Collide Gamer

Chapter 128 – A Tier 2 Elemental [Monday 7/7]

John decided that the last part of Monday was to be used to test Gnome’s new capabilities. As a new and improved Tier 2 Elemental he expected notable changes beyond the obvious physical ones. From what he could gather her Stats were not all that impressive from a mathematical standpoint, she had the standardized 5 times her level and then an extra of 10 points for some reason, most of which had gone into her newly awakened Libido. On the surface she wasn’t that strong but Observe had been proven to be more of a surface tool. Chances were that there was something to her that just wasn’t reflected in Stats alone.

Magoi was once again missing this morning and John made a mental note to check on him after he completed at least one dungeon. Between the question of what Gnome could do now that she was such a cutie and what Magoi was up to now the former was simply more interesting to him. So, he stepped into a gate and looked at the Monster Spawn Table.

‘To test Gnome a dungeon with actual earth around would be the best,’ John thought, ‘I have not tried the three new ones yet and I think now is not the best time to start. I am not fighting that Sporehost again. Even with my improved health pool two or three of its Sporelings would just kill me and the strategy revolves around it using that tongue thing, which it might not even do. The Skaven don’t have a lot of earth around, but she is a Stone Elemental now so maybe she can work with the walls? Better test it in a safe environment. Wall Shadows are also out due to their nature so it comes down to Orcs or City Elementals.’

The Orcs spawned in a tribal village with houses of crudely worked wood in a giant step so there was enough earth for Gnome to use. City Elementals on the other hand were a well-known foe, at the very least for the fifth Wave John didn’t lean in either direction so taking this long for the decision was stupid. He decided to put it up for a coin toss and be done with it.

Pulling a single dime from his inventory—it conveniently broke up the money he had into whatever size he wanted physically—he threw it up into the air and caught it in his left hand, slamming it on the back of his right before he could look at it. “Okay, heads means Orcs, tails means City Elementals,” he declared before raising his hand. It showed tails and so the decision was made. John opened the dungeon and rolled his shoulders. After a week of progress, he expected this to be easy.

“Da ba dee, da ba DIE!” Radio Head sang and hit Aclysia in the chest with the Eiffel Tower shaped spear. Aclysia took it with minimal flinching. Against John’s request Aclysia had asked to take at least one of these attacks in order to judge how much she had improved. John understood on a fundamental level but would have been much happier if she had just taken the Stats at face value instead of getting herself hurt.

The last time Radio Head had struck her with that attack it had done a little less than half her HP. Since then, Aclysia had raised her maximum HP by more than double and upgraded from Titanium as her main material to the magical Entherium. The attack still did about a quarter of her total HP instantly, but that was merely concerning, not threatening. In terms of numbers, before the attack had dealt about 110 damage, now it was closer to 60, a number which Aclysia could regenerate within 12 seconds.

In other words: Radio Head no longer provided a challenge. He wasn’t exactly easy but the fact that John had to do nothing in order to turn the tide of battle spoke volumes about their progression, both from a level standpoint and from their teamwork. Radio Head dissipated and left John counting down to the next wave.

“Good job everyone,” he made a short speech, “Now, I want to see what Gnome can do now so she is off protective duty for a bit, everyone else please fill her shoes. Once we have seen it our party will resume the regular formation.” Everyone around made their agreement known and then the new wave started with the transitioning that changed the city.

The night sky, clear and beautiful, got rather suddenly covered by a thin cloud cover that swallowed the stars, only the light of the moon shining through, offering the slightest bit of pale, natural light. The lamp posts all around flickered into activity as a soft rain set in, setting the mood of a depressing city night. The lights flickered again, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, and suddenly there stood an enemy in the light cone.

It was a greyish beast, this particular one was a light grey but John made out several other ones with different tones spawning underneath other lamps. It had four limbs, two arms and no legs, its face was located on the chest and looked like the sad mask often associated with theatre. Comparing its limbs to a human would have only been somewhat correct. The legs were like stilts, their ends needle thin and their arms wobbling like a wet piece of cardboard. All in all these things looked more sad than terrifying, and they had a name that fit that description perfectly.

