Episode 34
Once we properly entered the dungeon, I understood why it was called the “Mirror Maze.” There were countless paths that twisted like a labyrinth and crossroads splitting off in several directions. If the angel hadn’t lit the way for us, I might have gotten unbelievably pissed.
On top of that, most of the walls aside from the floor were made of mirrors, which was enough to make my head spin. If I’d been standing in this space in real life, I might have developed a split personality.
After passing through the maze, we arrived at a small garden. It had definitely been a maze inside a building, yet the ceiling was wide open, showing a clear blue sky. Judging by the sun, it seemed to be daytime, but seeing as Jaesugang, who was of the Jeop-a race, didn’t get any buffs, it was probably an illusion—or something fictional.
Inside the garden, there were swarms of small trash mobs shaped like black birds, resembling the <Corpse of an Unknown Creature> we’d found during last week’s investigation quest. As soon as I got within a certain distance, several warning sounds stabbed at my eardrums, alerting me that the aggressive mobs had detected me.
I quickly charged into the cluster of trash mobs, which looked to number well over ten, and used my taunt skill. The monsters that had been just within the taunt range rushed over and began attacking me.
Normally, at this point, the tank would enter combat and be unable to use Sprint, and even if they were just trash mobs, the more monsters there were, the more damage came in. So people usually stopped around here, killed them, then moved on to the next trash pack or named enemy.
However, we were not that weak.
[Party] Jaesugang: Stand by
Jaesugang, who still had no aggro from the trash mobs and was therefore out of combat, passed by where I was. Then he hit another trash pack a little farther away from range, drew their aggro, and even used an evasion skill to quickly regroup with me. Once I took the aggro from the trash mobs Jaesugang had brought over as well, about forty black birds swarmed around me and began pecking away.
I pressed the few AoE skills I had and faithfully ran through my rotation. My sword viciously cut through the monsters, but the damage was truly pathetic. Susin damage really needed to be buffed, out of basic conscience. Even when I was in Pasin, my attack power was the lowest among the damage dealers, and when I switched to defensive stance, it got cut down by almost another half.
Recalling that tearful reality, I cheered Jaesugang on. Jaesugang’s damage was also on the level of a teaspoon, but since he could apply DoTs to multiple targets and use the Mutated Virus Extraction skill, which allowed for multi-target attacks, his mass-pull damage was far better than mine.
However, our hopeful thought process had its switch flipped off about one minute and thirty seconds after we started the pull.
[System] The black-hued aberrant life-forms have been exposed to disease for a long period of time, and through environmental adaptation, their diseases have been cured and their immunity has increased!
[Party] Jaesugang: ?
Since this was our first run, there was no way we could have known the monsters’ traits, so the sudden message left us dumbfounded. “Exposed to disease for a long period of time and adapted to the environment”? We’d pulled them all in because we were relying on Jaesugang’s disease DoTs and Extraction skill, so how could this happen?
Jaesugang must have panicked as soon as he saw the system message, because he even stopped healing me and cast DoTs on the trash mobs several times. He tried changing targets and using the same skill repeatedly, then at some point, he came to a dead stop.
[Party] Jaesugang: We’re in big trouble
[Party] Jaesugang: The DoT lands maybe once every five tries
[Party] Kkulppang: lol
And so, the historic first mass-pull hunt of the tank who would never die and the healer who would never kill came to an end, leaving behind the historic record of eight minutes and forty-nine seconds. Crazy trash game.
(mention me when the Dusk homepage maintenance ends plz) Adap Akgae @dsk_dkekadkqmtkrnla · 15 min
holy shit
holy shit
holy shit
holy shit
holy shit
holy shit
holy shit
h
s
hs
hs
hs
h
hs
Guys did anyone see J*sug*’s livestream?? ㅜ??ㅠㅠ???ㅠ?ㅠㅠ?
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RoastedChestnutTruther @vEJoeVflqpwemv · 15 min
me lol
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(mention me when the Dusk homepage maintenance ends plz) Adap Akgae @dsk_dkekadkqmtkrnla · 14 min
You saw JS-nim swear just now, right???? It wasn’t just me, right??????
KKP: I like it when you talk a lot
KKP: For real!
