The stone plate crackled with energy after I installed the three required crystals into slots along its sides. At the same time, the runes on the massive circular door fiercely shone, burning green tendrils black. The door’s visible mechanical parts whirred to life, and cogs coated with gunk started to turn.
[ Quest Completed: Powering the Powerless ]
[ Received: (85) Toxic Goop ]
I whistled at the surprising notification. “I got Toxic Goops as a reward. Around two hundred and thirty more to go.”
“Further proof the quests are really connected,” Kezo said. “I bet we’ll find enough Toxic Goop for the collection quest while solving this other quest. Thinking about the story, this place is supposed to be the source of the Blight outbreak, so it follows there are lots of nasty chemicals here.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said. We had only forty minutes to deal with whatever was on the other side of this door and defeat the Blighted Vinereaver. If more bullshit puzzles and running were required, we wouldn’t have enough time to find any lacking [Toxic Goop] after getting the [Blighted Vinereaver Essence].
With any luck, the boss fight would be an easy one.
I’m jinxing myself, aren’t I?
I placed my hand on the energized magical plate. The stone door laboriously rolled to the side, ripping blankets of vines with it.
“It’s opening!” Megan cheered, flapping her sparkler wands. “Open Sesame!”
“Looks like we’re not the weaker minds the quest talked about,” Nitana said with an amused tone.
“Hey, why are you looking at me? I’ll solve the next puzzle we find. You wait for it.”
“Just teasing you.” Nitana stuck her tongue out at Megan.
Bantering Mardukryons with unfitting human voices was amusing, though I couldn’t spare the space to laugh. Strange noises sifted through the quaking earth and grinding stone, and it was becoming louder. “Hear that?” I loudly said. “Growling… Enemies?”
The stone door, now halfway opened, revealed the darkness behind it. Not complete darkness. Hints of light shimmered like stars shining after a thick cloud had passed. More and more of the green glow we know and love emerged. The Blighted gathered on the other side.
“That’s a lot of green,” Nitana said.
“More goopy goopiness for us,” Megan said.
“Prepare for battle.” Kezo cast his buffs. “Pick your favorite ancestor to call.”
I looked around. “We should move. We’ll get encircled if we stay here.”
We were in a wide corridor perpendicular to the door. Plenty of space for the enemy to surround us. Even if we backed up and hugged the wall, our left and right were wide open for the monsters to flank us. And who was at our flanks? Megan and Nitana—they’d crumple once a bunch of monsters piled on them. This wasn’t an action movie where the bad guys attacked one by one.
Kezo could use [Enraging Call] to direct attacks to him, but he’d die just the same, attacked by enemies on all sides, and then we’d be next. If I were a strong tank, this wouldn’t be a problem. I could plop myself right at the door and become the door.
But it takes time to get hard.
I wasn’t quite there yet.
“The tunnel narrows over there.” I pointed left. “We’ll take our position at the thinnest point to lessen the monsters attacking Kezo.”
“Will they follow us all the way there?” Megan asked.
“They will… probably.” I lobbed chemicals through the door. “Let’s get them angry enough.”
The toxic cloud obscured the approaching green mass, poisoning the Blighted as they marched through it. DoT ticks drew their aggro to me. Understanding what I was doing, Nitana sent a squadron of exploding fairies through the door before following Kezo to our designated spot. The amble of the ‘zombie thingies,’ as Megan liked to call them, intensified into a disorganized stampede.
BOOM!
Nitana’s fairies exploded.
I galloped away as fire and smoke rolled through the corridor.
We barely formed our defensive triangle when the first Blighted, a [Lvl 46 Blighted Saurian Axeman], stepped on the corridor. More Saurian Axemen followed. With boosted movement speed, they outstripped the rest of their sickly fellows. The Axemen charged our position as the rest of the horde stumbled out the door.
Megan and her [Spell Bonded Totem] hosed the Blighted with streams of fire. Kezo and Nitana also used their ranged skills. The platoon of Saurian Axemen didn’t reach our line, bursting into Essence and Gli a couple of meters away from us.
