Chapter 58. Def Leppard

  When I was just within range, I used Frost Nova, adding a second stack of Chill and locking them all in place for four seconds. The damage was minimal, but the effect was massive. I stepped back. Bomb Cyclone came off cooldown, and I threw it at the mobs. Three seconds later, it hurled through the air, landing in the middle of them and shattering.

  With three stacks of Chill, all four of the mobs froze in place. They were each down to 64% health.

  “I’m out of mana,” I said.

  “Good job, Warren,” Cassandra said.

  The initial group of Harpies lay dead at our feet, and our melee fighters converged on the new group.

  “Keep your back to the wall,” Rowan said. “We don’t need to get thrown into another group.”

  Shields blocked. Spears poked. Daggers plunged.

  Rowan’s prowess had grown. She switched between spear and shield, two-handed sword, and mace. She defended when she needed to, stunned mobs, bled them, and buffed our group with defense. While her damage was lacking due to being back at level one, I could tell that she was both skilled and versatile.

  When enough mana had regenerated, I cast one last Frost Bolt, but the fight was already won.

  You defeated Skeletal Harpy x 4.

  You received 173 Experience Points.

  You received 135 Job Points as a Cryomancer.

  You leveled up as a Cryomancer. +2 to Constitution, +4 to Dexterity, +2 to Intelligence, +1 to Wisdom, +0 to Strength, +0 to Perception.

  “Warren,” Rowan said. “Really nice work crowd controlling that whole group. We would have been in trouble otherwise.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You killed it back there too. Like a mid ’80s Def Leppard concert.”

  “I know that was supposed to be a compliment,” she said. “But it wasn’t. Def Leppard is awful.”

  I laughed.

  Over the next hour, we cleared the room. And then we reset the instance and did it again. And again. Each time we went onto the first floor, we saw the same layout. Clarity had the power to change the dungeon, but perhaps only once a day. In all, we killed over sixty Skeletal Harpies. It was a grind, as many video games were, but it was fun. My team got better at working with each other. We learned how to use our new skills with nuance, and we got levels. The effect of all of these things was like a snowball. As Rowan got better stats, she held aggro better. Kab learned how to use his healing skills to keep Rowan alive without pulling aggro. Cassandra interrupted spell casts, being able to anticipate when knockbacks, rages, and silences would occur. And Janica was our general, directing and teaching us as we went.

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  For my part, I progressed through the Cryomancer, Storm Mage, and Pyromancer Jobs. In each, I tested the spells and ultimately bought one that suited my long term plan: to have a complete kit as an Elementalist where I could do single target and multi-target damage as well as do some crowd control. In Cryomancer, I bought Frost Nova. I liked the simple crowd control of being able to freeze an unlimited amount of enemies in place. I also liked how cheap Frost Nova was. Mana was going to be an issue against the final boss, and I needed ways to continue to cast as many spells as possible.

  Storm Mage was pretty fun and consisted of three nature spells. It focused on getting enemies wet through Mist and then throwing Lightning at them, which turned single-target spells into multi-target spells. Seeing a lightning bolt zip around from mob to mob looked really cool. I took a spell called Zap, which had the capacity to act as an interrupt. It didn’t do too much damage, but it only cost 10 mana to cast.

  Geomancer was my least favorite. I had never acquired any Strength other than what I got from some of my gear, and so didn’t even bother acquiring a skill because the damage wouldn’t scale. Ultimately, this would hold me back. Elementalist gained power for every spell school used, which meant that being able to use an earth skill would boost my power. But until I gained an extra passive or spell slot at level twenty, I only had three spaces for skills. When I first started IO, I remember thinking that I would definitely take an extra passive when I got to level twenty. Now, I started to realize that having an extra skill slot might scale better.

  I loved Pyromancer. The passive allowed for damage to build over time. Every burn that I put on a target increased damage done to the target in future spells, and it stacked up really quickly. In one fight, I casted Wall of Fire on a group of mobs while Rowan and Janica created a phalanx, trapping the mobs within the inferno. I casted it again and watched as it burned down the entire group. It was difficult to pass up damage like that, and I felt powerful. Big damage numbers floated up everywhere and with them, my ego. But I think the look on my face scared those people around me. Unfortunately, Fire Wall wasn’t a good choice for my Elementalist build. It cost a whopping fifty mana and had an eight second cooldown. I doubted that we could get Clarity to stand in fire for very long. Fireball was another excellent spell, doing big damage and burning all nearby mobs. In the end, I took a simple spell called Fire. It was a damage over time, single-target spell without a cooldown. The mana cost was high at twenty-five mana per cast, but it did two times my Intellect in damage. If I could stack my Elementalist passive up twice and then cast Fire, it would become a powerhouse of damage.

  Current Loadout:

  ● Job: Elementalist

  ● Passive 1: Casting Ice, Fire, Earth, or Nature Spells each increases critical strike chance and movement speed by 10% for 8 seconds, stacking up to 4 times.

  ● Passive 2: Spiritual Embodiment. Cost to maintain: 2 stamina/second

  ● Skill 1: Ice Nova. Release Ice in a ring around you, freezing all enemies within 4 yards. Cost: 15 mana. Cooldown: 8 seconds.

  ● Skill 2: Fire: engulf your target in flames doing 2*I damage over 7 seconds. Cost: 25 mana.

  ● Skill 3: Zap. Shock a single target for P/5 damage and stunning them for .5 seconds. Cost to cast: 10 mana. Cooldown: 8 seconds.

  Through the day, I managed to level up six more times, ending the grinding session at level eight. I had gotten one level as a Pyromancer, one level as a Storm Mage, and the rest as an Elementalist. Level eight wasn’t ideal. If we could have grinded our way to level twelve, to match Kab’s level, we would be in the best position to take on Clarity. But time had run out, and we needed to leave the dungeon to collect this special item that Janica had told us about before we fought Clarity. The dungeon would be shut down by the developers in less than eight hours.