Eva was not too shocked by this, surprisingly. As a person who had reached Rank 6 in the previous timeline, she knew just what kind of strength monsters of each Rank up to there possessed, so she could definitely understand what kind of damage she would be dealing at a mere level 16.
However, the other ladies didn't know this and were shell shocked. They didn't think Eva was weak, but rather than the Rancid Giantworm was too strong. It could even shrug off Eva's Light attacks that were so powerful that it was insane so easily?
Hikari frowned and crushed an Aether Crystal. Just like Draco could easily manipulate the energy from his own crystals, Hikari could do the same, and even better, since her Spirit stat was more than three times Draco's.
In fact, she was even able to slowly convert bits of it down to Worldly Energy, which was the point of all this. She then buffed her three sister-wives with her White Light Blessing, increasing all their stats by 3 as well as their defense and damage.
This had the best effect on the remainder of the battle.
The first to feel this were Roma and Zaine. Roma, realizing that her black fire was doing so little in the end, decided to kick things up a notch by using her Mystic Arts to cast a giant ball of blue-ish fire that seemed to burn the air around it.
While Roma had to spend some time casting and chanting, Zaine immediately let loose with her Thunderstrike skill. The cave was not connected to the outside world, but a small gap opened in the rocks to allow the thunderbolt to strike the thrashing Giantworm.
The skill dealt 70% lightning damage to one target and had a chance to stun, and since lightning was a great element against dark-types like the Giantworm, it dealt extra damage.
-430,000!
This single attack dealt more damage than Roma and Zaine had done together previously thanks to Hikari's insane buff and the pure-Lightning type skill used.
While the Giantworm was launched into the depths of another stun, Roma finished her own cast. The blue fireball that was now as twice as large as a disco ball shot out and blasted against the entrance to its mouth, searing its cavity as well as its skin.
The poor monster screeched in endless pain. It had been peacefully sleeping, minding its own business when it was hit by fire - its greatest weakness - combined with a mental blast that ruptured its mind AND contained lightning traces - its other weakness - that forced it into stunned state.
After that, it was hit with two Light element attacks - another goddamn weakness! - which further exacerbated its agony. However, the first attacks were quite weak and dealt little damage overall, just pain.
Now though, the damage had skyrocketed and a few more of this would see the Rancid Giantworm on its way to heaven. After all, it made sure to visit Church every Sunday and never fornicated, so it was destined to enter the gates of heaven!
Roma's bluefire was even more unbelievable, as it dealt -1,350,000 damage! This was more than 1/15th of the monster's entire health bar, so it realized that things were getting serious.
As such, even through the pain, it screeched loudly and emitted a wave of gas so toxic that it was practically colored black. This toxin spread almost instantly, but the ladies were prepared for such things thanks to a briefing from Eva.
Roma fired a small shot of her blackfire that connected with the toxic gas, and as one could expect, it erupted in an explosion. A gas like this was easily flammable, only that not every type of fire could set it alight.
Luckily, Roma's blackfire was strong enough to do so. Eva shuddered when she remembered the horror stories from players on the forums after they entered this dungeon in the previous timeline.
The Rancid Giantworm, now burning in flames created by its own toxic gas, was utterly suppressed. Zaine and Roma were the damage dealers since Eva's damage was not up to par, otherwise they could easily restrain the monster with their combined Illusion passive.
Eva also helped out by using her bloodline to the fullest. Her Light-based attacks cost the least among her abilities despite being the strongest, and this was solely because she trained in it the most and used it the most.
As such, light beams, swords of light, spears of light, and light bombs were tossed out by her with impunity, dealing little damage compared to Roma and co, but definitely hurting the Rancid Giantworm greatly.
It was shocking how easily they were beating up a Rank 3 foe. Even if Eva had a Divine class and the other three were overpowered NPCs, they were still Rank 1 and Rank 2 respectively!
To jump Ranks like this…!
Then what would be the need for balance?!
But did they care? No!
