ALL NOVEL Chapter 53: The Pets
With the guild reinforcements having arrived, Maria was finally able to catch a break. The tanks quickly moved in front to block the monster and began pulling aggro away from her.
She's been at it for almost 2 hours now and it was taking a toll on her. The girl was relieved that she could finally stop and rest for a bit.
Maria landed on the ground and just sat there, resting on top of a rock. Amanda walked up next to her and apologized.
"Hey Mary, sorry for the wait, we got here as fast as we could."
"Ahaha~ it's nothing. If anything, it's sorta my fault. I didn't think the boss would be so hard!"
"Well, most area bosses are like that. Some are weaker when you have less people fighting, while others require more people to bring it down. This would be a prime example of a monster that you can't possibly solo."
"Hm~ this game isn't all too single-player friendly, is it?"
Amanda laughed at her words and continued, "The game company made it fair for all aspects of gameplay. If every boss could be soloed, it wouldn't be much of an MMO now would it?"
"Good point there~"
"Master, are we going to wait around here, or are we attacking?" Lilah quipped up from the side.
Amanda leaned in closer to observe the small fellow. "Wow, so this is your pet, Mary?"
"She's my familiar! I don't like that word pet, it just doesn't suit Lilah!"
"Ahh, I see. Since she has sentience, a 'pet' wouldn't be appropriate. Well, this little fellow here is my pet."
Amanda said as she did a gesture and a large magic formation formed just behind her. It began glowing and out popped a large 3 meter large lion...with wings.
"His name's Leo."
"A Winged Lion?"
"Yep~"
"How is this guy SMALL?!" Maria exclaimed as she began to curiously circle around the large monster. She was 'oohing' and 'aahing' while occasionally petting the large creature. She especially loved to stroke the large mane of the lion.
Amanda smiled wryly looking at her friend's lack of fear for her pet. Most of the people that she showed her pet to would at first be a little afraid of it before finally knowing that it was quite docile and aloof while out of combat.
"He was an adorable little kitty a while ago, but when he hit level 50 and evolved, he turned into a big guy!"
"Aww, I wish I could have seen him when he was smaller~"
"Well, that's what you get for trapping yourself in another one of your odd quests."
"Pui, this is Paipai's fault!"
Back at the Magic Tower in Enoch City, Paimon who was busy writing down notes to his research suddenly sneezed and toppled over the ink pot next to him. All the ink spilled onto the document he was currently working on.
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"
He quickly did all he could to salvage what could be saved, but most of the documents were ruined.
"Ah crap... great, just great! Now I have to do it all over again!" Paimon cried out in frustration.
After Maria had her fill of petting the large cat, she quickly turned her attention back to the battlefield. There were 2 other pets roaming around the battlefield dishing out attacks or giving support buffs to everyone.
She saw an eagle flitting around the battlefield and sending gusts of wind at the Abyssal Golem. There was also a butterfly flying around the backlines constantly showering some sort of yellow powder onto the priests and mages.
From the side, Amanda immediately began talking.
"The bird is a Black Wind Eagle, its Milly's and she named it Horus. It's an attack type pet like my own. The butterfly is actually Zack's pet—"
"The butterfly? Ahahaha~ that just doesn't suit him!" Maria laughed as she heard this.
"Well, that's true if you're talking about aesthetic purposes, but in a gamer's perspective, that butterfly is pretty suitable for him."
"Hm?"
"It's an Illusion Butterfly that he named Ae, an auxiliary-type pet. It enhances stealth related skills and it even has a skill that breaks invisibility. See that yellow powder it's spreading across the backlines? It's called [Illumination Powder]. It reveals and shocks players who are cloaked, invisible, or are in stealth for a short instant."
"Oh! So it's a good counter for those Thief class players!"
"Yup and right now, we're raiding a boss for the first clear, we don't want any other guild or poachers coming over to try and steal the achievement away from us."
"Poachers?"
"They're a group of players or just a solo player that steal monsters away from other people. Basically, they're unscrupulous bastards that try to steal the hard work of other players for themselves."
