7/20
Somewhere in China
3:40 AM
“Go clear the dungeon.” The man in a suit said. He was flanked by two guards armed with rifles, though they were for show. The man in the suit was the real fighter.
“I don't need this shit,” Hak-Kun Han replied. “I'm already strong. I don't have to prove shit to you guys.”
Thanks to its large standing army, China had almost complete control over its Dracosys sites. This one in particular was a 40 floor dungeon in Luoyang. Rumors were that the ghost of Lu Bu haunted this dungeon.
Dozens of Army troops surrounded the red archway, the entrance to the Luoyang tomb museum. They'd originally sandbagged the area around the arch. Now there were two full concrete bunkers aimed at the entrance. The troops hadn't even asked to see ID from the man in a suit or his entourage. They knew better than to question him.
The bright construction site flood lights were almost blinding. To Hak-Kun, this whole thing had been disorienting. He was a hero! The Ruinous Hero! That was literally his class! Yet they treated him barely better than a prisoner.
“I could kill you all if I wanted to,” Hak-Kun sneered.
The man in the suit snapped his fingers and Hak-Kun's hands exploded in blood. He fell to his knees and screamed. His hands immediately started growing back, but the pain was unbelievable.
The man in the suit, who'd never given Hak-Kun a name, confidently said, “You are a poor fighter. Your build is terrible. Go. Train. Come back when you are ready to fight me.”
Hak-Kun's hands were already back. The pink flesh would turn back to white over a few minutes, but his fingerprints were gone forever. The wrinkles and creases from two decades of video games, taken away in an instant.
Hak-Kun gritted his teeth. This humiliation wouldn't stand. “I'm a damn hero! You and your shitty governments can all-” As Hak-Kun pointed a finger at the man the index finger was immediately slashed off. Blood shot from the stump for a second, then the stump began to heal. Hak-Kun howled. “Fuuuck! Okay! Okay!”
“I'm not the government. The Chinese government has no interest in you. They have enough to worry about.” The man lit a cigarette. “You're private property for now, until you earn your freedom.” The man flicked ash in Hak-Kun's face. “I've cleared this dungeon twenty times. Each time I added a floor. Each time I made it harder for myself. You have only taken the easy way out. If you truly want to be this hero you go on about, then become it.”
The man pointed again at the archway. Hak-Kun stood, for once held his tongue, and stormed in.
-----
7/20
The Hollywood sign dungeon, 4th lot
10:45 PM
My danger zone is after 20 hours. 20 hours after I kill a 6th tier monster, I start feeling the Scourge pain. It starts in my fingers and temples, like a mild headache, but accelerates to painful migraine over an hour. At 21 and a half hours, pain shoots through my body and I can barely stand upright.
We learned this the hard way. I didn't take the time limit seriously. I should have. When I hit 21 hours I was barely able to contribute to the fight against the 15th floor/studio robots. And after the fight we did the math and figured that they wouldn't regenerate before I hit that time limit again. So now we're moving into the 16th-20th studios, looking for 6th tier enemies to reset my timer with.
“They strong enough?” Quins asks, motioning towards the WW2 Nazis peeking out from behind the bombed out ruins of Warsaw.
Nazi Rifleman. Tier 3. A good shot. Also evil.
Possible loot: rifle.
“Nah,” I say, waving a hand towards them.
“That sounds like a tank nearby,” Odysseus offers. He must have good ears. The din of gunfire, mortar barrages and burning buildings is constant.
I listen closely. It does sound like mechanical treads rolling. I use my boots to fly up and survey the battlefield. Indeed, there's a grey panzer tank a few buildings down.
It's at this point that I should mention that everything inside this studio, and this lot, is black and white and grey. Including us. The second we stepped inside the gates for studios 16-20, we went greyscale. It's pretty neat. The skies are overcast, lending even more grey to the scene.
I scan the tank.
Panzer IV. Tier 5. The backbone of German WW2 tank forces. This one has a short barrel to fire anti-infantry shells. As a reminder, you're technically infantry.
Possible loot: Tank shells, fuzzy dice, picture of Greta, tank stone.
Hey system, I'm not infantry, thanks. I'm airborne infantry. I fly straight down, switching forms as I go.
Solar Mind! Chimerablood Rise!
Relentless Heat. The sun wolf howls!
The sun wolf form includes Devastating Dragon style, and in this form I can hit really, really hard. I summon a 15 foot long anime-esque greatsword and bring it down on the tank, triggering my Strength Surge right before impact. Several passive techniques, including Sneak Attack, trigger and my blade cleaves right through the tank, a trail of flame following it. I land, kneeling in the dirt, and immediately stand, pull my blade out of the tank, shoulder it, and turn to face the other Nazis. Their shocked faces are priceless.
They open fire with their bolt action rifles, which ding against my armor. I can feel the impacts, but they're not strong enough to actually break my shell. One of them, an officer, pulls out a handgun and fires a shot that hits and blasts me back into the wrecked tank. I feel electricity shoot through my body and I convulse for a second. What the hell was that?
Nazi Blitzkrieg Officer. Tier 6. A master of the blitz. Blitz, as in German for lightning.
