Chapter 36

Earth
Algonquin Park Dungeon, Ontario
August 17, 2019
09:23 EDT

Ben shrugged when I looked over to him. “It’s a common boss when dealing with skeletons.”

“Well, we’re going to have to come up with something to deal with them,” I said, turning my attention back to the four bosses.

“It should be a lot easier with you in your dragonkin form, or your Seotross form, for that matter. You should be free to shift into either of those forms now that we’re alone,” Anja said.

“True. If I switch to my Seotross form, then I can probably deal with the warrior and archer quickly, but that would just allow the priest to resurrect them. Any way we do this the priest needs to die first.”

“I can help with that. My fire elemental can probably keep the warrior or the archer busy, but we’ll need someone to deal with the mage. It’s a fire mage, so unfortunately I can’t do much. I can throw some Chaos Bolts its way to drain its mana, but that’s about it.”

“Nah, I want you to help with the priest. Mace, you think you can deal with the mage while the rest of us deal with the priest?”

“As long as it doesn’t levitate out of range, definitely,” he answered. “What about the archer though? It’s going to be peppering us with arrows.”

“Let it,” I said, turning around. “Ladies, make sure you keep an eye on it if it focuses on either of you. Anja, you can probably keep one of the other skeletons between you and the archer, while you’ll have to be more proactive, Sonja.”

Sonja nodded. “Would have been nice if all of us had acquired Mana Shield. I think I can handle it, though.”

“Okay, lemme shift to my Seotross form and then we’ll get going.”

Everyone readied themselves while I shifted, and I did the same as soon as the process was done. Unfortunately the larger versions of my collapsible weapons weren’t ready, so I had to make due with the crystalline versions Abi made up for me. I didn’t bother with the shields, instead opting to go with four swords which would allow me to deal the maximum amount of damage. Besides, Mana Shield would keep me safe enough, even with my Intellect being significantly lowered in this form.

[Ready to go?] I asked.

[Hell yeah, ] Mason said. [Sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get started on the next dungeon.]

I chuckled, which sounded odd in this form. [Alright, let’s get going. Start summoning your fire elemental, Ben. When it’s almost done, we’ll go in.]

[Alright. It takes around thirty seconds to cast.]

I hadn’t seen him cast it the first time, so I was curious to see how it went. It seemed much more elaborate than Raise Skeletal Warrior, with the end of his staff glowing red and a small ember appearing in his other hand. I could see him saying something, but it was too quiet to make out. As the seconds went by, the ember steadily grew until it was nearly the same size as the elemental we had seen earlier.

[Go!] he said as his staff grew brighter.

I didn’t wait to see the end, instead turning around and running toward the Skeletal Priest. My long strides got me within range to use Blink very quickly, and I appeared behind the priest. It was a half a second too late, however. I immediately swung with two of my swords, but they connected with a shimmering white barrier instead of the priest itself.

The priest’s staff glowed a few times, but I didn’t pay attention to it. I continued my assault, alternating attacks whenever I estimated they were off cooldown, while getting some help from the twins. I could see Mason fighting the Skeletal Mage, which had erected its own barrier to keep itself safe. Suddenly the room got a bit darker.

[Umm, guys? My fire elemental just disappeared!]

[What?! How?!] I sent.

[I think it was banished! The warrior wasn’t dealing any damage to it, but it was keeping it busy. Now it’s going after Sonja!]

True enough, I looked over and saw the mounted warrior galloping towards her, quickly closing the distance.

[Don’t worry about me!] she sent as she shot an arrow at the horse’s feet and then turned into lightning immediately after. She appeared far away from the warrior and continued firing off arrows at the priest, all while the warrior was held in place by Tethering Shot.

I really thought the priest’s barrier would have dropped by now, but it was taking strike after strike without any issue. There were arrows, ice shards, fireballs and chaos bolts regularly contacting the barrier, along with my rapid sword strikes, but it still held strong. Any other creature we had come across would’ve run out of mana ten times over by now.

The priest’s staff continued to glow briefly every ten seconds or so, and I just knew that it had something to do with the shield still being active. None of the other bosses were hurt, so I knew it couldn’t be healing them, and nor was it doing any damage to with those casts. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what it was doing, and it popped into my head a moment later.

I immediately used Blink to appear beside the archer who was firing off arrows without a care in the world. I dropped one of my swords and used my free hand to pick up the archer and launch it at a nearby wall. It impacted a moment later, and the bones that made up its body went flying in all directions. With it out of the fight for the moment, I used Blink to appear beside the skeletal warrior and did the same thing.

