Chapter 113 – The day after, yet still the same day [Monday 2/7]

On normal days, John farmed for about four hours, giving him enough time to clear waves one through four about two times. On the days he had spent preparing for the Bloodfallen he had spent about ten hours grinding, clearing the waves about five times. Yesterday, he had grinded for 17 hours, the goal being to abuse Gamer’s Body and only take the necessary amount of sleep and food.

That had brought him one level at least. It was a horribly inefficient use of his time, the Waves 1-3 barely got him any EXP (the items sold for good money at least). Although the fourth Wave was somewhat okay, the only really worthwhile part was the boss. After a day of this, he was confident enough in the party dynamic that, even without Rave around, they would venture deeper. It was time to put that claim that he would be pulled out when he was about to die to the test.

John stood in a black void. It was a constricting feeling, standing in this space where the only orientation was the door he stepped from. Luckily, he didn’t have to stay there for too long. The Create I.D. Monster Table opened and he chose the Street Elementals. It was time to grind through the first four waves again.

The Asphalt Golem hit the streets and with that he had earned himself the tiniest of breaks as well as another level up. About one and a half hours was what he needed to get to this point. Sniping all the crows from the sky and getting all the boars took time. He was getting more proficient at it. It wasn’t difficult work, just arduous. Having the elementals with him was helpful, without a doubt, and Aclysia always pulled her weight.

Between two Waves, he had about one minute to leave the Instant Dungeon or prepare. This time around he used the minute to spend his Stat Points. He had 10 of them right now and all of his interest lied with his combat related Stats right now so Libido and Charisma were right out of the window. He had no desire to increase either Agility or Endurance right now, seldom making use of them, and Wisdom was still high enough as is. So, it was either Strength or Intellect. Strength because he wanted to have the 25 bonuses covered and Intellect because he used Mana for pretty much everything. The reason for Strength he had before, to stop being a human stick, was shifted now that he had to consider how to compete with Thana.

The timer slowly ticked down at the back of his head, urging him to make a call before the wave started. ‘Best to go for Int 100 first,’ he finally decided and raised his Intellect to 85. A few seconds later Wave 5 began. The flapping of plastic wings and Building Boars trampling down the streets announced the resumption of combat.

Gaia was making use of the good old developer trick of spawning enemies where he simply couldn’t see them. At least that was the case from his human perspective. With the verdin covering most of the area from above, Gaia had gotten lazy and let him see the enemies just popping into existence two streets away.

The other Possession he used on the earth golem he always created as part of the strategy to defeat the Asphalt Golem. The Gamer had considered just creating two golems. While that could have been useful, their punching power wasn’t actually that impressive. Possession was a utility Skill more than a combat one, even if John abused it that way. In the end, the eyes in the sky were just worth more than a lumbering giant of dirt.

Besides, his party was stable enough as it was. Without Rave, they were missing a bit of firepower but not enough to make things look dire. Aclysia and Gnome were still tanky enough to keep enemies at bay, Aclysia confronting the bulk of them and keeping them occupied with that stupidly big Cleaver of hers. She whirled that thing around like a light wooden staff. Meanwhile, Gnome took the few enemies that slipped through and slowly ground them down. Undine was still on defensive duty, protecting John from the claws of the diving Scrap Crows. The few of them that managed to actually execute an unobstructed dive, that was. Sylph and Salamander patrolled the skies as two thin lines of light green and fiery red. John supported the whole manoeuvre by using his improvised golem to squash weakened Building Boars, too slow to dodge, under his giant feet and occasionally shooting a Scrap Crow with Mana Ray. Usually it proved more effective if he handed MP to Sylph or Salamander though.

His battle plan for the waves was simple: Get air superiority, then grind down the Building Boars. It had proven well in the past and even though the enemies were now of superior level to him it was still proving good enough. The occasional level 45 enemy was a bit of a problem but anything below was easily solo-able by each and every one of his party members. He kept a constant eye on his mana, unwilling to enter an unknown boss fight with less than half. That wariness reduced the speed at which they finally got the skies clear, due to a lack of strong AoE effects. He considered that to be a worthwhile drawback.

Finally, enemies stopped spawning so now all John had to get through was cleaning up the remaining enemies. ‘Watch out, Master!’ A sudden warning came to his mind. Two Building Boars broke through the frontline, both level 45.

This had the potential to get very ugly. The first one was intercepted by Gnome but the second one trampled right around her. The concrete porcupine charged at John. Undine tried to get in the way but her slime body was not particularly great at stopping big things in full motion, she was more specialized in small to middle size projectiles, and so the Building Boar just ignored her and rammed straight into John’s Mana Shield.

The skill translated the 80 damage he would have taken into mana. At the current level of the skill (23) every one point of damage he would take lost him 4,1 Mana. This made the skill pretty terrible but he always kept it toggled because it would be 1 for 1 eventually, which would be really good.

Paying for the greatness of the future was costly. 329 MP costly, decreasing his carefully cultivated cushion to a mere 6. His preparations were now officially in shambles. Only after the Building Boar, confused by hitting its head on an invisible wall, was cleaved apart by Aclysia did John realize how bad the timing was.

Every single antenna in the city suddenly sent a bolt of electricity towards the sky. John cursed his luck, ‘Did it have to be that specific boar?!’

The bolts converged into an electrical sphere that slowly sunk to the ground about thirty metres in front of John. He already knew that the bosses were invulnerable in their spawning phase so he just watched as the boss formed.

The name was very literal in this case. The form the sphere eventually took was of a tall man, made out of yellow energy. The surface moved around like a mixture of sound waves and electrical current, taking the rough shape of an expensive suit.

