Chapter 273 Rita's New Summons And Reaching The Crystal Caves!

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POOF! POOF!

The bright light appeared in midair, as two creatures from the darkness appeared. A dog-sized bat with red eyes and long ears, and then a black wolf with a single black horn on its forehead. The two new Summons of Rita were of course unevolved and Level 0, but they looked pretty strong and "dark", totally.

"Ooh! I got a Vampiric Bat and a Black Horned Wolf!" Said Rita. "The Bat can drain HP from targets by Blood Sucking… And seems to boost its strength too doing that. And then the Wolf looks like a hybrid between a fast attacked and a magician using shadow magic. I'll name you Batman and Shade!"

"Batman, really?" Asked Titan. "Won't that be copyright?"

"Come on! It is just bat + man, nobody can copyright words!" Rita said while shrugging.

"Chuuuu!"

The Bat suddenly jumped over her head and began drinking her blood, her HP was going down slowly though.

"Ouch! Aaagh! Stop Batman! Stop!"

Rita began to freak out and took off Batman from her head.

"Chuuu!"

The Bat struggled to get away from her hands, it looked rather evil to me… But I guess it is her responsibility now.

"Maybe it is just hungry." I laughed.

"Woof!"

Meanwhile, Shade, the Black Horned Wolf rushed rapidly behind Rita's Nightmare, her Black Horse. It was incredibly fast despite being level 0 and was tailing the horse without problems.

"Woah, that wolf's fast isn't he?" I wondered.

"Indeed…" Titan nodded. "Make sure to keep them in the back so they don't die. When Summons die they become weaker and can even lose levels… Ah, I guess it doesn't matter when they're level 0."

"Don't worry I'll keep them well protected, Nightmare and Arachne will protect their new apprentices, right?" Rita giggled, petting her horse's head and her spider. Her two Familiars didn't seem to understand what she said but they seemed to get that she wanted them to protect the newbies.

"From what we have gathered, Summons can only be summoned four times per Skill, which maxes out at Level 10. Titan do you know if the Summoning Skill can evolve?" I asked.

"I don't know, I haven't really investigated, but we can just search right now. We can search through internet and even watch videos in game through the internet browser…" Said Titan, waving his hand as we traveled across the caverns over our mounts, and then tipping with his fingers into a keyboard made of holograms.

"Huhh… From the gate database made by players and fans, it says that Summon Skills reach their max at ten, and only Summoning-related Classes can continue to evolve them and gain more Summons." Said Titan.

"Seems kind of fair, if everyone could get a whole army of summons Summoners would feel underwhelming." Lily said, analyzing the game rather well.

"Yeah, most other Classes got one summon skill, so everyone can at least get themselves a party of ten Summoned Familiars at most. I guess this was probably decided so Solo Players can still get aid." Said Titan. "Though summons being completely random make this a bit weird. There's a lot of complains of people getting "useless" summons."

"Useless? But can't they all get strong after leveling and evolving?" I wondered.

"Usually yes but Summons have fixed max stats and evolution options it seems, some are just better than others in how far they can grow and develop special Skills." Said Titan. "Summoner Classes have several Skills that enhance their summons and they seem to be able to even be capable of selecting which summons they want as their summoning skills level up, or so it says here… Pretty interesting. Oh it also says here that Necromancers are a hybrid between Tamers and Summoners, as to get their servants they need to defeat monsters and then use Necromancy to convert them into Undead Servants, so it is as if they tame a corpse and turn it into a summon after that. I guess that's why it is so popular, there's a lot of players out there that like to just have an army of creatures at their disposal… Wow this whole thread is about Necromancers, probably half the players are Necromancers or hybrids between Necromancers and something else, so boring…"

"Ahahah, it is a popular class for a reason, the top player is a Vampire Necromancer right?" I wondered.

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"Yeah… Yeah he is." Sighed Titan. "Well whatever the case, Taming is completely different than summoning, only a few Classes have access to this one Skill, so it is quite rare compared to the Summon Skills, often tailor made with "themes" depending on the Class they come from. Races coming with Summon Skills are very rare apparently, but those can both mix their Race Summoning Skill with their Job Summoning Skill and get up to eight summons. I guess that's a good way to compensate for the player's weak combination of race and job- Ah, I didn't meant to say anything by that! Dryad and Farmer is super strong."

"Nah, I mean, I understand if it is perceived as weak." I laughed. "The combination seems so weird. I just choose it in a whim, but I really love my Player Avatar now! Having up to eight summons sounds like fun, but with the ones I've got right now I have already my hands full… I've also got two Tamed Monsters, and could get even more, we'll see if we can even recruit anything."

"Everyone! We are here." Titania quickly spoke to us, breaking our immersive conversation about the game.

We quickly glanced in front of us, as we found an enormous cavern that spread out widely all around, bigger than a stadium, it was completely filled to the brim with colorful crystals. White, blue, red, green, purple, pink, and other beautiful colors.

"Wow this place's enormous…" Said Rita.

"Welcome to the Crystal Caves this is an area filled with monsters but also with tons of valuable ores and crystals to mine…" Said Titania. "We need to keep moving forward though."

As we arrived here, we suddenly saw several figures move across the forests of crystals everywhere, their eyes were directed at us.

And this feeling… is this the smell of Miasma?

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