Road To Sierra Pt3

Fast.

The berserker at the end of the line was level sixty and moved with twice the speed of the Difficult berserkers. I almost took a sudden backhanded greeting after blurring right up to the brute but narrowly managed to lean back and down from the shoulders into a near perfect arch with my head on the ground.

Since the berserkers wielded two large broken swords, I had no choice but to toe my lower body up off of the ground before ramming my knees around and into my own chest. I actually lost five percent of my HP from freaking out and really kneeing myself to the side, but I still managed to flip around on my head and evade the following forehand chop of their second sword.

Rolling forward from my knees and to my feet without even raising my head, I leap up and forward toward the average highest point between both previous attacks while charging up Force strike in one leg. Layering the attack with Spirit Wave and fire element, I find the berserker's head swiftly fall into view a split second later.

As soon as I looked eyes with the berserker's large empty sockets, I stomped out and released the compiled skills down upon the berserker's body. Its head fragmented and blew apart in a few dozen large pieces while high leveled spiritual pressure and fire bore down through its armor and body to instantly char and crumble. It had already died from the Force Strike and never experienced the cleansing flames.

Turning my attention to the rest of the mobs while landing away from the singled out berserker, I test my Agility and Strength by mimicking the attacks of the clan elites I had once faced. Instead of my usual tactic of tackling the enemy head-on with brute DPH or DPS I now rushed alongside and passed the enemy while dragging my swords behind me.

The ensure the continuation of my one-hit killing streak, I cheated and channeled Soulfire into one sword and the other sword's curses into every strike. With Soulfire's overwhelming physical damage acting as a True Damage buff, neither the remaining soldiers or spiders survived a single passing lunge.

Even though my vision remained clear on my targets, everything else in the surroundings would seem to blur as if I were nearing Quick Step speeds. With my combination of overwhelming stats, all but Agility focused players or those with hellacious buffs could match my Movement Speed. In normal situations, my current MVSPD was one hundred and ninety-two percent my real movement speed while in combat that number was increased to around two-sixteen.

For these now low leveled mobs, these full-power jets of motion were fractions of a second too fast for their reactions. Even though every mob died, they still died with fangs bared or weapons raised in the middle of attacking. Against something with the mode Hardcore supporting it, I would not be satisfied until they died before being able to attack.

After just over a dozen fatal lunges, I was briefly stopped in debate. This was where the simplistic tomb dungeon branched off in two directions. Looking back to Cweeper and Hermes who had more or less kept this distance this entire time by leisurely strolling down the hall and were currently only halfway through, I blink and find them standing right in front of me.

These sneaky rats used Flash Step after getting caught being lazy. I did not pay much attention to them back in the catacombs because I was flying down the entire time, but they certainly were not of much help. It was about time they redeemed themselves.

Both of them were only at level one-oh-six because they did not partake of my raid rewards but their level only determined their base HP and MP as well as their physical and magical combat parameters. Their stats were the same as mine and their MVSPD was even higher than mine because of their smaller bodies with such intense Strength.

Comparatively, they should be half a time stronger and faster than me because of physiological differences but the game did not allow for something THAT broken. Their bodies became more humanoid because of the Acolyte forced evolution, correcting the predatory backward knees of the imps and increasing their general sizes.

"Do you guys mind squashing a few bugs?" I ask after smoothly turning away to look down the right hallway which was more dominantly populated by spiders while the walls became gradually denser and denser ensnared in web.

If not for the fact that this place was just big enough to accommodate mounts, we might have never discovered the construction material loot in this dungeon. We had only used this stuff to sell to the village by Winter Wood and as material for future operations, but even then we had used up everything we had.

"Will you get anything from it?" Cweeper asks curiously, speaking softly from her usual lack of speaking. Even though the party knew they could speak, around the other players they had both given the general impression of being mute, dumb, and instant-kill-powerful.

"I'll get enough… just see if you can preserve the boss's spinnerets," I say after trailing off, remembering that they were NPC and that looting for them was basically the same as in the raid dungeon. The spinnerets I had originally used were only one mutated spinneret and some of the basic spinnerets. If I could get more from them and the big boss I might be able to work my magic on them.

"As long as we only burn the front the web shitter will be fine," Hermes assures me briefly. "Do you want us to collect the webs again?"

Shocked to know they could remember the time before their evolution so well, I say, "Oh, yeah, absolutely. You guys want me to come around and help?

Smirking slightly, Cweeper responds by saying, "Even if you made it to the end before us, a third person would only be in the way."

"So it's a race, now?" I ask curiously, checking my mostly full and steadily filling mana pool with a thought. If I were willing to spend big, I could cut down entire hallways of mobs at once "You're on."

"Whoa, wait a…" Hermes started to say but I had already turned and lunged almost twenty yards forward down the left side hallways were there were gradually less and then no spiders at all. Preparing Spirit Slash with both Hauntings, I channel Soulfire and Shadowmancy into either sword while crossing them ahead of me before sweeping them out.

Unleashed in the wake of my outward slashes were twine black and white crescent moons of cutting spiritual energies. Even the walls they touched as they grew were disfigured with deep and broadening scars that traced for nearly a hundred yards until they struck the wall of the next corridor and dissipated.

