Awakening his prestige felt… it felt good. Good enough that Grayson had almost lost himself in the euphoric pleasure washing over him. However, he knew that he did not have the freedom to indulge, and kept his mind steady as he waited out the process.
Prestige Title - ‘Conquest’ unlocked! |
As soon as the message appeared in front of his eyes, he immediately opened his skill tree. Similar to spells, prestige abilities had their own special currency, prestige coins. Normally, you could only start earning those coins after your prestige title was unlocked, but he had traded to get a large number of them in secret before the invasion. All in order to prepare for this moment.
His eyes scanned over his new skill options, looking for anything that could help him in this fight. He had chosen his title carefully, and had done so long before entering the dungeon. As such, he had high expectations for what he could find.
And sure enough, his eyes fell on one particular skill at the base of his tree. ‘The Path of Conquest’, an ability which allowed him to dominate the minds of lesser opponents. He didn’t know if that meant strength, level, or simply energy quality, but these spirits charging at his men should qualify.
This skill had ten levels, each of which would increase its range, duration, as well as grant buffs to affected individuals. Ten levels, with each costing more than the last, was quite a heavy expenditure, but he didn’t hesitate. Over half of his prestige coins vanished in an instant.
However, that was enough. He leveled a fierce gaze at the approaching spirits. His men were firing arrows and spells at them from a distance, keeping them at bay. Yet, they were constantly coming closer, using their own people as living shields. As if there were some horrific entity behind them spurring them into action.
With a thought, he activated his new skill, pushing it to its limits. There was a strange pulse of power that spread out from his body. Although this power did nothing to the men and women of his guild, it showed an immediate effect when it touched the spirit monsters. Their bodies stopped charging, starting to swell with increased energy.
Under the dumbfounded gazes of the guild, they turned around and calmly left the dining hall. Even when a delayed spell landed on one of the creatures and wounded it, it paid no mind to its attacker. Under Grayson’s control, these spirits only had one goal, which was to fight the Keeper’s forces.
“Okay, that should buy us some time.” He muttered to himself. “Fleece, start preparing your domain. Everyone else, take a moment to recover.”
Inwardly, Grayson was cursing the developer of this dungeon. At first, everything was going fine. They entered the dungeon, integrated themselves with the population, but as soon as the proper combat started, the Keeper was all over them. Maybe this dungeon was meant to be conquered through deeper infiltration tactics.
He lamented his choices so far. There was no time limit for the dungeon run, even if it took years to complete. According to the rules, it was even possible to have the run spanning multiple generations Unfortunately, his guild was ill-suited for such a long term dungeon. The last time that they had hit a wild dungeon like this was before the release of prestige titles.
Maybe that had something to do with it? He shook his head. Even if the difficulty scaled up with the available resources to the players, knowing that wouldn’t help them at this point.
While everyone else was recovering from the brief siege, Grayson took another careful look at his skill tree. There was another skill that had caught his eye after he finished leveling up ‘The Path of Conquest’. This skill, aptly named ‘Army Empowerment’, allowed him to strengthen the abilities of those under his command.
Grayson knew that he wasn’t a particularly skilled fighter. Even with his prestige title, there were dozens of warriors within the guild able to defeat him in single combat. His specialty was in commanding an army, mobilizing them and allowing them to exert power far beyond the norm. That was what it meant to be an Overlord, to stand above all others.
It was finally here. The chance that Leowynn had been hoping for. Her longsword shined with a golden radiance as she cut apart one of Dana’s soldiers. She was finally going to be able to fight a true battle alongside her father.
Previously, the most that they had done was training together, or a fight where they had to hold back in order to not show their full power. This was the first time in her memory that she was able to truly fight together with her father, their lives on the line. She could be his shield and his sword.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she caught the faint expression of excitement that flashed across Tsubaki’s face, and knew that the kitsune was having similar thoughts. Both of them had participated in countless struggles on the edge of life and death in their past, but neither of them had had the chance to do so in recent time.
Leowynn and Tsubaki seemed to dance together through the halls, their backs occasionally pressing together as they killed their way through the spirits. They knew that they could simply wait near her father, and allow Dana or Scarlet to kill them as they approached, but this was their warm up for the coming battle. Whatever spirits slipped through, they would let the others have.
