“FUCKING HELL!” John shouted and jumped to safety. Behind him was the sound of a giant crash. Rubble passed by above him, as he kept himself flat on the ground, then he got on his feet and started running again. Another radiant star slammed into the ground.
In the distance he saw lights flicker up, as Salamander bathed the Anti-Depressant in flames, followed by the other elementals and Aclysia engaging it again. John spied another star falling towards his position with his bee. With his own two legs, he then sprinted away.
John had reached the ninth wave of the City Elementals as well as level 62 in the past days. There had been no other dungeon he had been grinding. Day after day, only Depressants and Anti-Depressants. It was good EXP and the watches dropped were good food for Aclysia. Most importantly, the boss had been comparatively easy.
HAD BEEN being the operative words. Turned out that the number of stars falling increased with every wave and while the city reconstructed every time, it had already been reduced to rubble in the ten minutes they had been fighting the blasted thing. There was also the fact that the boss got sturdier with each wave, so John had no idea how much longer he would have to play the dodging game.
He jumped, rolled and ran behind the remainder of a blasted wall when another star hit the ground, hiding from the rocks it scattered. Then he started running again. He could have done what the others were doing and walked up close to the Anti-Depressant, where stars never fell. The problem was however that the boss was way faster than him and the second he got just a step too close it would probably rip him a new one.
Instead, John opted to run relatively close by and use an Arcane Explosion. A ball of blue energy filled his right hand, a quick throw delivered in the general direction of his target. The spell flew far over the boss’ head. John was many things by now—muscular, charismatic, had the lungs of a horse and the ability to fuck several times a day—but he was not particularly great at sports. Chances were that, even with his heightened senses, Frank, his old school bully, could have still beaten him at dodgeball.
However, unlike his Dodgeball matches in the past, John was not alone in this.
“Tag!” Sylph shouted and flew right into the path of the Arcane Explosion. The second it touched her, it exploded in a blue shockwave that vanished into thin air after travelling exactly three metres, more than big enough to hit the Anti-Depressant. The Skill left all his allies unharmed, Sylph even posed in the centre of the explosion, before raining down gusts of slicing wind, filled with green energy, on the enemy again.
John just kept running. He had no idea if the stars were aimed at him, it felt like they were at this point, but being in motion made it generally easier to dodge. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to keep at this too much longer. He saw Aclysia swing Ashkandi. The black blade reflected the light of the stars carpet bombing the city as she brought it down. Through the body of the Anti-Depressant, the weapon sliced, bringing an end to the miserable experience.
John left the Instant Dungeon quicker than the timer could appear. He was not yet prepared for a core boss. They stepped onto the plain so Aclysia could eat whatever the bosses had dropped and John could collect the money. “For the love of everything, Newman, farm something new. This is beyond boring,” Magoi said, he didn’t even look into the basin, instead continuing to read his newspaper.
The Fateweaver had returned to treating the Gamer with previous niceness the very next day, but there still was a measurable distance between them. Most notably, Magoi refused to address John by his first name anymore. The Gamer hoped that would change in time. At the very least Magoi wasn’t making the grinding any more difficult. He would keep his word and contract to the letter.
While it lasted, Magoi still loved to check up on John’s loot. There was not much to check up on the last four days though. Aclysia went to eating while John stood there and thought. “Yeah, I thought about that too,” he admitted, “farming the Anti-Depressant is pretty dull…but just so efficient.”
“This is not a game, Mister Newman,” Magoi said while wiggling his finger, “you got to have fun sometimes.”
“That sounds opposite to how the saying normally goes,” John drily commented. “And I am not in a situation to have fun.”
Sylph flew up to him and landed on top of his nose. John had to cross his eyes to see her tiny face. “He is right though, gotta have fun, fun, fun, Johnny, let’s go do something else. Please, please, pretty please?” She pleaded, swinging her head from one side of the bridge of his nose to the other, giving him a slight headache in the process. Sylph vaulted off his nose.
“So where am I at now, John?” she wanted to know, John already knew that she meant her summoning Skill, she had been inquiring regularly.
“Level 82,” he said.
“It is so slooooooow,” she lamented, “Gnoooome, you have smart ideas, have a smart idea right now to help me, before I have to watch you have sex and masturbate in front of the window again!”
“YOU DO WHAT?” Gnome exclaimed for everyone else and stared at Sylph with teary eyes in a blushing face, “you, uwu, so embarrassing!” she said while sniffling, “can’t believe my little sister saw me naked.”