He saw this and went, “Ah, fuck, cute........” <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<ㅜ
ㅜ
ㅜ
ㅜㅜ
ㅜㅠㅜ
ㅜ
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RoastedChestnutTruther @vEJoeVflqpwemv · 13 min
One of the reasons I locked my account is so I can gorge myself on these two. I’m camping out for irreversible Jaeppang
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(mention me when the Dusk homepage maintenance ends plz) Adap Akgae @dsk_dkekadkqmtkrnla · 13 min
Me too, I’m irreversible Jaeppang, but as expected of Chestnut-kun,, you’ll be my mutual for life, right><~~!
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RoastedChestnutTruther @vEJoeVflqpwemv · 13 min
You’re the one who better Jae ppang for life
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find unused program
bloc_moth reboot fail. (0xc??null?)
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We finished dealing with every last mob. It was hell.
Spending just under nine minutes repeating the same damage rotation and the same defensive cooldown cycle forced me to take some time to reflect on why I had insisted on playing a tank. That was how boring, boring, and boring it had been. The monsters hadn’t only beaten up my character. They had left my sanity in absolute tatters too. This was the kind of pain even a healer couldn’t heal.
[Party] Jaesugang: We wrecked them all ㅇ0ㅇ!
No.
‘[Combat] Your sanity has been restored by Jaesugang’s cuteness effect.’
He healed everything.
Jaesugang seemed quite lively, perhaps proud that, even though it had taken a long time, we had managed to kill around forty mobs with only a tank-healer composition. I didn’t know what he was actually like, but that was how it looked from the chat with the emoticon attached.
Anyway…… the fact that Jaesugang was proud of it ultimately meant the mass-pull hunt had been pretty grueling. Considering trash sections usually took about a minute, I’d thought that even as tank-healer it would take two to three minutes, maybe four at most, but this was beyond imagination. Even killing a single named boss didn’t take this long.
[Party] Jaesugang: Why are the mobs so tough?
After savoring his pride, Jaesugang seemed to grow curious and asked for my opinion.
[Party] Jaesugang: If random matching can put people together, then it’s possible to get a composition the same as ours or similar. Did they not take that into account?
[Party] Kkulppang: Maybe they’re telling everyone to take DPS
[Party] Kkulppang: Or maybe they want people to do tank-DPS or DPS-healer comps
Now that I’d said it, it felt kind of outrageous. Wasn’t it too much to force people to pick DPS scum (*a derogatory term for damage dealers)? In a party-play game where the role division was properly established, wasn’t it a problem to force only one role?
Unlike me, who was tearing into Zero Soft in my head by myself, Jaesugang calmly began a deeper analysis.
[Party] Jaesugang: If it had been DPS-DPS, the person holding aggro would’ve died 100%. The trash damage is no joke
[Party] Jaesugang: A fully geared Susin used every defensive cooldown and even put in perfect blocks consistently, but because forty-four trash mobs were ganging up on you, you were losing 10 percent HP every second. I couldn’t deal as much damage as I thought because I was covering that
[Party] Jaesugang: At this level, aren’t they basically trash mobs from a six-man dungeon? We only barely endured and killed them because we were tank-healer. If it had been DPS-DPS, tank-DPS, or DPS-healer, even taking them one pack at a time, it definitely would’ve blown up
……Was that so? I didn’t know. I’d just been busy scraping away at the mobs with my spoon, so I hadn’t checked how much healing was coming in. Well, if Jaesugang said so, then that was probably how it was. To show that I was listening closely, I used the nodding motion.
I felt really sorry saying this to Jaesugang, a healer player, but tanks don’t really know whether the heals are coming in properly. They just think, since they’re still alive, heals must be coming in.
[Party] Jaesugang: Could we have missed something? Even considering this is a hidden dungeon, it doesn’t make sense for killing trash to be this hard.
[Party] Jaesugang: My viewers are saying that in normal dungeons, even with tank-healer, it didn’t take this long. Three minutes at most?
What?
[Party] Kkulppang: ?
[Party] Kkulppang: ??
[Party] Jaesugang: Since this is hidden, there might be some kind of different gimmick (*an enemy’s attack or behavior pattern, or the method for dealing with it)
We were the only ones taking this long? Because it was hidden? Because it was a hidden dungeon and the gimmick was concealed? Are you kidding me right now?