Leowynn gave a wide grin as she stepped forward. There was a panther covered in silver scales, its tail a sharp spike. When it lunged, she felt a faint pressure against her back from Tsubaki stepping into her again.
With a laugh, her body turned, allowing Tsubaki to twist and intercept this panther. Meanwhile, Leowynn’s own sword swiped out with tacit understanding towards the frail-looking humanoid without a face that Tsubaki had been up against.
Unfortunately, their battle was cut short when the wave of spirits reached its end. Dana was the summoner of these monsters, not their enemy, so once their forces were depleted there would be no more backup.
“You two battle maniacs had enough fun?” Dana asked, a knowing grin on her face.
However, at that time, it was Scarlet that unexpectedly spoke up with a troubled expression. “We should advance cautiously. I can sense that the ki of the other party has suddenly spiked. Most likely, they are preparing for their final confrontation.”
Hearing that only made Leowynn more excited. Her strength was just as high as her father’s due to the special link between their souls. If the enemy was indeed growing more powerful, that would make it a more fulfilling fight.
Tsubaki, on the other hand, was more adept at controlling her expression. She offered a faint nod towards Scarlet, thanking her for the warning. However, when she turned and began walking again, Leowynn couldn’t help but notice how her body shifted to stand more protectively in front of her father.
With a small smile, Leowynn led their advance this time. From their position, it was only a matter of time before they arrived at the crumpled steel door of the cafeteria. When that happened, she did not immediately step out, because doing so would simply make her the target of countless attacks.
Instead, she turned towards the others, offering a faint nod. Tsubaki returned it with one of her own, holding up her hands. Between her palms, an orb of white light appeared.
Tsubaki held this orb gingerly for a moment, before aiming at the door of the cafeteria. With a light push, it shot forward at a breathtaking speed. Once in the large room, it burst into a blinding radiance.
Leowynn didn’t miss this opening, nor did any of the others. She closed her eyes and charged into the room, more than capable of fighting blind. Her sword swept out towards the nearest hostile presence, and she could feel the heavy impact as it collided with a shield.
However, something about the situation felt almost… wrong. The air of their battlefield itself felt off. She withdrew her sword, changing it into a pair of metal bracers that stuck to her arms.
When the light passed, and Leowynn opened her eyes, she was finally able to tell what disturbed her so. The golden glow of her weapon had vanished, returning it to a pure silver. She did not have the time to figure out what that meant, as an arrow flew towards her.
The arrow seemed to contain an icy light, and gave Leowynn a faint sense of danger. She did not dare to block it directly, and stepped aside to avoid it. However, this arrow vanished even before it would have hit her normally.
Leowynn had seen this move before, and kicked the ground with all her strength to propel herself into the air. As soon as she did so, she saw the arrow exiting a small portal, striking where she had only just been standing.
While she was airborne, Leowynn had the brief chance to observe the rest of the battlefield. Scarlet was running rampant, an armor of bloody light wrapping around her. In one moment, she was a monster ripping apart a warrior with crimson claws. In the next, she had become a red mist to evade the ranged attacks that had been launched her way.
Dana wasn’t any worse off. She walked through the battlefield like a specter, her form ethereal. Her hands had elongated, forming dagger-like claws that struck out at anyone who came close. And, of course, she made sure that she was always close to someone, to prevent the enemy from being able to use any large attacks against her.
Tsubaki… Leowynn was shocked when she saw Tsubaki’s seemingly desperate state. She wasn’t fighting with any of her divine abilities. She wasn’t firing off beams from her tails to pierce her foes. Instead, numerous wounds had been cut open on her body in the brief moment of combat, and she was forced to pull out a pair of silver daggers.
Tsubaki was the one who should have been the most effective in this attack, aside from maybe Leowynn herself, and yet she was the one suffering? Leowynn didn’t have the time to process this change as she saw six spears of ice flying at her.
She condensed a small platform beneath her feet, and kicked off of it again to launch herself forward. Leowynn had an idea now as to what was wrong, and it was no doubt the same reason that her father had not been offering any suppressive fire from the rear.
