Personally, I think Dan should’ve picked a combat summons and utility pet. I think they’re way better than regular summons.
Or better yet, he should’ve picked a better Class with two power Orbment slots and a utility slot and taken a combat summons, a regular summons, and a utility pet. Or BALLAD OF ANCESTORS. Why fight yourself when you can have Orbments do it for you?
[In that case, why not just take a summoner Class with five power Orbment slots?]
Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you. In the Game, only one of each type of summons can be slotted. Summoners are too powerful in the early and mid-tiers. It’s unbalanced since there’s much easier access to Orbments. Rare Orbments can be bought through the Profile Reader.
At least on this layer, Epic and Legendaries are impossible to get, but in the game, with how drop chance and proccing works, and with some Trial rewards, not so much.
[Rare Orbments can just be bought with fragments? Any of them?]
Yes. Well, not full Orbments. Rare Orbment Foundations. Cheap too. 200 frags. Common and Uncommon Orbments cost 50 and 100 respectively.
[Holy Shit.]
You can say that again.
[Are combat summons popular in the Game?]
Not really. The cooldowns and cast times are too long for these fools to handle.
[In general, they’re not very good. Besides maybe Bynti or Ozamot. If participants can buy any Rares, I should hope the combat summons line wouldn’t be popular.]
Well, I’d love to have one of them. Same with utility pets.
[None of the utility summons are all that useful either.]
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’d love to have constant passive damage or healing. And the POCKET lines are Legendary quality too.
[Personally, considering the Class Dan did take, if I could pick three Legendary Orbments, I’d still pick STORM since it’s instant cast and should work well with his mana-type, or CROSS CUT for the same. NULLIFY since the Crown Orbment Bonus cutting cast time by 25% is too good to pass up. For the third, I’d probably go with a support Orbment, so the Crown Orbment Bonuses weren’t wasted.]
Which support Orbment?
[I’m not sure. I’d have to think about it. I’d like to undo the negative facets of Aspect of Magma. Nothing can be done with Orbments to overcome the loss of a Stat grade, and a resistant increase seems like a waste of a utility Orbment.]
Yeah. Hybrid Classes are dumb. Much better to specialize. Summoner or full offensive is the way to go. If I were to pick a summons over a combat summons, I would’ve gone with SUMMON ABYSSAL. If he picked…
[We should get back to Dan.]
Right. I could talk about builds for hours. I get it, Boss.
So, Dan put the infernal on guard mode near the Core Trial. Luke and Carlos were on guard duty. He told Luke to tell everyone not to worry if they saw a lava monster due northwest, and for no one to attack it under any circumstances. Then he ran to the Combat Trial.
All Trials have about a 37-minute lockout before it resets and can be entered again. That’s to prevent over-farming. The Combat Trial’s lockout is about 28 minutes.
Also, in every Game I’ve been a tech for, there’re groups that try to control Trials, charge entrance fees, or completely block others from entering. It’s wonderful.
Dan entered the Trial before even catching his breath. He dropped his backpack. Lava exited his hand until it formed a whip.
As soon as the voice stopped counting down, Dan double lashed his lava-whip at the Guardian bugbear. Once to remove the Block Orbment charge, the second to lash its head in half.
Then, down went the Singer. One lash later, the Warrior joined its kin in death.
I doubt if the whole fight took more than four or five seconds. Dan collected everything they dropped, threw the weapons out of the Trial, and exited.
Since he already had the top reward from this Trial, completing it again only got him some XP, about a third of what he had received for completing it previously at SS.
By this time, after all he used during the Mana Trial and summoning the infernal, his core was pretty low on mana. Killing the three bugbears got him a little back. He had a lot of banked XP, plus the three beast cores.
I figured he’d begin leveling up since the Trial was on cooldown. He didn’t. He meditated with a qi gathering technique, somehow keeping the lava whip through meditation. When the Trial could be entered again, he’d kill the bugbears, collect their drops, throw the weapons out, meditate, rinse, repeat.
It was very boring to watch so we got Az’ga fully up to speed and took turns meditating and resting.
