Chapter 821: The Fatal Five"The bartender thinks you are rowdy and bad for customer, so he wants me to make you leave," Ning said. "But I will give you a chance. Let's play a round of cards. If you win, I'll leave. But if you lose, you will have to leave this place."
Borgir, the demon, looked at Ning with a contemplative look in his eyes. "The bartender said that? Fine, then I'll see if you can send me out or not."
"Borgir sat back on the table and collected the cards. Ning turned around and looked at the two demons who quickly moved away when they realized a new game was going to be held here.
Borgir collected the cards and shuffled them as Ning watched.
"What game are we playing?" Ning asked.
"The Fatal Five of course," the demon said, not bothering to tell the rules.
Ning frowned. "How does one play that?" he asked.
"Borgir stopped. You don't know?" he asked, and suddenly started laughing. "And you dared to try and get me to play? Well, that's my good luck then."
The demon continued shuffling and started handing out the 100 different cards until there were 50 on each side.
Ning grabbed the cards and was about to turn them around to look, but he couldn't. The game didn't allow him to see what cards he had.
"Let's start!" the demon said and put 5 cards on the table.
[Place 5 cards on the table face down.]
'Thank god at least the game is helping me,' Ning thought and put down 5 cards just like the demon did.
"Let's turn the first one," the demon said and reached for a random card. At the same time, the game asked Ning to turn a random card.
Ning turned a card that read 'Pain 5', and the demon turned one that read 'End 7'.
"Oh, higher number wins?" Ning thought. He then turned another card.
'Possibility 2'.
Ning frowned. 2 was too small a number. He was going to lose, wasn't he?
The demon turned his card. 'Fate 10'
"Huh? How does 10 lose?" Ning thought. That made no sense. Still, he won so he wasn't going to complain about it.
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Ning turned the next card. 'Destruction 9'. He smiled, as that was as one of the highest cards he could get. Although, he did win last time with a high card so...
'Darkness 5'
'I did? But why?' Ning couldn't understand.
The demon turned his card to 'Pain 1', and Ning turned his card.
'Death 3'.
"Hahaha! I got lucky. I was scared for a moment there, but Baelgor and Trenzelgor haven't forsaken me yet," the demon said happily and collected the card to put it aside.
[Place 5 cards on the table face down.]
The round had restarted and he had lost. Even though this was the 4th match and he clearly had one more turn to go.
At this point, he needed to ask the system for the system of the game.
After asking the system, Ning finally understood the purpose of the game. The game was as he thought for the most part. Higher number won in most cases.
But, there were a few cases where it didn't.
There were a 100 total cards in the demon world, 10 numbered card for each of the 10 demonic traits.
Darkness, Fate, End, Corruption, etc were all traits that came one after another, known as the Loop of Demonic Traits. In this case if there were two cards, each with traits that came one after another, the one that came before would always win.
The loop was 'Death - End - Darkness- Destruction - Corruption - Blood - Pain - Plague - Fate - Possibility - Death'.
Darkness came before destruction, and Fate came before possibility, thus they lost.
There was one other case in this system. If any of your card was the Death card, you lost the entire round without question.
"Fuck! So that's why I lost," Ning thought. He read the notification asking him to put down 5 more cards and so he did.
The demon turned his first card. 'Plague 4'.
Ning turned his first card. 'Death 1'.
"Ho! I'm really lucky today," the demon shouted in happiness, making the entire bar sound more rowdy. The bartender turned to look at them and shook his head.
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Ning frowned. "Again," he shouted. He put down 5 more cards from the 40 that were left.
He played 3 cards, and lost all 3 of them.
"What the hell?" Ning cried out. "Again!"
He played a death card.
"Again!" Ning said and played.
He won 2 cards, and then pulled a death card.
"No! This can't be happening!" Ning shouted. "Again!"
Ning placed 5 cards on the table and flipped the first one. 'Blood 6'.
The demon pulled a 'Corruption 10'.
Ning won. He flipped the next card. 'I'm going to win this round. Definitely!' he thought.
'Possibility 4'
That was a low card, but he did have a chance to win still.
The demon pulled a 'End 2' card. Ning won again.
"Yes, I just need to keep this going," he thought to himself. Sure he had lost the last 5 turns, but if he won this, then he could go on for another round.
Then he will have to win another round. And then another.
Ning flipped his card. 'Death 10'.
Ning was stunned. "How…?" he couldn't understand. Just how could he lose? 6 times in a row at that too. Also he pulled out so many Death cards.
"I won, so you should leave me alone," the demon Borgir said.
Ning remembered what he was sent here for. He was to throw Borgir out of the bar. But how?
His one game failed, and he had no stats to fight the beast.
'Again,' Ning thought. That was the only way. Just then, a notification popped up.
[Your Class Quest has been Completed.]
Chapter 822: Trenzelgor[Your Class Quest has been Completed.]
[Please visit the Hall of Evaluation to gain your class.]
"I… completed the quest?" Ning was confused. "Didn't I fail since I didn't manage to send the demon out?"
Ning fell into thought. 'What was the quest again?' he thought back to the quest and remembered the exact wording used in the quest description.
'Persuade Borgir to leave the bar the best you can.'
"Oh, the best I can. So I could have failed, but I only needed to try. Dammit, succeeding might have helped me quite a lot though," Ning thought.
"You're still here?" Borgir turned to look at him angrily.
"Sigh, I'm leaving," Ning said and walked out of the door. Once outside, he needed to find the Hall of Evaluation.
"Now, where exactly can it—"
Ning's eyes fell on a board right across the road. The Hall of Evaluation was right there.
"Oh, so close," he thought and crossed the road.
He arrived in front of the door and grabbed the door handle. Before he could open it, he saw a bunch of information.
"Yes," Ning said.
The door opened and he vanished.
Ning appeared in a world where he alone stood in darkness. He looked around him, but he could see nothing. The scenery reminded him of Nulwurn when one summoned things, but it was a little different.
Then, a single blue panel appeared in front of him with a few words.
[Your evaluation will begin now.]
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'Okay,' Ning thought.
Suddenly, a million stars came into life up above him, some bright, some dim. All were of many different colors, and they all moved around.
There were many White and Gray stars, lesser Blue stars, very few purple stars, and only 10 Orange stars.
[You are being evaluated based on your stats and your performance in the Class Quest.]
Ning frowned. His stats were fine, but his class quest had gone as badly as it could.
Just as he thought that many of the million stars disappeared at once. Ning didn't understand what was happening, but he realized that he had lost a vast number of opportunities just now as amongst the stars that disappeared.
Fortunately, the rare Orange ones were left behind.
Ning frowned as he waited. If the stars represented the different classes he could obtain, then just by having the stats he had, he had lost his opportunity to gain access to many of the stars.
Still, the rare ones were here so that was something.
[The Demon Lord Yelzepor despises you for not completing a simple task.]
A notification spoke. A few lights disappeared again. This time, one of the Orange stars had disappeared as well.
'What?' Ning thought.
[The Demon Lord Vostromir despises you for being a weakling.]
A few more lights disappeared, including another orange one.
'Goddammit!' Ning thought.
[The Demon Lord Malevol is disgusted by your cowardice]
'When the hell was I a coward? Do they really expect me to fight a Level 26 demon as a level 10?' Ning thought.
One by one, the stars in the sky disappeared as the demon lords were either disgusted by him or despised him for how his class quest had played out.
As they left, they took along stars that were classes. Now, there were only a few stars left in the sky.
One of those was an Orange star.
[The Demon Lord Trenzelgor is disgusted by your lack of luck.]
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Then the final Orange star disappeared too.
[However, she is intrigued by what the fate of someone with such bad luck as yours entail.]
Suddenly, a purple star brightened and the many stars around it were suddenly engulfed in its light, disappearing until there was nothing but purple light in the sky.
Then, the light shattered as a woman appeared in the sky. No, a demoness.
With a small, round face that held a slight smile, even with crimson skin, she looked very beautiful.
Her black hair flowed down her shoulders like shadows hanging by her head. Her arms held an archaic grimoire, locked with metal chains as if no one was supposed to look at it.
Her slender body stood here, her head at the zenith that was the purple light and her feet ending at eternity.
A pair of beautiful bat wings spread behind her, fully white in color. The wings looked as if a million shattered pieces of glass were attached to form the wings.
In those shattered pieces, Ning could see many different things, all of which showed images of him doing various different things, things that he hadn't done before.
It was as if he was looking at the infinite possibilities that existed in this world, and one of these was a fate that he would be forced to choose.
Ning watched in awe at the Demon lord that had appeared in front of him.
"Little demon," the demoness spoke, her voice sounding distant and close at the same time. "Can you tread through the infinite possibilities and find yourself the best fate you can?"
A Panel appeared in front of Ning.
[Trenzelgor, the Demon Lord of Fate and Possibility, is curious to see if one with luck as bad as yours will always succumb to their fate, or will you rise above it and break through it.]
[Unique Class 'Puppet of Fate' will be acquired if you accept.]
"Do I have any other choices?" Ning asked. Being called a puppet just didn't sit right with him.
[There are no other Classes for you to choose from.]
"Then I am forced to choose it, aren't I?" Ning asked. 'Just my luck.'
"Fine," he looked up at the great demoness. "I accept your challenge."
The Demon Lord smiled. "Show me something fun," she said and broke off into a million different motes of purple light, all of which fell onto Ning.
[Class Accepted.]
[Congratulations, You have successfully acquired the Class 'Puppet of Fate.']
Chapter 823: New Skills[You have acquired the Unique class 'Puppet of Fate']
[You have acquired 4 Class skills]
['Deck of Infinite Fates' Acquired]
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['Fate's Joker' Acquired]
['Fate's Aid' Acquired]
['Fate's Puppet' Acquired]
[Your class has been set, and you will get a fixed number of stats every time you level up with no extra stats.]
[You have acquired a new title, 'Trenzelgor's Curiosity]
[Trenzelgor's Curiostiy:
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Title Grade: Rare
Your Luck stat has no upper limit.
This title is permanently equipped .]
Ning felt his wings change and quickly looked at them.
The pitch black wing with no texture was now suddenly turned white as shards of glass just like Trenzelgor's wings appeared on his as well.
Except there were a lot fewer shards on his wings and nothing could be seen inside of them. His wings were also covered in silver chains.
The shards made no sound when he moved his wings and the chains didn't seem to obstruct their movement.
Chapter 824: WaterFort CityIn the darkness, light blossomed, turning from a small swirling white light to a massive portal in front of Ning.
"Oh," Ning thought. "Am I leaving this beginner's city? Triple Shot did say that would happen once I get my class."
Ning stepped into the light and disappeared.
When he reappeared, he found himself in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by massive trees with nowhere to go.
Suddenly, a panel appeared in front of him.
[You have arrived at the outskirt of the Waterfort City, in the Ghalian Empire of the Suresky Continent.]
[Map has been unlocked.]
"Map?" Ning's eyes shined. He knew people had maps as TRIPLE SHOT had made a casual reference to it one time, but he wasn't sure how one got it.
From his perspective, one would likely have to buy it, but he was more than happy to learn that it was free.
"So… what city was it again? Waterfort?" Ning checked the map and zoomed it out to see that he was close to the edge of a small continent to the south.
There were other two continents to the north. The eastern one was called Soarsky Continent, and the western one was called Heavenswings continent.
Aside from that, he could see nothing else.
"I guess I will have to visit the various places to know these places, won't I?" he thought.
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Since he didn't know what he was supposed to do now, he decided to visit the town for now.
He was incredibly close to the town and didn't even need to walk for 2 minutes before appearing outside the forest, right in front of a massive, devastated city.
