He fought off growing panic at the inevitability of a bitter cruel mocking fate that he REFUSED to accept any twisted cards trying to link him and his world to and instead focused on the glorious shining silvery cord of possibility that made this endless night the farthest thing from an apocalyptic tragedy. Because here and now, unlike as was the case for countless struggling souls in countless novels, he could actually empower himself. Better himself. Learn from his mistakes in the best possible way. Here and now, he could actually level up!
“And I can try to make best use what I have! So why the hell am I allowing growing dread and gut-clenching tension to stop me from putting my BESTEST and most AWESOMEST class to best fucking use? I got THREE Master-Tier perks to choose from, and I’m going to fucking pick them!”
He embraced both Battletime and a System-enhanced natural slow time to make best use of those suddenly endless seconds it took for him to race along the border of Sylvan Paradise and a hellish wasteland only a demon would love, with countless roach-like locusts clicking and clacking and devouring every last spec of greenery or life, unable to breach the barrier where it was strongest. Unlike the second herniated point so close to rupturing that he was rapidly approaching. He snarled off his growing sense of dread and flashed open his myriad options and was about to make the best choice, the ultimate choice that would have doubled his already absurdly strong Mark of Resilience. Talk about insane defenses!
And he so wanted to pick what really was one of his strongest enhancements. An enhancement that his inner tank BEGGED he take! Because FUCK swarming locusts! He’d ROLL RIGHT OVER THEM!
And that was when he saw it.
The enticing, smug, and all too tempting perk that was way too like a certain purple-eyed youth’s smile.
You have achieved OVER 20 Enhanced Class Perks!
You have earned both Rank I and Rank II Underlord!
You have achieved Level 50+ as a Master Necromancer!
The Dread Lord Enhancement Branch is now open to you!
What exactly even IS as Dreadlord?
Who knows? Who cares? You certainly don’t!
All you know is that a certain too handsome brooding prince radiating dark delicious secrets and exotic spicy connections and hidden talents that you totally aren’t attracted to effectively saluted you with the same reverence as he’d do for a Full Silver commander! What could it mean? JUICY THINGS! That’s what!
So why not embrace a bit of Dreadlord awesomeness for you and your troops!?!
In the form of the baddest and most sickeningly over-powered perks at all tangental to your absurd class evolutions and wildly twisted talents and powers, you hidden GOLDEN PHOENIX, you! Fuck all jaded courts as legit as a Cali show-trial, and FUCK all precepts of balance when the Empress is in your corner and Conceptio is enjoying your end-of-world splash so VERY much!
Sound enticing? Yes it does! So let’s go!
Dreadlord’s Frenzy. - Hell yeah! We’re enjoying a raw Quickness bonus equal to your level! Which, at Level 54, means your boys are fighting 54% faster for even more frenzied slaughtering of all your foes!
Dreadlord’s Wrath! - Who needs coordinated grace when your raw fucking fury can tear the FUCK out of all that stands against you? - SYNERGISM detected! Your revenant’s blows will be FURTHER enhanced by your infusion with the Essence of Wrath! - What does that mean for your men? Rank one and the expense of 1 Soul point buys your troops Your Necromancer level in enhanced Damage and Penetration power. AND ADDITIONALLY! A 1% Chance that increases every Rank to unleash a Feat-based power attack!
Eric stopped reading right there, pausing for a precious microsecond as his pace slowed the tiniest bit, mind racing at the implications offered. If this perk gave a 1% chance of unleashing, say, Piercing strike… and that increased each rank….
“Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hell yeah. HELL YEAH! LET’S GO, BABY!”
Of course even as he cackled with glee, he knew there might be half a dozen nuanced factors he should be considering, not the least of which was exactly how much it would grow. And… yeah. He wasn’t a complete idiot. He did NOT overlook the 1 Point Permanent Soul Reserve cost… but with a Soul Reserve pool now at a whopping 700+! And with the world ending… he was in the rare position to NOT give a fuck. Because the one flaw beyond ALL others in battle was hesitation.
You picked a direction and you went HARD and the very frenzy of you MOVING and ACTING and FIGHTING and EVOLVING was more likely to keep you alive, no matter how stupid your screaming sergeant, than freezing like a fool in the middle of a hot zone… unless you were a camouflaged sniper... which Eric’s troops most definitely were NOT.
So he didn’t hesitate to slam down both Perk feat and Soul Reserve chips.
Not even when the second rank cost him two additional points of his soul reserves and earned him 2% increased auto-crit chance.
Heart pounding, absolutely HOPING it was a logarithmic progression, and skimming over all the other supposed benefits and perks he really should be considering… he dared to drop that third perk right where it needed to go.
