Risen World

Chapter 148: The First Time in a Town Dungeon Final

Joshua looked at the cat that was now rubbing its head along Lilly's stomach while purring and it was hard to tell if this was the same creature that was just previously trying to tear Tank apart. While paying attention to the cat Joshua felt a surge of strength poor into him letting him know that Cinder had finished off the final creature in the room. He was already on the verge of leveling once again so it came as no surprise to him that the monster room had pushed him over the edge.

When the feeling of new strength finally stopped he turned back to the cat like creature and observed it to see what details he could find out about it from the system. It was surprisingly already level thirty-nine which put it ahead of everyone in the group at this point. It was simply called Shadow Cat which Joshua was certain wouldn't be the name going forward Judging by Lilly's sense of naming. It had four stars by its name signaling that it was keeping up with its potential fairly well, even if it wasn't quite boss level at the moment. "Well what are you going to name it?" Joshua asked.

"It's a her not an it, so I'll be naming her." Lilly started to say, but Joshua instantly interrupted her.

"No cat puns!" He nearly shouted surprising the rest of the group. "Please no cat puns, I couldn't stand dealing with that all the time."

Lilly looked at him with a frown before replying. "So no Clawdia then, that's a shame. Then how about something like" Lilly trailed off for a minute before she snapped her fingers as if she had thought of the perfect name in the end. "I'll name you Jade because of your bright green eyes. It seems fitting."

Joshua was shocked at the fact that she had actually given the cat a rather normal name instead of the weird ones she had been doing so far. Well at least it actually got a name unlike the poor lizard. That thing wasn't going to be getting any preferential treatment any time soon. "Well then what are its stats and abilities like. I highly doubt we got to see everything in the short time we were fighting it. I caught it before it could show off to much." Lilly nodded at Joshua's question before bringing up Jade's skills and sending them over to him through the party chat.

[Jade (Variant Shadow Cat (Child)): A beast that lives in the shadows and grows stronger from them. This variant unlike its counter parts can move through shadows and has a far higher level of evolution in the future.

Abilities:

Shadow travel (Passive): This ability allows Jade to pass in and out of any shadows in the area. While inside a shadow the user is untargetable by everything, but light magic that directly effects the shadow. While traveling through shadows Jade is twice as fast and her figure becomes extremely blurry if out in the open.

Shadow Possession (Active): This skill allows Jade to either jump into the shadow of one of her allies or one of her enemies. While in the shadow she will either boost the strengths of the person she's possessing by twenty percent of all stats or she will impair the person whose shadow she's in by twenty percent. While in the shadow she can use other skills along with her tails to either attack her enemy or defend her allies. This ability drains Jade's mana when used on an enemy, but not when used on an ally.

Shadow Ride (Active): This skill allows her to bring someone else along with her when she travels through the shadows. This skill has a fairly long cool down of five minutes since only shadow creatures can stay in shadows for long stretches of time.

Tail transformations (Active): This ability uses mana from Jade, and it allows her to change the shape of the protrusions on her tails. It also allows her to elongate her tails to increase her reach. She can use this skill from within someone's shadow and either use it to protect and fight alongside them, or attack them from close by without being able to be attacked.

Magic Coating (Active): This ability allows Jade to coat the weapons she forms on the end of her tail with magical energy that gives her attacks magical properties and makes them deal far more damage. It can also be used to fire projectile like attacks but these drain even more mana than just coating the tails themselves.]

After reading through all of the abilities Joshua got a pretty good idea of what Jades skill set was designed for. For the most part she was a support type, but one that could deal some damage on its own while boosting the power of one of its allies or crippling one of their enemies. There was a lot of ways that they could use Jade's abilities and Joshua was looking forward to checking out how well they would work together in battle.

When Joshua finished reading through her abilities he also checked her stats and found out that for the most part she had high magic oriented stats along with a fairly high dexterity. Her other physical stats for the most part were on the lower side which proved that she wasn't much of a direct fighter like Tank and Cinder. Although if Lilly did synchronize with Jade she'd have the perfect stats for a magic user if she wanted to use spells to attack from afar. "Well she is definitely rather interesting. She should come in handy going forward. For now just let her help you out until we get more use to using all of her abilities. Testing them out on the upcoming boss fight, might not be the best idea the first time around." Joshua explained before turning his attention towards the treasure chest at the back of the room.

