Chapter 188: Overgeared (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 188: Overgeared (3)
I was walking through a dark forest in the direction where the doppelganger had disappeared from the Shadow Altar, the path ahead seemingly endless. Every step I took seemed weighed down by the tension in the air. As for our formation, I was at the front, and the rest were following a few yards behind. It was far from our usual setup, but... Well, what could you do? Such was the life of a tank that carried the team.
"Prepare for battle!"
The moment I sensed a presence ahead of us, dozens of doppelgangers untouched by the glow of the light sphere spell revealed themselves. This was the change that occurred at the start of the fourth stage. After the Doppelganger's seal was removed, the number of clones on the field increased exponentially.
"Enemy... enemy of the Empire...!"
"...Kill, them!"
They no longer transformed into us, and it would stay that way until we found the main body. I didn't know why. This was a part I had overlooked in the game. I was sure I could find some hidden explanation for this phenomenon if I looked, but now was not the time to think about stuff like that.
[You have cast Leap.]
Before the distance between us could narrow further, I threw myself forward and landed in the middle of them.
Kwaaang!
As I landed, the ground beneath me shook, and the special terrain effect, Recoil, activated. Dozens of doppelgangers were flung through the air at once.
Crunch!
I swung my mace like a baseball bat to strike one out and promptly cast Wild Outburst.
"Behelahhh!"
My Threat Level tripled. Doppelgangers in the forms of soldiers rushed at me like crazed beasts. As long as they were monsters, they couldn't ignore my provocation. "For... the Empire...!"
Doppelgangers had no skills but were tricky enemies nonetheless because their default stats were high. As indicated by the way the shield soldier withstood my macing, each of their stats was at least above Ainar's. Plus, the fact that our formation was made up of a variety of arrow, spear, sword, magic, crossbow, and shield fighters played a part in raising the difficulty of the battle.
Crunch! Crunch!
However, although I blocked what needed to be blocked, I never avoided an attack. There was no point in the first place. Enemies were all around us. All I could do was get beat up like the tank I was and await my teammates' support.
[Arua Raven has cast the rank-five attack spell Lightning Bolt.]
Soon, the long-awaited spell was completed. The lightning struck a wide range.
[Kailman Parteian has cast the rank-five support spell Spell Enhance.]
Thanks to Parteian's support, Raven's attack was twice as powerful as usual. I paused so as not to get caught up in the spell.
Boom, boom, boom!
The Lightning Bolt, equal in power to a natural disaster, lasted only about five seconds, but it was enough to half-destroy the doppelganger corps.
Large-scale combat really is the best type of hunting.
The remaining monsters were taken down by my teammates, who were waiting in the rear. Just like that, the first battle came to an end.
"Parteian," the blunt weapon user murmured as he brushed the blood off his weapon, "will Miss Sarman be all right? I keep getting worried."
"You saw it for yourself. The doppelgangers don't come near the altar. As long as she doesn't go outside, she'll be fine."
"I can't stop wondering if we should've just brought her..."
The blunt-weapon warrior continued to be troubled by Scout Lady, who had been left behind. But there was nothing I could do. Using a scout against a doppelganger may not have been impossible, but that was only if I wanted a sacrificial pawn. If she had come along as someone in need of protection, the cons would have far outweighed the pros.
"That's enough. Miss Sarman agreed to it. If we fail, everyone will die anyway."
Reading the expression on my face, Parteian ended the conversation there and I resumed our expedition without saying anything. Nothing good would come from wasting time.
Dddddd!
After that, as we fought several more battles and continued to advance through the dark forest, we felt a slight vibration beneath our feet. That meant the Seal Unlock Percentage had reached 20 percent. Since it went up 1 percent every ten minutes, it was about time.
"Mr. Yandel, can we go a little faster?"
"Sure." I increased my speed as I raced against the clock. "We're here."
