[Boss, boss. I did it. I made THE spear.] Dimnys sends in Guild chat and links the item. It's good to see her so excited about a smithy success, it means she's not getting bored with her trade.
[Five Tiger Spear] Legendary Quality. Damage equals 437 percent of DEX. Chance on hit to grant all party members 20 percent of damage as attack power for 5 minutes. Does not stack.
Great, now Cain needs to look up how attack power is calculated. Alright, it's not too hard, STR plus level. Then the base damage of your weapon is added to that to get your maximum possible damage range, before modifiers and skills.
Now, looking over that, with a plain, non magical sword in hand, that skill would buff everyone by about 5 percent if Cain's hit landed against a reasonably armored target. Up to 15 percent with a solid hit from one of the advanced Dark Elven Blade Form skills. But merged with the Oath Breaker, and using the spear that scales damage with DEX, it should be much more.
If it happens after Might of Many has stacked up for a while, it could be entirely unbalanced.
Cain approves.
[437 out of a possible 500 percent of DEX as damage, but a perfect roll on the group buff. If I could use spears I'd be begging you to make me a copy.] Carlos sends in Guild chat.
[And it scales with DEX, so it didn't need to be replaced or upgraded, until you find something with better scaling damage.] Dimnys adds.
[Now I just need a good offhand weapon to go with it. The pair of Scimitar I broke during the duel were the best I had.] Cain puts in, smiling at the memory.
[I'll see what I can find. If not, there's a few more Scimitar in the Guild Bank with decent stats.] Dimnys sends before returning to her work, proud of her days accomplishment, and keeping the fact she outright failed the first 4 times to herself.
"How about we go talk to the Smith? The one you sold a shop to yesterday I mean. He's bound to have something good for a Scimitar. I don't have any in my shipment inventory right now, I loaded a boat just a few days back." Carlos suggests.
"If we're all ready to go, we can stop by his place on the way out of town." Cain agrees and Laura leads the way out the door, holding a spoon in front of her like a baton or sword to signal a charge.
The smithy is on the far side of town, but the Stone Giant dungeon is out that way as well, so they don't lose much by going to visit, and take the time to try to understand what sort of logic went into this city's layout. Houses and commercial districts aren't separated, industrial shops are scared at random, and none of the streets are straight. It's like they started at the water and just built wherever.
"Guild Master Cain, welcome. How did your Smith do with the recipe?"
"Not too badly." Cain says, laying it on the counter for the Dwarf to inspect. The spear is beautiful, a short spear a little over 2 meters long, polished white shaft with gold inlaid tigers and a flat black blade, the edges curved into an elegant leaf shape with a solid looking cross bar.
"Not bad at all. Perfect bonus is far more important than perfect damage." The dark haired man nods his head happily, his red beard swaying in a leather sleeve he must be using to avoid burning it off while he works.
"What I need is a good Scimitar to go with it. I use a Dark Elven Blade Form, and that's the only option that goes with spear." Cain informs him.
"Well now, I might have something that compliments it. How about one of these?" The Smith places two Legendary Scimitar on the counter, both level 200 items.
[Scimitar of Pain] chance on hit to apply a [Cripple] debuff. Deals 180 to 240 damage.
Good, but Cain already has cripple in his summons arsenal and it doesn't stack. The second is a rusty looking thing with some sort of thick yellow fluid oozing out of it. A weapon recipe from the Plague Demon dungeons, made by a high level Smith.
[Pestilent Scimitar] Increases all Pestilence Damage by 100 percent and causes [Pestilence] on hit. Deals 250 percent of CON as damage.
Now that's more like it. The base damage might be lower than his spear, but doubled Pestilence damage is huge. With both Cain and Vala applying it, and the Scimitar doubling the damage, Hordes of monsters won't be an issue at all.
"How much for the Pestilent Scimitar?" Cain asks and the Dwarf gives it a disgusted look.
"It's been here a while, nobody wants a weapon that disgusting, even if it is disgustingly good. I'll give it to you for materials plus ten percent, eleven hundred gold coins." That's not cheap at all, but oh, the damage output.
"I'll take it." Cain agrees, handing over the coin and picking it up to check the balance.
"Are you familiar with [Pestilence]?" The Smith asks.
"Yeah, one of my summons gets it as a passive. Too good to pass up, and even better the more overwhelmed you get." Cain nods and Vala gives the Smith a toothy grin. Her Pestilence was a nightmare for the Nut Up Guild's healers during the brief fight. They had lots of cleansing abilities, but they wasted huge amounts of mana dealing with it.