He walked over and opened the chest after inspecting it and smiled a bit at what he saw before a look of confusion crossed his face. Inside the treasure chest there was a tomb that looked like a spell book. When he read the title to it he instantly knew which skill it granted and it was a flame based spell known as inferno which was a wide area spell that did high level fire damage. It was a powerful spell, but the drawback of course was the amount of mana it cost and the amount of time it took to cast. The spell was completely useless to Joshua and Lilly gained all her flame magic from whenever she was synchronized to Cinder so it was fairly useless to her as well. The only thing that could change that would be if either of them got a second job in the future that dealt with magic, but Joshua knew if that was something that were to happen it was still a ways off, so wasting it now would be pointless.

There was one person that the spell would be perfect for and that person was Julia. This spell was exactly what she needed to be of even more useful for their group, a wide area spell that was in the field of flame magic. What confused Joshua was the question of why the dungeon was constantly giving them gear that was perfect for Jayce's group instead of themselves. He just put that thought to the back of his mind and putt the spell book and the other random materials in his inventory. He'd give it to Julia the next time they met, and he imagined that wouldn't be too far in the future if all things went well.

Now that they had taken care of everything in the dungeon Joshua started to lead his group towards the boss room. He watched as Jade jumped into Lilly's shadow which was a bit fascinating since you couldn't even tell she was there afterwards. Soon they made it back to the split and turned the corner that lead to the big boss room where Joshua could sense only one presence on the other side of the door. He had a good feeling that the boss up ahead wasn't going to be all that challenging in the end based off of how the rest of the dungeon had gone up to this point. Luckily the double experience boost for their first time through was truly making it more than worth their while, not to mention finding Jade in the dungeon as well.

At this point both Joshua and Lilly had already reached level thirty eight in just a couple of days of clearing the town of haze and taking down most of the dungeon. He was certain that the main reason for this was the fact that they were constantly fighting creatures above their level unlike most groups, and Joshua was going to keep that dynamic going even when they joined up with Adrian's group. He took a deep breath as he pushed those thoughts aside and opened the door which lead to a small arena sized room that was about three stories tall. It wasn't spacious enough for Tank or Cinder to grow in size very much, but it also meant that the boss was on the smaller side as well.

When Joshua moved his eyes to the creature at the center of the room he was actually a bit disappointed at seeing what was basically a smaller sized version of the haze boss from the town. It wasn't exactly the same as the haze creature since it actually looked like a full on cat instead of a purple imitation of one, but it still had the same basic body shape. The only glaring difference was the fact that it had three tails each with a scythe like protrusion at the end of them. When Joshua observed it he immediately figured out that it was a five star creature of level forty, but Joshua just didn't get the same feeling of dread he had gotten from the haze monster from this creature. The fact that Lilly was shaking her head when she observed it told him that the thing didn't have potential left, but she wouldn't have been able to tame it anyways since it was technically considered a boss creature.

Not wanting to drag his time in the dungeon out and lesson his reward Joshua decided this time around he was going to make quick work of this creature. The moment they all stepped fully into the room Tank charged forward towards the large cat which looked affronted at the action. The boss immediately pounced towards him, but that was probably a dumb move. Sadly it was a simple creature in a system dungeon which meant for the most part it was going to be basic and rely completely on its stats to fight. It was a certainty for the group that this boss didn't have much intelligence as all of the scythe's on its tail didn't aim for the exposed parts of Tank, but instead went straight for the shell.

Tank smiled as they bounced right off before smashing into the large cat and knocking it over. It was clear which creature was stronger after the short exchange. Before it could even get back up Cinder leaped over and bit its neck injecting it with poison and causing it to scream in pain. The creature swung its tails at her, but Cinder backed away causing the cats flailing to miss. The entire time this was happening Joshua had snuck up behind it with a simple blink skill. He immediately coated his scale blade in aura before channeling a powerful combination of aura blast into it along with energy slash which focused all of the aura into a sharpened slash. He then tore straight through all of its tails with the following attack and immediately took away the creature's obvious strength.

From that point on the victory had already been decided and Tank had pinned the creature down while tearing into it. Cinder on the other hand simply watched as her poison took effect and caused the large cat to scream in pain as blood started to pool in its mouth. Its screams became more muffled as it slowly died from the combined assault. With that the dungeon was over and Joshua was just glad to see what reward he would get along with the town that was to be his first territory.