I frowned at my lack of contribution. Kezo didn’t need my [Healing Touch] as only a few projectiles and spells hit him, the damage patched up by his crazy lifesteal. In a ranged fight, a tank’s role was minimal—I knew that—but Herald Stone should be the most importantest member of the party! If I had skills that buffed allies, a portion of the party’s total DPS would be directly attributable to me.
Once my Plaguetank build was past the prototype stage, I’d look into buffs, auras, and other party-boosting skills. Different RPGs had terms for those kinds of builds, like Aura Bots or Full Support, even derogatory ones like Buff Slaves. Across the many games I had played, it was common for people to look down on the buffers—the supposed sidekicks of the hero DPSers.
An unboxlike mind would think differently.
Take a minion or summoner build where the player manages a tiny army, making them stronger with spells—a buffer worked in the same vein with his party mates as minions. They just didn’t know it. Like a benevolent god, a buff support doles out blessings of strength. Of course, there was the argument of picking another DPSer instead. Depends on the math.
I envisioned becoming a buffer, a debuffer, and a tank—truly worth the slot in every party. Irreplaceable even. An Aura Plageutank… doesn’t sound catchy enough.
The Blighted tide dwindled. We pushed onward to the door. Another crowd of Blighted was chilling inside—they didn’t come out because we were too far, and no one attacked them as my poison clouds had expired. Our party fled back to the chokepoint.
“Eek! So many,” Megan cried out.
“But it’s a good thing there’s many of them,” I said, dropping a couple of Totems to delay the enemy.
“An icky good thing.”
“Like split pea soup,” Nitana said. “Looks like vomit, but tastes great.”
“I don’t like peas.” Megan made gagging noises.
“Must be why you hate the Blighted,” I said as we took our positions behind Kezo. “The liquid they excrete looks like glowing pea soup.”
“Excrete… I don’t like that word either.”
After obliterating the next batch of the Blighted, I volunteered to check the door.
There were still monsters inside, fewer than last time but more than enough to overwhelm us in an open area. I fished them out with [Poison Bottle Cast] and led them to my party mates. Pulling mobs was one of the roles of a tank, and I gladly fulfilled it. There was the added thrill of getting chased by monsters that could kill me with a couple of whacks.
As the Blighted thinned, we resumed our push to the door. “Thirty minutes on the clock,” I said. We tallied our loot. “Hundred seventy goops to go.”
“Uh-oh, time’s running out,” Megan said. “Are we going to make it?”
“We are,” Kezo said with conviction as we passed the circular stone door. “I’m confident we’ll get plenty more goop once we get deeper into the lab.”
Smaller groups of Blighted monsters harassed us while we traversed the sewer-like passage. Some actual sewers were cleaner than this. Megan complained the whole time, threatening to log out while Nitana teased her. I didn’t voice it, but I shared Megan’s sentiments.
Green goo dripped all over us. It would’ve been a nice consolation if we could collect it as [Toxic Goop], but the system didn’t allow it. Furthermore, the vine-covered floor was squishy and slimy, making it easy to fall, especially while fighting. It wasn’t regular vines—they were bloated and mutated, pulsing as glowing liquid flowed through them.
“We should just burn this whole place down,” Nitana said. Her tone had changed after she tripped and fell on the swollen tendrils. “Fuck, Herald’s quest. No offense, Herald.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find a way to destroy this area after we’re done with the quest.”
“And we might be done soon,” Kezo said.
Another circular door was at the end of the tunnel of disgustingness—a carnival attraction I wouldn’t dare enter if this was real life. Though much smaller than the previous one, it gave off the vibe that it hid something important. We couldn’t read the symbols on its surface, but it was clear something dangerous was behind it, like the magical equivalent of a radioactive sign.
I placed my hand on a cracked plate beside the door. It opened. I sighed in relief that we didn’t need to find more [Vilumen Crystal]. “Ladies first,” I said, gesturing for Megan to go in.
“No! That only works for humans.”
“Oh, such a big baby,” Nitana scoffed, trotting through the door. We followed her.
It was the boss area.
Divine bovine from the Andromeda Galaxy! I wasn’t looking at my teammates, but I assumed they already had their mouths wide open.