The walls of the city were destroyed, and a crimson banner hung from the part of the wall that did still stand.
A banner with bat wings.
'Did they attack this place?' Ning thought. He walked up to the gate and through it as no one stopped him for anything.
As soon as he was in, he got a notification saying that fighting was forbidden inside the city and anyone who started a fight would be heavily punished.
'Who's going to punish us? The demons?' Ning thought. They didn't look like a very lawful set of beings, so Ning was quite surprised.
'Maybe it's just the game's way of taming players,' he thought.
He thought of what he needed to do in this place. First of all, because this was a game, he would have to go play it as best he could, which meant fighting and killing monsters for the most part.
For that, however, he needed equipment as the only thing he had at the moment was the Trashy wand.
'I don't want a wand now, do I?' he thought. 'With as bad a luck as mine, I should be focusing on stuff that doesn't need luck, like actual fighting.'
It was obvious; Ning wanted a spear.
"Where do I find one?" he looked around, searching for either a weapon shop or a shop where he could sell everything he owned currently so he had enough money for it.
He had learned about the marketplace that he could access through the settings, but the transfer took a day or so of delay, so he wanted to buy it right now.
The city looked medieval, made up of stones and woods, but most of it seemed to have been under attack recently and only part of it had been rebuilt.
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The pathway was paved with stones, and there were trees around the city that were still standing after whatever fight had taken place there.
Ning walked for a while and finally found a shop where he could sell all the grasshopper legs and eyes. The demon that was in charge of the shop seemed very happy to get the eyes as it seemed to have been unfindable in the normal human world since not much was corrupted as of yet.
Ning got about 12 Silver coins and 88 Bronze coins from all he owned.
'12 more bronze coins and I could've had a flat 13 Silver coins,' he thought and left the place.
He went around the city and found a place that sold equipment. He went in and saw all the equipment being sold all around the place.
They were being displayed around the shop, so he went through them, searching for the ones that fit him.
He didn't even look for any other weapons and went straight to the spear section where he found a short, one-handed spear that cost him around 2 Silver coins.
The spear had a class restriction as well as an STR stat restriction where one wouldn't be able to equip it if either of those weren't applicable.
Fortunately for Ning, his Unique class allowed him to equip virtually every weapon, so long as it was not a two-handed one. Apparently, the game needed his other hand to be free for some reason.
As for the STR stat, the requirement was 30 Base stat, which he had more than enough.
The spear added 5 more STR stat to his overall stat and gave 3 more Agility. While it wasn't a lot, Ning still welcomed the increase in stats with an open arms.
After that was done, he went around to find something defensive. He found an armlet that added 10 to DEF and nothing else. Since it cost 1 Silver coin and 30 Bronze coins, Ning bought it without any hassle.
Finally, he bought an amulet, which was where he spent most money.
The amulet gave him 250 Mana, 12 Int, 4% Magic Resistance, 2 health regeneration, and 0.5 mana regeneration. Other than that, it also gave him a skill called [Wind Arrows].
He could send out 3 wind arrows every 15 seconds, dealing 65% of his INT as magic damage to 3 random enemies in front of him.
Once Ning bought this amulet for nearly 7 Silver coins, he left the shop and went out to hunt.
Chapter 825: Orchid OrchardNing walked back towards the gate while looking at what he still had in his inventory. There was nothing but a few Observer stones, a few pieces of bread, and a rabbit drop that no one wanted to buy for some reason.
The game kept telling him that it was an item for eating, but who would want to eat a part of the rabbit that was not the meat?
'I need to find that one stone that lets me check my stats,' he thought. He desperately wanted to see how bad his luck stat was.
He also had a Trashy Wand in the inventory that he was keeping to himself.
"Hmm, I wonder how long it will be before I have to wake up from the game," he thought. Since the players weren't fully cryo-frozen to leave these minds working, he was sure he couldn't stay asleep forever like those in the spaceships.
"I shouldn't have to worry about that though," Ning thought and continued on his way.
He arrived outside the gates again and saw people asking for parties again.
'Should I join on? I should join one right?' he thought. He didn't want to randomly die to some beasts as he had nearly done with the grasshoppers before.
"Hey, can I join your party?" Ning asked a random party.
They looked at him weirdly as he was wearing nothing fancy at all and was no different from the beginners that had just come from the beginner cities.
"What's your level?" someone asked.
"10," Ning said.
"No," the person replied.
"Huh?" Ning was surprised.
"Go away. We don't want a level 10 newbie," the man said and pushed Ning away.
'What? Are they not newbies themselves?' Ning wondered. He tried joining a few others, but the response was always that he didn't have enough level or experience to join them, and that he should join a newbie party instead.
However, amongst the thousands of people standing out here, how was he supposed to know which party belonged to newbies? They were probably shouting that very info, but so was everyone else about everything.
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Listening was a chore, so he instead walked away from the group.
"I do have a Unique class, so maybe I don't need them," Ning thought. He walked through the people asking for parties and went towards the forest.
On his way, he saw something that confused him quite a bit.
All the players, the demons that were standing there had absolutely no change to their wings. The only difference was that it now shined red in normal light.
Did they come here without getting any classes? That was impossible. It could be that their classes didn't change their wings as it did him, but Ning didn't think that was ever likely the case.
So, he ended up at the conclusion, that there was a setting to hide one's unique wings so that the other people didn't realize what class you were.
Ning checked the setting real quick and found out he was correct. Aside from player name and player info, there was also the setting to show default demon wings, which was turned on normally.
Ning kept it as it is for now and walked deeper into the forest, following a trail left behind by many players, and finally appeared in front of a monster that was not what he was expecting.
The beast in front of him was a giant mushroom about his size, and it had two plant arms and legs coming out of it.
Ning was quite surprised and used an observer stone to check it.
[Vileshroom: Level 10
STR: 40
DEF: 30
AGI: 20
HP: 500
MP: 200]
Ning fell into slight thought. Since the beast didn't have an INT stat, that meant it did no magical damage, but given that it had mana, it most likely use some spell at the very least.
'I need to be a bit more careful,' Ning thought. He then took a deep breath and activated his main skill.
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200 mana disappeared at once as a card appeared out of nowhere, in white light.
A Common card.
[Orchid Orchard: Plants orchids in a 10-meter radius around you, that slow your enemies' movement speed by 15%. Lasts for 60 seconds.]
"That… but the monster is already quite slow," Ning thought. "Whatever, Activate!"
The card disappeared in white light and suddenly orchids grew all around Ning in a 10-meter radius, touching the Vileshroom that was in front of him.
[Fate's Aid (Common) has been activated.]
"Wind Arrows!" he shouted. At the same time, 3 different wind arrows formed around him, searching for 3 random targets, and with the Vilshroom being the only enemy in front of him, they all landed on the beast and dealt 133 Damage in total.
If only the monsters didn't have a natural 25% magic resistance, he could've dealt a lot more damage.
Ning didn't waste any time and dashed towards the beast. He poked his spear into the shroom's body and dealt 34 Damage.
He moved backward as the beast tried to swipe at him with its tree limbs. It tried to walk toward Ning, but not only was its AGI nearly half as bad as Ning's but it was also influenced by the slow on the ground.
Ning moved around the beast and stabbed it with his spear again and moved back.
With just these simple steps, Ning had removed nearly 40% of the beast's HP while he took no damage.
He moved around the Vileshroom quickly and hit it from more directions, slowly chipping away its health.
When he dealt enough damage to the monster to bring it down to 20%, the Vileshroom finally used its skill.
The monster took a deep breath and Ning understood he needed to dodge whatever was coming.
It suddenly shot out something that moved fast like a bullet. Ning dodged it, for the most part, but the area it attacked was quite large.
[You've been hit by Seed Bullet.]
[You've Taken 28 Damage.]
Chapter 826: SacrificeNing looked at the damage and then at his HP. It was a decent chunk of health that he had just lost, but not enough to make him worry.
He would have to worry if all the 5 seeds that the monster shot out had hit him. It was good that he dodged it in time.
Ning ran back and stabbed the monster with the spear again, dealing a critical strike, which dealt 62 damage at once.
Then, Ning used the Wind Arrows once again and beat the Vileshroom.
[Congratulations, You have killed a Vileshroom]
[You have gained 58 Exp]
[You have received Mushroom x 2]
[You have received Mushroom spores x 40]
"40?" Ning was a little surprised, so he quickly opened up his storage and brought out the spores, only to find that they were incredibly tiny and not even a small pile of it.
"58 Exp… that means I will have to kill 20 of these to level up, huh? Given how fast you can do that, I should be able to finish it quickly," Ning thought.
He left the place and went on to search for more of the Vileshrooms. As he searched, he started thinking about something.
In the 15 or so seconds it took him to completely kill the enemy, he had likely hit the monster about 12 different times. And in those times, he had only hit a critical strike only 1 time, even though the chance was clearly 20% of the time.
'Goddammit! My bad luck," Ning thought. He opened his stats to check and realized that he had recovered nearly half of his used-up mana thanks to his high INT stat and the additional 0.5 Mana regeneration perk of the amulet he wore.
Ning found another Vileshroom not long after and began fighting it. He had realized that it was unnecessary to pull out any cards and simply fighting normally was enough.
Within 20 seconds, with speed difference and Wind Arrows, Ning could easily kill the Vileshroom.
Ning got a few more of the mushroom loot, nothing that seemed exciting.
However, when he found the third monster, he remembered that he was there to try out his skills. Going to a fight without knowing what all of your skills could do was a bad idea.
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Besides, he could simply use a card, not for its effect, but for the crit chance, it gave him.
If not that, he could at least sacrifice the card to get a random buff from the system, hopefully.
"Draw!" he said and a card appeared in front of him in white light.
[Double Damage: Your next damage instance will be dealt once more.]
"That's…" Ning sighed. He was spending 200 mana to just get another hit in. Just as he thought that Ning realized something.
"Next damage instance?" he quickly swapped his Spear for the Trashy Wand and waited 5 seconds for the equipping to happen.
"Activate," he said and the card was used. Then, he used Fireball.
[You have dealt 83 Damage]
[Double Damage has dealt 83 Damage]
'Nice,' Ning thought and instantly switched back with the spear. He needed to wait 5 seconds for the spear to be usable, so in the meantime, he used the skill on his amulet.
"Wind Arrow!" he shouted and 3 wind arrows flew out from around him, and attacked the Vileshroom.
Ning ran back the moment it hit and waited for his spear to be usable. Once it was, he fought back.
With over 300 damage dealt already, the remaining 200 HP took no time to deplete and the monster was dead.
"Phew!" Ning thought. He was 18% of the way through gaining experience, so he needed to fight some more and gain some levels.
He continued killing monsters and using the few cards that he drew until he drew one that he didn't feel like using.
[Swift Shift: Turns all of your STR into AGI for the next 100 seconds.]
"The hell? How am I supposed to fight without STR?" Ning thought. "I'm not using this. Sacrifice."
[You have sacrificed Swift Shift]
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[You have gained a random debuff]
[Your defense is lowered by half]
"Shit!" Ning thought. "Whatever, I'll be fine. It's not like I was taking any damage."
Ning started attacking the monster. He started the fight with Wind Arrows and jumped at the Vileshroom to attack it before the arrows even landed.
He struck the monster multiple times, slowly whittling its HP down. Then, he saw the monster try and use its bullet seed again.
Taking damage this time around was bad, so Ning dodged it like he always had, but for some reason, he suddenly felt things strike his back, and his body went numb.
A notification popped up in front of him that told him what had happened.
[You have taken 5 x 36 Damage]
"What the hell?" Ning thought. How did he take 180 damage all of a sudden? He had clearly dodged the attack.
He quickly got up and pushed himself away from the Vileshroom that was coming to attack, and was hit from behind again.
