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The Gamer Chapter 1163 – Prep Grinding 4 – Stomping
🕑 Added 2022-02-17 20:52:20 +0000 UTCBoss design was a tricky thing.
Optimally, a boss was both challenging and fair. Mechanics represented had clear interconnections, be they through synergistic effects or consistent design themes, and every failure left one wanting to improve their abilities to cope with the challenges presented. In order to create such a challenge, numbers had to be finely tuned. Numbers too high made mechanics too punishing. In order to properly strike a balance, the game designer had to determine the expected power range of the players at this particular time and go from there.
When exceeding that power, an encounter got laughably easy pretty fast.
‘Doubly true for encounters designed around adds,’ John thought, stomping the remaining life out of the Void Abomination that had been battered by Gnome moments before. With it killed, the group, scattered around the pitch-black abyss, stood there and waited. John even had time to turn to Lorelei, who waited outside the boss arena. There had been a clause that a boss encounter could only be started once everyone was in for the first Raid, but Gaia had done away with that. Thankfully, as John would not have wanted Lorelei even near these enemies.
To him they were mildly dangerous. To her, he was quite certain that they could pull her limb from limb without issue.
The design of an add-focused encounter went one of two ways. Either there were a ton of adds to start with or they spawned in continuously. In both cases, handling them alongside the boss’ mechanics was key to success in the encounter. Adds in the former case were typically stronger and had their own set of minor mechanics, while those in the latter case had to be acknowledged specifically because they kept on spawning and ignoring them would lead to the group being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The difficulty of such encounters was therefore tied to how much trouble it was for the party to handle both the steady demands of add clearing and the primary DPS target (the boss).
As soon as the kill rate was notably above the spawn rate, encounters like these turned into an absolute snooze fest.
Of course, all bosses that had been out-scaled were dull in some way. There was a notable difference, however, between a boss where the unwanted power difference allowed one to face-tank five instead of two of the super-power attacks and an add-focused encounter where there was nothing to do between inconsequential adds that died within ten seconds of spawning. One was silly in how forgiving it was with mechanics designed to be punishing. The other was just plain boring.
‘At least we can hurry this along pretty well,’ John thought, watching the bombardment of elemental attacks hail down on the purple energy field. Each attack intensified the colour. Translucency was gradually removed. Finally, the priests within were entirely invisible, hidden under a bubble that started to crack.
A burst of sound echoed over a battlefield, like a hundred windows shattering at the same time, and the energy shield exploded into a myriad of shards. The complete sphere, half of it submerged under the invisible line that served as the floor, scattered outwards. Suddenly, all of the shards stopped and realigned themselves, jagged edges pointing at one of the five priests. In a flurry of light, the solid energy fragments embedded themselves in that one Priest of Darkness.
The human, their sex was obscured by the thick robes, snapped out of the chants and stumbled backwards three steps. They held their head, the glowing of their eyes intensifying. With a violent scream, their spine snapped backwards. Arms flying to the side, as if crucified, the priest yelled gargled nonsense. Then a wave of black mist exploded from their every orifice, consuming their shape in wavering darkness.
A primal, distorted roar accompanied the birth of the Voidborne, a massive snake-like creature with two heads. Where the two necks split along its long body, a knot of lashing tentacles writhed like a nightmarish mane. Hands rushed outwards, supporting the serpentine Voidborne in its rush forwards.
‘Lots of snake imagery going on here,’ John observed. Most of the Void Chimeras they had faced had some variant of serpent mixed in as well. ‘Something to symbolize how this energy betrayed the city, maybe? It’s at least refreshing to see something beyond squids in the void-theme mix.’
While the Gamer pondered about this and that, he raised his hand and unleashed the Arcane Ascension. The Voidborne rushed towards John, for whatever reason. He stood calmly and waited. The creature got larger and larger, yet the exact distance was near impossible to tell by sight alone. The best reference point he had was his own raised hand. Where sight failed, however, senses beyond the five traditional ones could be employed.
When the abomination was close enough to be felt with Aura Sense, John let fly a barrage of Arc Lances. Like bolts of a machine gun, the arcane projectiles pelted the creature. Devastated, the boss was driven back, while John stood his ground and raised an eyebrow at the mob. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ he told himself, finishing the first of the five Voidborne off with a few more spells. ‘There’s no way you’ll keep stomping bosses this easily.’
The rest of the fight passed with ease. There was some ramping up of the difficulty in the shape of increased Void Abomination spawn rates. An inconvenience more than a hurdle in their current state. John could sense that there were several mechanics they never saw just because they murdered the adds and boss monsters too rapidly for them to cast anything. As much as the Gamer inside him nudged him to deliberately ‘play’ a little worse to see all the mechanics, since there was nothing gained by that waste of time, he reigned in that curiosity. They dilly-dallied enough as it was.
Upon the death of the last priest, three things happened. The expected two were that the chest containing the boss loot spawned, a large box of a strangely shimmering, purple metal, and the effect suppressing proper behaviour of light ended. Unexpected, albeit fairly minor, was a series of chest-high pedestals rising out of the stone floor that replaced the pitch black. They had square bases and were of a design somewhere between Mesopotamian and Sumerian. Atop each of them, a purple sphere manifested, shining pale, baleful light. Like the pillars in the corridors before, these pedestals were evenly spaced out and came in two parallel rows. They guided the way down a broad corridor that appeared where only complete darkness had been before.
“That’ll be the way to the next boss,” John guessed the obvious and stroked his chin. They still had a lot of the labyrinth to explore, if his mental map and the other paths leading out of the chamber were anything to go by. ‘Not worth it,’ he deemed. Under other circumstances, hunting down the Raid mobs for extra experience could have been a good use of grinding time. Instead, he just wandered over to the chest and opened the lid. “What do we have here?”
