Dungeon Crawler Quest(Original Fantasy)

Yeah, you came across really salty.

 

Ah sorry, thought the whole "dammit bandwagon" part would indicate that I was annoyed at the bandwagon, not that you have a life. My excuse If I was rude.

 

“I’ll just take some consumables, suppose we’re just going to put the water crystal away for now?” you say after a moments thought.

“I think so,” Maya says, “That water prison is a pretty useful spell, but I don’t have the SP or power to use it effectively, from what you said.”

“I may consider using it at some point,” Shimah sighs, “My slots are already quite full though…. I am hoping that fusing Shaman and Hexer will grant a fusion skill that lets me save slots… but obviously I am unsure.”

“Water…. Doesn’t really fit my theme,” Sera admits, “If I get a race mod that boosts fire, it will probably weaken water.”

“I have a garbage SP pool,” Anshelm says with a shrug, “Only reason I’m thinking earth is the passive defense boost and the extra health.”

Yeah that sounds about right, stuff gets divided up among you and/or stuffed in the vault. Or set aside in Anshelm’s inventory for sale.

“Mm, you know, Sera, I know the robe you have now is a good power booster… but the extra defense on the …new one,” you carefully ignore the source of said robe, “Could be pretty useful, you wanna try it on for the trip back?”

No Maya, stop it, stop looking like your going to start laughing. Sera looks a mixture between bashful and thoughtful, “Um… I suppose that’s true, and Al does want to see it…” she says after a moment.

The change between equipment is instant as always… she looks pretty good in it. The robe is a shiny silvery white that doesn’t so much as hug her body as it does stick to it like a second skin. It has shoulders, and sleeves and all the things that would normally make for a nice, modest piece of clothing… but it also has lots of… creative cut-outs. Sera flushes darkly when she looks up and catches you staring at the diamond shaped one over her navel that dips down far enough to be near indecent. You whip your eyes back up to meet hers and smile weakly, “Lookin good?” you try.

She huffs a bit, but looks fairly pleased, “These armors just get worse and worse, by the time we’re high level they’ll probably be as bad as the… things in that shop,” she grumbles glancing over at you, even as her blush spreads further down her neck. She jerks her eyes away, looking even more embarrassed. Just what was she imagining?

There’s a flash then, that draws both of your attention, Shimah switched vestments for now it looks like. Huh, surprisingly decent, a lot like your old Crystal Lord robe. It sparkles like spun diamond in the evening light, and indeed covers everything like an actual clerical vestment. How rare.

A niggling thought occurs to you as everyone prepares to leave, “Hey, Maya?”

“Hm, what is it Al?” she asks, still barely hiding a grin. You ignore that for now.

“Just… thanks, for getting us out of there last time, we… woulda been in trouble otherwise,” you grit out, you hate admitting it… but the later rooms, or goddess forbid, the bonus boss, would have killed someone.

Maya gets a strange look on her face, but she simply shakes her head, “Don’t worry about it Al, you’re the one who suggested buying me an orb after all.”

You set off back to the city after that, you should get there in good time… though honestly, it might be risky but you could maybe risk early twilight in only a few more levels.

Either way, back you go, though everyone remains at least a little on guard… just in case.

On the way, you walk next to Sera, occasionally stealing a glance at her… you kind of cut her off when she asked about doing something together in the morning. You really need to stop being such a coward about this… dammit.

“So… Sera, I was gonna go buy myself a swimsuit to sleep in, you want to come with me? Then maybe we can catch dinner or something afterward?” you blurt out, before self doubt can prevent it.

Sera, still rather red from getting used to her new robe, blinks in surprise, but then breaks into a smile, “Um, of course! I know a few shops we can go too, if you would like.”

“Cool, cool, no idea where to get that kind of thing myself,” you respond, with a little bit of relief. Step one success. You pointedly do not glower at Maya when she gives you a knowing look over her shoulder. Shut up, you aren’t good at this.

“Do you have anywhere in particular in mind to go after we shop?” Sera asks curiously.

