The last bite killed its final HP. There was a sound like shattering glass, and the poison mass around Maple disintegrated.
“Thanks, Sally! On my own, I’d never have beaten it like this.”
“Yeah, without a healer, that would have been rough. Glad I could do something. Ooh, the poison’s gone, too.”
When the boss died, the purple fog lifted. Maple was finally free of that status effect and need not worry about it again.
“Well? Any skill?”
“Oh! I almost forgot. Um…yep! There’s a new one! But it isn’t resistance reduction.”
“Bosses deliver! Well, wanna try it out while there’s no one watching?”
“Why not? But I’m short on MP. I guess I could put it on my armor?”
“You that low on it? We could change your gear…”
“You can adjust how much MP it uses. One hundred, two hundred, or three hundred.”
“Well, you’d want to have the highest value available, so maybe putting it on your gear’s the best solution.”
Getting to 300MP with gear alone would take some doing. Since Maple already had gear that offered free uses for high-MP skills, taking advantage of that was the natural choice. Maple slotted the skill onto her armor.
“Then let’s go for the three-hundred-MP version!”
“Sure, lemme see it.”
“Toxic Fission!”
Purple goo surrounded Maple, then ran down onto the floor and spread out.
The purple puddle bubbled; then three columns rose from it.
These gradually changed shape and took human form. They even had the right colors, and they were soon indistinguishable from Maple herself.
“Wow, I can’t even tell them apart! How much can it copy?”
“They can’t use any skills, but the stats are the same!”
“So Absolute Defense won’t apply, but…I take it your gear stats are reflected?”
“Mm-hmm!”
“Fascinating.”
Even without any of her skills, Maple’s unique series boasted extremely high defense. Between her raw stats and the armor, ordinary attacks wouldn’t scratch these clones.
“I can give them some instructions, but if I don’t, they’ll just attack with poison.”
“Oh, like the boss.”
“And if I use it again they explode!”
“……?”
“Toxic Fission!”
She called the name again, and all three Maple fissions burst, scattering poison everywhere.
“………………”
“Wow…they really did explode!”
It was quite a shocking sight, but Sally soon convinced herself that it worked in their favor. She double-checked something else.
“Does Bug Urn Curse work with that?”
“It says skills don’t…”
“But since they count as one of your poison skills, I thought they might.”
“True…”
“If it does apply, this could be pretty powerful. They’re too tanky to take down, and you can detonate them if anyone gets close. Unlike my clones, they’re durable enough to fend things off.”
“Nice! This might be a great skill!”
“Let’s test what we don’t know, then work it into our strategies.”
“Yeah!”
With solid results under their belts and the quest cleared, they left the lair of the poison boss behind.
✦ ✦ ✦
As Maple and Sally made progress, the other guilds were spread out, taking on areas that played to their strengths and doing their bit to conquer the tenth stratum.
Naturally, some guilds were making faster progress than others—the Order of the Holy Sword among them.
“Ray is a rare monster. Those rental dragons aren’t nearly as fast.”
“Don’t fall off. There’d be no saving ya.”
“Oh, almost there, Pain.”
“Yes, beginning the descent.”
Pain’s pet dragon, Ray, had Giganticize, so all four guild leaders could fit on its back and they didn’t need to rent anything. Ray’s speed had saved them many times during the last event, and it was helping with the sheer size of the new map, too.
Ray landed, and they hopped off.
“That’s as far as flying gets us?”
“Sections of the sky are off-limits, yes.”
There were strong winds and unbeatable monsters gating sections of the air. Some quests or events would be ruined if players could just fly over, so the developers had found ways to prevent it.
“If only Umbra had Giganticize…”
“Not gonna learn it now. That’s a starting skill.”
It would be nice to ride Dread’s wolf around, but that was likely not in the cards. Umbra made up for that with lots of handy combat skills—best to use it that way.
“Okay, let’s make short work of this.”
“Then I’ll buff speed. Hmm?”
Frederica made to do that but spotted a column of light moving rapidly through the area.