“Chillax, Gnome, not like I never did,” Salamander commented, flying up to Gnome and patting her on the ear. “There, there, you easily bullied stone.”
“Uwu,” Gnome sniffled, rubbed her eyes clean, and then took a deep breath.
In the background, Magoi mumbled something about the energy of youth.
This scene aside, John was actually completely in favour of new ideas. It wasn’t like he wanted to do the same thing over and over again. As a gamer, he was well-accustomed to it, but anything that offered him similar efficiency while being a break from the monotony would be welcome. Plus, he had some problems to solve.
One was the lack of Skill Evolution Points, he was sure he could clear a tenth floor and thus finally complete his Quest to get one. The second was that both Sylph and Undine wouldn’t necessarily get to the maximum Skill Level before then. The best way to fix this problem would be Secret Rooms or Bonus Levels, both of which had largely eluded him.
The only Secret Level he had ever gotten in the first place was the one with the Horned Rat in it and although he had been grinding the Anti-Depressant for several days now, the Time Cigarette never once dropped. He remembered that Secret Rooms only spawned on core floors, meaning 5-10-15 and so on, chasing that was unlikely to work anyhow. Bonus Level he could get more reliably.
“Ehm, so I got an idea,” Gnome finally said and got the team's attention. “How about we beat every sixth-floor boss once, but instead of searching for the best Experience grind we are looking for the best bonus item grind,” she explained, having come to the same conclusions as John, who nodded and finished the thought for her.
“That way we would be getting the highest chance of getting Sylph higher in Skill Level and maybe get some achievements on the way. Everyone in favour raise their hand.”
Everyone did, a unilateral decision. “Operation ‘Boost Sylph’, now under way!” the air elemental chirped and they went to work.
They worked their way down the list. None of the bosses were a particular challenge, outleveled and outnumbered as they were, but nevertheless John noted all of them, he would have to fight four stronger versions of them after all.
Skaven Floor 6 Boss was a Rat Ogre not unlike the one he fought with Rave in the Giant Rats I.D., however this one had been partly armoured and given a maze made for his size, which made a huge difference. The setting they fought it in was a sort of colosseum with four stone pillars they could kite the beast around whenever it charged. While easy, the boss’ item pool was the usual Skaven mix of Warpstone and poisonous stuff. Not what he was looking for.
He skipped the Sporehost. Yes, the Item pool was small, but it had a buttload of health and John’s toolkit wasn’t exactly good at dealing with the thing. He noted however that this would be his go to if no other possibility should show itself.
Next were the Orcs. The sixth wave started with Orc Wolfriders setting fire to the village he had spawned in. Afterwards he had to fend off said Wolfriders, ending with a boss called Wildfire Shaman, an Orc mage that controlled the fire of the burning village. Conveniently, that Shaman had less control than the blaze elemental John had with him, so Salamander made them virtually untouchable. The rest of the boss fight was the group running and kicking down an old green man. His loot pool was small and contained a bonus item and even though John doubted that they could wrestle the fire control from him on higher levels this was still an okay target to farm.
The Undead threw the basics at him: Skeletons and at the end a Giant Skeleton. It was slow and not particularly difficult, but regenerated by absorbing the spirits inside the graveyard that was the setting for this I.D. They had to kite it on the spot, which was possible but annoying as one strike of it even at this low level was quite dangerous. Also, the Loot table was filled with trash like a ‘funny bone’.
The dreary atmosphere John felt in the next floor of the Wall Shadow dungeon alone was a reason to not take that dungeon for his grinding. After defeating the boss of the sixth floor the whole labyrinth vanished, only to reappear a moment later, the walls twice as high and the gap between them slightly narrower. Now, not only did John still have a deeply ingrained respect for the nightmarish creatures after seeing what their hugs did to people’s ribcages, but the things had also gotten smarter. The old trick of Salamander shining away their connection to the wall did not work anymore. These new Wall Shadows, called Shadow Jumpers, did their name proud and jumped out of the wall, trying to pull somebody to the ground. If they succeeded, they did the usual thing, dipping half their body back into the shadows and strangling their victim to death with their many arms. If they failed, they just vanished in the wall. While the boss of the dungeon, a giant spider that spun webs in whose shadows more Shadow Jumpers spawned, wasn’t actually that difficult, the way to it took way too long to be even considered worthwhile.
City Elementals were skipped for obvious reasons.
Now he finally arrived at the three newly acquired kinds of dungeons that he hadn’t even tried yet: Ogres, Demons and Angels.
