[D'sP] Purposefully Bad Buffs Banned - Chapter 434

And time passes. Ace and Jim have their hands full, leaving Doyle with little to do. Well, except question his devotion to not expanding until they’ve seen his core once again. In the end, and after a few long chats with Ally, he does decide to stick with his decision.

But now it seems things are coming to a head. It was super clear by now that the two teams had been holding back. They kept clearing up to the first lake. Oh, and Ally had heard them talk about how they were cataloging all the traps they were finding, so maybe that was what they were waiting on.

Now, though, Jim was gearing up to push through. Sure, Ace was a little disappointed he wasn’t getting to clear the floor first, but it was decided that the Adventurers Guild leader should be the one to conquer the floor. If only for the visuals of it.

Not that this was going to be a simple five with Jim’s normal team. This was a team meant not only to beat the floor, but to make it look easy. They were supposed to either advance into a new floor with confidence or exit while looking fresh.

So bright and early, though not too early! Jim showed up at the dungeon accompanied by Doctor, Jay, Ruby, Jeremy, and Susan. That’s right, both the Barrais were coming along and even Doctor was making the trip.

Also, they didn’t simply sneak into the dungeon. They marched from the guild to the dungeon, making sure the people heading to the dungeon won’t miss them. Then, once in the dungeon corridor, guards clear the way for them. Their delve was being highly publicized in the hope of lighting a fire under the populace and advertising the strength of the adventurers guild.

Doyle watches what is basically a parade, slowly arrive at his entrance gate. This does cause things to clog up a bit, the usual smooth flow of people entering and exiting thrown out of whack. Which in turn makes it even slower for Jim’s party to get there.

Looking in from the outside, Doyle finds the whole situation hilarious. Though it is clear Jim is less than pleased. But eventually they do make it to the portal and they don’t even give a last wave to the crowd, walking right in without pause.

And this go around, they aren’t wasting time arriving directly on the 11th floor.

As they grind away at the myconid sprouts, Doctor does bring up something. “I hope we keep seeing myconids at regular intervals. The next group is on 14 and I worry about if we don’t see any come the next couple floors after 17. Too many floors and our antidotes won’t keep up.”

Jeremy shrugs, “We’ll just have to be careful. As long as we don’t get ambushed right at the start, we should be able to harvest some spores. Either by ranged combat or one of us having enough resistance.”

Ruby waves her hand after having built up some power and an orange red line flies out at about shin level. This line of fire slices through sprout after sprout. While it doesn’t take everything out, there aren’t enough enemies remaining to stop the team from advancing. “Or we could simply be so strong as for it to not matter.”

Jay laughs, “That’s always an option!”

Jim sighs, “But now we have to deal with the maze.”

And they do. While the 12th floor isn’t difficult, it still takes time. If only because of the hoops you need to jump through. Then they got to floor 13 and boy, what a rush!

As in, they rushed the floor. Since there weren’t any enemies that stood in front of them, there wasn’t anything to stop them. Sure, getting dived by an increasingly large number of hexku wasn’t fun, but Ruby kept a dome shield of fire over the group to blunt the attacks.

Not that they didn’t kill any of the birds. While Ruby was purely on defense, the others had their own methods by this point and made use of them to keep the pressure off of the fire shield.

Then they were on floor 14 and things got exciting. It had been more than a few levels since they took the floor seriously and their new method of clearing things was quite something. Not all of them are strong enough to jump from one side to another, even if technically you only have to make it halfway.

However, that is only if you only count their strength. Once you take into account other abilities, well, instead of walking between encounters, Jim’s party simply jumps directly to the next fight. It is an oddly effective method, given how Doyle has the monsters spaced out.

Though it only works as well as it does when a person can actually jump the entire distance. If you depend on gravity to fall half the way, the monsters would have too much time to respond. Jim’s team didn’t give them that time and so while the floor wasn’t a quick clear. This was an easy clear.

Floor 15 was a dungeon floor. No one had anything against that. It was a serviceable floor. The mountain valley aesthetic with the clouds above looked beautiful. And for the most part, it was all skipped. The monsters mostly being spread out meant that at least half of the encounters are completely skipped by default.

Doyle didn’t mind this, respecting that Jim was in a hurry. Besides, those regular delvers who could make it this deep, really got a lot out of the floor. Overall, people had a bunch of fun exploring things.

Then Jim got to the 16th floor. In an odd twist, they had actually been having a worse time with it than what they’d been doing on the 17th. This was partly because they weren’t focusing on the floor, but mostly because there was a variety of threats.

Oh sure, the 17th has a bunch of kobold traps. But it is all kobolds and traps. Which they have a lot of experience with at this point. Kind of hard not to with how many kobolds are on the floor.

And speaking of the 17th floor, they manage to arrive at the portal to said floor in record time. Though in making record time, they also went a little too hard and so needed to take a short break.