We finally reached our destination—a sinkhole we hadn't noticed while wandering the forest looking for the mini bosses earlier. If we headed down there now, the boss battle would begin. But, before that, we had things to do.
"Let's search the surrounding area first." Following Raven's instructions, we circled the sinkhole in search of something. It didn't take long to find it. "As expected, it is just like the book said. It mentioned there would be one hidden near the entrance."
"It" was a white tombstone that emitted an eerie sound. In the game, it had been named the Sealing Stone and appeared throughout the forest once the fourth stage began. But this alone couldn't be considered the hidden reward we were looking for.
"Just like the book?" asked Parteian. Information on the Sealing Stone could be found in Memoir of the Sacrifice, which appeared at the Shadow Altar after the end of the third stage. The book just told us to find it and activate it, though. "There was nothing like that in the memoir."
"Not the memoir, but another book." Raven did not answer Parteian's question in detail and placed her hand on the Sealing Stone.
Shaaaaaa!
Black light shot up into the sky in the form of a pillar.
[The Sealing Stone has been activated. Seal Unlock Percentage: 10%.]
With this, the Doppelganger's Seal Unlock Percentage was reduced by 10 percent. Of course, if things went according to our plan this number wouldn't matter too much anyway, but since it was on the way, there was no reason to skip it.
"Those are all the preparations we can make up here."
Soon, we returned to the sinkhole again.
"Is everyone ready?"
It was time to fight the boss battle.
***
[You have entered the Doppelganger's Hideout.]
A boss battle was the crown jewel of a rift. However, the boss fight in the Doppelganger Forest had a slightly unusual format. First, the expedition had to be divided into two. One team had to fight the boss, while the other team had to find the Sealing Stone located in the forest riddled with doppelganger soldiers and manage the Seal Unlock Percentage. This was also the standard strategy described in Memoir of the Sacrifice.
The concept is super annoying.
Here, everyone had to trust each other and do their part to succeed. If that landmine hadn't exploded earlier in the altar room, we probably would have chosen two or three people from each team and created two different teams to fight the boss.
"I can't stop wondering if we should've just brought her..."
The blunt-weapon warrior continued to be troubled by Scout Lady, who had been left behind. But there was nothing I could do. Using a scout against a doppelganger may not have been impossible, but that was only if I wanted a sacrificial pawn. If she had come along as someone in need of protection, the cons would have far outweighed the pros.
"That's enough. Miss Sarman agreed to it. If we fail, everyone will die anyway."
Reading the expression on my face, Parteian ended the conversation there and I resumed our expedition without saying anything. Nothing good would come from wasting time.
Dddddd!
After that, as we fought several more battles and continued to advance through the dark forest, we felt a slight vibration beneath our feet. That meant the Seal Unlock Percentage had reached 20 percent. Since it went up 1 percent every ten minutes, it was about time.
"Mr. Yandel, can we go a little faster?"
"Sure." I increased my speed as I raced against the clock. "We're here."
We finally reached our destination—a sinkhole we hadn't noticed while wandering the forest looking for the mini bosses earlier. If we headed down there now, the boss battle would begin. But, before that, we had things to do.
"Let's search the surrounding area first." Following Raven's instructions, we circled the sinkhole in search of something. It didn't take long to find it. "As expected, it is just like the book said. It mentioned there would be one hidden near the entrance."
"It" was a white tombstone that emitted an eerie sound. In the game, it had been named the Sealing Stone and appeared throughout the forest once the fourth stage began. But this alone couldn't be considered the hidden reward we were looking for.
"Just like the book?" asked Parteian. Information on the Sealing Stone could be found in Memoir of the Sacrifice, which appeared at the Shadow Altar after the end of the third stage. The book just told us to find it and activate it, though. "There was nothing like that in the memoir."
"Not the memoir, but another book." Raven did not answer Parteian's question in detail and placed her hand on the Sealing Stone.
Shaaaaaa!
Black light shot up into the sky in the form of a pillar.
