A silver stream of mana shot from John’s finger. Almost immediately, it was discontinued, leaving a thin blast, about the length of a ruler, flying towards a powdery monster. It was a ghost that possessed bone dust and ash, manifesting into an oversized skull pulling a stream of raw magic and its particle components behind it. Letting out a deep screech, it dodged by quickly flying to the side.

That was when a second Blast Ray collided with the first. They joined in mid-air and became a stronger one with an adjusted trajectory. Slamming into the monster, the spell unleashed the majority of its energy as physical power. The skull was blasted apart, the powder flying in all directions and then disappearing.

‘God, I love this spell,’ he thought. It had taken him the last three days of the grinding to get a handle on it. There were several oddities and inconveniences involved with aiming fusing Arcana Rays. For Blast Rays, the first and foremost difficulty was that the speed of the attack wasn’t adjustable. If he wanted to hit an enemy at an angle, he had to commit to it from the start. There was no way to just shoot the first one, watch it miss, and then fire a second one to adjust things.

The more general drawbacks had to do with angle calculation and actually making two or more rays overlap. Since Arcana Rays were generally quite thin, colliding them was harder than one might think. Putting all of his fingers into the right positions had taken some getting used to. Even worse was the massive impact even small movements could have on the final trajectory. Luckily for John, he had steady hands and high enough Wisdom to stay calm in basically all situations. Otherwise, aiming the rays reliably, even with practice, would have been gambling on his pulse.

John walked around on the top of the stone tower and repeated the shot a moment later. The enemies, Dustskulls as they were so aptly called, were one of the three enemy varieties of the Undead Assault Instant Dungeon he was currently in the process of completing. Their wailing could be infused with magic, launching arcane attacks at people at a range. One of those attacks was only minorly threatening, but ignoring the Dustskulls meant there would soon be a lot of them. Being able to fly and keeping up high made them difficult to catch by the majority of the group. Their near immunity to magical damage, regardless of the kind, only made them more difficult to deal with.

Of their group, only Salamander, with her well-balanced Stats, and John, with Blast Ray transforming Arcana Ray into a mostly kinetic attack, and Jack, being John’s flying Extension, were well-equipped to deal with these enemies. The apocalypse elemental flew around and punched the Dustskulls apart, while John stood on top of the fortified tower they almost always erected in Assaults and sniped what he could. The monsters having highly repetitive dodge patterns made things easier.

John let his mana regenerate for a little bit and looked around the battlefield. A shuffling mass of zombies, melded together into a shape closely resembling a slug, slowly made its way towards his position. It was the base monster of this Assault, the Crawling Horde. They were slow, but there were many of them and they could take a lot of damage. Salamander took care of one of them whenever she could use her Unleash, but she alone wasn’t enough to stem the tide.

Sylph’s lightning, Gnome’s ground manipulation and Undine’s own Unleash combined to either kill the Crawling Hordes or at least push them away from their goal, being John’s position. Rather than wasting their time repeatedly hitting these damage sponges, the group had adopted a simple strategy: delay them and wait for the Combination cooldowns. Either Smlere or Shadowflame were optimal to kill the Crawling Hordes, drowning them in lava or taking advantage of the dark environment they found themselves in. It was a desolate and cold landscape, with a sky covered by thick clouds that occasionally let soft rain fall on the defiled, tombstone riddled ground.

‘Not exactly a place for a vacation,’ the Gamer thought and shot another Dustskull.

Much of their strategy hinged on Salamander, but even without her, they would have done fine. Aclysia and Beatrice whittled down the enemy numbers by descending on Crawling Hordes that got close to the tower. While Gnome’s ground manipulation wasn’t as effective as lava, it was still an effective area of effect tool.

Between the Dustskulls and the Crawling Hordes, they were pretty comfortable. It was a smoothly progressing Assault. Something they could spend six to eight hours doing and know they would get out exhausted, but victorious. Even the boss monster hardly proved an obstacle towards that ultimate goal.

John heard a couple of clicks in his ear. “Speaking of the devil,” he said to himself, looking over his shoulder. The Vision of Calamity lenses in combination with Observe allowed him to reveal the monster standing behind him. It was an undead insectoid creature, with four legs, a spider-like abdomen, a lanky torso, long arms and an oddly human-like head with way too many, way too large teeth. Perhaps the oddest part of the ghoulish monstrosity, however, was the extreme amount of dark grey hair that cascaded down to its hips.

Under the impression that it was still invisible, the monster reached up to the Gamer with its three chitin covered fingers. They were thick and sturdy, better for grabbing than slashing. The Darthspider Phaser was a monster that shifted through walls and remained invisible to reach their target. They also had a habit of making excited sounds in the very last moments before they attacked.

John let the monster believe it was still invisible, instead focusing on defeating yet another Duststkull. He had all the trust in the world that he would be safe. After all, there was an assassin standing behind his would-be assassin.

The only sound Siena caused was the surprised, pained yelp of the Darthspider Phaser when her tail burrowed its way into the monster’s back. The tip emerged from the stomach of the creature before it turned slightly translucent and phased away.

“Don’t be shy now.” The midnight elemental grinned, whipping around her tail and making purple blood splatter across the stone floor. Like her claws, the spade-shaped tip of her tail was covered with smooth crystals, sharp and ready to cut. “I’m not done with you.”

