Everlast Online

At the same time as the conflict in Vradora's capital 3 undead were strolling through a peculiar forest in the Magica Kingdom to the east.

The [Lilac Dread Forest] is not a well liked hunting area for the monster hunters of the kingdom for the simple fact that 90% of all creatures and plants inside of it were highly toxic. Monsters full of venom and plants full of poison, it's not easy to even enter the forest without ample preparation: However, this did not trouble the girls in the slightest.

This was mostly because they didn't know of course, but also because they were undead.

The undead are known for a few things; having one of the longest lifespans of all creatures, even at lower ranks; vehemently hating the living and consistently targeting them wherever possible; and finally their impossibly high resistance abilities - of which included poison.

Simply put, most toxins were meaningless in the face of an undead as their bodies function purely on magic, not allowing regular poisons to shut down their organs since they didn't need organs in the first place. Using magic poisons would be a different case altogether, but the [Lilac Dread Forest] did not have this in abundance, allowing for the 3 undead to make their way through the forest leisurely.

A ghoul, a dhampir and a spirit; killing the monsters they find while wondering why they are so weak given their respectively high levels.

"These monsters are fairly weak, but we've been getting an insane amount of XP from them." Jess laughed as she walked between the trees. Piper and Bailey had to agree as most of the enemies they had faced were taken down with greater speed than they had anticipated.

"Yeah." Bailey said, "Even when I get hit the damage is fairly low."

Piper was only half paying attention to the conversation as she looked around for a dungeon; though she did notice how easily they were progressing. She and Bailey hadn't played very many games of any kind and so did not recognise why they were facing no issue; and while Jess did have prior knowledge, she had not yet pieced together that they were winning by type advantage.

I thought dungeons would be more abundant... Piper thought, her sister had said she found a dungeon incredibly quickly so she too had been expecting something to show up soon, yet nothing - that is until she noticed something in the distance. Is that a dungeon?

A few trees away Piper noticed a clearing, populated by a single larger tree with a hole in its trunk - it was strangely conspicuous and drew Piper's attention.

"Hey, I think I see a dungeon." Piper said, interrupting her friends who had begun bickering over something.

"- Hm? Really!?" Jess said cheerfully, turning to see where Piper was looking, "Hmmm. Maybe. Might be a treant though, we should be careful."

"I don't know exactly what a treant is..." Bailey said, sighing at Jess's abysmal attention span, "But she's probably right to be careful."

"Yeah. Let's go check it out anyway though." Piper said as Jess began to explain that treants are monsters that look like trees. That thought frightened Bailey slightly as she began to worry the entire forest was treants, for which Jess laughed at her.

As they entered the clearing there was no attack, and getting closer to the peculiar tree resulted in the same result: Upon inspection the girls were delighted with the results.

[Lavender Dream (Uncleared)] [Recommended lvl: 15]

[D-Rank Dungeon]

(A/N: Decided to add level recommendation so that rank isn't the only deciding factor of dungeons. Only having F-Rank dungeons at low levels feels weird to me)

"D-Rank!?" Bailey exclaimed, "Are we sure we can clear that? I mean we're not even close to the recommended level!"

Jess also looked unsure, but not enough to give up. It was Piper who gave the final push.

"What's the worst that can happen?" She said, "The death penalty knocks you back a couple levels and you lose an item."

"Our levels are still low and we have no items of value. We should just try it out and see what happens."

That was enough to convince the 3 to enter; but only after sorting out their party composition. Piper would act as the primary damage dealer, with Bailey supporting her from the back with magic - her health too low for her to take Piper's role despite her higher dps as a mage - and although Jess wanted to focus on damage, she would have to act as their tank.

"Alright!" Piper exclaimed, fully prepared to clear a dungeon, "In we go!"

With that they entered the tree trunk and descended down to find what looked like a garden. Not what they had expected, but not enough to dampen their spirits.

---

"I guess D-Rank isn't that hard..." Jess muttered as she killed another monster.

The primary monsters of the dungeon were purple plants that attacked primarily by using vines as whips and petals as blades. At least that's what the girls thought.

In reality they had been blessed with luck once again, finding a dungeon that almost any undead could clear with ease.

The mobs inside [Lavender Dream] were not exceptionally strong, fast or tough - in reality their strength would be on the low end of E-Rank dungeon monsters. What made this dungeon qualify for D-Rank was the plant monster's special ability: [Dream Pollen]. The skill created a highly potent hallucinogenic that could cause most residents of Galdrash to see sounds and hear colours - it also wasn't stopped by normal poison resisting abilities, attacking the mind directly. For a normal foe, the plants would infect their minds and then launch fairly weak attacks that the enemy couldn't possibly avoid while under the effects of [Dream Pollen]; thus killing them before the invader even knew what had happened.

