The battle with the very obviously ‘big boss’ keystone monster began as chaotically as Leuen thought was possible. They’d walked into a large, seemingly empty room, then the door had closed behind them, as cliché as that is. Then the Big Boss had revealed itself by falling off of the previously unnoticed pillars that don’t actually stretch up all the way to the high ceiling. 

 

That had split the group up. Essandir is currently at Leuen’s back, as he does his best to keep the small army of regular gremlins from reaching his charge. A quick glance at Ird reveal she’s keeping the Big Boss in place, though not winning her 1v1. Cole is helping Lucius keep small ones off Ird’s back, meaning the current battle is a losing proposition. Ird can’t hold out forever. Fortunately, his stalling for Essandir’s sake pays off moments later.

 

“Flameblast!” The girl shouts before immediately switching sides with Leuen and erasing what must’ve been twenty gremlins from existence instantly. “I don’t have another one of those!”

 

Shit. Cole used his bomb earlier too. Alright then, guess we’re on the ‘finish this quickly’ plan Cole brought up as an alternative. Leuen moves to execute this plan as fast as possible, by shouting out for Lucius to take over guarding Essandir so that Leuen and Cole can attempt to hamstring the big boss. I suppose there’s no time like the present. Thought Acceleration!

 

A slight boost, only 10%, doesn’t seem like much initially, until Leuen is actually using it in combat. In combat, when decisions made in under a second are matters of life and death, having .1 extra seconds per second to make those decisions adds up fast. In the time it takes Leuen to reach Ird’s stalling battle with the boss monster, Leuen has been granted a full extra second by TA to determine the best way to enter the melee.

 

He deactivates TA as he uses the skill version of P.K.S. on the monster’s back right leg, first kicking the boss to one knee and then pinning its now bent leg in place with his sword impaling through the creature’s back. I’ll also be taking this. He reactivates TA to give himself the time to comprehend the stats that pop up.

 

Monster: Gremlin_BigBoss_A

HP: 46/70

--

Phys.Stat

Hard: 3

Tough: 3

Dura: Unknown

Regen: Unknown

Grit: Unknown

Absorption: Unknown

Stamina: Unknown

Regen: Unknown

CC: Unknown

M.Conductivity: Unknown

 

Leuen resists the urge to call bullshit that anything he’s seen in this world so far could have such a ridiculous amount of HP, but only because he’s busy pulling his sword out as quickly as possible to avoid it snapping while the giant gremlin attempts to recover. The moment his sword is free, he swings it in a diagonal arc towards the creature’s achilles tendon on its other leg, sending it to its knee once again.

 

As he does, he hears the telltale thwip-thunk combination of noises followed by monstrous growls and grunts of pain indicating that the stationary beast is being turned into a pincushion by Cole. Not to mention-

 

Leuen barely manages to jump backwards and out of he way of Ird’s two swords nearly taking his legs off through the boss’s injured left leg. For a moment, Leuen recognizes that TA just saved his life, as he dodged by around a tenth of a second. He can feel the heat mounting though, so he turns it off and resolves to thank his system later. For now, Cole and Ird can beat up on the boss.

 

Sprinting around the beast, Leuen manually performs a P.K.S. on a gremlin that would’ve prevented Cole from firing another shot, before taking up the backup tank role of keeping the trash off of his DPS duo. Until Essandir shouts out for him.

 

“Leuen! Lucius-” Leuen doesn’t waste any time listening, and simply trusts that Cole can handle himself. When he turns, the problem is obvious. With her flamethrower having run out, Essandir had to resort to her few remaining other spells, resulting in Lucius needing to pick up some melee slack. This would’ve been fine if two Gremlin Bosses hadn’t stepped out from an entryway that hadn’t been there when the group had entered the room.

 

Lucius is hurt, badly by the looks of it, but he’s got one of Essandir’s potions in hand, he just has no time to take it.

 

“Ok… fuck it… Plan D…” Leuen grunts as he pulls out his own potion and downs as much of it as he can while moving to cover his mage and healer.

 

Item: Essandir’s Potion

HP: 1

Hard: 0

Tough: 0

Flammable: No

Conductivity: No

M.Conductivity: No

Special: Consume to increase Dura regen by 143,942.4 for six seconds. Excess Dura regenerated in this time period is converted to stamina.

 

Leuen did the math earlier. All it really means is that the potion is intended to restore 10 HP when consumed. However, the part that Leuen wants is the stamina conversion.

 

The moment he’s in range, Leuen activates the P.K.S. skill on the first Gremlin Boss. Then, he uses it again on the second one while the first is still off-balance from the kick. Then he repeats it on the first, except this time successfully landing the stab on the creature’s head, buying him enough time to use the P.K.S. skill twice on the second one, killing it, freeing him up to execute the first as it reels from the faster-than-fair onslaught.

