Chapter 252 – How to Grind

There were two ways to grind sensibly, in John’s opinion.

One could either find trivial content, that was repeatable extremely quickly and that gave a moderate amount of experience and gear, or beat content of high difficulty, that rewarded the effort greatly, and just concentrate on getting that done without dying. The former was easier, but the latter was the usually intended experience by game developers and was, thusly, heavily encouraged or downright mandatory to get some of the better stuff.

If one were to ask which content John preferred, he would have had to go with the harder content in general. It was simply a more rewarding feeling, to get levels after beating a series of challenges, instead of just grinding down on mobs for a few hours. Or picking herbs… or something else stupid.

Then again, in some games, Diablo 3 for example, endlessly grinding was stupid fun, and the Instant Dungeons were conceptually close to the portals of the hack and slash game.

Trivial content being more rewarding than hard content usually had one of two reasons. Either the developers had fucked up, in which case it was going to get fixed eventually, or the content was quite literally meant to be skipped. MMO’s liked to do that, making old content very easy to beat just so everyone could get through ASAP and play the new content.

‘I wonder what I will get access to,’ John wondered as he finally beat the last challenge of the Fateweaver class: to make a barrier that was an exact cube with 100-metre long sides. It wasn’t the hardest thing to do, after John figured out how he had to go about how to work Illusion Barrier better (which he did thanks to the Skill getting higher giving him effective muscle memory on it).

He opened the class window and spent the level in Fateweaver.

Tough choices. The Loot Basin wasn’t what he was looking for, even if it was wonderfully convenient. Investing was a worthwhile thought… if he had someone to pull him through everything. Without his mana regeneration his whole party was way less effective. The elementals own mana was not nearly enough to cover all of their combat expenses. All they could rely on if he took this Perk was Momo.

While that was certainly possible, once she was gone, this skill would become less useful or just downright useless. He could probably deal with 50% less mana regeneration, but then the question became what was better between this and Assault.

Assault was obviously a challenging thing, and the experience bonus at the end must have been at least somewhat balanced in respect to him missing out on Firstkill bonuses and other things. Fighting sheer endless hordes of enemies also sounded way more fun than limiting his mana supply.

‘Yeah, let’s pick Assault,’ he thought and pressed the button. ‘Now, onto the rest of changes. First things first, how much time dilation does the Fateweaver Class provide?’

Not enough to justify switching from Elementalist, with its Stat bonuses to all of his elementals. What were those increased dungeon customizations though?

‘Interesting… now what happens when I do this?’ John wondered and disabled Trap Rooms, only to see the enemy strength, density and boss strength jump up to 5%. ‘Of course, that’s how that works…’ he sighed inwardly. It would have been too easy if he could do whatever he wanted with this. Maybe he could once he got a few more levels?

From the current look of it, the maximum amount of changes he could make moved in the 5% area. For example, if he increased the drop chance of Legendaries, he could only do so by 5%. In response experience went down and monster strength went up. The changes he made himself could not exceed a 5% deviation, while the responsive changes had seemingly no cap.

Out of interest, he disabled loot entirely. In response to that, experience shot up to +10%, while enemy strength went down to -5%. He put the experience up to +15% and now strength was back to 0%, but density and boss strength was still at +5%.

After fidgeting with it for some more time, he arrived at this.

‘Now to find out what the sticking bonus even is,’ John thought and switched back to Elementalist.

It was the Custom Settings after all. Probably better than slightly more time dilation. It was slightly saddening that the best he could do was 2:1 Inside:Outside dilation. In theory, that was, if the gains from Skills and Class remained linear.

‘Something crazy like 10:1 would be nice,’ John thought and sighed, ‘but I guess that would make this too easy.’ He left the Active Class on Elementalist and pondered about what to do now. It was 19 o’clock; he had been standing here just spamming Create I.D. for about two hours.

He wanted to test out that new Assault thing, the question was whether he was going to round up the others first or went in by himself to test a few things. Deciding to do the latter, he looked at his Monster Table to pick a match-up.

‘Let’s try Feral,’ John thought and created the I.D. The Skill reacted, as per usual, to his intention to create it with the new settings in mind. However, he was presented with a window to put in the amount of time he wanted to spend. ‘Let’s say 10 minutes,’ John thought and wrote it in, a number in parenthesis appeared behind it.