Nope, no idea at all. When you ate out at all it was usually street vendors, not a whole lot of big, permanent restaurants in your part of the city. Not much call for it from a bunch of shut in wizard types you guess. You don’t really want to go out to that super expensive place either, you really don’t need to feel any more uncomfortable. “Dunno, figured we could maybe stroll around and see what catches our eye,” you offer smoothly. What? That was a totally good save, not a barely concealed fumble.

“That sounds fun, I haven’t really explored much of the city outside of the necessities and the places around home,” she bought it, awesome.

The trip home goes peacefully enough, thankfully, no screeching pus dribbling abominations shamble out to ruin your evening today. You make it back to the city with time to spare before the setting of the sun. You stay with the others long enough to sell off the couple of white items you picked up at the Lake and the Den, as well as see what Shimah’s race mod looks like.

It’s… interesting. She still looks much the same… just shiny, she seems a little more angular too you would guess? She doesn’t precisely have edges and corners now, or anything overt like that. Also her hair makes windchime-y sounds when she walks, much to her consternation and everyone else’s amusement.

You split off with Sera then, heading to the more mundane merchants deeper in the city.

Shopping for swimsuits with Sera is an… interesting experience. It’s not like shopping with Maya, where you constantly find yourself stuffed into horribly embarrassing things without quite knowing how you got there. Sera is too shy for that, but when she glances at some skimpy piece and goes bright red and starts mumbling to yourself, you almost want to try it on just ‘cause you know she would like it.

In the end you go for fairly conservative stuff… you just don’t have it in you to buy the embarrassing stuff without Maya’s near unstoppable force of personality pushing you into it. You buy up two suits, one a simple dark blue one piece, and the other a lighter blue two piece, in case sleeping in the latter isn’t comfortable… You also convince a red faced Sera to let you buy her a matching two piece in a night bright red, like you know she likes. So both of you walk out a little embarrassed.

Well… you can’t complain though, because even if you can’t quite look each other in the eye, holding hands as you stroll through the city, no worries about monster attacks distracting you, is pretty nice.

“So, Al, is there any kind of food in particular you like?” Sera asks as you wander the streets, looking for a likely place to eat. She hasn’t commented on you staying away from the really high class stuff, so that’s good

“Eh… I always just kinda ate whatever we had available,” You admit, glancing over storefronts as you do, “I was always busy trying new stuff or getting into trouble, so food wasn’t a big concern…” still it is getting kinda late, if you want to eat in somewhere your gonna have to pick soon.

“Mm, I see, I suppose that fits you,” Sera muses, following along at your side, she seems content to let you choose where to go, or maybe she’s fine just wandering around with you. She hasn’t let go of your hand since leaving the shop.

Ah, that one looks pretty likely, you vaguely recall Mom talking about this place once… they make noodly stuff… pasta you think? Either way you remember her speaking of it fondly, so it must be alright. It’s also reasonable nice looking quality wise, without dripping in luxury. “Does this place work for you, Sera?” you ask, pointing it out.

She pauses, coming to a stop as you do, “Um, sure, I don’t think I’ve eaten at a place like this before, if Al is okay with it, that’s fine,” she says after a moments thought.

Cool, it seems you still have a fair bit of time till it closes too. You and Sera head inside, and are shortly after seated at a pretty nice little table in a private corner of the branded section of the place.
“So, did you level earth up Sera?” you ask idly as you wait for your food to come.

“Um, not yet, I’m just a bit shy of the mark,” she says, shifting a bit to get comfortable in the seat. You think the candleholder thing in the center of the table is a nice touch. Sera looks nice in the flickering light of a candle. “Did any of your skills rank?” she asks politely.

“Water did, I have a big ol’ area spell like the crystal lord dropped on us,” you admit with a grin. That’s gonna be useful in packed rooms like the C rank of Goblin. “I’m glad you picked up earth by the way, it makes me feel a lot better, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Sera asks, frowning slightly in confusion.

