The first floor went much the same as Cub’s Den had gone, except Tess was behind Alice and Eyfura while the older women sprung the traps ahead. There were only goblins at this point, but they were disgusting enough to make her wish that there were kobolds as well.
Well, provided the kobolds were cleaner. Regardless, the goblins were short and stunted, with proportions that were just…off. They weren’t even consistently off, either. Sometimes one of their arms was much shorter than the other, their necks were of dramatically differing lengths, ears weren’t always quite aligned, and they often had large dents and bumps on their body.
Their clothes weren’t much better; they were ragged and dirty, covered in stains and only patchily covering their bodies. The bodies themselves were green and, like the clothes, covered with dirt and grime. And they stank, too. Tess was glad that she had opted to turn off Keen Nose when not actively using it, because even without it she could clearly smell them from yards away.
Fortunately, as the info sheet had said, they weren’t anything to write home about when it came to actual combat ability. They generally had a front line/back line thing going on, but since none of the front liners were able to notice Tess, she was able to slip in and take out the back liners with a single strike each. Mopping up the front liners was a little more difficult since they were moving more, but a few well-aimed blows would finish them off too.
The only real thing of note that happened on the first floor was when they reached the exit. They were about to go through, but Alice stopped them. “Tess, have you absorbed that core yet?”
Tess started. “Oh, right, I forgot. Sorry.” She took the core out of her bag, “Let me do that real quick.”
The core was far and away the largest she had ever absorbed, but she wasn’t hurting for empty slots, so she wasn’t worried about potentially needing to eject it later. There was still a slight moment of hesitation, but she powered through it and absorbed the core, watching as the core burst into a huge haze, swirled around her, then rushed in.
And, unlike the other cores she had absorbed, there was an instant rush of energy and power from it. It was clearly quite a few steps above even the boss cores she had absorbed, and the long list in front of her reflected that.
You have absorbed an Emperor Lion Core! Form of the Beast: Monster Breeder has leveled up! New core absorbed! Scanning for abilities… Heir’s Will: Opulent Ordinance: Writ of Execution: Unyielding Hide: Bloodwork: Displaying core information: Emperor Lion Core: New Attributes discovered! Enhanced Hearing (Perfect): Extendable Claws (Major): Iron Fur: Saber Claws (Perfect): Saber fangs (Perfect): New Skills discovered! Emperor’s Armaments: Pollice Verso: Impenetrable Pelt: Blood Sport: |
“You there?” Eyfura was waving her hand in front of Tess’s face, a worried look on her face.
Tess blinked. “What?”
Eyfura smiled. “You were super out of it for a second.” She shot Alice a look. “What did you give her? I’ve seen Saberclaw Lion cores before, and that was not one of them. That was at least twice the size.”
Alice looked away, tapping her pointer fingers together. “Well, I figured that if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound, and I keep a fair number of valuable cores around just in case, so…I might have picked an Emperor Lion core? It wasn’t like it was more of a sacrifice or anything.”
Eyfura grinned. “I like it.” She turned back to Tess. “Don’t tell everyone else yet, they think you got a Saberclaw Lion core. Anything you would have gotten from that core you got from the one you just absorbed, so as long as you don’t use the active abilities, they should have a hard time noticing anything wrong. We’ll tell them about later, but until then it’ll be our secret, OK?”
Tess nodded hesitantly. “Um, OK.”
Alice breathed a sigh of relief. “Alright, go switch around your Attributes, Ker said that can take a few minutes. We’ll wait.”
As she tinkered, she quickly found that most of the Attributes were considered upgrades of ones she had, and as such, did not stack. The lion’s Keen Nose was the same as the one she was currently using, so that merged into Keen Nose (Greater).
Enhanced Hearing (Perfect) was an obvious choice, so she took that, and swapped out her Night Vision for Darkvision (Perfect). Likewise, Extendable Claws replaced Retractable Claws, and Saber Claws would replace Sharp Claws. Instead of putting it in a regular slot, however, she decided to try and put it in her Fundamental slot.
A new window popped up the moment she did.
New User Fundamental Attribute discovered! Saber Claws (Perfect) (User Fundamental): New concept discovered! |
She decided to keep her claws the same length before, as she was fairly happy with how they were, and she could make them much longer with Extendable Claws if need be. At that point she had used eight of her fourteen normal slots and her Fundamental slot, so she took all five of the Emperor Lion’s Skills. That left her with one slot remaining, and after some deliberation she decided to equip Saber Fangs (Perfect) and make them only slightly longer than her normal canines. Fortunately, it seemed that only her canines were affected, and she could easily wave away the difference if anyone actually noticed.
