[ Experience gained: +5 Quadrillion. ]
Sam caught himself raising an eyebrow. He knew the value from reading it in the Guide, but seeing it in the XP log was still intriguing.
Due to how the XP progression worked, this also triggered a lot of information to pop up, so he pushed it to the side to focus on the two other monsters. Though they were hesitant, seeing their friend explode like that, they didn’t entirely stop their attack.
Deciding to handle this securely, he despawned 20 of his Psihands to put the 10 Energy into his Invisibility, disappearing from view instantly.
The two Cloudhorns slowed down and eventually stopped, looking for the creature who disappeared, trying to sniff him out to no avail. Well before they found out where he could be, Sam made his move.
Walking into range, he focused on one of them, then the other. Without even attempting to dodge, not knowing how to react to the swarm of weapons heading their way, they died in the same way as their friend.
[ Experience gained: +10 Quadrillion. ]
[ Levelup +12! ]
[ Elara Levelup +15! ]
[ Dia Levelup +12! ]
[ Level 40 reached. Fourth class skill granted: Triggered Manifest. ]
[ Level 50 reached. Fifth class skill granted; Ascendant bonus applied: Armour Assimilation. ]
[ Triggered Manifest: The user can set a trigger which will manifest a Psyhand and perform a single action.
-The user needs to perceive the trigger action. ]
[ Armour Assimilation (Ascendant bonus): The user gains a set of bound custom armour; values and abilities can be absorbed from other pieces of armour.
-The armour cannot be removed unless the user wishes. Only activated or deactivated.
-The armour can have one (1) Defence Value and up to five (5) traits.
-The values taken from another piece of armour disappear from it, and cannot be returned.
- On changing the Defence value, or adding a sixth trait, the old value or chosen trait disappears.
-This does not stack with worn armour, only one set can be active at any given time. ]
[ Elara Level 30 reached. Third class skill granted: Camouflage. ]
[ Elara Level 40 reached. Fourth class skill granted: Venom 3. ]
[ Camouflage: Boosts the ability to hide considerably. ]
[ Venom 3: Merges Venom 1 and 2, combining their Strength to a base of 20. ]
[ Dia Level 40 reached. Fourth class skill granted: Tempered Strikes. ]
[ Tempered strikes: Gain a flat +5 to base damage that applies before stats and other skills. ]
[ Sam XP to lv.52: ███??????? ]
[ Elara XP to lv.50: ██████???? ]
[ Dia XP to lv.47: ██████████ ]
“Oh, wow,” Sam commented to himself as he looked through all the windows that popped up. On habit, putting his points into Spt, he saw the usual increases, smiling at the total of 112 hands he could spawn now.
Turning around, he went back to the others with a big smile, only to meet smiles of his own.
“I take it you also levelled a bit,” Sam asked rhetorically.
“Yeah, from 30 to 51, 21 levels, baby!” He pumped his fist in the air with a huge smile.
Sam took a gander at him, it seemed he split his points between Dex and Vit, basically what he expected.
[ Janik XP to lv.51: ██████???? ]
Janik had also unlocked two new skills, no doubt from hitting level 40 and 50.
[ Duelist’s Challenge: Challenge a target. The Duelist gains Dex as a Percentile bonus to Damage and Defence against the target, but damage and Defence against non-challenged targets are cut by the same value. Can be deactivated at will but not reactivated against the same target for 1 hour. ]
[ Precision strike: The attack following activation of this ability has a 100% critical hit chance. 5-hour cooldown. ]
“Zar, Zar!” Dia bounced to get Sam’s attention. “Dia many tarr!”
Sam looked at her, slightly confused. “I don’t know ‘tarr’.” He had some ideas based on context, but he didn’t know.
“Power... number... more...” Dia looked around hesitantly, almost like she tried to find what she was after written somewhere.
“Level?” Sam asked, using his assumptions to guide it.
“Yes!” She half-jumped a bit closer in glee as he hit the correct word. “Zar do thing, points.” She looked at him with a mix of glee and expectation.
