Chapter 1083 – Final Grind of the Year 13 – Court Dust
It took the first 45 minutes of the Assault to put together something John was reasonably happy to call a fortified position. During their first attempt, they had been able to figure out a barebone design, so it didn’t take the entire hour to put it together.
Rather than a tower, they were standing in a bunker. The roof was just barely high enough that John could stand straight without being afraid of bumping his head. More important was that they had a roof and that the windows weren’t wide enough for the spiders to come inside without pulling their legs in, which made it relatively easy to shove them back out. Not a whole lot even attempted that, courtesy of those that were still defending the perimeter.
More important than the bunker structure itself, at least for the moment, was the fact that they had doubled the diameter of the sealed surface. That made it considerably easier to deal with the spores. The second boss that had spawned in had consequently had less armour – which was good because they didn’t have Smlere ready to deal with it. Aclysia, Momo and Beatrice made for a fine trio to take it out. Essentially the strategy was to distract and delay, while the passive maid stacked up the necessary modifiers.
It didn’t go quite as well the second time. The boss had less buffs, but he was by no means slow and Beatrice got hit one time, taking all of the Crescendo and Endless Step stacks off her in one swoop. That did put a dent in her mood, but Beatrice was not one for strong emotions and quickly regained her equilibrium. Even if it wasn’t as clean, they did succeed in killing the boss.
About five minutes had passed since. Gnome was putting the final touches on the third expansion of their sealing ring. Their current rhythm was to keep expanding the sealed surface after each boss encounter and expand their base whenever Gnome had the time during waves. Which she would have progressively more of the less Sylph and Salamander were occupied with spore-cleaning duty. A task that also ate into John’s mana reserves.
His and Momo`s mana reserves. The sassy support was in the bunker with him. Where he was delegating where his mana regeneration went, she sent out one of her fireflies whenever one spawned and used her spells when she deemed that she had the necessary resources. Which, currently, wasn’t all that often.
“...I shouldn’t have spent it all already,” she mumbled, leaning against the structural pillar at the centre of the three-metre-wide bunker. “Now I’m sitting here with nothing to do.”
“That’s the price you pay for being backline support,” John sighed, walking towards one of the windows. Just as he arrived, one of the Sporeal Spiders jumped up the hip-high wall, and squeezed one leg after the other through the gap between two inwards slanted pillars. John decked the arachnid in the schnoz. Although his punches still did fairly little to the monsters, punching that particular area made them flinch, which allowed Aclysia to show up and rip the monster backwards.
“My apologies... Master!” she spoke the word with the forcefulness of someone driving a dagger through the neck of an upside-down spider. “It slipped by me.”
“Happens,” the Gamer told her with a forgiving smile. “You’re doing a good job, Aclysia.”
“Thank you!” She seemed entirely too happy about that simple compliment, grinning and blushing, before the necessity of combat pulled her back into the fray.
‘Combat gets her crazy side going,’ John noted, as he inspected the wall for damage. “Fascinating how little the enemies bother me now that there’s a wall between us,” he said to Momo and scooped some of the acidic saliva off the stone. It had burned a couple of small spots into the rock. Should the arachnids figure out that they could get through the fortifications that way, which would doubtlessly be the case due to the way dungeon monsters seemingly shared gathered wisdom, that could become a problem.
“I mean, that’s the smart assumption,” Momo posited, looking out through one of the windows. “Would surprise me if you thought the bear behind the glass was as dangerous as the bear in the woods.”
“Might be worth tossing some people to the bear to remind them what the glass is protecting them from though...” John hummed and walked back to the centre of the bunker.
“By all means, you first.” Momo pointed at one of the windows. The bunker had no doors, such a luxury would have been an unnecessary compromise on the defensive integrity of the structure. If someone wanted to leave or enter, they had to climb in or out. Luckily, the human body was narrower than that of a spider.
“My HP is half depleted,” John gave his excuse.
“Isn’t that convenient, mister hypocrite?”
“A little,” the Gamer shrugged with a smile. “Almost as convenient as the fact that I was fighting a literal god at the start of the month. I think I have earned myself a year off the bear fights.” He walked up next to Momo and put an arm around her. She blushed slightly and turned her head the opposite direction. “You smell like strawberry,” he noted.
‘You saw her not even three hours ago,’ Salamander pointed out.
‘And I did so much since then! I killed a spider with slicing gales, and I killed a spider by zapping it, and I killed a spider by leading it in circles until it died from Unstable Arcana and... uh! Uh!! Remember that time I killed a spider?’
‘Are you being passive aggressive or stupid?’ Momo chimed in.
‘Stupid and proud! Maybe a little bit bored of spiders though.’
‘Well, get used to it, 68 more hours to go,’ John told her. ‘This will be an incredibly repetitive task.’
‘Can I take a sex break?’
‘If we get an opening and my mana is otherwise empty,’ John responded. He felt the unsatisfied silence of the interrupted from Aclysia, so he asked her, ‘Why do you miss Metra so much?’
‘If she was present, we could have four corridors along the cardinal directions. I am certain this would please your desire for symmetry, Master,’ Aclysia responded.
John’s thoughts radiated plain agreement. The only one of the corridors that was perfectly aligned was the one Beatrice currently stood in, pointing north. This was not a quaint idea John had come up with for the hell of it. Directional Defence was locked in one of the four cardinal directions, meaning it was most effective if all attacks came only from that direction. That the spell could be used as an impromptu compass, as Momo could specify which of the four directions she wanted even if she didn’t know where they were, was a discovery they had made days earlier.
Momo’s thoughts radiated overplayed resignation. ‘What are we doing?’
‘Master’s concerns are purely practical,’ Aclysia came to his defence before he could. They all knew she was just as little serious in that remark as Momo was in her question. ‘It would optimize our strategic position.’
‘Yeah, sure, whatever.’ Momo rolled her eyes and turned to John. ‘It’s about time, right?’
Nodding, John reached into his inventory and retrieved the pouch of Court Dust. It was made from two large, lilac flower petals, sown tightly together with golden string and about as large as the bottom of a half-litre can. There was no way to open the thing, safe for tearing it. The Gamer retreated into the isolated inside of the bunker, just to be safe.
None of them were tired yet, but John wasn’t taking as few chances with the start-up effects being anomalous as he had with the ending coming sooner than advertised. ‘God, I feel like an actual junkie,’ he thought, kneeling in the dark, barren room, hunched over a drug package, a small knife, and a straw. He carefully cut the seams on one side of the pouch and created a hole just large enough for the straw. Golden, sparkling light seeped out of the opening, like the trail of fairy dust from Peter Pan.
Before his good upbringing could make him reconsider, John inserted one end of the straw into the pouch and the other into his nose. Then he held the other nostril closed and sniffed intensely.
It was as if someone shot a mixture of a flower field, the taste of vanilla, and the immense urge to sneeze up his nose. John held his breath to suppress the latter. He had gone this far, he wouldn’t waste any of it to such a basic bodily function. Once the scratching had calmed, John inhaled a second time. All he got that time was the smell of lilacs. Magically, all had been snorted up in one go.
‘I feel dirty,’ John responded to the supreme deity inside his mind. Rubbing the still itching nose, he stretched. The pop-up made it clear that the drug hadn’t kicked in yet, but placebo made him nervous regardless. ‘Winners don’t do drugs... man, if reality was that simple.’ John scratched his neck. ‘Let’s hope I don’t do anything stupid.’