Left in the wake of those twice crescents were a combination of dusted or splashing bodies that were torn apart on contact. Nothing was left alive within the hallway and I probably acquired around five thousand experience at the cost of three thousand MP. Then, I spared my familiars a look and then a smirk when I see that they were still standing there watching me before using Flash Step to reach the end of the first corridor.

I had several Flash Steps across a couple of rings more in my fingers than on them, so lunging into just one to get to the end was enough to keep the smirk on my face as soon as I appeared, I used the same means as before except in the form of Geist instead of Spirit Slash. I did not have time to wait on even that skill's ridiculously low cooldown.

At the end of the second stretch of corridor was a familiar wide open circular room. In the middle of this open chamber stood a familiar giant skeletal berserker wielding two large and whole swords. Looking at this ranked mini boss I suddenly found myself in the air after evading one blow only to find the other chopping into my lower ribs and throwing me across the chamber.

Coming back to the present after my brief flash of PTSD, I look around the giant undead officer patiently waiting in the middle of the room and count seven Silk Sorcerer spirits circling slowly and calmly around them. The Silk Sorcerers were never all that strong in attack power, but if more than one focused their entanglement attacks on a single person they would become tricky and time consuming.

Here in the Hardcore Mode while I was running solo, though, I would not be surprised if a few of them would be enough to trip me up for a few seconds. However, they were so physically weak as well as weak to fire that I was not even worried about these enemies. As soon as I stepped into the chamber, the ghostly sorcerers enshrouded in more layers of silk that the goddess from the raid starts drifting swiftly forward over the ground.

Once they were far enough away from the boss who had yet to register my existence, I used Quick Step to rush passed the sorcerers. Once safely behind the cluster of sorcerers already reaching long swaths of old and ratty silk through the air toward where I had been previously, the undead officer finally reacted to my presence by slashing at empty air toward me.

Unlike the previous modes, this boss unleashed twin crescents of whirling wind energy that scythed soundlessly through the air at me. However, the attack itself was huge and he had slashed his swords in an 'X' to unleash the attack. All I had to do was lower myself a little by bending my knees and I passed easily between the bottom legs of the X.

Leaving the mini boss to its own devices, I leap into the midst of the sorcerers and unleash a fiery 360 Geist that rips the sorcerers apart several times over while cindering their ghostly silken bodies into ash. Now, it was just the mini boss and I after the deaths of the level sixty sorcerers. I did not even need to check the notifications to know these guys were worth around two hundred experience without any modifiers and that I had gained well over fourteen-hundred points.

Surprisingly, though, the undead berserker officer was not done with their skills. Neither of us had closed the distance and thus the giant undead started lashing out with even more ranged slashing skills. Fire, ice, lightning, and even a sudden burst of dark rays flowed out from the mini boss's swords one after another. Each skill moved at different speeds and struck at different angles, forcing me to dodge left and right or slide forward on my knees underneath each passing wave of energy.

For a brief moment I wondered what it would be like to play with this boss, checking the damages of each attack while seeing how much effect I could get with how little mana put into my skills. However, I had to remind myself that I was forcibly racing my familiars who actually had a much higher damage output than I did.

Once I had smoothly spun around the finally spun smoothly around the cutting shadows passing through the air I simply Flash Stepped up and over to appear in the air by the undead officer's head. Then, channeling multiple elements into either sword, I cross the swords ahead of me and slash them apart against the mini boss's face while unleashing a Full Elemental Slash.

Each element came jam packed with a thousand MP apiece and empowered the Slash itself so greatly that the mini boss's head and body simply burst apart into a cloud of dust and bits of ancient scrap armor. With the critical and instant kill modifiers, I was fairly certain I had just gained over two thousand experience points from just this one kill. Still, I had another two hallways to clear after this chamber!

Barely more than a minute later, I find myself facing the last stretch of hallway leading toward where either mini boss paths met back up. There were three groups of enemies entirely made up of only level sixty berserkers in this hallways and each group was worth an estimated fifteen hundred minimum experience. With a one-shot modifier they were worth over two hundred experience apiece which brought each group closer to three thousand points worth.

When I reached the junction at the end of my path, I could not help but smile when I see that my familiars had not even entered the final stretch of hallway on their side. The hallway was still loaded with dense strands of webbing stretching up, down, and all around the hallway while vaguely hiding a couple dozen giant spider bodies. "I win," I cannot help but smirk to myself, preparing Force Strike, Spirit Slash, and Wind Cutter in my swords before unleashing them down the spider dominated hallways.

Even though I was not there to collect them myself, I was well aware of dozens of Dense Webs suddenly appearing in my Player Inventory even without my loot notifications turned on.

Only around a minute later I saw the lights of skills radiating from around the corner at the end of the spider hallway a split second before massive crescents of cutting energy scythed across the turn in the corridor and slammed brutally into the end wall. As the wall simply exploded outward, my familiars soon appeared in the ensuing storm of dust and debris.

Waving to them as the air around them clears so they can see me through the corridor I had cleared, I call out, "Guess who won? Your grandpa! Now, come help me sort through the bodies in the wall so we can get the real loot!"

*