However, Draco still had an expression of hate still on his face. This fellow had lost himself to his anger due to the silly reason of losing out on the inheritance of the Dao of Arrogance.
Instead of giving the poor Boss monster time to mourn its loss, he laid into it like a wild beast. Chunks of flesh and whole tufts of fur were tossed about the place as he brutalized the monster.
His DPS hovered between 1000-1500. He did almost ten times the damage as Rina and this was taking into consideration that he had the same equipment as they did: a rare weapon and common armor from the master package.
Granted, Draco had some other boons that players would die for, so that was the reason his output was more than ten times that of Rina. The other generals just watched the scene with bizarre expressions on their faces.
"Our Boss… doesn't he seem a little… off?"
Rina couldn't help but put the question forward.
"He's fallen into madness. The only way he'd come out is either by the unrealistic scenario where he awakens through encouragement by a loved one or the target of his hatred is destroyed."
Kiran made a calm assessment to which the others nodded to.
"Sounds reasonable."
"Eh, I think that's logical."
"A rational conclusion."
Boyd, Uno and Cobra gave their responses to his appraisal of the situation with looks of respect. Rina, became starry eyed and looked at Draco with a hopeful gaze.
"Does that mean if I go forth and offer my comfort, the Boss will love me?"
"Definitely not."
"Bitch, you will die."
"No, go ahead. I promise nothing bad will happen."
"Woman, if you want to see hell so quickly, let me show you the way."
Kiran, Boyd, Uno and Cobra replied to her question with varying responses. Rina simply sighed with regret and had a downcast look on her face.
"When will this big sis finally be able to nab the heart of our handsome boss…"
No one responded to her anymore as they had focused solely on Draco's violent beatdown. By the time the Ursa mustered the will to fight back, its health was a bit below 70%.
With a roar of anger and pain, its skin reddened and its eyes became the color of crimson. A shockwave blew out from its body and pushed everyone back a few steps.
This seemed to cool Draco down as his expression became somewhat serious. He leapt back and approached his team, taking the vanguard position as he started giving out orders.
"Uno, you will tank the boss by taking the hits with your shield. Remember what I taught you, dodge if you can and focus on deflecting attacks, not blocking them. Boyd and Kiran, you will rush forth with me to form the close combat attacking party. We will each focus on one cardinal direction around the boss and concentrate our attacks from there. Cobra, you will choose the final cardinal direction and lay in wait. Your job is to attack at key moments to either distract or deal immense damage. Rina, you stay within maximum range and cast your auto attack only. No spells. We can't afford to have you pull aggro with your current skills and no healer."
Draco nodded to each of them and they displayed serious expressions. It was good to know that he hadn't spent the last few hours teaching a bunch of slow witted imbeciles.
"Alright then, let's go!"
With a quick command, the group leapt into action as they took their positions around the boss. Naturally, the initial aggro was focused on Draco due to him being the object of the Boss Monsters' hate.
Draco took a position to its east flank and dodged its attacks while he allowed Uno to cast his uncommon paladin skill, Taunting Throw. This was a ranged attack that forcefully attracted aggro to the user for a maximum of 30 seconds by throwing their shield in a similar manner to Captain America.
Uno easily caught his rebounding shield after the throw and prepared to receive the Boss' attacks with a serious expression. Draco nodded to him and activated the Fire of War only. Even using that was a bit of overkill but he wanted to end the fight quickly so he could take his team on a few more runs.
Uno tanked the boss surprisingly well. It wasn't too strange since the fellow was a top tier fighter in the real world, so all he really needed to learn was how to factor in game related elements into his fighting.
He chose the tank pre-class build because he usually took on hits from others in the fights he participated in. His fighting style was simple, rush in and grapple the enemy. While he couldn't obviously do same here, the underlying concept of using his sturdy frame to mitigate damage while seeking to attack was there.
And that's what made Uno special in the previous timeline. Majority of tank class fighters had developed the mentality that their only job was to receive hits and let the others handle the damage output. Uno had drawn the line and opened a new field of play by tanking while also focusing on dealing damage with status effects, mostly stuns thanks to the hammer.
Kiran was like the wind. His palms moved so fast that the others thought he was as fast as Draco. Naturally, in Draco's eyes, all of them were moving as slowly as snails if he didn't focus on limiting his perception to the normal level. Still, he wasn't surprised by Kiran's skills.
