Healer Arc 2 -- Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Thaden and the rest of his Party quickly discovered that while the Gremklins were essentially immune to their own Blasters blowing up, that didn’t extend to the explosive traps that they encountered along their way through the dungeon.  With his group of enthralled monsters leading the way as essentially disposable mine detectors, Thaden had them sweep back and forth along the path they were taking, setting off a half-dozen detonations that otherwise would’ve hit the Party if they weren’t being careful.

As this was a low-Level dungeon, the explosions themselves weren’t that much more powerful than when a Gremklin Blaster blew up, but they were still strong enough to completely obliterate any of the enthralled monsters that triggered them, diminishing his group bit by bit.  By the time they reached the scorch-marked tunnel leading to what turned out to be another cave, Thaden was down to only 25 of the Gremklins that were – at that point – about 80% Swarmers and 20% Foragers.  At the threshold of the next cave, Warven stopped him before he could send them inside.

“Can you have them search out all of the explosive traps and trigger them?  That should bring the others to us, and then you can enthrall them again.”

Thaden thought about it for a few seconds.  “I can do the first, but I’d like to try something else after they attack.  Don’t worry; if it doesn’t work, I can always Enthrall them.”

The Party leader looked at him for a few seconds before he nodded.  Without any more hesitation, Thaden instructed his remaining enthralled Gremklin into the cave, which was slightly larger than the previous one, and had them spread out as much as possible to minesweep it for any traps.  Within seconds, they had found the first one, and the resulting explosion reduced it to pieces; the detonation also seemed to stir up the awaiting Gremklin that were hiding in ambush, and he saw them begin to emerge to see what was going on.  It was at that point, now that he had a target within sight, that he began casting Celestial Dominate Spirit.   When another dozen traps exploded within the next 20 seconds as his little minions explored every crevice within the cave, the hostile Gremklin began to swarm, quickly identifying his enthralled monsters as the enemy.

Needless to say, against nearly 100 Gremklin, his forces were quickly eliminated – and then they all turned toward Thaden.  The weight of their attention was a bit intimidating, but he pushed past it as his Celestial Dominate Spirit finally completed after 30 seconds, as it had triple the casting time because of his Karmic Balance Advancement.  He’d deliberately made it a wide-area spell thanks to Fortunate Catastrophe, and when it went off, he could immediately feel the battle of wills commence between him and every monster in the cave.  It was almost overwhelming, especially when he felt a few of them fail and attempt to backlash him with a stat reduction, but it was thankfully redirected back toward the failed targets due to his Haunted Nemesis Advancement. 

It took about a second for the entire process to complete, and Thaden instantly felt a dominating connection between him and 91 of the monsters in the cave, meaning that 9 of them were free from his influence. 

Staggering under the sheer amount of information flooding his mind, as his Mentality wasn’t exactly up to the strain of the sudden connections, he pushed through the uncomfortable feeling as his Psychic Resiliency Competency kicked in to support the load.  Once he was able to concentrate again, he found that the Gremklins that he’d failed to dominate had paused momentarily while the battle of wills commenced, but then they shook it off.  As they once again headed toward him, he felt rather than saw his Party members start to move, but he held up his hand for them to stop.

Unlike Weak Enthrall, his dominated monsters weren’t exactly useless when under the influence of Celestial Dominate Spirit.  Instead, they were able to leach Health from a hostile target by touching them, which occurred every 10 seconds and would pull 5% of Thaden’s own max Health – which in this case was only 1 Health.  However, the previous mentioned spell effectiveness had an influence on the outcome of the spell; rather than extending the Level of what targets it could affect, similar to Weak Enthrall, it would increase the Health leach amount, as well as increasing the frequency of it occurrence.  With a 200% increase, that meant it would leach 3 Health every 8 seconds – a significant difference that was quite impactful, especially when he had 91 dominated monsters that could leach Health.

Thaden had his monster servants throw themselves at the attacking Gremklins, getting in their way immediately and preventing them from reaching Thaden, and the Health leaching began.  At the first clash between forces, half of the hostile Gremklins had so much Health leached from them that they fell within a few seconds, while the others were surrounded and unable to move.  The survivors slashed and bit at the dominated monsters under Thaden’s control, causing a few of the Blasters to explode, but for the ones that weren’t killed outright, they managed to leach some of that Health back to heal themselves after 8 seconds had passed, eliminating the rest of them almost instantly.

And just like that, in less than a minute, the entire cave was cleared of any obstacles to the Party’s progress and Thaden now had a total of 84 Gremklins at his disposal… which could actually deal some damage thanks to being able to leach Health. 

After another few seconds of silence, which had become increasingly common among his Party, Unarven asked a bit hesitantly, “You… can’t use those spells on, uh, people, can you?”

“Only hostile targets,” Thaden replied immediately.  He could sense a bit of nervousness within the Netherines, and he honestly couldn’t blame them based on what they were witnessing.  He didn’t really sympathize with them, however, as he remembered how he had been treated before, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit smug at their reactions. 

