Re: Level 100 Farmer

Li watched as the giants began to charge forwards, their footsteps sizzling and sending out flames and sparks across the forest floor, their weight and heavy armor loosing quaking clicks.

The entire party tensed up, holding their weapons firm as the tide of enormous, blazing bodies approached. 

Tia smiled as she pranced from one foot to the other, eager for the fight. 

Li noted with calm that among the twenty-two giants, only eleven were approaching. One greatsword giant and ten barehanded ones. The greatsword giant, judging by the fact that four horns protruded from its molten helm instead of two, was higher in rank, leading the ten behind it in a charge.

The other host of fire giants, then, was led by the remaining greatsword giant who stood back, watching the results of this charge with blazing eyes of orange. 

Li knew immediately that eleven giants was far too much of a force for the party to reckon with. He could not have them dying on him, for even though he did have a resurrection spells, it was an Ultima-tier spell that he could not freely use, for Elden World had always been strict about resurrection mechanics. 

Only the most specialized of priests and templars could afford to cast resurrection freely, and even then, it was an A-rank spell at the minimum. 

"Stay put," said Li to the party. He put a hand on Tia's head. "And you come with me, Tia."

"Okay!" said Tia as she unfurled her black and green wings, hovering in the air. 

Li smiled at her before turning to the approaching charge of giants, their combined heavy steps now quaking the earth. His glowing green eyes landed on the greatsword giant at the front. 

"I'm ready, papa!" said Tia, as she sensed through her Soulbound connection Li's intent.

"Good. Because papa is going to be moving real quick," said Li. 

"Got i-," began Tia before she was cut off from Li charging forwards, into the fray.

"No fair!" said Tia as she leaped off the ground, batting her wings with a surge of gusting winds as she tried to keep up with Li.

Before the greatsword giant at the head of the charge could react, Li had slammed into him, driving him down with feet on the giant's chest. The giant groaned, and his voice sounded like fire given speech: a roaring, crackling, deep cacophony.

The force of Li's impact had driven the giant backwards, and where before he was at the head of the charge, there were now two giants ahead of him, looking back at their leader with shock. 

Li turned around and lifted an index finger to the air. "[Ironbark Wall]"

With that chant, an enormous wall of thick, gleaming, almost metallic wood rose from the forest floor, separating the two giants from the rest of their host and leaving them to fight the party. 

Two giants, Li calculated, were enough for the party to deal with. Defeating them would likely grant them many levels, particularly in the case of Mason and Mercer both of whom were severely underleveled compared to the rest of the party. 

Now, the rest, Li looked up to see a dozen plus pairs of burning eyes aimed at him and Tia. The rest of the giants in the charge looked at Li and then began to pour forth their hostile intent. Fire started to sputter and rage from their backs in blazing auras, and in their bare hands, swords of flame and molten rock manifested.

A typical ability of fire giants. Fire auras and flame weapon generation. 

Li felt the greatsword giant beneath his feet start to move again, groans turning into a roar as he tried to sit up, spilling Li away from his body.

But Li only stamped down with his foot, sending a shockwave surging from the blow and shattering the giant's molten breast plate. The giant's two dots of flaming eyes widened as they stared straight up, the wind knocked out of him from the casual blow of a man less than a quarter of his size. 

The remaining giants hesitated to charge, the flaming weapons in their hands trembling as they began to perceive Li's strength.

Good. This indicated that the giants had not lost their minds to eldritch corruption or else they would have been mindless units more so than beings. 

"Now then, we can finally have a talk," said Li. 

"Talk? But I wanted to fight!" complained Tia. 

"And I do think you will," said Li. His eyes narrowed as he saw the other host of fire giants standing from far off continuing to look at Li without an ounce of fear in their eyes. 

The ones around Li seemed to have lost their fighting will seeing their leader so helpless under Li's feet, and they acted organically, being fearful to move, being hesitant to do anything.

"They do not seem to want to fight anymore," said Li, and Tia followed Li's gaze at the hesitant giants.