The Darthspider let out a high-pitched shout after manifesting again. The wound in its stomach was more of an inconvenience than deadly. The same would have been true for a lopped off head. This undead had enough endurance to survive many things it shouldn’t.

Siena and the monster charged at each other. They seemed equally matched. The brutal strength that boss monsters usually had, the Darthspider had exchanged for its particular gimmick. While the swipes of its arms weren’t as threatening as Siena’s claws, the fact that the creature possessed an extra pair of pointy legs allowed it to fight with four limbs against the midnight elemental’s three.

It was an exchange not of blows but of aggression between them. Two Agility based assassins, neither of them could afford to get hit, so they concentrated on dodging. There was no contact between them until Siena Unleashed. Her entire body turned into a mass of midnight blue, coalesced darkness, only interrupted by silver constellations and her intensely glowing eyes. Her Unleash, always usable and only costing her mana to sustain, boosted her speed beyond the lock they found themselves in.

Siena ducked away under a swipe of the Darthspider’s arm and rammed her tail into the weak spot under the shoulder. The arm was cleanly separated, letting Siena wind away from the retaliating strike of the other arm. Wide open on its right side, the monster could only try to hit her with one of its legs, but the spider-like things were only good for stabbing, not up-close kicking. Siena just grabbed it with her left hand, dug the claws of her right inside the hole in her opponent’s stomach she had made earlier, kept the Darthspider from moving away and then slammed her raised tail against its neck.

Also a limb better at stabbing than slashing, the impact only cut the outer layer of the monster’s carapace. Finally, the Darthspider managed to whirl its second arm around and reach Siena. The shadow spirit dropped to the ground, landed on her upper back, let the arm pass over her, then launched herself upwards feet first. A high heel slammed into the opened neck. Siena’s momentum made the Darthspider topple over backwards. It hit the ground with the back of its head, only for Siena to stand over it and ram her second high heel into the functioning arm.

From there, it was just a bunch of tail stabbings to assure the death of the monster.

___________________________________________________________________

‘Good progress,’ John thought and rolled his neck. He had run six Assaults during the last three days, giving him about 3 levels, and Experience of Love had gotten him another 1 ½. That did give him another Class Level to spend, but John hadn’t gotten to that yet. ‘I think I can find the time to get a single Class level done… somewhere…’

He wasn’t especially convinced of that.

“I’m back,” he announced his entry into the house. The rest of the harem, even the most productive members of it, were just lazing around in the living room. “Everyone ready to sleep one more time and get out of here?” he asked.

“No, let’s stay for another three weeks,” Rave responded flippantly. “Don’t wanna deal with all of the stuff going on outside.”

“Can’t exactly blame you, but it shouldn’t be too bad,” John said, getting naked as soon as Aclysia had closed the door behind him and the rest of the usual grinding party. “We didn’t get any emergency calls, so whatever is going on, it’s not outside of protocol.” He rubbed his neck for a couple of seconds, then the weaponized maid was behind him and moved him towards one of the armchairs. Her own hands replaced his and he let out a relaxed sigh. “I’ll still have to deal with the potential Lorylim threat in some fashion. Lydia?”

“Yes, my love?” The queen looked up from the book she was reading.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a compendium over Lorylim knowledge, right?”

“If such a book were to exist, I would simultaneously cherish its existence and lock it within the deepest depths of Rex Germaniae’s secret chambers,” Lydia responded. “What knowledge do you seek?”

“Primarily I wonder if there are any ways to identify a Lorylim spy or host outside of lunacy and their bodies liquefying,” John told her. “Usually, when those two come into play, it’s already too late. I would run experiments, but it’s not like the Lorylim would just hand me a specimen to send to the Apothecaries.”

“That is partly incorrect,” Lydia pointed out.

“What do you mean?” John asked.

“You have access to at least three specimens.”

John cocked his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “I still don’t get it… but I feel like I should…”

Lydia gave him a worried glance. “Yourself, John. You, Undine and Salamander. All three of you were touched by the Lorylim to varying degrees. Did it not occur to you to ever research the effects of that?” Sitting upright, the queen’s glance transformed into a demanding stare. “Stop scratching your arm.”

John looked down to where he was currently working on the red Lorylim scar with his fingernails. The skin was reddened by the intensity he had worked on himself with. “…No, it never occured to me,” he mumbled, doing as he was told. The itching on his bone stopped at the same time. “Why did that never occur to me?”

“You should visit an Apothecary,” Lydia told him.

John made an unwilling grimace, but nodded. “I’ll see if I can get Meddelnick to check on me.” The eunuch was one of the few, if not the only, Apothecary John could get along with. He was simple, to the point and kept to the objective facts. He gave John everything he wanted out of an Apothecary, primarily because the visits were as short as they could be. ‘There is definitely something weird going on with me… for how long though?’ he asked himself.

The answer would hopefully be found in the hospital. For now, whatever had been happening with him, it wasn’t a strong enough influence to ruin his last few hours he had in peace with his harem. To conclude the grinding, he cast Observe on his girls, particularly those he hadn’t paid too much attention during the rest of this double-length session.

And, of course, Stirwin deserved to be checked on as well.