You shift a little uncomfortably and glance away, “It’s just… you’ve had a lot of close calls lately, and every time I see your health drop down into the red I get a little panicky… I don’t want to lose you, ya know? So I’m glad you picked up something defensive.”

She seems pretty pleased by that, smiling shyly, “Um… don’t worry Al, I’ll take better care of myself, I promise… I admit, I’ve felt a lot better since you got out of that old robe too.”

You are pretty sure she’s referring to the way your old robe boosted your threat but some traitorous part of you that has been hanging out with Maya too much can’t help but blurt out, “Hah, you did look pretty happy to see me in new robe, I guess.”

“N-no, that’s not what I meant at all,” she says after a moments shock, “I just, meant that reducing threat was, I mean, you looked very nice, but that’s not…” she sees the smile you are struggling to hold down as she babbles, and stops at that point. Sera pouts adorably at you, “That was mean Al.”

“Sorry, sorry… I guess I’ve been hanging out with Maya too much,” you glance away, “I … guess you could say I don’t mind you looking though, if you don’t mind me doing the same,” Dammit, you aren’t blushing, and no can prove you are, blue skin has its advantages.

Sera, turns a little pink herself, staring at you for a moment, before her gaze shifts down to the tabletop. “I-I, um…” she gathers herself for a moment, “I… I suppose that sounds like a fair deal,” she squeaks out.

At least the food comes pretty soon after that, breaking the awkward silence between the two of you. You lapse into less serious conversation, just talking about normal stuff. Sera is planning to push her current job to B and then start working toward Bright Mage… and she kinda wants to try poking around for some new dungeons… she thinks there must be a Light Elementalist, if there is a dark one, and that might go well with her current stuff.

You are feeling pretty good by the time you are done, and well.. the restaurant is closing, so you should be on your way. Chatting about silly stuff with Sera is fun. You walk out hand in hand, heading back to the Inn.

As you approach though, you pick up on the shy looks Sera is giving you now and then, and wonder what that’s about. A distant memory of one of the times you tried to hang out with some of the other kids in your district comes to mind. You thought it was stupid stuff at the time… but you distinctly remember one of the older girls giggling over a date and the…. Oh, right, you… you’re supposed to kiss after a date right? Like, that’s a thing you are supposed to do.

You glance at Sera, and briefly meet her eyes as you come to a halt out in front of the Drunken Goblin. It’s late, so there isn’t really anybody else around.

“I had a very nice time, thank you Al,” Sera says quietly, looking up at you from under her bangs. Goddess why is she so pretty, now you’re nervous and…

“Ah, yeah, me too, this was fun… d’you think you would want to do it again sometime?” you ask, buying yourself time.

“Oh, yes of course,” she says quickly, smiling prettily.

“Ah…” fuck it, you aren’t a coward. Just push on ahead Alice, the worst that can happen is she says no. “…Do you… mind if I kiss you?” you ask awkwardly.

She blinks, not quite seeming to comprehend your words for a moment, and flushes a dark red, all the way down to the collar of her new robe, “I-I… um…yes?” she asks in a tiny squeak, seeming flustered, “that is, I …don’t mind…” you can barely hear her at the end there, even with how good your ears are.

Right, time to man up… wait. You aren’t a man… woman up? Whatever, Sera is waiting and you can hardly back down at this point. Awkwardly you put your hands on her shoulders and lean in, hoping you're doing this right.

Ah… at least you didn’t bang your face against her nose or something embarrassing light that. Sera’s lips are warm, almost hot really, and this feels really nice as she starts to hesitantly kiss you back.

You aren’t really sure how long you are supposed to hold this for… isn’t tongue supposed to be involved somewhere, that sounds weird though. You pull back after a few more moments, you would probably be blushing as hard as Sera if not for your race mod. “That was…. Nice?” you ask as much as say.

“I-It was,” Sera agrees quickly, looking terribly embarrassed, “U-um, so… good night then?”

“Yeah, night Sera,” you say…. Then you both pause, remembering that you sleep three doors away from each other, and both break into a fit of giggles… ah well, that’s a pretty good end to the night. You do a little studying and fill in the new info in your guide, but you spend most of the time thinking about Sera…. Man your dreams are probably gonna be weird.

