Roll Need

"That's the last one." Fists said with a sigh of relief. After finishing off the three witches, two more waves arrived. In the end, they fought off a total of thirteen witches. Markus offered them up just like before and got 2 favor. At this point, he just wanted to discover what effect focusing on a single god would have. He tried letting someone else offer a witch, but they only received the option to loot. It seemed that perhaps damage dealt was a factor.

"Blender! That is the only way to describe you." Fists said while looking at Markus in shock. He had really hacked right through the witches. Between [Vital Strike] and [Dismembering Strike], he was able to kill the witches in one or two attacks. Unfortunately, the second phase of the instance introduced more splashing water. In between cooldowns, Markus had no choice but to get splashed with water. Instead of taking it directly, he blocked I with his sword. Now it was just a pile of scrap iron. Since his damage was the best, Baby gave Markus his sword to use.

Markus learned a few new things about the game from that battle. First, it seemed that the naming convention for abilities might not be completely arbitrary. He could not activate both strikes simultaneously. He would need to get more abilities but that seemed to make sense from a gaming standpoint, so he wagered it was an accurate deduction.

Second, Hero status didn't affect his damage against the witches. He decided to attack casually without targeting weak points and noticed that he did normal damage. With this, he was able to confirm that the 'Critical' effect ignores differences in status. This was an important discovery as it would be more and more necessary to target weak points as the overall level of the game increased. This was the general trend in games like this.

And finally, the side effects of the incantation were significantly weaker this time around. He contemplated the reason for it and even had Punch test it on Baby. They were able to rule out that the side effects were consistent with the first and second usage. The only difference is that Markus raised to Hero status. The increase in rank could give hidden benefits. Perhaps the side effects of the incantation came from the difference in rank between the caster, or the base rank of the incantation itself.

Unfortunately, he didn't level anything in that prolonged fight. It was expected so Markus wasn't too disappointed. He needed to focus and stay concentrated during the duration of the fight so the inverse growth of his talent must have activated. He had reaped 11 more underworld gifts, 22 favor and 33 more experience.

Although he was only 12 experience away from level 4, he knew it would be a huge mistake to level at this point. Thinking about the balance of the game where experience is required to level skills as well as your overall player level, Markus understood the brilliance of the developers. This was subtly hinting to the players that maintaining a lower level and focusing on skills was a more optimal way of playing. Because the decrease in experience gain from leveling and the exponential increase in toughness of higher leveled monsters, the only way to climb was to have a solid skill and ability foundation.

The only reason Markus was able to breeze through enemies was his skills and abilities were more than twice the level and quantity of the strongest players! He could benefit from removing the level difference and increasing his overall damage output simultaneously. Other players would need to grind for hours to reach a standard damage output to challenge higher leveled monsters, while Markus could casually fumble into it.

That being said, he quickly understood the importance of class diversity. If not for the supporting and tanking from Lloyd and Punch, they would not have survived the multiple waves of witches. It was also important to have an item user to support the team. Baby was managing the stock of Hellboros and feeding it to anyone that got cursed since he had to give up his weapon to Markus. However, he seemed to fall into that role perfectly. Often noticing someone being cursed before the notification appeared in their game logs. Markus became more certain that Baby had some sort of deduction or analysis talent after that fight.

"Stop making a scene, we already knew Markus was powerful. Open the boxes! I want to see the loot" Punch dismissed her brother's comments and her eyes shined expectantly. The feeling of finishing a long battle could only be topped by the feeling of checking all the loot. Markus nodded and started opening the gifts.

[Opening…

Whisper-silk x2]

[Opening…

Skull of the Damned x1]

[Opening…

Bones of the Damned x1]

[Opening…

Blade of the Coven x1]

[Opening…

Rowan Branch x3]

[Opening…

Soul Fragment x9]

[Opening…

<The Final Covenant vol. 3> x1]

[Opening…

Whisper-silk x2]

[Opening…

Bone Key Teeth (1/3) x1]

[Opening…

Bone Key Shaft (2/3) x1]

[Opening…

Whisper-silk x4]

Markus saw the large list of items populate his game logs and shared the descriptions one by one to the group chat. Seeing the variety of items made the groups eyes pop with excitement. Since there was no precedent set on what kind of loot can drop from instances, they would be the trail blazers.

Markus shared the [Whisper-silk] first. Like hides and meat, there was no detailed description if you inspected the item. The item seemed to be a crafting material. It was a translucent silvery-blue silk that had the eerie feel of the Styx imbued to it. There were 8 units of the silk, and each unit seemed to be a 5x5 meter bolt from Markus's estimations. He could see Baby become very excited about this new material. However, he kept posting so they could discuss the breakdown after.

[Skull of the Damned

Rank: Hero

Effect: All incantations cost, and interval decreased by 20%. Can only be used by the [Witch] class lineage.

Message: Waste not, want not.]

[Bones of the Damned (13/13)

Rank: Hero

Effect: Destroy a bone to activate [Curse of Madness]. Must maintain eye contact during the activation.

Message: Look into my eyes]

[Blade of the Coven

Rank: Hero

Effect: 2-4 damage. Immune to [Decay].

Message: "By this blade, I sacrifice my life for the coven!" - Unknown]

[<The Final Covenant Vol. 3>

Rank: Hero

Effect: Advance to [Witch Apprentice]. Requires level 10 Caster.

Message: It's Leviosa, Not Leviosaaa!]

Next Markus showed them the [Rowan Branch]. It was a large branch with dozens of shoots coming off the parent branch. The child branches were also very straight and could easily be turned into arrows. Seeing this, he only wanted to keep the child branches. The parent branch looked to be suitable for a staff or further carved into other tools.

The [Soul Fragments] didn't need any consideration, he directly passed them to Lloyd and let her sort out the distribution. The final item were the two key fragments. The teeth and shaft seemed to come together easily, but they didn't merge into a single item. It seemed he needed to find the last piece for that. Since the key was incomplete it wouldn't be considered in the final distribution. Markus noticed that the group didn't say anything about the last few items, along the way they gave short and simple replies but stopped after the book was posted.

After a while, Lloyd spoke up. "We discussed the item distribution and wish to offer you a deal."

"Sure, go ahead." Markus didn't have any problem with Lloyd changing their initial terms.

"We want the class advancement book and the skull, and we will drop all claims on the rest of the items in the instance."

Markus looked over at Punch and she had an embarrassed expression on her face. It seemed like she was reluctant to hog the loot and take away from her party's potential good drops. However, she didn't disagree with Lloyd's assessment that the book was the most valuable item in the list. Based on previous MMO games, class advancement books for special or restricted classes would always cost exorbitant amounts of real-world cash. There were even cases of people resorting to violence in real life to get their hands on such rare game commodities. Markus was also aware of their thinking. Although the book was useless to him as a fighter, it could potentially sell for a lot.

"Sure." He answered casually.

"Wait, before you decide, let me offer— sorry what did you say?" Lloyd was already prepared to sweeten the deal and assumed Markus would reject her. However, her expectation and reality differed too greatly.

"I said sure. Its yours. I'll take the rest of the loot except for the soul fragments that we already decided on splitting. Although this book is valuable, I wouldn't have gotten without your help." Markus half-closed his eyes and shrugged with a lazy expression when he was suddenly wrapped in someone's arms. Punch was already standing close to him because of the narrowness of the boat, but the distance becoming zero all of a sudden shocked him.

"Thank you so much!" Markus could see her sincerity and patted her back subconsciously to comfort her. She awkwardly broke off after realizing what she did and backed away from him.

'There seems to be more to this than what I see. I wonder if they are actually only here to build up their fame.' Markus thought