She looked up and saw a rental dragon flying overhead. Not long after, it began to descend, and it was soon lost behind the trees.
“Was that…Maple?”
“I’ll bet. Looked like Martyr’s Devotion.”
“There something over that way?”
“Not according to our info.”
“Let’s go check it out!” Frederica suggested. “Maybe they’ve stumbled on something rare.”
“Can’t rule it out.”
“Hmm. Then it’d be worth the detour.”
“Oh? For real?”
Frederica blinked in surprise; she hadn’t expected anyone to take her seriously.
“Ha-ha, it was your idea, Frederica. Maple Tree’s a guild worth keeping an eye on. A chance encounter on a map this big is a good opportunity to assess their progress.”
“Then back aboard Ray! Good thing you haven’t shrunk it yet.”
“Indeed. Ray!”
Pain got them all aboard, and they flew off across the forest, following the light.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once they were back on the ground, Frederica scanned their surroundings.
“This should be the place…”
“……!”
“…………!”
“Yeah, there’s certainly someone here.”
They could hear voices and combat but couldn’t tell who it was. At least they weren’t inside a dungeon. Frederica led the way, keeping her eyes peeled, and they soon heard familiar voices through the brush. Certain they were on track, they poked their heads through the bushes.
✦ ✦ ✦
There they found three Maples. Being hugged by a giant bear. The bear was doing its best to maul the Maples, but it was doing no damage at all.
As they watched, the bear suddenly exploded despite having plenty of HP left.
“……?”
Frederica had assumed these clones were Sally’s skill at work, but apparently not.
They looked the Maples over again, wondering what new skill this might be. And suddenly the Maples exploded, splattering pieces everywhere.
“Eep…!”
“Hmm? Oh, Frederica!”
“Er…yoo-hoo, ladies!”
The sight was so horrifying, Frederica had given her position away, and the girls came running over.
A moment later, the male Order members revealed themselves.
“Sorry about our mage. We saw you flying by and followed, hoping to chat.”
“Ah-ha!”
“We figured you might have found some rare event. This is a bit off the quest chain. But you were just testing out a new skill?”
“Want us to test it on you first in the next event, Frederica?”
“I’d rather not…”
“Heh-heh, now that you’ve seen it, we cannot let you live.”
This was clearly the sort of skill of which a player had to know the full specs to really do anything about it, so Sally was just joking.
Even if the Order worked out everything, the skill would still be a nightmare.
“Frederica may not have planned on it, but she did wind up spying on you. By way of apology, we can offer some information.”
They accepted that gesture and received a few pieces of handy intel.
“Impressive. The Order’s making rapid progress, then?”
“Fairly. We’ve got a lot of members, but we still feel shorthanded.”
“If it was just about clearing these quests, we’d have that covered. But focusing too hard on that means we’ll miss all kinds of hidden events.”
“We’re getting stronger! Oh, let’s schedule another duel!”
“Sure. Looking forward to it.”
“Even with our membership, the bulk of the map remains untouched. We need everybody we can get. We’ve allied once before and would appreciate your cooperation once again.”
“You got it!”
“If you need help, just say the word. We’ll lend a hand.”
“Mm-hmm!”
“I guess I could say the same? We were just planning on exploring anyway.”
“If Maple’s up for it. What do you say?”
“Yeah, I’m down! And I think we’re on the same quest.”
“We’ve been playing awhile…so having the Order with us would help.”
“Sweet! Mwa-ha-ha, now we don’t have to worry about defense!”
“It’s a win-win.”
“Then let’s get going. Change strats to offense only!”
“Yes, don’t want to take up too much of their time. Let’s move out!”
Clearing a quest with the Order of the Holy Sword and with Maple’s impenetrable defense, the Maple Tree pair were now at peak DPS.
What followed was a stampede, trampling everything underfoot, skills flying and sending monsters flying.
The boss was no different.
Even on the tenth stratum, this quest was available to all players. Nothing on it could possibly be a threat to these six players when they let loose.
It hardly needs mentioning whether the quest was cleared.
Maple’s new party was far too strong for that to be a concern.