Eva, Roma, Zaine, and Hikari were doing their work with a single-minded focus, hurrying to bring this monster to an end before any unexpected changes could happen.
Eva might have prepared them well beforehand, which was another reason for their grand success in the battle, but anything that could happen, would happen.
By the time the monster was down to 50% HP, Eva's eyes narrowed. "It seems like we'll be having some trouble from here."
To buttress her point, the Rancid Giantworm screeched loudly and blew out a shockwave that pushed them all back. It used a skill that would auto-activate once it reached half-health, Spawn!
｢Spawn – Active Skill
Effect: By sacrificing 10% of total HP and battle prowess, create hundreds of mini-spawns of yourself to harass all foes.
Duration: 10 minutes
Cooldown: Conditional
Note: Activates upon 50%, 25% and 5% HP respectively.｣
This was a pretty basic skill for all high-tier monsters. Of course, such skills varied by race and type of monster, but many of them possessed it nonetheless. While this would only be seen on boss-tier monsters, looking at the Rank 3 Giantworm's health, it could certainly be called a boss in its own right.
True to the name of the skill, pustules grew all over the Giant Rancid worm's body and grew to the size of footballs before bursting open with disgusting yellow pus to reveal smaller versions of itself.
The stench and the sight disgusted the four ladies to no end, but they remained calm. Eva had told them that when this stage occurred, they were to use AOE attacks until the 'adds' as she called it, were destroyed.
As such, Zaine threw out a bunch of knives and imbued them with her lightning aura. She then deftly manipulated them to cut down the tiny monsters that were furiously crawling in their direction and spitting some disgusting toxins.
With her level of Telekinesis, this was easy as pie. She could even place it in her manifesto that she gave each mini worm its own throwing knife! One knife, one worm, vote Zaine 2066!
Roma was less fancy and stuck to her Mystic fires that burned all within its range. None of the tiny worms survived this attack, and were reduced to ashes in one hit.
Eva didn't bother to attack them because that was not her duty. Her duty was to act and vanguard and MT, so she directly cast light barriers over Zaine and Roma with her bloodline energy whenever they were about to be attacked.
This would be impossible on a battlefield… on any battlefield… but was made pedantic when once one remembered that Eva had Control, which could allow her to grasp the movement of anything within a certain range.
With this, their formation was practically perfect. All Hikari had to do was maintain the buffs on them, and she had more than enough energy for that at the moment.
It went to reason that within another 2 minutes, they managed to reduce the Rancid Giantworm to 25% HP remaining. Even though it tried to rebel against fate and its inevitable death, it was nothing but the futile struggles of the general populace against the hidden overlords that control humanity!
Eventually, it hit the final key point of 5% HP, but Zaine and Roma were no longer interested in wasting time. Roma used Necrotic Hands while Zaine used her Charm skill on all the mini-worms.
All of them immediately became her thralls as they were weaker than her. They were created to distract and swarm after all, not to deal damage. They were produced with quantity in mind, not quality.
She didn't use them against their creator, but rather kept them aside as she and Roma finished off the Rancid Giantworm. She was told by Eva to charm them and keep them aside, because there was a good chance they would be needed later.
After the Rancid Giantworm let out its final screech, it collapsed into a pile of rotten meat that would even make a pig sick. Some loot had fallen around it, but Zaine carried it over with her Telekinesis without daring to head over.
As for the experience, quite a bit of it had been granted. In total, they received 69,081% experience for killing the lowest Rank 3 monster. This amount seemed shocking, but was not so.
After all, this party was made up of only three Rank 2 fighters and one Rank 1 Immortal Adventurer. 69k experience was far more than Draco earned as a Rank 1 fighting Rank 2 monsters in the Orchard.
Back then, he had been earning 16k experience for clearing scores of Rank 2 monsters that was reduced to 1.6k thanks to his Divine Class. Of course, that was for only clearing sectors back then, even when he cleared whole Field Zones, the most he earned was 53k experience.