I didn’t stand around to watch this time, Blinking over and picking up my sword before Blinking again and appearing beside the mage to help Mason. It’s shield fell after nearly ten seconds of our combined assault, allowing us to quickly dispatch it. I turned back to the priest and saw that it’s staff was glowing constantly now, so I ran over and rejoined the attack with Mason right behind me.

With the five of us peppering it, its shield fell before it could finish its cast, and I swung two of my swords down in an overhead chop. The dual strike neatly bisected it and cleaved through the horse below it as well. I thought we had killed it before its cast had gone off, but an arrow flew past me, impacting Ben’s Mana Shield while a fireball impacted Mason’s.

The warrior had been resurrected, and was nearly upon us when I turned around. I Blinked forward a few feet and waited for it to get close. It was running right at me, its sword at the ready, but I calmly sidestepped its charge and cleaved through it’s steed’s legs, sending crashing to the floor.

Knowing my friends could handle it, I closed the distance and quickly dealt with the archer, making sure to use Siphoning Strike to increase its damage before turning towards the mage. It’s shield was back up, but it fell a few seconds after Mason turned his attention to it. I Blinked to help them out, but Sonja finished it off with an arrow before my attack connected.

There was a flash behind us which caused us to turn, seeing that a chest had appeared in the center of the room.

[So what was up with that priest?] Anja asked. [You disappear and then reappear shortly after and the shield finally falls?]

[Did you notice how its staff glowed briefly every once in a while?] I asked her.

She nodded.

[I’m pretty sure it was siphoning mana from its allies, allowing it to keep its shield active. It’s counter-intuitive, isn’t it? On the previous levels we always killed the priests first to prevent them from resurrecting their allies. Here, it was the opposite. The warrior and archer were weak defensively, so I dealt with them before helping Mason with the mage. It’s shield was pretty low already, so it only took a few seconds to kill it. When its allies were all dead, it began resurrecting them, which meant that it wasn’t able to siphon any mana to protect itself. Apparently we weren’t fast enough, because it barely got it’s spell off before we killed it.]

[I can’t believe I didn’t think about that, ] Ben said, shaking his head. [I’ve read stuff about boss fights like this where teams often get baited into attacking the wrong targets.]

[Well, I don’t know what level Victorious Secret is, but I suggest messaging them and letting them know whats in store for them here. They might be better off waiting until their friend can join them to tackle this boss.]

[I don’t see any stairs leading down to the eleventh level, so we can probably let them know without messaging them, ] Anja sent. [It’s probably similar to Jihm where the path to the next floor is opened after the boss is killed.]

[Alright, let me shift back into my human form and then we’ll sort out the loot before heading out to talk to them.]

We all walked over to the chest before I started shifting back, while Mason went ahead and opened up the chest. A sack appeared in his hand and he began grabbing handfuls of Mana Crystal Shards, dropping them into it before putting it away and taking out another sack. He grabbed a few Mana Gems and a Mana Crystal, depositing them as well.

I walked over to the chest just as Mason stood back up. He turned to me holding two Skill Gems in his palm, one Tier C and the other Tier D. Handing them to me, he bent down and came out with the first of two pieces of equipment in the chest. It was a cuirass made out of some sort of leather, but didn’t look like it was anything special. He passed it over to me and I could see that it was an uncommon item, just like my bracers and boots.

Lesser Enchanted Leather Cuirass
Uncommon
+12 Strength
+12 Agility
+10 bonus Strength or Agility, whichever is highest.

I realized that everyone besides Ben would be able to make good use of this chest piece, though it would be better for one person, in particular. I turned towards Anja and handed it to her.

“A few of us could make use of this, but you’re in the most need of it right now. Anyone have any objections to her getting it?” I asked.

“Fine with me,” Mason said.

Anja put a hand on it so she could get an idea of what the stats were and she immediately objected to getting it. “Sonja can get just as much use out of it as I can, if not more considering she occasionally uses Windblade. Why do you want to give it to me?”

“Two reasons,” I said with a smile. “The first is that you’re clearly the weakest of us, for now, at least. The second reason is the item that is still in the chest. You wanna grab it, Mace?”

