DCO- Dungeon Core Online

Chapter 11

James watched as two fedoras were thrown past the J-Kappa’s, and past Oak, to soar en route to Med Ic. The hats landed on the ground before the surprised healer, who had the sense of mind to take a step back, just in time for the two Fogeymen to emerge from the hats. Two ties wrapped themselves around Med Ic’s arms, one on each, and he was yanked towards the hungry fangs of the skeletal, sharply dressed bogeyman like mobs.

“Med Ic!” Z yelled as he turned his bow towards the newcomers. He shot towards one of the mobs, but missed. His arrow had targeted the creature’s head, and yet, when it reached where the head would have been, the object in question had been missing. This was because the Fogeyman had quickly sunk its body back into its padded jacket, treating it exactly like a turtle shell, to avoid the attack.

Before another attack could land, both creatures sunk their fangs into Med Ic. His casting was interrupted by the damage, and James watched his life tick down a bit. A debuff stack appeared on him, and James pulled it up, knowingly immediately what it would be.

Sharply Dressed (2) – Ten stacks of Sharply Dressed will cause a player to temporarily be charmed, unable to attack or act in a hostile manner towards any Fogeyman or uniquely dressed mob in the area.

“We need to free Med Ic.” Z called out as his minions pulled themselves away from the J-Kappa’s to charge the two wannabe 1950s mob….sters.

“No shit.” Elm commented, taking a shot at the clothes. He had a glowing white aura around him, showing he was debuffed currently from the Shy Persona J-Kappas. Meaning, his accuracy was down. The arrow missed its target. And he cursed. An accuracy debuff was always a bit of a pain in any game, but when combined with an increased dodge chance on your enemies, especially when they already had a skill that increased their dodge chance, it was pretty damning.

“Sooner rather than later.” Med Ic squirmed, trying to free himself from the grasp of the mobs. “I can’t break free.” He was glowing with purple light, a skill of his own active, and yet, they held him fast.

“He’s not going to be able to break free by himself.” Steve commented as he struggled. “Fogeymen are the perfect ambush mob. Once you’re in their tie clasp, you’re pretty much screwed if you’re by yourself.” He chuckled, “especially if you’re a squishy caster type. The guy who came up with their design had a special hate for assassin type casters and cheeky healers, so he made the mobs specifically to be their bane.”

“Is that why they jumped on Med Ic?” James asked. He’d been curious why the two mobs had completely ignored Oak. Sure, the tank’s taunt hadn’t reached them earlier, but he was still the most obvious target. And unlike the Philoso-Raptors on his second floor, these mobs didn’t have enhance intelligence.

“Pretty much,” Steve said with a nod. “They’ve got a priority list built into them. It’s uh, kind of a funny bit of coding design actually,” he chuckled, “they target the least dressed party members… which is almost always the mages and healers, since their armor generally consists of just robes and such.”

James glanced over at Rue, thinking particularly about her Avatar. “What about scantily dressed barbarians and the likes?”

“Their armor still carries more weight, making them lower on the priority list. When I say least, I mean least, as in pure weight and material wise.”

“I can honestly say, I have no idea how you guys came up with these things.” James said to Steve. The developer smiled, taking it as a compliment. James, however, had meant it more as a ‘I can’t believe you guys were able to make anything work’ statement. Then again, with how advanced AI was, coding was very different from how it used to be. He knew that much, from what he’d learned over the years about the process. It didn’t involve long lines of code and if-then statements and such. Now they could give intention statements to the AI tools, and the computers themselves would develop the systems.

They could quite literally hatch the craziest of ideas into concepts that worked, which was part of what revolutionized the technological advances. After, that is, they put in hard-lined rules and regulations to stop AI from stealing work from creatives such as authors and artists. It was shaky at first, but eventually, AI was used for bettering the world, or at the very least, giving humans more time to themselves, and to do the things they wanted to and enjoyed.

Med Ic’s screams drew him back to the battle at hand. The Fogeymen had both bit down once more on the man, though this time only one applied a stack of the debuff. It seemed the creatures could launch that attack once per five seconds, draining a small portion of his life with each bite, but more importantly, gaining a chance to apply another damning stack.

“It’d be really nice if we didn’t have all these debuffs on us.” Faust grumbled as lightning flew past Med Ic to blast into one of the Fogeymen. It struck the one on Med Ic’s left, and the lightning danced from it, into the other. The tie’s crackled but hung fast. Their life pool dropped by a negligible margin. “The increased spell cost is a new one, and I hate it.” He had the glowing golden light around him, and every time he cast a spell, a pile of coins sprung from his body, as if imitating the increased tax his skills had on them.

“High magic resist?” James asked without even glancing in Steve’s direction. He couldn’t remember what their special traits and passives were off the top of his head and didn’t feel like pulling them up just yet in the middle of the battle.

“Yup. Increased magic resistance, but as a tradeoff they take a higher percentage of damage from slashing and piercing attacks.”

“Truly, mage killers.” James acknowledged.

“I told you.” Steve said mid sip. “There are certain mobs that were designed with singular grudges in mind. The Fogeyman just so happens to be one.” A pause, another sip, and then Steve continued. “The Candy Dungeon has a mob called the Everlasting Mob-Stopper that has a skill that makes it multiply anytime it takes damage from a non-player source. Solely created to punish pet class players.” Steve chuckled. “I love that mob.”

James resisted glancing at Steve, the crazy spectacle of the battle below thankfully captivating enough to make the effort extremely easy. With Med Ic’s healing stopped at the moment thanks to the Fogeymen, Oak had to switch purely to turtling up. Which meant his attacks on the Idol persona, which was down to a fifth of her life, had slowed up enough to allow her to begin singing. Bright blue and pink flowers flowed around her as her buff and debuff spread out, increasing the agility of her allies, while trying to apply a slow debuff to the already debuff stacked players. More cursing and sputtering from the adventurers, as the adventuring party found itself overwhelmed by the sheer number of level 91 mobs, and more importantly, the musical troop worth of effects.

Every good gamer knew, first and foremost, that status effects, buffs, and debuffs could instantly change the tide of a battle. With that being said, there was another important lesson every good gamer knew. And that was when to cut your losses and run.