The Dungeon Raid Pt2

I finally got to see what I felt was the full range of Zekrom's flash technique, not only in distance but in the number of times he could use it. At my command, he suddenly appeared around five hundred feet away in the air toward the cathedral before immediately blinking for several hundred more feet. More than a dozen blinks later, he suddenly appeared in an almost blurred flight toward the rear of the battle.

Seconds later as the last ten rows of a few hundred demons were becoming a colorful smoke screen and meat paste, Zekrom's immense form landed behind the unaware undead rearguard. As one, the now aware undead monsters turned around and spurred forth. The stopped.

Within seconds of his landing, my new pet boss had frozen a thousand mobs in place. Looking at this in various ways, there were few ways to describe this scene in a bad light unless on was on the receiving end of it. This was a game changer.

True to his words, though, only a few hundred of the undead actually came under his control. While all of the others were rendered motionless under Zekrom's control, three hundred of the biggest and ugliest monsters started running rampant through their own ranks.

The demons under fire could not afford to even glimpse back as their numbers were simply blown apart every other second from in front. Their undead were simply vanishing alongside their comrades. It was a complete and total massacre that never even tested the effectiveness of my pitfalls.

These demons were fucking idiots. Even though the initial spears from the skeletons no longer shattered their defenses, the following volleys still shredded straight through to them while in the blessed obstacle field. And yet, their was still no responsive recourse from their AI other than to push forward.

I was actually a little scared of this. Not because of the unrelenting nature of these demons but because of how easy this fight had been. When we divided up to take more than one outpost at a time, we would be facing serious difficulties. I could only hope to make the others make a joint effort in taking the first enemy outpost for the shared experience.

Rolling forward from my seat and over the edge of the cliff, I grow out my wings through my armor and flip into a swift glide out toward the cathedral. Even though my flight was steady, I only flapped once for forward momentum and used the angle of my wings to maintain it so my airtime somehow came out to around ten seconds longer than Zekrom.

Because I was landing on the front of the cathedral, which was closer, this was made worse by the fact that the plague lord was a few hundred yards out. Flash movement skills were no joke and his 'charges' refreshed one per minute. However, as I looked around I quickly forgot such petty concerns when I noticed something.

The enemies not under Zekrom's control had died seconds ago while I was in the air. Yet, their bodies were still on the ground. Parts and halves of bone demons with rivers of innards and fluids staining the obstacle field were still on the field and the thousands of bones and bits from undead were scattered as far as the eye could see. As for the ghouls, their existences amounted to puddles of vaporous slime that were smeared out by the oppressive energy of the attacks.

"Melpomene… Is this for real?" I ask as I see other players around the front yards of the cathedral were looking around in confusion. It was one thing for me not to receive combat or loot notifications because I was outside the battlefield entirely, but for the bodies to still be here and everyone else showing similar reactions I was now worried.

[No, they still received experience and other rewards at the very end, but the physical materials themselves must be collected by hand here. The people who make it this far in these events- and this can also happen in PVP settings for looting bodies- would be the professional and elite players. This is where the quality of your work effects the quality of your gains]

"Uh, we obliterated everything," I say with a dismal sinking feeling in my gut as I flapped up and then again into another dive. Landing in back of the obstacle field that was painted in vaporous slime and gecko demon gore, I look around to find some pieces of body protected by only partially ruined armor and equipment. However, the only demon materials we would find here are a few dozen heads, the bone demons, and what I could only assume was supposed to be 'ectoplasm'.

The omnipresent undead parts might be considered as loot as well, since I had seen some of the demons wielding weapons made from them. However, after making comparisons, the undead bones were lower in quality than troll ivory. They were almost not worth eating if not for a few nearby that bore interesting signatures to my mana senses.