After taking 46 damage, Ning quickly turned around to see that another Vileshroom had been behind him, making no noise whatsoever.
He swung his spear, cutting the shroom with its tip, and instantly used Wind Arrows. Two of the arrows hit the near-dead Vileshroom and the last one hit the new Vileshroom.
"Two at once huh? Sure," Ning thought and got back to fighting. He dashed at the one with less HP and stabbed it through the chest area.
Then he pulled back and hit the one with more HP.
Ning weaved through the two Vileshroom, hitting them one after another while maintaining his distance just far enough, that he wasn't hit.
He finished killing the first Vileshroom after 2 more hits and started focusing on the second one.
Ning had to dodge its Seed Bullets one more time before delivering a final blow with Wind Arrows.
Once both the beasts were dead, he fell to the ground, tired and exhausted.
Chapter 827: Vileshroom Dungeon"God! I really need better VIT stats. It's annoying how easily I get exhausted in this game," he thought. He rested for a while and checked his profile.
He needed 1000 Exp to level up, and he had about 560 right now.
He stood up after a bit and went on to fight some more Vileshroom. He defeated a few of them easily and decided to return.
While hunting the monsters alone was working for him, he needed to find a better way to gain Exp if he wanted to grow up faster.
He needed to find some quests for himself.
Ning went back to the city and found a place where he could sell the mushroom and spores. They didn't give much money, but it was good for now.
"Say, do you want any help?" Ning asked. "Anything I can do?"
The shopkeeper looked at him and said, "Can you bring me the Shroom King's Poison Spores?"
"Shroom King?" Ning was confused.
[You have received a quest.]
[Quest: Harvest Shroom King's Poison Spore
Kill Shroom King in the Vilshroom Dungeon and obtain Shroom King's Poison Spore
Reward: 10 Silver Coins and 12000 Exp]
[Do you accept?]
"Wait, what?" Ning was surprised. "12000 Exp… I can get 4 levels so easily? That's a steal. I accept."
Ning left the store after that and went on his way outside the gates once more. He started asking the players where the dungeon was, and they quickly told him where he had to go.
However, Ning didn't leave. A dungeon meant that it would likely be very strong when compared to normal beasts out here.
Which meant he either had to fight at a party or wait until he was quite strong. Since he didn't want to wait, he went around trying to find a party.
Once again, most rejected him. However, Ning wasn't discouraged this time around due to the sheer number that was there. Not long after, he found a party of newbies that were trying to fight their way to the dungeon.
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Ning was easily accepted to the party and they left.
The party consisted of a swordsman with incredible damage, a ranger that used a crossbow, a fire mage, and an assassin.
The group met their first Vileshroom and started their fight.
Ning activated his Wing Arrows, dealing 133 damage at once. The ranger shot her cross-bow, dealing 140 damage thanks to hitting a critical.
The fire mage used a skill that started burning the shroom, dealing constant damage over time.
The assassin jumped behind the shroom, using a skill to attack its back, dealing additional damage, for a 100 total damage.
Finally, the swordsman used a Sword thrust skill, that killed the beast entirely.
"That was fast," the assassin said with a surprised look on his face. "I would've thought we would have to go into actual battle."
"Not for now," the fire mage said. "With the four of us, we should be able to burst down any monster that comes for us here. The problem will only be worse when we get to the dungeon. Apparently, they are all between Level 15 and 20."
"Oh," Ning was surprised. "Then we will have to get stronger than we are."
"Yeah, going as we are is a death wish," the swordsman said. "Let's continue."
The group went on their way, fighting through the Vileshrooms they came across.
Most of the time, they would just burst down the monster, and maybe use an attack or two more to finish it off later.
However, some of the time, there would be more than one Vileshroom in a single field, forcing the party to coordinate.
They defeated the monsters slowly, and Ning even leveled up along the way, becoming just that much stronger once again.
He wasn't forced to use his skills at all, so no one really knew what his class was. They all assumed it was a variation of magician and spearman, based on how he fought.
Finally, after more than 2 hours of fighting, the group appeared in front of a giant wooden arch, covered in mushrooms of all colors all over.
There was a thin layer of white below the arch, letting them know that beyond this point was a dungeon.
[Vileshroom Dungeon
Maximum Level allowed: 20
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Maximum Players allowed: 5
Recommended Player count: 3
Party clear record: 8 minutes 8 seconds
Solo clear record: 15 minutes 22 seconds]
"Woah, who completed this in just 8 minutes?" the ranger asked with a surprised look on her face.
"Can't we check?" the swordsman asked and expanded it.
Ning realized that he could do so too and expanded the Party Clear record to see that the record was set by some group of people that called themselves "Breaking Point".
The second fastest clear after them was nearly 52 seconds later.
Ning nodded to himself and looked at the Solo Clear record. Unfortunately, the name was [PRIVATE]. Whoever it was that cleared the record, didn't seem to want to name themselves.
"You guys think we can beat that?" the Fire mage asked.
"You probably have to be all Level 20 to get that fast of a record," the ranger said.
"Let's not waste our time," the Swordsman said and walked up to the thin film.
"Yes," he said. As the Party leader, he alone had the right to choose that.
Suddenly, the group was covered in white light, and they disappeared, before appearing in a different place.
[You've entered the Vileshroom Dungeon]
Ning looked at the empty meadow around him and then stared in front of him at a massive hedge wall with a single opening in it.
"No way," Ning spoke softly to himself. "No way that's a maze, right?"
"We will only know after we enter," the assassin spoke from his side.
The group walked forward, entering through the hedge wall, and immediately saw that there were two different paths to choose from, left and right.
"Yeah," the Fire mage said. "I'm pretty sure this is a maze."
Chapter 828: Scouring the Maze"Which path do we choose?" the assassin wondered.
"Do you know which path leads where?" Ning asked.
"No," the assassin said.
"Then it doesn't matter. Let's go left," he said and started walking. The rest realized that this was there was no better option so they too followed him.
The hedge maze was made up of mostly vines and shrubs that grew to a tall height. Along the hedge, there were a bunch of small mushrooms growing, which looked out of place for Ning.
He had never seen mushrooms grow in such bright sunlight. Not only the hedge, but even the ground was full of mushrooms everywhere.
"Where are the monsters?" the fire mage asked, and as if by intention, they all heard something stirring.
The bulbous head of the Vileshroom appeared from the ground and pushed itself out of it.
The white body of this Vileshroom was covered in blue dots and its umbrella-like head was mostly red with white dots all around.
"That looks different… and stronger," the assassin said.
"It's bigger too," Ning said, realizing that this was a different monster from the ones they had fought before.
"Yeah… it's more dangerous for sure," the swordsman said as he looked at the shroom's stats with his Observer stone.
"It has 50 STR instead of the regular 40, 30 AGI instead of 20, and 700 HP instead of the regular 500," he said. "And it is Level 15."
"What about DEF and Mana?" the Fire Mage asked.
"Same as the other ones," the swordsman said.
"I'm sure we can beat it then," the ranger said.
The 5 of them immediately used their attacks to burst down over 500 of the Vileshroom's HP at once.
The fire mage used her second spell, an AOE fire skill that dealt some damage to the shroom, while Ning jumped forward to deliver another strike with his spear.
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The swordsman followed, attacking the Vileshroom with a slash before the Assassin delivered another attack.
Finally, the ranger shot out her next arrow, killing the beast altogether.
Ning saw the notifications and the small drops he received. The drops were nothing, but the experience he received was nearly 2 times as much as the ones from the Vileshroom outside.
"This is harder to kill, but it does give more experience," the swordsman said happily.
"Yeah," the assassin approved.
"About that… we have a problem," the Fire Mage said.
"What's wrong?" Ning asked.
"It's my mana," she said. "We need to drag out the fights or at least I can't use more than a single skill to fight, or I will waste too much mana for nothing."
"How much mana do you have?" the ranger asked.
"Normally, about 1200, but my two attacking spells together cost about 120 mana. With how slow mana regen is, I will have to end up being useless in most of the upcoming fights," she said.
"Do you not have a wand from the beginner village?" Ning asked. "There was a Fireball skill in there that you can spam."
The girl shook her head and showed her staff. "This staff has 8% Spell Amplification and 14 INT stat. If I give this up, my damage will go down by a lot," she said.
"Oh, I see," Ning said.
"Well, then we will just have to have you use a single spell and keep your mana until we reach the boss," the swordsman said. "We will figure out the rest along the way."
The group left the area and kept on walking through the maze. They saw another Vileshroom crawl out of the ground and immediately they started fighting.
Ning drew a card from his main skill and saw what came up.
[Brilliant Mind: Doubles your INT stat for the next 120 seconds.]
Ning had drawn an Uncommon card, the first of its kind.
'Well, shit!' he thought. For some reason, he had a hunch that because he had pulled a card that needed some luck, the rest of the card he pulled after this would be quite bad. He was sure that with this card, he had used up quite a lot of luck for himself.
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"Whatever, activate," he said and the card went into action.
[Fate's Aid (Uncommon) has been activated.]
He also got an increased Critical chance and critical damage.
Ning changed his items around, pulling out the trashy wand since it had a skill that could make use of his 166 INT stats.
"Fireball! Wind Arrows!" he used both skills at once, and together they hit the monster.
[Fireball has dealt 172 Damage]
[Wind Arrows has dealt 3 x 93 Damage]
Together, the 2 skills dealt over 450 damage at once. Now, the monster only had 250 health remaining.
The assassin jumped in at once, dealing over 80 damage by himself, and the Fire mage used her skill to deal another 90 damage all by herself.
The arrow from the crossbow hit the Vileshroom above its eyes, dealing above 50 damage.
Finally, the swordsman also used his skill to attack the Vileshroom at once. He slashed his sword at the monster after using his skill, but he didn't expect the Vileshroom to just die like that.
"What?" he looked confused as the various notifications appeared in front of him, telling him that he had killed the beast.
"But… we barely attacked," he said. "How?"
"I got lucky just now," Ning said. "My skills are luck based and they usually don't deal much damage, but there is a very small chance of doing much damage and I just did that."
"Oh," they all reacted. "You're quite strong then."
"As I said, it is luck based, and I have really bad luck," Ning said. "Anyway, we should keep moving."
"Yes." the Swordsman nodded and moved on. They continued through the maze, but they simply couldn't seem to find a way through it.
They stayed lost, going through the different routes, and killed nearly 25 different Vileshrooms before they arrived at the center of the maze where the boss room lay.
And in that room was the Shroom King that Ning was looking for.
Chapter 829: Shroom King"Wait, let me eat some bread," Ning said and brought out some food. He was fine in regards to HP, but his mana was quite low.
So, he brought out a piece of bread and quickly ate it to regenerate his health and mana.
There were far better options out there to quickly regenerate your health and mana, like potions or just some better food, but for now, Ning had to do with a bread that made him wait over 3 minutes to fully get his mana back.
At the same time, the others did the same before entering.
Ning checked his stats again and realized that he was quite a way away from leveling up still. However, the Shroom king should be enough for him to level up right now.
"Let's go."
The group entered the boss room and saw a massive Vileshroom that was nearly 5 meters tall in front of them. The monster was black-stripped with a purple head and a snarling face on its body.
Its two arms and legs were each over 3 meters long, on top of the monster's body being about 3 meters wide itself.
All over its body were multiple mushrooms growing as well, making the monster look quite terrifying.
The Assassin used his Observer Stone to check the boss's stats, but it didn't work.
"Dammit! Its level is too high. I have a really low chance," the assassin said.
"I think the boss has something like 20 Levels and 2500 HP. I remember hearing that in the city gates," the ranger said.