[The Sealing Stone has been activated. Seal Unlock Percentage: 10%.]
With this, the Doppelganger's Seal Unlock Percentage was reduced by 10 percent. Of course, if things went according to our plan this number wouldn't matter too much anyway, but since it was on the way, there was no reason to skip it.
"Those are all the preparations we can make up here."
Soon, we returned to the sinkhole again.
"Is everyone ready?"
It was time to fight the boss battle.
***
[You have entered the Doppelganger's Hideout.]
A boss battle was the crown jewel of a rift. However, the boss fight in the Doppelganger Forest had a slightly unusual format. First, the expedition had to be divided into two. One team had to fight the boss, while the other team had to find the Sealing Stone located in the forest riddled with doppelganger soldiers and manage the Seal Unlock Percentage. This was also the standard strategy described in Memoir of the Sacrifice.
The concept is super annoying.
Here, everyone had to trust each other and do their part to succeed. If that landmine hadn't exploded earlier in the altar room, we probably would have chosen two or three people from each team and created two different teams to fight the boss.
We can't use that method anymore, though. We only have seven people now.
The expedition had been cut in half, and things had gone awry. Our number was nowhere near enough to split the team up. So what could we do? Looking through the dwarf and Hans G teams' loot, I quickly came up with an answer and gave Raven a hint to lead her to the same one. Rather than split the already small team into two, which would render us useless on both fronts, the plan was to focus all of our manpower in one place. Put simply, it was a strategy for experienced players.
"It might be a little dangerous, though. Will everyone be okay?" she had asked.
"There is no other way."
Thus, the basis of our strategy was laid. My guess was that our probability of success was 90 percent. Of course, probability was nothing more than a number, so the only way to see if this worked was to try it for ourselves. And when did life ever work out according to Plan A?
Boom!
Like the barbarian I was, I jumped down the tunnel first to check that it was safe. Then, when I sent up a signal, the rest of our team members descended.
"The air is chilly."
The temperature of the cave was cool.
"Kyaaargh!" The monsters inside sensed our presence and erupted in bizarre howls.
I chuckled. This was one of the roles of the barbarian: breathing courage into the team. "What are you all frozen for? Let's go kill 'em."
When I went straight in without the slightest hint of hesitation, the few intimidated members of our group also came to their senses and followed along.
After about ninety steps or so, the fog scattered throughout the entire cave lifted, and the boss room—a cavity with a huge magic circle drawn on it—was revealed. Stones of Truth were scattered on the floor like toys, and something in the form of a person sat squatting with their back turned to the center of the room. We heard the sound of sobbing.
"Are you... here to kill... me too...?" The figure turned its head and looked back at us. Its face was not any of ours. It was just an ordinary kid—or it would have been if it weren't for the fact that its eyes, nose, and mouth were flipped upside down. "I... didn't do... anything wrong..." The child glared at us like we were being unfair. Soon, the emotion in its eyes transformed into anger. This was a typical boss battle intro. "I'm like y—!"
I decided to skip the dialogue before it could get its next line out. "Behelahhh!" This wasn't a good environment to use Leap, so I just dashed forward and swung my mace.
Smack!
The sitting child's head was promptly bashed in, but I didn't feel the usual sensation I got when I hit something. It instead felt like I had just hit a punching bag full of water.
"Keeeeeek!" A scream coming from an unidentified place filled the entirety of the cave and the child turned into black slime.
Bubble, bubble, bubble!
The black form repeatedly contracted and expanded into spikes that looked like sea urchin thorns.
Is it starting with me?
When the process was over, another me stood there. Imitation: the Doppelganger's unique skill, which couldn't be obtained even from its essence. However, it was a bit different than it had been during the first stage.
"Keeeeeek!" The monster no longer copied my words and actions.
[The nameless extorter has cast Swing.]
It didn't stop with simple imitation; it became stronger than the original. On top of having the stats and skills of the individual it was copying, it also basically had the stats of a rank-five monster. Doppelganger wasn't a rank-four monster for nothing.