First were the Ogres. After blazing through the fifth floor without a care, other than analysing the area, an endless grassy plain, he entered the sixth floor. It was an odd wave to say the least. John could clearly see all the ogres running around, giant, dumb looking humanoids in white, Asian looking clothes holding hammers of wood. None of them attacked unless he got too close, which ironically made the wave extremely tedious because he had to hunt every single enemy himself. At the end spawned a two headed Ogre that was enormous in size. Big, slow enemies were something he was quite used to by this point.
The Demons got a similar treatment. Imps ran around the Floor and were quickly dealt with. After reaching the end of the sixth floor, the party was greeted by a Vessel, a warlock type thing that summoned minor demons to throw at them. Not a great problem and the Loot table looked promising. It had both a Legendary item and an epic one called ‘Key of Forgotten Sins’ which just screamed the Revealer of Secrets attribute. Sadly, the Vessel didn’t drop it, but it was still a good enemy to grind out.
The final category he had available was just as easy at that level. However, after beating the boss of the fifth floor, an angel with one wing carrying a halberd, in front of a giant golden gate, John got an interesting achievement.
The item that he got was beautiful. Three golden keys hanging from a silver band, not the beauty he meant though.
“Yes!” he shouted, immediately putting the item into his accessory slot. “Girls, operation ‘Boost-Sylph’ is in full swing! Let’s kill whatever floor boss there is here and then it is back to Anti-Depressant grinding.”
“Whaaaaaaat?” Sylph asked, “why do we have to go back to that boring stuff? I wanna be boosted while having fun!”
“Because only the wave nine version is actually hard and this thing ticks for the version that spawns at seven, eight and nine, the lowest of which is level 60 and the highest 70. We can probably get it to full by tomorrow noon if we hurry up.”
John was not entirely convinced about the truth of that statement, they had already wasted a full day on this endeavour of grinding lowbie areas. If it hadn’t been for the Achievement, this day would have been practically entirely wasted. Best to, tomorrow, get back to what worked.
They beat the boss of the sixth Angel floor, an orb of golden energy with two white wings called a Holy Wisp. It dropped no money but had a high amount of materials. All of which was sold later, as Aclysia was still at the same level as him, making him a fair amount of money.
Money wasn’t what he needed right now though, he needed power. So going back to Anti-Depressants was what they had to do. Experience and charging the new item were the priorities.
“FUCKING HELL!” John shouted and jumped to safety. Behind him was the sound of a giant crash. Rubble passed by above him, as he kept himself flat on the ground, then he got on his feet and started running again. Another radiant star slammed into the ground.
In the distance he saw lights flicker up, as Salamander bathed the Anti-Depressant in flames, followed by the other elementals and Aclysia engaging it again. John spied another star falling towards his position with his bee. With his own two legs, he then sprinted away.
John had reached the ninth wave of the City Elementals as well as level 62 in the past days. There had been no other dungeon he had been grinding. Day after day, only Depressants and Anti-Depressants. It was good EXP and the watches dropped were good food for Aclysia. Most importantly, the boss had been comparatively easy.
HAD BEEN being the operative words. Turned out that the number of stars falling increased with every wave and while the city reconstructed every time, it had already been reduced to rubble in the ten minutes they had been fighting the blasted thing. There was also the fact that the boss got sturdier with each wave, so John had no idea how much longer he would have to play the dodging game.
He jumped, rolled and ran behind the remainder of a blasted wall when another star hit the ground, hiding from the rocks it scattered. Then he started running again. He could have done what the others were doing and walked up close to the Anti-Depressant, where stars never fell. The problem was however that the boss was way faster than him and the second he got just a step too close it would probably rip him a new one.
Instead, John opted to run relatively close by and use an Arcane Explosion. A ball of blue energy filled his right hand, a quick throw delivered in the general direction of his target. The spell flew far over the boss’ head. John was many things by now—muscular, charismatic, had the lungs of a horse and the ability to fuck several times a day—but he was not particularly great at sports. Chances were that, even with his heightened senses, Frank, his old school bully, could have still beaten him at dodgeball.
However, unlike his Dodgeball matches in the past, John was not alone in this.
“Tag!” Sylph shouted and flew right into the path of the Arcane Explosion. The second it touched her, it exploded in a blue shockwave that vanished into thin air after travelling exactly three metres, more than big enough to hit the Anti-Depressant. The Skill left all his allies unharmed, Sylph even posed in the centre of the explosion, before raining down gusts of slicing wind, filled with green energy, on the enemy again.
