Chapter 93: Dungeons and Daggers

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Enjoy!~

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Sean had only hunted in a group once before, and that was only in the loosest of terms. It had been him and Estesia, with him acting as bait and Estesia doing her best to eliminate groups of wolves before they disemboweled him. It hadn’t been hard, exactly, but it wasn’t the best intro in the world into the world of collaborative killing.

This, though? Hunting with a group of four other people and a pretty good balance between support and damage dealing? It was a whole other thing. The enemies in the forest zone were mixed groups of some kind of huge spider and moving trees that hunted in packs called Barkbites. But they hadn’t been a serious danger, at all.

Spike used a spear, so he and Sean constituted the front line, bashing into groups of five or six enemies as they approached. This should have been fatal, given that the spiders were packed with what looked like pretty nasty venom and the trees were unreasonably tanky. Instead, Brendan was picking off the spiders one by one with his bow like a machine while Brady was hitting everything he missed with vision-based debuffs, foregoing direct damage dealing in favor of keeping nearly everything on the field slightly disoriented.

And Jason, against all odds, turned out to be terrifying. Sean had a little bit of stealth, built up through various titles and a very decent SAV score. Jason was a whole other thing. As Sean’s dagger kept various enemies busy, he’d appear from nowhere, materializing out of shadows to deal single, devastating blows to the backs of creatures. Sean would have thought that the spiders, being ambush predators themselves, would have been able to sense him.

Nope. They have no idea until he stabs them in the brainstem. Remind me not to fuck with Jason.

Soon, another group was down.

“Jason, you are truly terrifying,” Sean said, open-palm patting him on the shoulder as he did. “How in the hell were you so bad at hiding from me in the market that day? Were you faking?”

“Oh, that. No, I wasn’t faking.” Jason shook his head. “My stealth is only partially me hiding. It also comes with a bunch of minor buffs. The System considers it an attack, like laying a trap. So I can’t do it in town.”

“It’s a shame,” Spike said, pulling his spear out of the corpse of a tree. “We could probably figure out more about how the offworlders are operating if he could.”

“Anyway, moving on,” Brady said, impatient. “It’s about time for that contribution tracker, right? I want to see if I took the lead yet. It’s only a matter of time, guys. Only a matter of time.”

The system had been dropping informational messages listing each party member’s supposed rankings, using a quantification method it hadn’t made explicit yet. Brady was more or less obsessed with it, sure every time it popped that she would have risen to the top.

Party Contribution Tracker: Forest Dungeon

First Place: Sean

Second Place: Brady

Third Place: Justin

Fourth Place: Spike

Fifth Place: Brendan

“Hell yes. Rising on the charts,” Brady pumped her fist. “But why is Sean still up top? I swear I blinded every single enemy this round. I even got some hits in.”

“I wouldn’t complain as much if I were you,” the last-place Brendan said. “I’m not doing so good, probably because I’m just working as a distraction and that’s not what my class is. As for Sean, it’s probably that dagger.”

“Yeah,” Justin said, catching his breath still. His stealth abilities seemed to take a lot out of him. “I think those trees are supposed to be the hard bit here. That dagger is breaking the balance.”

Sean smiled and looked down at the Mystereamer. For all the upgrades he had dumped into it over the weeks he had it, it had always been janky in a way that held it back. The metal was a little better than raw scrap, and his class had to dump tons of points into it through each remodel. It had been just effective enough with its chaotic damage proc that it was justified as a part of his loadout.

Those days of mediocrity were done. The rule-breaking token had leeched every bit of the absurd build quality of the blacksmith’s journeyman piece into his shank, transforming it into something completely different. It still looked janky as hell, but where it had always had jagged edges, each protrusion was now sharpened to an absurd edge, essentially acting like tiny knives themselves.

The point of the knife had narrowed slightly, and the metal itself was a different color that resonated like a tuning fork when he flicked it. Really, he couldn’t explain why any of this should matter. The dagger was already able to pierce most things. Sean assumed that the stuff it couldn’t pierce before, like the armored snake’s scales, would still be outside of its capabilities.

The actual experience of using the dagger proved how little it mattered what Sean could and couldn’t explain. The dagger would slip into the trees, making the same size hole it always had, but he’d instinctively know the kind of damage it was doing was incomparable to what it had done before. It wasn’t just about the wound size. It was piercing straight through the damage reduction from the opponent’s VIT like tissue paper.

And that, of course, was before the procs came into the calculation. It wasn’t that the dagger’s sometimes-not-always random elemental damage was kicking in more often now. They were still coming in at about the frequency Sean expected them to. But each was much more powerful now, like whatever energy was leaking out in those strikes was being released through a wide-open nozzle.

I wonder if this is how it is for everyone else. You replace your knife with a better video-game-rules knife, and it just knifes better. I’ll take it, either way.