Only he knew that Kiran had been the second strongest in Hellscape. Chances were that after Draco was assassinated in the previous timeline, he took over. Draco had never really bothered to look into Kiran's life in the past and just took it at face value, but now he was curious about the fellow.
Boyd had learned to fight using one eye and the normal limitation on impaired sight seemed to not bother him. His poleaxe cleaved whole pieces of the boss's skin and fur away, leaving bloody wounds and causing pain filled screams.
His style wasn't exactly skillful, but it was certainly effective since he put an absurd amount of force behind it. Some of his cuts even went as far as to exposes small pieces of bone, to which the others grimaced.
Rina had been casting non-stop. She followed Draco's advice and stuck to casting her auto-attack fireball instead of using channeled spells. Draco had explained to her that spells that required channeling had great power in combat, but very little utility. It could do almost 4x your usual damage at the very least, but if you missed or you got interrupted, the consequences weren't worth it.
Cobra attacked infrequently and his piercing stabs were always trained on either Boss' nape or the small of its back. By attacking these tender areas, Cobra had been able to force the boss into a stunned state whenever Uno became overwhelmed or aggro suddenly shifted, greatly lessening the stress on the rest of the team.
Draco simply swung his sword multiple times in a single second, leaving thin trails of blood wherever it passed. When he moved to a different section of the Boss's body, the others noticed that the lines of blood formed into the pattern of a lotus flower that had bloomed.
When they realized that Draco had enough time to… 'doodle'… on the Boss monster in the middle of such a fight, they became flabbergasted and a bit more fearful.
With Uno and Boyd doing around 55 damage per hit, Rina doing 95, Cobra inflicting 80 and Kiran causing 50 damage per attack, it didn't take them long to fell the Boss monster.
Naturally, this could only be done so quickly because Draco's base damage was over 3,000 with the addition of the Fire of War. The others couldn't even feel good about leveling up twice from defeating the Boss with their guild leader being a monster in his own right.
｢Congratulations on completing: Ursa's Cave normal mode
Time elapsed: 4:52:47
Enemies killed: 254
Team Deaths: 0
Team Members: 6/10
Assessment: A+
Reward:
150% EXP
10 Gold｣
Naturally, since this wasn't survival mode and the method of completion wasn't as outrageous as when Draco soloed a dungeon, the rewards were a bit more normal now. Still, an A+ assessment was definitely uncommon and only achievable by uncommon guilds.
Players ranked guilds differently from the system. The ranking system was the same as used for weapons and items. Trash-tier, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary and Divine.
Hellscape had been one of the five guilds at the Divine tier. Darkrow had been another and the three others had been located in different sections of the map. Draco had never bothered to encroach on their territory and they had kept off his.
The Boss also dropped some loot in the form of uncommon weapons and armor pieces and one potion recipe. The recipe was for the basic health potion, which was a standard recipe that any player could acquire.
Still, Draco didn't mind as he could let another player in his guild learn it for production in his shop. That person would help alleviate the pressure on him and he would have more time for various things.
One thing about Boundless that made Draco feel aggrieved on behalf of other players was that there were no stupid limitations on creation. That meant, one didn't absolutely have to learn a recipe or design in order to craft an item.
This allowed architects, chefs and a myriad of other creative professionals from the real world to be able to find a place in this world without having to always swing a blade. After all, if every one of the 7 billion humans on earth entered Boundless and focused on battle, the competition would be far too fierce for most.
Naturally, some things were limited in order to maintain the ambience of the world. Those who focused on tech couldn't create any technical item whatsoever. One guy had tried to get away with making a transistor but was eventually hunted down by the playerbase after the AI issued a lucrative quest. The AI had both punished the offending party and sent a message to the rest, killing two birds with one stone.
Lord knew why such an intelligent existence would work for humans still…
That mean that Draco, who had done a heavy amount of crafting in his past life, was unstoppable since his memories of the previous timeline were now easily recollected. After all, this fellow had crafted the best player made weapon in the history of Boundless, his Semi - Legendary Mana Sword.
He had already made basic health potions and mana potions for his shops in the War of Attrition area. As such, such a design was pointless to him. Unfortunately, since the game has to keep in some measure of competition in each sector of life, designs could not be shared without following the proper process.
