A Gamer Into Trails

As always, Giliath demands your power stones!

*****

Seeing no immediate threat, the three of us huddled around each other again, showing what had all changed. I started reviewing the notifications one after another.

As for the Instance Dungeon itself, we needed to clear out a total of fifteen Mottled Killers, two Mottled Murders, and the Boss of this dungeon. Looking over the details, the boss was a Grand Mole, a larger variant of normal mole monsters. The SSS would hunt one of these during Zero. As Lechter said, they can be quite tricky. It's a mole monster. They can dig underground. And if one launches physical attacks at it, the mole does have the ability to counterattack.

And that wasn't the worst of it. Grand Moles can spawn smaller moles.

Very few monsters had the ability to call allies to join it in battle.

And in the games, this can be abused. Allies could be called into battle an infinite amount of times.

You can probably imagine where I'm going with this.

As long as the Grand Mole remains alive, it will continue to call for its allies. Endlessly. You could farm an infinite amount of experience points by doing this.

The only bad thing about this was that diminishing returns is also a thing. That meant I would have to kill over a million of these moles to level up a single time, while Lechter would have to kill five hundred thousand of them, haha!

Clearly that is not logical to do. What I intend to do instead is to have Tio try killing a few, if the chance arises. She could earn plenty of experience. The Instance Dungeon set the Level at 10, which likely meant the Boss was Level 10. I'm sure she could gain a few levels out of the remaining monsters we have to kill, and from the Boss.

A plus was that Grand Moles only called other moles one at a time. It may exert some energy out of Tio, but I think she'll be able to manage it. Using two casts of Arts and one Craft, that depleted her EP by 50. It might be an Instance Dungeon feature, but she did not regain all of her EP back after leveling up six times. Her maximum EP did increase thanks to her orbal staff leveling up. She now capped at 250 EP, and was presently at 200 EP. Another thing to note was that her Craft used EP.

As far as I have recalled since being brought into this world, CP, or Craft Points, hasn't been a function of the Gamer System. Crafts used these, but I did notice using Crafts in my previous battles did consume EP instead. So it will likely behave like that in the future too. Not that I mind that. My EP pool is quite large.

For Tio though, she still had 200 EP left. We could head back to the entrance behind us and recharge her EP before the Boss Battle begins. Many often did that, or use the charging station right before bosses. Monsters haven't respawned either, so we'll have to locate those remaining twelve spiders before challenging the mole. The tunnel is quite large and dark, so we'll have to tread carefully.

But as I initially stated, the nearby threats have vanished. I took these couple of moments to see what I gained out of it, as well as what Tio had gained from this second battle.

[Ding! Tactical Bonus has been applied to Party's battle experience. Overkill x3 (+30%), Swift and Sure (+5%), First strike (+5%), Unscathed (+20%), Immovable (+20%)]

[Ding! Due to Tio being a higher level than the monsters she battled, total experience awarded will be decreased by 15%.]

[Ding! Calculations have finished being adjusted. Tio has obtained 995 experience points.]

[Ding! Due to Gamer Naoto's equipped title, Tio's total experience has doubled. Now awarding 1990 experience points to Party Member Tio Plato.]

[Ding! Tio has leveled up! (700/700)]

[Ding! Tio has leveled up! (800/800)]

[Tio's Current Level: 9 490/900]

[Ding! Tio's combat parameters have been strengthened.]

[Ding! Gamer Naoto has received 1990 experience.]

[Naoto's Current Level: 111. 4,090/1,146,900)]

'I haven't even reached 1% of the experience I need to level up...But it's progress nonetheless. Tio leveled up twice too. It's much less, but as people level up, the more experience is needed. She's Level 9 now, so the other spiders might not give too much experience...', I mused to myself, reviewing what Tio had obtained from the second battle.

There was even an additional notification for me, on top of all of that.

[Ding! x20 Sepith (All) has been obtained from the battle.]

[Ding! Due to this battle being Gamer Naoto's first battle after the Exchange Shop function went online, an additional x60 Sepith (All) has been awarded to Gamer Naoto.]

