As the warm white light faded, they found themselves standing in a cave, not underwater as Sam half-expected. That said, the only direct way out of here was a single hallway leading into the water, which was to be expected. It was strangely illuminated by what looked like glowing crystals stuck in the walls.
Taking a few steps towards the water the familiar window popped up.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Murkwhale: 0/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 0/20
Rewards:
100 000 000 xp
1x Random crafting material
Chance (2%): Low D-tier weapon or armour -or- another item.
Bonus rewards for optional step:
100 000 000 xp
Random Box - X. ]
Sam immediately reacted to the XP levels. 100 million was absurd, or rather, it was absurd at the moment. Considering that they should be at around level 40 at this point they would need somewhere around 2 trillion XP... So it would still take thousands of these to level up...
Who the fuck designed this shit. Sam wasn’t surprised to realize that it felt like the System was designed to nudge Players to go in under levelled because they needed that inflated XP rather than grinding the same dungeons for hundreds if not thousands of times... He also already knew the answer which didn’t aid his distaste for things.
“Though I like the XP numbers now, it puts some perspective on later levels and how sucky it’s going to be to level up...” Sam commented with a drawn-out sigh.
“It’s good you can do that hax-thing, then. That’s with a level per round, right?” Janik countered with a good point.
Sam had to agree. Since each level-up only gave you one point, each Ascendant boost gave you a free level without the penalty of needing double XP for the next one. If he could just figure out the triggers for them. But this did mean that 10 points were 10 free levels, so... in a way they were already cheating quite a lot.
Deciding to take some frustration on some dungeon mobs, they continued into the water. Luckily enough it was still temperate and didn’t feel uncomfortable, it would have been much worse if it was freezing or boiling, but Sam decided to not think too much about this lest he give the System ideas.
The first monster was a singular Reefclaw, the giant crab was eating something it had found on the cave floor which gave Sam a moment to open with a volley as soon as he swam in range. It had the same statistics as the one Janik fought, not having any Elemental resistance.
The damage from Sam’s full volley, even with 100 Defence, took it out instantly.
[ Experience gained: +7 500 000. ]
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Murkwhale: 0/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 1/20 ]
This was a good jump for the level they were at. Realistically this would be a group fight to get done fast enough to not take much damage. A solid Tank keeping its focus with damage mitigation skills on top of a good Defence would make this better, but... they didn’t have that unless you counted Janik’s very focused Active Defence. Alternatively, Sam could use his Active Defence and defend surprisingly well, but that wouldn’t do wonders for his damage output. In a pinch, he could go full-defensive mode and have the others attack, so there was a backup if nothing else.
They continued through the Dungeon, and it was just more of the same. Reefclaws and some Skewerfish. They made for a horrifying combo when they met them both, however, the lack of elemental resistance and Static Charge meant that splitting up the weapons didn’t cause any major problems, and a single split volley took out both of them. Their focus on the group in addition to a head-on charge made them very easy to hit.
Though swimming made everything take much, much more time than if they had walked to run through this place, since they had plenty of time they didn’t need to stress and wear themselves out. Having a theoretically unlimited amount of underwater breathing also helped on the mental side of things.
This process continued as they went through the whole dungeon, save a few close calls where Sam had to either split up the weapons between multiple targets enough that it wasn’t enough to instantly get everyone, or where he opted to take out single targets before going to the others, they got to the Boss room without problems and any damage. It was a linear dungeon so they got every kill without problems, netting up a substantial sum of XP and Cores.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Murkwhale: 0/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 20/20 ]
They had all levelled at this point, Sam put his point in Spirit like he always did, Dia wanted her in Dex, and Janik put his in Dex as well. On top of this, Dia hit level 20 and unlocked a new skill!
[ Foxfire strikes: For the next 4 attacks, the user deals an extra 20 Fire damage per hit
- Cooldown: 5 minutes.
- Number of attacks: Dex / 4.