John just kept running. He had no idea if the stars were aimed at him, it felt like they were at this point, but being in motion made it generally easier to dodge. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to keep at this too much longer. He saw Aclysia swing Ashkandi. The black blade reflected the light of the stars carpet bombing the city as she brought it down. Through the body of the Anti-Depressant, the weapon sliced, bringing an end to the miserable experience.
John left the Instant Dungeon quicker than the timer could appear. He was not yet prepared for a core boss. They stepped onto the plain so Aclysia could eat whatever the bosses had dropped and John could collect the money. “For the love of everything, Newman, farm something new. This is beyond boring,” Magoi said, he didn’t even look into the basin, instead continuing to read his newspaper.
The Fateweaver had returned to treating the Gamer with previous niceness the very next day, but there still was a measurable distance between them. Most notably, Magoi refused to address John by his first name anymore. The Gamer hoped that would change in time. At the very least Magoi wasn’t making the grinding any more difficult. He would keep his word and contract to the letter.
While it lasted, Magoi still loved to check up on John’s loot. There was not much to check up on the last four days though. Aclysia went to eating while John stood there and thought. “Yeah, I thought about that too,” he admitted, “farming the Anti-Depressant is pretty dull…but just so efficient.”
“This is not a game, Mister Newman,” Magoi said while wiggling his finger, “you got to have fun sometimes.”
“That sounds opposite to how the saying normally goes,” John drily commented. “And I am not in a situation to have fun.”
Sylph flew up to him and landed on top of his nose. John had to cross his eyes to see her tiny face. “He is right though, gotta have fun, fun, fun, Johnny, let’s go do something else. Please, please, pretty please?” She pleaded, swinging her head from one side of the bridge of his nose to the other, giving him a slight headache in the process. Sylph vaulted off his nose.
“So where am I at now, John?” she wanted to know, John already knew that she meant her summoning Skill, she had been inquiring regularly.
“Level 82,” he said.
“It is so slooooooow,” she lamented, “Gnoooome, you have smart ideas, have a smart idea right now to help me, before I have to watch you have sex and masturbate in front of the window again!”
“YOU DO WHAT?” Gnome exclaimed for everyone else and stared at Sylph with teary eyes in a blushing face, “you, uwu, so embarrassing!” she said while sniffling, “can’t believe my little sister saw me naked.”
“Chillax, Gnome, not like I never did,” Salamander commented, flying up to Gnome and patting her on the ear. “There, there, you easily bullied stone.”
“Uwu,” Gnome sniffled, rubbed her eyes clean, and then took a deep breath.
In the background, Magoi mumbled something about the energy of youth.
This scene aside, John was actually completely in favour of new ideas. It wasn’t like he wanted to do the same thing over and over again. As a gamer, he was well-accustomed to it, but anything that offered him similar efficiency while being a break from the monotony would be welcome. Plus, he had some problems to solve.
One was the lack of Skill Evolution Points, he was sure he could clear a tenth floor and thus finally complete his Quest to get one. The second was that both Sylph and Undine wouldn’t necessarily get to the maximum Skill Level before then. The best way to fix this problem would be Secret Rooms or Bonus Levels, both of which had largely eluded him.
The only Secret Level he had ever gotten in the first place was the one with the Horned Rat in it and although he had been grinding the Anti-Depressant for several days now, the Time Cigarette never once dropped. He remembered that Secret Rooms only spawned on core floors, meaning 5-10-15 and so on, chasing that was unlikely to work anyhow. Bonus Level he could get more reliably.
“Ehm, so I got an idea,” Gnome finally said and got the team's attention. “How about we beat every sixth-floor boss once, but instead of searching for the best Experience grind we are looking for the best bonus item grind,” she explained, having come to the same conclusions as John, who nodded and finished the thought for her.
“That way we would be getting the highest chance of getting Sylph higher in Skill Level and maybe get some achievements on the way. Everyone in favour raise their hand.”
Everyone did, a unilateral decision. “Operation ‘Boost Sylph’, now under way!” the air elemental chirped and they went to work.
They worked their way down the list. None of the bosses were a particular challenge, outleveled and outnumbered as they were, but nevertheless John noted all of them, he would have to fight four stronger versions of them after all.
Skaven Floor 6 Boss was a Rat Ogre not unlike the one he fought with Rave in the Giant Rats I.D., however this one had been partly armoured and given a maze made for his size, which made a huge difference. The setting they fought it in was a sort of colosseum with four stone pillars they could kite the beast around whenever it charged. While easy, the boss’ item pool was the usual Skaven mix of Warpstone and poisonous stuff. Not what he was looking for.