As she finished, she realized that she was sitting down. That…was not something she really wanted to be doing, considering the state of the dungeon; it was like an old, moldy cellar, covered in all sorts of grime and grease. The wooden walls were rotting, and she could occasionally see dirt or stone beyond them.
And the floor was nasty too. It was made of uneven cobbles, small stretches of wood, or just altogether missing. Even when the floor was there, it was covered in plants, rubble, grime, and generally looked like it hadn’t been maintained in years.
Tess quickly stood up, went to brush herself off, and then decided that it wasn’t worth dirtying her hands any more than they already were, not when the clothes were bound to get dirty again anyway. “Done.” She said. “When you have multiple Skills that increase damage or efficiency of things, do they stack? And if so, is it multiplicative or additive?”
“Yes, and generally speaking, they stack additively between other bonuses from the same category, and multiplicative from other categories.” Eyfura said, “So, all effects from passive Skills or passive effects from active Skills add up to one multiplier, which is multiplied by active effects, which is multiplied by Titles, which is multiplied by buffs, and so on. The biggest exception to this is damage reduction, which is always multiplicative, regardless of the source.”
Eyfura stopped for a moment. “No clue where your Attributes lie on that, though I’m guessing they’ll be considered their own category.”
“So, what’d you get?” Alice asked excitedly.
“Um, a lot.” Tess replied. She gave a quick summary of what she got, and there was a long silence as both Eyfura and Alice stared at her. Eventually, Eyfura pulled out her phone and started tapping on it while Alice watched interestedly.
Tess squirmed around for a bit. “What?” She asked.
Eyfura slowly shook her head, putting away the phone. “I was doing the math on your bonuses. They’re absolutely busted. Six times damage on claw attacks, which will inflict a bleed for one hundred and twenty seconds, which deals one hundred and five percent of the damage of the original attack every second. And on top of that, you plant a parasite that deals another ten percent of every second and heals you that amount.”
She sighed. “I think that actually bumps your overall damage output to above average for your level. Which, by all rights, shouldn’t be happening given your abysmal statline. Seriously, just imagine if you had Ellie’s stats. You’d be the strongest person to ever live.”
“Um, right.” Tess replied awkwardly. “Sorry.”
Eyfura frowned. “What’s there to be sorry about?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
Alice and Eyfura shared a look.
“No, it is.” Alice stressed. “That was a hypothetical that would never actually come to pass. Fortune said she chose you because of your low stats. She could have chosen Ellie just as easily, but she didn’t. She very clearly believes in your potential, so you shouldn’t be down about it.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Tess mumbled., looking away.
There was a silence then, but Fortune chose to fill it with a message.
She’s right, you know. Honestly, even if I wanted to give Ellie my blessing, and I didn’t, I couldn’t. It would upset the balance of power way too much. Think of it like this: I believe that, way down the line, you’ll be stronger than Ellie. Not for a long while, yes, but eventually you probably will. And if someone with literally the worst possible base can make it to be in contention for the world’s strongest with my blessing, then someone with a good base would break everything. The boss just doesn’t allow it. But, that’s completely irrelevant. I wouldn’t have picked someone else. I haven’t picked anyone else. Honestly, I don’t see myself picking anyone ever again. Not in the way I’ve picked you. I’ve realized that my influence is more…influential than many of the other gods’ and I don’t think I can trust other mortals as much. I mentioned I’d been watching you for a while. By that I mean I’ve been watching ever since you and Ellie first met when you were like…two. Parts of your dynamic really caught my interest, and I ended up watching you two waaaay more than I should have. I almost feel like a parent, in a strange way. The point of this is that you’re not a waste of potential. I would much rather have you get this blessing then someone who has the theoretical maximum stats I could get away with giving my blessing to, which isn’t even much higher. In a way, I think it’s for the best that you got those stats, which, by the way, isn’t my doing. That’s completely random, and not even I can touch it. Anyway, those low stats just mean I get to talk with you like this. |
“Right, um…sorry.” Eyfura said, snapping Tess back to the situation at hand. “I probably shouldn’t have said something like that. I’m not trying to say you’re not good enough, you’re plenty good, I was just making wondering what if.
