The Flying Emporium

At that instant, the giant boss toppled over. Defeated.

After what felt just a couple of moments, they had vanquished the golem.

Just like that.

Sure the group was overleveled, but everyone went into that fight expecting that they were fighting with basically only two damage dealers.

And the problems Xander was expected to experience in this fight would naturally also apply to Andreas, albeit in a less significant fashion.

While most tanks weren’t supposed to also deal real damage over the course of a battle, it would still add up and shouldn’t be neglected.

So no one present really knew what had just happened.

Least of all, the three in the back.

The two damage dealer’s for one didn’t have the time to pay attention to anything else. Much less to someone they thought would be deadweight in this encounter.

Therefore the battle plan had been for them to go all out from the very beginning. But even then, it wouldn’t be possible to achieve such a kill time.

On the other hand, them going all out meant that the resulting magic effects, the explosions and clouds of smoke and flashing lights, made it impossible to closely observe anything from that distance.

That being said, Lynn was more focused on Andreas anyway. Not that he was ever in real danger. Especially since hardly any time had passed yet, since the start of the battle, and the boss hadn’t used any of its hard-hitting abilities yet. Still, she was more focused on the damage the boss dealt than on the damage dealt to it. And until now, unless Xander was stomped by the golem, there was no way for him to have taken any damage yet. There was no need to pay any special attention to him. Much less to his weapons. So she hadn’t realized what happened either.

“Wha…?”

Naturally, Xander wasn’t nearly as surprised as the others by the amount of damage the group had dealt so far, but the last hit still perplexed him.

He hadn’t paid that much attention to his flashing weapons either once he had found his pace.

After he confirmed the effect of the oil was as described, he only focused on the battle, fading out anything unimportant.

So he missed the black light, too.

What he didn’t miss, though, was the almost disturbing lack of resistance on his last attack.

None of the strikes before had felt like that. Even with the oil applied.

The tooltip specified that 50% of his damage would get converted into elemental damage.

But being converted to magic damage didn’t mean that this part of the damage now somehow ignored all kinds of defenses.

Every being had a minimum value of resistance against the four base elements. And while they varied from being to being, they were never null. At least not without curses or other magic debuffs. That was true for every being. Be it a monster inside a dungeon or a class-less human.

Like that, the iron golem would still have resistance against water-based attacks even though it was considered its weakness. Fire, on the other hand, was its highest.

So depending on the damage type he dealt, Xander would feel a varying degree of resistance.

“What was that last strike? That didn’t feel like anything before…” In the end, Xander was just as stunned as the others, just for slightly different reasons.

Andreas, on the other hand, stood basically right next to Xander and had the best view of things.

Therefore he had seen everything. By chance, he had noticed the weapon flash when Xander jumped past him in his opening attack. Since then, he had paid special attention to the matter. He quickly figured that the knives were obviously magically enhanced, but in a way that he had never seen before.

He had taken a close look at the weapons earlier, and therefore Andreas knew with certainty that they weren’t enchanted. And there existed no enchants that had such an appearance, to begin with. At least not that he knew of.

The [Warrior] clearly realized that the knives did more than just lighting up on contact. There was obviously more to it.

The colors were unmistakable; Hence he had a good idea of what had happened. Even if the ‘how’ eluded him for the moment.

‘It must’ve been some form of added magic damage. Maybe damage conversion. One way or another, that was magic. But it was obviously not fixed to one specific element per weapon. And then the black light…’

A certain realization dawned on Andreas.

“Don’t tell me. Da...Dark element? Shadow damage?” Andreas couldn’t help but stutter.

Xander was barely able to hear him, but it was enough. Enough for him to come to his own conclusions and jolt him out of his stupor.

He hurriedly summoned one of the two little bottles out of the inventory. There were still a few drops left. Enough to still reveal the tooltip. While reading the text once more, his hands holding the bottle started to tremble. He read it again in fear of having missed something, more carefully this time. All the while gaping like an idiot.

The moment Xander took out the bottle, Andreas knew he had been mistaken earlier.

He had already forgotten about it, but now it was apparent that the green liquid wasn’t poison.

He quickly stepped over and also started reading the text in the blue box, over the [Duelists] shoulder.

Just like Xander, he had to read the text multiple times to fully comprehend what had just happened. There was a crucial detail in the wording. Even after realizing it, the both of them refused to believe it.

“…of a random Element…”

“It doesn’t say anything about ‘basic’…

It always says ‘random basic Element.”

The two turned to slowly face each other in utter disbelief.

By now the other three had come over as well.

First the unexpected conclusion of the fight, and now the strange behavior of the two men before them. The three were naturally curious about what happened and the two melee fighters seemed to know the answer.

While rushing over, Lynn couldn’t help but shout with rare excitement in her voice.

“What happened just now? Why are you looking like that?”

She didn’t get any answers out of the two, so once she got close enough, she started reading the tooltip herself.

‘I guess that somewhat explains the damage. Still, no reason to make such a big deal out of the whole thing. The way you were looking had me expecting something more exciting.’ She looked more confused than enlightened.

She was about to turn towards the corpse of the fallen boss, wanting to check out the loot.

“Where… Where did you get this from? We have to show this to our leader.”

“Our leader? So I have passed?” Having overcome his previous shock, Xander quickly turned back into his usual self. He knew he had struck gold. Not only was he confident in his performance just now, but he also knew that the weapon oil would be coveted by many guilds. There was no way he would let go of this trump card for nothing.

“Why are you making such a big deal out of it?! Why show that to the guild lead? And why can’t you just say where you got this stuff from, Xander?” Lynn didn’t get what was going on and got frustrated. Especially by Xander’s behavior. Wouldn’t it work in his favor if he just told Andreas where he got that stuff from and earned some goodwill?

“Yeah, yeah! Sure. You’re in. I’ll make sure. Now tell me.” Andreas didn’t really mind Xander’s behavior. Even before the last fight, he was impressed enough with him that Andreas had already decided to let Xander join, as long as he didn’t mess up in the boss encounter. And by now they obviously both knew the worth of the item in question. It was only natural for him to react this way, if maybe he was a bit too blunt.

“What is wrong with you guys?” Lynn wasn’t pleased being ignored like that.

“Could someone please tell us what’s going on here?” By now, the other two involved themselves as well. They didn’t like being kept out of the loop.

Before things would become too chaotic, Xander threw over the bottle to Lynn.

“Here, read again.” Xander was smug as usual, but he quickly decided that it might be better to not be too pushy. This was going to be his future guild, after all. He turned back to Andreas and suggested, “Why don’t we get over to your base and take things from there?”

“Just to be sure. There’s more where this came from, right?”

“Sure! 20 gold each.”

Andreas felt things didn’t quite add up. Twenty gold for one of those things would be far too cheap.

So what was going on here? “Is that you taking a cut for every potion?!”