[Assimilating: Aged Skele-lord Skull]

[Assimilated: Bone Density +5%]

[+300XP]

[Assimilating: Aged Heretic Scapula]

[Assimilated: +5% Darkness Affinity]

[+300XP]

[Assimilating: Sand Demon Paste]

[Assimilated: +.5% Physical Recovery Per Second]

[Assimilated: +10% Thermal Regulation]

[+520XP]

[Assimilating: Wraith Fiend's Ectoplasm]

[Assimilated: +5% Lightning Resistance]

[Assimilated: Spiritual Paralysis Toxin]

[+450XP]

Sadly, there were no new material productions.

Only after a few minutes of wandering around and eating a few random parts, I quickly stop gaining benefits from the loose gore and switch to using a large-scale Appraise. As I hoped, there were a few dozen tags in every direction marking out things like ruined mana crystals from the undead or tougher monster cores from the demons. There were not many of these and I had done next to nothing myself so I simply left the undead loot at the back up to Zekrom's discretion.

Walking deeper into the obstacle fields as the first players were finally finding their own ways down from the wall, I stop at the first 'ascended bone fiend' I come across and place my hand on its head. Everything below the upper ribs and below the biceps were simply gone. However, some of the most important parts were right here in reach.

[Assimilating: Ascended Abomination]

[Assimilated: +10% Bone Density]

[Assimilated: Crystallizing Chaos Ivory]

[Assimilated: +10 Strength]

[Assimilated: +10 Endurance]

[+750XP]

[Fusing Reproduction Materials: Troll Ivory+Crystallizing Chaos Ivory]

[Fused Material: Crystallized Chaos Troll Soul]

[+1000XP]

[Fusing Material: Crystallized Chaos Troll Soul: Plagued Lich Lord Soul Stone]

[Fused Material: Crystalline Chaos Lord Soul Stone]

[+1500XP]

[Leveled Up]

[All stats raised by 1]

"Holy shit," I cannot help but swear aloud as I listen to and read the notifications scrolling in my view as I devoured everything- including a core- remaining from the bone fiend. Not only had I managed to trigger a fusion for similar materials, I had triggered a second fusion that created an even stronger version of the soul bone from the original Trollbone.

After having claimed an entire sample of bone fiend for myself despite not taking part in the action, I put in some work flying about the field using skills likes Force Strike and Spirit Wave to throw the giant pieces of bodies into a pile. Considering the size, density, and weight of these giant bone demons, there were probably only a handful of players present who could actually transport these body parts alone at all. Even using magic, there were few who could throw one alone.

As it turned out, it required three or more players to move the few dozen bodies I did not get to first, marking a stark contrast between our Strength stats. I was fairly certain most of the people transporting these giant bodies with me had around three hundred Strength, coupled with the starting one hundred units of Character Inventory weight.

This made for an overall four hundred kilograms of strength, almost nine hundred pounds. Many of them would have a little less or even a little more than this depending on their training. Considering they were the elites of two of the top clans, I could assume everybody here had around three-twenty in their Strength stats.

My Strength stat was now exactly three-fifty since the level-up and bone demon stats while my highest stat was still Agility at three-seventy-five on the mark. My carrying capacity was almost a thousand pounds, I could loosely say that in the game I could bench or squat my strongest attack in reality. Throw in some magic to amplify my Strength and I could throw these one-ton body halves and pieces around.

Somehow, Luck was still my lowest stat with three-twenty-five points. Everything else sat within a fifty-point range between Luck and Agility, bringing a fair amount of balance to my stats. I was certain that none of the other players on the battlefield could say their highest and lowest stat were only fifty points apart.

Zekrom's new undead minions helped as well, collecting the thousands of scattered undead remains as well as 'sweeping' ectoplasm into gory piles. With their assistance the job was actually handled in less than ten minutes. Everything else not worth picking up was left as carrion for the dozens of infected familiars that mad been spreading throughout the player ranks.

While a hundred-person team was quickly assembled to disassemble the bone demon bodies, my team and the other heads of clans were gathered around a small mountain of whole and broken undead bones and parts. There was no actual reason for us to be here since Zekrom was busying himself sorting the bones, but to simply stand here and watch OCD at work in the form of this giant armored monster organizing skeletons was simply too absurd to walk away from.

