November 3, 2022
Day 14
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Rahul's well-earned sleep was rudely interrupted by shaking and shouting, and he woke up with a jolt.
He felt confused, disoriented, and not at all rested.
As he regained his senses, Rahul heard voices shouting his name.
Maya and Charlie's voices.
All he wanted to do was to sink back into the warm embrace of sleep, but the shouting and shaking was unending. He grudgingly opened his eyes and was greeted by blinding brightness and two blurry figures hovering over him.
As Rahul's eyes adjusted to the light, he recalled the turn of events that had ended with him falling asleep in the dungeon.
The last time he had gone into a trance, it had lasted longer and he had been able to walk back to his room in the castle, lay in bed, and voluntarily sleep. This time the trance was shorter but had been more taxing, and in the end, he hadn't so much slept as fainted.
In any case, Rahul was now awake.
And irritated.
"Why did you wake me up?"
Maya replied.
"You've been asleep for the last twelve hours. Charlie and I have made good use of that time and dealt with the remaining three alphas, but we need to leave now. There's nothing left to do in this dungeon."
Rahul protested.
"Why wake me up! You could have carried me!"
It was a bit embarrassing to say it, but then this wasn't where he had fainted last night, so Maya and Charlie had probably carried him and Matt all over the dungeon as they fought and killed the alphas.
Wait, did I hear that right?
"The two of you killed all the three remaining alphas!"
Maya and Charlie both frowned.
"What? Don't look so surprised. You and Matt might be stronger in melee, but we are smart and learned from the first alpha."
Charlie continued.
"The battles had rounds, like boss battles in games. Round one with just the alpha, and round two with the alpha and an endless stream of crocodiles. As long as you kill the alpha twice in quick succession, you don't have to deal with the annoying fodder!"
Maya took over.
"That's what we did every time, killed the alpha during its healing period between the two rounds. And those four dead alphas are the reason we woke you up. We need to carry the bounties of war and need your help to carry Matt. He's not waking up from his sleep."
She pointed Rahul in the direction of four peculiar objects.
The first was the metallic tail he had severed off the whiptail crocodile, the second a slightly different appendage, a massive stinger. The third was a sac filled with some weird orange substance and the fourth was a gruesome heap of bloody reptile scales.
Charlie spoke.
"The first alpha we encountered after you two fainted was similar to the whiptail crocodile, and was called scorpion-tail crocodile. We believe its stinger might be poisonous and so we collected it. That's just a guess though, we killed it from a distance."
The matter of factly tone in which Charlie said that was surprising. Killed the alpha, just like that.
Charlie continued.
"The next alpha could breathe fire, and that ability was helpfully called out in its name when we used the inspect skill - fire-breath crocodile. This one too died before it got close to us."
Maya added.
"For a beast that emitted fire from its mouth, it was surprisingly vulnerable to fireballs."
Rahul was taken aback by Maya's cheeky comment at the end.
I guess I'm not the only one getting desensitized to violence.
Rahul had a feeling that the two were skipping over a lot of details. The alphas couldn't have been that trivial to kill. If they had been, they would have been back in the castle already. Rahul had fought till late last night, but it was almost noon now. Too much time had passed for the battles to have been so one-sided.
Charlie spoke again.
"The last alpha was the thick-scale crocodile. It lived up to its name and those scales were impermeable to my arrows and unaffected by Maya's fireballs. Even its eyelids were invulnerable. In the end, we had to resort to using Maya as bait. She got close to the alpha and pretended to fall, prompting it to take an opportunistic bite at her leg. The moment the alpha opened its jaws, I used my rapid-fire skill and unloaded five arrows into its mouth. It struggled painfully for some time, but eventually died."
Maya spoke as soon as Charlie had finished.
"And then this guy decided he wanted to make an armor out of those scales, and peeled them off its body."
Rahul looked uneasily at the bloody mess of scales. The process couldn't have been pleasant.
Charlie explained.
"My father took me hunting as a child. I'm used to gutting, skinning, and de-feathering small game and birds. I had never hunted or skinned a crocodile before, but you live and you learn."
Rahul and Maya did not comment on that. Having grown up in India, game hunting was a concept foreign to both of them.
Rahul had a question.
"How are you planning to carry that pile of scales?"
Maya and Charlie looked at each other and came to a silent conclusion.
Neither of them had thought of that.
Charlie shrugged.
"We'll figure it out."
Rahul was annoyed.
"You could have woken me after you had done that. That and all other preparations. I'm exhausted and going back to sleep! Wake me up when we are actually leaving."
Rahul started to survey the ground for a comfortable place to lie down but was interrupted by Maya.
