Chapter 176 - 176 Stone Giants

Cain turns on and prepares his interface for this dungeon, something he's never done before. The health and mana globes appear in the bottom corners of his vision, party member status down the left side, almost in his peripheral, Summon details hidden, and a spot for active buffs high and centered in his line of sight. That should let him know how Might of Many and the attack power bonus from his spear are doing. 

The final part is to turn off titles and Guild tags and turn on detailed life bars. They hover over everyone's head and show health and mana levels. That should be enough to see at a glance that everyone is safe. Now save that as a preset so it comes up the same way every time he enters an instance, but returns to normal when he exits. No need to know if random people in the street are mildly injured or low on mana. But seeing their name, title and Guild tag is important sometimes. 

"Call out if a Summon goes down. Everyone follow me in." Cain says, stepping through the entrance. 

On arrival he is immediately attacked by a pair of Stone Giants guarding the entry, huge gray hands swinging stone clubs at his head. That's a bad spot for clubs to be landing, especially with others coming behind him, so Cain activates [Cloud Dancing] and gracefully leaps behind the giants to attack their backs. 

It has the desired effect of turning them away from the entry, and does a surprising amount of damage, taking a quarter of their health in a few seconds. Cain also sees a buff active. [Might of Many] but he's the only one here so far, so it must count the extra damage from merged summons as Summon damage, increasing his attacks lethality with every strike.

The first giant is almost dead when the rest of the group enters, and the second drops almost immediately after to the combined attack power of the summons. 

"Notifications, so many of them. And closing them opens more." Symbia wails and Misha laughs. 

"The next pull is six of them, all elite." Misha says, pointing at the group to explain her amusement. Symbia is going to get it bad right from the start. 

The dungeon looks to be placed in the badlands. The steep cliffs of rocky outcrops and plateaus surround them at irregular intervals, with very few trees and yellowed sun scorched grass. They've entered into one of the ravines, so it's not beating directly on them, thankfully, but it is almost desert afternoon hot in here. 

They move out in their usual formation, but with a few changes from the usual. Wrath Bringers and Snapping Turtles are in the front, softer summons behind with the Drakes and Dragons airborne. Cain is now in front with the tanks and the merged Lord of Decay has taken a defensive positron in front of the other transfers, a huge club that looks like a rotten log in hand. 

From the front you can barely tell the others are even present, the disgusting Demon is just that wide. 

Even merged four to one, there's still a lot of summons in this dungeon, greatly outnumbering the groups they're about to fight. Cain hopes that makes up for any level based weakness, but like this they should actually be stronger than their opponents. 

The tanks attack the elite giants and the giants are shredded in seconds, Might of Many stacking up in a hurry. Cain leads the charge, Cloud Dancing still active, as the buffs he's getting regenerate mana faster than he's using it. His strikes are taking large chunks out of his target's health now, and the area effect and Pestilence are steadily burning down the others, even without considering the Summoned army. 

Then the Five Tiger Spear procs the damage increase effect and the remaining giants simply die under the next wave of attacks. Cain continues moving, leading his forces at a fast walk through the dungeon, wiping out the initial groups of giants. 

"Did we get the wrong dungeon? I don't recall this being something a level 106 can simply jog through twirling a spear." Carlos asks rhetorically. 

"It's 107 now, this level gap bonus is insane." Cain jokes, an arcing swing of his Scimitar removing a giant's head. 

"Keeping everything healed is rough though. Cain mostly parries, but anything they hit, they hit hard." Kone sighs, sending out more heals as the Turtles pull in another group to fight. They recover ten percent of their health a second, the damage must be just unreal to a regular group their level, likely killing someone with every other hit.

A giant Boulder flies past Cain towards the group before he can even shout a heads up, but with a resounding Crack it comes streaking back at his head. Cain dodges the rock, which strikes a giant in the chest, and looks back. 

The Lord of Decay is turned sideways, club up like a baseball player and simply shrugs at Cain before smashing another Boulder back towards the giants. 

Who knew Plague Demons were good at baseball? 