Multiple things: First off, he was not okay with the shortage of loot these days. Was Gaia being lazy? Was it just a theme of the floors 6-10?  Whatever it was, it made levelling Aclysia harder so that Watch of Sadness better drop a lot, otherwise he would have to farm Wave 5 over and over again to keep her up to his level. Second, he was actually surprised that Gaia resisted making a bad pun of these. With how his life had been going he had expected them to be insects, Depress-Ants or something. He was not complaining about it, just noticing it. “Gnome, go ahead,” he instructed and watched Gnome do a little ritual in response.

“Okay, okay, I can do this!” Gnome muttered to herself, while pumping her fists up and down in a self-motivating way, “Ey, ey, Oh!”

“What are you doing?” Sylph wanted to know, causing Gnome, who apparently acted under the illusion that nobody had seen or heard her, to try and swat her sister with a wild flailing of her hands, while also looking decisively away from Sylph, making the whole motion fairly useless.

“Y-you did not hear a thing!” she decided for the Wind Elemental.

“Pretty sure I did!” Sylph laughed and easily dodged the hand, even as a Tier 1 Elemental Sylph was still more agile than anyone else in the group.

“Noooo,” Gnome cried, continuing to miss Sylph who was loudly giggling through the whole thing.

“Ehm, Sylph, Gnome?” John said with a worried look at the moving Depressants, the monsters squatted down, their bodies pulling together like a coil. “GNOME!” he then shouted to get her attention as the Depressants sprinted towards them with impressive speed. He failed, Sylph's laughter was too loud and Gnome was so embarrassed she did not hear a thing.

“STOP LAUGHING!” Gnome stomped, the echo of her foot on the asphalt, so she hoped, would drown out her sister's incessant laughing. Instead, it broke open the asphalt.

“Wow, wha, whui, wudeldi, wadeldi, WOAH!” Sylph made an arrangement of stupid noises as she dodged spikes of rock growing out of the cracks and then shouted in actual surprise as she needed to use all her speed to dodge an assaulting Depressant that had suddenly appeared behind her. The monster missed her narrowly and got hit by a spike meant for Sylph a moment later.

John watched the whole scene, baffled. Gnome had killed one of the enemies by pure accident. The Rock Elemental looked up at the new landscape she had just created. “Uhm, uh, sorry?” she asked as Sylph returned to hide behind John.

“Gnome is scary strong now! I don’t like it!” Sylph complained, “I also want to be scary strong! No wait, can I be cute strong instead?”

John himself needed to double-check his mana, it was still full. “Can you do that again?” John asked with a look at the destruction. In a cone in front of her, about ten metres in length, the street was just gone and replaced by an arrangement of brown rock spikes that had torn apart the asphalt with ease.

“I-I can try,” Gnome promised and moved her hand in a summoning gesture of epic proportions. Only a single spike rose this time.

John deduced that Gnome now had mana of her own. It wasn’t a lot but it allowed her to act more independently, which was good, and her destructive capabilities evidently had also risen. Breaking the asphalt in order to get to the earth had always been a bit of a mana heavy part of the City Elemental dungeons and now that was, at least in part, taken care of. John shared his idea with the group and everyone seemed to be in agreement. Even with the conscious confirmation, the realization that she could now cast on her own did not quite settle into Gnome’s mind yet.

“Okay, we will slowly take this wave apart, Gnome try getting used to your new powers while protecting me, see if you can do some other things than spikes. If you have the mana to spare, see if you can take distant enemies out,” he continued giving her a long list of possible applications for her new abilities. He was 90% sure that only half of it stuck as Gnome’s head started spinning in confusion somewhere through the conversation. It didn’t help that they had to deal with enemies at the side too.

Although the Depressants were fast and the lashes of their floppy arms packed quite a punch they were not half as concerning as the Sporeling+Treant team. The Forest Elemental dungeon was really hard compared to this, although maybe the two levels John had gained also played into this. Each of his levels meant a level for four other members of his party, as well as a potential one for Aclysia. Or in other words: He was level 50, the enemies he fought right now were level 46-50, they were not that hard. Generally speaking, a Tier at his level was easy, a Tier one above his level was challenging. He hadn’t attempted a Tier two or more above his current bracket, but he did get the feeling that would be suicide.

