[Trade Accepted]

“Really awesome shield,” I said. “Thanks, Mephisto.” And there goes the last of my rings. As well as some of my Integral Bits and other metals and minerals I found down the mines. Those were only for the labor costs. I was also the one who collected the crafting materials. Hunted them myself or bought them, really costly business.

I was poor! Not really poor. More like insolvent if we were going to be technical about it. No, wait. The term should be illiquid.

“Thanks for shopping at Mephisto’s Crafts and, uh, I really haven’t thought of a cool name yet,” he said. “When we get out of this mountain, I’m going to the human empire and make my shop there. Then I'll think about a name.”

“Seriously, thanks for this,” I said. I wasn’t buttering him up or anything. I was genuinely appreciating his work. I ordered it from Mephisto since I couldn’t get something like it from Sumuel. When buying from Sumuel, he would present choices, pre-made weapons. What I wanted was a bit more specialized for my build. Fortunately, Mephisto could make it.

Spiked Lava Shield

(Shield)

24% Chance to Block

125 Armor

70/70 Durability

Effects:

29-41 Fire Retribution Damage

17-25 Physical Retribution Damage

10% Chance to Ignite (Ignite is 5% of the Initial Damage per second for three seconds) Max Stack:1

Active Skill:

Lava Overflow (Channeling Skill) You will damage enemies in a small area around you. for 30-60 (+5% of Solar Spirit) Magic Fire Damage every half a second. Every four seconds, the area of effect will grow and the damage will increase by 20% with 10% Fire Penetration. It will reach its maximum output after twenty seconds.

Cost: Solar Spirit 5/7/9/11/13 per second.

The percentage chance to block displayed, as I’ve learned, was only when you were up against a monster about the same level as you. It would fluctuate depending on the level of the monster, its speed, strength, plenty of other factors. Bigger, badder monster, less block.

I have always wondered why I could never block the hits of those humungous fuckers, you know, those giant monsters who took a swipe at me. My previous chance to block was nearly twenty percent. It would probably be lower when I went up against those more powerful monsters. But at the least I could have blocked something, right? At least one of those hits. I mean, come on. The bigass worm, the elephants, the troll?

Some research told me I was wrong. A block did not mean total negation. Again, it depended on the monster hitting you, your own stats and the quality of your shield. Which kinda made sense. Even the weakest shield, a garbage can cover maybe, would have a small chance to block. It would be total bullshit if it could nullify the attack of a legendary monster who had the misfortune of getting the bad end of the roll of the block chance.

“You’re sure with the active skill?” Mephisto said. “Sorry I couldn’t provide you with better choices. But I made sure to put fire retrib there and there’s a small phys retrib that showed up as well. And I got the ignite chance.”

“The skill is fine. I chose it for my strategy.”

“If you say so. Or are you just saying that because I only have crappy selections for the active skill to put on the shield and you don’t want to offend me.”

“No problems with the skill. Really. Don’t worry about it.”

“It costs a lot of Spirit to cast. Increases each time it powers up.”

I nodded. “That is a problem.” I opened my inventory and checked my storage of Solar Spirit herbs. “That’s going to burn through my stock, but I have a plan for it."

“And you have to stand while casting it thought. It also takes twenty seconds for it to get to maximum. It’s not even that powerful.”

“Looks pretty neat when it's fully charged. A hundred percent increase in damage plus fifty percent fire pen? It’s not just double damage at that point. And no problems with standing still. I’m supposed to be a tank.”

Mephisto said, “It could have been way better if it scaled your Health or Vit. I don’t think you have a lot of Solar Spirit like a Healer.”

“This is already very good,” I said. “Thanks again.” I waved goodbye as I went back to my plants.

We were in a very large cavern in the Ice Tunnels. Sort of our base of operations. You could fit a three storey building in here. It was that large, with icicles of death hanging from the ceiling. There were about thirty players with me doing various things. Patches of Forager gardens scattered here and there. A few players also set up shop such as armor repair or selling potions.

The players who came before us already left our 'headquarters'. They formed small groups led by strong players like ChilliMaster and Megiddo to explore the tunnels branching out of the cavern. I wasn’t able to join them because I was late so I just planted my shit in a small corner while waiting for Mephisto to log in. He wasn’t ranked among the top Mardukryon blacksmiths so his prices weren’t that balls dropping but he could make good items given his skill level. And I didn't need those awesome items from the best blacksmiths to make my plan work.

A Mardukryon player waited for me near my garden.

“I see you got a new shield,” Santi said. He sat by my plants while applying poison to his throwing spears. I was going to trade with him next.

He used different kinds of poison supplied by yours truly to upgrade his throwing spears; they were technically sort of like arrows in games where you need to buy lots of them to use them for attacks. I wasn’t sure if he could retrieve the spears he threw and use them again.

I spotted a couple of bottles with black liquid inside along with the other poisons Santi arranged in front of him. It was my new brew. A stronger poison which became deadlier the more stacks it had. Poison could inherently stack if you get hit with several instances of it, unlike Ignite. Each of those instances would run their course, dealing damage until they expired. My new poison, which unfortunately only came in liquid form and not as a gas, increased in damage per additional stack. Besides the damage each poison stack dealt, there was also a bonus damage based on the number of stacks on the target.

Santi planned on running a poison/disable build. While he wouldn’t get crazy high damage with one hit, he could possibly deal more damage in long fights compared to, say, a crit DPS build. More of a boss killer, actually.

“Yeah it's a nice shield,” I said. “This would work really well with my plan.”

“Does that plan involve the Integral Bit I have?”

“Yep. An Ignite tank build.”

