#086 – Mine now!

#086 – Mine now! My strategy was simple. Gun and shield. The first time I’d faced the archer, I could only try to dodge and was too slow to do so. But now I had a shield which hopefully could block her shots. Although if they were armor-piercing as so many people in chat had theorized, I would still have to do my best to dodge. As for my offense, I would use my gun self’s crystal shower setting. Why? Because this enemy was nimble, but ultimately squishy. It was easy for her to dodge one powerful shot, but much harder to dodge hundreds of little crystals. If enough of them hit, it would either cripple her enough to easily take down or just finish her off outright. That was the idea anyway. Sure, I wanted to preserve Ether and this strategy would use a bit of it, but it was better than risking getting poisoned again. It was a good plan, though. I was fairly confident that I would at least fare better than my very first attempt. And if not, I could always go with the scorched-earth strat. Did that mean that I wasn’t afraid? Hell no. I was more anxious than if I was waiting for a job interview after realizing that I hadn’t brushed my teeth. It was so strange, too. I’d nearly died so many times already in this world, but for some reason, the stupid archer was the one that got to me the most. Probably because of the way I would have died. Stupid poison. I was stalling. “Okay, here goes nothing...” I grabbed the door’s handle and opened it, revealing the familiar porch and grassy yard that haunted my nightmares. I gripped my gun and shield tighter, stepped in, and immediately began scanning the bushes. This time, I didn’t step closer to the bushes and instead walked sideways away from the door, hoping that would be enough to activate the encounter. It was. A few steps later, the door closed itself and clicked and at the same time, the bushes rustled and I quickly spotted movement in them. I tensed up and waited for the inevitable arrow to fly out. The moment it did, I lifted up my shield and dodged to the side, avoiding the arrow completely. Immediately after that, I raised my gun, and fired a shower of crystal at the emerging green-haired figure with bark-like skin. She threw herself to the side to dodge my barrage, but a few shards still wedged themselves into her body. I didn’t give her any room to recover and shot again. With not enough time to dodge, she instead raised her arm in front of herself and huddled behind it. To my surprise, the arm began to grow green gemstones – emeralds? – as some kind of armor, similar to what she had done with arrows in the past. Several crystal shards still hit her bark, but a lot of them also buried themselves into the emerald. That was fine by me. If that stifled her ability to shoot arrows at me, that was only good news. I dashed forward and fired off another barrage. As I did that, she pulled out an arrow with her free hand and coated it with emerald, turning it into a melee weapon. She then used it in combination with her coated arm to block or deflect as much of my barrage as possible. She was crafty, that was for sure... Another shot. She protected herself from most of it again, but the chip damage was settling in. My strategy was working. That was when she hurled the emerald dagger she had been defending herself with, making me stop my advance to barely dodge the surprise attack. It gave her just enough time to produce another arrow, nock it into the bow, and fire. Unfortunately, my earlier dodge left me in a terrible spot to dodge again and I was forced to raise my shield and hope to the Fate Weaver that it was good enough to block the arrow. It was not good enough to block the arrow. The damn armor-piercing arrow pierced through the shield and nearly stabbed me, but luckily the shield at least managed to cancel enough of its momentum that it still protected me, even if I now had an arrowhead sticking out of my shield uncomfortably close to my hand where I held it. She was already pulling out another arrow, but I didn’t give her the chance and shot her again. She quickly turned the arrow into another dagger and continued to block. This was getting a little annoying, but I had no reason to change up my strategy. Sure, it cost Ether to constantly shoot those barrages, but at least I was slowly whittling her down. Most people in chat were in agreement that as long as I didn’t let her fire any more arrows, it should be my win. She threw the dagger again, but since I was more careful with my advance and was expecting it, I easily dodged without letting up with my shots this time. She continued to coat more and more of her body with emerald in a desperate attempt to shield herself, but it wasn’t enough anymore. Two more easily-dodged dagger throws from her and five more shots from me and she finally collapsed, looking like a pin cushion. I wanted nothing more than to rush forward and finish her off, but didn’t drop my guard since so many people in chat warned me that she could be faking it. I approached, my gun trained at her. She wasn’t moving, but she also wasn’t dissipating into smoke. JamieWasTaken3: yoink her skills My eyebrow twitched. I was really, really tempted to do that. I didn’t know what exactly her skills were, but if I were to guess, it was the poison, the armor-piercing ability, and the emerald coating. Any one of them would be a huge boon to have. She looked completely