"Well, this should be messy." Carlos cheers, eager to get into combat and very happy with his new choice of Guild.
"Will our composition be alright? I'm not entirely familiar with everyone's abilities, they're all uncommon classes. Me, I went from Barbarian, to Barbarian Warlord, nice and simple, just smash things." Carlos asks the group in general.
"Yeah, we've got 2 healers, and I will Summon more to balance things out. I think this time I'll have most of my summons merge at least once, durability will matter more than numbers when we're this far under level."
"I understood about half that. But if you say it's good, it's good."
Kone is feeling pretty tough, merged with her Snapping Turtle, but Misha is rather concerned, being the softest one there.
"Soon we will fix that." Cain says, seeing her concern. 14 more levels until he can hopefully get the first skill of the General side of the skill tree and unlock [Lieutenants] which are basically Appointed Companions from a class skill. That will let Misha merge with the Golems from Benevolent Leader and greatly increase her health and durability.
"You should think about what sort of Golems you would like before we get there. Something to help deal damage, spell Casters, a cute bunny girl, it's your call." Cain jokes with Carlos.
"Do you have any snake girls? I've always been a sucker for snake girls."
Both Misha and Kone burst into laughter at that. "You didn't see them during the fight? Cain uses over a dozen Lamia all the time."
"I say go for the Primordial Shaman. Six armed, Winged snake girl with mana and healing Totems, as well as Elemental spells and decent close combat. The ability is for Epic Golems, so you're working with dungeon bosses." Misha suggests, always a fan of more mana Totems.
"What will you fine ladies be using?" Carlos asks.
"I'll be using demons called Mysterious Disciples. A Holy flame user with really good damage." Misha says and Cain nods, expecting that.
"I'm going for a Lord of Decay. They grant bonuses to healing done, and MP regeneration, plus they're really, really tough." Kone giggles.
"So you're the tank type Summoner then. I was told the Turtles also start with you." Carlos nods his understanding.
Kone, being the Appointed Companion, gets a better version of [Benevolent Leader] summons than everyone else, benefitting from Cain's buffs to Summons. So she plans on merging with two of her demons to increase her own durability, leaving her Snapping Turtles available to fight.
"When we get there, all the Companions are to merge. I'm also going to merge all the summons at a 4 to 1 ratio to increase their durability. That way we're not overcrowding the dungeon, and we shouldn't be losing summons." Cain says as they jog towards the edge of town, with Carlos carrying Symbia, who didn't stand a chance of keeping up.
That should also put them well above the effective level of the monsters. But since their actual level won't change, they'll be getting a huge bonus for being under level. Cain isn't sure what merging summons does to his bonus though. Will it be cut to a quarter? Do they all still count despite being merged?
But the better question is, does he even have any way to find out, without going back to an easier dungeon and running it twice?
He's not sure he does, so this run will be a bit of unknown for them all.
The entrance to the dungeon is on the beach side of a cliff, a short hike outside of town, at least at their level, so they decide to prep themselves before entering. The Companions call their Bonded Forces, merging them to two each, and then the Companions merge with their clones.
There's still 4 of each species worth of Bonded Companions, so Cain takes that as a good sign that all the summons might still be counted, despite sharing a body. Cain calls all his other summons out and merges them to a quarter of their previous numbers, looking at the 5 enhanced Wasps, the last of his Lesser Golem equivalents. They might still be relatively squishy, but they should do great individual damage now.
The others follow suit, Kone combining 2 of her Lords of Decay into one but merging with the other two. It's a massive being, immensely fat and putrid looking like it had been decaying in a swamp before being Summoned, standing a full five meters tall, and she's glad they're going to be facing giants. Low roofs are not that thing's friend.
With the abundance of Legendary Turtles, Cain decided to merge with Eight Oath Breakers, leaving the last four to merge into one. Then he merges the six Kone clones into two groups of three, before doing the same with the Su clones and looks over the assembled force. That should give them enough summons to deal with the raid, over two dozen Legendary Summons in all, and still have room to move.
"At the start, Symbia is going to get a lot of notifications and be basically immobile. Carlos, you're responsible for carrying her, don't let anything hit her, because she'll probably die before her stats have time to grow." Cain says and Carlos nods in understanding.
Finally, it's Raid time.. It's been too long and Cain was beginning to miss that unique feeling that passing through into a dungeon gives.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel