EmEs_etherious
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Chapter 129- A Tiring Speedrun
🕑 Added 2024-01-11 23:59:01 +0000 UTCIt was an impulsive decision. Arthur didn’t walk into the fight aiming to catch a massive two-handed war-axe going for his throat. It sort of just happened. The reasonable choice would have been a single step backwards which would have allowed the blade of decapitation to swing by harmlessly; except with a half-metre hunk of steel looming in his vision, Arthur for some reason, raised a single hand, appearing to any observer like a fool who thought he could command the force.
Except when the axe-head connected with his open palm, it almost looked like he could. Arthur was just as surprised as the hobgoblin chieftain when the monster’s strike did absolutely nothing. The attack's momentum and force met the wall of 2,050 Draconic vitality and found itself wanting. With an effective constitution of over 3,000, no monster under level 200 had the toolkit to harm him. Apocalypse beasts didn’t count.
For all his efforts, Mavak’s opening strike resulted in nought but a thin line of red on Arthur’s hand that disappeared as soon as it formed, more a papercut than an actual wound. Letting go of the blade's edge, Arthur shook his arm to get rid of the phantom pain his brain told him should be present. Judging by the power behind the hobgoblin blow, Arthur estimated its strength stat was in the low five hundred, significantly higher than his measly 260 (125x1.26x1.1x1.5).
If stats didn’t mess with physics, Arthur would have been sent sprawling. As things were, he merely cocked his fist and punched the creature’s jaw for all he was worth. The monster might have been stronger than him, but Arthur was faster and he didn't have to worry about a shitty constitution holding him back like Alyssia did. His clenched fist crashed into Mavak's jaw with a juddering crunch, and finding a little resistance, pushed through splintered bone and broken teeth, pulverising the upper third of the hobgoblin's tongue in its passage.
This fight is seriously unfair.
Arthur stopped his preparation to launch a second blow when he heard the distinct snap of bone. Like a puppet with its strings cut, Mavak fell lifelessly to the ground, jaw hanging on by a thread of flesh in a grotesque display of pulped flesh. He'd broken the creature's neck with a single punch.
Arthur sighed in exasperation. This was supposed to be his testing ground, a place where he could get used to the new limitations of his body before he had to face the very real threats approaching Earth. He couldn't test shit if monsters died so easily. Nudging the creature's body with his foot to see if the overgrown goblin was faking death, Arthur was disappointed to see nothing so inspired. The monster was actually dead, the rush of energy it provided him was so small it didn't even register as a blip on his radar. He'd have to kill thousands of hobgoblins, maybe tens of thousands to gain a single level.
It was a depressing thought and he quickly tempered his hopes of levelling from this final layer. It wouldn't be happening.
Congratulations on completing the first wave, you finished the wave with 46 minutes to spare and the next wave shall begin in ten minutes.
Wave 2- 50 goblins, 20 goblin arches, 3 frost hounds, 1 hobgoblin shaman, 1 hobgoblin chieftain.
That was quite a large spike in difficulty from the first wave. And he wasn’t sure if the previous him would have been able to handle it. Alyssia would have struggled even more than him with this layer's restrictions limiting her. It also informed him that there was an hour limit to every wave and that if one wasn’t completed by then, you’d have to deal with the next at the same time.
He could see that becoming a problem if the waves grew too large to handle quickly but he doubted things would get to that point. Rolling his shoulders, Arthur sat down to wait for his enemies. Hopefully, this wave wouldn't prove to be as disappointing as the last.
It did.
Arthur rubbed his temples as a hobgoblin shaman shot fireball after fireball at his face to little effect. The decrepit hag had been at it for three minutes now, and the only reason Arthur didn’t kill her was because the warmth felt sort of pleasant on his skin, reminiscent of the time an ex had persuaded him to get a facial at a beauty salon. It was kind of pitiful; she was pouring everything she had into this and Arthur was treating it as a massage.
The novelty of the experience faded after a while and Arthur quickly killed his last foe with a Molecular water shot (Epic) through the skull. It was one of his skills that had changed the least with his new class.
Molecular water shot (Elite) level 1- Fire bullets of water ranging in size from as large as boulders to as tiny as the grouped molecules that make up the liquid. Molecular water shot possesses a piercing ability that bypasses a portion of the target's natural defence, both magical and physical.
Cost: variable
Damage: variable
With his new class, the skill’s rarity had gone up a grade, and its wording had changed a little. It now bypassed a ‘large’ portion of a target's defence and the word ‘natural’ had been taken out of the skills description. Did that mean he could now bypass unnatural defences too? What the hell was unnatural defence anyway? One thing Arthur knew for certain, however, was that the skill dealt significantly more damage now, almost twice as much if he had to put a number on it.
A portion of the hag’s head was literally deleted out of existence, something the previous version of the skill never would have been able to do with the hundred ether investment he'd put into it. With the monster’s death, the second wave ended leaving him as disappointed as the first had.
The monsters, on average, had all been five levels higher, and the hobgoblin chieftain had wielded a massive club instead of an axe. Apart from that, things had been exactly the same. A five-level increase was a drop of water in the ocean of difference that separated the base creatures from himself. Grimacing at the gore coating his fists, Arthur prepared himself for the slog that lay before him. He no longer harboured any hopes that it would be any fun.
~A Hospital Staffroom~
The air was charged with a horrible pressure that seemed to physically weigh everyone down as they stared at the television screen. The room stank of stale sweat and disinfectant. Even after a month since the system’s arrival, the hospital hadn’t gotten used to the copious flow of injured patients that came through every day, and it could be seen in the haggard faces and unkempt appearances of the staff crammed into the room.
They were on a rare ten-minute break and a few healers were passed out on beanbag cushions despite the momentous news being broadcast on screen. ‘Hells rising’ they were calling it. The day when the dead started to wake up. Things had started innocently enough. Twenty-seven hours ago, the huge dimensional incursion hovering over the Atlantic ocean or ‘Ritual Translocation spell’ as the authorities were calling it, had finally opened up, spitting a motley crew of ragged humans directly into the waters.
Military personnel had immediately apprehended the group, or at least they’d tried to. Moments after identify showed them to be levelled into the low 200s, quickly told everyone that things wouldn’t go so well. That hadn’t stopped a Japanese general, newly appointed by himself as the great samurai warlord, from trying something. How the man had managed to get on the scene without raising a horde of red flags was anyone's guess, suffice to say the man had died very quickly.
His execution had been broadcast for all the world to see because that was exactly what it was. The man hadn’t stood a chance. It had taken a while for things to calm down after that, but eventually, the news stations were given something to work with.
The aliens, for that, was what they were, were apparently the citizens of a tier-two world called Seroll. A mercenary team led by a man named Captain Arencia had apparently bitten off more than they could chew when they came across an ancient lich in their explorations of a sub-dimension. With their healers down after their first battle, and their dimensional mage out of action, they’d made the wise decision to cut their losses and flee.
That decision had led them to Earth and their troubles had come running behind them. Most hadn’t believed them at first, captain Arencia's warnings scrutinised as some kind of plot to spread dissent. How wrong they had been. Now Rachel watched, alongside the rest of the world, as a land of ice and death was created out of salt water. Even as the drones recorded, thousands of undead abominations crawled out of rents in space. Conservative estimates placed the number of their foes at two million. Captain Arencia said another three were coming.
That was only the beginning of their troubles. The ‘Frozen city’, for that was now what it was called, was mobile, and wherever it travelled, the dead began to rise. The monsters created were weak, with none of the deadly powers of the lich’s personal creations, but they proved fatal for the ordinary man. Already thousands had died, the victims joining their killers in undeath.
There was hope, however, according to the news stations. Whilst Kazi Alukai hadn’t made a move himself, another of Earth's primes was making her way to the fight. The Life Of Earth, blue whale, Oceanuss, ruler of the seven seas.
The representative of Earth's animal kingdom had answered the world's cry for help. Now the people watched, beast and man alike, with bated breath to see where the dice fell. Rachel didn’t think she’d like the role.
~~~~~~~~~
Arthur groaned in exhaustion as he lay down on the blood-soaked earth, a mountain of corpses around him. This is gonna be easy, my ass. His stamina had literally hit zero multiple times on the most recent wave, which thankfully didn’t knock him unconscious as he’d feared. No, it just felt like elephants started a tap dancing concert across his body and slowed his movements by about seventy percent.
The waves of monsters had grown in both number and difficulty exponentially after the third round where the locus left the goblin theme behind. The fourth level had been a horde of 500 bipedal wolves, all at level 130 led by a Lycan Packleader at level 150. That was the first round Arthur had to rely on his skills to finish at a reasonable time. He’d stuck with the tried and tested molecular water shot to whittle his enemies down, but true to the layers name, the fight had truly become a test of endurance, with each shot of water costing thrice as much as it had initially by the end of it.
Even with his massive energy reserves, spending ether and health so extravagantly wasn’t sustainable. This locus was meant to be challenged by five people, who could selectively choose which skills to use against their enemies and cycle between them to avoid ratcheting up to heightened costs he had suffered. Sadly, Arthur was alone, with an entirely new set of abilities that he had absolutely no experience with.
Arthur had used some of his new abilities to give them a test run but quickly realised that his experience with water bullets made it the best tool in his arsenal to get the job done, even as it increased in cost. Learning to shadow-step with an angry mutt gnawing on your leg wasn't the greatest of ideas.
By the ninth wave, the one he’d just completed, he’d had to fight a horde, 3000 strong consisting of trolls, ogres, lycans and werecats, all around level 180 using a spell that now cost a thousand ether per shot.
If the locus didn’t increase the time allotment per wave, he never would’ve managed to complete it. Now he only had one to go, and he briefly wondered if he should bow out now with the rewards he’d already earned. He quickly shot the absurd notion down and got to his feet, even as a portal formed in the air directly before him. This was different from the last, he could feel it in his bones. Oh, and the monsters were coming in a completely different way this time. It was a good thing he’d saved his most potent skills for the final wave. He had a feeling he’d need them.
Wave Ten- 1 Archon Knight; Level 201.
Would you like to leave?
Arthur selected no.
AN- Just a heads up that there won't be chapters the following week because I'll be busy with IRL things. Also, a slight edit I made to the chapter before the previous chapter; Arthur has his pinnacle skill already instead of having to unlock it at level 101.
Comments
Joshua LaBarge
What a cliff! I liked how you resolved things with Alyssia and I can't wait to read more :)
Milton Skipper
Thanks for the heads up, seeya when you get back. :)