He skipped the Sporehost. Yes, the Item pool was small, but it had a buttload of health and John’s toolkit wasn’t exactly good at dealing with the thing. He noted however that this would be his go to if no other possibility should show itself.
Next were the Orcs. The sixth wave started with Orc Wolfriders setting fire to the village he had spawned in. Afterwards he had to fend off said Wolfriders, ending with a boss called Wildfire Shaman, an Orc mage that controlled the fire of the burning village. Conveniently, that Shaman had less control than the blaze elemental John had with him, so Salamander made them virtually untouchable. The rest of the boss fight was the group running and kicking down an old green man. His loot pool was small and contained a bonus item and even though John doubted that they could wrestle the fire control from him on higher levels this was still an okay target to farm.
The Undead threw the basics at him: Skeletons and at the end a Giant Skeleton. It was slow and not particularly difficult, but regenerated by absorbing the spirits inside the graveyard that was the setting for this I.D. They had to kite it on the spot, which was possible but annoying as one strike of it even at this low level was quite dangerous. Also, the Loot table was filled with trash like a ‘funny bone’.
The dreary atmosphere John felt in the next floor of the Wall Shadow dungeon alone was a reason to not take that dungeon for his grinding. After defeating the boss of the sixth floor the whole labyrinth vanished, only to reappear a moment later, the walls twice as high and the gap between them slightly narrower. Now, not only did John still have a deeply ingrained respect for the nightmarish creatures after seeing what their hugs did to people’s ribcages, but the things had also gotten smarter. The old trick of Salamander shining away their connection to the wall did not work anymore. These new Wall Shadows, called Shadow Jumpers, did their name proud and jumped out of the wall, trying to pull somebody to the ground. If they succeeded, they did the usual thing, dipping half their body back into the shadows and strangling their victim to death with their many arms. If they failed, they just vanished in the wall. While the boss of the dungeon, a giant spider that spun webs in whose shadows more Shadow Jumpers spawned, wasn’t actually that difficult, the way to it took way too long to be even considered worthwhile.
City Elementals were skipped for obvious reasons.
Now he finally arrived at the three newly acquired kinds of dungeons that he hadn’t even tried yet: Ogres, Demons and Angels.
First were the Ogres. After blazing through the fifth floor without a care, other than analysing the area, an endless grassy plain, he entered the sixth floor. It was an odd wave to say the least. John could clearly see all the ogres running around, giant, dumb looking humanoids in white, Asian looking clothes holding hammers of wood. None of them attacked unless he got too close, which ironically made the wave extremely tedious because he had to hunt every single enemy himself. At the end spawned a two headed Ogre that was enormous in size. Big, slow enemies were something he was quite used to by this point.
The Demons got a similar treatment. Imps ran around the Floor and were quickly dealt with. After reaching the end of the sixth floor, the party was greeted by a Vessel, a warlock type thing that summoned minor demons to throw at them. Not a great problem and the Loot table looked promising. It had both a Legendary item and an epic one called ‘Key of Forgotten Sins’ which just screamed the Revealer of Secrets attribute. Sadly, the Vessel didn’t drop it, but it was still a good enemy to grind out.
The final category he had available was just as easy at that level. However, after beating the boss of the fifth floor, an angel with one wing carrying a halberd, in front of a giant golden gate, John got an interesting achievement.
The item that he got was beautiful. Three golden keys hanging from a silver band, not the beauty he meant though.
“Yes!” he shouted, immediately putting the item into his accessory slot. “Girls, operation ‘Boost-Sylph’ is in full swing! Let’s kill whatever floor boss there is here and then it is back to Anti-Depressant grinding.”
“Whaaaaaaat?” Sylph asked, “why do we have to go back to that boring stuff? I wanna be boosted while having fun!”
“Because only the wave nine version is actually hard and this thing ticks for the version that spawns at seven, eight and nine, the lowest of which is level 60 and the highest 70. We can probably get it to full by tomorrow noon if we hurry up.”
John was not entirely convinced about the truth of that statement, they had already wasted a full day on this endeavour of grinding lowbie areas. If it hadn’t been for the Achievement, this day would have been practically entirely wasted. Best to, tomorrow, get back to what worked.
They beat the boss of the sixth Angel floor, an orb of golden energy with two white wings called a Holy Wisp. It dropped no money but had a high amount of materials. All of which was sold later, as Aclysia was still at the same level as him, making him a fair amount of money.
Money wasn’t what he needed right now though, he needed power. So going back to Anti-Depressants was what they had to do. Experience and charging the new item were the priorities.