"Aren't you curious to see what level you reached after all that carnage?"
Rahul facepalmed.
How had I forgotten about that?
All his exhaustion gone in an instant, Rahul immediately opened up his character stats screen.
Character Overview Name Rahul Sharma Race Human (F) Class Melee Level 17 HP 220/220 MP 270/270 Stamina 221/270 Intent Points 1/7 Strength 45 (49.5) Endurance 27 Dexterity 27 Vitality 22 Intelligence 27 Presence
Name Momentum Level 1
Level 17.
More than he had expected but less than he had originally hoped.
Rahul had planned to exit the dungeon at level 20, but after just one hour of rampaging, he was afraid he would get only 3 or so levels. That he had leveled up 6 times was a pleasant surprise.
He projected his character stats to Maya and Charlie, who congratulated him on the levels and on his strength which was almost 50 now.
That dealt with, Rahul looked at his current experience.
1300/100000 experience to the next level.
Rahul had entered the trance halfway to level 12, and calculated that he must have earned over 550,000 experience since then. More than 6000 crocodiles in that one hour. Even with that AOE attack at the end, that seemed impossible.
Rahul decided to just ask.
"Maya, Charlie, do you have any estimate of the number of crocodiles I killed?"
The two exchanged glances, and Maya spoke.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"We took turns clearing the debris you left behind. I toasted more than 1500 corpses."
Charlie added.
"I took care of roughly 2000. Not counting your massive attack toward the end, which must have killed hundreds more. We saw no point disposing of those corpses at the end since you were done fighting."
Rahul nodded.
So over 3500 crocodiles were killed during the trance, and several hundred more after. The numbers still didn't add up. Rahul would look through his notifications to see if they could account for the rest.
But first, a more urgent question.
"What level are you two?"
"Level 14." Maya and Charlie replied together.
Maya elaborated.
"The alphas gave 250K experience each. With the three we killed, Charlie leveled thrice and I four times. Since Charlie had already reached level 11 during the first alpha battle, he's at the precipice of level 15 now."
Rahul smiled. That was good. Then he spoke.
"The reptiles I killed don't account for all my levels. I will catch up on all the notifications and find out the other sources of XP while you two find a way to take those scales back with us."
Maya tried to protest, likely hoping to see Rahul's notifications herself, but Charlie signaled for her to accompany him, and she grudgingly obliged.
Now alone, Rahul went over his notifications in chronological order.
You have advanced to level 12.
20/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 39 to 40. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
You have advanced to level 13.
30/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 40 to 41. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
You have advanced to level 14.
10/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 41 to 42. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
Three level-ups from his rampage while in trance.
Then a different notification popped up.
You have gained a new skill.
Willblade - Project and channel your intent into a tangible blade to strike your enemy.
Effect: Willblade will phase through and ignore unenchanted physical armor.
You have gained 10,000 experience from this skill.
Willblade, so that's what that skill was. The ability to ignore physical armor would certainly be useful. Would that include only external armor or even natural defenses like the crocodile's scales?
But the skill said nothing about the blade getting projected outwards in a huge arc. Rahul pondered on that for some time, before moving on.
The next notification had the answer to his question.
Willblade Strike - Project and channel your intent into a tangible blade to strike your enemy.
Effect: The willblade will phase through and ignore unenchanted physical armor.
Changed to
Willblade Strike - Project and channel your intent into a tangible blade to strike your enemy.
Effect: The willblade will phase through and ignore unenchanted physical armor.
Specializations (1/unknown)
Kinetic Cleave - Fuel your willblade strike with accumulated kinetic intent.
You have gained 100,000 experience from this Specialization.
Kinetic cleave. Now that sounded more like his attack. Rahul wondered why the specialization mentioned kinetic intent instead of just saying momentum, and predictably found the answer in the next notification.
You have learned to harness your accumulated intent in various ways, and that experience has resulted in you discovering a hidden stat - Intent Points.
Based on the nature of your presence - momentum - your accumulated Intent will be Kinetic.
Please note that intent accumulation is measured on a logarithmic scale, and 3 intent points indicate ten times as much volume of intent as 2 points.
Out of all the things that happened today, this was the strangest and most exciting.
A new stat!
So it looked like Rahul wouldn't have to eyeball momentum's rotational speed to figure out how much intent he had left anymore. The fact that accumulated intent was measured on a logarithmic scale made Rahul think of the Richter scale. Given how catastrophic his attack had been last night, it was perhaps apt that intent was measured the same way as earthquakes.
Rahul looked at his status screen again and confirmed that Intent was there. He must have failed to notice it the first time around.