Whooom!
As a test, I backed away and avoided it. Its mace slammed into the ground.
Kwaaang!
The mace left a crater behind, and the entire cave shook. It was the kind of force that required a Strength stat of at least two hundred to achieve. When I thought of this as my future self, I was almost a little proud.
I can stop this, no problem.
The stats I lacked could be compensated for with items. To make sure the Doppelganger swinging the mace indiscriminately couldn't get near my teammates, I stopped him with my shield.
Kwaaang!
The sound wasn't crystal clear like I had hoped, and the force slamming into the shield was greater than I expected. That was a 50 percent reduction in impact?
"Raven!" Like the dishonorable adventurer I was, I called for support. A spell flew in right away. Since our opponent was a high-rank monster, we started off with curse magic instead of attack magic.
Clang!
It became a bit easier to bear the doppelganger's attacks after that, but this only set up the first basis of our strategy. The official first phase started now.
[The nameless extorter has cast Self-Replication.]
The Doppelganger with my appearance flung black slime from his body indiscriminately, which splattered on the ground. The number of tiny beads was too high to count.
"Iherno Heindar!" Raven's wand released a jet of flame that melted the beads of sludge, but it was impossible to dispose of them all. The beads stubbornly crawled across the floor and clumped together. Then, after going through a series of transformations, they began to copy our appearances. Raven calmly relayed the information to me. "Four in total!"
I quickly made a decision. Since these were just clones, they wouldn't perform on the same level as the original body. Thus, I promptly set the plan in motion. "Don't worry about me and get rid of them first!" I left the clones to my teammates and just decided to focus on facing the main body.
"They're all Hans Chrisen!"
At Raven's briefing, my body stiffened reflexively.
What?
I doubted whether I'd heard her right and, even though I was in the middle of battle, I took a moment to look. Of course, Raven hadn't given me faulty information.
...God damn it.
How could they all show up as Hans G? Alive or dead, didn't they randomly transform into one of the fifteen of us? So what the hell were the odds of this happening?
Oblivious to where my mind was at, Raven shouted like this was good news. "It's a relief that Mr. Yandel isn't among the clones! Let's sort this out quickly!"
It wasn't that I couldn't understand why she felt that way. Not only was Hans G relatively inferior in combat power to the rest of us, but four summoners was also a shitty combination. There was no doubt this worked out well for us.
Thump.
But my heart started pounding like crazy anyway.
We can't use that method anymore, though. We only have seven people now.
The expedition had been cut in half, and things had gone awry. Our number was nowhere near enough to split the team up. So what could we do? Looking through the dwarf and Hans G teams' loot, I quickly came up with an answer and gave Raven a hint to lead her to the same one. Rather than split the already small team into two, which would render us useless on both fronts, the plan was to focus all of our manpower in one place. Put simply, it was a strategy for experienced players.
"It might be a little dangerous, though. Will everyone be okay?" she had asked.
"There is no other way."
Thus, the basis of our strategy was laid. My guess was that our probability of success was 90 percent. Of course, probability was nothing more than a number, so the only way to see if this worked was to try it for ourselves. And when did life ever work out according to Plan A?
Boom!
Like the barbarian I was, I jumped down the tunnel first to check that it was safe. Then, when I sent up a signal, the rest of our team members descended.
"The air is chilly."
The temperature of the cave was cool.
"Kyaaargh!" The monsters inside sensed our presence and erupted in bizarre howls.
I chuckled. This was one of the roles of the barbarian: breathing courage into the team. "What are you all frozen for? Let's go kill 'em."
When I went straight in without the slightest hint of hesitation, the few intimidated members of our group also came to their senses and followed along.
After about ninety steps or so, the fog scattered throughout the entire cave lifted, and the boss room—a cavity with a huge magic circle drawn on it—was revealed. Stones of Truth were scattered on the floor like toys, and something in the form of a person sat squatting with their back turned to the center of the room. We heard the sound of sobbing.