[]Planz

+8 Gilder

Spoiler: Missions!

A recent spate of deaths in a nearby village has been attributed to a coven of vampires. Search and Destroy Minimum group 3. 1500 Gilder Rank D

Patrols Needed: Branded of at least rank C required for patrols on the eastern and southern trade roads, full parties required, if you do not have a full party, you will be added to one. Rewards are 500 Gilder per person and a 15 point writ, plus full share of loot.

A number of drakes have taken up a roost near a mining village. After the death of the previous party to attempt, the rank has been increased to C, destroy the nest and return the personal effects of the deceased party. Any gear is free for your taking. Full party required. 2000 Gilder

Branded requires a group of 3-5 to investigate and destroy a group of Ice Devils harassing his home village, he cannot complete this himself to conflicting duties. Reward is the successful parties a single pick of gear from his backlog for each member.

Rare Herbs Needed! A master alchemist requires a number of rare herbs from near a dangerous dungeon. D rank. 3 people Minimum 1200 Gilder, and 2 Elixers offered in reward.

((AN: A brief explanation of point writs, ‘point writs’ are items generated by cities in order to aid in the payment for necessary and higher ranking missions. A point writ can be used to add its value in job points to any one skill or job the user desires. It is of course, a consumable.))

 

Point writs sound amazing. We want one, right?

 

Gee, so sad we didn't take that job before.

Okay, so vampires, minimum group of 3, 1500 gilder. Will take the full day and payout is about 300 gilder/party member+Vampire drops. I don't expect terribly much there, and the gold doesn't really justify it. Doable, but pass.

No guarantee of trouble, we have a full party so that's good. 500 gilder and 15 JP to any skill or job. Adding 15 to hexer would be nice, but still less JP by far than a day's normal work, and random encounters tend to give shit JP. Loot's a variable and hard to calculate. Probably pretty hard mission. Pass for now.

Oh hey look, a job that requires a full party and already killed one group of branded. Yeah! Let's go! If we want drakes just run D rank. If the branded died and we succeed our gear is probably already better than theirs. Ergo getting it isn't that helpful besides more gilder. High risk, likely no unique rewards. Great gilder payout. We're fine on gilder at the moment. Skip.

Could be interesting. We don't know what he has in his backlog. Sera would be golden here but Al should equip fire elementalism instead of dark maybe. (I expect ice devils to resist ice and dark). reasonable difficulty, complete gamble of a reward. Maybe.

Elixers could be a lifesaver, and this looks like it'll have us running a dungeon as well. If it's near a dangerous dungeon it may be plot related. Still, we don't really need better pots just yet and they won't last long. Pass.

Ultimately we're on the low end of C rank jobs right now at best. Ergo we should overload on members if we can. That nixes Patrol and Mining Town. The two D ranks don't reward that well, though the elixers might be nice.

Therefore, only the ice devils are more than remotely tempting, and honestly, that doesn't look like a great fit for our skills. The reward is a complete gamble as well.


For now

[X] Go check out the shops. See if necromancer, polar adept, blizzard sage or winter witch is up for sale. Buy it if it is.
-[X] Buy Ether x1, Amritas x1 Sell Potions x2
[X] Desecrated Fort E rank
-[X] Equip Fire magic instead of dark magic of course.

 

Mission in the morning!


[X] Stock up on Amritas and the usual necessities, consider switching our Dark for Fire (Dark won't work on vampires, Fire will work better on Ice Devils almost certainly)
[X] Go check out the shops. See if necromancer, polar adept, blizzard sage or winter witch is up for sale. Buy it if it is.
[X] A recent spate of deaths in a nearby village has been attributed to a coven of vampires. Search and Destroy Minimum group 3. 1500 Gilder Rank D
[X] Branded requires a group of 3-5 to investigate and destroy a group of Ice Devils harassing his home village, he cannot complete this himself to conflicting duties. Reward is the successful parties a single pick of gear from his backlog for each member.