Somehow, the enemy was able to stop their divine abilities. Her weapons had always been imbued with the divinity she shared with her father, empowering them far beyond normal. The loss of that golden glow showed that she was unable to tap into that power anymore.
Her figure flashed, stepping in front of one of the mages. The man was startled at her sudden appearance, stumbling back briefly as she observed him. Not this one… After giving him a quick look over, she threw out a punch that caused his head to burst open. If she wanted to relieve the pressure from Tsubaki, she had to identify who was causing this suppressive field.
Honnestly those last chapters make me feel that the registry they created is useless. It should have block the power of his prestige the second he obtain it. The sole fact that you can go in a world and become a divinity without using the same system that is implement in the world is rather strange. That would mean someone from any of Dale worlds could find a methode to become a divinity without him knowing off it. Not mentioning the fact that they can suppress the divinity of this world inhabitant when theirs is not detected.
I can understand that the system of the invaders can copy the abilities of the world they are invading be in this case, they should also need to copy the divinity and not just become one as they would in their world. That seems like an inconsistancy here or a lack of explanation. Or I misunderstood something.
If I remember well, chapters ago the author told that the invaders use the powers and systems from they world
@Mestreangel But their system so far seems to simply ignore all of Dales systems without even any effort.
Their god(s) ignores the specific countermeasure created for them.
They can avoid detection without prior knowledge of the existence or inner workings of detection mechanisms like the crystals. By all rights some high-level scout or mage should have simply seen through the illusions they used at the start and raised an alarm, but apparently the chance to fool onlookers is 100%.Even worse, apparently Dale & Co cannot develop countermeasures to that despite having specific knowledge about those skills and the people they look for from their illusionary insider.
They somehow can shut down divine powers without even knowing what those powers are - while excluding their own gods and with no preparation. Remember how Tsubaki and Dana experimented for weeks and months to get stuff like this right? Even if it was roundabout "deactivate all divinity except X" it shouldn't work, because they did not know about their god of conquest 5 minutes ago. And apperently Greysons divinity is still kicking.
Greysons freshly unlocked power as god of conquest immediately takes control of spirits summoned by the QUEEN OF HELL , who is as powerful as a god herself without contest. Conquest usually involves some form of struggle, specifically with the ruler whose stuff you want to conquer. Its usually not just winning by default.
And, maybe an even greater problem I see right now - they do this seemingly without expending any resources. Dales gods need to gather divinity from their followers to use their powers. Greyson and their other god just seem to spam their abilities away. And the array still doesn't catch up on thousands of divine chaos teleportations.
Its feels like fighting the goddamned Batman. You bring gods , he has anti-divinity spray . You cast sharknado, but luckily he has thought about equipping his shark-repellant and his bad-weather cape.
I like the story and it makes for a good one. But as someone who likes games of all kinds and has invested significant time in understanding how they work, how rules interact and how balance works I gotta say I don't like the powers of those invaders at all. Somebody warned Dale that this other keeper might know some tricks that seem cheaty, but as far as I can see that is not the case, except maybe those skillcoins. The rest of how they interact with the world is as if they play the game with the debug console open.
@Haquim you areright about this, the only thing I was telling is that they powers can work the way they work in they world, but the fact that those powers overpower Dale world powers it's not something that I agree.
I can understand the god of conqueet overthrowing the authority of the queen of hell, because he have a higher level authority (but even so, I think that some struggle have to happen) but for all the other things... Dale is a God with two! Domains an a subordinated god, Tsubaki has been a goddess for so many years, and yes, they have a divinity suppressing field, why those things don't work, if it's for not ending this arc to son, there are better ways
@Haquim I agree since we talk about a second rank keeper. Dale just ranked up and he face a enemy that, if they were alittle more patient, could have killed him without him knowing who they were. From a mindless keeper that spam fast breeding species to one that send a force you can't spot unless they make a mistake, it is a too huge leap in power. I can't imagine what higher keeper have for power. For a third or fourth rank keeper I wouldn't have mind since he could have been more prepared.
From this arc, I deduce that game systems are a cheat because they weren't even able to shut them down when the connect in dale's world as they planned too.
He had to intervent because without a divinity, they could have killed bloody hell Scarlet that is a thousands years old being and half a divine being.
