energy had to be concentrated on purely defensive measures. Killing the enemies was a side effect of defensive necessity. The only goal was to make it through. At some point, they had to push the emergency button, unleashing a long charging Arcana Strike. That reset the situation, but it also left them without fortifications for the last ten minutes. Those were defined by everyone defending John from endless spawning enemies, trying their best to prevent a wipe in the last bit. Stirwin was added to the fight, granting some relief.

Sylph died in the chaos, with Gnome soon following. Those two, thankfully, were the only toll taken. While the rest of them were in bad shape, the timer was on their side. Before anything else bad could happen, the Assault finished and they got to take the rewards.

This brought John up to level 240. The next two days he spent recovering and getting the new Lover Boy challenges filled out. Because two days entirely spent fucking meant he filled out the 50% maximum exp from Experience of Love twice, he was at 241 at the end of it.

He also got the next Perk of the Class.

Sexual Lifeforce seemed quite bad, especially next to Shared Road. What use was there in him being able to make his lovers’ life as long as he lived, through sex, if he could instead give them the power to become strong enough that they would be effectively ageless anyway? Centre of the World was as selfish as the name implied. It was really good, no question about it, but the Gamer’s choice was definitely Shared Road. With it, he had almost entirely eliminated concerns that any of his girls might fall prey to an average or even expert assassination attempt. Given they trained up to their new potential, of course.

He would concentrate on maxing out the Class regardless, be it only to tickle his perfectionism.

On the last day of the time dilation, he ran another 16-hours Assault. Same barrier, same strategy, a different outcome.

To make a long story short, during hour ten, Sylph got killed by unlucky positioning. Since they relied heavily on the glass cannon and her ability to stay energized for the entire duration of the Assault, this boded poorly. Without the backing of the single-target thunderstorm elemental, Salamander struggled to kill the important targets in time. This cascaded into more pressure on Aclysia, Beatrice and Gnome, which put more strain on Undine and forced John to make riskier calls with less mana and other resources at his disposal. Siena tried to fill the boss assassination role, but the burning forest didn’t do her any favours and the grating they had installed against the deer worked just as well against her high heels.

At hour eleven and with several lifelines exhausted, John realized he had to call it quits and used Escape Rope. He could have killed himself to activate Fateweaving, but he preferred to not go through whatever ‘death’ he would have needed to suffer.

This meant he had failed the final Quest out of the Augusta line but, given what was accomplished overall, he couldn’t be too mad. On the contrary, going back to Lydia and being soothed by her over his waste of eleven hours by lying on her thicker thighs, John knew what he had gotten was very much worth it.

One Quest being failed wasn’t that bad in the big scheme of things.