Character Overview Name Rahul Sharma Race Human (F) Class Melee Level 17 HP 220/220 MP 270/270 Stamina 221/270 Intent Points 1/7 Strength 45 (49.5) Endurance 27 Dexterity 27 Vitality 22 Intelligence 27 Presence
Name Momentum Level 1
Rahul looked at the next notification, and did the math.
You have advanced to level 15.
91000/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 42 to 43. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
This notification immediately followed the experience gained from specialization. Before he got the 110,000 from the skill and specialization, he must have been at level 14 with 81000 experience. That meant his rampage on the crocodiles had bought him nearly three and a half levels worth of experience.
Rahul realized he must have killed 4000 crocodiles, maybe more. Maya and Charlie had undercounted a bit.
Enough calculations. Rahul moved to the next notification.
You have advanced to level 16.
0/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 43 to 44. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
That must have been from the big swing. This notification told Rahul he had killed enough to get 9000 experience at least, which wasn't saying much. The next notification was better in that respect.
You have earned a new title Name WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION II (RARE) Condition Kill 500 or more enemies in a single attack Effect
Your mass attacks will now become deadlier upon crossing certain destruction thresholds
Attack damage increased by 5% after killing 100 enemies
Attack damage increased by 10% after killing 500 enemies
Rahul was a bit disappointed by that title. First, it did not come with any experience reward, and second, the effects weren't very useful in the short term.
Maybe the 10% damage increment would help against some stronger enemies, but as of now, it just made an overwhelmingly powerful attack even more powerful. Rahul suspected that even if the damage output was cut in half, his kinetic cleave would have bisected the crocodiles just as easily.
What he would have liked better would be more range or longer active duration.
He checked the next notification, and that brought a smile back to his face.
You have killed the Level 11 Whiptailed alpha. 38,000 experience earned.
38,000 was barely over 15% of 250,000. It was honestly much less than what Rahul had expected to receive, but Rahul couldn't have been happier, since it meant Matt would get 212,000 XP from the alpha kill. Probably a bit less since Maya and Charlie might get a little too. In any case, it should be enough for two level-ups.
And that was a relief since Matt hadn't gotten any chance to level up after that first alpha battle.
Rahul looked at the last few notifications.
You have advanced to level 17.
1300/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 44 to 45. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
Quest Updated: Eliminate the Alphas
You entered the territory of one of the alpha crocodiles that live in this mangrove and bested it. Eliminate the three remaining alphas to complete this dungeon. Eliminating an alpha will provide dungeon points and open a portal that can be used to exit this dungeon.
Progress - 1/4 alphas eliminated
Three more quest updates followed, one after another, as expected.
There seemed to be no reward for the completion of the quest itself, nor any mention of the dungeon points. Maybe those will come once they exit the dungeon.
With all that out of the way, Rahul was ready to either leave the dungeon or go back to sleep. He saw Maya and Matt coming back with a rucksack fashioned out of leaves and knew there wasn't going to be any time to sleep.
He did one final bit of math as he looked at his current experience. The same number he had been at when the first alpha died.
1300/100000 experience to the next level.
The discovery of the skill and the specialization had taken him to level 15 and 91000 XP. And now he stood at level 17 with 1300 experience. A gulf of nearly 110,000 XP. The alpha awarded 38,000 experience.
The difference came from the kinetic cleave - 72000 XP. Assuming an average of level 8 crocodiles, that would be 900 kills.
Rahul smiled, happy at that number.
A thousand kills might have gotten him the next title, but he was not disappointed in the least.
Next time
Charlie and Maya soon joined him, and he casually flung Matt over his shoulder.
His strength in this new world still surprised Rahul sometimes. Not when fighting monsters, cutting through scales tough as steel, or firing arrows as fast as bullets.
No, it surprised Rahul when he did everyday things that he never could have before.
But there was no time to think about that as Maya and Charlie ushered him to one of the exits that had opened at the sites of the alpha battles.
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A series of notifications appeared in Rahul's vision as he emerged from the dungeon. But he did not spare them a single glance.
None of them did.
The sight that greeted them upon their return to the cellar of the castle made their blood run cold.
Bodies.
Three bodies lay unmoving in front of them, covered in blood and grievous wounds.
Still.
Eerily still.
Frozen in time.
Not unlike the group of three that stood as a statue as they stared with horror at what had become of their friends.
Then Rahul's eyes caught something on the other side of the cellar.
A fourth body.
Ivan's chest rose and fell weakly.
He was unconscious but alive. Barely.
Rahul dropped Matt to the floor and ran to Ivan, all the while shouting for help.
"Health potions. Now!"