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Chapter 130- Bad Premonitions
🕑 Added 2024-01-23 23:59:01 +0000 UTCThe final wave of the test of endurance was different to its predecessors in that it consisted of only a single enemy, the Archon knight at level 201, a full 21 levels higher than any of the previous beasts he had faced. He wasn't sure if he was remembering things correctly, but most monsters tended to undergo a significant evolution at the 200th level, much like unlocking a class for a sapient.
If he was right, then the monster he was about to face would be a force to be reckoned with. The fact that it was placed as the final wave, considered a higher tier of difficulty than a battle against three thousand enemies of significant strength suggested he was in for the fight of a lifetime. The knight modifier also suggested he'd be fighting a humanoid monster, which meant the battle with it would be completely different from the other powerful creatures he’d faced such as the hydra.
Arthur swallowed the saliva that had pooled at the back of his mouth as he waited for the Archon knight to appear. He wasn't scared per se- the past waves had taught him he was nigh invulnerable against the creatures of this locus now- but he was certainly nervous. Would this creature prove to be the outlier? His lizard brain definitely registered it as a threat, and it hadn't been wrong yet. Three minutes left. With his remaining time, Arthur went over the skills he’d saved for the final wave. He'd done so more because they simply hadn't been necessary in the previous rounds than out of any cautionary reason, but now it seemed that decision had been the correct one. He’d yet to use his pinnacle skill in combat, or even any of his legendary ones. I'll hold out on the pinnacle skill for a bit and see if it's overkill or not first. He wanted a challenge, and he doubted he’d be getting one if he used it.
The Homunculi Hunts (Legendary, Domain skill)[Class pinnacle skill] Level 1- The perfect homunculus is a predator that thrives in the hunt, relishing in the misery of its prey. Creatures caught in your domain and selected will suffer adverse mental effects and will be 50% slower. (Note: this percentage is affected by the target's natural resistances and constitution)
Ten targets may be selected for the debuff Homunculi’s Draining [Cost 1000 ether/target]
Homunculi’s draining- Targets are drained of their ether, stamina, and Health at a rate of 5% of their respective maximums per minute. This drained energy is randomly assigned to create shadow bombs within the domain to target foes. Lasts for ten minutes.
One target may be selected for the debuff, A Homunculi’s Ire.
A Homunculi’s Ire- Target's skills cost 30% more and may fail to function properly judging on the level/Strength disparity
1% of all damage inflicted on this target within the domain will count as soul damage which permanently reduces a target’s Healthpool
Cost: 10,000 ether.
Cooldown: 24 hours.
0.01% of the damage inflicted on foes in your domain will count as soul damage. All host’s skills [excluding domain skills] cost 25% less when used in the domain. Soul splinters are 25% stronger in the domain and recover twice as fast.
Domain cost: 10,000 ether + 1,000 ether per minute of usage.
Size: 1km.
Reading through the skill description for the third time, Arthur concluded that it was simply a cheat. Any single one of its effects was a massive boon, but when considered together, it made most fights trivial. The greatest advantage it had over his former pseudo domain, however, was that the skill could now differentiate between friend and foe. Using the skill for the upcoming fight would immediately make the Archon knight 50% slower in EVERYTHING, moment speed, mental processing, skill usage, and even magical attacks.
Add on one of the active effects, and fighting Arthur would be a nightmare. Soul damage was the crowning cherry at the top of the cake and meant even the fights he lost would extract a hefty price from his foes. As long as he survived a battle, no foe would ever be beyond him, and if there was one thing he was confident in, it was his survivability.
His pinnacle skill did, however, come along with an exorbitant cost. Ten thousand ether just to summon it translated to 30,000 health and it would take another 3,000 health per minute as it was deployed. The skill drank ether like a V8 engine did petrol. He’d thought his health pool was practically an infinite resource; his new abilities were quickly teaching him otherwise. A part of his domain effects was currently cut off from him, at least until he figured out what his skill, The Soul's Splinters (legendary, ritual) did.
The soul splinters (legendary, ritual) level N/A- Break a portion of your soul and create a ??????? construct with it.
Item cost: Variable
Cost: 3% of your highest stats maximum
Effect- Gain 1% of Splinter's total stats as an addition to your own. Summon your soul splinter
[Note: Ritual skills, especially those of the higher grade, go beyond the parameters of the system. Locate someone with a higher identification ability to learn more about your skills.] Uses available: 1
Additional uses will be unlocked every 30 levels.
The skills description told him very little, only that if he decided to use it, he’d have 9% less Draconic vitality by the time he reached level 200 and upgraded his class. That milestone was so far off in the future with how hard his class was to level he might not see it until he was twice his current age. The ritual's effects were a little more… obscure.