“Sure,” he replied, bending down and standing back up a moment later, a recurve bow in his hand. It was made out of bone, and looked quite menacing. There was a skull with glowing red eyes which would protect the hand while the bowstring seemed to be made out of sinew. It looked like it would make for a decent blunt weapon as well, if someone got close to her.

Anja had grabbed onto the chest piece when she saw the bow, allowing me to receive the bow from Mason and hand it over to Sonja. It also gave me some time to see the stats on it as well.

Soulstring
20 Weapon Damage
+15 Agility
+6 Constitution
+6 Endurance
10% increased Agility from all sources. Stacks multiplicatively with other effects.
Reduces the cooldown of all ranged physical abilities by 20%.

I didn’t react to the stats, I just held it out for Sonja. She hesitated while looking it over, but eventually grabbed it. She did react, her eyes growing wider and her jaw dropping. She recovered a moment later.

“Wow! That is one massive upgrade,” she said with a smile. “We’ve been quite lucky in this dungeon, haven’t we? Two epics in as many bosses?”

“Yup,” Ben said from behind me. “Epic items drop from bosses with a one in twenty chance, while legendaries are one in ten thousand and mythical items are one in a million.”

“You said those are the boss drop rates, meaning that they can drop from other sources as well. What are the chances of getting an epic from a regular enemy?” I asked.

“Multiply the boss chances by about one hundred and that will give you the rough odds for the rest of the enemies. No one knows the exact odds, as it’s easier to count boss kills than regular kills. It’s around one in two thousand for an epic, one in a million for a legendary, and then one in a hundred million for a mythical item.”

“Rough odds.”

Ben nodded. “There have been a handful of people who have gotten incredibly lucky over the millennia. The stats on legendary and mythical items can vary greatly, so a low level adventurer could get an item that would be very good for someone who is level five hundred, before any special bonuses that item provides. The opposite is also true, and a high level adventurer could get an item with very poor stats.”

“Well, we’ve probably got a long way to go before we find a legendary or mythical item, barring some ridiculous luck,” I said, walking towards the large doors. “We should probably get moving, though. Sooner we let the other team know what to expect, the sooner we can move on.”

“You know, there is a way to increase our odds at getting a legendary, but it’s very difficult to do so,” Ben said, jogging to catch up with me. “There is a perk called Luck that increases the odds of epics, legendaries and mythical items dropping. The problem is that it is a very rare perk, and if one person in a group has it, then the effect is averaged over the entire group, lowering the effectiveness. We would all need to have one, and even then, the odds would only be increased slightly with the Tier E version.”

“How much are we talking?” Mason asked from behind us.

“I believe Tier E is a twenty percent increase to the regular drop rate. So for epic items, it changes from one in twenty to one in seventeen, legendaries become one in eight thousand three hundred thirty four, and mythical items it becomes one in eight hundred thirty-three thousand three hundred thirty-four. Each rank increases the odds by another twenty percent to the base value, except for Tier S which increases it by two hundred percent. Epic becomes one in five, legendary one in twenty-five hundred, and mythical is two hundred fifty thousand.”

Mason whistled at those numbers. “Hey, you’re rich, right, Jonathan? How about buying each of us the Tier S version of that perk?”

Ben burst out laughing. “Even if there were any Tier S Luck perks being sold, they would probably cost hundreds of millions of credits for one, if not over a billion. I meant it when I said that they are rare. Even a Tier E version runs for a few million credits, and they’re usually snapped up immediately.”

I didn’t answer Mason because I couldn’t. While my mom told me that my sisters and I inherited money from our parents, I still hadn’t checked how much was in the account. It did have over fourteen hundred years to accrue interest, however, so I was sure there was a lot in there. Besides, I probably wouldn’t want to spend hundreds of millions of credits, if not more, on a couple of perks.

We arrived at the door so I turned the handles and swung the double doors open. The members of Victorious Secret were sitting up against one of the walls while they waited, but all quickly stood up when they heard the door open.

“We were wondering what was taking so long. How’d it go?” Kaya asked.

“Took us a while to figure things out, but we did, eventually. What level are the four of you?”

“Sixteen, why?”

“The fight is a pretty difficult one. You didn’t see since it was so dark, but it’s actually four bosses in there, and you need to fight all of them at the same time. There is a warrior, archer, mage and priest, all mounted on Skeletal Horses--”

“Four Horsemen, really?” Astrid asked.

