Chapter 379 - Good Choice
Irina's bodyguards armed the tent a few kilometers away from the dungeon, and Irina stayed inside the whole day. At least it looked like she was doing her job seriously since the bodyguards remained outside the entire time. Regardless, Ryan decided to think of some ways to solve the situation on his own. While Irina was the self-proclaimed leader of the operation, she was yet to learn that Ryan doesn't follow the orders of those who only have their own interests in mind.
"The bosses are the problem," Ryan declared. "If we can take them out of the picture early on, even against that massive army, we might stand a chance."
"I have a hard time believing in that," Natasha said. "Even if you use your golems, they will be just overwhelmed by the sheer numbers."
"That is fine, we can kite the monsters as much as we want since there is no camps nearby this place," Ryan said. "We should focus here on eliminating the monsters no matter what because the larger their numbers, the faster they can level up and we can't let them reach the max level."
Ryan had explained to Natasha what might happen when the dungeons reach level one thousand. While she was having a hard time believing that the demons of the myths and other crazy creatures will be able to unleash hell on Earth even more than they already did, she was fully aware that Ryan wouldn't be traveling around for no good reason. While he was weird, he wasn't insane. Someone insane wouldn't tolerate the mad behavior of Irina and probably wouldn't be able to survive alone for this long.
In any case, Ryan had some ideas, but neither of them was particularly amazing. He wasn't a master tactician, so the best he could do was to come up with small plans that will increase his chances in a fight little by little. However, several of those small plans might become a massive advantage later… for now, all the plans that Ryan had involved Natasha.
"What? It is weird when you start to stare at me all of a sudden," Natasha said. "I thought my charms have no effect on you or that the end of the world made me look less appealing."
"The hell are you talking about… You still have a lot of coins with you, right?" Ryan asked.
"We will need to increase your firepower. While I can teach you some skills, I can see that you don't have some essential ones. Those are hard to teach, so you will have to buy them."
"There is no dungeon nearby, so…" Natasha said.
"I have access to the dungeon shops wherever I go," Ryan said. "Regardless, to become a little more like me, you will need Active Spiritual Recovery, Bleed, and Improved Concentration. Those skills will cost you 750.000 coins."
"Is that really a good idea to spend so many coins in skills that will be at a low-level and I barely will be able to level up in a few days?" Natasha frowned.
"You won't level them up all that much, but once the fight starts, you will have plenty of chances for that," Ryan replied. "The last skill you will need is Firing Posture. I can teach you that."
"I need to apologize," Natasha said. "I thought you were a much colder person who wouldn't help others and left your home country without thinking twice."
"Don't get all sentimental on me," Ryan said. "I am just doing this because it is necessary. No matter what, I don't want to leave those mother fuckers running around on my planet. That is why I am teaching you some useful skills, let's just hope you won't disappoint me."
There were other skills Ryan could teach, but in the end, he would be revealing too much information about himself by teaching Natasha too many skills. As far as he was concerned, Natasha wasn't a bad person per se, but no one could tell what someone might become once that someone becomes much more powerful than the others.
After Ryan helped Natasha with those skills, he began to think about what else he should do. Natasha needed a better weapon, but Ryan couldn't create a useful magic item by using the wasps and cocoons' souls. Then he had a certain idea… could he create magic items by using the souls of his summoned monsters? Actually… he could.
Heavy Crossbow (Earth) (+4)
Effect: fire bolts at the cost of fifteen points of mana that might stun your foes based on their level of mentality and willpower.
Dexterity + 98, Intelligence + 42
Durability: 65/65
Ryan used the soul of a golem… to think that even they had souls… Regardless, that weapon would be highly effective at stopping the swarms of monsters. Ryan made two more of those and then offered those two to Natasha.
"I can sell you those for one hundred thousand coins," Ryan said. "How about it?"
Natasha saw Ryan easily creating magic items, and she couldn't help but be stunned by it. Not to mention, they were two times better than her current crossbow… it was insane to think that someone had the skills to create magic items that could easily cost fifty thousand coins.
"I will buy them," Natasha said.
"Good Choice," Ryan said.
The bosses didn't have high resistance against earth magic, but Ryan didn't want to use two crossbows of the same attribute. Besides, it wasn't like he would be able to stun them easily. While Natasha was using her new crossbow and training her unique skills, Ryan decided to think of a few more ideas to increase their chances of victory, and much to his surprise, it looked like Femradiel had been thinking about the same thing.
"You ignored the magic bow skill until now due to its cost, but that skill would be really useful right now," Femradiel said.
Ryan nodded when he heard that… he didn't think of that before, but it wouldn't be awesome if he could create all his crossbows with that spell and use all of those effects at the same time? It was a pretty exciting idea… that would cost him lots of mana.