 

[X] Go check out the shops. See if necromancer, polar adept, blizzard sage or winter witch is up for sale. Buy it if it is.
-[X] Buy Ether x1, Amritas x1 Sell Potions x2
[X] Desecrated Fort E rank
-[X] Equip Fire magic instead of dark magic of course.


EDIT: Also, we really need to get in the habit of going to shops in the evening No race mod for Sera still

 

Missions do sound interesting. We want to protect the town and the surrounding area so cleaning out the local threats is a good way to start.

[X] Stock up on Amritas and the usual necessities.
[X] Go check out the shops. See if necromancer, polar adept, blizzard sage or winter witch is up for sale. Buy it if it is.
[X] Vampires
[X] Ice Devils

 

Guys, PLEASE vote to shop if you're going for vampires (though I don't really see why). Also please vote for fire magic which is super effective on vamps.

 

Vampire coven? (D-rank)
Requirements: Party of three
Goal: Search and destroy source of deaths
Reward: 300 G/person
Pro: Alice and Sera have Fire
Con: Attributed might not be true

Patrol eastern and southern trade roads
Requirements: Branded of C-rank, full party
Rewards: 500 G/person, a 15 point writ
Pro: The writ
Con: Increased trouble over land, probability of both no encounter or hard encounter

Drakes near mining village (C-rank)
Requirements: Full party
Goal: Destroy nest and return personal effects of the prior party
Reward: 400 G/person, gears of prior party
Pro: We have anti-Dragon equips for Maya and Anshelm

Ice Devils (???-rank)
Requirements Party of 3-5
Goal: Investigate and destroy Ice Devils
Reward: a single pick of gear from requester (Branded)
Pro: Alice and Sera have Fire
Con: Questionable rank, questionable reward

Rare Herbs Needed! (D-rank)
Requirements: Party of 3
Goal: Gather herbs from dangerous Dungeon
Reward: 240 G/person, 2 Elixirs
Pro: Elixir, can probably still do a Dungeon afterwards
Con: Unclear Dungeon


[X] Go check out the shops. See if necromancer, polar adept, blizzard sage or winter witch is up for sale. Buy it if it is.

[X] Shop first
-[X] Buy Ether x1, Amritas x1
-[X] Buy Amritas x5 and Vault them for Shimah's use
--[X] Urge others to do the same
-[X] Sell Potions x2

[X] Vampire Coven?
-[X] Equip Fire Magic
-[X] Going to the Ice Devils afterwards

 

Will stress that the last thing we saw a patrol doing was apparently fighting multiple enemies on a tier with the kiln knight.

Notice how the full party D rank people wanted to do TPKed a group of branded?

We're at the bottom of C rank at the moment, so let's not chase a mission that's C rank full party.

Remember, we can orb out of a dungeon. We can not orb out of a mission ergo we need a much larger safety margin.

 

Con: If it's true we are getting next to no rewards. 300Gperson is less than we do in a dungeon nowadays, an JP for missions are meh.

Con: If we encounter enemies we might fight against level 12+ groups, and if we don't fight them the only thing to show for it would be low gild and very low JP. Very high risk for Very Low reward.

Pro: Gear of a full-party D-rank might actually be pretty damn good.
Con: Full party C-rank is hard. We just did a not-full party D-rank. Extrapolate what is C-rank.
This is the only High-Risk High-Reward one.
Edit: No worn crystals, only secondary gear. Very low reward.

Con: Alice has Ice and Dark has powerful spells, OTOH she could make do with Water/fire. We don't know the actual rank of the enemies.
Pro: almost certainly a decent reward, a type of enemy we don't know.
Medium-risk medium-reward, this looks decent-ish.

Pro: we learn of a new dungeon.

So, while I want to do Desecrated Fort, If we do missions... Please do Rare Herb/ Ice Devil/Drakes, in order of difficulty/reward quotas.

 

Ehhhh, I forgot the rank on the devil mission. Its C

 

Question about Drakes nest mission. When we get full loot of dead member party, do we get their passive skill crystals? Also, when we get their job crystals, would they be "empty" of skills?