@Vhail
Well, it has been explained at his first game that the keeper system kicks in and made it so everyone follows there Mather system.
(if I have to geass invaders system resolve around copy and steal the ability of other systems so that is why they look as if they follow his system while they don't at all.)
and
(also I can't see how they would understand what they can't prove, remember they don't follow his system so for all we know they could have been doing it completely different than Dales systems so honest I am not surprised they don't understand it)
So overall their keeper is really cheater his people are well prepared for most kind of fight.
(divinity and magic as they are the strongest and have the most valuable abilities, remember how blood princesses (ki user) and hell queen (spirit user) have easy time)
Just like in games equipment is everything so you usually have sat for everything that you maybe face (especially if it is your life that inline)
@Ahmed My problems with this here is :
- Why do they need to copy abilities from the world they invade ? aside to sneakily impersonate people and blow there cover at the first attack they make
- Why not every one of them has Prestige on their own to access divinity during the invasion ? Seems pretty dumb not to make every single one of them have it to maximize the chances of winning.
- If they are sneaky enough and plan on several generations, they can basically go undetected until one of them gain the trust of the keeper, have divinity and kills him while being with him. That evolution of the enemies is way to fast from a mindless fast-breeding monster keeper to a keeper that has a system with people falling the invasion because they weren't careful enough and sheer luck from Dale's side.
- Why do they plan countermeasures that took months to implement with tier 4 magic that doesn't work on enemies when said enemies can block divinity of the people they invade with a simple ability ?
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the story but this invasion doesn't seem really consistent with the rest of the story. Either we lack some explanations or there is actual inconsistency.
There's no real consistency and there hasn't for a while. I think this story is suffering from the snowball effect.
Not saying that I always dislike this story, I just disagree with how it's done.
@Kyrian_Clawraithe
Why do they need to copy abilities from the world they invade?
I think this is to know their capacity, their strong point, and their weak point.
blow there cover at the first attack they make
This was a Fatal mistake in their tactics.
Why not every one of them has Prestige on their own to access divinity during the invasion?
Consider what the team leader says, I think they simply couldn't offer to produce it in Mass (not without the keeper interfere which will likely lead to an increase in the world powers before it's people manage to keep up with it means without making all spots of problems) so he was the only one who has it.
If they are sneaky enough and plan on several generations, they can basically go undetected until one of them gain the trust of the keeper, have divinity, and kills him while being with him.
Well yes, you are right. That what should they did but ever so I do not think it would have worked as with every generation their Determination to do it will get less and less until they will evenly become a port of his world
(he will be aware they planing something and he should not mind staying as he is for some centuries and hunt them every time he gets chance, unite he wins).
That evolution of the enemies is way to fast from a mindless fast-breeding monster keeper to a keeper that has a system with people falling the invasion because they weren't careful enough and sheer luck from Dale's side.
The first part is simple because who lives ,happy go luck, easily going MC with no challenges what so ever, Not my for sure. The second part is how best plans fall in real so I don't see a problem with it.
Why do they plan countermeasures that took months to implement with tier 4 magic that doesn't work on enemies when said enemies can block divinity of the people they invade with a simple ability?
Well with the girl because it only works in divinity and it has to be in large quantity (or else knight and other jobs that use divinity energy in a small amount will also be affected) so if that girl can control her energy good enough she can still using it with no problems (as long as she keeps it to the small and simple thing)
Also, she is not the first to bypass the spell remember God slayer Mr. UnKnown.
As for their leader because they currently in a different dimension, so the spell simple doesn't exist so no effect.
As for the enemies block divinity well, I guess their keeper make it so divinity monster (or enemies) are quite common (not super common but just enough so if you get in a big fight you must expect to face one). because the need is the mother of all inventions, so you just have to make it so your people are ready to fight the strongest enemies and they will develop the countermeasures themselves. (the keepers are almost like to be a God as it increases their power and allows them to produce their one divinity and still can get it from the mass and has no real disadvantage. (ever if they block his divinity he can still fight without it as if he isn't one in the first place.)) so yes, if they came with no way to countermeasures to divinity especially in their base I would have questioned their keeper skill.