Yet, just one Rank 3 monster…
Most of this naturally came due to Eva's participation. Had she been Rank 2 like them, the amount would likely not even cross 1.2k experience. Clearly, climbing up two Ranks was quite profitable, but hehe… it was also impossible.
Since the party distribution was set to party leader - as Eva would get dogshit otherwise for her weak damage – the split was done as 70% for the party leader and 30% for other members. As such, Eva received 48, 356% experience which was cruelly shaved down to 4,835%.
Roma, Zaine, and Hikari had to share the remaining 20,724% equally, which ended up as 6,908% experience.
…
So even though the majority of the experience went to Eva, Roma, Zaine and Hikari ended up with more each that Eva overall… this was the true lamentation of Divine classes.
Roma went to level 100, 0% from level 59, 21%, giving her 123 stat points.
Zaine went to level 100, 0% from level 59, 21%, giving her 123 stat points.
Eva went to level 50, 1594% from level 15, 59%, giving her 105 stat points.
Hikari went to level 100, 0% from level 59, 21%, giving her 123 stat points.
As could be expected, they all their Rank caps in just one battle, a feat that would force any player from the previous timeline to cough 3 liters of blood, which was almost half the blood in their body anyway.
Eva smiled at this, as this was what she roughly expected. As such, she said: "First, let's allocate our points then we can head back to Vita to Rank up. After that, we'll return to this dungeon and continue our work."
The other three shared surprised looks. After all, they just fought one enemy and they were going back already? No, it was rather that they fought one enemy and they were already ready to Rank up just like that?!
Eva understood their skepticism, but only laughed and urged them to leave with her. Once she completed her Rank up and reached Rank 2 while they reached Rank 3, their exp gain would drop so drastically it would silence their doubts.
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Author's Note: Sigh... I thought I wouldn't;t have to do something like this for a long time since the basic foundation of the novel's world and rules has been set while the rest builds upon it, but since your beloved editor expressed doubts, I thought to nip any dissension in the bud.
So, the issue here is... why did Eva and co reach the Rank cap in the span of 1 chapter and 1 battle?
I'll start simply; What is the criteria for calculating experience in the game? It is stated in chapter 172 that "The AI followed the rule of effort=reward".
What does this mean? The AI calculates benefits for all endeavors based on objective effort vs subjective effort.
Objective effort is the true difficulty of an action. In other words, if an average Rank 1 player with three average Rank 2 NPCs were to fight this Rank 3 monster, what was their chances of success?
Subjective effort is the current difficulty of an action. How hard was it for Eva, Hikari, Roma, and Zaine specifically to defeat this foe?
Both combine to decide the final outcome (and is basically how I calculate exp).
Another issue was brought up, which is the party exp mechanics. Can't player abuse such a mechanic to power level?
Why not bring a Rank 0 scrub in a party of Rank 2 players to face a Rank 2 monster so that they could gain boosted experience?
To answer this, let us first remember the one thing that has been repeated in the novel over and over again but which many seem to forget.
IT. IS. NOT. EASY. FOR. A. PLAYER. TO. KILL. A. MONSTER.
They literally have to group up in large numbers to take down monsters of the same Rank. You're talking about crossing Rank to kill one enemy higher?
Even Draco could not do that until his Divine Class was gained. Most players leveled up by fighting in parties against monsters of a lower level than them to gain level suppression boosts.
To bring a piece of deadweight to such a battle to raise exp? Hehe, do you think the AI is stupid?
This is an Artificial Intelligence that can control the entire digital world at once, not a game engine from a modern-day game that is limited by code in which bugs could be exploited. It can obviously judge the situation and react accordingly.
Four women of a lower Rank fighting a higher Rank monster are different from many players of the same Rank bringing a low Ranka ally against a monster of the same Rank as the majority of players in the party.
I personally feel some of this should be obvious if you've been paying attention to detail in the story, but well.
Please keep all this in mind. Thank you.