“People think about the theoretical strongest set of Skills all the time, and that theoretical strongest is often paired with the strongest stats as a matter of course since they’re talking theory anyway. I was just thinking aloud, and I still haven’t fully come to terms with the fact that this hypothetical is playing out right in front of me.”
“I…alright. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. I’m just a little stressed right now, sorry. I don’t mean to drag everyone down with my own issues.”
There was an awkward pause, and then Alice spoke up. “Alright, um, Eyfura, what’d you think of Tess’s form?”
“Right.” Eyfura began slowly, “So, couple of pointers, first, when you go in for a big blow, you hesitate, finding the most exact time and place to strike. That has its time, but if your teammates are under fire, you have to be faster.”
Eyfura activated…something, and a pair of gleaming claws materialized on her hands. “Now, the best way to go about it is just aim for the general vicinity of the vitals. Let me show you a couple of ways to maximize your chance of getting a solid hit in…”
Contrary to popular belief, the best defense is a good defense.
I love these tooltips so much.
Is Ellie's ideal the CatGirl/CatMaid or something? What if Tess' ideal warps to a man?
Ellie's not particularly picky when it comes to fluff, but she's most fond of things with pointy ears (Most common examples being cat/wolf/fox).
She'd be sad if Tess's orientation changed, but the chances of that happening are 0 so she's not too fussed about it.
@Fighterman481 "because the author has said, and if the author says it is done" .jpg
@Fighterman481 fox is best. Yes I'm completely biased. And no I do not back down.
To continue my gushing about how gloriously absurd this can be, and in case it wasn't obvious by this point. I can get *really* into the statistics of these sorts of things. With how Tess is almost certainly going to get more dots added to her repertoire, because it would be utterly stupid for her to not, *especially* now that she has a 2x multipler for them. Her attacks might not due a particularly high amount of damage, but if you get smacked by her you will get a one way ticket to Status Effect Hell. Which nobody wants to deal with. And now that i'm thinking about the status effect f*ckery that she can engage in and the wording on Status Tennis was kinda weird....Does it mean she could add one of her effects to the 'volley' of effects for the target to resist whenever it happens? Which also makes me curious of something regarding the percents. I know effects don't really go about 100% chance normally but since some of skills increase the chance for them to apply....could they go above 100% chance and thus effect enemies that would normally be immune? Or would that still be moot because of the Blessing?
Finally moving on from the sheer *implications* of how these new skills attributes work in regards to attacks to how Emperor's Command works. Judging from by the specification of Enemy and Beast. I'm guessing it would also work on Freelancers? Quite the ability if so. Also, how does Charmed work? If an entire squad of enemies is charmed, (which they all will be when its activated against beasts) would they start mauling each other since there would be no near by "enemies" or would they be passive for the duration of the effect?
To finally round out these two overly long comments, remember how i said she was kinda a mix of several classes? Well, with the introduction of Dot based absurdity and her alpha-strike combat style "assassin" would probably also be a good description.
Gonna reply to both comments here for simplicity's sake, also it's going to be long and rambly so bear with me.
Double status effects on passive hits are folded into a singular status effect that is a combination of the two (chance to hit, duration, dps), which is part of why the bleed she inflicts now is so big.
The amount of EXP the core gave relative to its level is fairly low, but that's by design. For one, Classes receive less EXP than the "main" levels, so actually killing the thing would give more EXP than that. That aside, it's also a matter of the time taken to level dramatically increasing the further level goes up. At certain milestone levels (generally multiples of 25), it tends to get harder, and that scales more than the EXP that enemies give. A core from a boss at that level shouldn't be able to instantly level something up at ~level 50, but...I should probably increase the EXP it gave anyway (while keeping the level gain the same) for the sake of appearances.
Resistances and immunities are a bit odd. There are flat out immunities, but those are generally reserved for things that shouldn't be physically possible (think a golem made entirely of stone bleeding or being poisoned or something). Resistances of 200% are, for all intents and purposes, immunities, as the way resistances work is as such:
When inflicting a status, subtract the opponent's resistance from the chance for the status to be inflicted. So, if someone has 50% bleed resistance, a 100% chance to inflict bleed would inflict bleed 50% of the time, and a 50% chance to inflict would never land.
And...I guess this is technically a spoiler but we won't be seeing any consequences of that for a long time (if ever?) and by that point this will barely even matter so...Classes have a level cap of 100. This isn't common knowledge because, generally speaking, people have more than one Class and switch between them when leveling dramatically slows down. Furthermore, there are few enough people over level 100 as is, and only a handful of those would have a Class at level 100, so it's not something that's really even applicable to most people.