Even if it cost him FOUR Soul Reserve points and only increased the critical hit weapon feat chance by 3% for a combined 6%
“What fucking bullshit is this WONDERFUL LOVELY PERK! Love you, Conceptio!” He hooted allowed when he read the fine print.
Four additional Soul Reserve points (and 1 additional Master Necromancer Perk Point) spent!
Congratulations! You have achieved Rank 3 in Dreadlord’s Wrath!
Your revenants now have a combined 6% Chance to unleash critical Piercing Strikes with EVERY blow unleashed!
Your revenants now do bonus damage with every blow equal to your Master Necromancer level.
Dreadlord’s Wrath additionally allows you to CHANNEL your Weapon Feat through your ENTIRE ARMY (at tenfold normal cost) no matter how big or small!
Eric was momentarily stunned by the sheer, glorious absurdity of the perk he had just unlocked. Sure, it was also absurdly expensive. NO way in hell he was doing it with a fifty pound mithril blade, Crimson orb in play or no. BUT should he have, say, a custom-made bone and sinew Sarissa covered in blazing crimson runes of Resilience, Dominion, and Wrath... That was equal in length and size to the 25 foot long pike used by all his men, with a blade head comprised of the sheering forelimbs of one Shadow Mantis Assassin happy to give up a piece of himself, knowing Eric could restore the creature that was miraculously STILL intact after a shockingly deadly night full of fighting and killing…
And if he were to make a successful Flesh Sculptor check…
Flesh Sculptor Check successful!
Congratulations! You have SUCCESSFULLY forged a MASTERWORK Spear based on the 375,000 spears your Sarissa hold that resonate so gloriously with your spear!
You have DARED to expand the limits of your gloriously warped Flesh Sculptor skill! Flesh Sculptor Rank now = Armor AND Weaponsmith rank for once-living material!
Flesh Sculptor is now Rank 33!
You have successfully fused 77 crimson runes upon the shaft of your masterwork with the power of your imagination alone! (And all the glorious sweet blood… YOUR blood, giving organic life to your masterwork!)
Runic Lore is now Rank 33!
Blood Ward is now Rank 6!
Potency Binding is now Rank 7!
Eric howled with fierce delight as he pulled out what by rights should have been a lopsided mess but was, in fact, a perfectly made sarissa EXACTLY matching the size, length, and weight, of the 375,000+ versions he felt like a weight in the corner of his soul that mastered and commanded his men. Holding the long spear as if he had held that pike in his hands through countless hours of training, a pike that was feather light with 1000+ Strength, even if he had last held it countless levels, class evolutions, and weeks… had it only been fucking weeks since he had first started charging orcs for fun and profit?!? - ago.
CONGRATULATIONS on forging your first masterwork Sarissa! NOTE! Your extra awesome 25-foot long reinforced Sarissa weighs 15 pounds!
Eric flashed a fierce smile, miming charging and thrusting with his sarissa as he raced above the ground at absolutely insane speeds, making sure that he DID feel a connection to this weapon mirrored in the souls of all his kills. Knew it so well, tied to paths of mastery, necromancy, and blood, that when he commanded his blood forth to anoint his weapon, he did it as another tool of war he now had absolute familiarity with, if not yet mastery.
So he took that moment to anoint both his legendary Bronze Tier Cuirass of The Underlord and his Masterwork Sarissa. Happy to burn yet another Soul Point as he gripped tight the tools of fate and destiny, HIS fate and destiny, and made them forever his own.
1 Additional Soul Reserve permanently spent! You have successfully Soul-Bound both of your personally forged tools of war! You may now summon or store them both at will!
Eric laughed aloud into the cold, uncaring night sky, knowing he was playing both the wildcard savant and the utter fool.
And none of that mattered.
All that mattered was that he force his feet to move FASTER! Ever fucking faster, ignoring the wheeze in his chest and the growing fiery burn in his quads and gluts as he leaned INTO the pain and TORE through the air at what was now Mach 2.6.
As fast as he had ever gone, and just in time to catch the supersonic crash of screams… so many innocent screams.
He then caught sight of a bucolic slice-of-life farming village radiating magic and warmth and golden fields of wheat, interspersed with fields of corn, soybeans, and alfalfa. Every house was blessed with personal gardens filled with lush green vegetables, brightly blooming flowers, and fruit trees heavy with their sun-ripened bounties. In the heart of the village square was a nighttime celebration filled with song, drink, dance, and laughter.
Why hadn’t they fled? Had they not been informed? Had twisted foes subtly assured that the promise of peace was all their souls would hear even as it set them up for the awfullest of betrayals?
It was a question for which he had no answer.
Instead his eyes were drawn to the celebration being embraced by elven youths of marriagable age and what he sensed was one young Contender choosing a better path for herself than the one of blood and peril he had so madly embraced. Yet somehow, she knew… Knew as the sky brooded with storm clouds and the crackling lightning of an imminent breach that the storybook romance that this wondrous territory had all but promised, resonated through her soul, was about to turn to tragedy and horror as she, armor and sword already traded for simple farmer’s clothes with a heartloop about her finger, holding tight the hand of the young elven farmer beside her, the pair of them somehow knowing to look right at HIM… a supersonic bullet, no matter that their attributes were far too damn low to see him at all right now… putting the fate of their entire doomed village on his sorry ass…
And he couldn’t even scream at them to run. It would come out as an ear-drum bursting sonic boom if he projected his voice in a shout beyond Speed Racer’s domain.
So instead, he did the only thing he could.
Slamming to an instantaneous stop at nearly 2000 MPH... Because yes, he could DO that, he spun to face the awful shimmering black wall of crackling energies stretched into the effigy of Malice Bane’s twisted visage… sensing the awful pressure of reality itself screaming to hold the barrier and a malevolent hate-filled FUCK doing all he could to rupture it… and Eric leaped on through BEFORE the fucker burst.
It gave him the tiniest measure satisfaction to see those hate-filled features twist in surprise as Eric slipped through the barrier between realms that affected mortals and Contenders not at all.
Because not even his NOT FATHER! had expected Eric to shatter the sound barrier nearly thrice-over, racing from the bait to the true thrust of the shockingly monstrous attack while being the farthest thing from a Golden Phoenix.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
You have crossed between realms ALONE!
You are surrounded on ALL SIDES by Bronze Tier locusts now EAGER to consume you!
Eric howled his fury, lips curling in a wide grin as his interface screamed with the horrific pressure of not dozens or hundreds but hundreds of thousands of abominations all crushing against the barrier between realms for several miles in all directions, even now crushing him with hundreds stacked above him, Eric effectively finding himself in ground zero of Malice’s ultimate trap.
Surrounded by the crushing weight of half a million monsters in what was effectively the bowels of hell.
Exactly where he wanted to be, 1000 Vitality REFUSING to buckle to weight that cracked only one of his Brittle Bones as the curse weakened before his flood of levels.
And the flood was just beginning as the gloom and crushing weight and mandibles scraping and clawing at his indestructible chest plate and mithril helm were suddenly lit by a transcendent light so brilliant it blazed like the core of supernova for the blink of an eye.
All the time in the world as Eric unleashed retribution more than capable of obliterating a Silver-Tier Titan Wyrm, screaming his hate for the one who was so eager to destroy his world.
TRANSCENDANT STRIKE OBLITERATES all locusts within 50 yards radius!
Shrapnel plasma shockwave slaughters 75% of all Locusts within 100 yard Radius!
Shockwave STUNS 57% of Locusts within 250 yards attempting to Breach BARRIER!
You are directly responsible for the utter annihilation of 742 Bronze Tier Locusts with a SINGLE STRIKE!
Congratulations! You are the FIRST Terran to Slay over 100 Bronze Tier foes with a single melee strike! (Actual number to DIRECTLY perish from Transcendent Heat that yes, most DEFINITELY counts as part of your Super Punch Man special = 282!)
NOTE! Skill Check Successful!
Transcendent Flame does NOT Backlash and breach the barrier you are so eager to protect! (For fire knows the cry of the Phoenix and is EAGER to obey its master!)
You have earned the DEEP Bronze-Tier Title: Greater Reaver II!
Reaver Feats COMBINE! All class feats OR Cultivation abilities channeled by MELEE Attacks (Even mile-long force-blades of Dreadnaught-Destroying Ice Fire! OR explosive fists unleashing Transcendant Flame!) Shall enjoy a PERMANENT 60% Damage Bonus multiplicative with ALL other boons!
You additionally enjoy an additional permanent 10% bonus to all earned attributes!
5 Cards of Folly seek to TEAR FREE YOUR PRIZE!
System Ruling in effect! - Any player is free to TAKE your End-of-World Consolation titles, with no card expended! So long as they survive ONE PUNCH FROM YOU, HERE AND NOW!
Eric’s eyes lit up with outraged fury even surrounded by plasma unleashed by his own strike, collapsing bodies about to crash down upon him. “Come on, motherfuckers! You want what I got? I WILL TAKE YOU THE FUCK ON AND I WILL FUCK YOU UP! BRONZE OR SILVER, I DON’T CARE!”