defenseless, too... But if using Skill Snatch left me braindead and it turned out that she was only pretending, I was as good as dead. No need to risk anything. SunOfABeach: cut off her arms SunOfABeach: then skill steal I grimaced. I sighed. Nothing. I would just talk about it with Jane later. “Okay... Chat... That didn’t need to be that close, dammit.” Another sigh. “Anyway. I ended up stealing her poison skill... which actually isn’t really a poison skill from what I can tell. Hold on, let me see...” Since I didn’t have Appraisal to look at the ring, I instead opened my full status screen and stopped to look at all the innate skills I had accumulated. Maybe that was why you only had three skill slots at first? Because you could easily get innate skills? Anyway... Name: Nana Aoto Title: Immolator Race: Human Skill Points: 5 Racial skill: Streamer Innate skills: Quick Fetch (Golden gate key) Minor Hydrokinesis (Gift of the Weeping Phoenix) Featherfall (Gift of the Weeping Phoenix) Aquaport (Gift of the Weeping Phoenix) Combination Breath (Dragon Blaster) Immolate (Immolator) Skill Snatch (Sealed ring of the larcenous demon queen) Essence Sap (imitation) (Sealed ring of the larcenous demon queen) Other skills(3/3): Phoenix Blessing [CURSED] [FREE] [TEMPORARY] Heat Vision Soulbound Item Armsmaster “...Hmm. Yeah, here. Essence Sap. An imitation, actually. Huh. Can I...? Here we go.” [INNATE] skill: Essence Sap (imitation) – Slowly drain Ether and Intra of any target you touch to recover your own. Upgrade: Poison Touch Upgrade: Essence Drain Upgrade: Spore Sap I blinked. “Oh. Upgrades. Right, makes sense. Wait, poison touch. So, it is poison!” I quickly opened up descriptions of all the sub-skills. Poison Touch - Essence Sap leaves a lasting drain on the target even when you aren’t touching them anymore. You won’t recover any Ether or Intra sapped this way. Essence Drain - Essence Sap works much faster and saps Tempor as well. Does not recover your Tempor. Spore Sap - Use a variable amount of Tempor to use Essence Sap through any object you touch. Tempor used depends on the size of the object and your distance from it. My eyes went wide. “Wait, what? But how did... Are you telling me she used both Poison Touch and Spore Sap on arrows the first time around? And the armor-piercing skills on top of that?! That’s cheating! What the heck?!” I said that, but as a gamer, I had to admire her build. Stay at range, dodge attacks with mobility, and whittle enemies away with poison, using the armor-piercing skill to make sure the poison actually landed. I let out a sigh and looked at the chest sitting right in front of me. I shrugged and casually put my hand on top of it. “Get poisoned. Checkmate, mimic,” I declared. JamieWasTaken3: utterly destroyed JamieWasTaken3: gg mimic trelipideliberitation: never stood a chance I actually couldn’t even activate that skill on the chest, but chat didn’t need to know that. “Anyway, let’s see what I get from this clusterfff...feeerromagnetic thing.” FouxMoux: why are you even trying to avoid swearing? I sniffed as I opened the chest. “I’m not gonna swear! I’m trying to keep my stream family friendly!” Inside the chest was a log that was shaped suspiciously like a severed arm of the archer. It even had sap leaking out of it like blood. I slammed the chest closed again. FouxMoux: but you swear anyway FouxMoux: during fights and stuff JamieWasTaken3: family friendly loot moment Why was I still trying so hard not to swear? Maybe because it reminded me of being a normal streamer. Of when my biggest worries were figuring out another silly word that started with ‘F’ that I could use. My stream had long stopped being family friendly. What with the constant violence, several near-death experiences, and me just blurting out swears in tense situations anyway. I sighed and then shrugged. “It keeps me sane,” I truthfully said. “Or saner, I guess. I’m not gonna let this world destroy my humanity, okay? And I have to do... something that reminds me of my old life, at least. To keep my sanity. So why not continue my endless quest to find replacement words for the word ‘fuck’?” JamieWasTaken3: omg she swore trelipideliberitation: whoa breaking character RetconRanger: I like that you are doing that. RetconRanger: Don’t let that world break you. I cracked a tiny smile. “I mean, for the word ‘fog’! Yeah! You guys must have heard wrong!” I said with a smirk as I opened the chest again and tossed the wooden arm into my backpack without looking at it. “Anyway!” I stood up as the chest vanished. “We did it, chat! And I still feel full of energy thanks to that refill! We’re good to keep going!” I was a little low on Intra because of how expensive the Skill Snatch was and my Tempor reserves were probably also pretty low, but other than that, I was good. Good Ether reserves and no injuries, thanks to me draining her. I grabbed my shield from the ground and eyed the arrow rammed through it that hadn’t disappeared. Then I shrugged, pulled it out with some minor difficulty and put both the arrow and the shield into my backpack. “New stuff! Finally! Feels like I’ve been stuck on this one for way too long. Time to face the fourth boss of this place!” With a bit of determination, but mostly trepidation, I turned around and walked to the door, steeling myself for my next opponent. I grabbed the handle, took one last breath, and then opened it.