But it just so happened that the infiltrators were undead, a race that had one of the highest mental resistances in existence - a mental resistance that even mindflayers would struggle to surpass.

As a result, the 3 girls had misunderstood the power of the dungeon. What would normally be a perilous capture for anyone else was reduced to a sightseeing trip through a fancy purple garden.

The girls had made excellent progress thanks to the rank of the dungeon. Each of them gaining a new skill and becoming closer to the recommended level of the dungeon.

Piper and Jess had earned ordinary and boring skills at level 10, being [Slash] and [Strike] respectively; and while Bailey's skill was also not of a higher rank, she did still gain an elemental skill: [Water Ball]. This was as a result of her [Chilling Soul] skill guiding her level progression, she would likely become a [Blue Mage] soon enough.

Piper, as the main dps, had reached level 14 and Jess just one level below her as she recklessly charged into combat despite her role. Bailey, being as meek as she was, dealt the least damage and as a result claimed the least participation in fights, placing her at level 11. Of course that was not to say she did not help, only that she only attacked when certain she would be able to hit, ultimately resulting in less hits overall with higher average damage compared to her 2 friends who consistently missed, but also occasionally scraped by the enemy and landed small amounts of damage.

"Let's take a break." Piper said after Jess had killed another monster, they had been going for around an hour now and she was certain they were around halfway through the dungeon; she was disappointed by the difficulty, but secretly proud at how accurate her sister's information had been.

The girls chatted for a while with the intention of leaving soon, but Piper noticed something peculiar on a nearby plant. Despite a rather normal temperature the leaves of a few plants had frost growing along them, after getting closer she realised the frost was spreading at an abnormally fast rate - so much so that she could see it moving, encroaching on the purple plants around the area.

This was not something she had really expected, Piper thought the theme of the dungeon was plants, it didn't really make sense for it to randomly change up to being ice. 

Pushing through the foliage as Jess and Bailey followed behind, after Piper had pointed it out to them, the 3 girls came upon something completely unexpected: A swirling blue portal spewing ice and snow.

"Huh?" Jess spluttered since this was not how ELO usually did things. From the forums and info she had read, ELO's dungeons were simply monster hotspots where their respawn rate was abnormally high compared to other areas; they were not alternate dimensions as she had seen in other games.

"What the hell is that." Jess asked, getting closer, but then something came to the tip of her memory, "Ah! A dungeon quest!"

Dungeon quests were talked about for a while around a week ago after golden radiance had managed to clear one; they were cleanly upstaged however, so it didn't stay a popular topic for more than a few hours. But there was still shockingly little info about them considering someone had cleared one, and this was because it was golden radiance - a group notorious for not sharing things under any circumstances. It was shocking that so many people supported them, but might makes right so all was forgiven.

Jess explained all of this to Piper and Bailey, increasing their excitement to her level since all 3 girls knew something so rare would likely grant pretty substantial rewards. 

The 3 stepped forward and as expected a system message revealed itself:

The girls simply grinned in response and entered through the portal.

The inside seemed to be a perfect replica of the [Lavender Dream] dungeon with 2 key differences, the most glaring of which was that inside what was once a serene purple garden was now a storming blizzard and icy blue plants. Second was that the world seemed to be a mirror image of the [Lavender Dream] dungeon, everything being reversed.

The girls only got a moment to take this all in before another system panel showed up in front of them, a quest one this time:

"Seems heavy. But we can probably do it!" Jess, ever the optimist, cheers and leads the way back to the path they had been following.

She was immediately met with the same creature she had killed on the way here.

"You again?" She mocked, having already dealt with this overgrown weed before and expecting it to be easy, "Looks like I'll have to take you out aga-"

She is interrupted as the large flower, that was previously purple, but is now blue, sprayed her with what seemed to be an icy pollen. Having already faced the [Dream Pollen] of the [Lavender Dream] monsters Jess was surprised to find herself inflicted with a debuff:

[You have been inflicted with the {Freeze} status effect]

[Your movement speed has been reduced by 50% for 30 seconds]

With the dramatic decrease in speed, Jess was not able to dodge the incoming vine as it knocked her to the ground. Before it was able to bring the vine down, crushing Jess underneath the frost-covered bit of plant, a high speed jet of blood pushed it back and allowed for Jess to take a distance.

Undead were somewhat resistant to the cold, but not enough that they could escape a direct status effect skill.

"This feels tougher than before..." Jess sighed as she glared at the plant that had gone back into stasis now that no enemies were within its range.