Of the Common loot, he received three Volatile Void, a crafting material with a big warning label on it; a Robe of the Dark Traitors, which was a pretty solid piece of cloth; and a Crystal Void-eye, which could be used to replace an actual eye with one that granted a couple of supernatural bonuses. The thought occurred to apply it to John himself, but Gamer’s Body made that a difficult task. Replacing an eye was difficult if the eyeball to be replaced instantly regenerated at any point during the procedure. That aside, John didn’t dig returning vision in only one eye, the ball of purple energy didn’t have a stealth setting, and common sense advised against putting crystallized void energy inside his head.
Uncommon loot netted John two Voidlings. The small, semi-liquid creatures looked at their new owner with big eyes. Descriptions made it clear that they were tame – for now. The potential here was interesting. Yet, John neither had the time nor the Class Levels to pursue whatever depths of Tamer he needed to actually control these things when they had grown to an adequate size. As much as a waste of potential as it may have been, John selected an option that made them part of the Menagerie. Diversity in cute critters was worth it in some way.
For the Rare category, he found one Stable Void, which was good news for Scarlett. The energy source came in the shape of a crystal orb, inside which purple energy steadily swirled in a vortex that seemed to devour itself, without ever running out.
Lastly, they found two of the Antumbra Alloy Ingots. Antumbra Alloy was a blend of shadow and light metals that were just one step underneath Schattengarn and Solunian. A quite impressive material and useful for John. Access to the Collimets was still extremely limited, especially now that Magnus needed some of them to conduct his research on self-sustaining Mobile Barriers. Materials just one grade below the elemental extreme metals were quite useful, consequently.
He did not get the Classbook, which he didn’t register as a huge loss. Completionism was irked, but otherwise this did feel like the kind of knowledge that better remained a mystery. John did not want to be the one who broke his world’s void-free streak by meddling with things he shouldn’t. The Lorylim were eldritch horror enough for one reality.
They returned home to rest. Easy as it had been, they had been raiding for several hours. Even comparatively weak monsters and bosses required time to be pummelled to death and the walking also took its fair share of time.
The following day was further testament to that. After breakfast and the usual morning pleasantries, they entered the Raid again. Following the path further soon had them face to face with the next Void Chimera. The mob was ten levels higher than the previous iterations, which posed no significant challenge either.
Confirmation that progress would continue to be easy made John consider his path forwards. In terms of acquiring Experience, the Raid was inefficient until they hit actually dangerous parts. In order to get there, they had to invest the time to clear these easy segments. Walking was the major factor there.
Luckily for the Gamer he had the body strength, the Perk, and the willing partners required to make even walking a highly stimulating endeavour. Particularly Sylph was incredibly useful as a walk-fuck, small and light as she was. Not that other haremettes couldn’t take the role. All John had to do was hang back a little bit during encounters and let everyone else do the work, while he fucked for eight hours of grinding. A blissful solution to achieving levels and Raid progress.
Sometimes the environment demanded that he actually paid attention to it. Raids often threw obstacles other than enemies at them. Parkour of the deadly variety was a secondary threat. They hadn’t been faced with it for the last area, the maze likely had been meant to fill that design niche. Now, however, there were various areas where pits filled with void-ooze had to be crossed using broken pillars, the occasional resting platform, and plain old speed. John hated those stretches, since he was always worse at them than most of his girls. Admittedly, it was refreshing that those still posed a challenge. Environmental obstacles typically cared little about damage resistance.
Much as John loathed having his weaknesses highlighted, the true victim here was Lorelei. Carrying her across was too risky, so the very first obstacle course they came across was where she had to opt out of following them. John left her with Jack at the spawning platform, so she wouldn’t be lonely for several hours.
Admittedly, John could have used his double to solve the Experience of Love issue. No reason to skip out on the opportunity to have sex in inappropriate places though. There was something truly thrilling about dumping a giant load inside a big-titted fire elemental while the rest of his harem fought off a giant void monster a few dozen metres away. On-site fucking therefore continued.
Distracted as he was by jiggling femininity, John still noticed the various changes in the environment. From corridors, they transitioned into a system of underground city layers. Various buildings had been erected underneath ceilings that flickered with broken magic that was meant to conjure artificial skies. What had once been lively bazaars and homes now lay barren, claimed by black mist. Dozens of Ohmior Knights lay across the place, some of them jutting back to life when approached. Controlled by the energy of the void, these Ohmior Knights were equipped with mana-reaving attacks in addition to the skills associated with their respective weapon. They were still easily discarded.
They descended several layers, each time following a corridor that, rather than just using stairs, shifted the direction gravity worked in. This would have been quite disorienting, had the entire architecture not also changed to accommodate. Up turned down and vice versa, without any real consequence. It was just flavour.
A last twisted corridor and they emerged, after over ten hours of travel, at the next boss arena.
It was the literal bottom of the city. The Raid in its entirety was located in a massive bowl-like structure. Upside down as they stood, the depression was now a rise under them. At the highest point of the convex shape was the platform on which they emerged. The pedestals with the balefully glowing spheres led up to a massive altar, a ziggurat of dark magic, guarded by four Void Chimeras patrolling the base and the square of pedestals around it.
A flight of stairs on each side led up to the top of the altar, where a shifting knot of snakes and tentacles squeezed out of itself a steady flow of liquid void energy which simultaneously drenched and held the Guardian of the Seal, the second boss of the Raid, underneath it.
‘Always with the unpronounceable void names,’ John thought.
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