"If you don't want to fight, go home!" said Tia. "Stop burning forest!"

The fire giants stepped back at Tia's reproach, and yet, Li felt a little uneasy. These giants, it seemed, were normal.

But the other ones. The other host of fire giants led by the remaining greatsword wielder were different.

The other greatsword giant was quite a distance away and on an elevated mound of ground, taking a viewing vantage point. His host of ten giants were positioned in a neat, semi-circular formation in front of him with such precise positioning that they almost seemed to have been placed there by someone. 

Li had expected to sense fighting intent from these giants, or fear that the rest of the giants that had taken the charge were now so easily scattered, but there was nothing.

No emotion. 

Instead, the greatsword giant raised its blade towards Li, and so too did the ten giants around it, all of them projecting flaming blades. Then, they turned the blades towards themselves, stabbing themselves through the hearts.

All of them collapsed down to their knees, the flames around their bodies, a sign of a fire giant's life force, flickering down rapidly. 

Li was left confused, and at the same time, he started to understand. 

"No-," Li began, understanding that this was a kind of spell, a ritual akin to spells like [Life Pact] or [Ritual Sacrifice]. He had a delayed reaction because it was not a spell he was at all familiar, and that delay proved crucial.

Li charged forwards, attempting to break the semicircle ritual formation, but the moment his feet left the ground at hyperspeed, the world around him shifted, the colors and space distorting. The burning forest and all the fire giants around Li completely disappeared.

Replacing that was instead more fire. More burning. A pure and proper hellscape. 

Li stood in the middle of what seemed to be a lake of lava and flame. Splashes of lava and fire rose all around him, washing over him, but they could not burn even a single stand of his hair, being as ineffectual as water.

Li shook his head to flick off droplets of lava as he took note of his surroundings. 

Dark clouds of sulfur clogged the skies, and tornadoes of fire whirled in the distance. Past the lake, he could see huge dark mountains and volcanoes rise up into the skies, belching out ash and flame. 

This was almost exactly similar to Musphel, the home of the fire giants in Elden World. He had been forcefully teleported.

"Tia-," Li began with a start before realizing that Tia was there, tugging at his coat tail behind him. She was looking around with confusion in her eyes. 

"Where…where we?" said Tia. 

Li scooped her up in his arms in relief and she laughed in happiness at the sudden gesture. 

"It looks like I am not the only one capable of forging spells," said Li. Both Tia and Li looked around to the rising spouts of lava, hearing the distant rumble of eruptions, and feeling the ash gather at their skin. 

He took in a breath of ash and heat, feeling the magical energy and sensing it similar in wavelength to that from the forest. In other words, this was still the dungeon. Another layer. The layer of the fire giants, most likely.

"We go back? Friends back there!" said Tia.

"If this had been an ordinary spell to force teleportation on us, then yes," said Li. "But this is not. This is…quite clever. We will have to get back on our own."

Li pondered the nature of this spell. It thoroughly utilized Elden World game mechanics to its advantage.

Players, no matter how strong they were, were bound by certain game mechanics. One of these being that they could not simply just teleport to the end of a dungeon. Even if a level 100+ player cleared a level 10 dungeon, he would still have to go through all the layers the proper way. 

There were, however, dungeon traps that could teleport party members elsewhere. In some cases, certain dungeon mobs or bosses could do the same. 

These, Li were completely familiar with, and many of them were easily noticeable or had tell-tale windups. But it was completely out of the ream of Li's knowledge for a spell to exist wherein fire giants could transport others. 

No, this was not a fire giant spell. Some other entity had created it, and, highly likely, fashioned it directly in preparation to use against a single powerful entity. The vast majority of transporting dungeon traps were area of effect, and so one counter to them was parties could just pile on the trap and be transported all together, thus highly incentivizing parties from sticking together. 

In this case, however, the transportation spell was purely single target, and seemingly tailor made for Li, having modifiers against stronger entities and forestborn beings. 

In other words, there was an entity here that knew of Li and had prepared for him.