Finally, after a few minutes in which a 'complete' humanoid skeleton had been set aside, I finally stop and ask, "Are you going to do what I think you're doing?"

"Fight fire with fire," is his simplistic response, holding a hand out toward the skeleton he had just laid out and producing thick tendrils of darkness. This usually intangible element suddenly gains substance as it travels down, winding about the arrayed skeleton like dozens of slender serpents.

After a while, the darkness began connecting the bones with spaced out joints, increasing the actual size of the skeleton while the bones begin soaking in the darkness to turn an incredibly dark iron gray. Less than two minutes after he started, the skeleton had almost turned black and rose straight up from the ground as if out of the grave into a standing position.

The undead was over seven feet tall thanks to the new spaces between its bones but its stance and form were completely solid. It had large folding ivory arms like a mantis but and large backward-bent animal legs, but the rest of the skeleton was human despite having several spines twisted into one thick column.

I could tell just from its presence that this undead was on par with the strongest undead in the previous ranks. As well, from how smoothly and calmly Zekrom continued to pick through the pile I could tell that this would not be the only addition to our ranks. I was sorely tempted to give it a try myself as I watched him at work.

I DID technically get the Necromancy mastery and I even have Shadowmancy that deals directly with the darkness element. If I had to guess, those were the same things that Zekrom were using to create these elite abominations. However, as I received another notification from the back of the cathedral, I remembered that I had better toys to work with.

Leaving the others to organize the gains from the obliterated siege, I simply praise Zekrom for his work before flapping up and away into the air. Three flaps later, I angle out into a swift dive down toward the graveyard pond of the cathedral. Still planted in the ground at the bottom of the pond was Hauntings, feeding on numerous pulses of divine energy from the surrounding area.

Surprisingly, the swords itself and the ripples were changing. One half of the sword's steel was turning dark and even faintly gassy with dark light while the other half had whitened as if bleached and shone brightly as if from within. The central seam where light and dark met was also splitting, starting at the giant pommel of my sword and making its way down the tang was a smooth divide as the alignments of the sword separated.

As the dual energies within the sword separated, the sword itself was slowly splitting down the middle and the split had almost reached the guard above the hilt. The rest of the steel itself did not look damaged in any way. My primary weapon was simply turning into a primary pair.

Wondering how long a process like that would take, I shake my head sadly from outside of the pond before turning my attention to manufacturing materials. Even though I planned to attempt making my own undead similar to Zekrom's new creations, there was an even bigger issue that required my attention. Siege supplies.

Not only did we spend all of our strongest spears in the first battle due to overestimating the enemy, we would need several times as many for the retaliation of attacking an outpost. Their attack ranges would probably exceed ours both physically and magically while their physical defenses would surely be stronger than ours. Numbers aside, they had settled in at their locations much better and for much longer than we had.

So, to compensate for this, I started producing chaos lord soul stone spears that were simple seven-foot long stakes that tapered down to needling points. Not only did this simply weapon have a PATK of one-ten on the spot, it could be affixed with a magic head over its rounded stake points so that the outer head lays down suppressive AOE while the actual spear hammered for heavy single-target damage.

However, a single estimated volley of these weapons would be five hundred just from our own wall and each spear required three hundred mana to produce. Even though I now had four thousand MP without the temporary pool, that was still a costly and time consuming number. That was only thirteen spears in one minute of producing with two minutes of naked recovery time. With just over six hundred bonus MP from my accessories and general bonuses, I could make fifteen spears in three minutes.

That was seventy-five spears in fifteen minutes. Even if I added the regen buffs of some food and potions, that only became one hundred spears in fifteen minutes. Over the course of the next hour I could not even make a full wall volley before the others started arriving.

"What the hell?" Go asks once he, the rest of our team, and some of the other clan elites finally returned to the pond. The probably intended to continue their training while everyone else handled inventory before crafting. However, they arrived to find my pushing out a chest-height pile of long crystalline stakes from my hands with a look of such concentration that I probably appeared constipated.

*