Glass Cannon

"This is fun."

The only real control I'd put in was loosing an Ice Arrow a little more cleanly when the moon bear got close. Everything else had been me sitting still and flinging skills.

To the controllers who treat Haven like performance art, I was a click-to-win leech, nothing more. But if I was the one having fun, that was enough. Crushing things under raw, overwhelming power suited my taste better than fine control ever had, and the endorphins came pouring out.

I'd meant to stop around three stars today and shut the stream off, but there was time left, so I decided to take a single taste of four-star.

"Just a taste? I come back even if I die."

Death doesn't bother me much. Revival is free through level 30, and items only start dropping at random from 30 on, so there's no reason to be afraid of dying before then. Even after that, pay the fee and you get back up. For me, Haven Online might as well be a game with no death penalty at all.

Still, going by three-star, four-star wasn't going to be easy. Even the three-star moon bear had been stubbornly tough. Four-star monsters would have far more health, so a little preparation was the sensible move.

"Just in case, I'll pick up some health potions."

I cleaned the high-grade health potions out of the auction house. Thirty million won apiece wasn't much of a problem—call it the price of ten mid-grade mana potions. I only bought twenty.

"Hmm. Nothing else to prep."

After that, nothing else came to mind. Suggestions kept rolling through the various chats, but most of them were dungeon necessities, rations, that sort of thing. I didn't need any of it.

"What is this, a picnic? It'll be over in an hour. Why would I need camping gear and food?"

In Haven Online, a four-star dungeon is a playground for the chosen few. The experience multiplier alone is double. If just anyone could walk in, just anyone would, suck down that sweet EXP, and climb. And four-star isn't even built to be cleared at your own level.

From four-star on, you're in farming territory. There are item grades that only appear up through a given dungeon tier, which is why anything four-star and above is expensive, and why players past the level cutoff form raids and drop into lower-level dungeons to hunt.

"This isn't going to be easy."

People call dungeons with special conditions the good ones, and yet modifiers that shave your base stats while inflating the monsters' are supposed to be brutal. The stat gap is already yawning before the fight ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even begins.

I had a feeling the edge of my five-star gear wouldn't show much inside a four-star, either. The one mercy was that there was no boss.

Let's do this.

Competitive fire caught in my chest. I'd never played games for long, so this was the first time I learned I even had a competitive streak. I was pretty sure I'd started with the vague idea of raising a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠character the way you raise a cyber bonsai—casually, however it happened to grow.

I entered the dungeon.

Fwing—

The instant I stepped in, something split the air. I rolled sideways before I knew I was moving.

"Ghk—fuck."

The curse came out on pure reflex. The arrow that had sheared through the space I'd just left was faintly steeped in mana. I looked toward the shot and found some human up in a tree, arrow aimed at me.

No. An elf.

I hadn't caught it in a single glance. I'd borrowed the read from the veterans in chat.

Elf. Arrow. And magic.

Whoom.

Boom!

And it wasn't even just one of them. Spheres like the Fireballs I'd been making came down around me. Three at a minimum. Maybe more.

The info coming through chat was genuinely useful. In other words, I had to clean this up inside five minutes.

I formed Ice Arrows and sent them at once.

Shwip, shwip, shwip—

I didn't even try to hit all of them. I dumped everything into the will to land on just one, but by the time the arrows arrived the elf had already sprung to another tree.

"I'm so damn slow."

On top of that I was eating the all-stats-minus-ten penalty. A body that had felt light now felt heavy. A drop always hits harder than the number.

Fwing—

Arrows kept coming, kissing the air beside me. Whatever the army had beaten into me—the habit of throwing my body first the instant something felt like a threat—seemed to be the only reason the first three or four attacks didn't kill me outright.

That luck, of course, did not hold.

Boom!

"Agh!"

A Fireball clipped my left arm and burst. My head went white, and my body lurched.

Stupidly strong.

I understood it the instant it connected. In this dungeon, if any attack landed clean, I was dead on the spot. Even a graze left me barely able to stay on my feet. Even so, I shoved a hand into my coat, yanked out a health potion, and crammed it into my mouth.

Glug, glug.

My head cleared.

"Haa."

The thought that I'd nearly died hit me, and with a single breath cold sweat sheeted off my whole body. Tension. When in my life had I ever shaken like this from the fear I might actually die? The easy little shrug of if I die, I die had been wiped clean.

I wanted to win. I wanted to kill those bastards. An impulse I'd never felt once in my life boiled up through me.

This is it. This was why people couldn't quit Haven. It was a different species of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dopamine from sitting at a computer and clicking a mouse, clicking a keyboard—and even those deskbound games had swallowed plenty of people whole.

Chk-rak!

I'd caught a breath, but it wasn't over. These elves would stay on me until I was dead. I thrashed back and hurled Ice Arrows of my own.

It wasn't easy.

The chat was packed with backseat coaching. Most of it was combat conducted entirely with the mouth, but some of it helped. I'd been thinking along the same lines. If I'd thrown mana several times and hadn't landed a single hit, then this was an attack the elves found easy to dodge. Once I understood the principle, the picture sketched itself.

Elves running the trees. Instead of dumping every Ice Arrow at once, I sent them in sequence, half a second apart—not down one line, but out in every direction.

Shk, shk, shk!

The elves knew the magic was dangerous if it connected. Whenever a spell came in, they dodged as hard as they could, and when a dodge ran out of room they changed trees.

That was the opening.

"Now!"

Pap!

"Ghk!"

The instant he planted a foot and kicked for the next branch, I put a single Ice Arrow not into the elf but into the branch under him, snapping it half a beat early. Caught off guard, he lost his balance, and while he flailed in open air the arrow coming in behind him was one he couldn't dodge.

"Got him!"

Celebrating would have been a mistake. Fireballs followed at once.

Dungeon modifiers or not, the SSS-rank slow on Ice Arrow still sheared a full thirty points off Agility. He was falling through empty air besides. And the ten-percent freeze even procced.

"$!@$!$!!"

"1$@!$!—"

I heard two elves shouting something. A split second of hesitation. I could feel attacks coming for me, but they were late. My Fireballs were faster.

Whump—whump—boom!

Clean hits. Just to be sure, I wrung out my mana and threw every Fireball I had.

Pap!

Sparks spat from the blast debris.

The elves must have been spaced fairly far apart. The sparks jumped to only one of them and started eating its life away. I didn't care.

"I've got the feel of it."

I swallowed a mana potion and a health potion, and grinned.

It hadn't been easy, but the moment it was on me, I understood in my hands how each shot had to be steered.

Fwoosh!

And right behind that understanding, the variations started pouring through my head.