As soon as I enter the Control Room, I see the Hunters sitting on the chairs I created for them, and it reminds me I have some unfinished business.
“Ah, right! I almost forgot about this…”
Since I upgraded The Sun to level ten, I should do the same for the other two Hunters too, shouldn’t I?
“If I recall properly, they were level seven…” I talk to myself, fiddling with the game’s menus. “...this gives me three level-ups and three skill points…”
The Mountain was the unmovable tank, and The River was the stacking damage dealer. I think I have an idea for the first skill I can use… I’ll start there and then–
“Hey hey, Andreu. What are you doing?”
Something, or to be more precise, someone, starts shaking my arm. The unexpected movement makes me touch one button for another and instead of opening the Templates menu, I almost press the log-out button.
Wow, that was close…! Can’t you see I’m trying to do something? Don’t bother me right now!
I shake off the thing grabbing my arm, and after the interruption, there’s a short pause where I continue to fiddle with the menus, until…
“... hey, Andreu, why don’t you answer?” The shaking resumes. “I thought we were going to design our dungeon for our fight against Ricard and Laura, but what are you doing? Heeeeey, don’t ignore meee. Andreeeeeeeu…!”
Ugh, fine, you win, Clara. I can’t concentrate like this!
“I’m sorry, it’s just… It’s just that I remembered something. I wanted to finish this the other day but ran out of time, so I wanted to finish it now...” I lie.
It isn’t that I ran out of time but that I decided to spend the remaining time watching the upgraded Minitaur Queen and The Sun in action. After the close failure with the orc player, I wanted to make sure everything was working properly…
Okay, okay, you got me, I lied again. I was having too much fun watching the invaders suffer and didn’t want to stop. Happy now?
“Do you mind waiting for a while?” I ask her before returning my attention to the screen in front of me.
Knowing my little sister as well as I do, I’m sure she’ll accept.
“Heee…” Clara tilts her head to the side, acting cute. Which, given her current appearance, doesn’t look cute at all. If anything, it’s terrifying. She’s still using that tentacle thing as her Champion. “Why don’t you tell me what is it? Maybe I can help you.”
As she talks, she entangles her tentacles around my arm, sending a shiver down my spine. Now, I have no escape.
“S-sure. But I need some free space, please…”
“Okaaaay!”
My arm is liberated from the oppressor’s grasp and I can finally open the Templates menu. I scroll down the list until I find the two Hunters. I was right, they’re level seven.
The reason Clara is inside my dungeon is to prepare for the matches we’ll have against Ricard and Laura. We’ll design a dungeon and use it for three or four consecutive Dungeon Battles. The idea is to limit ourselves to using the exact same monsters, traps, etc. for all the matches; and then we’ll repeat this until we’re comfortable with it.
This way we’ll learn how to adapt to the opponent’s strategies with what we’ve got, the same as the real event.
The game has a function that allows another player to come to your dungeon as a ‘friend’, and gives them some of the dungeon owner’s abilities, like teleportation and opening locked doors at will. Monsters and traps won’t attack them, as they’re treated like an administrator, but they can’t modify anything inside the dungeon.
If you’re wondering why we’re doing this inside the game instead of in real life, the answer is easy: it’s easier to access any information we require inside the game, plus we can create and modify the dungeon after the first idea.
“I told you yesterday, I upgraded a few of my monsters as well as my Champion yesterday, but I didn’t finish everything,” I explain as I work. “Do you remember the Hunters?”
She nods. Of course, she does. They’re sitting right in front of us.
“The Hunters are kind of a pack, and I want them all to be on a similar power level. But now I have one that’s three levels higher…”
I leave my phrase unfinished, knowing she’ll understand what I mean.
“Oh, I know!” Clara jumps on the spot and raises one of her… hands? “And you’re going to use this chance to fix them, right?”
“Fix them…?” I tilt my head.
Why fix them? They’re good as they are, aren’t they? Why should I need to fix something that isn’t broken? It makes no sense…
“You didn’t watch my last invasion?”
Now it’s Clara’s turn to tilt her head, and my turn to turn my head away. “...uh, I…”
“You didn’t? But you told me you would!”
“I got distracted by the other invaders…”
Why would I want to watch you repeat the same? There’s no fun in watching someone who knows everything and clears my dungeon as if it were a walk in the park. Someone who knows the placement of all the traps, and every monster’s weakness? There’s no fun in watching that.
Furthermore, her Champion and support mobs give me the creeps…
Please don’t tell her I said that, although I believe she already knows and wants to make me suffer on purpose…
Clara crosses her arms. “Humpf! If you had watched me, you’d know they’re filled with problems. Especially the one that’s inspired by a mountain.”
Is she angry? I can’t tell because she has no face… Her pose and attitude, though, make her look like a puppy instead of menacing. Or that’s what usually happens when she gets angry, as her Champion does give her a dreadful feeling.
“Alright, alright… I’m sorry.” Did she crush my The Mountain so easily? Or is she exaggerating? “So, tell me. What’s wrong with my monster?”
“I’m generous, so I’ll forgive you. I’m a good little sister!” Clara says, nodding to herself.
Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.
“The problem with him is that it’s weak to damage over time effects. Once I came into contact with him, I melted his HP bar like it was nothing!” Clara happily proclaims, patting her chest area.
“But that makes no sense… the Lust skill…”
I can understand that a tank is weak to continuous damage because stacking several effects is easy on a target that’s more of a nuisance than an actual danger.
That’s usually the downfall of monsters focused on defense.
But even so, if she used damage over time effects, she should have taken a significant amount of damage from the Lust skill… After all, every damage tick triggers the skill and reflects a portion back… Ah, right! She heals as she deals damage, doesn’t she? The healing might have mitigated the damage taken from the Lust skill.