“Don’t see plenty of those around,” he said. “I actually haven’t seen that.” He paused and scratched his horn to think. I swear we were picking up habits from the NPCs. Although I couldn't see it, I assumed he opened his inventory because his fingers moved through the air. He said, “I see where you’re going with this. But you have a way to apply the Ignite?”

“I already have items with a chance to ignite. As long as I deal fire damage, I could ignite.”

“Let’s trade then,” he said.

I didn’t place anything on my part of the trade tab. We already made arrangements how I was going to pay. I would supply him with poison bottles of different types during this expedition down these wretched frozen tunnels. I already gave my first batch earlier and I promised to give him more later. I was stuck with him for a while, but that was fine. I really wanted the item.

Integral Bits: Flameshards of Sustain (5/5)

+8% Chance to Ignite

+20% Duration to Ignite

15 Damage Negation when hit by an Ignited Enemy

Bonus for completion: 4 Health and 2 Solar Spirit gained when hit by an Ignited enemy.

“Thanks for the trade,” I said.

“Sure, no prob.”

I slotted my completed Integral Bits to my new shield. You were probably wondering what the hell was I thinking? As I’ve said before, Poison inherently stacked. Ignite did not unless you have an item that allowed for stacking. Integral Bit, Ember Steel, attached to my weapon allowed three stacks.

The next problem was how to apply Ignite so that I could benefit from the Flameshards of Sustain. Previously, I only had my attack skill, my shell, and a tiny bit of added fire damage to my normal attacks to set off the Ignite. Now, I had twenty-eight percent chance to Ignite, Fire Retribution, and Lava Overflow along with what I already have.

Let’s be honest here. Lava Overflow wasn’t some awesome skill I could use to clear maps in a flash. Nope, it was a crappy skill. But, it released waves of fire every half a second. And that was what I wanted. Lava Overflow with twenty-eight percent chance to Ignite was awesome. I could Ignite lots of monsters within a few seconds. The more powerful Ignite would be applied; the Ignite damage of Ember Steel instead of my shield would take effect.

Seven percent of the initial damage over six seconds, since the Flameshards of Sustain increased duration, totaled to forty-two percent added damage. Multiply that by three since I had max three stacks equals to a whopping one hundred and twenty-sixty percent additional damage. The increasing power of Lava Overflow as it gets channeled wasn’t even factored in the computation.

Still, I wasn’t expecting my damage to compare to real DPS builds. And where was the tank part of this build, you ask? Ignited enemies who attacked me give me teensy weensy bits of Health and Solar Spirit. But if there was a large mob of monsters attacking quickly, that would add up to a lot of Health and Solar Spirit regeneration. And I already regenerate my Spirit when I blocked.

With the added Solar Spirit, I could continuously channel Lava Overflow without consuming too much Spirit herbs and I could cast my Pyro Shell as soon as it popped. The skill Inner Grit would activate if something really nasty popped my shell and took down my life to dangerous levels. Unless I get one shotted, I could survive indefinitely if there was a sizeable mob humping my ass.

And what do I do with the Health I gained from getting hit by Ignited fuckers? Use it to heal the damage from the poison clouds I planned to use, obviously. The fuckers around me would get hit by Lava Overflow, Acid Drops, Pyro Shell, Retribution, and Poison while they were healing me. Pretty neat, huh? And last but not the least was the Damage Negation from the Integral Bit. Damage Negation came after the damage was reduced by armor unlike Damage Absorption which went before armor. There might be instances where weak monsters would not damage me at all!

To make this plan work, I needed to pull a large mob in an area with high spawn rate. I've done builds like this before. In the past, I would leave my character to AFK level while I went to school. Creativity was needed here. To make this build better, I needed more Retribution, or maybe even reflect, although the latter one was harder to find. Retribution only worked when I was hit with a physical attack or even a magic attack with physical components. Reflect worked on all damage types and it actually subtracted the amount to be reflected from the damage you receive, throwing it back to the one who attacked you.

Some items for survivability woulnd't hurt too. I smiled. My build was slowly shaping up. Little by little.

I admit that something with leech from fire damage would be a great addition to my plan but those items were stupildy expensive. Everyone wanted leech especially those DPS fuckers. They drove the prices up so I needed to find something else to passively heal me. Good thing I found the Flameshards of Sustain from Santi.

Oh well, back to planting.

I went to a small patch beside my garden. I already dug this earlier as I waited for Mephisto. We might be in an Ice cave but I could still plant here. Somewhere deep inside this place, the Guardian slumbered. Its energy or something gave life to the Ice Tunnel like how Lord Mirdabons energized the land they passed through. I needed to dig through the ice and then I could plant.

First, I needed to plant the root crops to make the new black poison for Santi. Second, I also needed poison gas plants for myself. Lastly, I have to get more Spirit Herbs.

You might be wondering, where the fuck did I get root crops? Don’t question Mardukryon Forager logic. I smashed together poison seeds, fruits and other plant parts using Forager skills and out came a root crop. I…I don’t know, ok? Let’s just accept it.

I barely started with my chores when the cavern echoed with the sound of heavy hooves. A group of players spilled out of one of tunnels. Santi and I looked at each other then we galloped towards the others.

"Tons of monsters are chasing us," one of them said.

"We pulled them here."

"Now we'll also die, dipshit," one of the Foragers tending to his garden shouted.

"Yeah, why did you have to pull them here."

"Hey guys, dont fight," I said. "Let's help each other." I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for this. Not that the Nobel Peace Prize really mattered nowadays. They kept on giving it to weird people.

"He's right," Santi said."We have lots of players here. We can deal with this."

Instense scratching came from the tunnel like hundreds of giant insects were coming for us.

"Let's go, people," I said, raising my spear. They followed me. In times like this, one should just show initiative and people will follow even if you didn't know what the fuck you're doing.