[Current Sepith:

 -Earth: 80

 -Water: 80

 -Fire: 80

 -Wind: 80

 -Time: 80

 -Space: 80

 -Mirage: 80

The battle itself gave me twenty Sepith of each element. And since we're in a Party, this battle was counted as my first battle upon this new function of the Gamer System going online. It gave me additional Sepith as a reward. I now had eighty of each element. Monsters typically drop different kinds of Sepith, or in this case, raw Septium. It depended on what the monster was. And boss monsters dropped more of it. By several times the amount.

I could very well use these eighty Sepith of each type to assist Tio in unlocking her locked lines. Now we weren't in an orbal workshop or anything, but I had enough tools stored in my Inventory to do the basics of orbment management, at least. We didn't need to wait around for an exchange orbal station, either. Since we could tinker with Tio's combat orbment now, I decided to suggest it to her, and praised her again. Tio leveled up twice from this second battle.

"You were able to level up twice from that battle. As time goes on, it will be harder to level up, but it's nice to see you're Level 9 already, Tio. We have no immediate threat around us, so why don't we take a moment to tinker with your combat orbment? I do realize we are far from an orbal workshop, but I should have the basic tools stored away to unlock slots at least. That is, if you're up for it.", I suggested to Tio.

Tio raised her eyes, and shifted her gaze from her blue status screen back to me. It would seem she wasn't expecting me to suggest such a thing. Especially since we're inside an Instance Dungeon, no less.

"Would it be alright to do that? We still have quite a few spiders to hunt, and just having a single Art won't cut it. You still aren't planning to join me in battle, right?", Tio asked me.

"That's the current plan. You've made quick work of the five spiders you've killed so far. But if you keep relying on that Craft, they may catch you off guard. So I figured now is a good time to unlock another slot or two. I should have enough Sepith from that battle to unlock at least one. There is a Quartz I have stored away as well, but this Quartz is a bit risky. It should allow you to unlock a few more Arts, at the very least. You up for it?", I decided to ask.

"A risky Quartz? There aren't many that you would see one as a risk...", Tio wondered which Quartz I was exactly referring to.

"Heh. It's the Scent Quartz. We could lure out the rest of the spiders in one go, which is why I said it's risky. If you put this on, your presence is much easier to be detected by monsters. They won't immediately rush out at us, but if we approach them, more than likely they'll initiate an attack.", I explained.

"So it is the Scent Quartz...", Tio murmured.

"You sure you want to put the kiddo with a big risk like that? Granted we aren't in the open anymore. We're stuck inside this place, so the monster count is finite. That doesn't mean we can't be careful. Twelve of those spider monsters is still a lot to take care of.", Lechter responded.

"That is a very fair point. But by giving Tio the Scent Quartz specifically, it'll let her cast a strong area Art. Aerial.", I explained. Arts do change over time for their casting requirements, but considering the first chapter of Sky hasn't happened yet, I'm betting Aerial only requires four wind counts to cast it.

You see, with the fourth generation combat orbment, more and more Arts became available to cast the more Quartz you slot into your six slots. Each Quartz provides a certain count of a given element. And some Quartz even dip into more than one element! Now those are the much rarer Quartz to come across.

Scent is one of them. 

Scent is only locked behind the first tier. You'd think it'd be a Tier 2 Quartz. I'd just always assume it's a Tier 1 because the only effect this Quartz has is the fact it draws monsters' attention your way. Just like how taunts work, but passively. It does have a certain radius, though. It's not like monsters several hundred arge out would suddenly get attracted by it.

The cool thing about Scent is that it is one, it is one of the only Quartz that gives all four basic element counts. four Wind, two Water, two Fire, and two Earth. It allows one to cast most of the basic Arts, and additionally allows one to cast a few better wind Arts.

Including the one I want Tio to test out on a larger set of spiders. Seeing as we fought two in one battle and three in the second, it is very possible the next wave might contain four or five. Or perhaps all of them at once.

If the spiders are within close range enough, Aerial should be able to blast them all away in one go. Considering Tio's current ATS, no doubt will that happen.

I saw Tio nod her head after coming to a decision.

"Tio will accept this Quartz. I will be sure to pay you back in some way, Naoto.", Tio said with a nod.

"Haha, you don't need to pay me back, Tio. I have several Quartz I'm presently not using. If I can use them to help power up my friends, then I'm all for it.", I replied with a smile.