The boss adjusted its crackling tie with both hands, the left of which held a microphone. He raised it to the literal radio head afterwards. It was an old-timey kind of device. Single speaker, short antenna, circling around as if searching for a signal. It slotted into a crooked position, then the speaker produced a loud gong sound.

 “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the main event!” John could not believe what he was seeing, much less what he was hearing. Every single piece of metal in the copy of Springfield served as a miniature audio relay. “Llllleeeeet’s get ready to RUUUUUUUMBLLLEEE!” 

Half a dozen wrestlers in speedos appeared out of nowhere and started to run towards John at full speed. Radio Head was dancing like Elvis in the background. “What the fuck is going on?” John shouted as he dodged the first muscly dude that jumped straight at him. Once the wrestler hid the ground it vanished. The next one tried to hit Aclysia, but was quickly cut apart, his body vanishing just like the first. The other four went for each of the elemental girls, who in turn took care of them by getting out of range or punching them.

“Nice!” Radio Head commented, “How about this, baby?” He performed another perfect copy of a song, “Caviar and Cigarettes, well versed in etiquette, Extraordinarily nice.” His voice switched into the chorus and from his microphone small energy bolts darted all over the place, “She’s a killer Queen,”

A lady jumped at John and tried to stab him with a dagger. Gnome blocked for him, giving Aclysia the space she needed to engage the Radio Head. “Gunpowder.” a small explosion ripped apart the street between them. Aclysia curved around the crater, unsure what else might lie in the explosion site. “Gelatine.” Gummy bears started raining, a nice surprise amongst the madness. “Dynamite with a laser beam.” The gummy bears turned into sticks of explosives which then exploded (big shocker) into laser beams (actual big shocker) none of which hit John. Which was a good thing because, judging by the way they cut into the buildings they were guaranteed to blow his mind.

“Love is a burning thing,” Radio Head started a new song, “and it makes a fiery ring.”

Around John appeared a ring of fire that gradually closed in on him. With Salamander and Undine around, fire was the least of his worries though. They made a path for him to quickly run outside. Radio Head recognized his mistake and changed yet again.

“Soooomewheeeere,” He sang in a soft voice and John was catapulted into the air as he saw Aclysia finally reach the boss. He was above a rainbow and while that was beautiful and all of that he needed a landing strategy.

‘SYLPH!’ he thought desperately.

“Yeah, hey, hello, moin, Salut, Bonjour.” Sylph easily caught up to him and started babbling, “What other greetings are there? Ah, whatever, hey, John, Johny, John Walker, John-Tron. UH-UH, can I call you John-Tron? I have a question, see, I was given separation from the whole air plane like, ehm,” she quietly counted on her tiny fingers, “One, two, three, four, FOUR days ago and I don’t get any of these references could you…Oh geez you are moving pretty fast now that we are moving downwards, is something wrong? Should I…”

“PLEASE SLOW MY FALL!” John screamed in a panic.

Sylph giggled, “Why didn’t you just say so, just give me a bit of mana and TADAA!” About two metres off the ground a strong wind blew into his face, slowing him down enough to make a running landing.

Once stationary, he turned around. He had landed not far away from the fight. Aclysia had engaged Radio Head in a melee, which the boss absolutely didn’t like apparently. He kept trying to raise his microphone to his speaker, but kept having to prioritize dodging. Unfortunate that John was out of Mana again, otherwise he might have been of some help.

“Keep him from singing!” John instructed Sylph and his other Elementals as he kept his distance and looked for a place from which he could fire his Mana Ray without running into the danger of hitting his allies. He found a tall building nearby and hurried inside. Once on the roof, he pointed his palm at the nimbly dodging Radio Head, the metal handrail he was leaning against vibrating as they relayed what the boss was saying.

“Today’s Lotto Numbers are 77-3-2-69-7 and 32, if you have won, my congratulations. Back to the music.” A change went through the enemy. Accompanied by bad spaceship ‘Pew Pew’ sounds, its body turned from yellow to blue and as it dodged Aclysia once again, it raised its microphone. “I’m blue, da ba dee da ba die,” at the last word Radio Head conjured a lance that looked like the Eiffel tower and thrust it at Aclysia. This stopped the constant dodging for a moment, meaning that the monster got hit by all the elemental girls. The energy that made up its body distorted for a moment. However, the attack also connected and it was terrible, reducing Aclysia’s health to little more than half.

John knew that song, as most who hung around the internet (or reality, really) did so he knew that wasn’t the last attack. “Da ba dee da ba die!” the Eiffel lance appeared a second time, as predicted. It moved at such absolute speed that Aclysia could not hope to dodge. Her health was reduced to a mere sliver, surviving only thanks to her insane HP Regeneration.

While John would be taken up by Fateweaving and his elementals could just be resummoned, Aclysia’s death was likely to be final. One more strike and he would lose her too.

There was no was no way she would regain health quickly enough to survive a third strike, but the Radio Head also looked hurt. His skin looked like a TV without signal, black and white dots dancing erratically over the otherwise blue surface, and his voice had a certain distortion to it.

The boss was bent on not going down alone and if he got a third attack in he wouldn’t. John however had also recognized a pattern in his movements. “Da ba dee,“ Radio Head sung as it dodged. Then the boss monster planted its foot on the ground, ready to strike, “da ba di-“

At the last syllable, Radio Head was struck by a Mana Ray John had started charging the instant his mana allowed him to. The attack struck just in time to stop the boss from hitting Aclysia a third time. The radio burst apart, turning into disappearing particles, which then cascaded into the rest of the boss dissolving.

He put the points into Intellect and left the Instant Dungeon. He gave himself a moment to breathe, for resources to top off, then went straight back in. Now he could start each grinding session at a more efficient point. ‘Wonderful,’ he thought, as the combat began once again.