 

You would only get their spares any equipped crystals they had equipped would poof along with the body.

 

The ice devil one is a good way to get an in with a powerful branded.

 

Cool potentially rare crystals are basically the only reason I might be interested in picking over the corpses of dead Branded. And now they don't even have real corpses?

 

Oops, forgot about the C-rank.

Rare Herbs Needed then, vote updated.

 

Personally I think we should limit ourselves to easy missions, because you cannot orb out of missions

 

Then do dungeons?

 

We stills should do missions because they are important, they save lives or otherwise significantly affect the people in the world. plus its interesting and unique.
While dungeons are just loot and XP, self improvement with no effect on the world around us.
I am just saying that we should do both. But when we do missions we should stick to ones easier than the dungeons we do since we lack the orb safety net and can easily die for real in them. Preferably on missions also stick to ones that tangibly improve people lives (eg, save a village from marauding monsters)

 

I think we are probably ready for the C rank missions. Still, I'd rather go to Desecrate Fort. Also Wind instead of Fire. Sera is Fire. Also guys the Kiln Knight was strong against FIRE. We were doing the most damage with our ice and water.




[X] Go shopping
-[X] Buy Ether x1, Amiritas x4
-[X] Store Potions x2 in the vault
-[X] Store the Burning Salve in the vault

[X] Head to Desecrated Fort
-[X] Switch out Dark for Wind

 

Arkeus Darkened

The Kiln Knight, who was most likely from Desecrated Fort, was strong against fire. Sera was not doing any damage to it, we were. Kiln is also a type of oven.

 

Can you explain your reasoning for thinking it was most likely from the Desecrated Fort? If you are right, then yeah we probably shouldn't switch to Fire.

 

Hmm, a couple things mainly because knights come from forts and the knight itself struck me as undead given the black blood and all. Finally the knight itself was called Old Kiln Knight and the fact that the drops from the other undead group we faced called [Old Knights Axe] and [Old Knights Spear] and Maya noted those most likely came from the Fort.

I suppose there could be a fire aspected Dungeon other then Ashen Grotto around which has humanoid enemies which is outside our level range.

I'd still prefer Wind instead of Fire though, we are planning on leveling Wind eventually and Sera's fireball from when we faced the random encounter of skeletons that were most likely from the Fort wasn't noted to be especially damaging. Which is something Al usually notes.

 

[X] A recent spate of deaths in a nearby village has been attributed to a coven of vampires. Search and Destroy Minimum group 3. 1500 Gilder Rank D
[X] Branded requires a group of 3-5 to investigate and destroy a group of Ice Devils harassing his home village, he cannot complete this himself to conflicting duties. Reward is the successful parties a single pick of gear from his backlog for each member.

While I would quite like if we headed toward the Ice Devils, for the experience fighting that type of monster, vampires would do. With the gilder payout and drops, Maya should have enough gilder to buy both Wind Elementalist and Ninja. (Also, since this is a C rank, this is more likely to result in race mods & dark-type jobs.)

 

We currently have 1200 gilder, and that's after buying the Wind Job ourself. Maya bought the Ranger Job, so that's her equivalent. Basically, she should have more than enough money to buy both Wind Elementalist (350 in shop) and Ninja (600 in shop) already, especially as she doesn't need to buy Ethers every days like we do.

 

...Maybe!

 

Heh, Well she got a minimum of 530gilders from dungeons alone yesterday, assuming she had nothing to sell from Ogre Den. Given D-rank dungeons usually give quite a bit, I'd say she won around 700-1000 gilder just from yesterday's run

 

Why do you think it will take the full day? I can't find anything that says that.

[X] Stock up on Amritas and the usual necessities, check the job shop, consider switching our Dark for Fire (Dark won't work on vampires, Fire will work better on Ice Devils almost certainly)
[X] Vampires
[X] Ice Devils

Saving two villages, even if the JP isn't worth it, it's still a good thing to do.