Sam went through the normal process, spreading her points between Dex and Vit. Elara got everything in Vit like normal, bumping her new Venom to a frightening level.
“Jeez...” Same commented to himself as he looked at the window for Elara. “You need 53 Vitality to have a chance against your Venom now,” he turned his expression to Elara properly as he explained that.
She only returned a satisfied smile, the tip of her tail wagging ever so slightly.
“I see you got some neat thing as well?” Sam smiled towards Janik, mainly to move the conversation there rather than asking.
“Don’t pretend you can’t read it just as well as I can,” Janik replied with a fake annoyance. “But yes, I’m looking forward to testing these, with all of this, I’m reaching a point where I might be able to join you fighting... Not that it would be needed...” Janik’s smile and pride faded to an envious, almost judgmental expression. “What’s your expected damage now, all of it?”
Sam looked through the list of things, but as he chose to mentally ask the system for once, a small window popped up.
[ Expected damage, assuming 0 Defence: Physical 5838, Electric 1086 (Static Charge 194), Fire 545. Total: 7468. ]
“If everything hits, no activations or crits, nor Aura or anything like that, a bit over 7 000.” Sam gave Janik a shit-eating grin, taking some pride in this. “Spread across my 114 Psyhands.”
“Oh, well.. That’s both amazing, disturbing and not making me more envious than before or anything...” Janik’s smile showed honesty. He never hid his envy, but he always seemed honest about his compliments, even when camouflaged in fake annoyance like this.
“I can also lift about two men now, so I can throw you quite the distance if you’re not picky about landing,” Sam added, his ego being a bit inflated.
“You know... that sounds fucking dangerous but... If we go back to the Third Floor, it could be interesting to see how far you could throw someone into the water.”
Sam chuckled. he hadn’t tried to throw a person, at least not yet, but based on the damage he did to the Raven Lord, it could become somewhat cool or horrifying, depending on details.
“What did you get?” Janik asked, changing the topic. “In fact, what did everyone get? I assume everyone crossed a Class Skill boundary?” Looking across the whole group with a questioning look, he seemed to expect at least Sam to answer.
Doing as expected, Sam went through the different skills that were unlocked, as well as the math changes that followed some of them.
“Oh, that’s neat,” Janik interrupted as Sam ended with the Armour Assimilation. “I mean, the manifestation with the Sentinel dagger you have will probably make you close to untouchable if you do it right, but being able to build your armour sounds amazing.”
“Yeah, I haven’t tested it yet. I wonder what it looks like.” Speed unequipping his armour by touching it and putting it in his Item Box, Sam activated the Assimilation Armour a few seconds later.
In a puff of particles, his normal clothing was covered with a surprisingly mundane-looking dark brown, almost black coat. It had pockets, didn’t have a hood and looked like something you’d get in a random clothing store, the material seeming to be semi rain resistant at best.
Sam appraised it instinctively.
[ Assimilated Armour.
-Defence: 0
-Traits: None. ]
“Well... Not sure what I expected, no Defence or traits, but I haven’t absorbed anything, so that makes sense.” Sam felt a bit dumb for expecting anything else, as the whole thing was based on absorbing stats.
“You going to give it a go on your armour or wait until you get something else?” Janik asked, adding an important thing to consider.
“That’s a good point... If something goes wrong, it might be smart to have a backup, but... I’m not going to bank on not getting hit, but if worst comes to worst, I can always just go back and buy something temporary.”
Sam took out his Thornweave Breastplate, and as he was wondering how to activate the absorption, a little window popped up.
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[ Choose what to absorb:
- Defence 80
- Barbed Retribution
- Verdant Barrier
- Nimble Growth. ]
Mentally selecting the Defence rating had the value disappear from the breastplate, but appear on his Assimilated Armour.
“Oh, that’s interesting. I stole the Defence from it, now it’s just a breastplate without a Defence rating, but it still has the plant-stuff.”
Janik stepped closer and reached out for the armour in a requesting way. Sam gave him the armour and let him have a moment to inspect it.