This is when Bob and I found out Az’ga is a filthy whore and doesn’t say no to anything, no matter how depraved the act. She’s basically like a male. It’s fantastic. I’m sure she makes her great demon ancestors and her mother very proud.
When we checked back in, Dan was still grinding. His broken arm fully healed including the bones setting themselves right, so he removed the cast and left it in the Trial before exiting.
He only used Lava Stomp once. Just one second of having the bugbears’ feet covered in lava was enough to cause very serious injury. The lava splatters killed two of them. Only the Singer didn’t get hit with splatters, but the injuries to its feet caused it to fall unconscious.
We looked it up and it seems the water in living creatures can protect against lava for half a second by creating an immediate steam barrier, or something like that. More than half a second causes significant injury.
Shortly before dawn, Dan’s core was 100% full. He ran to the Class Trial. Instead of going to the Class Obelisk to ascend to level 1 and Foundation tier, he went to the reader and purchased a Rare Orbment Foundation, Enhance Reaction.
He then went to the community Transmuter and broke down three Orbments that had dropped. Just three, not all. He held on to a few. For instance, he had an Uncommon drop. Darts. That was lucky.
I should explain how the drop chance works now. The combined increase to drop chance of 55% from Lone Wolf and Hell difficulty sounds super impressive.
Don’t get me wrong, it is. It’s fantastic, but it doesn’t work as it sounds since the proc chance is super low, especially at these levels.
Every creature, participant, or item that can be broken down has a loot table, and every item on a table has a chance to drop, what we call a proc. It could be an item group instead of a specific item like, say, a random Epic Orbment, but the chance of a level 11 bugbear dropping an Epic Orbment is almost nonexistent.
Earlier, I said the Transmuters in the Game work the same as ours. They do. But the whole loot system works differently.
I don’t know the specific chance of proccing additional or higher quality fragments when breaking down an Orbment with a Transmuter. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s 1%. That 55% means the chance for this to proc increases to 1.55%.
Of course, if something has a 50% drop chance, that changes to…um, whatever 50 times 1.55 is. A little over 75% chance.
[77.5%]
Yeah, that’s it. So, you see, that’s huge. 50% chance to 77.5% chance.
I hope I’ve explained this well. Did all this make sense?
[It did. Thank you.]
No, thank you, Boss. Ace Blacky lives to serve.
[How many Orbment Fragments did he have at the time?]
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
No idea. A lot. Completing a Hell difficulty Trial with an SS-rating gives 54 Common fragments. That’s…let’s see, eight times 54 is…um…one sec…I can do this…432. Common frags are worth two trash frags each, so that’s, uh, 864 right there.
He got a bunch of trash and Common fragments from all the bugbears he killed.
He broke down three full Common Orbments. That’s 300 Common Fragments.
Add in what he had already gotten from the goblins and shit, minus everything he had already bought. We’ll say around a total of, uh, maybe around somewhere between 1,600 to 2,000 trash, not counting the Foundation he just bought.
I know that’s a big spread, but I’m a Game tech, not a mathematician, so cut me some slack here.
[Are you serious? That participants have access to so many Orbment Fragments in the tutorial area alone is shocking. That’s a fortune.]
It sure is. Keep in mind, this wasn’t normal. It’s very far from normal. And fragments are used as the currency for everything in the Game too.
Dan spent the 400 trash fragments needed to fill in the Enhance Reaction Foundation then slotted his new Orbment.
What he did next was infuriating. He slotted an Orbment that dropped from the bugbears – Block. A Common, garbage, stupid Orbment for stupid idiots. It made me want to punch something.
During my Ethnological Observation on Earth, we all had these things called smartphones. I could download all these programs onto it. One program was called Yelp, and I loved it. If anything gave me the slightest negative feeling at all, I’d go on Yelp and rate it horribly. I loved that. It made me feel so much better about myself.
Dan slotting Block made me wish I still had Yelp. And a phone. I miss the internet. There were so many interesting pictures. And videos too. You must see them. Even as a Kobalite, I thought some of the stuff mortals did to each other’s holes was just terrible. Sick and terrible. The level of depravity was sometimes off the charts. Even I had a hard time watching. The Shining One himself would blush.