Possible lo-
He dashes forward before I can even finish reading his entry, knife in hand. The knife glows white and slashes into my side, punching through my armor and just barely reaching my gut. I can tell it's not bad. I try to punch him back, and he dodges back five feet. I bring my massive anime sword down and he easily dodges the overhead chop. I jump up to get some distance and he fires another lightning shot. This time I see the white lightning come from the handgun and light up the area. It's Jose's goddamn moves! The bolt hits me mid air and I'm shocked and drop like a rock. I can't recover before he's on me again, stabbing into my back over and over again. So fuck this guy.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
6th Step, Astral Pathbreaker, Star Swarm!
My stars form a dome around me and push him back. He responds by immediately raising his handgun again, but I'm on that shit now. I fire five streams of Prominence Burn from different stars at him. He, of course, dodges, but I really just wanted to interrupt his attack. I chase him briefly and immediately realize that this bastard is faster than me. Fine, inescapable traps it is.
I launch stars in all directions, leaving me exposed. He takes aim immediately, and a Prominence Burn flame stream shoots towards him from his left. He has to dodge right, which is where another star is starting up a separate stream of fire. He dodges again, this time flames shoot straight down at him, and engulf him.
He does a spin to dispel the flames around him, but during that half second I pushed my stars into a loose, 10 foot across dome around him. He swears in German. Prominence Burn fires from a hundred stars around him, setting him very, very on fire. I only keep up the flames for one second to preserve my dwindling AP, but during that second I've grabbed my greatsword with telekinesis, brought it back to my hand, and thrust forward with it, twisting the blade and stacking half a dozen techniques on the thrust.
The flames stop just in time for the Nazi to see the strike. My sword is about 3 inches thick, but the stacked effects make it so, so much deadlier. The blade cuts into his already burned body, and the shockwave blasts his whole midsection apart. The remaining 2/3rds of him fall to the ground.
The rest of the Nazis surrender. Before I can debate what to do with them, arrows find their ways into Nazis necks and heads. Oh well. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
“Head Nazi was 6th tier!” I shout over the sounds of battle. Now that I'm on the other side of the battlefield, and the guys here are dead, I think that maybe the combat sounds are just background noise, and not actually coming from any actual guns or troops.
“Oh good,” says Mercy, coming around the tank ruins. She's in the Psi Dragon outfit. That one has barriers, so she was probably blocking bullets for the team. The Psi Dragon outfit is technically her strongest outfit right now, but it's taking Mercy time to get the hang of psychic powers. Also, due to the color palette of this place, her hair is grey, making it way less sexy than purple.
We collect the loot. In 12 hours I can wipe out the 15th studio transforming robots again, then 12 hours later return here and kill more Nazis. Not a bad loop.
“Not too bad for a 16th floor,” Odysseus says, reloading his rifle. “I was able to kill them like regular humans.”
“Dude, I bet it's the genre!” Ivy slaps Odysseus's shoulder. “Black and white flicks don't have a ton of super powered monsters or whatever. Low special effect budgets. We should take the rest of this area. I got like four levels off this place alone.”
Turns out Ivy gets credit as long as someone buffed by her music gets a kill. So she's basically getting XP off every MOB we come across. Which, hey, I'm not mad about. She needed more levels than the rest of us to begin with.
I take stock of my progress.
Over the last couple of days I've gotten 16 levels from wiping out the robots a few times and smashing through floors/studios 1 through 14. That got me to Dead Eye 10, Operative 10 and Kinesiologist 3.
Operative
As a Spy you were an expert of stealth and scouting. As an Agent you added combat skills. Now as an Operative you can add widespread destruction to that list.
A fourth step class. Four subclasses. Unknown class evolutions.
Gain 5 Charisma, 5 Agility and 5 Ki upon choosing this class. One master espionage technique will be granted to you upon choosing this class.
Uses Charisma, Agility, Ki.
Upon level up three additional random basic, advanced, expert or master espionage techniques will be granted, until all master and lower espionage techniques are known. A subclass specific technique will be granted every odd numbered level. Each level you gain 2 Charisma, 2 Agility, 3 Ki and 8 free points.
Subclasses
Demolition - Weapon and stealth techniques you know can be applied to bombs you use to make them deadlier and harder to find.
Biological - Weapon and stealth techniques you know can be applied to poisons you use to make them deadlier and harder to detect.
Electronic - Weapon and stealth techniques you know can be applied to devices you use to make them deadlier and harder to detect.
Digital - Weapon and stealth techniques you know can be applied when you are hacking to make things easier to crack and make you harder to detect.
For the Operative subclass I took Biological, since I'm about to do poison chicanery. The techniques I get are mostly about lockpicking and hacking, which are almost certainly useless to me. I do get the trap sense ability that Alicia Bennet had.
Trapfinder
You gain a basic radar function that appears in the upper left corner of your vision. It only detects traps. This can be configured. This stacks with similar vision mapping techniques.
Passive
Range: 50 feet
Proficiency: 0%
Hell yeah, that's an awesome ability, even if the other stuff Operative gave me was garbage.
Kinesiologist
Master the body. This includes your body, of course, but also that of other humans. Fine tune and upgrade humanity.
A fourth step class. Six subclasses. Unknown class evolutions.
Gain 5 Agility, 5 Charisma and 5 Spirit upon choosing this class. One master or lower performance boosting chant will be granted to you upon choosing this class.
Uses Agility, Charisma and Spirit.
Upon level up an additional master or lower performance boosting chant will be granted until all master and lower performance boosting chants are known. Each level you gain 2 Agility, 2 Charisma, 4 Spirit and 7 free points.
Subclasses
Self - Your chants targeting you last 33% longer.
Ally - Your chants targeting allies (except you) last 33% longer.
Enemy - Your chants targeting enemies are 33% harder to resist.
Training - Buffing effects that you use while within reach of the target are 50% more effective.
Performance - Debuffing effects that you use while within reach of the target are 50% harder to resist.
Recovery - Healing effects that you use within reach of the target are 50% more effective.
So at level two of Kinesiologist I got to pick a subclass from Self, Ally and Enemy. I shrugged and took Ally. At level three I got to pick another subclass, this time from Training, Performance and Recovery. These are all broken. I'll explain.
Normal Kinesiologists would have taken the Coach and Coordinator classes first. These provide buffing chants that you can issue at range, as does Kinesiologist. But Kinesiologist wants you to get in close, like a sports medicine expert, and treat/guide targets. Thus incentivizing you to use ranged buffing chants up close once in a while. A neat twist on mechanics you'd be familiar with.
HOWEVER, I'm no Coach or Coordinator. I'm a goddamn Synergist. And thus the three subclasses that improve melee effects are absolutely broken. See, they don't specify that you have to use a chant to trigger the bonus. You could use anything. So that +50% recovery bonus? Yeah, that'll apply to my Recovery Palm. The debuffing effect will apply to my crystalize, entropy and burning debuffs, as long as I'm dealing those in melee. I had to spend one level on getting the second subclass, but being an Ally Performance Recovery Kinesiologist is definitely worth it.
I suppose the Training subclass would also be good, but I've only got a few buffs, and most of them are from Kinesiologist. Those seem bad, to be honest. Like this one:
Knees Up!
The target moves through difficult terrain more easily.
Range: 30 ft
Duration: 30 seconds
Cost: 5 Spirit Points
Proficiency: 0%
The range and duration are short. So it's not like I can shout across an entire battlefield and get the effect. And the duration means that I can't just pop this off before a fight and expect it to work for the duration of the battle.
I look into the Coach and Coordinator subclasses and sure enough, there's support for increasing the range and duration of these types of chants. Which means that someone who was taking this seriously probably could make it work.
----
We open the door to studio 17 and I'm immediately excited to go in. “Giant ants!” I exclaim like a sugar rushed first grader.
“Why are they so hairy?” asks Mercy. There's a few dozen truck sized ants heading our way across what looks like scrub land. Some grass, a highway, telephone poles, a few bushes here and there.
“Ants have hair,” I say confidently. “And some ants can share their stomachs. Did you know-”
“What the fuck is going on?” Ivy asks Odysseus, meaning my exuberance. He shrugs.
“What, did you read that ant litRPG?” asks Quins.
“THERE'S AN ANT LITRPG?!?” I sat with waaay to much excitement. I'm in my Lunar Moon Beetle armor set right now. They can't see my wide grin.
“Jun played some game back in the day,” Mercy tries to explain. “Sim Ant? Anyways, sometimes Jun gets excited about bugs.”
“Pfft. Not just any bugs. Like, I don't give a crap about mantises or spiders. But ants are cool. Also beetles.” I point to my helmet, which is styled after a rhinoceros beetle.
Quins has to rain on my parade. “Right, right, but we're here to kill them. You going to be okay with that, chap?”
“I mean, they're not real ants anyway. Just dungeon monsters.” I turn to face the oncoming stream of 10 foot tall ants. “Oh but-”
Mercy stops me. “You CANNOT keep one.”
My shoulders slump.
-----
The ants turn out to be quite formidable. We have to back off and leave the studio after about 30 minutes of constant fighting. Not only are they tough and strong, but there's a lot of them. Hundreds, maybe thousands. We have to close the door on the studio and wait to recharge our respective magics and such.
“What about taking a peek into studio 18?” I ask, hoping for similar edu-tainment.
Studio 18 is a swamp. There are roars from inside the swamp. We decide to get high-waisted rubber waders before we tackle it.
Studio 19 is Dracula's castle. We enter, fight some bats, then Mercy opens a door and makes us leave. Apparently there are succubi behind that door, and she doesn't want me to go in there. She says she and Ivy will have to handle it alone on a future run.
We don't enter studio 20. Studio 15, the boss room we're already familiar with, holds nothing until we go in and shut the door. Which then locks behind us, trapping us until one side is dead. So we're thinking 20 might have the same lock-in effect. We're not going in unless we're confident we can tackle it. And we're not confident in that, yet.
Once we're fully charged, we head back into the ant nest. Literally.
