We continue forward, I make sure I don't trip after saying that, I really don't want to make a fool of myself. I commanded the wolves to protect Anduda so there is absolutely no change for her to get hurt, I trust my party to keep her safe, but there is always room for more. As we walk up on the next batch of wolves, I prop myself against the wall so I can focus on my spells. 4 sets of eyes stare at me from the darkness. Seems like they still grow in pack size as we go further in. I let out a sigh, knowing this is probably going to be over quick. They start to get close enough for me to see, and I realize that one of them has a black skull, rather than a white one. That's odd... I don't remember you being a thing...
I wait for them to get a little closer before I bind the odd one out, I want to get a closer look at that one before I kill it. Glowing gold chains appear and restrain it with a whimper. The others look up to it dangling, it drops it's whip and tries to bite at the chains. The others turn back to me and growl, getting low and creeping towards me. Like that's going to help...
I cast a short range directional explosion spell called depth charge close to the first one, it is sent careening into the wall as a hole is punched through its chest. The whole hallway vibrates as the blast propagates through it, leaving a moderately sized indent in the wall. I... shouldn't use something like that again... I don't want the whole place coming down on top of us...
The last two look at me, seemingly trying to figure out what to do as they are indecisive about moving. They both crouch down and start to rush me, one is slightly faster than the other, reaching me first. It lunges at me, it's claws bared as it tries to scratch my chest. I push off the wall as I summon a spirit sword into my other hand, slashing up through its neck as it passes and causing it to fall to the ground limp. The second one stops out of reach of my sword and tries to use it's whip to hit me while I am off balance. I slam my shoulder into the opposite wall as I block the strike with a magic shield, steadying myself. It goes for another strike as I throw the sword, making it hover with the point to its side next to it. I block the strike with my forearm causing the whip to wrap around it, before I make the sword plunge into the side of it, causing it to fall flat.
I unwrap the whip from my arm as Nabe rushes over to me.
"Are you alright!?" They ask, confusing me.
"Yeah? What's up?"
"What do you mean!? Is your arm okay?!"
"Uh... yeah?" I show him my arm, completely uninjured.
"Uh... How?" He asks.
"It might not look it... but this is pretty good armor..." It helps that it is resistant to slash/pierce too... my stats to help a lot as well... but um... it is pretty much max stat armor... it's going to be pretty good.
"I just... I don't understand how you aren't injured..."
"Um... maxed out armor stats with focus in pierce and slash resist with really high character stats?" I shrug, as I start to walk over to the restrained wolf.
"Wait what!? maxed out armor stats?!" He screams, causing me to pull away from him slightly.
"Uh... yeah, close enough at least. Like I said before, I liked making armor, I wasn't just going to make shitty armor that looked good..." I inspect the wolf a little closer, the black bone having a ton of little scratches on it.
"What is that even made out of?!" Nabe screams again, jesus christ man calm down...
"It really doesn't matter, anyway, did you guys ever encounter a wolf like this in this dungeon before?" I ask them, seemingly pulling them out of a daze they were in. They walk over and take a closer look at the thrashing wolf.
"Hmm, no?" Zorae says, "Though I never spent too much time in this dungeon, maybe it was a rare spawn?"
"I don't know, I went through this dungeon a few times for materials, and I never saw it..." I say. "I could have just gotten unlucky and it didn't spawn though." I shrug.
"It could also just be something new." Leo chimes in.
"Well... I'm not going to leave it strung up like this any longer." I summon my sword once more, preparing to strike it when it starts to whimper... God fucking damnit...
I let out a sigh, looking to it's eyes. I dispel my sword, and let the wolf drop to the floor. My party instantly backs away and looks at me like I'm insane.
"What are you doing?!" Leo yells.
"It won't do anything," I turn down to the wolf, giving it a smile. "right?"
It looks up at me, shivering before backing away and sitting down, nodding at me... I um... I didn't think that would work but okay...
"You can pick back up your weapon and join the others, as long as you behave." It nods at me vigorously before doing what I asked with haste, starting the others as it walks by and gets next to the other wolves. It has it's head down and looks kind of pathetic... I didn't even scold it... it's cute though... The other two wolves welcome it by nudging it to try and cheer it up.
"Uh... anyway... I guess we should continue." Leo says, shaking his head to steady himself and walking past me. What... what did I do?
I walk back to Anduda, who looks up to me for a moment before releasing Melina's hand and rushing over to mine. "Don't... don't scare me like that... I... I thought you got hurt..." She says. Okay... you need to stop doing this... it's starting to freak me out... it's cute... but freaky.
Continuing on, and 2 more batches of wolves later, we finally reach the golems I was originally here for before this whole experience started. Tall gray and red humanoids of rock with a large, solid pale blue gem in the center of their face. Zorae and Roana switch out their swords for maces, preparing at the front.
The 2 golems start shuffling forward, throwing wide punches at their shields causing them to be pushed back slightly. Roana bounces an attack off her shield, using the time that the golem is unbalanced to shatter one of its legs. It falls against the wall, grinding down it before Inglis puts a sword of ice into its gem, causing the red to fade in color and the golem to go limp. Zorae smashes his mace into the side of the other one, causing it to bend over at an almost 90 degree angle. Reggie fires an arrow into the gem, it glances off leaving a small scratch, causing him to click his tongue. I use the attack version of the chain bind, a golden chain with a pointed blade on the end whips forward and sticks into the gem, chain dangling from it. The golem falls as the chain starts to disintegrate.
