Chapter 153
The situation flipped in a instant. Because every single enemy from the boss-monster down to the grunts focused their hostility on the tank, the fight stabilized in a flash. Do-Jin, who had been running around like a maniac trying to keep the healer alive just moments before, felt utterly baffled.
“Say that again before I rip your throat out!”
The Priestess of Condemnation went rabid, hurling herself at Theresa like a deranged butcher, while the ghosts she had dragged back from the afterlife piled onto her like a mass of decaying corpses.
Theresa shoved her back against the wall and started tanking while screaming “Pig! Pig! Pig!” like she was personally auditioning to get murdered.
Trash talk is common enough as a method of provocation, but for her taunt skill to be completely ignored and her verbal insults to pull aggro this hard is seriously fucked.
Do-Jin couldn’t help but laugh, because the whole situation was so absurd it felt like his brain had broken. He wondered if this even counted as a game mechanic, but it didn’t even matter. The immediate crisis had been avoided, even if the way it had resolved was stupid beyond belief. In hindsight, he regretted having wasted Transcendence, but there was absolutely no way to undo it now.
It is already active, so I might as well finish this before the timer runs out. Do-Jin steeled himself, tearing through his Magic Circuits in an almost masochistic way.
The Priestess, blinded by her own rabid rage, made a mistake by turning her rotund back to the mage. She panicked when the torrent of spells crashed into her like a collapsing building made of hellfire.
“Aagh! You rude bastard. How dare you do this to a lady.”
A lady my ass. Do-Jin quieted her complaints with raw explosive firepower. The rage vanished from her mind like water on hot pavement, replaced by a deeper instinct to survive.
“What are you idiots doing. Kill that rude bastard right now,” she commanded, triggering the monsters to switch their focus to Do-Jin.
This boss monster is impossible to control in terms of aggro.
It didn’t matter anymore. Do-Jin rammed his full burst damage directly into the Priestess’s disgusting body. She couldn’t do anything except helplessly scream at her minions. They couldn’t follow her orders because Tanto and Theresa were blocking every possible gap, preventing them from getting through.
“No way. I... I cannot die like this. This is impossible. Dear god...”
Despite its qualms, the boss monster eventually perished. Although the fight left Do-Jin recoiling from the effects of Transcendence, he cleanly recovered using Limited Reversion.
“Holy fuck! I seriously thought I was actually dead.” Having survived that raging boss’ full force, Theresa narrowed her eyes and glared at Soso like she wanted to strangle her.
That mouth of hers has been the problem ever since we were little.
Soso looked pretty on the outside, but her mouth was basically the jaws of a demon. One single comment from that unfiltered mouth and the entire dungeon had exploded. Despite that, Theresa had given up on expecting Soso to ever be socially normal a long time ago. This wasn’t even a situation where social skills mattered. A simple “Disgusting.” was enough to set that hag off.
Theresa stopped thinking about it and took the time to wind down. If a rich girl wanted to walk around lacking social filters, then Theresa would allow it for today. She rested her chin on her shield, sucking in a deep breath. Then, a sound she could not believe tickled her ear like a cold finger.
“Sorry.”
Theresa looked up from her shield in an instant and stared directly at Soso in shock. “Who are you?! There is no way Kim Soso apologized to me over something like this!”
“What are you on about? I wasn’t even talking to you.” Soso said before turning toward Do-Jin. “Your wound is gone.”
“Oh, that.” Do-Jin brushed his right arm with his hand.
He had dragged Soso around near the end when things got chaotic and he had scraped himself during the attack. The wound was completely gone now because of his Time Traveler trait.
“It is fine. We were almost finished for a second there, but it worked out in the end. In a weird way, we found a hidden gimmick that ugly boss monster had because of you.”
The boss was already dead so they couldn’t confirm it anymore, but in Do-Jin’s opinion, the Priestess of Condemnation was most likely a monster whose aggro couldn’t be controlled otherwise. She revived and summoned multiple ghosts that attacked in totally unpredictable patterns, and they probably would have gone wild, randomly hitting everyone in the field. That might have been even more dangerous than what they actually experienced.
Soso didn’t say anything else about it after that. Her face returned to the usual dull blank deadpan expression that looked comically uninterested.
Something feels off, Theresa thought.
This was a moment where Soso’s hopeless social ability looked like it had improved, but somehow it did not feel like that was even the important part.
Theresa suddenly realized what she had missed. Since when did Soso start speaking casually to him?
In truth, Soso had started speaking more casually ever since Do-Jin began addressing her by name without formality. She was not someone who talked much to begin with, and Theresa, being as oblivious as ever, had completely missed the change. Now that she finally realized how much closer the two of them had grown, it was depressing to think she had been socially outdone by Kim Soso of all people.
I am still awkward around him...
Theresa glanced sideways at Do-Jin with timid little eyes. He looked like he was thinking deeply about how to continue the dungeon strategy.
Fine. I will talk to him casually too. If Kim Soso could do it, then so can I.
At that moment Do-Jin decided on a direction and spoke, “Let’s move.”
