Magical Engineering

Level one thirty-seven, not bad, but still only another fifteen levels. If I wanted to get to where Mel wanted me, I had to hit two-fifty, and while there was still another dungeon to do before then, I just couldn’t count on those to do much. My head didn’t hurt all that much, and in theory, I should have a better Soul-Core reaction going, which meant it was likely okay to try another modifier. I was going to need to remove the floor being lava anyway. That had been a near disaster. So that meant adding two more.

I just didn’t think I had a chance if I dropped my level any more than it currently was, especially with the losing five levels per modifier, but that was worth far too much to turn off. Alright, it was time to turn on all the extra opponents I could and see how that played out. Before I did that, I made the decision to invest in a knowledge skill. I was going to be facing one hundred and twenty of the queens, so that was a little terrifying.

After maxing out Vespology, I looked over my skills and attributes and saw that I had gained both a ranged combat and a claw dart skill. I wasn’t sure if the first applied to my spells or not, so for now, I skipped them both. In attributes I had gained a wasp venom resistance as well as a piercing one. Had that second one been from the wasps or the diredeer? It didn’t really matter, and I threw almost all my new attribute points into both. What little I had left went into arm accuracy since I was going to need to pick off any stragglers once this was over.

After that was done, it was back to the simulator. I changed up my options and launched the simulation. I started on the ground, and so did more wasps than I could count. They weren’t what I was worried about. The several larger queens that were also directly in front of me were my bigger fear. I swung my mallet, and as I did so, I saw an overlay pop up on the wasps I was aiming at. Several parts of their bodies were highlighted with percentages of the likelihood of what kind of damage. Fatal damage was highlighted in red. So this was why Elicec was pursuing knowledge skills, smart kid.

Looking at the giant clustering masses all around me, I wasn’t sure I could actually win this. Despite my doubts, I tried anyway. My mallet went to work with one hand while the other channeled my Aether orb, launching columns of wasps skyward over and over, crashing into each other, stingers ripping apart allies. It wasn’t nearly enough. The sheer number of wasps was far more of a problem than I had considered. It wasn’t the queens. There were few enough of them that they had trouble even reaching me through the wall of their drones. Within minutes I was out of mana and had more venom coursing through my body than I did blood. I gasped for air on the ground as more stingers found their home, and the simulation ended in failure.

At least my head felt fine. There was no real backlash at all from adding the extra modifier. As I was contemplating if it mattered whether I could push it or not with how badly I had lost the last simulation, I remembered the armor. I had purchased it from Mel and it was just sitting there doing nothing in my storage. I had a new, much more interesting idea. It would have been great before I wasted the skill points, but there was no helping that now.

I exited the simulator menu and put on the flame retardant suit. Could I live in lava longer than the wasps could? I had no idea, but it seemed entirely likely. I removed the no armor and weapon modifiers, the weapon one only because the bonus wasn’t better than turning on more lava, and decided to risk both starving and being poisoned. The chances of living more than a minute in this attempt were exceedingly low, so I doubted the effects had a chance to hurt me. I launched the new, much more fiery iteration of Waspy Woods.

For the briefest second, everything was red. Through the goggles, I could make out a few wasps packed in around me, and then I was encased in a solidified stone. That was something that hadn’t occurred to me; the relative temperature difference between any of the beings here, myself included, would likely instantly form a lava cast around us. It shouldn’t change the idea of the wasps dying faster than me, as the casts were still super heating, and no one was coming to their rescue. So now it was a waiting game of seeing who would cook the slowest.

I had no idea what the mutation was or where I had started, neither of them mattering much as the agonizing wait was unaffected. If this worked and my head didn’t hurt too badly, I could likely run it again, possibly even start decreasing my level or increasing theirs. I’d have to be very careful, though. It was entirely possible the queens could outlast me, especially if any of them started in their hive, away from the flames. I didn’t want to experience this kind of pain for nothing.

The feeling of your own body rapidly cooking itself while you hope you roast the slowest is one of the least enjoyable experiences I could imagine. Toss in the fact that I was ravenously hungry, and the smell of my own cooking flesh triggered some feedback with the poison in me that caused me to start throwing up, sealed in a suit with nowhere for it to go. That wasn’t even the worst thing I could think of. It was that, in the very strong likelihood this worked, I’d be forced to repeat it, at least until I had enemies that had no issue with lava, which was probably sooner than I’d like to think about. Just as I felt my lungs start to scream with superheated air, the simulation came to an end with a record experience total.