Of course, there was a major downside to using Celestial Dominate Spirit, or pretty much any of his old, altered spells – and that was their Mana cost.  As it required 80% of his Mana pool to maintain the spell, which was 16 of his 20 Mana, he couldn’t cast Weak Health Siphon to heal anyone, as it required 10 Mana.  That meant he was essentially unable to heal anyone if they were hurt, unless he dropped the spell, used Weak Enthrall on some targets, and then cast Weak Health Siphon on them. 

Still, it was worth it to have some little minions that could actually do some damage, even if it was a minimal amount.  What Thaden really needed was more Physicality and Health… and more Mentality and Mana… and more of every stat, in fact.  Fortuity would help with his Fortunate Catastrophe spells and Personality would help with his newest Class’s spells; Celerity was good all over, as it would make him faster in every aspect, allowing him to keep up with the speedy monsters that were out there.

He checked on his progress after looking at his notifications for all of the kills that had occurred in the dungeon, finding that he only received 0.1 PICK for each kill, no matter which one they were.  All told, they’d killed – or caused to be killed – 66 monsters, which gave him only 6.6 PICK; along with what he’d earned along the way to the dungeon, he was still over 90 PICK away from Level 2.  Even if he killed the rest of the dominated Gremklins, that would only be another 8.4 PICK, which was barely even a dent in the requirements needed for the next Level.

Thaden needed a lot more targets to kill.  Thankfully, as they continued to progress through the dungeon, there were no shortage of things to kill.  The groups of Gremklins they encountered became more numerous the further they went in, increasing by 50 with each subsequent cave.  The term “Swarm” made more and more sense to him as the sheer quantity of the monsters they faced became known, until it was nearly overwhelming. 

After they reached 200 in quantity, Thaden discovered that he had a lot of trouble maintaining control of over 100 individual monsters simultaneously, as it was too much for his mind even with Psychic Resiliency helping out; he figured that once he increased his Mentality, he would probably be able to handle more, but for now, he had reached his limit.  After informing his Party of his limitations, he was able to utilize another of his spells and his spell effectiveness bonuses, Celestial Spiritual Guardians, to create 6 spiritual protectors that surrounded him and acted as taunting tanks with no offensive capabilities, though they each had 1,500 Health to soak up damage.  The spiritual protectors were white-glowing, humanoid figures that essentially stood still and convinced every hostile monster to attack them; they were also the perfect way to expose the Gremklins to the rest of his Party, who took advantage of the monsters’ inattention to tear through them. 

Once the hostile Gremklins were whittled down to under 100, that was when Thaden would strike with his Celestial Dominate Spirit spell.  Since it took 30 seconds to cast, he had to start it early, which he discovered was possible if he timed it correctly; even while maintaining his Spiritual Guardians, which required 90% of his Mana pool, he found that he could start casting Dominate Spirit whenever he wanted, but would have to cancel his Guardians a second before it completed, freeing up his Mana pool, and then the dominating spell would go off. 

It was surprisingly effective, and it helped to alleviate some of the trepidation that his Party was feeling after witnessing what Thaden could do; being able to contribute to whittling down the swarming monsters made a huge difference to their perception of him and his abilities.

In one instance, when he was unable to save most of the Gremklins for his Dominate Spirit spell, he tried his Celestial Reanimation spell, which brought back to life over 300 monsters and put them under his control – and that nearly broke his mind because of the sheer number of them.  He was forced to cancel the spell within a few seconds because of the strain, but in those few seconds, he was more than aware that the spell had actually worked the way it was supposed to.  He figured that it would be useful when there weren’t any living monsters to dominate or enthrall, which he could technically do together since he had enough Mana for it, but mixing them didn’t seem like a great idea for the health of his mind.

There wasn’t a lot of variety in the Blasted Caves dungeon, with there only being progressively larger caves and larger swarms, until they cleared a cave that had a total of 500 monsters inside of it – which took a while to whittle them down to a decent number for Thaden to dominate.  Once his spell went off and he took control of 76 Gremklins, there was a sudden silence as they looked for the tunnel leading to the next cave – but there wasn’t one visible.  After a few seconds, a rumbling came from the far stone wall where they assumed the next tunnel would be, followed by a shaking that had Thaden falling on his butt; the rest of his Party had much higher stats and were able to keep their feet, of course.

Struggling to get to his feet, he was nearly knocked down again when there was another violent surge in the shaking, which precluded a minor explosion on the wall that had a portion of it collapsing outward.  Out from the dust and darkness of the 20-foot-tall hole that was just created from the explosion, Thaden saw the figure of another monster emerge.