"What about its DEF and AGI?" the swordsman asked.
Ning tried using his own Observer stone, but that broke without working too. Not only was the level difference high, but even his luck was low, making it hard for him to activate the stone.
"If no one can do it, then let's just fight anyway," the fire mage said and prepared her first attack.
As soon as she did, the boss moved.
The boss was faster than they had expected and it rushed forward.
The fire mage used her DPS skill to damage the boss and immediately moved away.
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Ning used his Wind Arrows, the Assassin used his Back Attack, the swordsman used his Sword Thrust, and the Ranger used her crossbow attack that dealt critical damage.
As soon as their attacks landed, they all realized a massive problem.
They dealt very little damage.
Compared to the Vileshroom they fought outside, the Shroom King took half as much magical damage, meaning that he had 50% Magic resistance normally, and quite a lot less physical damage as well.
The swordsman did some calculations based on what he knew about how DEF worked and realized that the Vileshroom had around 50 DEF stat.
This was a little annoying, but they fought it still.
The monster slowly swung its arm around, trying to hit someone, but Ning and the rest dodged the attacks and continued hitting it.
In the meantime, Ning drew a card from his Deck of Infinite faces and hesitated to use it.
[Negate Magic: Negates the next instance of magic damage dealt to you. Buff lasts 120 seconds after activated.]
'Does the Shroom King even have magic damage? What if it does and I use it too early?' Ning thought. However, he could wait too long either. After all, he needed his skill to go on cooldown so he could draw another card soon.
As he was deliberating, the Shroom King stopped attacking with its hands and pulled out a mushroom from its body.
Then, with a rather surprising speed, it shot the mushroom at Ning.
Ning who had been ready to attack was caught off guard as the mushroom was thrown in his direction.
"Activate!"
[Negate Magic has been activated.]
[Fate's Aid (Common) has been activated.]
The mushroom hit him in the chest, and he saw a notification.
[You have taken 81 Damage]
'Dammit!' Ning thought. That mushroom was physical damage and not magical.
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The card he activated ended up not blocking the damage. He still continued in his path and fought.
The Shroom King continued chucking mushrooms in all directions, while the group slowly chipped down its health.
Ning kept his focus on the boss's health, and when it reached 50%, the boss stopped attacking.
"It's entering another phase, careful," the swordsman cried out.
They all watched curiously, trying to figure out just what the boss was going to do now that it had stopped.
That was when they saw something else move. Many things.
Nearly a third of all the different mushrooms on the boss's body poked out further to look like tiny Vileshrooms. Then, they all took a deep breath, and the group realized what was happening.
A third of nearly 30 different tiny Vileshrooms shot out Seed Bullet in all directions.
They all tried to dodge, but the fire mage was hit by 3 of the 5 bullets and took 40 damage each.
The Vileshrooms returned back to the Shroom King's body, and another 10 of the other ones popped out, targeting them all again.
This time, they all moved before they were even targeted and started attacking again.
They easily dodged all the attacks and fought the Shroom King, once again slowly chipping its HP down.
Ning drew out another card, [Crowd Morale, that improved his and his party's STR and AGI, by 5% each.
That only slightly improved the damage they did, but that was still a welcome buff, and it also allowed Ning to have a 20% Critical chance now to deal 200% damage of his normal attack.
They fought until the Shroom King was down to 20% HP, in which case the Shroom King went through another phase change.
The tiny Vileshrooms in its body all popped out and fell to the ground. Those Tiny Vileshroom merged together to form two proper Vileshrooms.
Now, on top of just the Shroom King, they would also have to fight with two other monsters if they wanted to defeat the boss.
They were annoyed at the change, but they would do it all the same.
Chapter 830: Dungeon ClearedThe fight became a little bit harder with two Vileshrooms at the same time along with the boss. It even became chaotic.
The group had to split their attention between 3 different monsters, and none of them had a good understanding of leadership to know how to handle a group of fighters. The Swordsman who was the leader was just there as a figurehead of the party. He was never used to leading.
Even Ning had to never do this sort of thing. He was always a solo fighter, and as a result the fight became hard to handle.
They would deal with the Vileshrooms, but then the Shroom King would attack them. They would fight the Shroom King, but then they would be hit by the Vileshroom's Seed Bullet.
In the end, whether he could or not, Ning had to stand up and give them orders.
He told the Swordsman, fire mage, and ranger to take away the last 20% of the Shroom King's health. As for the two Vileshroom, he and the assassin would handle it themselves.
With the orders given, the 5 of them began to work in unison. The assassin and Ning lured the two Vileshroom away, while the other three fought the Shroom King.
Ning brought out a [Double Damage] card that allowed him to kill the Vileshroom in a single attack from his Wind Arrows, after how much health it had already lost.
He joined the three in the fight, and not long after, the Assassin joined too.
After tons of fighting, dodging, and occasionally taking damage, the party was able to defeat the Shroom King.
[Congratulations, You have defeated the Shroom King.]
[Clear Time: 26 Minutes 15 seconds]
[You have obtained Shroom King's Poison Spore]
[Quest Completed: Return the Shroom King's Poison Spore to the Shopkeeper to obtain your rewards.]
[You have obtained a Mushroom Hat]
[Mushroom Hat (Common)
VIT: 5
Health Regeneration: 2
Double Regen (Passive): Doubles all Health regeneration if the user has been out of combat for over a minute ]
"Oh, not bad," Ning thought and put on the hat. The hat looked like a mushroom head, and looked quite stupid, but he remembered seeing similar hats around the gates, so it wasn't exactly something that he would be averted to using.
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Ning wore the hat and looked at the rest of the notifications.
[You have obtained 1500 EXP]
[You have leveled up.]
"Ooh, nice," Ning thought. He quickly opened his Player profile to see what the situation was.
[IMMORTAL ENERGY:
Level: 12 (253/3000)
Class: Puppet of Fate
Race : Demon
Title: Trenzelgor's Curiosity
STR : 45
INT : 89
VIT : 40
AGI : 43
DEF : 29
HP : 520 / 800
MP : 563 / 1090
]
"Great," he thought to himself. The stats were looking good, and he now had nearly twice the amount of INT compared to STR and AGI.
'I seriously need to find some sort of skills. I will have to check how much they cost later,' he thought.
"Let's return, shall we," the swordsman said and the 5 of them left the Dungeon through the white portal that had just appeared.
"What do we do now?" the Fire Mage asked. "Do we enter again?"
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"I just finished a quest I got. If you guys don't mind, I would like to return," the Assassin said.
"Me too," the Swordsman said. "We should disband the party."
"Sure," Ning said and removed himself from the party first. The rest followed suit and soon there was no party.
After that, everyone separated to go on their own way.
Ning was about to return to finish his quest as well when he remembered something and turned around to look at the Dungeon gates.
Maybe people were around here, standing around the gate, getting ready to enter.
However, what Ning was looking for was the maximum level allowed to enter the dungeon.
'20,' he thought. He was already 12. If he left and finished the quest, he would get 12000 Exp.
However, based on how the Exp system worked in this game, he would level up to be around 15 if he got the reward.
Then, he would only have 15 more levels, and he wouldn't be a lot of time to fight in the dungeon.
And he desperately wanted to fight in the dungeon. Especially, he wanted that Solo clear record very much.
'Should I try right now?' he wondered. He was only level 12, so he wasn't sure if Solo clear as possible. Even if it wasn't, given how easy it was to find Vileshrooms in that dungeon, it was more than enough incentive for him to go in on his own, even if that meant there was a high chance he would die to the boss.
The Exp he would lose when dying was nothing when compared to the Exp he would gain. On top of that, dying in a dungeon didn't make you drop your loot, so he was good there too.
In the end, after thinking for a while, Ning decided to enter and fight on his own.
Due to the Double Regen skill in the hat, he had already gained his HP back. As for his mana, it would slowly go back as well.
Thinking so, he walked up to the dungeon gate that lay in the arch and accepted the pop-up.
Then, he disappeared and appeared inside the dungeon once more.
Ning looked around at the grassy meadow and then at the Hedge maze in front of him. He walked up to the maze and looked at the ways that went left and right.
The group had gone left last time, so he wondered what was right. He wondered if that even matter, as the maze wouldn't be a maze anymore if players could simply remember which way they had to go.
So, assuming that no matter which direction he went, it didn't matter, Ning went through the pathway to the right. After walking for a bit, he heard the sound of the ground moving and stopped as a Vileshroom popped out of the ground.
Ning began fighting.
Chapter 831: Solo ClearFighting the Vileshrooms was rather easy at this point. He was already used to their patterns and skills, so he could fight them continuously without stopping.
From time to time, he would use his skills. He would draw a card and use it. If it was a card that he didn't like, or affected him in a negative way, he would simply not use it until the fight with the monster had ended.
At that point, he would use it and spend the next two minutes slowly walking forward through the maze.
By the time he found the next Vileshroom, he would be already out of the effect of the card by the time he was to fight again.
Ning was very surprised by the cards he had. Most of these cards were simple skills, active or otherwise, and were extremely unique from each other.
None of the cards he received ever felt the same and none of the cards did anything similar.
There would always be something that made them different from the rest of the cards.
Also, Ning was surprised that he was finding a few Uncommon cards too. When he realized that after the constant hunting today his Fate stacks were at 76, he was surprised.
The Fate stacks stacked independently meaning that each of the numbers had its own timer before they disappeared. However, Ning hadn't expected the timer to be so… long.
He wouldn't doubt if the stack was meant to last for over a day. His chance to summon Unique cards was now at 7.6%, and the chance to summon Legendary cards was at 0.76%.
Ning knew that with his luck it would be impossible to summon those, but he was still glad that they lowered the Common card's chances by over 8% overall, giving him a better chance at summoning the Uncommon or maybe even Rare cards.
Ning fought his way through the maze, slowly gaining Exp. After killing 25 or so Vileshrooms, Ning had obtained close to 2000 Exp. He needed about 750 more to reach the next Level.
At the same time, he also improved his Fate stacks until they reached 100.
Finally, after over 20 minutes, Ning arrived at the boss's room.
The Shroom King stood at the center of the room, so Ning began fighting without thought.
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He pulled out a card.
[Short Blink: Teleport anywhere within 20 meters.]
'Well that's a shitty card for this situation,' Ning thought. He thought for a bit and activated it.
Even if nothing, he wanted to get the crit chance. So, Ning activated the teleport and appeared behind the Shroom King.
He started his barrage of attack with the Wind Arrows and then went to using his spear.
Ning constantly went in and out of the range of the monster, attacking whenever he could, and running the other times.
Unlike when he fought with a party, this took quite a long time to bring the boss down to 50% HP.
When he did, the boss stopped attacking with its arms, and instead the mushrooms on its body moved.
Ning prepared for the Seed Bullet assault, but something else happened.
The boss suddenly let out a spore from all over his body that was simply unavoidable.
[You've been hit by the Shroom King's Poison Spore]
[You are taking 7 damage per second for the next 60 seconds.]
"What? 420 damage over a minute?" Ning looked back at the boss. What happened to the Seed Bullet attacks? Was this a different phase?
He pulled out another card from his skill called [Lacerating Aura]. It created an aura around him that dealt 100% of Ning's damage in a 2-meter radius.
This was a fantastic AOE card and it was also an Uncommon card, which made it all the better thanks to his Fate's Aid skill.
Unfortunately, it was a skill monster he had to deal with, so the timing on the card was quite unfortunate.
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"Sigh, Activate," he said. Any damage was good damage.
Even through the poison fog, Ning continued fighting. He would lose half of his health, sure, but the damage he could deal was also quite a lot.
By the time the Lacerating Aura was nearly done, the Boss was down to 20% health, and so the two different Vileshroom dropped from the Boss's body.
Ning fought them carefully while continuously dodging whatever he could. He was hit by the Vileshrooms a few times, but he made sure not to get hit by the boss as he hit the hardest of them all.
Ning was down to around 200 health when he managed to kill the boss's subordinate and it only had about 15% more HP remaining.
Ning pulled out one last card to help him fight. A white card came forth called [Mind Whip]
[Mind Whip: Deals 180% of your INT as Absolute Damage]
"Oh!" Ning looked in surprise. He had heard about Absolute Damage but had never seen it before.
Absolute Damage meant that whatever the Damage Value was, Ning would deal exactly that amount as damage, regardless of the defense and resistance of the one that was getting attacks.
The only way to possibly protect oneself from Absolute Damage was to have an all-around damage reduction.
Without thought, Ning activated the common card and dealt 158 damage instantly. He tried to follow it by using Wind Arrows, but it turned out he was out of mana now.
"Tsk!" he thought and went back to fighting the boss who now had less than 100 HP left.
Ning attacked 4 times as fast as he could, which somehow ended up being over 20 seconds due to having to run away from the boss when he attacked.
Once all the attacks were done, Ning successfully killed the boss and completed the dungeon.
A bunch of notifications popped up in front of him, letting him know what he had gotten.
Ning received 7500 Exp, allowing him to level up twice to reach Level 14. He received an Observer stone as well.
Finally, the last thing he received was another item.
A Shoe.
Chapter 832: Ganged Up[Mushroom Shoe (Uncommon)
Movement Speed: 10%
AGI: 13
VIT: 6
HP: 120
Poison Spores: Spreads poison spores in a 5 meter radius around you, dealing 10% of your INT as damage over time for 30 seconds.
Manacost: 120
Cooldown: 90 seconds ]
'10% of my INT?' Ning quickly opened his profile page and checked. 'That's nearly 10 damage per second. I will deal 300 damage over the duration… that's not bad actually,' Ning thought.
The shoes also gave him quite a significant improvement in AGI and movement speed.
Ning sighed when he saw his clear time at over 30 minutes. Even when he knew it was going to take a long time, it was still a lot more than what he was expecting.
Ning walked through the portal that appeared and fell into thought when he came out of the dungeon.
'If I really want to solo clear it very quickly, then I need to skip all the beasts and find the boss directly. I should be fine when I find the boss, right?' he thought.
Thinking so, Ning waited a while to regenerate his HP and Mana and went back in again.
Since he wanted a record, Ning dashed into the maze as quickly as he could. He found himself running faster thanks to the increased movement speed he had found himself.
As he ran, Ning pulled out a card using his skill. The card was a card that dealt some damage, but he wasn't looking to attack anything at the moment.
So, he sacrificed it, hoping for something good.
[Fate's Joker (Common) has been activated.]
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[You have gained a Buff.]
[You have gained 30% Status Resistance for the next 120 seconds.]
'Status resistance… that's for debuff duration right?' Ning thought. It was certainly not useful for him, but he still was happy that it wasn't a buff.
His luck had panned out for this coin flip.
Ning heard a Vileshroom pop out in font of him, but he simply jumped over it and ignored it. The Vileshroom was slow, so it could not keep up with Ning's speed.
Ning came across many Vileshrooms, but he simply ignored it and continued running.
He ran through the maze for the next 3 minutes before finally finding the boss's room.
'So fast,' he thought to himself. He entered the boss's room and pulled out a card and started fighting.
The card dealt some damage to the boss and stunned it for 5 whole seconds, which turned out to be about 3.75 seconds, because the boss had a 25% Status Resistance.
Since no one from the previous group had any crowd control skill, Ning had no way of knowing this.
Ning poisoned the boss using the Poison spore and used Wind Arrow before fighting it.
The boss took half damage from each of course, making the damage be barely anything. Still, barely anything was better than nothing, so Ning fought.
He wanted to finish this quickly. Having arrived here at 3 minutes, Ning had about 12 minutes to finish the boss. While that seemed like a lot, he had to keep running away so as to not get trapped and take quite a bit of damage.
Still, Ning had beaten the boss before in 12 minutes. So, he could certainly do it now.
In the next 2 minutes, Ning dealt over 600 damage to the boss. If this went on, he would deal somewhere around 2000 damage in the next 7 minutes.
That would be more than enough to kill the boss, and it would be enough to beat the clear time by nearly 3 minutes.
Ning was looking forward to it. He happily fought the boss when suddenly he heard some sounds from behind him.
The many Vileshrooms that he had run away from were entering the boss room one by one.
Ning's eyes went wide in shock as over 20 Vileshroom entered the boss room, and they all started attacking him.
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'No…' he thought. He brought out a card and tried to fight, but there was nothing he could do that would help him dodge the attacks of so many monsters at once.
Ning tried to run away, but he couldn't walk out of the boss door. He tried to leave the dungeon, but that was impossible too.
In the end, Ning was ganged upon by the many monsters and he tragically died.
[You have died.]
[You lost 200 Exp]
[Time to respawn 09:59]
Ning sat in the darkness with a weird look on his face. 'Dammit! I overreached this time around,' he thought. 'How was I supposed to know those monsters could enter?'
Fortunately, he lost no items and only exp. 'Will by Fate stacks reset?' he wondered. If it did, he would have to kill a lot more again.
While he was dead, Ning thought about what he could do or not do.
He wanted the Solo clear record, but that was just a want, not a need. Should he give up on that and go about the game normally?
'Hmm, I really want my name there though,' Ning thought. 'How do I get it though?'
There was really just one way from what he could tell. Ning needed some sort of AOE spell to kill the monsters once they were in the room.
Unfortunately, he had no way of acquiring such a spell at the moment. He had checked the market and the spells cost a lot of money.
So, his only way was to rely on his luck, which was quite unreliable for the most part.
Ning sighed in the end. "How about this then? I will try to do it 3 more times. And if I fail, I will move on," he thought. He gave himself a condition that he wouldn't run out of.
3 more dungeon runs and he would leave, whether he got his record or not.
"3 chances… I hope my luck helps me here," Ning thought and waited.
When the timer reached zero, he respawned in a building inside the city, and so he restarted the game.
Chapter 833: Eat itNing stood in front of the dungeon gate, thankful that his Fate stacks didn't reset on death. If it had, he had no idea how he would possibly get it all back without leveling up a lot.
Ning looked at the gate with a plan in his mind.
He used his first skill to bring out a card. He looked at the card and shook his head.
He wanted a card that gave him some good movement speed. However, the card he just pulled out was not one.
So, he sacrificed the card, and in doing so hoped for a buff that would help him move faster.
Many cards were not fit for him, and the buff he got was barely any better. Worst of all, he got more debuffs than he got buffs.
So, Ning had to stay there for nearly 30 minutes, swapping through 15 different cards before he got the one he wanted.
[Swift Shift: Turns all of your STR into AGI for the next 100 seconds.]
That was nearly 115 AGI. Adding the 10% movement speed bonus he had from his shoes, Ning could make it quite far quite quickly.
So, without hesitation, he jumped into the game and activated the card. He felt the world slow down quite a bit around him as his own perception and speed quickened at an astonishing rate.
Ning ran into the maze without hesitation, making his way through the narrow hedge.
Vileshrooms grew out of the ground, and Ning hit them when he could, but most of the time, he just forgot about them and continued.
He quickly reached the boss room just as his speed was dying down. When it was completely gone, Ning started fighting.
He hit the boss as quickly as he could, trying to kill it before the beasts would arrive. He didn't go back out from the boss's range as that would only make him lose more time.
So, while he fought the boss, he also took quite a lot of damage. Even when the boss reached 50% and started spewing seeds, Ning fought the boss in close combat.
The Vileshrooms started appearing from the gate, but Ning focused on the boss. If he could just kill it, if he could just kill the boss, then…
In the end, he couldn't and as he got overwhelmed once again, he died.
Ning respawned 10 minutes later.
"Two more times," he thought to himself. That was the only opportunity he was going to give to himself. If after 2 more turns he didn't do anything, he would move on with the game.
Ning returned back to the spot and continued on. He fought a few monsters to keep up his Fate Stacks, but aside from that, all he did was summon a card and eat some bread to keep up his mana.
Once he got a movement speed buff, he entered the dungeon and ran again.
This time, Ning made it through the maze to the boss room in about the same time it took for the buff to wear off.
When it did, he immediately pulled out another card in hope that it was something good.
It was.
[Exploit Wound: Dealing damage to an enemy will add 2 physical damage on them for each hit. The damage stacks on every hit for 120 seconds. The stacks expire if you damage another unit]
"Activate!" he said.
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[Fate's Aid (Uncommon) has been triggered]
Ning fought the boss like a madman. With each hit, he added 2 more damage to the attack that hit the boss and it stacked.
The first hit did normal damage, but the 2nd hit dealt 2 more damage. The third hit dealt 4 more and the fourth hit dealt 6 more.
Slowly, the damage crept up to a point where he was dealing more than 100 damage on each hit, and it continued going up.
The boss reached 50% HP very quickly, but Ning kept going while taking damage. It wasn't even a minute longer before Ning defeated the boss while ignoring the two Vileshrooms it had popped out.
Once the boss was dead, Ning killed the Vileshrooms too. Then, he waited for the notification. Unfortunately, there was none.
"What? Does killing the boss not end the game?" he thought. Then came the droves of Vileshroom, pushing each other through the boss room's door.
Ning looked horrified when he realized that he had to beat them to defeat the dungeon.
He had already taken a lot of damage, so he wasn't sure if he could do it. If it was just the boss, then he would have ended the dungeon in 4 minutes record time.
But now he realized why the record was so slow. 'You would have to get lucky to defeat it this fast,' Ning thought, something that was quite impossible for him.
He fought the Vileshrooms, killing as many as he could, but in the end, he was overwhelmed once again and died.
Ning respawned.
"Last chance," he thought. He made plans on how he would win this time around. He had a simple choice of course.
"I will have to deal with the boss, and then deal with the many monsters when they come around," he thought to himself.
He fought by the dungeon gates again, pulling out cards one by one while his mana was slowly used up.
200 Mana for the card and then another 100 mana for the sacrifice was quite a lot of mana.
Since he was fighting, he was using up a lot of mana, so he had to eat his bread constantly.
He continued pulling cards, that was good for him. But, his luck was so bad that he simply couldn't pull out any good cards.
In the end, he leveled up to Level 16 and still didn't find any good cards to enter the dungeon with. And now, his bread was gone too.
He would have to go back to the city to buy some more. However, he didn't want to.
"I'll just not fight. That should be fine," Ning thought and returned to the gate to sit around and pull out cards.
People asked for him to join their party and such, but Ning refused them, just sitting around pulling cards.
As he did, he got bored and started looking through his settings, going through the market and such. He found a few good skills that he would buy if he had the money.
After that, he went through his inventory, looking at what he had. He saw the mushroom loot, another hat he had received for killing the last beast, some observer stone, the trashy want, and that one rabbit drop that no one wanted to buy from him.
"Why do I have to eat this?" he kept wondering. He couldn't think how that part of the rabbit could taste any good.
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'The developers should have made the meat the consumable part, not this thing,' he thought.
Still, it was a loot he received when he was learning to fight, so it couldn't be that good. He was already going to have to move away from the bread itself, so there was a good chance this was even worse.
"Let's just get this over with," he thought and tried to bring the item out, but he couldn't.
"Oh… OH! Good job developers," he said to himself when he realized he just had to press to consume the item and didn't have to literally eat it as he did with bread.
"I would have consumed it long ago had I known that," Ning thought and pressed eat.
A bunch of notifications appeared in front of him.