Ruby, “Will this actually be quicker? I figure if we had just went at a steady pace, things would have been fine. Not like we’re trying to make use of some of those buffs that are cropping up.”

Jim laughs, “Not like the buffs we could have gotten would have done much. They’re all focused on the people farming the sixth floor.”

Ruby sighs, “Well, sure, but we can do better! I mean, those, eugh–”, and she shivers, “–things are purposefully bad! The buff leaks Mana like a sieve! They can barely last a few minutes.”

Susan shrugs, “If anything, I’d say they’re custom made for their purpose. Is it actually a bad thing if it leaks Mana on purpose?”

Ruby shrugs, “I mean, I understand? They’re leaking Mana to force extra drops. It’s just, they can do it better! This is like someone wanted to water a garden and so poked a bunch of random holes in the bottom of a pail. All while the proper solution is a watering can.

“The spell shouldn’t be leaking if not in use. You shouldn’t have to cast the spell moments before you go into the dungeon. Sure, you can’t be casting it hours earlier, but a few minutes one way or another should be fine.”

Jim, “Don’t worry, those spells won’t be around for much longer. Did you hear about one of the possible effects? The buff can explode.”

Ruby raises an eyebrow, “Well, expound?”

Jim laughs, “And by explode, I mean some snap, crackle, pop in the air. I guess you would have heard about it if there was what you actually think of as an explosion.”

Ruby, “That’s more like it. I assume this explosion means the buff drops right away?”

Jim laughs even harder, “Oh boy, if it was only that? I wouldn’t be considering a ban on them. Nope! The buff reverses. That bonus to Strength? Now it goes negative!”

Ruby frowns, “How does that even work? If the spell fails, it really should just go away.”

Susan shakes her head, “You would think that. Kelly hasn’t nailed it down, but she isn’t looking into it too deeply right now. Sort of on the back burner.”

Ruby, “But why? That sounds like a thing that could be super useful. What if you figure out how to dispel an enemies buff so it goes reverse?”

Susan, “Oh, that was the first thing we tried to figure out. And nope, doesn’t work that way. At least, it doesn’t work that way at a reasonable cost. The reversal comes from the consensual nature of a buff.

“When you dispel, that is a hostile spell being layered on top. So to force through the buff reversal? You need to throw more Mana than it would cost to both dispel them regularly and then debuff them.

“So yeah, I guess if you resist the buff when it was cast in you? The reversal wouldn’t happen. However, the spells suck so much that any resistance would make them fail.”

Doctor sighed, “And it isn’t only buffs that suffer from it. Faulty spells all seem to have some sort of reversal of fortune thing that can happen. I’ve had to heal more than a few people with frozen hands. Because the reverse of a custom fire dart seems to be a frost blast going towards you.”

Jim shakes his head, “I’m not against spell research. However, there is a reason the mage tower has special rooms for testing new spells. I wish people didn’t feel the need to try and show off in the guild building.

“And it isn’t like they’re allowed to cast spells in the building to begin with! We banned that! For exactly this sort of reason! There is a patch of dirt out back specifically for showing off attacks and such. Blarg.”

Ruby, “Why am I just hearing about this now? I’ve done so much spell research! This is kind of important information to know.”

Jim, “I honestly assumed you knew?”

Jeremy, “Also, since you have been doing this, I’m going to assume you’re one of the lucky sorts. Do you do much outside of fire?”

Ruby shakes her head, “I only play with fire. The rest of my spells are generic.”

Jeremy, “And there you go. I’d bet you’d have a lot more failures if you did. Now, the status doesn’t say anything about it, but everyone seems to have some sort of affinity to various things.”

Ruby, “Well, why isn’t it on the status panel?”

Jeremy shrugs, “Too much to bother with. I’m sure there are spells, items, and skills to judge such things. However, I would not be surprised if an actual list of your affinities would be a mile long and growing. While things have been reduced to somewhat of a game, it is still the same reality as before. Just with an overlay and a bit of extra fun.”

Jeremy nods, “We don’t have any actual numbers, but there are already people who have found they’re really good with fire Mana, but suck with fire Qi. So yeah, affinity is probably a combination of a bunch of things including soul related things.

“A full page would include every type of power source cross-referenced against every possible outcome type. So not only Fire, but every combo and alternate to fire. Steam, glass, magma, lava, plasma, and so on and so forth. Hades, you could probably break out the various mundane colors of fire. Maybe even every perceptible temp of fire. So yeah, the system just doesn’t bother.”

In the core room, Doyle turns to Ally, ‘Is that true?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Close enough. Though there are some places where affinities will be on a status panel. Admittedly, that has more to do with the local situation. If you have a group of humans who have evolved to only manipulate Mana and the local Mana is highly polarized? They could easily end up with the affinity for earth, air, water, and fire magic since that is all they can manage. Though such additions famously like to vanish once exposed to the greater universe.’

Fox Vs Fox - Chapter 433

Already Jacking Alcohol - Chapter 435