Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

Chapter 45: Shoals

When you are strong, some things became easy, as what happened in the battle against the Giant Red Crab. This boss can be considered easy for players that had changed classes and for elite players, it is easier, even in the hard mode.

In this battle, Ye Yan didn't deal much more damage than the others because this is the first time he battles a boss underwater and his weapon isn't the best choice for this boss. It was like hitting a rock with a kitchen knife. The fan is an all-around weapon that can be used to attack and defended but its damage comes from the slashes using the sharp blades hidden in the fan stem.

Because of this, Ye Yan started to make a list of things he needs. The first item is a new space bag and the second, is new weapons for different situations, like thrust and smash, and elemental weapons.

But now, Ye Yan only has his fan to attack and he will have to make do with it.

The worse part of the fight with the Giant Red Crab was not the low damage he was inflicting on the boss but the fact that while they were fighting, My Girl was dancing and imitating a mermaid. He was dancing, shaking his hips, and throwing kisses. Sometimes, the poses looked like he would do a magical girl transformation. The visual impact of the scene was too heavy for anyone to stand. Ye Yan received critical damage with stagger effect from it.

The other party members are already used to it but it is the first time Ye Yan has met a person like that. My Girl is too crazy for someone like him to stand. Ye Yan likes to fight and study and his circle of friends is restricted. The more strange person he knew in the past was He Ling and he is only a rich playboy, no more than this.

The girls of his party are not normal either, but the strangeness is in the fact that they chose characters that don't suit them, at least, it is what Ye Yan thinks. But My Girl is different. He is a man! My Girl is a man that behaved more coquettish than any woman that he has ever seen in his life, even in movies. If he didn't know My Girl is a man, those things would be a little less shocking but everything put together became too scary for Ye Yan.

Now, My Girl is a part of this party and he has to learn how to live with it. But while he didn't adapt to it, his eyes will keep burning every time he sees such a scene.

After the boss died, they started to collect the loot on the ground. There were just miscellaneous items that can be used as materials for creating weapons and equipment.

The best weapon in the game is the personalized ones that are crafted by forges, NPCs or players. Using one silver weapon as the base, for example, a forge can craft a gold weapon using enough materials. Or they can forge weapons from zero, using only materials. Everything depends on the level and creativity of the forges.

Players that are real-life forges will have an advantage while forging because of their experience. To forge each weapon, the forgers take a long time, from hours to days, and their experience increases according to their success rate. They receive little experience when it is unsuccessful.

Second Life, different from other games, has classes specialized in crafting items and some other professions.

There are classes for players that want to adventure in the world which begins as fighter, archer, thief, and swordsman. Some classes are focused on craft or other professions as Blacksmith, Alchemist, Cooker, Lawyer, and others. And there are classes that can do both, as doctors, mages, Devil's Advocate (Dark Faction), and merchants.

The players that don't want to fight monsters would go to the Crafters' Guild, Trades' Guild, or any other guild specific of a class or profession, as soon as they enter the game to start learning the skills necessary for the class they chose.

After they collected everything, they swam to the next area of the mini-dungeon.

In this area, there are shoals of Dwarf pufferfish[1]. They are 10 inches long (~25cm) and attack together.

The problem of this part of the mini-dungeon is not in the power of the monsters but in their quantity.

If they could use lightning spells it would be easy but they can't, because if the mage uses it underwater without any skills to help the party members, the mage would die before finishing casting the spell.

Only electric property weapons could do more damage to them but no one in the city has got their hands on one yet.

The party has to clear all the Dwarf pufferfishes for the boss to appear, so they went to the shoal nearer them and started the fight.

Ashardalon went first. He used his shield to smash the pufferfishes, starting the fight. But because they were swimming underwater, he couldn't smash them to the seafloor, so the damage was halved.

Ashardalon started to use his two-hand Large Bronze Shield as if it was a giant flyswatter. He is moving it in a frenzy, like a child playing Hulk smash everything using a hardcover book half its size.

The pufferfishes soon started to inflate, they became a kind of balloon with a fishtail that is five times bigger than their original size. When they have done it, their physical resistance increased, because now, they have an airbag to cushion the impact.

This time, the other members of the team waited for Ashardalon to stabilize the agro before acting because even if their attack power is low, the high quantity can stun the players, making them unable to move for a few seconds.

After a few seconds, Ashardalon signaled them to attack and they started to use their skills and spells.

Ye Yan didn't wait together with the others. He helped Ashardalon tank some monsters but Ye Yan is not as effective as him when tanking many monsters at the same time.

That's the difference between a full tank and a hybrid build. Ye Yan can use his martial prowess to help him lessen the gap between his character and a full tank or a full attack build, but there are things that even his ability can't help and this is one of these cases.

Ye Yan normally uses his fighting abilities to help him deflect the monster's attackers, needing to dodge and defend less, but do this in a fight against a big amount of monsters is totally impossible. He has only four limbs after all, and even if he uses his bottom to help as some goalkeeper has done in certain soccer matches, it doesn't increase the efficiency by much.

Ye Yan used the fan on his right hand to make sushi of pufferfish and punched the fish balloons with his left hand. Every time his punches turn out to be critical hits, he looked like the hairy version of the one-punch man, killing the monster with only one punch.

My Girl was supporting them from behind. But, sadly, the shemale can't do anything without attracting attention to himself. He is using his skills and spells doing a lot of different poses that looked like he was dancing, imitating magical girls when she attacks.

And to think that My Girl wants to be a cleric when they turn level 20 is a little too much. He will taint the sacredness of a cleric class.

My Girl will probably be the only cleric in the game that would be more like a striper than someone with holy abilities.

At moments like this, Ye Yan feels relieved that players can't speak underwater at this stage of the game, or not only his eyes will burn to see such a scene, but his ears would be pierced by the nonsense words of My Girl.

Ye Yan is afraid about when My Girl and Spell Bound get together at the same party. He only prays that he can keep his sanity in the future.

Ye Yan is very serious sometimes and is not used to such plays. This is a new experience for him and he is having a hard time adjusting to it.

Harpy is not far from them and is the one that is doing the most damage among them. She can one-hit the pufferfishes with each arrow. The piercing power of the arrows didn't have their damage reduced after the Dwarf Pufferfishes became ballon-like fishes.

And Hello Kitty, the only normal girl of both parties, is casting her spells from a distance, killing one monster with every spell.

They attacked the monster in this pattern, again and again, until they cleared all the area.

When they killed the last Dwarf Pufferfish, they saw a big Goblin Shark coming in their direction. It is the uglier shark they have ever seen in their lives. On TV, the sharks looked much better than this one.

As the Goblin Shark approach them, they entered formation and got ready for battle.

...

[1] Dwarf pufferfish is a freshwater fish and its maximum documented size is 3.5 cm (1.4 in), making it one of the smallest pufferfish in the world. Different from the game, they are not found in saltwater. They can be found in southern Karnataka in Southwest India. When they inflate, they look like a balloon, but please don't use it as such because it is cruelty against animals. This author had done such a thing as a child when I didn't understand things well, playing with pufferfishes, throwing them to my friends.