I chuckled. “That’s what I said. The tricky thing about the fight for us was that on the previous floors we had focused on killing the priests first so they couldn’t resurrect their allies. For the boss fight, you need to do the opposite. The priest is actually able to siphon mana from its’ allies, which makes it pretty much invulnerable. You need to kill the other three and then focus down the priest before it can resurrect them, or you’ll have to do it all over again. We actually killed the priest, but only milliseconds after it had resurrected the others. It didn’t have enough mana to put its shield up, otherwise we would’ve had to kill the other three again before focusing it down. As it was, we just had to clean up the other three after the priest was dealt with.”

“That does sound hard,” Kaya said with a thoughtful expression. “Maybe you don’t need to kill all three, though? If the mana siphon you were talking about is a spell that is cast, then maybe all it takes is killing one of the skeletons to get it to start resurrecting it. If we all turn our attention to it after we kill the first skeleton, then maybe we can kill the priest before the cast is over.”

“Do we really want to risk it though?” Kendyll asked. “We’re without our healer, and it’s not like we can run away once we engage the bosses. If we try it and it doesn’t work, then they’ll probably kill us before we kill them. Undead don’t get tired, we will.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” Kaya asked. “We drove over two hours to get here this morning, and it would probably take just as long to get to another dungeon suitable for us. Even then it would only leave us with a few hours of leveling before we had to head back.”

“Where is the closest rank II dungeon, anyways?”

“Prince Edward, near Belleville,” Ben answered. “I was looking at dungeons, and it was between this one and the one there. This one was at a lower completion percentage, so it won out.”

Hailey nodded. “It was the same when we checked yesterday. This dungeon was at forty-six percent while the one just outside of Belleville was at thirty-three percent. It’s also right between Toronto and Kingston, so it probably gets a lot more adventurers than this one does. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was under twenty percent now.”

“Eighteen percent, actually. It says that we’re about two hours away, so we’d get there at around 13:00. That would give us a good amount of time to level before we need to head home. Vivienne is guaranteed to be free tomorrow, so maybe we come back here tomorrow and knock this out with a few more levels,” Kendyll said.

“We’d better be going then,” Kaya said before turning back towards my friends and I. “Thanks for letting us know what we’d be facing. Where are you guys off to?”

“Not far, actually. The closest rank III dungeon is in a forest just to the north-east of North Bay. Should only take us an hour or so to get there,” Ben answered.

“Ah, lucky. You will have quite a long drive back to Ottawa though, won’t you?”

“Not really. We have ... alternate means of transportation,” I said, leading us towards the waygate that would take us to the surface.

“What does that mean?” Hailey asked from behind us.

“A friend of ours has Portal, so she can get us places like that,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “As long as she’s been there before, of course. If not then we’ll probably head back and get my car, and see if she can get us as close as she can.”

“That would be really handy,” Kaya replied as we stopped just short of the waygate.

I nodded and stepped onto it, appearing in the lobby. Everyone else followed soon after and we made our way to the parking lot.

“Give me a minute, alright?” I said taking my phone out and walking a short distance away. “I need to call her to see how long she’ll be.”

“Sure,” Kaya nodded as she led everyone over to one of the only other cars in the parking lot.

I made it seem like I was dialing a number and put my phone to my ear before sending. [Hey, Zaszi, we’re ready to head over to the next dungeon now. Have you been to the one just east of North Bay?]

[I can’t say I have. I have been to Sudbury, but that isn’t any closer than you currently are. How about I open up a portal so you can come back and get your vehicle, and then I’ll open another portal so you can drive back through.]

[Works for me, keep in mind that there is another group in the area. What should I call you? Zaszi isn’t exactly a common name.]

[Natalia is what I go by when I’m out in public. I’ll be there in a minute.]

[Alright, thanks.]

I put my phone away and walked over to the minivan where Kaya and her team were storing their equipment. They didn’t appear to have the amount of dimensional storage we had, so each of them dropped a small backpack along with their weapons in the trunk before moving to get inside. They all froze at the large popping sound, looking in the direction it came from. Standing there was Zaszi in more casual clothing than what she had been wearing when she opened the portal earlier.

“Ready to go, Jonathan?” she asked.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, looking at Kaya and her team, as well as my own.

Zaszi opened the portal and I stepped through with her right on my heels. We appeared in the parking lot where my new SUV was parked, and she directed me to get in and drive it over while she waited. I did as she asked, and as I got closer she started casting Portal. As the seconds went by, it got bigger and bigger until it was easily big enough to drive through. She waved me through and I wasted no time.