Last Minute Benefits

By the time the pond refilled to a swirling mass of fluid-like energy, I was sober enough to stop my friends in the work and have them cultivate while sending Conansson out to find people from the other clans to come in and start mining crystals.

After four full hours of cultivating after this point, the pond had lost around half of its rocks along the sides, leaving mostly the bottom bed and lower sides of small boulders. The crystals themselves were being stored in one-hundred-rock sacks of rat-face Taurian skins, making it easy to keep track of what was gained.

Even if the people brought in to replace all of the elites collected less for my team intentionally, the collection from either side at the time was already different by a few dozen or so sacks in my clan's stock. The overall number was around four thousand crystals per person which came our to around forty thousand overall. We had enough to supply stat rings for every available member slot in our clan for all six stats several times over.

The continued collection from the past four hours would have tripled this at the very least, which was something that I could accept after being the first to pull in my elites. However, several dedicated members of Mistress' team decided to stay on so that their team eventually came out with the most divine mana crystals.

As for my cultivation, I officially reached Initial Success for Demigod two hours after pulling in my team. The bonus up til then was merely a hundred MP plus some affinity five times, but after unlocking a second tier for Demigod I received ten thousand experience, one thousand MP and HP in one fell swoop, and a healing buff that gave anybody I recognized as an ally a universal regen of two percent per second every second for an hour as well as plus ten percent to all of their stats for ten minutes.

Thankfully, this buffing skill called 'Divine Aid' also applied to myself when it was cast on any ally within one hundred yards of my position.

Aside from the Demigod gains, I only managed to make two breakthroughs in MA2, bringing me to the part of the way through the fifth level of Proficient Success and reaping the benefits of nine thousand new MP. With the help of Melpomene's blessings, I could probably unleash a magic combo skill with the power to rival an actual nuke.

If I hit the ceiling of this dungeon with that, not only would I probably excavate the lost township but I would probably kill every existing thing present.

Now that I was once again suffering a hangover from cultivating such intense energies, I felt like I was ready to quit cultivating for a while. The only thing I really wanted to do was balance my Chaos Fiend branch with Demigod but even with all of the demons gathered condensing their energy in the area above the pond the progress of this was very slow.

Most of the others had even started taking breaks from their meditations, growing exhausted from the combined mental and physical efforts that were somewhat forced for those who relied too heavily on the absorption process. Since Mana Condensing probably did not upgrade to Mana Assimilation for them, I doubted they had achieved more than a few thousand extra mana to spend overall.

I could imagine the growths were not that great after Initial Success but probably grew greater at the Proficient levels

Since we really did have over a hundred people in our clan over the last few days, I went ahead and started on producing stat rings and bangles for my clan members. I doubted they were actually receiving trouble in their respective areas, but many of them were classless players I had invited from my threat and I knew that they each needed help in certain areas.

However, I did not release them in every stat. I spent my time crafting a thousand Intelligence rings, one thousand Strength rings, and one thousand Agility rings. I only covered the dominant class stats, ignoring Willpower, Endurance, and Luck since most classless players had naturally high Lucks.

These speed and damage boosts would really only be so effective, but they would definitely be more on par with people using classes at the same level if they focused on two stats apiece. Three Intelligence rings and three Agility rings could level almost any playing field out in the open world and even in some dungeons. Six Strength rings, though, could add no less than a hundred damage to any physical based attack.

There were almost ten of each ring for every member of the clan filling the Fodder positions but the rings themselves cost fifteen thousand contribution points. Few people were actually making monetary or asset contributions since we posted a no-collection warning on familiars while we were in this dungeon raid and everything else now had restrictions except for some crafting materials.

After this short break from my training, I return to the shore of the dried up pond to begin cultivating Chaos Fiend. I had intentionally neglected this branch because I would usually have access to its energies through Zekrom and thus it remained at initial level two. Now, though, with the dense gathering of chaotic energies piled on top of the pond's divine energies, I could take in and refine almost the same amount of MP as in the pond.

The first few levels and first few hundreds of mana rolled in in minutes before tapering out to a few minutes between each breakthrough. However, level two as two hundred and the scaling levels continuously added up to over five thousand mana and a thousand HP by the time I achieved Initial Success in the due course of two hours.

My exact health and mana numbers were now four thousand four hundred and fifty-two HP and twenty-thousand two hundred and twenty MP. I had more than four times my health in mana. This was probably what a magic class with a level in the three digits looked like between their health and mana.

This not only affected the scale of my attacks but also my regeneration. One percent of ten thousand was one hundred, any second in which I regenerate MP would be two hundred and since I could regenerate in combat like I did in combat then I could regen several hundred mana per second under normal circumstances. If I measured my attacks and skills, I could never run out of mana as long as I only used a handful of skills in most cases.

Aside from Spirit Slash and Geist, the elemental cutters only had cool downs of between five and ten seconds with their nearly maxed skill levels. These skills could be thrown out with horrifying consistency at several hundred MP apiece when mixed with other skills and basic attacks.