 

It was a cheap tactic. Akin to spamming an unbalanced command grab in a fighting game. It also isn’t possible without immense stamina usage, and Leuen is pretty sure P.K.S. isn’t a great skill to do the tactic with. But, it worked wonders. For good measure, Leuen activates P.K.S. one more time on the only regular gremlin close enough to pose a threat to Essandir and Lucius. Surrendering control of his body to a preprogrammed set of actions is unsettling, but if Leuen contextualizes it as being just a bullshit combat gimmick in an otherwise realistic game, he’s willing to let it slide.

 

“What did you just-” Leuen doesn’t let Essandir distract either of them for any more time than it takes for Lucius to down his potion and then pound his chest, seemingly to get his blood pumping.

 

Leuen reaches Cole just in time to kick a gremlin that would’ve landed a blow on the rogue into the nearest pillar. Without wasting any time, Cole drops his dagger and draws an arrow, firing a shot that sends two gremlins closing in on his and Leuen’s flank to oblivion. Judging Cole to have enough time to operate on his own, at least for now, Leuen looks back at Lucius and Essandir, who are moving to the center towards himself and Cole, and of particular note is the ‘windlace’ spell Essandir launches towards Ird’s much more favorable engagement with the big boss.

 

Leaving Cole to Lucius and Essandir, Leuen rushes forward, taking Ird’s place as tank by blocking a wild swing of the injured boss’s hammerlike right arm and observing that blocking it still dealt a point of stamina damage as Ird plunges one of her swords into a cut opened by Essandir’s spell.

 

An arrow impacts the beast’s head, knocking its next strike off course, enabling Leuen to stab through its left arm and force the beast to the ground, whereupon Ird summarily decapitates it with exactly zero climax or fanfare.

 

With the boss dead, Ird collapses, leaving one of her swords inside the beast and the other on the ground as she pants heavily. Leuen looks around for something to do, but only finds that Cole is sniping away fleeing gremlins trying to run towards the hidden entrance the two bosses had come from earlier.

 

“Fleeing?” Leuen questions while gathering Ird’s swords for her as the big boss’s corpse slowly sublimates into black mist like all other gremlin corpses.

 

“Keystone’s dead. Look there.” Lucius waits for the big boss’s head to fully evaporate, revealing a small blue crystal that looks almost exactly like-

 

Lucius’s boot crushes the gem to dust, sending a wave of what Leuen can only describe as secondhand or perhaps psychic pain screaming through the dungeon’s walls around him. It’s momentarily too much for him to bear, and Leuen finds losing his balance as raw sensory overload takes him.

 

Level Up

Most recent action: Dungeon Conquered

Level: 6 -> 7

Dura: 16 -> 17

Stamina: 16 -> 17

CC: 60 ->65

Optional Rewards(Choose one):

--

+1 Any two Phys.Stat (M.Conductivity and CC excluded)

+1 Any two Mental.Stat (TA and Analyze excluded)

+Meta.Stat.Systems.Quest

 

-X-X-X-

 

Essandir wants to kick herself. The man she’s currently letting lean against her chest is a psion. Why had none of her party considered how he might react to shattering a keystone right in front of him? The powers dungeons use and the powers psions use are almost identical, at least according to the scholarly. So why hadn’t Essandir, rank 4 Elemental Mage, the one actually trained and in charge of knowing magical stuff, realized that her bodyguard might not appreciate it too much to have one shattered in front of him?

 

Still, Leuen is recovering quickly. She’d thrown herself on the floor to prevent him from hitting his head on the hard stone, likely badly bruising her own legs in the process, but it was worth it. She already decided when she brewed a potion for him that Leuen is one of her ‘people’ now, just like her party is. It’s a little bit different than that, if she had to admit it. Her party is like her second family, whereas she’s not quite sure what Leuen is to her.

 

Someone she wants to continue keeping her alive, to continue patting her head, to continue letting her use him as furniture when the group is resting. Essandir doesn’t have much romantic experience, so she’s been quietly hoping Leuen will take the lead in that regard. She knows Lucius and Ird approve of her choice, even if Cole hasn’t weighed in.

 

Not relevant. He drank my potion earlier, and after that… Essandir shudders. Lucius being injured was bad enough, considering he needed to drink one of her potions rather than simply heal himself with magic, but how Leuen had responded was something Essandir thinks she’s glad Lucius didn’t see. Faster than she’s ever seen him move before, Leuen had knocked both gremlin bosses off balance, then he’d brutalized the one closest to herself in under two seconds. He’d been a blur. One moment he’d downed her potion, the next both were dead to three stab wounds each.

 

She could understand, intuitively, that Leuen had been using her potion for something other than healing, probably as fuel for a psion power she doesn’t understand. That psion power was probably what allowed Leuen to move so flawlessly and quickly. Leuen didn’t use any new techniques or skills, just the exact same repetition of defending, staggering, and striking that he’s been using, he’d just done them terrifyingly fast and with the same precision each time. As fast and percise as Ird can do her signature techniques when she puts her mind to it.

 

It’s the only display of offense he’s displayed that doesn’t fit a rank 5 warrior. Everything about that display defies convention. Or, she supposes, there isn’t a convention to hold him to. He’s a Psion. Ridiculous feats of precision and efficiency is one of the few things that is documented about a psion’s powerset. His seeming intangibility is another. Essandir thinks she’s the only one who’s noticed, but Leuen is never injured unless he’s already tired.