So Draco couldn't write down the recipe for the basic health potion and hand it to Kiran. The AI would immediately issue a quest against him and he'd get f*cked. While he could tear apart almost any player in the game, he didn't want to annoy the AI and have it mobilize the NPCs.
｢Sturgehaven Kingdom Regional Announcement
The Umbra Guild have cleared out the Ursa's Cave and gotten first clear of the Dungeon! Reputation increased by 2000｣
This one was limited to a Kingdom wide announcement because it was an Area Dungeon. There were Continental Dungeons and World Dungeons, but the difficulty level of those couldn't be compared to Area Dungeons.
Even with Draco's skill and boons, he didn't have any plans to tackle those types of dungeons any time soon. One thing about standing at the top was that one always knew when to attack or retreat and pride rarely ever dictated one's actions. Unless you were a fool of course.
"Alright, let's head out and tackle the next one."
Upon exit, the group wasted no time heading to another local dungeon in the general area of Stagnant Moss town. That day, various first clear announcements by the Umbra Guild made players of Sturgehaven Kingdom curse and swear.
Some filed complaints and others tried to mute notifications, both of which were a waste of time.
However, these actions led various interested parties to conclude that the first guild, Umbra, was based in Sturgehaven Kingdom or at least, its guild leader was. Majority weren't interested in the Guild itself, but the fellow who seemed to be able to attain multiple game announcements in the span of two days since launch.
Of course, it was the early game so very few had the time to leave their pre-selected base of operations just to hunt down one elusive fellow, but most of the thrill seekers and independent players began making a pilgrimage to Sturgehaven to see what this fellow was all about.
Of course, others trekked with the intention to catapult to fame by challenging him and taking him down.
The fellow himself was currently having a great time tormenting an undead skeleton warrior by making bone puns as well as harsh comparisons to other types of undead.
The poor monster had gone past the rage stage into the depression stage, and was curled up onto a ball while shivering from sorrow and low self-esteem.
"Can you imagine? A measly skeleton like you that has only 206 bones wants to move the heart of that banshee deeper in the dungeon? Dream on!"
Draco's harsh words made it clutch its head in pain.
"Of course she only likes real undead with that one extra bone in their body! The one that you'll never have, ha!"
Boyd took this chance to drive in the hurt.
"Not even a single muscle. Just bone all around. And you expect an entity like her to reciprocate your feelings? You'd be better off dying and reincarnating my friend. Trash."
Uno started pushing towards a dreary ending.
"And even as a skeleton, your bone density is below average. You think a filthy generic monster like you can stand out in a crowd? You are nothing special. I can find a hundred like you anywhere."
Cobra sneered at the aggrieved undead.
"Waste. Common debris."
Kiran's apathetic look and toneless words did more harm than a long derogatory speech ever could. It was as if the fellow were looking at a piece of sand... and even that sand was low quality filth.
Suddenly, the skeleton heard clacking footsteps and a woman in a tight and s.e.xy red dress knelt down beside it. Upon wondering who was here to torment it, it was shocked to see that is was an astoundingly beautiful woman with a gentle expression on her face.
That expression reminded it of the banshee it loved, who was also a gentle soul as long as there were no livings being around. She had made that same expression to it countless times and she channeled reconstruction magic to mend its dislocated bones after fighting adventurers.
This made it lower its guard and see the light of hope. Especially, when Rina took its bony hand in hers and smiled lovingly. It felt like this might be the real form of its love and maybe it had finally ascended to heaven... finishing its contract with the Lich that ruled the dungeon.
Its heart opened up and basked in the warmth and love being sent its way. The euphoria was intoxicating a liberating, allowing it to ascend to heaven from hell.
"I only wish you could realize how ugly and useless you are. I feel pity knowing that you genuinely think you deserve life… even in undeath. That banshee woman who you fancy must suffer being around you just as I do. I only project such kind feeling because I feel like no one else would, not even your mother, with such an ugly f*cking face."
The world seemed to pause in that moment as those words that were uttered were digested by everything – even the wind. When understanding dawned on all the parties who heard Rina's destructive words, the world resumed once again.
However, the light the burned inside the skull of the undead had long flickered out. It had chosen to extinguish its life in order to escape this torment.
It had literally been bullied to death!