[You have consumed a Rabbit's feet.]
[In some ancient culture, a rabbit's feet is considered to be an item of good luck.]
[Congratulations, you have ranked up your LUK stat from C- to B-]
[Your next chance-based action will have a 100% probability of activating the best action.]
"Woah!" Ning looked at the notification in surprise. Not only had his LUK stat gone up, but he also had a 100% chance of having the 100% chance at the best thing.
Which meant, he was guaranteed to draw a Legendary card.
'A legendary card!' Ning thought with surprise. He wondered what it could be.
"I will have to find out after I reach the boss," Ning thought. He stood up and without any hesitation entered the dungeon.
Since the next card was guaranteed to be the best, he wondered if he could fight all the monsters at once.
He had to try.
Ning ran into the dungeon and made his way through the maze. This time, however, he didn't hurry.
Instead, he dragged the many Vileshrooms with him. He attacked them when he could, but mostly he just ignored the slow monsters and had them follow him.
He knew they would all reach the boss room in around 4 minutes, so he spent 4 minutes gathering them from everywhere he could.
After a while, he finally reached the boss's room where he entered and waited.
One by one, the Vileshrooms entered the room, all of them looking forward to killing him.
Ning waited for them to enter while running around so the monsters couldn't catch him while they all entered.
At the same time, he finally used the Deck of Infinite Fates to pull out his next card.
Suddenly, the world seemed to dim as a bright orange light flared in front of Ning, changing to the shape of a card that slowly landed on his hand.
[Congratulations, You have successfully pulled out a Legendary card.]
[1 point has been added to LUK stat. When the point reaches 100, your LUK stat will improve by a minor rank]
Chapter 834: Lethal Fate[Lethal Fate: places a debuff on any enemy in a 5-meter range around you, making them connect by fate. Whenever one unit takes damage, they all take the same damage. Lasts 30 seconds.]
"Activate!"
The orange card shined brightly as it disappeared, and suddenly
[Fate's Aid (Legendary) has been activated. You now have a 40% chance to deal 750% damage for 120 seconds.]
"Wind Arrow!" Ning immediately started attacking.
The moment the Wind Arrow took effect, the entire battlefield took damage. With Ning's 105 INT, each of that arrows dealt about 60 damage, bringing the total damage for everything in the area to about 180 damage.
Then, he hit once, successfully hitting a critical strike, dealing 322 damage.
Then Ning used the Poison Spore skill. The skill dealt about 10% of his INT as damage per second.
Because of their magic resistance, the many Vileshrooms only took 8 damage per second.
With over 25 monsters in total here, the entire crowd took 200 damage in just the first instance of the poison spore.
Before the next instance came along, everyone but the boss was dead. And even the boss had taken over 700 damage already.
Without any hesitation, Ning rushed at the boss and started hitting it once more.
Every 3 or 4 hits, he managed to hit a critical strike, far better than the last times when his LUK stat was lower. As such, in such a couple of hits, he brought the boss down to his 50% stage where the bullet hell began.
Still, Ning would rather take the damage than letting the time run any further.
He continued attacking, dealing either 45 or 335 damage each time. In what felt like not even a minute, Ning successfully beat the boss.
[Congratulations! You have defeated the Shroom King]
[Clear time: 5 minutes 42 seconds]
[Congratulations! You have beat the solo clear record. Would you like to publicly announce your record?]
Ning fell to the ground in a mix of fatigue and happiness. He laughed loudly when he realized that he actually did it.
"Yes, Of course," Ning told the game. "Why else would I have tried so hard if I wasn't even going to let other people know what I did?"
['IMMORTAL ENERGY' is now the fastest person to clear the Vileshroom Dungeon.]
[You have obtained the title 'Plant's Nemesis']
[
Plant's Nemesis:
Title Rank: Uncommon
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Deal 20% extra damage to plant-type monsters and take 10% less damage.
The title must be equipped to be in use.
]
"Hmm, that's not bad," Ning thought. Yet the notifications kept on coming.
[You have Leveled up]
[You have obtained the item 'Mushroom Armor']
[
Mushroom Armor (Uncommon):
VIT : 15
DEF : 15
HP : 200
Damage Block: Passively blocks 15 Damage from every physical attack.
]
[You have obtained Shroom King's Poison Spore]
[You have obtained a skill book.]
No more notifications came after this.
Ning looked at the final notification and felt his eyes go wide in shock. 'A skill? I got a skill book!' he thought with a surprised look on his face.
He had been meaning to get a skill book, but good ones had their cost in gold. For a man who only had enough materials to sell to receive maybe 2 gold coins, that was a lot of money.
There were only 4 different slots for him to learn a skill, so he couldn't waste his time on a book unless it was good.
Although he would get a chance to unlearn a skill every once in a while from a Skill clear stone that had a very small chance of dropping.
"I hope it's something good," Ning thought and brought out the book.
[
Seed Bullet:
Skill Rank: Common
Type: Active
Spews out 5 supersonic seeds that deal 80% of STR as physical damage each.
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Cooldown: 20 seconds
Manacost: 80
]
"Of course," Ning thought, a little disappointed. "I should have known that it would be this. What else did I expect to get from these monsters?" he thought to himself with a sigh.
He opened his profile page to see that he had about 61 total STR stats. Which meant each of his attacks would deal about 48 damage, for a total of 240 damage.
That was nearly 3 times as much as what his raw damage would be normally. For 20 seconds cooldown, Ning wasn't sure if it was worth it.
"Shit! Whatever, I will get that skill clear stone if I ever need one," Ning thought and learned the book.
[Congratulations, You have learned Seed Bullet.]
[1 Skill Slot used. 3 Remaining.]
Ning equipped his title, and also put on his Mushroom armor, with shoulder pads that looked like a mushroom head. He sighed and shook his head when he realized he looked like a person that was growing mushrooms all over him.
'I'm so close to leveling up,' Ning thought when he saw his Exp. He was close to reaching Level 18, so he decided to go through the dungeon again.
He had made a plan that no matter what if he couldn't make a record in 3 tries, he would leave. However, now that he had done it, he felt like going back on his words and doing it twice again.
After all, he really wanted level 20 before he left this city. So, Ning walked through the portal that had appeared and…
"Is that him?"
"That's him!"
Ning curiously turned around to see the Fire mage from his earlier party pointing at him. Not only her, everyone suddenly got rowdy and started running towards him.
Ning was ready to attack when they all started speaking at once.
"Brother? Are you Immortal Energy?"
"Was it you who cleared the dungeon?"
"How did you do it?"
"Please tell us what glitch did you exploit?"
"Do you plan on uploading your run online?"
"If you didn't cheat, then you must prove it!"
Ning looked at the crazed demons with nothing but anger, jealousy, or envy in their eyes.
'Damn, no wonder the last guy chose to leave his record private,' Ning thought to himself. 'I probably should have done the same.'
Chapter 835: Assault in the North"I didn't cheat," Ning shouted at the people. "I only got lucky. I will put up a record of how it happened online after I'm done with the dungeon."
He immediately returned back to the dungeon and took his time this time around. He focused more on just fighting and nothing else.
After two more clears, he reached level 20. While he could enter again, he chose not to. There simply was no point in doing that.
When he came out, there were significantly fewer people around that hounded him for answers.
There were still a few that desperately wanted to know how it was done, so Ning promised to put up the video as soon as he was done selling his items back in the city.
Hearing that, the people finally let him be and went on their way.
Ning returned back to the city and sold all he could, including the pieces of equipment which he was sure no one would buy if he were to sell it on the market.
Once done, Ning started looking for how the video format was done.
To his surprise, the game recorded every instance of his gameplay and was free for him to use however he wanted.
It was also segmented into parts, and one of those parts was the dungeon clear that they required from him.
He watched the video for a while and saw that it wasn't that bad. It was quite short too/.
"Okay, now I need to upload this," he thought. After a bit of playing around, he found the option that allowed him to upload the run where he cleared it.
"Uhh… upload… username? Let's just use Immortal Energy so people can know it's me, and then… right, name."
Ning thought about what to name the video but it was too much work. "Let's just say 'Vileshroom Dungeon, WaterFort City, Solo Clear Record - 5:42'. That should work right?" he thought and uploaded the video.
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Once done, he forgot about it.
Ning then went on his way to find the old man who he took the quest from. He pulled out the Poison Spore and handed it to him.
"Here, I did your job," he said.
The old man looked with a hint of surprise. "Not bad. I expected you to fail, but you came back successful," he said.
[Quest Complete]
[You have received 10 Silver coins and 12000 Exp]
[You have leveled up]
Ning was level 21 now, and he had successfully earned over 220 Silver coins, or 2 Gold coins and 20 Silver coins for himself.
'I can't enter the dungeon now, and the Vileshrooms are too weak for me,' he thought. 'I should leave the city now.'
"Do you know where I should go from here?" he asked the shopkeeper, hoping to get an answer.
"Hmm, everyone is going to the north to prepare for an assault on the forts there. You should join them too," the shopkeeper said.
"An assault?" Ning looked surprised. "Are there still humans in the north?'
"Yeah," the shopkeeper said. "We launched an assault here 2 months ago, but we didn't have many numbers at the time. However, our number is steadily growing and as such we are ready to go further. You should join them too."
Ning nodded. "Okay. Thanks for the information," he said and left.
Ning thought to himself as he walked. 'So the game only started two months ago huh? Did the people really help the demons invade?' he wondered.
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Ning walked towards the gate, and he saw a clear path leading north that was some distance away from the path that led to the forest.
He looked around for some carriage or a cart or anything, but with the demons invading, there was nothing for him to ride in.
He saw people walking down the road with nothing, and Ning soon realized that was what he was supposed to do.
He was supposed to walk his way through the entire continent as he made his way to the north.
'You must be fucking kidding me, right?' he thought to himself. In the end, he couldn't change the reality… or he could, but chose not to, and started walking down the line.
He opened his map and it showed him moving away from the waterfort city, going towards another city about 10 kilometers away in the same Ghalian Empire.
'Well, I can only hope that the next city has carriages and carts,' he thought to himself and continued.
That pathway was rather smooth and he didn't find it hard to continue walking. He did come across a few Vileshrooms that spawned around the road, which he killed.
There was no one around him for a good long distance, so Ning was alone on his travel. Fortunately, this was a game and thus he could just go online and check what was happening while he walked.
He saw that his video was picking up in views. It had about 2000 impressions by now, with a few comments that said that he was a cheater, while someone else called him lucky.
If only they knew that he was both.
Ning then saw some other videos about people fighting different monsters, but he didn't watch them. What was the point of watching other people do stuff when you were playing the same game?
So, he wanted to go fight on his own. He wanted to fight everything.
Ning pulled out cards once in a while to see if he could perhaps improve his movement speed so he could run, but despite his improvement in luck, it wasn't any better.
'99 more Legendary cards and I improve my luck stat, was it? Sigh, talk about something being impossible,' he thought to himself. If only he could go back to the beginner's city and hunt for those rabbits for their feet. He could improve his luck so much.
Just as Ning was thinking that something suddenly flew out of the bushes and struck Ning on his head. Before he could do anything, he lost his vision, and then all of his senses.
Chapter 836: CapturedNing found himself in the darkness, unable to focus on anything as his mind drifted to many things.
He managed to focus for a moment or two, where he couldn't help but wonder what was happening.
It was only when his consciousness returned that he found out that he was on the back of some people, being taken away.
He tried to move, but he seemed to have been tied up.
'What's going on!' he wondered. He was a little confused since he didn't seem to be able to move at all. He tried to speak, but then a notification popped up in front of him.
[You cannot move during a cut scene.]
'A Cut Scene?' Ning was surprised. He was surprised that this life-like world wasn't actually as life-like as he had thought.