 

It’s as if Leuen’s level of exhaustion determines the thickness of his skin or the effectiveness of his clothes as armor. The very first time they fought together, she saw his arm get grazed by a gremlin’s spear, yet he came away not even scratched. At the time she thought him lucky. Right now, when you’re helpless in my arms, this is when he would be cut by that. This is when you could-

 

Essandir stops herself from running her hands around on his body, not because she was doing anything untoward, but because Leuen is staring up at her, now fully awake from his psionic shock. 

 

“I was just-”

 

“You can continue later, if you want.” Leuen smirks as he interrupts her, before Essandir’s whole party, herself included, erupts in laughter.

 

-X-X-X-

 

“So,” Lucius and Leuen both begin at the same time, but are stopped from continuing by interrupting each other.

 

“So,” Mr. Buccitte, the manager/bossman/whatever of the local adventurer’s guild (Leuen does not care what he is), ignores them both to continue speaking. “The reward for the dungeon subjugation that was set aside has gone missing. I’m afraid I don’t have your reward for completion.”

 

Leuen thinks the man is slimy. He’s refusing to make eye contact with Leuen, which isn’t a surprise anymore, but he’s also acting highly suspicious beneath Leuen’s gaze, and being very careful with his words, something he now recognizes as being doubly suspicious when a faith mage is in the room.

 

It doesn’t help that Leuen and Voran’s of Riverwake were coming into the guild hall after normal hours, but Mr. Buccitte almost seems like he’s got too much on his plate even without a reward going missing. Leuen just has a bad vibe. He can’t imagine how Lucius must be feeling, given his whole magical schtick seems to be ‘healing + magical vibe detector’.

 

“That’s incredibly odd, Mr. Buccitte. The dungeon had other oddities, if you’ll hear them. It was far older than the guild’s intelligence provided, and Leuen here observed that a nefarious third party could’ve been trying to use the guild to cover their tracks by having the dungeon destroyed.” Lucius is very direct and measured in his tone, something Leuen hasn’t really associated with ‘adventurer Lucius’ but that he’s fully willing to associate with ‘serious priest Lucius’. “I’ve already sent my party’s rogue to deliver that message to the temples, for the record.”

 

Mr. Buccitte’s reaction is to sweat bullets and fish around for some paperwork in one of the receptionists’ desks.

 

“That is… worrying. But there’s been far more than just that afoot, someone used vile- no, destruction magic, on the river, repeatedly, over the last few days. Investigation has turned up nothing, not even connection to anything else ongoing, it’s as if-”

 

Interrupting the guild leader is the sound of a door slamming open. Turning as one, Lucius, Leuen, and Essandir face the intruder. Leuen has to narrow his eyes for a moment to prevent himself from looking too surprised. Walking through the door is a veritable giant of a man. Leuen is six feet tall, and this man probably has a full head up on him, not to mention his bulk. Leuen thinks the only thing keeping his outfit on is the fear it will be destroyed if he flexes.

 

The men that follow him are vastly different, but equally intimidating. A short man in mages robes, hood up and obscuring part of his face. He’s slightly overweight, but decorated in enough magical-looking stuff to clearly be that group’s equivalent of Essandir. There’s a textbook ‘rogue’ (Leuen has just started assigning the label to anyone who dresses and walks remotely like Cole), complete with definitely aesthetic bandages on his wrists that obviously hold hidden knives. There’s a man around Lucius’s height with two hatchets on his waist, the only man visibly walking around armed beyond the rogue, and a female mage dressed like a feminine Lucius, but without the holy iconography.

 

“We’re back, job’s done.” The hulking behemoth doesn’t elaborate more than that, simply letting the ‘rogue’ walk forward and hold out his arm, as if demanding payment from Mr. Buccitte. “This the newbie you mentioned?”

 

At that, Leuen feels something in the air around him, like an invisible icy breeze pressing against his skin. Leuen activates TA and glares back at the man, before stopping when Mr. Buccitte begins talking again.

 

“Y-yes, thank you, here you go. Have a fantastic evening, Sir Blackwood.” Mr. Buccitte bows, holding the position with his spin bent at a near ninety degree angle for the entire time it takes for the ‘rogue’ to walk back to his group.

 

“Don’t mention it.” Leuen thinks that the man intended that more as a threat than an acknowledgement. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We looked into that mage you mentioned, and I think I can have a report for you within the week. Cya tomorrow, bossman.”

 

The entire group hadn’t waited for a reply, not that Leuen was capable of properly moving beneath that icy aura. Essandir doesn’t release her white-knuckle grip on Leuen’s shirt until the adventuring party is well out of sight.

 

“Virtues…” Lucius lets out, followed by an exasperated sigh. He seems to recover quickly in Leuen’s eyes, but he doesn’t turn to the guild leader first. “Absolutely everything he said was a lie and absolutely every question he asked was malicious.”