"Yeah, that pollen stuff never mattered before." Piper said, "Why did it suddenly start working now?"

And like clockwork it finally clicked in Jess's mind, her palm came up to her face as she slapped herself in response to her stupidity.

"Type advantage. That's why it's been so easy." She said, the other 2 shooting confused glances at her, "We're all undead so we had a type advantage over the other plants; they probably used some kind of poison that didn't affect us since we're already dead - technically."

"But now that it's been switched to ice, it can actually affect us?" Piper jumped in, finishing Jess's sentence and gaining a nod from the ever-wise game addict Jess.

"I actually feel even better than normal though." Bailey said, gaining Jess's attention as she tried to piece together what that was, "I've definitely gotten a boost to my abilities."

A simple use of her spells proved that they were noticeably - although only slightly - stronger.

"Maybe it's a hidden ability." Jess theorised after Bailey's racial skill was brought into question, "It doesn't say you'll be empowered in icy areas, but maybe it's more of a synergy thing than an actual boost."

"Like how fire gets hotter in places with more fuel. There's just more... Ice fuel for you here... Maybe?"

"Seems as logical as any other response" Piper said, "Should we change things up then?"

With the new environment Bailey had jumped bounds ahead of the other 2 girls in terms of power; her insane INT stat already made her a magical powerhouse, but with the further boost there was no contest in who was the highest dps.

"Okay then." Jess cheered, "Me and Piper will take aggro from the enemies while Bailey deals. I'm just glad that plant was a stationary type so we could plan this all out."

So, understanding that the changed environment meant they would have to change strategy allowed the girls to regain their previous pace and make their way through the dungeon at a similar, albeit slower, pace to what they had previously.

The [Lavender Dream] dungeon's monsters of lavender radicles and lavender corolla had been replaced by ice variants called winter radicles and winter corolla, with the primary difference being that each of their attacks inflicted [Freeze] instead of [Fantasy] as they should have been doing before.

With Piper and Jess moving to attract the attention of any and all monsters while getting in any hit they can safely manage, Bailey was safe to pelt them with [Water Ball] and [Mana Bolt] until they would eventually fall to the ground in a heap. Normally ice and water-type skills would be rather ineffective against ice-type enemies, with water being rather weak to ice, but thanks to [Chilling Soul] Bailey had enough buffs to make us of it despite that, training its level as she believed that [Water Ball] would be much more useful than [Mana Bolt] in the future.

It did not take long for the girls to reach what they presumed to be the boss monster. It was a giant clearing, free of any plants at all besides the giant one towering over the area. Jess recognised the type of plant it was thanks to having been brought up in an excessively traditional household and enjoyed the slight attention to detail from the game devs.

Although much larger than reality and not really the right colour, the flower in front of her was a hellebores flower - otherwise known as a christmas rose - with icy blue petals. It was exceptionally beautiful, to the point the girls felt bad they would have to kill it, but they knew they would considering their inspections confirmed it was the boss:

[Fragment of Winter (35) (Dungeon Boss)]

It was a much higher level than them, but even so the girls were not daunted as they too had grown in level on the way here.

Piper had increased to 22, Jess to 23 thanks to being exceptionally reckless and Bailey most of all to level 25. The new skills were once again rather disappointing for Piper and Jess while Bailey once again got a skill that seemed to be determining how she would proceed in her class focus.

Piper received the skill [Stab (1) (F)], a simple skill that like [Slash] increased the damage of an attack, but unlike [Slash] that improved her slashing, [Stab] improved her piercing ability when stabbing enemies.

Jess received a slightly better skill with [Quick Dodge (E-)] that allowed her to strengthen her legs for a moment and move a greater distance in the name of dodging; however, Jess was - in the terms familiar to Galdrash - a muscle-brained idiot who only wanted to deal as much damage as possible; as a result she found a dodging skill to be unnecessary despite its importance to a CQC fighter.

Bailey received yet another water-type skill: [Water Bullet (F+)]. The attack was weaker than [Water Ball] by a rather noticeable margin, but the speed of the spell and its mana cost were much better - making it a more practical spell in actual combat. Its cast speed was also noticeably faster, so with a suitable multitasking ability Bailey could pressure an enemy with [Water Bullet] while preparing the more powerful [Water Ball]. 

Regardless of the impressiveness of their skill, the 3 girls felt confident in their ability to take down the [Fragment of Winter], and after Jess explained to them how valuable grimoires were they were excited to get their hands on the rewards too.

"Let's chop down this overgrown weed!" Piper called out as the 3 of them entered its range and began their attack.