Dungeon Core Online

Chapter 80

"What is this?" James was looking at the achievement screen that flashed up following the Terminus fight. He had been ignoring the screen, watching, along with the stream, to see what Gno-More would do next. The assassin had donned his top hat, grinning mischievously. As James inspected it, he found out why. Apparently, the top hat was a secret part of the boss gear James knew about on the floor. The gear, similar to the demonic farmer set, had various set bonus's which could be applied based on the number of pieces the wearer had. The top hat, it seemed, had the unique trait to decrease the number of set pieces needed to be worn by one. Therefore, Gno-more was now a farming assassin in a top hat. After that though, Gno-more simply sat down and waited for his countdown timer to remove him from the dungeon, much to everyone's displeasure. Chat, and James, still wanted to know what was in the World Boss egg.

The moment Gno-more teleported out, along with the glowing orbs of the somewhat successful raid party, James had once again ended his stream, promising his viewers that he would set up another AMA on the forums shortly. He was certain the latest stream put him at the most popular dungeon core on the server, even though BLANK was still the number one dungeon. Oddly enough, BLANK refused to actually interact with anyone, or share any screenshots, streams, etc from their dungeon. It was actually slowly driving James insane.

"Maybe it's a try-hard achievement?" Rue had put away her sour gummy worms and was now playing aimlessly with a lock of hair as she grinned at James. "Or, maybe a consolation prize? 'You almost did it buddy." She let out a mocking laugh.

"Ha ha, you're so funny." He replied, shrugging off her comment to turn to the screen. Her sarcasm was on point at least, a sore point for a lot of gamers. Somewhere along in history, everyone started getting awards for literally everything. They even had freaking participation trophies and awards. It lessened the impact of some achievements, since many seemed insignificant, as everyone could and did get them. However, that was the one thing James liked about the MMOs he played. Sure, there were some gimmie achievements, but everything else you actually had to work for, had to accomplish. And that, plus the sweet rewards at the end, made the effort worth it.

He opened up the achievement, another quip on his tongue, before he paused. Seriously?

Achievement Unlocked- Plague Inc- Successfully infect a player with a permanent and spreadable(per instance) disease

Reward- 3000xp, 750 resources, Access to disease menu

"Ummm." James was at a loss for words. Like, he was totally on board with the extra experience and resources. But what the hell was the disease menu?

"Oh." Rue went quiet as she scanned over the achievement. James watched her eyes, losing himself for a moment to them as the pixie completely ignored him.

"Honestly I'd prefer if you stared a little lower." Her eyes shot to him, making him jerk away. "A giant eyeball staring intently into your eyes is just a bit creepy." She grinned at him as she floated away lazily. He did not miss the deliberate way she moved as she drifted away. Not at all.

"I mean, isn't a floating orb with an eyeball and tentacles creepy already?" He wiggled his tentacles around for a moment, making her grin and laugh. After a moment, she regained her composure, and turned back to the achievement.

"So, I've got some good news, and some bad news for you."

"Oh, what's the good news?" James figured he would just continue to ride the high that was his current mass of experience and resource gains, before letting her down him with the bad news.

"Good news is, the plague menu is going to let you get a lot more experience, depending on how you use it." That was definitely good news.

"And, what's the bad news?"

"You are now an infectious, diseased, floating eyeball with tentacles." She floated further away from James, laughing all the time. "I don't know if I can stick around with someone giving out diseases to players."

James whipped his tentacles towards the pixie, doing his best to snare her. However, the agile tease that she was meant she easily avoided all of his attempts. After a few more minutes, which were honestly needed to further relax and decompress from the raid, James and a chuckling Rue turned back to the achievement screen.

"Is there actually any bad news?" He asked, his tentacle hovering above the exit option. He had every intention of opening the disease menu next but wanted to make sure he wasn't missing anything.

"Eh, not really. The disease menu allows you craft various diseases or viruses that you can release into instances, which may randomly effect players. You can use resources to generate carriers and delivery means for these options and add them into traps. In order to modify and evolve your diseases, you need to meet certain criteria, and spend additional resources on them."

It seemed pretty straight forward, and James had played games similar to what she was describing in the past. Honestly, it seemed like the makers of DCO had done their fair share of…acquisition, when it came to implementing mini games and features into their own game. James had to wonder if any games in existence had escaped DCO's plans. He had a feeling none were safe.

"Alright, well now that that-" As James spook he closed the window, only to have another one appear. This one James couldn't help but grin at. Now, he had an extremely difficult choice to make. Should he keep his fanbase waiting, or push this notification aside until after he completed his AMA. Reluctantly, he decided on the latter. Rule number one of building a following was to deliver one what you promised. And he had promised them an AMA, and as such, he needed to deliver. Sighing, James pushed the Rank Up! window away, and headed to the forums.