His subsonic scream ruptured countless locusts already charred to a crisp, and he pretended he didn’t sense the pair of blazing wings erupting from his BACK as his soul screamed with the sudden weight of 27 levels roaring through his frame, instantly catapulting him to half-step Bronze as a Legendary Classer that did NOT destroy him like a quark bomb…
Because he had danced this dance once before. Now feeling a surprising degree of comfort as old channels first lit up by his mother’s side reignited once more.
It did take a heartbeat to put away his OBLITERATING WINGS that set a good 7000 Locusts exploding into superheated plasma as the world screamed with the weight of his perilous ascension once more.
He flinched away from eternity and took a shuddering breath of poisoned air… and the wings were no more. He and Terra both silently agreeing that what had almost happened had not, in fact, happened at all.
Congratulations! Your challenge has been heard throughout the local quadrant!
(All cards have been rescinded.)
Eric howled with furious vindication as the air grew impossibly hot, caring nothing for the impossibly potent backlash that caused him nothing more than the mildest of burns, howling his fury, for all that his muscles trembled for air.
For he was technically trapped under a literal mountain of enemies even now collapsing down upon him, no matter the near ten thousand he had just destroyed, and the solution to his non-dilemma was gloriously simple.
He would just punch his way free.
Transcendant Strike obliterates 1574 Additional Bronze Tier Locusts!
(20 Qi & 40/4 = 10 Temporary Soul Reserves Expended)
Vitality Check made (By 1000!) You have saved versus dizziness (Oxygenless void)
You have obliterated an additional 1672 Bronze Tier Locusts!
Vitality check made (By 989!) You have saved versus weakness and disorientation (Oxygenless void).
You have broken free of Raging Locust Swarm!
Fire Fist is now Rank 27!
Unarmed Combat is now Rank 31!
He raced upward at a steep angle, laughing and wheezing as he glared down at the endless see of fucking world-ending locusts that had indeed devoured the entire lush forest of giant ferns, exotic proto-flowers and primordial life. All Eric saw before him now was a lifeless wasteland of desiccated soil, ash, and howling winds.
And all of it covered with a sea of fucking locusts, even now forming up, EAGER, so very eager to push through the barrier once more.
Eric screamed his defiance even as he was forced to process the sweet rush of 27 levels ROARING through his body and soul before slamming so much extra potency so EAGER to see him ascend to fiery bronze in truth… squeezing it tight, so shockingly tight once more as he embraced 3rd Tier Core Saturation… every muscle and bone in his body trembling under the sudden surge of supreme effort it took to dare form a third compression after coming so close to dying after the second, less than a handful of hours ago… now radiating so much heat that he wanted to scream.
That the massive swarm of flying locusts were exploding in superheated fluids and bright flame as they flew too close was of minimal comfort.
Though it did make him smile, even if his laughter was the roar of a dragon’s flame.
Vitality Check Successful!
You now DARE the absolutely absurd, attempting to Infuse your Core a THIRD time!
Conceptio approves of your madness and is EAGER to see how far you can go before erupting into a Phoenix, OR a supernova! (He’s 50/50)
The potency of an additional 1527 locusts killed directly by your hand is now your own.
Fire Fist is now Rank 28!
3rd Tier Core Saturation is now at 27%!
Daring to take a single moment to center himself, he found himself both awed and horrified by what he had dared, challenging half the sector for a single heartbeat in time… and not one player dared answer his call.
Why?
_______________________________________________________
Eric Silver Level 99 PRISTINE GOLDEN PHOENIX (Adventurer)
(3rd Tier Core Saturation at 27%!)
Rank 54 DEATH’S DISCIPLE (Four Seasons Cultivator)
Level 55 Master Necromancer
Physical Characteristics
Strength – 1083 (You can easily shatter tanks with your fists!)
Vitality – 1103 (Your Vitality is beyond monstrous.)
Finesse – 861 (You’re nearly as deadly as a Bronze-tier sniper. Even without all their perks!)
Quickness – 1427 (You’re well over 70 times as fast as an Olympic Fencer. ABSURD!)
Appearance – 36 (If this were pre-apocalypse, you would star in all your mother’s movies!)
Mental Characteristics
Scholarship – 35 (Your still yourself, but your thoughts are clear and your memory is sharp!)
Perception – 833 (A deadly marksman who always spots his prey. No one’s sneaking up on you!)
Willpower – 145 (You were forged in fire, and it shows!)
Charisma – 20 (No comment. This isn’t your path.)
Potency Pools
Arcane Potential – 1070 (An Archmage would be proud to make you his prodigy!)
(Mana Pool = 12847)
Spiritual Energy – 1038 (An elder sage would be pleased to call you Favored Disciple!)
(Qi Pool = 12456)
Psionic Potency – 272 (Despite your flaws, you’re worthy of a Psion Knight’s regard.)
(Psion Pool = 3270)
Soul Reserves – 1068 (You could be a Master Necromancer... You ARE a Master Necromancer!)
Stamina – 11030 Points
Health – 13644 Points
Resistances & Recovery
Physical Resistance – 347 (Artillery Shells no longer hurt you! With Battletime? You’re ABSURD!)
Physical Regeneration – 110 health per second (As if you even needed it!)
Elemental Resistance – 231(346) (Hyperion Blazer = +50% Multiplier to Elemental Resistance as it applies to the electromana spectrum! (Heat, radiation, plasma, fire, cold, etc.)
Qi Resistance – 262 (You’re unlikely to be harmed by cultivators below Bronze!)
Mental Resistance – 258 (No faerie enchantments, persuasion, or illusions are effecting you!)
Psionic Resistance – 151 (Dense Neurons mean squid-brains won’t find you easy prey at all!)
--__________________________________________________--
Congratulations! Finesse, Perception, Arcane Potential, Spiritual Energy, and Soul Reserves ALL exceed 800!
You have achieved the top rank in ALL five attributes within the Northeast Territories!
You now enjoy a 50% bonus to all other points invested in each of those attributes! (In addition to all other title modifiers and boons!)
Your ASTOUNDING Growth has been shared with the world!
All know to fear (and envy) Ernest ‘Edgelord’ Slaughter now!
Eric felt a delicious thrill as the weight of those numbers defining his potency truly sunk in.
And of course there was more. So much more.
Such as half-step Bronze reducing all essence ability costs to 50% of what they would otherwise be. And his damage bonus to all Essence Melee attacks with his Essence Damage multiplier, Cultivator’s Might and Fury in play was a shocking 549% greater than what it would otherwise be.
The perfect fusion of Pristine Phoenix and Death’s Disciple and daring rank 30+ in Unarmed Combat and Sword Mastery. And when he counted the power of what were now multiple titles…
Death’s Disciple multiplying everything by an additional 30% And Rank 2 Greater Reaver Multiplying that by another 60%… he was stocking multipliers like a pro in Exile’s Path!
Lilly would be so proud.
And as Bunbun’s soul-linked snort made clear, she WAS that proud!
And he had fifteen essences boosting his Ultimate Attack… to say nothing of the shockingly powerful boon that one of his earliest Martial skill enhancements had given him, Power Blow fused with Fire Fist equaled a 50% damage bonus at 50 Strength… and a ten-fold damage multiplier at a thousand. Double that again with a Wrath based essence ability Burst of Strength… and it was no wonder why he had been able to obliterate nearly a thousand fucking bugs with single transcendent strike!
His damage multiplier was literally approaching a thousand-fold what a typical Rank 28 Fire Fist should unleash from a 50th level Cultivator.
A thousand-fold.
And he was unleashing the very essence of Fire.
AS for his Phoenix Strike… 171 Times whatever a single rank of a Higher Order attack would normally allow. Which was the equivalent of setting a lighter to a cardboard cutout of a water mage. And his blow was 171-fold times stronger. In other words, If he could get that reality-warping freezing blaze long enough, he’d be tearing through DREADNOUGHTS just as he had for the few brief days, hours, centuries, when he had been a halfstep GOLD!
He shuddered for breath, gazing upon the hellish scene of devastation all around him, as countless thousands of ravenous locusts raced for his momentarily stunned self as he just stood there in mid air. As horrified by his own deadly ascension as he was by the world teetering on the precipice of extinction.
No wonder the entire fucking Global Council wanted him dead.
No wonder countless otherworldly players hidden in darkest shadows of intrigue and treachery seemed so eager to steal his perks, cripple his build, and do whatever they could to kill him.
And no matter how strong his attacks… as he knew from a single Shadow Mantis…
He was still a White-Tier classer, even if now at the point of saturating his core.
Again.
Any skilled assassin with multiple perks… hell, any level 100+ stalking insect… had a fair chance of killing him if he was STUPID enough to just stand there over a lifeless wasteland, admiring his own pretty numbers-go-up character sheet as fucking thousand locusts swarmed and…
You have successfully dodged multiple hostile parties!
Is it Danger Sense, or is it paranoia? Who cares as long as you live to see the dawn! (With it hopefully looking a bit better than the wasteland of devastation all around you!)