“It’s pretty good, I’ll admit it,” Sean said, hefting the knife’s improved weight and balance in his hand. “I lucked out. Although I had to go through some shit to get it, too, so it feels pretty even overall.”

The rest of the day was a blast. The others had all partied up in significant ways before, either with each other or adventurers from their own time periods. For them, it wasn’t that shocking of a change-up. For Sean, it was a revelation. Suddenly he didn’t have to hold up every single aspect of a fight. He could focus on doing things he was relatively good at, and count on other people to pick up the slack for him if he accidentally slipped up.

Finally, after dozens and dozens of mooks had fallen to the surprisingly good mechanics of their ad-hoc team, they found the boss of the area, peacefully milling about a glade at the dead center of the forest.

Mossy Golem

Centuries ago, the last robotic remnants of a once great empire found his way to this glade, his steel heart heavy with the devastation he had both seen and caused. At the end of all things, the automaton sat down for what he supposed would be the last time.

And then, slowly, he began to appreciate a new way of life. It took decades for the beauty and silence of the forest to worm its way through his combat-oriented programming, but he gradually began to appreciate the subtle sublimity of a herd of deer grazing, or a flock of birds settling down for the night.

As far as he’s concerned, you’ve been fucking it up.

The Mossy Golem is a master of multiple elements, durable as hell, and stronger than you. Most of his vital functions are decentralized, so don’t go hoping for a one-hit-kill. Otherwise, just pile on the damage and things should turn out okay.

Sean was relatively confident about attacking the mossy guardian of a forest when a relatively high percentage of his friends were in the monster hunting line of work. That fell away when the guardian noticed their presence, pulled itself up straight, and clomped towards them faster than Sean had imagined was possible for such a large monster.

“Get back! I’m going to debuff it,” Brady yelled, sending a focused beam of light straight at the thing’s glassy eyes. The golem didn’t slow down at all from it. “Damn, that didn’t work. It’s resisting it, or those eyes are fake in the first place. I’m not gonna be much use here, guys.”

“Me either!” Brendan yelled, as his conventional arrows plinked off the golem after causing little more than scratches. “I’ll be able to do some damage with my bigger shots, but I only have so many of those.”

Jason was already gone into whatever sneaky-shadow-realm he hid in, which left just Spike and Sean with untried abilities.

“You go high. I’ll go low. Trail me a little,” Spike said. Sean nodded. As they moved to meet the golem, Spike ducked off to the side, brought his spear down low, and slammed the shaft of it hard into the golem’s legs. The golem almost immediately sprawled forward, landing flat on its face and cutting a shallow furrow into the forest floor as it skidded.

Must be a skill. The physics don’t work otherwise. Sean leapt through the air, landing a heavy shot on the box-like back of the machine. He watched with satisfaction as the blade punched straight through the metal, and almost grinned when some kind of electrical elemental damage coursed outward from the wound.

He managed to get two more shots in before the golem recovered, flung its heavy arm at Sean, and sent him flying through the air. He had done some damage, but it was hard to say how much. The golem didn’t look much slowed down, at any rate. As he hit the ground and scrambled back to his feet, he saw Spike holding the golem back with rapid-fire spear strikes, none of which seemed to be doing much.

“Not enough!” Sean said. “Can you keep it still for a bit?”

“Maybe!” Spike yelled. “You have a plan?”

“Kind of!” Sean yelled, stowing the Mystereamer and pulling out the Heavy Heart. A storm of arrows suddenly clanked into the metal body of the golem, distracting it as it flailed ineffectively to try and block them.

As Spike and Brendan hit the golem with endless strikes that seemed ineffective besides slowing it down, Sean charged up the Heavy Heart, spinning it through the air at its full extension. At his current strength and speed, it didn’t take long in actual seconds to get it up to full force. Still, every second was one that Spike and Brendan had to keep the golem at bay, and it wasn’t like it was slow, either.

By the time he had his strike ready to go, Spike had taken several big shots and was visually staggering. There was no time to spare.

“Get back!” Sean yelled, gratified to see Spike had some kind of rapid withdrawal skill that let him get out of the golem’s punching range without much trouble. He stepped forward into range himself, putting all the force he could into the chain as the business end of the Heavy Heart swooshed at the robot’s head.

At the last second, the robot jumped backwards, getting enough height off the leap that the Heavy Heart caught it in the chest instead of its head. The resulting collision was still loud and incredibly heavy, scaring birds all through the forest and denting in the robot’s chest so far that the head of the flail actually got caught in the metal.

“Nice!” Brady said, still shooting what beams of damage-dealing light she could at the golem. “Oh, shit.”

Brady’s eyes widened as the golem reached, caught the chain in its hand, and yanked.