Chương 12: Bonus Chapter - Demonic Pacts

The lights in Bella's apartment were dim, her face lit only by the harsh glow of her computer screen. Around her head was wrapped a pink headset with little cat ears on top, relaying the voices of her friends. Her fingers flew across the keyboard pressing intricate keybinds, her mouse flicking back and forth as she clicked between the hordes of enemies. On screen, her avatar charged up a massive fireball and let it loose, decimating the health bars of the corrupted trolls they were facing.

Over ten of them fell from a single invocation. It was one of her most used spells, [Fires of Creation], an expensive but fast casting and high damage spell. Aside from the mana cost, its other drawback was that it was one of the few spells in her character's spellbook that could cause friendly fire.

"Nice timing, Bel, but please warn me before you use that. I was about to [Shadow Jump] in and you would have nuked me." Cameron's complaint was almost drowned out by the music thumping through her headset, but they'd had this argument so many times she didn't need to hear him.

"If you weren't so flammable, it wouldn't be a problem, Cam. It's your fault for not giving Robin any health buffs. And stop stealing all the loot before Holly's done reading." Robin, Cameron's halfling rogue, was similar in design with her own creatively named Bella - all damage, no health or resistance. And said rogue was busy bouncing between the lootboxes dropped by the trolls. She ignored his complaints, instead mousing over their paladin tank who had done a better job balancing her stats.

Gemma's character popped up in the party list at full health, highlighting the elf across the dungeon, parked on top of a statue with a lore tooltip hovering over it. Bella paused her music and asked, "Holly, I know you're reading but can I get a mana regen buff?" The elf character lifted her shield with a golden glow, and suddenly Bella's mana bar was refilling at double the speed.

"Thanks. Let us know when you're done so we can go through the gear." Several more floors of the dungeon passed in similar fashion, their party easily mopping up all of the low level mobs that crammed the upper levels. Only as they approached the boss did the group lock in and start playing seriously. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The stage for the fight was an obscene ritual meant to gather power for the Exiled Moon's eventual rebirth, and the ritual site was protected by a hulking golem crafted from the corpses of famous mages that had been murdered for this grotesque purpose. They'd already failed on this boss several times due to its two main mechanics. The first was a rotating buff that made it weak to only certain types of magic for 30 seconds at a time, which made long casting high damage spells challenging.

The second mechanic was its obscenely hard to dodge attacks that caused a stun lock paired with damage that temporarily reduced a character's maximum health. Bella smashed the dodge key on her keyboard, her in-game catkin just barely rolling out of the way of a barrage of earthen spikes. The giant golem lit up a deep blue, indicating a vulnerability to water magic. Everything lined up perfectly.

She had several seconds after dodging before the next attack, so she smashed the button for one of her powerful spells that would not only do a lot of damage, but knock back anything in its zone and afflict them with a 'damp' debuff that caused extra damage from lightning.

"I'm doing a [Tidal Gush]!" Bella warned her friends, voice trembling with excitement and adrenaline. As the spell fired, Holly tried to move her character out of the way. But the boss's attention was focused on her paladin, and she was rooted in the spell's area of effect. Gemma's health dropped by a good chunk and her armor glistened with the 'damp' debuff visual effect. A husky voice whispered in Bella's ear through her headset.

"If you were going to get me all wet with such a big gush you could have waited until after the boss," Holly cooed. Critical hit. Bella's brain locked up, her face glowing bright enough to almost illuminate her bedroom on its own. When she finally surfaced from the deluge of embarrassed excitement her character's last few points of health trickled to zero and she was left dead on the floor of the dungeon.

Without her support splitting the boss's attention, her friends quickly succumbed to the same fate and they were kicked back to the beginning to try all over again. Cameron groaned, somewhere between fed up and bone tired." Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh. Please, Holly. I know you two have some kind of weird demonic pact about platonic flirting but can you save it until later? That's the fourth time we've wiped this dungeon, its the middle of the night and I want to go to bed."

"Sorry," Holly chirped with a voice far too smug and pleased to mean it.