"Are you... here to kill... me too...?" The figure turned its head and looked back at us. Its face was not any of ours. It was just an ordinary kid—or it would have been if it weren't for the fact that its eyes, nose, and mouth were flipped upside down. "I... didn't do... anything wrong..." The child glared at us like we were being unfair. Soon, the emotion in its eyes transformed into anger. This was a typical boss battle intro. "I'm like y—!"
I decided to skip the dialogue before it could get its next line out. "Behelahhh!" This wasn't a good environment to use Leap, so I just dashed forward and swung my mace.
Smack!
The sitting child's head was promptly bashed in, but I didn't feel the usual sensation I got when I hit something. It instead felt like I had just hit a punching bag full of water.
"Keeeeeek!" A scream coming from an unidentified place filled the entirety of the cave and the child turned into black slime.
Bubble, bubble, bubble!
The black form repeatedly contracted and expanded into spikes that looked like sea urchin thorns.
Is it starting with me?
When the process was over, another me stood there. Imitation: the Doppelganger's unique skill, which couldn't be obtained even from its essence. However, it was a bit different than it had been during the first stage.
"Keeeeeek!" The monster no longer copied my words and actions.
[The nameless extorter has cast Swing.]
It didn't stop with simple imitation; it became stronger than the original. On top of having the stats and skills of the individual it was copying, it also basically had the stats of a rank-five monster. Doppelganger wasn't a rank-four monster for nothing.
Whooom!
As a test, I backed away and avoided it. Its mace slammed into the ground.
Kwaaang!
The mace left a crater behind, and the entire cave shook. It was the kind of force that required a Strength stat of at least two hundred to achieve. When I thought of this as my future self, I was almost a little proud.
I can stop this, no problem.
The stats I lacked could be compensated for with items. To make sure the Doppelganger swinging the mace indiscriminately couldn't get near my teammates, I stopped him with my shield.
Kwaaang!
The sound wasn't crystal clear like I had hoped, and the force slamming into the shield was greater than I expected. That was a 50 percent reduction in impact?
"Raven!" Like the dishonorable adventurer I was, I called for support. A spell flew in right away. Since our opponent was a high-rank monster, we started off with curse magic instead of attack magic.
Clang!
It became a bit easier to bear the doppelganger's attacks after that, but this only set up the first basis of our strategy. The official first phase started now.
[The nameless extorter has cast Self-Replication.]
The Doppelganger with my appearance flung black slime from his body indiscriminately, which splattered on the ground. The number of tiny beads was too high to count.
"Iherno Heindar!" Raven's wand released a jet of flame that melted the beads of sludge, but it was impossible to dispose of them all. The beads stubbornly crawled across the floor and clumped together. Then, after going through a series of transformations, they began to copy our appearances. Raven calmly relayed the information to me. "Four in total!"
I quickly made a decision. Since these were just clones, they wouldn't perform on the same level as the original body. Thus, I promptly set the plan in motion. "Don't worry about me and get rid of them first!" I left the clones to my teammates and just decided to focus on facing the main body.
"They're all Hans Chrisen!"
At Raven's briefing, my body stiffened reflexively.
What?
I doubted whether I'd heard her right and, even though I was in the middle of battle, I took a moment to look. Of course, Raven hadn't given me faulty information.
...God damn it.
How could they all show up as Hans G? Alive or dead, didn't they randomly transform into one of the fifteen of us? So what the hell were the odds of this happening?
Oblivious to where my mind was at, Raven shouted like this was good news. "It's a relief that Mr. Yandel isn't among the clones! Let's sort this out quickly!"
It wasn't that I couldn't understand why she felt that way. Not only was Hans G relatively inferior in combat power to the rest of us, but four summoners was also a shitty combination. There was no doubt this worked out well for us.
Thump.
But my heart started pounding like crazy anyway.