He waited for the 'cut scene' to end.
He could barely see the hint of a butterfly wing behind the man that carried him.
'Hmm, a human then?' Ning thought. He waited as they took him deeper into the forest until they reached an area where the tree was so dense that it was hard to see anything in front of you from the sheer amount of foliage.
Then, they arrived at a cave that seemed to prop out from the ground and entered.
As soon as they entered, Ning saw nothing but darkness in front of him as he was slowly taken away from the little light that came from the cave opening.
They took him inside and as they did, Ning saw the feet of people walking past him, but barely. His vision was still mostly focused on the ground, barely seeing anything else.
Finally, his vision changed when he was tossed away, landing inside a cell. Ning tried to move, but he just couldn't do it. His hands and feet were tied up too well, and even his mouth was covered.
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"Mmmm! Mmmm!" he shouted now that the cut scene seemed to be over. His captors finally crouched down to look at him.
Ning was surprised that the person that had carried him here was actually a woman. The ease with which she had walked all the way here while carrying him surprised him.
However, when he really thought about it, he couldn't deny the fact that she might actually have quite a bit of STR or VIT to carry him.
Behind her, there were other people standing, but he couldn't see them clearly in the dark cave.
The girl reached behind his head and undid the knot to drop the cloth that blocked his mouth.
"Fwah!" he spat out unconsciously as soon as the gag came out and looked at the girl. "What the hell are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing, demon?" the girl asked, her pretty green eyes shining even in the dark. Her translucent butterfly wings also seemed to catch some light even in this darkness, but not much.
"Did you kidnap me?" he asked.
"Of course," the woman said. "Did you think I brought you here for a tea party?" Ning could hear the snarkiness in her voice like she had been deeply offended.
"Why did you kidnap me?" he asked. He was trying to untie himself in the meantime, but he didn't seem to be able to.
"Why wouldn't we kidnap you? You're a demon! You destroyed our city. You killed our friends and families. You sent us away from our own homes. You bastards ruined our lives," the girl said with strong emotions in her voice.
"Yeah, but why me? I never did anything. I only came here like a day ago at best," he said.
'Shit!' Ning thought. 'The demons are really terrible aren't they? Even in a video game. Dammit! Can they not go without trying to conquer everything?'
Internally, Ning regretted choosing the Demon race. He knew he was most likely the arch nemesis of the Angels, but now he was the enemy of humans too.
'This is going to be annoying,' he thought.
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"Because you seem important," the girl answered his question.
Ning paused. "Important? Me? I'm not important," he said. Why would he be important?
"Don't lie!" the girl shouted. "We can see it. You are important to the demons. You are blessed by one of their gods."
'Ah!' Ning seemed to understand what was happening. 'So because my class is a Unique class, given to me by the demon lord, they think I'm important huh?'
Now, how did he get out of this?
"I promise you, I'm not important. This… this blessing you say is actually a curse. It was forced onto me. That demoness forced this upon me because my luck is incredibly bad and she thought it would be hilarious to see what I do with it," Ning said.
The girl was surprised for a second. However, a hand fell to her shoulders that brought her back to reality.
"Don't fall for that, Gariin. That is a demon speaking. Its demon tongue is very good at lying and deception. You shouldn't fall for it," the man said.
"Ah, right. Thank you brother Feroon. I nearly believed him," the girl said.
'Tch, I was so close,' Ning thought and looked at the man with an angry look on his face. Still, he had to continue.
"Please, I'm not lying," he continued. "I really was cursed by our gods. I do not have any wish to harm your humans."
The girl turned around toward him. "Sheathe your sharp tongue, demon. They will not work on me anymore," she said.
"But I'm not lying. I promise I'm not trying to harm the humans at all," he said.
The girl thought for a moment. "If you are so keen on saying that you do not want to hurt any human, then you should be fine with saying an oath, right?" she asked.
"An… oath? I'm fine with that," Ning said.
Suddenly, a bunch of notifications appeared before him and a new quest seemed to have been triggered at that moment.
Chapter 837: Demon Stats"Promise to us, in the name of your god that you have never, and will never henceforth hurt a single human ever in your life again," she said.
"I…" Ning didn't speak. He was reading the notifications in front of him with incredible shock.
[Quest: Swear an Oath
Swear an Oath to never hurt another human again unless they hurt you first. You will swear an oath directly to the Demon lords, so if you ever break them, you will face their wrath.
Failure Condition: Intentionally harm a human before you're allowed to harm them.
Punishment: Complete Deletion of Character and restart with a Cursed Class.]
'What the fuck?' Ning looked at the words in front of him with utter shock.
There was a quest with no winning condition, and only a losing condition, and losing meant you had to get rid of anything and everything you had worked for this whole time.
'I can't, right?' Ning thought. 'Why would I ever want to say this oath?'
"What if I say it? Will you let me go?" Ning asked. "I can promise that I've never harmed a human before, but that doesn't mean that I won't harm them in the future, especially if they come after me as you did."
"I don't care if you're a human, a demon, or an angel. If you hurt me or my friends, you will get hurt in return," Ning said.
The humans were a little surprised by his conviction. The girl thought for a bit and asked, "Are you willing to harm the demons?"
"If need be, yes," Ning said.
The girl suddenly turned around and started speaking in hushed tones. Ning had no idea what they were talking about.
The girl quickly turned around. "What do you want?" she asked.
"Right now? To be free," Ning said.
"No, what do you want for hurting demons?" she asked.
Ning's eyes narrowed a bit. "Well, first of all, I need a reason," he said. "I'm not someone that hurts others just because you say so."
"Of course, there is a reason," the girl said. "Your people killed everyone we knew and loved, and now you're doing it to others. What if someone came and killed everyone you loved and care for? What would you do?"
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Ning sighed. "That's a solid argument," he said. "But I'm still not convinced yet."
"Then what about this?" the girl pulled out something and showed it to him.
Ning tried to grab what it was, but the girl quickly pulled the skill book away.
"That's a skill book. Are you trying to sell a skill in exchange for my getting my help?" he asked.
"Yes," the girl said without hesitation. "Us infiltrating the Demon camp and killing them would be incredibly hard, so we need you to do it for us. Are you willing?"
[Quest Obtained]
[Quest: Demon Extermination.
Type: Permanent
Kill any and all demons that you are given the name for in order to obtain rewards from the humans all around.
Rewards: Will improve as you go along.
The first reward is guaranteed to include the skill book 'Demon Stats'. Killing an enemy that is a high-ranking demon or above 20 Levels from you gives you a random permanent stat.
The stat is doubled if it is a direct mission given by humans. ]
[Warning: If you are ever found out to be behind this killing, You will have a bounty put on your head.]
'Shit!' Ning thought. 'That's tempting.'
He analyzed the situation as well as he could and came to the answer that this was one hell of a quest for him.
The extra stat, while it may look like it wouldn't amount to much since killing enemies above 20 levels gave some stat, he would surely end up with a lot of stats, if he found a way to do so.
For now, all he could think of was fighting bosses.
"Well?" the girl asked. "Do you choose to be a pawn or a hostage?"
Ning sighed. "Fine, I'll accept your offer," he said.
"Swear to your gods!" the girl said.
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"I swear on my gods," Ning sighed and complied.
[Quest Accepted.]
[Wait for the human's next target.]
"Now swear that you won't harm any humans, or we won't let you out off here," they said.
"Seriously?" Ning sighed. "I swear on my gods that I will not hurt the humans that don't try to harm me first. Is that enough?"
[Oath Accepted.]
'Woah,' Ning thought. He didn't expect the game notifications to appear here. 'Wait, I hope this doesn't backfire on me anytime soon.'
After he had finally said all of his oaths, only then did the humans there let him out of the cage.
Only after coming out did Ning's vision improve, letting him see things more clearly.
The girl named Gariin was young and beautiful, but she wore tattered clothes with a dirty face that hadn't seemed to have been washed in ages due to the demon's sudden arrival on the continent.
However, no matter how dirty she was, her bright and shining eyes looked quite impressive, and so did her beautiful wings that were shaped like a butterfly's.
Ning looked at the other two men. One was named Foreen, and the other didn't speak.
They were both equally, if not rougher than the girl they were will. Also, the two of them had dragonfly wings as opposed to butterfly wings like the girl.
"Come," the woman said and the two men followed her like they were her bodyguard.
Ning looked at the other cages and saw signs of people being there, entrapped.
He wondered if there were more demons in this cave, kept in cages. If there were, they had most likely died too.
'I should have died too,' Ning thought. 'I would've been respawned in the Waterfort city, wouldn't I?'
Going all the way back to the first city was annoying, but that was a good choice, compared to what he had gotten.
Still, the rewards he would be getting for completing the mission the girl gave would definitely be worth it in his eyes.
Chapter 838: BesailachThe girl and two men took Ning to a location with a little more light. The room they had arrived in seemed to have a small hole in the ceiling through which light could pass.
Ning was looking around at the dome-like room when suddenly the woman did something so ridiculous that Ning thought he wasn't seeing right.
The girl reached to her back and unhooked her wings to lay them down beside her.
"Wh-what?" Ning was confused. "How did you do that?"
"What? This?" she looked at the wings. "It's not mine to begin with. It belongs to one of the blessed ones that fell in battle."
"Blessed ones?" Ning asked. 'Players?'
When he thought about it a little more, he remembered that NPCs shouldn't have wings to begin with. 'Right, I was so caught up in being caught that I didn't catch the fact that they had wings.'
"We use our fallen soldiers' wings to scare the demons. Otherwise, they look down on us quite a lot," the girl said.
"Oh," Ning said. "Are you three the only ones alive?"
"What need do you have to know about our survival, demon?" the man at the side spoke. "Do you wish to go and tell your superior about this?"
"Geez, calm down. I don't have a superior. I'm not from the army, I told you," Ning said.
"You never trust a demon's lies," the man said.
"Fine! Whatever," he looked away from the man and towards the woman. "What do you want from me exactly?"
"Good, let's talk business," the girl said and started explaining the situation. "Up north, near the city of Winterheart, there are currently demons trying to invade the city. The commander of the demon, from what we have gathered is a demon known as Besailach. Kill that demon and meet us in the forest near the Highcastle."
[Quest Updated:
Kill 'Besailach', one of the fastest-rising demon commanders of the time.
Failure to kill will result in the quest's removal. In which case you will have to meet 'Gariin' to receive another quest.
Failure to kill Besailach without being noticed will result in a bounty put on you, making you a target for all demons.
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Reward: 5 Gold coins, 55000 Exp, and a Skill Book 'Demon Stats']
"Ooh, that's quite good," Ning thought. "I'll do it. Is there a time frame?"
"Not really, but we will prefer if you do it before they attack the city," Gariin answered.
"Got it," Ning said as he looked at the quest. Killing a demon… that should feel that bad right? Especially given that he would now not have to kill humans.
At least not the innocent ones.
"Okay, I'll leave now," Ning said.
"No," the men suddenly said.
Gariin sighed. "We cannot let you go just like that. We will have to blindfold you so that you don't know where you are."
Ning sighed as well. "Really? Didn't I already promise not to hurt you folks?" he asked.
"That… no, you will have to be blindfolded," the girl said. The men brought a piece of cloth and tied it around his eyes.
Then, another cut scene began where Ning couldn't do anything was listen from the darkness as his body was taken somewhere else.
After a while, he was dropped on the side of the road, where he had been previously taken from.
"Walk ahead for 2 more hours and you will come across the next city. A day's journey after that is the Winterheart city. Good luck," The girl said and left.
Ning stood there in the road with no one around him, and after a while, he continued walking down the path.