Keep in mind that those mortals were professionals though. I have some saved footage of Game participants getting it on, but it’s boring to watch. Non-professional mortals suck at fornicating.
Want to see some of the footage I’ve saved?
[No.]
Yeah. Good call. Like I said, it’s boring when they’re not professionals.
Anyway, If I still had Yelp, I would’ve rated Dan slotting Block very poorly. Very, very poorly. Block! What a fool!
But with all five Orbments slotted, the Aspect of Magma Slot Bonus took effect. And it looked like it hurt too.
Dan was shaking and whimpering like a huge sissy for, like, five minutes. When it was done, his skin had dark streaks here and there and his eyes were black with orangish-red pupils.
Then he sat down to meditate. Listen to this – he somehow ascended to Foundation tier without the Class Obelisk. He forced his core to advance on its own.
[That’s a way…]
Wait! I know this. I didn’t know it at the time though. Forcing a core to ascend naturally fortifies the core, somehow making core upgrades easier, but we haven’t seen how. It leaves the core with less mana than the Class Obelisk does though. A good bit less. Seems kind of detrimental.
[If you could see core progression on Dan’s status, you’d see it slowly progressing towards its next rank by leveling up and ascending this way. Not nearly to the same extent as using Stat points to do so, but since it takes two Stat points minimum to fortify the core, and it must be done 24 times to go from pristine to perfect, he’s saving up to 48 Stat points doing it this way.]
Really? How the Heaven don’t we know about this? That’s infuriating.
Are you sure you won’t consider getting me that upgraded status? If I do well, I mean?
[You need to catch me up first. Then we’ll see about a reward for you.]
Nice! You’ll see that I performed perfectly throughout. And if you get me that status, I’ll sacrifice all of that dumb broad Zixy’s brood and everyone she cares about to not just our Dark Master, but also Beelzebub, Moloch, Astaroth, and Eurynomos, and demand they give you a blessing.
[Continue. Please.]
Ace Blacky hears and obeys!
I was wondering if Dan would hit the Class Obelisk to spend his six Stat points, but before my curiosity was satiated, the other Ace, the one that isn’t Ace Blacky, appeared. I’ll just call him Ace now.
The dawn phase was just starting. Ace must’ve seen the Orbment Foundation parachute in. He called into the Trial from the entrance, “Hey, can we talk?”
After Dan walked out of the Trial, Ace said, “We spoke a little on the first day, but…holy shit! You okay? What the hell happened to your eyes?”
“Just something my Class done.”
Nothing was said for a minute. I was hoping that Enraged effect was about to make Dan extra murdery, but he just calmly looked at Ace until the man continued. “I’m guessing this Class is also the reason for the monster near the Core Trial?”
“Yeah.”
I think Ace was expecting more of an explanation, so he waited a few moments before saying, “Okay.”
Then both stood there awkwardly for another moment. Ace finally said, “Listen, I just wanted to update you on a few things. I’ve taken charge of training. I…the only way out is through. I know that. I’ve seen you sucking it up and driving on since we got here while all we did was stand around and watch. That’s over. I don’t know why you know so much about all this bullshit, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is what is, and what we need to get done.”
Dan nodded his head as he looked at his daughter. I should’ve been mentioning that more. If I don’t, just realize her ghost was always there asking Dan her questions.
“Your brother said you’re a veteran. Army. So am I. Infantry. Did most of my time at Cambell and Bragg, what’s Fort Liberty now.”
“I was payroll,” said Dan absently. “Fort Hood the whole time.”
“I know. Your brother told me. It’s Fort Cavazos now though. I know you have one deployment. All that. I did 12 years before I got out. Four deployments. Was enough for me. I swore I’d never hurt anyone again. Never kill again. I meant people, not monsters.”
Dan’s eyes flicked back to Ace before settling back on his daughter. “I reckon lasting long enough here’ll require killing both.”
“I’ve had enough of the one. I’m guessing you have too.”
“I never saw combat,” replied Dan. “My MOS was 36 Bravo.”
“I see it in your eyes. Listen…that’s something I wanted to ask about. Have you…do…are you seeing anything?”
“What do you mean,” asked Dan, his eyes flicking back to Ace for a second again.