’12 minutes, 30 seconds… that’s the time dilation in action,’ John realized. ‘So it’s taking the time I will be out of reality, not the time I will be inside, as its base, good to know.’ He accepted, and the run-down house disappeared.

He was now inside a tropical forest. The tall trees competed with each other for the sun’s rays. The canopies towered far above, all manners of different plants, from mushrooms to lianas, hanging from the bark and branches. The air was warm and humid, uncomfortably so, a stark contrast to the winter cold he had just left.

And he was instantly pounced by something that looked like a horrible fusion between a panther and an insect. Plates of chitin covered its muscular body, black fur growing out of the small gaps. Its four black eyes each looked at a different part of John’s body, and its maw was wide open, parted mandibles framed sharp fangs

“Watch out!” Gnome shouted as she materialized between him and the monster. The earth spirit threw a sucker punch that hit the panther straight on the nose. The impact of the earthen fist cracked the bug-panthers face-covering chitin and threw him right back to where he came from. “S-stay grounded!” Gnome said.

The panther flew back a few dozen metres, crashed onto the ground and was then caught in an updraft. Being carried high into the air as someone blabbered over it with commentary. “Hihihi, is that the best you can come up with? Gnome, Gnome, Gnome, should, like, try something more creative. Like ‘Sorry to rock your world’ or ‘Your scissor is nothing against my paper’. Here let me show you,” Sylph’s voice rattled the words down like she was a sportscaster that had just finished powdering her nose with cocaine.

The poor panther flew further and further up only to then make a really awkward and unnatural turn in the air. Roaring in confusion and anger, it was slammed into another one of its kind. Then another one. This went on until Sylph had gotten five of them into a ball that was tumbling through her winds.

The insectoid felines fell down to the ground as the tempest elemental finally stopped the storm. “I will end this in a flash!” Sylph announced with a face of pure determination. Raising her hands above her head in an epic manner a single spark of electricity danced between her fingers. “Eh?” the air spirit gave her hand a confused look.

The pile of panthers threatened to recover while Sylph was busy trying to summon her lightning. Before either of the two parties could act, the monsters were bombarded with fire.

“Kekeke,” Salamander cackled; “You dunce, Sylph, have you still not learned that you need to keep track of your mana? Not everyone can just throw that shit around like John.”

“You kill stealing bitch!” Sylph complained. “Those were mine, I wanted to be totally cool and electrocute them! You didn’t even use a cool one-liner.”

“Like I give a tosh about one-liners,” Salamander waved off. “These guys are toast now, that’s all that matters.”

“Yay, you used a one-liner!” Sylph chirped, causing the blaze elemental to look confused. “Toast, you know, you made them like crispy toast, toasted them crispy, crisp-crisp, you know. Do you get it?”

“Urgh,” Salamander let out a frustrated groan. “That’s really reaching for it, airhead.”

“Whatever, let’s just fucking kill these dudes!” Salamander announced.

“One thing after the other,” John told them. “I want to dictate the terms of this engagement.” He turned his head to look at Gnome.

The earth spirit was busy drawing little circles into the ground with her finger. “I think that line was cool…” she muttered, all pouty and adorable. Sadly, this was not the time to squish her cute face.

“Gnome!” John called out to her.

 “Y-yes!” she jumped to her feet. “S-sorry to slouch off in the middle of battle.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” John agreed. “Anyway, I need you and Salamander to do something for me.” He mentally sent her the details.

“That…is…” Salamander said slowly. “AWESOME FUCKING HELL YES!” the fire spirit flew over to Gnome with a fire in her coal coloured eyes. “Let’s do it, come the fuck on!”

“Sure?” Gnome was less enthusiastic about this plan, but she and Salamander, who changed into her big form, folded their hands together.

Their mana intermingled, and John poured his own into the mix graciously. The ground trembled, John spotted more of the bug-panthers stalking around, distancing themselves from what they thought to be an obvious source of danger.

‘Jokes on them,’ John thought; ‘You are playing right into my hands.’ The humid air became even hotter with each passing moment until, suddenly, the ground cracked open in a ring around John’s group. Lava splashed upwards as pieces of the earth surrounding it fell inside.