He thought about the situation of the world right now, the lore of the game.
The demons were invading this foreign land, bringing death and destruction wherever they went. The humans were the ones being attacked and they were fighting back.
So, where were the angels? Given that they were angels, Ning expected them to be helping people fight off the bad guys, but he hadn't heard about them yet.
It couldn't be that there were no Angels on this continent, right? Could it be that they were fighting on the other two continents?
Ning continued on and slowly he started seeing fewer and fewer monsters around him.
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By the time he saw a crowd of demons, he was already close to the next city on the road.
The Greenveil city.
Ning looked at the city that was less of a fortress than the Waterfort city. This city had low walls, and the buildings were made up of more wood than stone.
At least, they used to be. Now, they were all destroyed. Whatever remained was used by the demons for trade and such.
Ning sighed when he saw that, but he couldn't do anything about it. He walked through the city and went to a building where one would respawn after dying.
He quickly set Greenveil city as the city of choice for his respawn. He didn't want to accidentally die and respawn back in the Waterfort city after all.
Once set, he went around the city, looking for any quests he could get to level up.
As of yet, he was level 21, so he wanted something more.
"Oh, can you help me get some Wolf Skin, young lad?" a demoness who worked as a tailor spoke.
"Wolf Skin?" Ning asked.
[Quest: Gather Wolf Skins.
Gather some Wolf skins from the nearby BrownWolf Dungeon. The more skins you gather, the more reward you will get.
Reward: 100 Exp and 3 Silver coins per wolf skin.
Special Reward: Gather more than 500 Wolf Skin to get a custom-made Wolf Leather Belt from the tailor.]
"I will do it," Ning told her.
[You have accepted the quest.]
"Are there any other beasts aside from the Wolves?" Ning asked.
"There are. There are some Goblings to the northwest, and some Grayworm to the east," the tailor said. "If you find wolves to be hard, you can start with the other beasts."
"I see," Ning said. "Thank you."
Chapter 839: Spear GoblingNing arrived north of Greenveil city. He climbed a small mountain through a treacherous path before appearing in front of a cave halfway up.
The entrance to the cave was a dungeon gate.
[Brownwolf Dungeon
Maximum Level allowed: 50
Maximum Players allowed: 5
Recommended Player count: 3
Party clear record: 7 minutes 02 seconds
Solo clear record: 11 minutes 29 seconds]
"Woah!" Ning looked at the dungeon information in surprise. There was no way he could do a Level 50 dungeon alone at all.
"Looking for Level 30 and above mage."
"Looking for a Tank."
"Looking for a high damage dealer. We have a tank for aggro."
Ning looked around at the people asking for specific classes of players.
'What general class do I fall into?' Ning wondered. He wasn't a fighter since his INT was so high, but he wasn't a magician either as he had no damage skills.
He was a mix of two, with the worst combination of skills from both. For a person with such little STR, having a high critical chance and damage was almost too cruel.
At the same time, giving someone with high INT absolutely no damage skills was also quite cruel.
In the end, all Ning was was someone that had gotten unlucky.
"Hey, can I join you guys?" Ning approached someone. "I'm only level 21 though."
"Sorry, we're looking for someone stronger," the group said.
Ning smiled and went on to the other group. They wanted someone better too. Before long, Ning understood he was in the wrong place.
Since there was only the Wolf Dungeon, there wasn't any wolf for him to fight outside there.
So, he would have to leave this place and either go Northwest, or East. Ning thought for a moment and went Northwest, as it was the clothes from the Wolf Dungeon that was in the north.
He climbed back down the mountain and went to the hilly meadows that lay in the west of the mountain.
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The tall grass swayed in the wind, and Ning could see quite a few demons around. Some were fighting, while some were searching.
[You have taken 36 Damage]
Suddenly, Ning saw the notification pop up at the same time as when he felt something poke his left leg.
Ning turned around to see a tiny creature, barely half a meter talk poke his leg with a spear made up of sharp rocks tied at the end of a stick that was longer than them.
Ning looked at the humanoid beast, with green skin, a pointy nose, and even pointier ears.
He saw the rabid look on its face, saliva dripping from its chin, as it looked at him hungrily.
Ning instantly used his observer stone to check the beast.
[Spear Gobling:
STR: 65
DEF: 55
HP: 500
MP: 200]
"Kinda weak," Ning thought and instantly used his Seed Bullet.
5 seeds appeared out of nowhere at the bullet speed, dealing 37 damage each for a total of 185.
At the same time, Ning used Wind Arrows, all 3 of which flew towards the Spear Gobling, dealing 212 damage in total.
In just two spells, Ning had dealt nearly 400 damage to the beast, and with just 3 strikes from his spear, the gobling would die.
However, just before he was about to attack, the gobling jumped back into the thick grass and disappeared into the greenery.
"What? Come back!" he shouted and searched for the gobling, but he couldn't find the beast at all.
"That goddamn little shit!" Ning shouted when he realized that his attacks had been for nothing.
At the same time, another gobling shot an arrow at him on the back.
Ning took the damage and turned around to see that another gobling beast had appeared not far away.
However, before he made it to the gobling, the gobling disappeared into the grass.
"These little shits," Ning was getting annoyed. He used his skill and pulled out a card.
[Maiden's Touch: Heal HP equal to 120% of your INT.]
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"Activate."
Ning healed for 145 HP and then ran after the goblings now that he could deal critical damage from time to time.
He ran through the high grass, searching for the little creature until he found one.
His skills were already active by now so he used his skills without hesitation, dealing over 400 damage again.
However, at the same time, he also stabbed the beast in the chest, dealing 65 damage. The Spear Gobling tried to run away, but Ning stabbed it in the back again, dealing another 65 damage, and killed it.
[You have received 74 Exp.]
[You have received Gobling Ears]
[You have received Gobling Spears]
[Gobling Spear (Common)
Crafted by the Gobling smiths, the Gobling spear is certainly one of the worst weapons out there. However, with the Gobling Wizard's help, the spear is far from the worst.
STR: 10
AGI: 8
Deals 10% extra damage when attacking from the back.]
"What the hell? That's better than my current spear," Ning thought. He swapped the short spear with the Gobling spear, which was about the same size.
However, the Gobling spear looked significantly worse and looked almost as if it would fall to pieces after 2 more uses.
But if the system said it was good, then it had to be. Besides, it was a drop for a better beast than whatever was used to make this 2 Silver Short Spear.
Ning equipped the spear and went hunting.
He pulled out another card, now that the first one had expired.
[Flame Aura: Creates a fiery aura around you dealing a constant 50 Damage every second. Lasts 120 Seconds. Will disappear if you take more than 500 magic damage.]
"Activate!"
Ning went hunting. As soon as he found the goblings, he would ruthlessly use all of his skills and then use their own spears to kill them.
Spear Goblings that came close to him were easier to kill than the Gobling Archer, but he could also use Seed Bullet and Wind Arrow to target Gobling Archers and kill them as their overall HP and Defense were quite pathetic.
In the end, he killed many of them and leveled up quite a few times.
Chapter 840: Gobling DungeonNing leveled up to Level 23 before he found his way to the Gobling Dungeon.
The dungeon lay at the foot of the hill to the west and allowed anyone below level 30 to join.
It recommended people to be at parties, but Ning decided to go at it alone.
The gobling dungeon was a small, worn-down village where the goblings lived. As soon as he entered, their feral attitude made it so that they would try to kill Ning at all costs.
Ning activated the new card he had pulled out, which created a fog around the place that made the goblings miss half of their attacks.
Ning weaved through the rest of the attacks and attacked back on his own. He used Poison spore to damage every single gobling and used the rest of his arsenal to deal with the rest.
There were 3 types of goblings that fought him openly. They were the Spear Gobling, the Gobling Archer, and the Gobling Hunters.
The hunters used knives and daggers and were proficient at being sneaky. Fortunately, Ning's poison spore was enough to deal with them, given that their HP was even less than 250.
He took quite a bit of damage of course, but his HP was over 2000 now, and that wasn't something the Goblings could easily deal with even when they attacked together.
Once the gobling army was dealt with, Ning went inside to find the Gobling King that was the main boss of this dungeon. At least, the people outside told him so.
When he entered the village, he found the Gobling King. It wasn't even that hard to miss him as he was sitting on a giant chair at the center, with a subject beside him.
As soon as Ning arrived, the giant king jumped out of his chair and landed in front of Ning with his giant cleaver-like blade.
Ning pulled a card and smiled.
"Let's fight then. Activate."
[Fate's Aid (Uncommon) has been triggered.]
Ning's spear suddenly burst into fire as he rushed to attack the gobling king.
Poison Spore, Wind Arrow, Seed bullet— All 3 of these skills landed on the king before he even arrived, and when he did, he stabbed the king from the front, dealing 70 damage.
However, after that attack, the fire in his spear also dealt damage to the boss, dealing 60% of his INT as magical damage on each attack.
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Ning tried using his observer stone in between, but that proved useless. He just didn't have the luck to activate it against an opponent that was so high above him.
Instead, he looked at the health bar above the boss to find out what his HP was.
'3500? 4000? Seems like it,' Ning thought. He dodged the boss's attacks as he fought back and slowly brought the boss's HP down to 50%. However, before it reached 50%, Ning jumped away from the boss and arrived at the Gobling Wizard that was hiding behind him.
The Gobling Wizard added buff to the boss as the fight persisted, so if he let it be, the boss would only grow stronger after reaching 50% when the Wizard would buff him up.
Instead, Ning decided to kill the wizard and be done with it.
He swung his spear, dealing 85 damage to the beast with very low armor. He stabbed him and then jumped to the side as the boss's cleaver fell where Ning was.
Ning pulled out another card and sighed. It was a card that changed his AGI to DEF for a while.
'I can't have that,' Ning thought.
"Sacrifice."
'Magic damage…' Ning turned towards the Wizard. That was the only one that could deal magic damage here so he had to kill him quickly.
Ning jumped back into the fold, dodging the boss's attack. The Wizard used a debuff on him that made him move slower, but Ning still went towards him and hit him.
Ning took a single instance of damage from the boss while he was killing the wizard, but that alone took nearly 200 of his HP away.
The boss was slow, but he definitely hit his size.
'Dammit!' Ning thought as he was still slowed by the wizard's debuff and from what he could see, he still had 20 seconds of the slow remaining.
However, it was only him and the boss now.
Ning ran around for a while, dodging when he could, but he still took another instance of damage.
Fortunately, the 20 seconds were done, and Ning was back on his feet, ready to fight.
Without the Wizard's aid, the boss couldn't survive Ning's assault. There were no 50% hp or 20% hp phases for this once the wizard died, so Ning had a relatively easy time defeating him.
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In the end, he managed to defeat the boss with more than 70% of his HP remaining.
[Congratulations, You have defeated the Gobling King]
[You've received Gobling King's Bracer]
[You've received Gobling King's ear]
[You've received 10,000 Exp.]
[You've leveled up]
[Dungeon Clear time: 8 minutes 32 seconds]
"That's not bad," Ning thought to himself. He checked the King's bracer and smiled when he noticed the stats.
[Gobling King's Bracer (Common)
STR: 15
VIT: 10
AGI: 5]
There was nothing but stats, but the stat alone was rather great. At least, they were better than the armlet he was wearing.
Although, he would now have to lose 10 DEF, which was terrible in a sense.
"I'm level 24 now," Ning thought. He needed to be stronger just to party with people entering the Brownwolf Dungeon.
He would have to be stronger if he wanted something more. So, he needed to grind a little bit more.
That was all he had done since starting this game, but he would have to do it a bit longer again.
So, he turned towards the portal that had appeared and walked out of the dungeon, before turning around and getting right back in there.
:)