[Lvl 33|Mon Aleh, the Blighted Vinereaver] wrapped around a mad-scientistesque power generator spitting electricity like a science fair display. It wasn’t alone. Four more Blighted Vinereavers with levels in the mid-twenties, each with distinct names, were also present. The decaying and mutated plant monsters tangled among themselves; I couldn’t understand whose body was whose.
The big question was: Who the hell is naming them?
“We finally found them,” I said. “We were looking for one, and the game gave us five.” Maybe they were one giant boss monster with different parts to defeat?
“Like frigging really?” Nitana groaned. “Be careful what you wish for, I guess.”
Their skin wasn’t green like Zoar Elab and Moa Manot. A craggy and rough material mostly covered it, the texture of the charcoal skin of a Mardukryon’s upper body but shinier, picking up the green and blue glow in the room. It was as if someone dunked the vines in weird chocolate, and it dried.
Numerous eyes on the vines erratically twitched in their sockets while crying green tears. Dozens of mouths with razor teeth puked out the same liquid and materials I didn’t want to touch. Their vines also pierced the Mardukryon-sized vats filled with blue liquid that surrounded the machine in the center of the room.
“They are… turning the blue liquid into Toxic Goop,” I said.
“Like photosynthesis?” Megan guessed.
“Uh, I don’t think this is photosynthesis,” said Nitana. “There’s no sun. That’s the ‘photo’ part. It means light.”
“Nerd,” Megan whispered.
“What!”
“Their coating.” Kezo stepped forward for a closer look. The eyes of the Vinereavers snapped to look at him. “It looks similar to the body of the golem Jensen was fighting. That could be what gives them a reflect effect.”
“We’ll have to see how strong it is,” I said. Our party prepared for battle. The stray vines of the Vinereavers wriggled in the air as we cast our spells. Black flames covered Kezo. “Let’s start?” I asked him.
“Game time, team!” Kezo the Meteor hurtled at the mass of the Vinereavers, exploded…
…and died.
Kezo died. Not the Vinereavers.
Temple
Reflect Damage, the thing DPS people hate a lot. As for tanks, reflect builds can be good or bad, depending on how the game is balanced.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
The stone plate crackled with energy after I installed the three required crystals into slots along its sides. At the same time, the runes on the massive circular door fiercely shone, burning green tendrils black. The door’s visible mechanical parts whirred to life, and cogs coated with gunk started to turn.
[ Quest Completed: Powering the Powerless ]
[ Received: (85) Toxic Goop ]
I whistled at the surprising notification. “I got Toxic Goops as a reward. Around two hundred and thirty more to go.”
“Further proof the quests are really connected,” Kezo said. “I bet we’ll find enough Toxic Goop for the collection quest while solving this other quest. Thinking about the story, this place is supposed to be the source of the Blight outbreak, so it follows there are lots of nasty chemicals here.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said. We had only forty minutes to deal with whatever was on the other side of this door and defeat the Blighted Vinereaver. If more bullshit puzzles and running were required, we wouldn’t have enough time to find any lacking [Toxic Goop] after getting the [Blighted Vinereaver Essence].
With any luck, the boss fight would be an easy one.
I’m jinxing myself, aren’t I?
I placed my hand on the energized magical plate. The stone door laboriously rolled to the side, ripping blankets of vines with it.
“It’s opening!” Megan cheered, flapping her sparkler wands. “Open Sesame!”
“Looks like we’re not the weaker minds the quest talked about,” Nitana said with an amused tone.
“Hey, why are you looking at me? I’ll solve the next puzzle we find. You wait for it.”
“Just teasing you.” Nitana stuck her tongue out at Megan.
Bantering Mardukryons with unfitting human voices was amusing, though I couldn’t spare the space to laugh. Strange noises sifted through the quaking earth and grinding stone, and it was becoming louder. “Hear that?” I loudly said. “Growling… Enemies?”
The stone door, now halfway opened, revealed the darkness behind it. Not complete darkness. Hints of light shimmered like stars shining after a thick cloud had passed. More and more of the green glow we know and love emerged. The Blighted gathered on the other side.
“That’s a lot of green,” Nitana said.
“More goopy goopiness for us,” Megan said.
