[NR] Overlapping Resistances - Chapter 681

The advanced skeletons slow the slaughter to a halt. Try as they might, Jason and the other melee defenders are no longer capable of disabling most of the enemy’s front line before the zombie horde reaches them. Not that the skeletons don’t die, they do, but Jason isn’t even sure why until the man in charge is informed.

“Damage reduction over top of an Hp grind!” And the defenders stop aiming their shots, instead focusing on wailing on the skeletons as hard as possible. No fancy decapitation strikes or knee shots. Just aiming for pure damage.

Jason can only shake his head and retreat behind the line early to find out what he could do. His Energy strikes still did damage just fine. In fact, war stomp did spectacularly when done with Runic Bloom. That skill required too much stamina to deploy non-stop.

Behind the lines, Jason finds someone who seems to know what is going on. “So, uh, I don’t think I can do much at this point.”

The lady glances up, “Ah, yeah, you’ve been doing well so far. That was exceptional work with the regular skeletons. Can’t help it at this point. Might as well be golems or elementals, especially the metal advancements.

“A bit more magic, especially a buff of the counter element, would cut through this nonsense. Except that is probably why they aren’t sending only the metal skeletons. We can’t be wasting our Mana in so many different buffs.”

Jason raises an eyebrow, “Wouldn’t an anti-undead buff be enough?”

The lady laughs, “Oh, how much I wish that was how it worked. These outer realm undead break the usual resistance and damage reduction rules. Under the System, such things from the same source don’t stack, but also don’t overlap.

“Be thankful the skeletons aren’t stacking resistances. We’d need to be doing so much more damage with each strike to get through that. But! They are overlapping resistances. Dang cheaters.

“Anyway, to beat their resistances you need to beat both of them. So throwing undead debuffs around would only be half of the solution. And since they’re skeletons, you need to actually break their bones and not just bend them.”

Jason groans, “Well I might as well retreat for the night!”

The lady shrugs, “You did your part. Head back on up. If anything, you’ll just be getting in the way. Go up and help keep the ranged fighters stocked.” And she waves him over to one of the ropes dangling down.

Jason really wants to do some more fighting, but he recognizes she isn’t wrong.

Once back on top of the wall, he is put to work right away. While the archers weren’t running out of arrows, but with a large portion of the melee fighters now being down on the ground? They are lower on arrows than any previous night.

After all, they’re still doing everything they can to take out the zombies. This has become even more important because the skeletons aren’t being killed quickly enough.

With this, there is a delicate balance that needs to be preserved. Good thing the night is almost over as the shield wall just manages to keep said balance for the rest of the night. And as the last wave dies, a cheer goes out.

There wasn’t a single fatality! There hadn’t even been any major injuries that would take someone off the line the next night. Everyone knew this wouldn’t last, but for one night, they won.

And this continued for the next three nights. During which, Jason changed up how he fought. For some reason, his stamina based War Stomp cut through the advanced skeletons. It wasn’t perfect and he couldn’t kill them by stomping on their heads. However, more of his damage was getting through.

With that in mind, Jason began going all out. A wave of skeletons would arrive and he would stomp around, Runic Blooms going off over and over. This wasn’t in any way sustainable, but that wasn’t the point.

Once Jason felt his stamina dip, he would retreat and sit out waves until topped up again. Then he would repeat it all over again. This left him run ragged at the end of the night. However, it was an unnatural tiredness.

Which thankfully, was something cultivation seems particularly suited to fixing. The Energy coursing through his body was capable of replacing the stamina which had been forcefully extracted by the skill. And when he told Siegfried this, the man got a particular big smile.

Siegfried, “Well, aren’t you the perfect person to fight the undead?! It sounds like you would be perfectly capable of recovering from their usual draining shenanigans. We’ll have to make sure you are out front at the start of every night.”

Helina, who was nearby hashing out supply requests, smacks him upside the head. “Stop it. I’m not saying he shouldn’t do it, but don’t be so third rate villain about it.”

Siegfried rubs the back of his head, “That wasn’t the intent.”

Helina snorts, “It sounded like you were the villain in a child’s hero tale.”

Siegfried sighs, “Take it how you want. Now, Jason, while I said be out in front. If you do fight something that does hit you with a draining attack? Retreat right away and make sure you can recover from the drain on your own.”

Jason shrugs, “I doubt a drain would do permanent damage to me.”

Siegfried raises an eyebrow, “Even something like stat drain? Or experience drain? The undead can be pretty strange in what they take. I’ve even heard of an undead that could suck out a person’s negative emotions.

“Seems some kingdom, not a nearby one, tried to mass produce them and use them to keep the population happy. Yeah, that didn’t work out for them. We didn’t get the full report, but the undead are not good for normal life and having an undead constantly suck out your negativity does not lead to good results.”

Jason sticks his tongue out, “Bleugh, any fool that thinks an undead would harmlessly take anything would truly have to be a king of fools.”