Bloodlines Online

Since he had seen these large gaps in the swamp’s tree growth he figured it would be the ideal place to corner a lot of creatures for mass culling.

He began to rain down frenzy bombs while observing the forest, he wanted to find other creatures capable of flight so that he could remove any dangers to himself.

The notifications of the mass consuming of enemies was beginning to annoy him so he muted them, he could check his stats after the dungeon anyway.

He eventually turned to look at the clearing and when he saw how many creatures remained he simply began to cast the frenzy star.

’I can’t be bothered to deal with those damned creatures.’

As he was about to release the spell he suddenly heard a screaming voice from below.

When he looked down he saw the devil Astra flying into the air towards him.

”Oh it’s just you...”

”STOP IT, YOU’RE GOING TO KILL US!”

He frowned when he heard this and looked down.

It took a moment but at the edge of the clearing he saw two demon women, the third he could not find however.

”Hey where’s the other one?”

This seemed to enrage astra and she summoned a ball of fire.

”You... Maichekson! You are the one that killed her!”

’What the hell is a maichekson?’

”How did I kill her? I don’t remember attacking her.”

”YOUR FLAMES YOU STUPID MAICHEKSON!”

He looks down and nods.

”Oh I see now, yeah that makes more sense. Let me wipe outthose creatures and then I can go down there and handle the flames so no one else gets hurt.”

This seemed to make her settle down and the frenzy star he had been carefully controlling with his autonomous mind was allowed to fall.

The projectile plummeted into the horde of creatures and rapidly spread as the shrapnel layers were burst open.

He used his frenzy wing spell to take out the rest while the crowd was thinned.

When everything he could see had been killed he began to descend, he saw more movement however and unleashed another barrage of frenzy bombs.

The falling projectiles shredded through the creatures and he did not stop until he saw no more movement, he would not have seen any either way as the area was smothered in shadowfire now but he could certainly unleash his power again.

He would keep doing so until every last enemy on the ground was slain.

”Those are psycho ants, they will keep showing up until they all die but you cannot kill them without destroying their nest.”

”Oh? Where’s the nest then?”

She pointed at the singular tree in the clearing and suddenly he had a moment of clarity.

He flew high into the air and spotted what had previously looked like a strange grouping of trees before but when he had noticed these trees matched those in other clearings he didn’t think of them anymore.

Now he saw that these trees were much larger and had seemingly grew into their own grove.

’I have a hunch... the boss is an ant in those trees.’

Once he felt more confident he began to descend, his boots touched the ground in front of the two demonesses and he spoke up.

”I’m very sorry for your friend, I didn’t think the flames were dangerous enough to kill anyone but the creatures, they are easy to kill because they lack intelligence.”

He was trying to be as sincere as he could about his apology for killing their friend.

”When we leave here I’ll apologize as soon as I see her of course!”

Astra had her mouth open and was clearly getting ready to tell him something but the demoness who had spoken up for him during her first rant interrupted her.

”That is acceptable but the main one you must apologize to is our mate, he will overreact when he hears about her temporary death in the dungeon.”

He nodded in response and pointed in the direction of the tree grove.

”So that big group of trees those ants live in, that’s where the boss is right?”

The demoness that defended him the most had chosen to speak up this time.

”No? Of course not, fighting psycho ants is not worth the effort because they have high magical and physical resistance.”

”No one tries to go into the main nest, it’s a death sentence.”

”Then where the hell is the boss?”

”The boss is in a lake of poison, the dungeon places you in a random point so we have to look for landmarks that have been recorded.”

As he heard this he began to dispel the shadowfire at the edge of the clearing.

”Get to the rest of the area, it should have finished burning everything organic so the only remaining things would be traps and creatures that got lucky in their path.”

The three leave and he returns to the sky.

His mastery of his flight skill had grown to be almost second nature, a single flap of his wings was enough to launch him into the air.

He glides until he was above the tree and got ready to take out his next targets, the psycho ants.

With the frenzy wing spell ready he began to rain hell upon the tree.

When he started to attack the tree he immediately noticed that this one was far more resilient than the others, the needles stuck into the wood and only harmed the surface while the damage over time effect spread across it.

The bark seemed to have some damage resistance but he saw that the more he shredded the bark away the less damage he could deal.

The inner wood was more resistant to damage than the bark!

’I wonder if anyone ever tries to use wood like that for construction?... Actually it might be a nightmare to work with.’

Through the whole attack on the tree he noticed that the ants swarmed out of it, holes in the ground, gaps in the trunk.

The closer he got the more he realized that the tree was less of one giant trunk and more like a bundle of them which had gaps inside of it.

The tree itself was as large as a redwood and even before he reached the treetops of the swamp he had the ant infested tree in his sights.

From the top of the tree he saw a swarm rushing up the branches to the sky, he kept his distance but then one of them lept into the sky like a grasshopper.

’Shit!’

He binked backwards and saw the ant plummet to the ground but others were leaping at him and they had some range.

He began to bombard the tree while blinking away from the ants that lept at him, he saw the ants tanking the frenzy bombs but damage was showing.

He had a good idea suddenly and flew high into the sky to prevent the ants from getting to him then he started to drop bombs on the tree in multiple casts.

If he simply let the damage over time kill the ants while he destroyed the tree then he would start absorbing stats from the ants he consumes.

There were probably thousands of ants in the tree and if he consumed even one percent on them he would be gaining the stats of hundreds of powerful enemies.

’The growth may be slow compared to basic leveling but it’s still free stats!’

At a certain point he had realized that his bonus stats were operating in a strange way, the bonus from the gear would apply to the stats secondary effects but their primary effects did not get affected.

For example.

The intelligence stat increased his mana as a primary effect now but the secondary effect gave him increased experience gain for skills and his level.

The fact that he had +25% to all stats right now meant that the total stats would be increased for his secondary effects.

What shocked him about how stats were handled was the fact that the stats he stole from enemies were actually applying to his base stats!

The only reason he figured this out was by watching his damage as well as looking at his health, stamina and mana.

Damage was the easiest to understand.

His base intelligence was the stat that handled everything, then the gear bonus was applied to make his total increase by 25% and finally the stats he got from his consumption of enemies got added to this total.

This was the number used for every other bonus to his damage that he received.

Eventually he would have stats that would rival a martial player.

A mage being able to overpower a warrior or a barbarian makes no sense but he was practically cheating due to his elemental affinity.

He may be weak compared to the npcs that had existed for a long time but with players he would probably be the strongest in the server.