“Prepare for battle.” Kezo cast his buffs. “Pick your favorite ancestor to call.”
I looked around. “We should move. We’ll get encircled if we stay here.”
We were in a wide corridor perpendicular to the door. Plenty of space for the enemy to surround us. Even if we backed up and hugged the wall, our left and right were wide open for the monsters to flank us. And who was at our flanks? Megan and Nitana—they’d crumple once a bunch of monsters piled on them. This wasn’t an action movie where the bad guys attacked one by one.
Kezo could use [Enraging Call] to direct attacks to him, but he’d die just the same, attacked by enemies on all sides, and then we’d be next. If I were a strong tank, this wouldn’t be a problem. I could plop myself right at the door and become the door.
But it takes time to get hard.
I wasn’t quite there yet.
“The tunnel narrows over there.” I pointed left. “We’ll take our position at the thinnest point to lessen the monsters attacking Kezo.”
“Will they follow us all the way there?” Megan asked.
“They will… probably.” I lobbed chemicals through the door. “Let’s get them angry enough.”
The toxic cloud obscured the approaching green mass, poisoning the Blighted as they marched through it. DoT ticks drew their aggro to me. Understanding what I was doing, Nitana sent a squadron of exploding fairies through the door before following Kezo to our designated spot. The amble of the ‘zombie thingies,’ as Megan liked to call them, intensified into a disorganized stampede.
BOOM!
Nitana’s fairies exploded.
I galloped away as fire and smoke rolled through the corridor.
We barely formed our defensive triangle when the first Blighted, a [Lvl 46 Blighted Saurian Axeman], stepped on the corridor. More Saurian Axemen followed. With boosted movement speed, they outstripped the rest of their sickly fellows. The Axemen charged our position as the rest of the horde stumbled out the door.
Megan and her [Spell Bonded Totem] hosed the Blighted with streams of fire. Kezo and Nitana also used their ranged skills. The platoon of Saurian Axemen didn’t reach our line, bursting into Essence and Gli a couple of meters away from us.
I frowned at my lack of contribution. Kezo didn’t need my [Healing Touch] as only a few projectiles and spells hit him, the damage patched up by his crazy lifesteal. In a ranged fight, a tank’s role was minimal—I knew that—but Herald Stone should be the most importantest member of the party! If I had skills that buffed allies, a portion of the party’s total DPS would be directly attributable to me.
Once my Plaguetank build was past the prototype stage, I’d look into buffs, auras, and other party-boosting skills. Different RPGs had terms for those kinds of builds, like Aura Bots or Full Support, even derogatory ones like Buff Slaves. Across the many games I had played, it was common for people to look down on the buffers—the supposed sidekicks of the hero DPSers.
An unboxlike mind would think differently.
Take a minion or summoner build where the player manages a tiny army, making them stronger with spells—a buffer worked in the same vein with his party mates as minions. They just didn’t know it. Like a benevolent god, a buff support doles out blessings of strength. Of course, there was the argument of picking another DPSer instead. Depends on the math.
I envisioned becoming a buffer, a debuffer, and a tank—truly worth the slot in every party. Irreplaceable even. An Aura Plageutank… doesn’t sound catchy enough.
The Blighted tide dwindled. We pushed onward to the door. Another crowd of Blighted was chilling inside—they didn’t come out because we were too far, and no one attacked them as my poison clouds had expired. Our party fled back to the chokepoint.
“Eek! So many,” Megan cried out.
“But it’s a good thing there’s many of them,” I said, dropping a couple of Totems to delay the enemy.
“An icky good thing.”
“Like split pea soup,” Nitana said. “Looks like vomit, but tastes great.”
“I don’t like peas.” Megan made gagging noises.
“Must be why you hate the Blighted,” I said as we took our positions behind Kezo. “The liquid they excrete looks like glowing pea soup.”
“Excrete… I don’t like that word either.”
After obliterating the next batch of the Blighted, I volunteered to check the door.
There were still monsters inside, fewer than last time but more than enough to overwhelm us in an open area. I fished them out with [Poison Bottle Cast] and led them to my party mates. Pulling mobs was one of the roles of a tank, and I gladly fulfilled it. There was the added thrill of getting chased by monsters that could kill me with a couple of whacks.