He let out a chuckle. “Well, this is kind of dumb. Right now, it just acts as clothing. With some neat abilities, sure, but it’s an armour piece, so you can’t stack it, but it doesn’t give you any armour... I doubt this will sell.” Janik ended with another chuckle and a smile as he returned the, frankly, ruined armour to him.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t buy anything like this, at least not without a very specific reason... But I suppose there’s no need to not absorb the rest, since it’s ruined anyway.”
Going through the process a few more times, his Assimilated Armour now had all the stats of the breastplate. And the breastplate was now just useless.
[ Thornweave Breastplate, High C rank.
Defence: 0. ]
Sam chuckled. “It’s like a gag item, looks like a crafter who failed or something.”
“It could almost be fun to get it appraised,” Janik added with a chuckle of his own. “It looks absurd.”
“Well, I hope I get some new armour soon so I can build something with better synergy for-” Sam stopped himself in the middle of his sentence, seeming to have realised something. “I just realised something, can I use this offensively? Steal from others?”
“That... That’s a good question, I wonder if it would work against enemies, imagine stealing 300 Defence.” Janik commented after a brief second of imagining. “I’d love to help you test, but... not fond of the idea of my armour losing anything, I kinda like what I have.” Ending with an honestly apologetic face, it seemed like he wanted to be a part of this, but also not.
As they were pondering this, Sam caught what Dia and Elara were doing in the corner of his eye. Dia was holding Elara, letting her reach up to be on the same face level. Elara had opened her mouth and moved her teeth back and forth, which had Dia look at them with the same glee of a toddler meeting Santa Claus. Sam was amused at how intrigued she was at this, but let them have their fun.
“Well, I could try on you, and just see if the effect triggers, I can always choose not to take anything,” Sam confirmed, with the hope that it would have Janik agree.
Thinking about it for a few seconds, Janik nodded to himself. “Yeah, I see no problem with that.
“Great,” Sam smiled, manifesting a few Psyhands and getting mentally ready. “Try to... I don’t know, resist the effect or something?”
Janik looked at Sam, somewhat confused. “And who would I do that? Just think ‘no’ or something?”
As Janik asked, Sam used that moment to try and trigger the effect, to no avail. No matter what he tried, nothing happened. Expecting this to be the case, he reached out and touched Janik’s armour with his manifested Psyhand and tried again.
[ Choose what to absorb:
- Defence 80
- Immoveable Fortress
- Stoneward Protection
- Earthbound Vitality. ]
“Oh, don’t worry about it, this works surprisingly well,” Sam answered. “I reached out with a Psyhand, and it seems to be working, I get the list of things.”
“Well... that’s horrifying,” Janik’s brow furrowed at the thought of this. “I mean, it’s fine since it’s us, but imagine having some super expensive S-class armour and suddenly your Defence goes from 100-something or whatever, to zero. And your cool traits disappear... That’s gotta be terrifying the next time you’re attacked.”
“That’s going to be very nice if I get in another PvP situation and don’t feel that my... seven thousand damage is enough... But since the skill explains that I can gain from touching ‘another piece of armour’, I doubt it’s going to work on a Monster. I’m going to test, of course, but it doesn’t feel like it’ll work.” Sam hoped he was wrong, to the point that he was already halfway turning around, heading back towards the Dungeon.
“I agree on both points,” Janik nodded. “I kind of hope it works, stealing 300 Defence from a boss, though it won’t change much for your damage, not counting resistances that... what... a 20th of your damage or something? But it’ll be cool if you can get that.”
Scratching his chin as he looked blankly into space, Janik continued a few seconds after. “Though, with all of these weird things going on, you should look into hiding your stats, I think. Ironically, there’s a skill for that, but like most other ones, it goes fast on the Marketplace.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, it would be nice. And I can probably consider a Solo Dungeon for something like that, but... I imagine I’ll be there for a year, and gods know what I’ll be doing...”
Considering the rarity and ‘cost’ of a good blocking skill, and that the result of the months of fighting and shit he went through for the A-rank Stealth skill... He wasn’t too keen on giving it another go if he could avoid it.
“But for now, we... I have a dungeon to clear.”