It wasn’t the biggest of rifts, maybe two metres in width, but filled with molten rock, it was quite the imposing thing. This was especially true for the panthers who hadn’t evacuated fast enough and fell straight into the deadly trap.

‘There, a nice and easily defendable position,’ John thought, as he was now on a secure island in the forest. The heat of the lava caused nearby wood to ignite, much to Salamander’s delight.

“Look at it! Look at it burn!” she laughed.

“Mhm, look at how pleased you are,” Siena, materializing from John’s shadow, moaned. “If you like things hot, our next fun time should involve some candle wax.”

“Oh, fuck off an- John, above you!” Salamander’s warning came just in time. One of the monsters had climbed a tree and was now jumping at John. It had already crossed the ring of lava by the time anyone could react. Everyone else was too far away, but John wasn’t worried in the slightest, the destruction of the surroundings, caused by his elementals, had pumped Echo of Destruction up quite a bit.

He was getting ready to fend off the assailant by himself (until Gnome was ready to take over) when a blue shape intercepted. ‘Undine?!’ John thought, surprised. Not only should the mending elemental have been able to feel his intentions, she should also know that what she was doing now was a terrible idea.

The wall of slime didn’t even pass a hindrance for the panther. Too heavy and too fast, it broke thought the blue liquid, tearing a hole through the soft membrane. A mental scream of pain rocked through John’s consciousness. For a moment, he was back in a chamber, getting swarmed by rats, then the image was gone. This time, it wasn’t his mistake.

Whoever’s mistake it was didn’t matter to the monster. John had hesitated and now the panther crashed right into him. Mana Protection had been deactivated, MP being more useful than HP, so he was slammed straight to the ground. In a hurry, John used a Mana Blade to cut into the monster’s stomach.

It didn’t care, snapping at his face with its mandibles. The razor-sharp extension clacked close mere millimetres from his face, held back only by the Purgatory-covered arm holding it by the throat. John continued to cut through the insectoid feline with the bright blue sword. The mandibles opened up. He would not be able to keep it back for the second bite. He was strong, but not stronger than the monster.

The sharp things reached his face, barely. Cutting thin, symmetric trenches into his cheekbones, they fixed his head in place as the creature’s mouth opened wide, stinking hot breath followed by a green liquid spilling forth. Then blindness.

The monster had spit a load of acid on his face. Not even Gamer’s Body could just recover from the slow damage that did to his head. The pain of his flesh being seared, healing and then searing again was cruel but nothing he couldn’t bear with for the moment.

John quickly shifted his eyes away from himself and concentrated on scanning the battlefield through Jack. His freedom was imminent in the form of Gnome charging at the panther above him. The feline was ripped off him, the mandibles sheering some more of the liquified flesh off his face, and launched by the impact of the earth spirit’s attack, carried all the way into the ring of lava by a gust of magical wind.

John was still blind, remaining acid keeping it that way. ‘And this is with goddamn Acid Resistance,’ he thought, resisting the urge to wipe the stuff off his face with his It was painful, yes, but in the midst of battle, healing was cheaper than repairing his jacket.

The elemental that was supposed to do the healing had gathered herself back together. Undine looked calm on the outside, but a sense of defeat and deep shame radiated from within her. ‘Come over here,’ John told her as calmly as possible.

‘Are you angry?’ Undine wanted to know as she started healing him. Patches of healthy skin replaced wherever Undine wiped the acid off his face.

‘Yes,’ John told her truthfully, as he had taught her to be; ‘The fuck was that supposed to accomplish?!’

‘I wanted to be useful,’ Undine said, her voice a sad little melody.

‘You are always useful, you are our safety net!’ John reminded her and stood up. Now with a functioning mouth again, he said, “You are the group’s healer, never think that is a useless occupation!”

‘I don’t… but…’ In that moment, John felt something break through. Envy towards everyone else, anger towards herself, ugly things that she had buried deep beneath. It was gone before John could make sense of it – before he could properly take hold of the root issue.

“You will tell me exactly what this is about once we are out of here!” John demanded and turned to help the rest of the group.