Well, thanks for reading, hope that will help you enjoy the story.
@Ahmed Oh, enyoing the story is not the problem at all for me.
As I said, games and game-like systems are kind of a passion of mine, so let me write down my thoughts more with mechanics in mind, than with examples without context.
WARNING! WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!
It is just the balancing aspect that is rubbing me the wrong way right now. Since the Keeper System itself has a game-like character the abilities of keepers of the same rank should be comparable. In a game, when two powers/skills work against each other there is a skillcheck to see which power comes out on top. But the skills and powers of the invaders work 100% of the time, all the time.
And the budding "god of mystery" is an indicator that detection can be avoided with the right powers, but that was ALL he could do. The invading goddess of chaos has apparently (if memory serves) the powers of
1. Cannot be detected
2. Can teleport people from anywhere to random locations (teleporting people from a different world than the one you are on to another one is definitely not "suppressing" her powers)
3. Superior attack and defense. (At least I think i remember this was written somewhere)
I get that chaos could feasibly and logically mean and do all these things, but why can she do everything like it was her sole specialization? What happens when "Jack" ascends and his domain is "all trades"? Is he literally omnipotent because he can do everything as well as a god that is only specialized in that one thing?
It doesn't hurt the story per se, because a story needs conflict and drama. But I, as a reader, am not limited to a personal viewpoint of the world, since I am not part of it, but an (not quite) omniscient observer. Going so long without any explanation WHY the invaders are so superior in absolutely everything makes it seem that they simply are. The only time we have seen them expend a resource was when the healer knit Greyson back together and we don't even know how much of an expenditure that was. We don't know how they level (i.e. ge their skillcoins), or what their resource pools are either. We DO know that they can, in comparison to Dales people, effortlessly!, aquire all the skills of the invaded world for the whole guild at once. In addition to their own powers. And that, looping back to the keeper system trying to be balanced, starts to scratch on the world building.
PS: I just remembered skillcoins can seemingly, and prestige coins can demonstrably, be traded. I hope there is are very harsh limitation on this, or this system is too unbalanced for ANY rank of keeper, never mind rank 2.
@Haquim I agree. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy this series, I'm saying that the system is designed extremely poorly. This entire conflict is because the attacker has been a Keeper for far longer, and they have accumulated more abilities than Dale could ever hope to.
The system is essentially making new players and players that are new game+ing fight against each other as if that would be a productive fight.
The reason that that's my complaint is the Keeper System seems to me to be a Development type system. This type of system is made in order to encourage the players, in this case the Keepers, to fight against each other in order to stimulate them into designing systems that are more and more powerful.
The Keeprr system seems to me to be a type of Gu container.
Having the experienced keeper fight the newly born Keeper is like having multiple Gu containers be set up, and after one of them is done, you put the victor inside one of the other Gu containers that is full of newborn bugs and expecting the previous victor to gain anything from the flask of newborns.
It would be a lot more effective to have the victor put in a Gu container with other victors, rather than with a bunch of newborns.
Besides that, Mr. Unknown was more powerful than Dale because A) He was admitted to be a result of a system glitch and a really bad part of the system design, and B) He wasn't the minions of another Keeper, he WAS one of the previous Keepers that was a lot further along from where Dale was at and so he was able to use Dale's resources better than Dale.
Terrain ADMITTED that Mr.Unkown was a mistake made by the system. Besides that when Dale summoned Terra through the Comunity Domain, she should not have had the memories of hers that were related to the secret system details but she still demonstrated that she did.
@Kyrian_Clawraithe @Kyrian_Clawraithe
Also, she is not the first to bypass the spell remember God slayer Mr. UnKnown.
I think that Mr. Unknown it's the god of mystery, the one that was killing gods and the spell didn't detect, that keeper hasn't been killing god, neither has been in any of Jack's worlds, remember, his last known place is life plan
Oh. Ok, I thought he was the unknown person that they encountered in Feyor once, that Ferra said was one of the older keepers.
got to remeber they are in the void not on a planet, the system is planetary, not universal.
@timeh No, I don't think so? I'm pretty sure it is restricted to species in the universe, where the system won't activate around anywhere that doesn't have the specific species.