“You go, girl!” Janik commented back with an amused tone. “We’ll be here, chillin’, cheering you on.” He added with a large smile.
Sam chuckled through a sigh. Not feeling threatened in this Dungeon, he still didn’t feel like risking anything. Activating Stealth, he had to dedicate 10 Energy to it, which cost him 20 Psyhands. This lowered his damage by a solid chunk, but with over 6 000 remaining, he felt fine.
He moved on.
The first group of enemies were taken care of already, remembering the Premonition effect, it was kind of strange but oddly easy to understand. But he felt that he needed to test it out more to get a better feel for it.
According to the guide and what he could see, there was a travelled path going up into the mountains in the far distance. And though he could see several more Cloudhorns and some winged raptor-like creatures. None of which Sam felt would be problematic, as they couldn’t see him.
Though the landmass they were on had an abrupt end, leading down to a long freefall, he didn’t feel like that would be a problem. His Psyhands could lift him fine, even without the boost, so if he wanted to, he could fly to the top of the Dungeon. It would be a speedrun tactic that would most likely be much faster and more efficient. But for now, he wanted to do the Dungeon at least once in a normal way.
He could also use this as a test of the damage he did to the Hydra, taking that as the first idea, he took out a cheap dagger as he neared the next Cloudhorn, having nearly 3 000 health, it made for a good test.
Manifesting his full 92 hands, as the 10 Energy was still used to power his Invisibility, he walked up to it and made sure he’d hit. Pulsing the launch with all hands at the same time, there was a deafening whipping crack immediately followed by a sizeable hole opened up through the side of the large bison-like creature. It let out a guttural groan and fell over as its innards were torn out from the force and speed, the dagger slammed into the stone ground, mangled beyond repair. As the creature landed on its side, into the gore of its gore, Sam again read that he did a maximum of 10 damage as the hit was a critical strike.
This kind of attack was devastating and technically resource-hungry. It consumed the dagger and used everything he had for a brief moment. It felt almost anticlimactic this round after finding out how this worked against the Hydra, that also being underwater. If it wasn’t for the fact that his full volley did more damage than any monster’s health pool that he had met so far, not counting the Hydra. He was almost wondering why he was being given all this power. He was becoming the most dangerous creature.
Considering that bosses were supposed to be multi-player targets, where you often needed someone who specialised in mitigating damage, the Tank-trope, to make sure that others could do their own thing, and here he was, one-shotting everything he met. He was glad for it as far as safety went, but it almost felt a bit anticlimactic.
[ Experience gained: +5 Quadrillion. ]
[ Sam XP to lv.52: ████████?? ]
The other nearby creatures were surprised at the sudden disembowelling of their friend. Not able to see the source of the attack, they looked more defensive, looking and sniffing around, trying to find anything they could focus on.
Now closer, Sam could get a proper look at the raptor-like creatures. They were sleek raptor-like creatures, with bladed wings and talons of dark crystal. They flew in low spirals as they looked around for him. They felt like they were made for hit-and-run tactics.
[ Stonebeak Styrger
Level: 61
STR: 15
DEX: 36
VIT: 20
SPT: 14
HP: 630 / 630
Damage: Talon Dive 475 / Wind Shear 377 / Feather Flurry 426
Defence: 0
Abilities: DEX Boon, Talon Dive, Wind Shear, Sky Circle, Feather Flurry. ]
[ Talon Drive: Dive towards target, dealing increased damage. Needs to be higher up than the target. ]
[ Wind Shear: Send out a narrow pulse of wind from your wings, which can knock back. ]
[ Sky Circle: Using increased aerial acrobatics, can avoid incoming attacks if airborne. ]
[ Feather Flurry: Flap your wings rapidly, sending a flurry of feathers towards your targets. ]
Sam wondered if the Sky Circle would work against attacks they didn’t know were coming. He doubted it, but even if so, that would be their only saving moment. He was also not keen on them realising they could stay out of his range, so he made a mental note of taking them out first.
Coming up on a group of two Styrgers and one Cloudhorn, there was only one thing to do.
Rinse and repeat.