Gremklin Detonator (Boss) – Minimal

Level 6

The Gremklin that emerged was nearly as large as the Netherines in Thaden’s Party, though it definitely had thinner limbs than the tiger-demons.  Other than its larger size, the Gremklin Detonator didn’t appear to be too different from its smaller brethren that they’d been killing in swarms throughout the dungeon, but there was one major difference that wasn’t related to its physical appearance.  Instead, it had to do with the swarm of Level 3 Gremklin Blasters that emerged after it – and how the Detonator picked up one of them as they circled around the larger monster before tossing it toward Thaden.  Fortunately, Unarven was quick enough to cast spell that shot out a stream of water that impacted the thrown Blaster in mid-air, which then exploded without damaging anyone or anything. 

With what looked like virtually an endless supply of bombs that it could throw at them, the Detonator was a much more difficult opponent than they had planned for.

“Can you enthrall that thing?” Warven asked, even as everyone was forced to dodge another thrown Gremklin Blaster, which harmlessly exploded just past them. 

Thaden shook his head.  “No, my Weak Enthrall isn’t strong enough to bridge the Level gap.  I can try to dominate it, but that would mean releasing these others.” 

“Send them all to stop the Boss from throwing those things, and we’ll see how what needs to be done after that,” the Party leader ordered, before instructing the others to protect Thaden.  It was obvious from the start that the Level 1 Enthraller was the Boss’s target, as he had been target since they entered, thanks to his Fortunate Catastrophe Class drawing all the attention.

As Thaden sent his newly acquired force of 76 Gremklins toward the Boss, he learned very quickly that the Blasters that the Boss was tossing were different from the ones he seen before.  While they might have looked the same, it appeared as though their explosions were different enough that his Gremklins were no longer immune to their destructive properties.  In other words, as they approached close range and began to touch the hostile Blasters in an attempt to reach the Detonator, they were essentially obliterated when the monsters began to explode.  Within seconds, his once-numerous army of minions had been reduced to a bunch of Gremklin body parts strewn about the cave floor, and even more hostile Blasters emerged from the dark tunnel behind the Boss to replenish what had been lost in the explosions.

“Try it,” Warven said after he saw the results of the attack.

Moving a little closer to be within range of his spell, Thaden did as ordered and started casting Celestial Dominate Spirit, hoping that it would work.  While they waited for the 30-second cast to complete, Thaden had already activated his Spiritual Guardians, which helped to draw the attention of the Boss, but anything that got too close, his Party did their best to keep him safe, either by blocking or exploding the Gremklin bombs that were chucked their way.

Finally, the spell completed…

…and he knew almost instantly that it had failed against the Boss.  He had cast it to include all of the Gremklin Blasters nearby, but none of them succeeded, either; when he looked closer at the Blasters, he noticed something about them that he thought might be the explanation.

Gremklin Blaster (Temporary Spawn) – Minimal

Level 3

The “Temporary Spawn” note on their nametag likely meant that they weren’t actual monsters, but were only there to be ammo for the Detonator.  He doubted that they would even get any PICK from them exploding, either.

He debated trying to use Celestial Befriend Spirit to control the Boss, but decided that would be a poor idea; if he failed again, it would make the larger monster immune to any spells and damage coming from him or his Party. 

Looks like this is going to have to be done the hard way.

“Didn’t work.  I can keep my Spiritual Guardians up to draw its attention, but its up to all of you,” he told them.  In some ways, it felt like he was a bit of a failure in being unable to harm or control the Boss, because he had finally experienced some of the domination in fights that he used to have, but he consoled himself with the fact that he had already made significant progress since he had acquired his new Class – and that all he needed was a few Levels and some gear and he would be much more effective.

Warven nodded, acknowledging his words, before his Party organized for the fight to come.  Thaden was basically relegated to sitting back and allowing his Guardians to draw some attention every now and again as the Netherines started to attack the Boss.  Fortunately, it seemed as though the Detonator was a one-trick pony, as it didn’t try to strike at the Adventurers as they closed with it; instead, it simply tried to throw Gremklin Blasters at them, which was easy enough for the quick tiger-demons to dodge because there was a second or so before they were tossed where they could move out of the way. 

It took approximately 5 minutes for them to whittle down the Boss’s Health, until it swayed dramatically before collapsing on top of the Blaster “ammo” underneath it; the large explosion that resulted telegraphed far enough in advance that everyone was able to move far out of the way. 

And just like that, the dungeon was clear.

Now all that was left was to collect their rewards and get back to Felith.  With all of the coin that he’d just earned from extractions, he knew that he’d finally be able to find some gear – or at least commission someone to create something.  While he hadn’t checked his notifications since just after finishing the first few caves, he knew that he had earned more than enough to make it to Level 2, along with a good portion toward Level 3, so he had that to look forward to, as well.  He hadn’t checked it yet, as he knew that he couldn’t Level-up in a dungeon, so he thought it would be better until he exited with his Party.

“Nice work, everyone,” Warven said after the Boss was dead, and he even included Thaden in those congratulations.  “Let’s clean up and get out of here.”