"Uwah, that's bad!"
"It sure is! Remember to not do something like that, okay Mary? That kind of behavior is frowned down upon! Of course, no one can stop you from doing so, but at least think with your conscience about whether or not what you're doing is right or wrong!"
"Don't worry about me, Amanda~ I wouldn't do something so horrible like stealing other players' hard work!"
That one time when she killed the wolf area boss after that party of unfortunate players were wiped out did not count. At least that's what she rationalized in her mind to alleviate a little bit of the guilt she felt when Amanda began hating on those 'poachers.'
'I'm not one, no way! That time didn't count! Those people had already died and I just killed it on my own. Yup, I'm no poacher, hmhm~'
"Master...didn't we do—"
"No Lilah, we did nothing of the sort! That did NOT count."
"But..."
"They died first and we killed it, so it did NOT count!"
"Well, if you say so Master..."
Amanda tilted her head in confusion at her friend's discussion with her 'familiar'.
"By the way, where is Lizzy's pet?"
"Lizzy's? Oh, you see that armor she's wearing?"
"That black skeletal armor with all those demonic skull decorations? It's really cool!"
"C-cool, you say? More like frightening! That armor is her pet."
"Eh?"
"Her pet is a Living Armor and just like you, she doesn't call it her pet, but instead her 'partner'."
"Oohh~ Lizzy's partner is so cool!"
"She named it Styx. Lizzy could have it fight on its own, but the big guy is a little slow. She grew frustrated at one point and suddenly had the bright idea to just wear him instead."
"Hohoho~ that's so cool!"
"And smart too. Styx can adjust his size to fit appropriately onto Lizzy. It has its own health and defense so it's like Lizzy has a secondary health bar, it's so ingenious."
"So that means her partner's health is pretty high?"
"Living Armor has innately high HP, DEF, and M.DEF. What it lacks is SPD, AGI, and M.ATK. It has a pretty high ATK stat, but it's not gonna be of use if it's so slow and keeps on missing its attacks, but luckily for Lizzy, her partner actually acquired a skill called [Synergy] very early on that lets it share a portion of its stats with Lizzy whenever she has it equipped."
"Wow! That's so cool!"
Maria was in total awe of her friend's awesome pet. She turned to look at Lilah, but noticed that Lilah herself was pretty unique as well. Up until now, she was the only pet who had enough intelligence to be able to actually communicate with its owner verbally.
"But my Lilah is also pretty cool too! She can talk, has many debuffs and even provides a Mana Regen Aura!"
"Ah! So that's what this [Faerie Aura] buff that I keep seeing on my HUD! 12% Mana Regen...that's pretty overpowered. No wonder you never seem to be running out of mana, Mary."
"Yup, and it's all thanks to her!" Maria declared proudly.
On the side, Lilah was pushing her chest out at her master's praise. She immediately flew forwards and once more cast [Faerie Fire] and [Faerie Spark] onto the boss.
Exclamations of amazement began to spread across the entire battlefield in the next moment.
"Woah! W-what's with these debuffs?! My damage is shooting through the roof!"
"Guild Master! Are you seeing this?! The golem's DEF and M.DEF have been lowered!"
"I see it! Ya'll better thank my friend for this! Let's hurry up and take it down! Let's settle this before any other guild tries to interfere!"
"OUH!"
"YEAH!"
With the boss' HP plummeting down even faster than before, all of Fallen Angels' members attacked the monster with renewed vigor. Multiple skills and spells rained down on the boss.
The monster roared out in anger at the attacks and it was constantly stumbling around. It couldn't even properly attack anyone and could only randomly rupture the earth with its skill and randomly send magic spells everywhere around it.
It had entered a stage where aggro was no longer affecting it, but that didn't matter. With how random and un-concentrated its attacks were, the tanks were able to maneuver around and tank its attacks, while the mages dealt with the randomly flying magic spells with their [M.Barriers].
From what Maria could see from the back, the fight seemed to have been decided, it was the Fallen Angels' win.