“The Lust skill? It’s useless if you don’t look at the monster!”
She’s right, but how did she kill it in melee without looking at– “I hugged your monster and looked over his shoulder. It was very easy because it didn’t move, and I took no damage. Hehehe!”
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Being hugged by her and drained to death… Brrr…! I don’t want to even imagine it!
I shake my head to dispel the horrendous image.
“But fixing that would be very difficult. Tanks are inherently weak to stacking damage over time effects…”
Let’s forget about the hugging part. Nobody sane would do that.
“I have an idea!” Clara walks to my side and starts fiddling with the screen in front of me. “Take a look at this. It’s a skill I thought of giving to some of my monsters. I don’t want to ever lose in a battle of endurance, where one party tries to drain the other to death, and this skill is perfect for that. Hehehe!”
Yeah, no… Please, don’t act cute while saying that. It’s terrifying.
Well, let’s take a look at the skill. There’s nothing to lose.
“Hmm… interesting.”
This skill… it’s surprisingly good? It should solve the damage over time problem The Mountain has, according to what Clara said.
Let’s make some quick numbers. Taking into account The Mountain’s base HP and the bonus for level ten, two percent of that is… Around 30? So all damage under 30 will be reduced by half? Not bad. Not bad at all.
It’ll make all basic attacks from weak opponents pretty useless on top of damage-over-time effects.
Furthermore, it perfectly fits the mountain theme. A mountain is something so big, that you require something on the level of a bomb to affect it. Regardless of how much effort you put into it, you won’t achieve much with a shovel.
Hey, don’t be rude! That’s the best comparison I could come up with! If you have a problem with it, you’re free to share a better one!
“I like it. Thanks for the idea, Clara.” I say, patting the tentacles forming her head. Ugh… slimmy…
“Hehehe…”
I immediately regret my actions. But she’s happy, I’m happy that I found an interesting skill… so who cares about my disgust?
“Do you have any other ideas? You told me that The River also had some problems…”
“Yes! I’ll help you as much as I can!”
Now let’s find a way to solve the ‘hugging’ part… The last thing I want is for other players to find out such an easy way to defeat The Mountain, one of my ‘security guards’.
I don’t even want to imagine ‘them’ finding out…
If that happens, I might not be able to watch more invasions, to prevent my head from exploding. Just the thought of them starting to hug my monsters is giving me a headache.
“Alright. This is it! We’ve done it!”
I high-five Clara. Well, I suppose I high-fived her, you can never tell because she has no actual hands.
“Yeah! We did it! I did well, right?”
“Yeah, you did.”
It’s always good to have a second opinion and new ideas. Doubly so when I didn’t find any trouble with my current Hunters, so I couldn’t have known how to improve them.
Let me explain which skills I picked for my Hunters. I’ll start with The Mountain.
Other than the It Tickles passive skill, I also gave my monster the Earth Wave skill to push enemies away if he gets in danger. Only against melee enemies, of course.
This skill is what you’d call a support skill. It isn’t weird for players to use Earth Wave together with other skills to create a devastating combo. That’s why it has a long cooldown.
But you can also use it as an emergency disengage button, as I did.
Now, The Mountain will use Earth Wave as a defensive measure to buy some time to unroot itself if the need arises. Three meters doesn’t seem like much, but the delay caused by the displacement effect, which takes a while, adds up to the time.
As for the last skill…
Well, I couldn’t pass up on the possibility of upgrading Lust, could I?
Seven times ten is 70. It’s 70 damage every time it gets hurt! It was impossible to pass up!
“Fufufu! Hahaha…!”
“Andreu, you’re doing it again.”
“... Sorry.”
The Lust upgrade will make it even less appealing to target The Mountain with any attacks. I wouldn’t disregard the possibility of the players actively avoiding it at all costs, even if it means running away.
Not that I would mind if they did. The Mountain is there to hold its ground. The one to chase after the invaders is The River, and talking about my second Hunter…
According to Clara, The River has two problems.
First, it’s too much of a glass cannon. Once you get used to it, it’s very easy to take down before the damage from Pride stacks.
Second, its unpredictable, never-stopping movement becomes its downfall. You can stay still and aim a few attacks every time it passes near you, killing it without any problem. It’s just a matter of timing the attacks properly and avoiding the counterattacks.
This becomes even more noticeable because, like in real life, the faster the speed, the harder it is to change directions.
But those problems are more difficult to solve, so it was a bit more tricky to fix The River compared to The Mountain.
Oh, how much I hate using this word…
Anyway! These are the skills I chose in the end.
As you can see, it’s the perfect amount: one of each.
Ram serves to turn The River’s speed into damage. It also completely stops its movement while sending the enemy flying. It’s a perfect way for my monster to change its path without any warning while presenting a significant danger. The damage from Ram can work as a finisher after Pride has accumulated enough stacks, something The River was missing.
Sound Barrier is a good defensive option that requires no explanation, and Backstab is a perfect tool for when the players are trying to run away.
I like how they turned out in the end.
“Thank you, Clara. With your help, they turned out better than I expected.”
“If you’re so happy, I’ll ask you to reward me later, okay? Hehehe!”
For some reason, I shudder at her words. It must be because of her horrifying appearance that doesn’t match her mood and words. Yeah, that must be why.
Let’s change the topic.
“Uh…” I take a look at the in-game clock. “It’s gotten so late… We don’t have time to work on the plans for our match. What do you say? Want to continue after dinner, or do we leave it for tomorrow?”
“Yes. Let’s continue tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if we couldn’t do it today, I’m happy I got to help you with this. It’s well-spent time.”