On top of the mana and health benefits, I received more affinity with darkness and curses, a buff that directly made my curses ten percent stronger, and a new curse. This curse was called Carrion Touch and was basically the same as my Corruption abilities in that it makes an opponent rot away. However, the rot was slow at six percent of an enemy's HP every six seconds.

This was strengthened and shortened to eight percent and four seconds through my affinities and buffs, but even in its normal state it was a decent solution to the pesky problem of regenerating or naturally long-winded opponents. Using my cordycep skills like Corruption was a problem for fighting with a group because I had no idea if the people around me could get infected or die.

Spore Shoal was literally my body, so I could change its distribution and relative mass to avoid being breathed in, but Corruption directly converted the mass of another entity into toxic sludge. Devour was something that I could do with my body and Assimilate was something I could use through every facet of CordAniCol.

As expected, though, the growth after Initial Success slowed down horribly, even more than the second level of Demigod. It took several hours to break through the very first level as if trying to dam a river to fill a gorge. However, the benefits of the first level on the road to Proficient Success was an altogether new addition of one hundred HP and resistance to darkness.

My inner obsessive compulsive self was immediately intrigued by this and I found new motivation to continue this cultivation. Chaos Fiend had a direct effect on my physical self and defenses, if I could gain a few more levels in this then I could certainly raise my HP at least to one fourth of my mana.

Each of the following levels for two and three, raking in five hundred HP, took roughly an hour apiece but was finished in a timely manner.

My HP was now roughly a quarter of my MP, which was downright shameful if said out of context, but my single percent regen was now around fifty HP per percent and came out to five hundred HP per ten percent. With the help of my simpler healing items or my recent buffing skills, I could easily achieve what would effectively be five hundred HP per second. That was an enormous amount of regen when compared to most players.

Reminding myself with a wistful sigh that I had eaten up my rations, I do a quick estimate to find that we had spent nearly two days in the dungeon since I last logged off. That was about six hours, my parents would probably be waking up soon. I did not intend to have any commitments today but I should at least get up to check on my little brother and sister to see how their studies are going after another day.

Using Melpomene's assistance for checking the progress of my party's mana training without disturbing them, I use their training progress to estimate the progress made by the gathered clan leadership and elites. By now all of the big boulders in the middle sides of the pond had been broken down and mined for several tens of thousands of divine crystals.

All that remained were the smaller boulders and large rocks lining the bottom and lower sides. However, once could not see this without being in the actual pond. Regardless of this, it was time to stop mining and meditating and put these final reserves to use on the 'masses'.

Though it took longer to reach their Proficient stages, they had made the move in one fell swoop and thus took a long time to recover. Their minds, like mine, were just barely present and drifting while fighting adverse physical urges. They even took longer to recover from their delirious status than I did and several of them had to vomit to do so.

I, at least, had held in my copious amounts of food that were digested through questionable means.

Half an hour of coaxing them out of the pond later, I took over the control of the pond's energies while sending the demons out to collect the other players while briefly resting their powers. Demons like Reptor had needed to be forcibly educated to pick up such mana manipulation practices despite their original innate mana ability and thus it was more straining on them.

When the others returned, I had managed to slowly spend a few thousand mana further compressing the whirling divine energies into a thick sheet that blanketed the entire inside of the pond. It was actually an incredibly straining process to maintain so I was grateful for the demons' return. Once Zekrom was back I immediately tapped into his enormous mana pool which was tens of times greater than my own by default.

Using his mana to directly compress the sheet of divine power, I shift my own mana and awareness into the energy itself while loudly informing the gathered players, "I want ten of you at a time to come into the pond and wait at the bottom. Careful of your footing. When you're at the bottom, I am going to set the pond ablaze with Soulfire and your mission will be to escape. Each person will have to undergo at least ten minutes if they cannot escape."

The looks on the exposed faces of some of the gathered players went through several changes at my words. They already knew from the time their leaders spent in here that this was where we went to train in a variety of ways, so at first they looked almost excited. This excitement changed to hesitation as soon as I gave them the first warning.

Once the word 'Soulfire' was spoken, everybody looked and carried themselves with unease and even a few took a step back. They obviously did not want to be the first ones in the pit of doom. Following their example, several dozen other players quickly stepped back as well.

Around twenty people were left looking around in shock, fear, and anger at their previous companions. Some were even in the process of more slowly retreating. However, I quickly said, "All of you, in."

Emphasizing my words, the demons gathered around the pit sidled a little closer to show that they were prepared to enforce my orders. Even at the risk of these bosses the two-hundred-plus players present did not show any signs of entering the pond. Finally, I stood up and reached out with a secondary awareness worth ten thousand MP channeled into Telekinesis.

A sheer wall of kinetic energy rushed out, encircled the front-most twenty players, and scooped them into the pond. Even though the holy energies compressed along the inner walls of the pond were intangible, the players were caught in the maelstrom of flowing layers of energies and sucked straight to the bottom.

Watch their footing? Escape in ten minutes? Even I did not know how screwed they were, anymore.

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