Darius and Gunner had used their blink-leap train to reach the edge of the Journeyman band.
The duo was not threatened by the strength of the undead or humans in this Amateur band, but those upfront could not simply be bypassed with ease, at least not for Gunner.
Nearby, a group of level 20 undead rushed over as soon as Darius and Gunner had entered their vicinity. Gunner was a little beat from expending so much stamina, so Darius took over.
He Analyzed the incoming enemies to get a feel for the average strength and combat ability of their kind compared to his own two undead 'idiots'.
[Detected target is of an Enemy affiliation. Displaying details accordingly.]
[Name: Undead Warrior
Race: Undead
Class: Warrior
Subclass: None
HP: 247/247
MP: 160/160
Level: 20
Strength: 19
Agility: 15
Endurance: 13
Intellect: 8
Charisma: 3
Luck: 0
Abilities: Assault, Bisect, Barrel Roll
Weapons: Sword and Buckler]
[Detected target is of an Enemy affiliation. Displaying details accordingly.]
[Name: Undead Mage
Race: Undead
Class: Mage
Subclass: None
HP: 88/88
MP: 380/380
Level: 20
Strength: 8
Agility: 10
Endurance: 11
Intellect:19
Charisma: 7
Luck: 0
Abilities: Ember, Spawn, Ice Lance
Weapons: Staff]
Darius nodded. Their strengths were within reason for the Amateur Rank, especially since they were undead. Their stats certainly would not match up to the living at the same rank.
Then again, their individual power had never been the strong point of the undead. No, they were widely feared for their collective power, and especially their relentlessness.
The pair of Undead Mages initiated the fight by casting Spawn, each one raising 5 undead skeleton warriors that were far too weak. The new skeletons were merely at level 5, so none of them would be able to survive more than a single hit from Darius or Gunner.
Darius just watched them idly, then swung his hand to cast his new Adjust spell. Since there were 7 enemies attacking him, not counting the extra 10 created by the Spawn spell, this drained 7 MP per second.
However, this tripped up the charging Undead Warriors who had their swords raised to hack Darius into pieces. His eyes gleamed as he realized an interesting use for this spell.
If cast when an enemy was in motion, the sudden change in momentum could be used to disrupt their balance greatly, creating a perfect opening!
Still, Darius also realized that the effectiveness of this would depend on the enemies' Agility stat. With high Agility, one could easily adapt to the sudden change, making it only a marginal debuff spell that it was supposed to be.
Darius blinked on top of one of the Undead Warriors and cast Purify on it, to measure its effectiveness. The damage came up as 9 points!
While this was small compared to the 200+ HP the Undead Warrior had, Darius's eyes narrowed as he deduced the calculation.
Spell damage was calculated by a percentage of his Intellect with the spell's unique effect taking the form of elemental damage.
In this case, Purify at level 1 inflicted 5% damage. Given Darius' Intellect at 50 points, that meant that the spell should ideally deal 2.5 damage!
Since the Supreme System tended to round up numbers, this meant 3 points of damage.
So how did it reach 9? There was no critical damage done seeing as he cast the Purify over the entire body of the undead. That could only mean that the damage of light-based spells on undead was automatically modified by a factor of three!
Basically, using any Light element attack was automatically treated as critical - no, this should be called elemental bonus - damage. This would mean that separate from this, critical damage could still be added on top to add another x3 modifier to the damage!
Whew!
Darius only spent a split second calculating this at his current computational power, and he stretched his hand to cast Ember upon the undead below him, wanting to test the power of fire over the death element.
The flames covered the undead and caused it to thrash about just as the light-based attack had done, yet it still could not get up as Darius was standing atop it. The others were slowly climbing to their feet though.
Darius checked the damage dealt and noticed it was 15 points! Following the same method as before, he discovered that the Fire element dealt x1.5 damage to undead which was half of the holy damage and was understandable.
This time, Darius used his trump card to make the final assessment, which was Sparks! After the electrical discharge fell on the undead below him, it twitched and shuddered just as someone who was tazed would, amusing Darius greatly.
This time, the damage was quite grand at 100 points! This took Darius even less time to calculate, coming out that the Lightning element translated to x2 modified damage against undead.
As such, Darius began to wonder whether it might be more valuable to upgrade either Ember or Purify for his foray into the Plains of Death in order to increase his offensive power.
In the end, he decided on neither.
Sparks was good enough for anything he'd need here and his many concern with the possible extra 20 SP he might earn due to the level cap should be used on either his Basic Lancer Arts - so he could maximize his use of the Demonic Spear when the time was right - or used to increased Spawn - to power up to two undead idiots - or Adjust - to make enemies even slower - in the end.
Whatever the case, Darius ended his pondering when a cheeky Undead Warrior attempted to use Bisect on him. In less than a second, Darius had blinked away and stood behind one of the Undead Mages as he used Sparks, killing it instantly.
As for the Undead Warrior that had tried to attack him, its attack ended up striking the spine of the one who had been pressed beneath Darius's foot, cutting its boney appendage in half.
This was not enough to kill its mate straight off, but it was suitable enough to put the one down there out of commission for now.