Theresa shot up and yelled back, “Yes!”
Talking casually could wait a little longer. She admitted to herself that she was a coward.
***
After killing the Priestess of Condemnation, they cleared out monster mobs while wandering the dungeon, and eventually, a new boss monster appeared. Unlike the Priestess, a roaming boss monster that actively hunted players as she wandered around, this one was the complete opposite.
“No one passes here,” said the stationary boss monster. “Do not cross the line. I only guard. If you do not approach, you will be able to keep your life.”
Its name was the Wall of Despair. As the name suggested, the wall and the passage itself were the monster. The moment someone stepped into its territory, iron soldiers shot up from the ground, the walls, and even the ceiling. They swung spears and swords and fired arrows in every direction.
The monster’s core, which looked like a massive gemstone, was positioned far away at the very end of the corridor, too far for spells to reach directly. Tanto’s Stealth didn’t work either. No matter how silently he moved, the moment his foot touched the floor, his location was revealed instantly.
There might be a special gimmick or a different route somewhere else, but whatever. Do-Jin did not feel any need to back off.
“Theresa, let’s use it here.”
This party still had plenty of cards to play, like the Guardian Zone built into Theresa’s Lapis Lazuli Bastion.
“Finally. I get to use it!” she said excitedly.
The cooldown for Guardian Zone was twenty-four hours, so Theresa had been saving it even when shit got dangerous. She stroked the shield with a solemn face. It was a shame she could not show this beautiful cinematic moment to viewers on stream.
“Soso, stay here. We need to run at full speed to reach the core before the shield skill expires, and you’re quite slow.”
Soso nodded, cast some party buffs, and replied, “Run in first. Trigger it at the last possible moment. Look forward only. Run at full speed.”
“Alright. Then seriously trust me and do not trip behind me.”
Theresa gripped the shield tightly. She gathered power throughout every muscle in her body. Then she exploded forward in a single violent burst. Just as Do-Jin instructed, she activated the Guardian Zone before the enemy attacks reached her.
The power that had been stored by absorbing enemy strikes formed a blue barrier. The engraved barrier looked like a carved gemstone and it blocked every incoming attack perfectly and even reflected those attacks right back.
“Aaaargh!” Theresa sprinted at full speed with the shield held forward. Although her warrior’s charge was extremely fast, she didn’t have to worry about Do-Jin or Tanto, since they could still outpace her.
Guardian Zone would naturally dissipate in ten seconds, at which point it would stop making them basically invincible against enemies of the same level. In those ten seconds the three of them closed more than 150 meters of corridor.
“It’s fading now!” Theresa said, thinking the distance between them and the targets was still slightly short.
“This is enough!” Do-Jin said.
Right at the moment the barrier faded, he fired the spell he had been preparing, and it thundered forward. Although Lightning-type magic lost power sharply with distance, its speed and destructive force were absolutely brutal within the effective range. That lightning spear ripped through the remaining distance in a blink and stabbed straight into the gemstone heart of the boss monster.
A hideous scream rang throughout the entire corridor, but the Wall of Despair didn’t seem to be dead yet. With the Guardian Zone gone, it unleashed a berserk, all-out assault on Do-Jin and Theresa, trying to rip them apart out of pure rage.
That violent barrage suddenly froze in midair, however. Tanto had closed the remaining distance at some point, and he hacked the gemstone heart with both his axe and his dagger like he was butchering a carcass. Unlike Do-Jin who needed at least a brief instant to prepare a spell, Tanto’s skill set allowed him to move in instantly and shred the heart without even breaking rhythm.
Do-Jin’s magic then followed immediately and slammed into it repeatedly. The whole corridor convulsed violently like it was having a seizure, and finally, the gem exploded like a bomb, shattering along with the monster.
Do-Jin felt something burst open in his chest in pure satisfaction as he watched the gemstone explode into fragments.
With the gear advantage and team coordination, this is practically free farming.
They executed everything perfectly, handling each threat naturally without orders. With a raw skill advantage and a relic advantage, even a high difficulty dungeon could be wiped like it was a joke.
“Theresa, your shield performance is seriously insane. My shield only has passive options, so the effect never looks this dramatic,” Tanto said.
“Right. Right. My Bastion is a real monster.”
Tanto admired it with genuine awe, while Theresa looked proud like a mom whose kid just got complimented for winning first place at a talent show.
“It looks like we have to go farther down,” Do-Jin interrupted them. “The path below is open again. Let us go down first and get a feel for the situation, and then we will start the real push after my cooldown and Resa noona’s cooldown both reset.”
For a safe clear, Do-Jin decided to hold back until his broken abilities were available again.
With the decision made, they headed deeper into the dungeon. That was when a heavy, ominous sound rumbled from above. It sounded like a massive door slamming shut. Immediately after that, they heard water rushing. All that ominous noise was neatly summarized in one system message.
[Forge of the God has begun to flood.]
“What the actual fuck is this...?” Do-Jin mumbled.
As if mocking his plan to wait out his cooldowns and trivialize the fight, Forge of the God began a countdown toward drowning every intruder inside.
Comments