From what he could tell, and the little nudge his soul affinity was telling him, he’d be sacrificing a fraction of his soul to create a construct, or was it a minion of some kind? He was pretty sure the variable item cost included a monster core of some kind or the other. Arthur would normally be leery of creating something to serve as an ally, paranoid that he’d get stabbed in the back, but this ritual was quite literally created from him.
The construct created would be built off his soul, changed slightly to facilitate a new form of existence. At its core, though, the skill would still be him. With two minutes left till his grand battle, now wasn’t the time to theory-craft his build. And besides, he’d already settled on a skill to use for this fight.
Armaments Of The Soul (legendary) - The most potent tool of any soul mage, the armaments created with this skill are a reflection of the soul made manifest in physical reality. Of fluid form, the armament can be anything the user desires. Cost: 5000 ether summon cost. 1000 ether/ minute of use.
Effect: 5% of all damage inflicted via the armament counts as soul damage. Ignores 50% of all defences. Attacks done with the armament have a slight possibility of permanently decreasing a target's stats. Whilst the armament is summoned, spells cost 10% less ether. The host learns weapon techniques at an accelerated rate whilst using an armament.
Falling under the umbrella of soul affinity, the skill did not disappoint. There was a reason that soul mages were renowned as the hunters of apocalypse beasts. Yes, they also made for great healers, smiths and craftsmen but they weren’t KNOWN for it. But I will be. I’ll be the damned greatest healer the universe has ever known. Arthur promised himself. With the homunculi’s healing (Legendary), he was already on the right track. With a little less than a minute before the Archon knight's arrival, he deployed the skill for the first time.
Five thousand ether translated to 15,000 health and Arthur was lucky using the resource didn’t destroy his body as his last use of unstructured magic had. He’d experimented with it a little, using almost 40,000 health dealing with the ninth wave, and thankfully using the resource didn’t break down his body as he’d feared. He suspected it was an unwritten effect of Dragon’s vitality, but the energy spent on conversion this way made him feel... hollow. He didn’t know how else to describe it, only that the time it took for him to regenerate from it was spent feeling a little more fragile than his stats suggested.
It took a few seconds for his weapon to form and Arthur looked at the blob of purple-blue energy with embarrassment. He’d been managing a huge bastard sword, described by many as more a hunk of iron, and had been left with… well calling it a big stick was a little generous. Turned out the skill mentioning an armament being anything the user desired failed to mention how difficult actually shaping the weapon was. It was a good thing he’d summoned it a few seconds before his enemy appeared because as things stood, the weapon would have proved useless. Rushed for time as he was, Arthur settled on creating a mace of some kind, with a sort of spike to the top of it. The final result didn’t quite match what he’d had in mind but it would have to do.
The knight was stepping through a portal.
If Arthur wasn’t after a challenge, he would have struck right then, hitting the creature’s armoured knee and disabling a leg before the monster even appeared fully. As things were, Arthur let the knight make its entrance and observed his foe even as it did the same for him. The knight was clad in golden armour and adorned with a billowing red cape. In her hands, for the knight's proportions were distinctly feminine, were clasped a metre-long shield of some kind and a gleaming one-hand sword.
Even an amateur like him could tell how exquisite the craftsmanship was. Alarm bells started ringing in Arthur's head and he instinctively took a step backwards. Something was wrong. Whatever this was, it wasn’t the Archon knight he was supposed to be facing. He was sure of it. His instincts were practically screaming it at him. The locus-generated monsters had a certain flavour to them; he wouldn’t quite call them soulless, but there was an element of unreality to them and his brain recognised them for the magically generated constructs that they were. It was why he hadn’t found it difficult to cut down so many ‘humanoid’ monsters thus far. He knew that they were fundamentally fake.
This woman, however, was very, very real. Almost too real in fact, as if her presence in reality was somehow stronger than his own. Arthur had heard about the phenomenon, mentioned as a passing comment in one of his conversations with Alyssia. He’d forgotten the exact word for it, but she’d been describing something that took place at the top of the food chain, with people who were beyond the power structures created by classes.
Whatever the case may be, it was definitely not something that should be happening with a level 201 Archon Knight. Not unless the thing had apocalypse-beast level potential. Arthur shot off a quick Identify and felt a stab of pain go through his head. That wasn’t supposed to happen either, and it only confirmed his suspicions that something had gone wrong. His analysis skill, as underdeveloped as it was, should have shown him something, a question mark at least, especially since he already ‘knew’ what this creature was.
The final nail in the coffin, though, was when the knight started to speak. She bowed her head at a ninety-degree angle in some form of greeting before looking back up at him, all in a single smooth motion that ignored the usual restrictions heavy plate put on someone.
“My name is Issania, firstborn daughter of Orlando, The Scarred One. May I have the honour of knowing who I am facing.”
Oh Fuck.
Comments
Gavriel
Well fudge 😂, maybe they don't have to fight?