After that group is eliminated they find themselves facing the first boss of the dungeon. An extremely large Granite Elemental with six smaller Earth Elementals. 

"Hold up, I've got a bad feeling about those Elementals. See how they've got their hands on the ground? I'm thinking they're going to start the fight with earth spikes." Carlos tells the group. 

"I'll go first, gotta keep the buffs up. Stay back and out of sight." Cain agrees, running on air towards the boss. 

Carlos was right, the second Cain enters their range, spikes begin to shoot up from the ground in waves. 

"Lava dance, do the lava dance." Cain sings a song from a video game meme in his past life to himself as he dodges spikes, chopping into the nearest Elemental. Might of Many has begun to face from the delay, but the buff from the spear is long lasting. A tenth of the smaller Elementals life fades in one strike and Cain calls for the majority of his summons to advance, leaving the Companions to guard the humans.

Or, well mortals. Since neither Kone or Carlos are technically human. His species is Vampire, which looks human, but might not have been, since it gets its own designation by the system. 

The waves of spikes start overlapping each other as the Elementals go berserk due to the influx of attackers. Keeping the squishy ones away was a good call. At best they'd be doing nothing but running. That Granite Elemental is not taking much damage though, so Cain inspects it and discoverers that it has no debuffs on it. No Cripple, Pestilence, armor reduction, stun, poison, bound, nothing at all. 

The earth Elementals weren't as lucky, Cain's Dread Spider bodyguard has tightly wrapped one in a cocoon while it and one of the Wrath Bringers repeatedly Stab the Elemental in the face. That's not actually a vital point, but they look like they're having fun. Even the Wasps have given up on the boss, stinging the Earth Elementals instead. They're immune to poison, but most of the other effects still work on them. 

Cain makes sure both of these variants are recorded, that status effect immune boss especially, while the summons have learned the system to the spikes. They won't appear too close to one of the boss monsters, so the Lamia have wrapped the Earth Elementals up, to attack their heads and upper torso, and the others are standing close to the Granite Golem, despite the damage they're taking from its stomping and crushing fists. 

The smaller ones are almost dead, but even with the majority of damage being leveled at it, the big boss is still over 80 percent health. That Granite Golem just does not want to die.

It doesn't seem to have a weakness though. 

Certainly not physical attacks, or Water. It's also not poison or dark magic. Maybe Fire? Cain swaps the Plague Mages he's using for Sorcerers to Fire Elementals, as the system considers them and their icy cousins a mage type creature. They're doing more than the Plague Mages were, but the boss is immune to the burning effect, so it's still not perfect.

The change should make Misha happy though. Cripple is an invisible effect, but burning is not, and she loves setting things on fire. Besides, Cain still has [Cripple] from the remaining Oath Breaker available. 

"Carlos, any idea how to kill this thing?" Cain calls out. 

"Slowly? Most mining groups stop here and mine the entrance, because that thing just won't die. It's immune to pretty much everything. This is the fastest I've seen a group deal with it, he's usually a two hour long fight."

Compared to the giants, it does very little damage though. It hits hard due to the level difference, but most of the damage was coming from the now deceased Earth Elementals. 

Thirty Four minutes. That's how long it took the group to hack that stupid Granite Golem to death, and it didn't even drop anything decent, at least not as far as Cain can tell. Just a bunch of basic mining materials and a Granite Core, an Epic crafting material. It was at least a pretty impressive amount of materials though. 

Beyond the first boss the Giants change a little. The Stone Giants become Mountain Giants, paler gray in the skin and even larger than their cousins, built wider in the body too. The big change is in the ground though, Cain can see many more shiny deposits waiting to be mined than in the entrance section.

"Everyone grab a snack here and we'll let poor Symbia recover for a little while. The boss fight was long enough she finished her notifications, but she still looks woozy." Cain smiles, pulling a picnic blanket from the Guild Bank.

"That's evil I tell you. If it weren't for the fact they were all level related notifications I would probably strangle you for doing that to me.." The sculptor laughs.