"Thanks for the cover." Reggie says. "I am going to have to use Piercer..." He mumbles. Guess that's a ranger skill?
"I would like to play this safe and rely on the mages for most of this, we shouldn't be trying to learn our weapon skills in the middle of this." Leo says.
"I can keep you guys covered if you want to learn them." I say.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I was actively soloing this dungeon when this all happened. I was on my 5th or 6th run." I say with a shrug.
"Lucky you were close to here, people that were exploring the mountains are probably struggling..."
"We can't do anything for them, Leo."
"I know."
We take a small break, Anduda sits next to me, still holding my hand.
"Are you feeling better?" I ask.
"It's... getting better, slowly. It's just fucking annoying..."
"I get it, you probably can't control it. Hell, I couldn't control it by any means when I first got horny..." I shrug.
"Too much information sis..." Sis? I wonder if you even realize you just said that...
"Well guess what? You have that information now."
She leans on me, "I missed your dumbass comments."
"I missed you too." Actually, now wouldn't be a bad time to go over her stats... "Want to apply some of your stats a skill points real quick?"
"Sure." She sits up, adjusting herself on the stone floor. She must be uncomfortable. I pick her up, much to her surprise as she lets out a small yelp, and place her on my lap.
"W-what are you doing!?"
"You did this to me many years ago, you know?" I put my arms around her.
"Yeah... but I was the older brother at the time." She lets out a little growl, getting startled at herself.
I chuckle, "You'll get used to that sound... Anyway, go ahead and pull up your stat menu."
"Okay." She gestures into the air. Hmm, I wonder if it still works?
"I want to try something, don't worry, there is no risk if it fails."
"O... kay..." She says hesitantly.
"See in the top middle of your stat page? The little person icon with an arrow?"
"Mhm..."
"Click on that, and select me from the list." She gestures a few times, then her menu appears in front of me. "Huh... So it does work."
"You can see my menu now?" She asks while turning to look up at me, making me dodge her horns.
"Yep, do you remember all of the stats?"
"Mostly..." She looks back to her menu, "They are like most other MMO's right?"
"Kind of, stuff like strength, agility, dexterity, and endurance are the same. The magic stuff is where its different."
"Is there no health upgrades?" She says, scanning the menu and finding no vitality stat.
"Health and natural defense go up with your level. And from what we have seen, there is no max."
"That seems... like you could become very overpowered if you focused entirely on leveling..."
"Kind of, armor does play a big part in it, once we are done here I'll figure out how to make you something, I can't give you any of mine because they would be too big for you. If it is anything like the game, the armor needs to have the correct height value to fit to the character."
"Great..." I am going to make you a nice and frilly dress with really high- "No frilly stuff."
"Damnit." I am going to do it anyway... "So, because you are a summoner, you will probably have to spec into your magic pool and magic strength mainly. I would suggest you also spend some of your points in agility so you can move quicker. In the end, this is your build, and your character... uh, life? I don't know about that now, but you can make it however you want."
"Could I make something that is still close to the fight while being a summoner?" I don't like that you want to be close quarters...
"Yes, you can, just know that it is going to be a lot more risky than if you were to let your summons do the work."
"I know, but I want to be with my summons, I don't want to feel like a soulless slave driver..." There's your moral standpoint sticking out.
"The summons can come back, we don't know about you yet..."
"I know, but I would feel bad..." Stop being cute damnit! I really am going to start treating you like a child.
"Okay," Damnit, I just can't say no to her if she is acting like that... Am I really becoming the older sister here?
"So what do you recommend?"
"What weapon would you like to use?"
"Just a sword is fine, I have a few in my inventory but I don't think they would be able to do anything here."
"Alright, I should have a few swords that you can take a look at, you wont be able to use them for a while though."
"Okay..."
"You are going to want to increase your Strength and Dexterity for swords. Since you want to fight close range, I would suggest doing a decent amount into Agility. For your summons, Magic Strength, Magic Capacity, and Magic Efficiency are all going to help."
"What about the Magic Potency? Is that not the same as Strength?"
"Kind of, it's more risky. It was designed to be a late game upgrade for magic users as it makes your spells exponentially more powerful in the first few levels. After a few points the return you get is pretty bad and your spells start to become unstable if you don't have the other magic stats up, as well as if you don't spend enough time on your Magic Familiarity."
"Magic Familiarity?"
"Ah, it's a separate stat that just tells you how good you are in-lore at magic."
"What's yours?"
"Uh... Maxed..."
"Maxed!?" Inglis says, startling both me and Anduda.
"Uh... yeah?"
"How many top level spells have you casted?!"
"Probably thousands..." I scratch my cheek.
"What's your potency stat?!"
"A few hundred..."
"Wha... You are insane...- Ow!" Leo flicks him on the forehead.
"Don't call her that because of the way she plays, that's rude." Leo says.
"S-sorry, and sorry for listening in on your conversation." He puts his head down. It's really not that big of a deal...
"It's fine, it was insane to do to be honest, and we are talking out in the open, people listening is going to happen." I shrug.