- Damage: Dex. ]
Dia was ecstatic, commenting that she could now ‘punch fire’, something both Sam and Janik found amusing, her almost childlike excitement was hard to ignore. That said, she wasn’t able to test it on the way to the boss room on the account that Sam handled everything before it became a big problem.
Sam also didn’t want her to fight these things, they hit surprisingly hard, and her Defence of 60 only helped so far. He wanted her to get the same combo of Defence and Counter that Janik had, perhaps he’d ask Janik to teach her Active Defence later, it might be easier for him to do it than Sam due to their combat styles.
Being as ready as they could, it was time to brave the boss, the Murkwhale. Like many Dungeons before, the little nook that led into the room had an entry portal stopping Players from taking cheap shots. They entered the area of the portal and accepted.
As the white light once again faded, they found themselves in a large underwater cave, it was the size of a shopping mall, with more than enough room for a large whale to swim around in. Though it was decently well illuminated by the same crystals as the rest of the Dungeon, due to the distance and amount of water things became blurry fast.
A high-pitch whale vocalization echoed through them, the water making it hard to estimate where it came from. Sam looked around and eventually spotted a shadow in the distance, a shadow that came towards them at great speed.
The whale-like beast had jagged teeth, dark and almost scale-like armoured skin, and a glowing bioluminescent pattern across most of its body.
[ Murkwhale
Level: 46
STR: 22
DEX: 4
VIT: 30
SPT: 0
HP: 1120 / 1120
Damage: Crushing Bite 128, Deep Roar 160, Tail Smash 128.
Defence: 150, Elemental Resistance.
Abilities: HP boon, Crushing bite, Deep Roar, Tail Smash, Elemental Resistance. ]
[ Crushing bite: A powerful bite that holds onto prey for several bites unless the target gets loose ]
[ Deep Roar: A powerful underwater sound attack that ignores Defense. ]
[ Tail Smash: A powerful tail swipe that creates underwater currents to damage and send targets flying. Secondary damage from hitting things is possible. ]
[ Elemental Resistance; Takes 50% damage from elemental damage. ]
Sam wanted to make sure this didn’t get a chance to do anything, moving his Aura Points away from the HP barrier, he assigned the points to Aura Damage boost and placed it on the Void Fang. The circular weapon and its dangerous-looking teeth were covered in a weak, but perceptible red field as the information on the weapon updated with +72% damage.
Taking his time to aim, making sure he hit with everything, though on a target this large that wasn’t a problem, but he wanted to make sure he hit well, not just hitting it at all.
Several weapons landed a critical hit, of them the Void Fang was one, doubling its already inflated damage. The Void Fang also triggered its 30% penetration by doing an extra 72 damage by ignoring Defence. Static Charge built up and triggered, and though it had Elemental resistance it all stacked up.
The total damage, after Defence and resistance, totalled up to 1682. The Whale had no chance and didn’t even get a single attack on the group. As soon as it came within range it died in an explosion of gore slowly floating around in the water.
“Well... That was anticlimactic...” Janik stated through their communication.
Sam was fine with this being anticlimactic, anticlimactic in this context meant safe.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Murkwhale: 1/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 20/20
Rewards:
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
60 000 000 xp
1x Random crafting material
Bonus rewards for optional step:
60 000 000 xp
Random Box - X. ]
The System slammed them both with 120 million XP each, on top of the 30 million split between them from the Whale. So each ended up with 135 million XP in this burst of a moment. All of them levelled up again, placing their Skill points as they wanted. Yet another point in Spirit for Sam which put the score back to an even number and thus another Energy, which in turn gave him two more Psyhands.
The exponential increase in damage was always fun.
The Random boxes were less interesting, Sam got two Aether Crystals for a total of three with the reward, and Janik got three for a total of Four.
At least they had a bunch of Cores.
Swimming to the exit portal in the centre of this massive room took a while, but during that moment Sam decided to test something. Though his Psyhands couldn’t lift him, in the water he was somewhat weightless. Though momentum was always a thing he could now use his Psyhands to exert a bit over 58 kg/128 lbs of force. Grabbing hold of himself he could pull and push himself forwards, giving him a surprising level of mobility in the water. This seemed like a good dodge mechanic if he could spare the hands, and frankly; for survival, you should always spare what you need.
Since he could manifest and despawn his Psyhands functionally instantly within his Area, this opened up a lot of new movement. It wasn’t perfect, naturally, but it was more than enough to take him up to great speeds compared to his swimming. Surpassing his swim speed with what felt like twice as fast, without any of the hassle. Surpassing both Janik and Dia who were better at swimming than him. If he aided with some movements and swimming it seemed to help a little, but it was better to just Psyhand-pull himself forward.
He was using this when he had to grind these places.
Finally coming to the portal, Sam exited with Dia like normal which had them land on the grass near the portal outside. Janik appeared only a few seconds after them, seemingly having used the Emergency Exit method.
[ Companion Elara, level up! ]
Elara had levelled up but didn’t get the XP before Sam exited, they had to be in the same... world, or something. However, she had only levelled once, which wasn’t too weird as she only got half of the XP.
Sam put her point in Vitality, as she wanted everything in that for now.
“Cheater,” Janik commented with a sly smile as he took his mask off. “Though that’s probably going to make the grind easier.”
Sam nodded. “I agree, still more annoying than walking or running, but at least it takes most of the hassle out of it.”
“Zar, Dia clean fur now?” Dia asked Sam. She seemed to almost look annoyed as she did so, her tone halfway sour.
“I suppose?” Sam commented with an uncertain tone. “If I’m going to run these on my own, you’ll enter in the dry area, and come back out here when we leave, so yeah; I think that’s fine.” His tone changed to a more certain tone during his resonating, as he realised that she shouldn’t need to get into the water as they proceeded the grind.
As they talked, Elara came slithering out from the tree line, Sam briefly considered sending her back or having her waste time. Instead, he had another idea.
“Before we start this grind, how’s about we have some food, I’m starving after all that swimming and... this is going to be a long day.”
“Yeah, sure, I don’t see a problem with that,” Janik replied, taking off his soaked backpack, pouring out the water in it and fishing out some cooking utensils.
“I have rabbit and rat,” Sam smiled at Janik, intending to let him pick. However, as soon as he mentioned that he could feel some heavy and excited eyes from a certain vulpine companion. Briefly considering it, there wasn’t a real choice. If he didn’t go with the rat he feared that this would make the situation... bad.
“On second thought, let’s go for the rat...” Sam confirmed without letting Janik choose, taking it out of the Item Box.
Janik opened his mouth to comment but Sam could see that he noticed Dia and understood the situation. “I don’t know how to prepare rat, though... I don’t have that much skinning knowledge.”
“Dia knows! Dia can prepare!” She almost pounced on both Sam and the dead rat. Immediately started to get it ready for cooking.
Though macabre, it was surprisingly interesting seeing how skilfully she took care of it, removing the skin with almost no effort before she proceeded to gut it and prepare the meat. It made sense, she had been living in a survival scenario her whole life so this wasn’t a new concept to her. Modern advances had the firewood that Sam got from the forest light up without any effort. It felt almost cheating compared to the stuff Sam had to do on the Island, something as simple as a gas lighter was just too good.
Janik had some kindling in a waterproof container in his backpack, making the process even easier, it didn’t take many minutes before they had a proper fire going, which Dia used to prepare the rat. She had taken the meat off the bones and impaled them on sticks, simple enough. They were close to the ocean so as they were working on the fire she seemed like she had a great idea and darted towards it, coming back with some salt packed up in a large leaf she folded to make a simple container.
Sam could see that Janik put his little container of spices away, he didn’t want to ruin this for her.
Throughout this whole ordeal, Elara simply lounged in the area, moving up to soak the heat from the fire as it was lit up, she didn’t seem to have a vote in the food nor anything to aid with, opting for the lazy and comfortable.
It didn’t take long for the food to be done, it was a simple salted rat. Janik reached in for some food first but Sam could see his movement suddenly stop, a glance at Dia explained why. She looked at him with eyes hinting that she might or might not make a problem out of this if he dared take the first piece. Janik pulled his hand back.
Instead, Dia took the first piece and handed it to Sam with a happy, “Zar nar!”
Sam knew that Nar meant the value 1, it was also used to signal anything of the sort so in this context it was probably ‘First’. Which made sense in her view. Her grammarless language was oddly simple but weird.
Taking the piece, Sam took a bite. He had eaten worse things before, this was at least hunted and prepared by Dia, so he felt much safer than the other things he had eaten in necessary times. It was salted meat, a small rodent so a bit gamey but it wasn’t bad.
“It’s good,” Sam forced himself to say, he couldn’t say ‘not bad’ or comment about it being less than good. In Dia’s defence, he was comparing this to a proper steak cooked by modern chefs, comparing this to other meat it was honestly good.
Dia’s face lit up, looking extremely content she sat down properly and picked the next piece for herself, pulling a small piece of it that she handed to Elara. Janik was then allowed to pick a piece.
“Interesting hierarchy, I’m lower than the snake,” Janik joked.
“I have no proper understanding of that part of her culture, but if I’m to guess... Dia is with me, and Elara is also bound to me, though a friend you’re not bound in the same way so...” Sam looked towards Dia for confirmation.
She nodded. “Zar important, top. Dia second, Sa zar. Elara nor, or zennor, Dia not understand, but important. Janik friend, important, but lower.” She explained, using a few words that didn’t help Janik much.
Luckily for Janik, Sam understood the words.
“Both Nor and Zennor mean bond, but Zennor is a closer emotional, heavier bond. Dia doesn’t understand the Companion thing but she gets that she’s bound to me, thus important.”
“Ah, yeah. That makes sense in context, just wasn’t sure about the words. But I suppose that makes sense, it just feels weird being at the bottom, you know?” Janik looked down into the fore. It was clear that he knew it wasn’t really important but at the same time, it seemed to affect him slightly.
“Oh, we all know you’re a bottom,” Sam grinned back at him with a dumb, dirty joke.
“You fucker, that’s a good one. I’ll let you have this one,” he smiled properly in response, seeming to have snapped out of it.
Their small talk and shade-throwing came to an end shortly thereafter, Sam had to start today’s grind. He both liked and disliked this part, it was fun seeing how overpowered he kind of was, but the repetitive nature was both boring and dangerous.
Deciding to just get started, they popped back in for another round. They took about two hours to swim through the whole thing, all the rooms and whatnot, but with the swim boost it should be a bit faster.
The white light deposited them in the same land-cave location as before.
“I have an idea,” Sam commented before getting started. “Since you’re just sitting here, do you mind teaching Dia the Active Defence skill?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can do that,” Janik agreed to it instantly, looking surprisingly happy about it.
Janik had a very helpful personality, and given the number of times he has taken advantage of Sam’s grinding ability, he might have seen this as a way to repay some of that.
“That’s good to hear,” Sam smiled back, it was surprisingly good to consider this. “Also, if you see the counterattack skill you got, I would like that for her as well. Just buy it and let me know. I’ll repay it afterwards.”
Sam wanted that mix for Dia since she could combine punches, kicks, claws and bites she might be very skilled at this kind of fighting style. If the timing was bad and they somehow ended up with two instances of the skill, that was not a problem and he’d just learn it as well, no reason to not know this if the chance came.
“Yeah, no problem,” Janik smiled back as he made a shooing motion towards the water. “Now get:”
Sam wanted to reply with some snide remark, but he wasn’t able to think of something, on top of this he was going to teach Dia so...
Letting out a drawn-out sigh instead, Sam headed for the hallway into the water.
