Chapter 441

James watched their prey move about the corn field, the massive form visible even amongst the gold and green swathe, bathed in crimson light. Old Man Jenkins. The Demonic Farmer, first of the Jenkins family to be introduced in his dungeon. Even more than the first floor boss, Old Man Jenkins was James’s very first boss in DCO. The Demonic Farmer had launched his dungeon forward, and that crazy, pipe smoking farmer, with his flaming pitchfork, had put on quiet a show. Shame, really, that now James had to kill him.

“You know,” Steve said, glancing at the party, his smaller frame making him appear a child beside James, Rue, and the towering Ifrit. “I have a feeling this is going to look ridiculous.”

“Wasn’t that what you were going for?” James pressed. The spanker’s small size definitely helped with his ability to dodge and maneuver, but at the same time, it did add a bit of comedy for the fights. The whole party, including Ifrit, had shared a laugh when Steve had been tanking a Mad Cow. The sight of the enraged, demonic bull, chasing Steve, whom they’d given a few red dicken feathers to, for aggro purposes, had been hysterical. James was already preparing to record this upcoming fight, considering Old Man Jenkins was at least 4, probably 5, times taller than Steve.

“I mean, you’re not wrong.” Steve said, running a hand over his chin, where normally, he had facial hair. His current character though, was clean shaven. “But now, I’m starting to question my life choices.”

“You’re thinking about Rexy, aren’t you?” Rue chimed in. “He’s totally going to eat you.”

“Yeah. You know James, you really should have scaled down your mobs. Seriously, everything is so big.” Steve chuckled. “Is it a size issue with you?”

James ignored the jab and motioned towards their target. They’d cleared the floor of mobs already, three times in fact. Now, all that remained was Old Man Jenkins, and they didn’t have to worry about the unlucky appearance of any mobs, to catch them off guard. While the dungeon itself didn’t recognize who they were, James and his party were abusing all of their knowledge about the dungeon, to maximize their grinding efforts. To top it all off, clearing that many mobs had pushed Ifrit to level 10. According to the fiery djinn, he was a hair’s breadth away from 11, and beating Old Man Jenkins, would likely push him to his first evolution.

During their escapades on the first floor, James had found his summon gained a fraction of the experience that James did, from each kill. Given his level advantage over the mobs, which already decreased how much experience James was gaining, it had been slow going for the summon. Fortunately, they’d been able to land a lot of achievements, and the experience, even at its mitigated rate for Ifrit, combined with the experience multiplier James and the others were gaining, had still helped the summon out greatly. Normally, there was no way in hell his summon should have been so close to reaching its evolution, after a single dungeon run. But James, wasn’t complaining. Especially since their dungeon run had only just begun, the second floor already in their sites.

/PM: Rue: You have a Res right? Can we just watch Steve solo tank Old Man Jenkins for a bit?

/Rue: I wouldn’t put it past his spanker class to be able to solo Old Man Jenkins. He is 8 levels over the boss, after all.

Rue had a good point. While the experience gain had been slow going, they’d all gained three levels so far, which honestly, was more than James had expected. With all the mobs being level 10 on this floor, they were only gaining a trickle of experience from slaying them. But again, the achievements had been pivotal in their growth. Without those, they’d likely still be level 20, maybe 21, tops.

/PM: Rue: Fine. But I’m totally wanting to watch him get jumped by a velocity raptor.

/Rue: Ditto.

/PM: Rue: Who the hell says Ditto?

“You love birds done sending messages to each other?” Steve’s voice pulled James back to the situation at hand.

“Sorry, sorry.” James held up his hands, palm outwards, towards Steve, in a sign of apology. Even so, the developer seemed keenly aware James and Rue had been plotting, something. Steve was Steve, after all. He was the king of plots, and shenanigans.

“Uh huh.” Steve drew his empty hilts, and a moment later, purple energy swirled across them. In one hand, the hilt turned into a jagged dagger. That weapon, had a stacking bleed debuff on it. Each stack caused the target to lose 1hp, per stack, per second. At 20, the stacks caused the target to lose 10% of its hp, and then the stacks reset back to zero.

Steve’s other weapon turned into a purple mace. That weapon came with a slow debuff. Each stack, up to 10, caused a 2 percent slow to be applied to the target. At 10 stacks, that slow doubled to 40 percent, for 5 seconds, as the stacks faded away. Both were powerful tools, though as Steve had explained, each time the afflicted target landed a hit on Steve, it would cleanse itself of some of the stacks. Meaning, Steve’s class was very, very, technical. Furthermore, the psychic weapons came with cooldowns of their own, and a limited number of strikes. They also did crap damage on their own, relying entirely on their damaging stacks and such, to pull off any type of victory. According to the developer, the more he leveled up, the different weapon types he could summon would increase, as would their stackable effects. Steve had told James and Rue that what he really wanted, was to reach level 50. At that mark, apparently, Steve would gain the ability to craft and combine his weapon options, to create specialized psychic weapons, that would serve as mass cooldown, which Steve said was called Infinite Psychic Blade Works. It was a mouthful, but then again, this was Steve.

James took Steve’s que, and pointed towards Ifrit. The Djinn had been standing silently behind them, its eyes closed in boredom. James felt a tingling in his hand, as the magic flowed through him. A second later, power flowed from James, into Ifrit, and the Djinn’s fiery form glowed with an additional, deep scarlet. A second later, another spell flowed from James into Djinn, this time, adding a yellow hue to the Djinn. They were basic augmentation spells, one to serve as a haste for the Djinn, increasing its attack speed, the other, a buff that would increase his crit rate. With those two buffs, and the passive life steal Ifrit was gaining from James and Rue’s bond, the summon was definitely formidable. And after this fight, he would evolve.

“It’s about time.” Ifrit said, his eyes opening, their pupils blazing with excitement. The Djinn drew his blades, flames racing along the shining metal. “Let’s set this whole floor ablaze.”