As the Blighted thinned, we resumed our push to the door. “Thirty minutes on the clock,” I said. We tallied our loot. “Hundred seventy goops to go.”
“Uh-oh, time’s running out,” Megan said. “Are we going to make it?”
“We are,” Kezo said with conviction as we passed the circular stone door. “I’m confident we’ll get plenty more goop once we get deeper into the lab.”
Smaller groups of Blighted monsters harassed us while we traversed the sewer-like passage. Some actual sewers were cleaner than this. Megan complained the whole time, threatening to log out while Nitana teased her. I didn’t voice it, but I shared Megan’s sentiments.
Green goo dripped all over us. It would’ve been a nice consolation if we could collect it as [Toxic Goop], but the system didn’t allow it. Furthermore, the vine-covered floor was squishy and slimy, making it easy to fall, especially while fighting. It wasn’t regular vines—they were bloated and mutated, pulsing as glowing liquid flowed through them.
“We should just burn this whole place down,” Nitana said. Her tone had changed after she tripped and fell on the swollen tendrils. “Fuck, Herald’s quest. No offense, Herald.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find a way to destroy this area after we’re done with the quest.”
“And we might be done soon,” Kezo said.
Another circular door was at the end of the tunnel of disgustingness—a carnival attraction I wouldn’t dare enter if this was real life. Though much smaller than the previous one, it gave off the vibe that it hid something important. We couldn’t read the symbols on its surface, but it was clear something dangerous was behind it, like the magical equivalent of a radioactive sign.
I placed my hand on a cracked plate beside the door. It opened. I sighed in relief that we didn’t need to find more [Vilumen Crystal]. “Ladies first,” I said, gesturing for Megan to go in.
“No! That only works for humans.”
“Oh, such a big baby,” Nitana scoffed, trotting through the door. We followed her.
It was the boss area.
Divine bovine from the Andromeda Galaxy! I wasn’t looking at my teammates, but I assumed they already had their mouths wide open.
[Lvl 33|Mon Aleh, the Blighted Vinereaver] wrapped around a mad-scientistesque power generator spitting electricity like a science fair display. It wasn’t alone. Four more Blighted Vinereavers with levels in the mid-twenties, each with distinct names, were also present. The decaying and mutated plant monsters tangled among themselves; I couldn’t understand whose body was whose.
The big question was: Who the hell is naming them?
“We finally found them,” I said. “We were looking for one, and the game gave us five.” Maybe they were one giant boss monster with different parts to defeat?
“Like frigging really?” Nitana groaned. “Be careful what you wish for, I guess.”
Their skin wasn’t green like Zoar Elab and Moa Manot. A craggy and rough material mostly covered it, the texture of the charcoal skin of a Mardukryon’s upper body but shinier, picking up the green and blue glow in the room. It was as if someone dunked the vines in weird chocolate, and it dried.
Numerous eyes on the vines erratically twitched in their sockets while crying green tears. Dozens of mouths with razor teeth puked out the same liquid and materials I didn’t want to touch. Their vines also pierced the Mardukryon-sized vats filled with blue liquid that surrounded the machine in the center of the room.
“They are… turning the blue liquid into Toxic Goop,” I said.
“Like photosynthesis?” Megan guessed.
“Uh, I don’t think this is photosynthesis,” said Nitana. “There’s no sun. That’s the ‘photo’ part. It means light.”
“Nerd,” Megan whispered.
“What!”
“Their coating.” Kezo stepped forward for a closer look. The eyes of the Vinereavers snapped to look at him. “It looks similar to the body of the golem Jensen was fighting. That could be what gives them a reflect effect.”
“We’ll have to see how strong it is,” I said. Our party prepared for battle. The stray vines of the Vinereavers wriggled in the air as we cast our spells. Black flames covered Kezo. “Let’s start?” I asked him.
“Game time, team!” Kezo the Meteor hurtled at the mass of the Vinereavers, exploded…
…and died.
Kezo died. Not the Vinereavers.
Temple
Reflect Damage, the thing DPS people hate a lot. As for tanks, reflect builds can be good or bad, depending on how the game is balanced.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