If an entire group of enemies is Charmed, they would likely turn on each other, yes, but that's only if there are no un-Charmed enemies and during that process they wouldn't attack any of the charmer's un-Charmed allies. Command of the Emperor does indeed work on other freelancers, but only if Tess considers them to be hostile (or, in the case of, say, someone in hiding she doesn't know about) or would consider them to be hostile.
And, yeah, this is sorta where I'm taking Tess right now. You really, really, don't want to let her get a hit in, so you need to keep her at bay at all costs, and if she does get a hit in you need to pray your defenses are high enough to blunt the attack to the point where you won't take massive damage before the time you can deal with the status.
And finally, word count. I'm partial to reading long chapters as well, and I have done chapters as long as...I think ~5,500 words when I really couldn't break it up, but I like to keep things around 3,000 for a couple of reasons. The first is consistency, since...well, I like having semi-consistent lengths, and the second is time-to-write reasons. 3,000 words is a comfy amount that lets me get a chapter out every week, work on other projects, and have time for other things like games, so it's just a balancing thing lol.
What she NEEDS is a powerful passive regeneration ability and a few crafting abilities, all force multiplicatators
Fortune remains a sweetie, and woah those skills are cool :3
Thanks for the chapter
Personally, i like longer chapters but if they aren't your thing then thats fine lol. Oh, and i see i was right about both the core giving several levels worth of experience instantly, and Monster Breeder having unlockable skills that are, as expected from the others, super broken. I was also right about it having passive Skills (though that was basically already stated) i was surprisingly, but also not surprisingly considering the Creature that it had a skill that increased a Resistance. Up to 57.5% physical damage reduction if i got my math right. (Which i might not of, percents were never something i was good at) i was also right about the claws, and hearing, but again as expected. I *also* noticed that it was listed as the core of a different monster then the one previously specified. So ha! ....or something
On to me talking about the sheer shenanigans this core enables. First off, and i feel like this is going to be rather important if things are going to play out how i expect, since bleed does stack. Can you apply two (or more) instances of bleed (or any stacking status effect for that matter) to a target at once? Because since that one active Skill she got a few chapters ago added a passive bleed to her attacks. And Blood Sport *also* adds a passive bleed. If both worked at once that would mean Tess inflicts 3 status effects per attack. 2 of which would be really strong (because i know Tess has a sh*t stat spread but a 6 times damage multipler and having 2 status effects that do more damage then the original attack every second. Would be quite strong) unless like....everyone else is unreasonably strong as a baseline. Which, going off the monsters doesn't seem to be the case. Which assuming multiple instances of bleed or status effects can be applied at once, then if Tess got bleed from other sources. (Active or otherwise) then that would increase it to 4 (or more by that point) effects applied with every attack. Theres also the fact that since Emperor's Armaments doubles the effects of ALL status effects inflicted, it would stand to reason it would increase the damage and subsequent healing of the leeches from 10% to 20%. And thats just with the current 2 or 3 effects. Which would brutalize most things that aren't immune or have high regeneration i'd expected. And thats not even the most absurd part i'd say.
With the reveal that Tess can make attributes be Fundamental to herself which also increases their power. She could, when she reaches level 20 in monster breeder (which admittedly probably won't be for awhile since she got just got shot up 6 levels.) She could stick Emperor's Armaments in that slot.....actually sh*t thats a skill not an Attribute. So it probably wouldn't work. Boo i wanted more absurdity. Eh, still a lot of other undoubtedly absurd stuff that could be pulled by having the ability to make an attribute a more powerful version of what it already is. like, any attribute that gives resistances, since Iron Fur is a thing they definitely exist. Or potentially an attribute that makes all your attacks have a chance to inflict Poison.
Which is actually lower then i expected from the core of a level 102 probably Boss monster. But if i remember what you said about xp, with how leveling up can take years or decades, and the current highest known level takes whats was it? 100 thousand something experience? Then it makes a bit more since in that context.
I'm just going to split this into two comments and post the rest of my thoughts on this glorious absurdity there, because this is already a really long comment.
Thanks for the chapter
I didn't mind the big window. In fact, when I saw all the acquired stuff at the top, I amused myself by putting on "Maybe I'm A Lion" while I read, since it seemed appropriate.