Chapter 330: Level 22 Dungeon

Inside the dungeon, Niall glared into the impenetrable snowstorm.

They were clearly in the Frost Giant city, but as it had been at the start of the Third Trial, not after they had bombed it to rubble during the retaliation.

"Well, that answers that, and we already know how to fight these enemies. Be careful of the frost magic, and keep your barriers up at all times, because they’ve got some serious range on those ice spikes.

They were already individually stronger than we were, so let’s pick small groups and hope for the best.

It’s a dungeon, so they’re likely arranged that way anyhow."

The rest of his team nodded, and moved into position, with the Rogue off to one side. He had stealth skills that would let him get right up close to the Frost Giants and launch devastating first strike attacks before retreating to avoid the counterattack.

That was their plan for the first few pulls of the dungeon, so they could see just how bad the power difference was.

It could be that level 22 was only fifteen percent stronger than level nineteen, going by levels. But it could also scale much more aggressively. The only way to find out was to actually fight in the dungeon, which was set up to heavily favour the Frost Giants.

Niall moved to the first group, a scout patrol of three Frost Giant warriors with no mage or shaman, and launched his attack.

Blades sunk deep into thick hides, as his [Backstab] skill activated, and the frost giant stumbled.

Then, the tank led the way for the rest of the group, and the other two Giants were too busy with the warrior to do more than defend themselves.

The group was a bit different than his usual team, as Niall usually went with three warriors and a healer, but today they had an earth mage named Keith with them, as he was level eighteen, and the strongest available mage.

The other team was even less reluctant to go. Sanchez had assembled a makeshift team out of everyone who wanted to go, including Esmeralda, Amber, the fire mage Hakim, and Kurt, one of his special forces teammates.

With the Necromancer’s horde appearing inside the dungeon, they were going to have a much easier time than most, largely because there were Frost Giant zombies in the group, and they were resistant to ice magic.

Resistant to most things, really. But that was a side effect of being a zombie.

With the advantage of numbers, the second group was moving more quickly, and the three ranged attackers made it easier for Esmeralda’s zombies to tank for them.

Their group didn’t have a dedicated tank type warrior, the Necromancer was filling that role, as well as being added damage. But she had brought her cat, and the cat had to be good luck.

At least, that was the consensus as they crushed the first few groups and headed for the Frost Giant Mage that looked like the first boss. The fights hadn’t been easy, but their healing could keep up, and the damage was more than enough for the purpose.

That was the key, Sanchez thought.

The Giants were incredibly durable, and if you let them wear you down, you’d never finish the dungeon before exhausting yourself.

But if you didn’t run into too many mages, their damage output wasn’t too high.

Esmeralda led the way to the boss as soon as Amber announced that she was back at full mana, and the mage responded with an ice storm that dealt steady damage to everyone in the group, as well as all the undead.

But they had a Saint with them, and Amber excelled at group healing.

Hakim had a [Fire Shield] that he kept up over the core group members, while focusing most of his mana on damage output, since the Giants were weak to flames, and the boss’ health was dropping fast from the first moment that Sanchez unleashed a Pulse Cannon at it.

Sure, he was burning an insane amount of energy, but it was just as efficient as any spell, and the Frost Giants didn’t have too high of a resistance to the Plasma, which was more of a fire damage attack than anything.

Honestly, Sanchez was overjoyed that the option was the frost Giants and not the insects or something nastier. If they had to deal with that in a dungeon, where the monsters were all more powerful than them, they would have been in for a very bad day.

Having the mage block the barrages of ice spikes, while the healer pushed through the ice storm’s area damage and everyone else simply went all out seemed like the best tactic.

However, Niall’s team had found another way.

If you used the [Backstab] skill to turn the boss around, it would cancel the ice storm for a moment, until the boss could cast it again. Then, the tank could use [Shield Slam] to try to either cancel or end the spell.

If they got the timing right, they barely had to deal with area damage at all.

It was just that nobody on Sanchez’s team had either of those skills, so they had to do it the hard way. But both teams made it past the first boss, to the next set of giants, which now had a Frost Giant Shaman with them, who did small amounts of healing and more ice magic attacks.

More difficult, but Niall focused on taking that one down first, as did Sanchez. Frost Giants were never weak, but the mages and Shamans couldn’t cast in heavy armour, so they were still the softer targets.

That brought them to the final boss, a Frost Giant Lord, and that was where things got dicey for Niall.

The Lord had better perception than the others, and it turned to parry his [Backstab], which put the tank’s timing off, and the whole fight lost its rhythm against the massive opponent with a blade in either hand.

In contrast, the undead were not sneaky, and the second team simply went all out with the damage until the Lord was punched full of holes, with scorched marks all over its hide.

Simple, Safe and Efficient.