The Depressants spawned at a constant rate, assuring they were always fighting between three and five. If he was susceptible to being ground down that might have been a problem but his build was really good for prolonged engagements thanks to his high Wisdom.

Gnome slowly but surely changed the landscape to their advantage with her own mana, allowing John to put more into Salamander, whose offensive power was still superior even though the occasional earth spike Gnome could summon around her was a good addition of burst damage to Salamanders streams of fire.

By the end of the Wave John stood upon a small fortress. Gnome had raised the ground and then fortified it with walls, spikes and other hindrances, all of which John had commissioned her to do. This was, without a doubt, absolutely unfair to their enemies.

John was standing on a fortified hill, protected by Gnome and Undine, while having two aerial attackers and Aclysia run rampant outside and keeping track of all that thanks to his Bee overhead. Dictating the terms of engagements like this was exactly what the Gamer liked. No uncertainty, just careful handling of resources.

The lamps bent and now shone towards the sky, waving around for a bit before focusing all on one point: the moon. The clouds above opened in a circle just big enough for the celestial body to shine through and, despite it breaking all known laws of physics, the moon reflected the street lights’ glow and created a path of light down to earth that contrasted so heavily with the night that John almost mistook it for being a physical thing.

Slowly, a being descended. It looked pretty much just like the Depressants but inverted in every aspect. Instead of a shade of grey it was blindingly white, the mask on its chest was cheerful of expression and the way it hovered gave it an air of enthusiasm and energy.

Was there some kind of moral hidden inside the fact that the pharmaceutical named character dropped the most money he had ever seen? Was that a goddamn Futurama reference? Two questions John had no time to ask himself as a much more urgent one got answered.

“What stars?” he mumbled before a glorious shining orb of silver tore the sky apart and crashed five metres away from him into the fortifications. The shockwave sent him flying, he gave mana to Sylph in order to make his impact as soft as possible. She reacted in time and so, instead of crashing on his side, he made a very unnatural somersault and landed on his feet.

A lesson in modern warfare: basic fortresses are not useful against aerial bombardment. The Anti-Depressant was still inside its spawn point, its floppy arms raised above its head, the blunt ends connecting in a big O. Stars fell all over the city. None of them were aimed at John but the things just kept falling and that was enough cause for concern as it ripped apart the buildings like they were made out of paper. Unlike paper though, the highly accelerated debris was actually deadly, so John did his best to stay on the move and somewhere safe.

“We need to end this fight ASAP!” he shouted both aloud and in his mind, “Everyone attack the Anti-Depressant!”

Aclysia was the first to heed the call, closely followed up by Sylph, who caught up to her. Aclysia, wielding the Cleaver of Streets, jumped and did a spin in the air that ended with her blade crashing right into the being’s side. It sank only the slightest bit into the Anti-Depressant’s body, Aclysia’s momentum coming to a very abrupt halt. Then she was smacked over the head, taking 40 points of damage and throwing her to the ground. The Anti-Depressant didn’t chase at all and Sylph now started to shower it in small but frequent attacks.

‘Is this one of those bosses that are rooted?’ John wondered and stopped running. Even when Salamander arrived and helped Gnome in a combined assault all the Anti-Depressant did was keep flailing its arms and rotate on the spot. Aclysia re-joined the fray, then Undine and finally Gnome partook in the tussle. The thing was showered in attacks and John, always an eye in the sky (literally, the Bee had broken through the cloud and now he could spot where the next stars would fall) threw in some Mana Rays for good measure.

As it turned out: just like John had bosses he was bad against, this boss was extremely bad against him. The stars were impressive but so random they weren’t a reliable threat and the melee attacks it did were too slow to hit Sylph (although Salamander got smacked twice and had to retreat) and too shallow to be of major concern to Aclysia. So, as long as John kept dodging the stars, he could just grind the boss down. Which is exactly what he did.

The fight was over after ten minutes of constant hitting. John smiled, that was a boss he could grind out for the day with ease. Wave 7 here he came!