“I think you see something too. You’re looking at it now. They’re showing you something. Luke saw something before. A couple times. He said Carlos has too. Mine won’t stop. They’re always there. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I finally lost it.”
I guess it’s a good time to mention that we hadn’t been solely focused on Dan. I had been showing Ace, Luke, and Carlos what Trauma I found worked best on them. Not Nick. He should’ve never made my top 10 threat list. We were mainly doing it for Carlos and Luke because they had some fun stuff we could use against them.
We only considered Ace and Chet actual risks. We would’ve done it for Chet more, but his mentals got better when we used any Trauma on him. No idea why. He’s a weird kid.
For Ace, we used a bunch of ghosts. Some were dead friends, but what worked best was the dead kids. Oh, boy, he hated looking at the kids he was responsible for killing. Or at least felt like he was responsible for killing.
Despite Ace being an old, I would’ve probably rated him as a higher threat if he wasn’t a filthy hippy pacifist. And unlike Dan, the Trauma I used on Ace was Veil well spent. I had him so close to snapping.
“Yeah,” replied Dan. “They show me something. Don’t let them win.”
Ace stood there for a little while. He finally managed to get out, “They keep showing me…,” before he broke down crying like a huge sissy. He was just shaking with giant sobs with his face scrunched up all weird. He invented a whole new category of ugly-crying. It was pathetic. When one of us Aces cry, it reflects poorly on all of us.
Dan just watched the guy cry. Ace went to hug Dan. I thought Dan wouldn’t let him, but he did. His black and orange eyes were all watery and I thought he was going to cry like a sissy too. He didn’t though. Thankfully.
Once Ace, the sissy one, not Ace Blacky, managed to finally collect himself and pull away from Dan, he asked, “What are they showing you?”
Dan was silent for way too long before saying, “My daughter. She died. It was my fault.”
“Nick mentioned something about that. He wouldn’t go into specifics. Hey, listen, I don’t know what that’s like, but if you ever need to talk to someone that’s been through some shit, you know where to find me.”
Dan just nodded. Ace said, “I see the cast’s gone. How’s the arm?”
“Good.”
After standing around awkwardly for a moment, Ace said, “I know we got bigger things on our plate, but the girls have been complaining a little about the lack of toiletries. There’s a hygiene kit showing in the reader thing. Any chance we could buy a couple of those?”
Dan looked annoyed at that request, but he said, “Yeah, I’ll get one each for all y’all. Tell them to make it last. Those is expensive and there ain’t no reason to look or smell pretty for no one here.”
Ace nodded. “The ladies were wondering about feminine…uh, pads. Whatever they’re called. For when they need them. They both got some in their purses, but not enough to last long.”
“Those is cheap, so I’ll get a bunch for them.”
Ace nodded again and said, “Doesn’t look like diapers are purchasable either. Bonnie’s been free balling since early the second day. Becky’s only wearing flip flops and wanted some pants. Chet keeps staring at her legs. Leena wanted a heavier top. Everyone needs or wants something.
“Would you mind if we went around getting clothes and whatever else off the dead bodies? Afterwards, I’d like to dump the bodies a little south of this Trial in the stream. Unless you want to buy a shovel. If the computer has any. I haven’t checked.”
“There’s no shovels in the reader,” said Dan. “Cut up a blanket and use that for diapers or underwear. Anything left in a Trial is disposed of when it resets. If y’all can manage it, bring all them bodies and all y’all’s trash to the Combat Trial and throw it all in.
“I ain’t able to help out right now or I’d do it all myself. Y’all’ll be using this area for a long while, so disposing of the bodies is a good idea.”
Ace looked concerned. “You said that like you won’t be. You taking off on us?”
Dan’s eyes flicked back to Ace before saying, “Not really. But, yeah, for a little bit later today.”
I don’t know if Ace knew what to make of that. I didn’t. He said, “Okay. Did you already loot the corpses? I saw one was missing shoes about your size.”
“Not really. Just a few things. Plenty left.”
[One moment. How did Dan’s kid die?]
You haven’t read his profile?
[I was provided with information on you and the other techs working with you. Veil expenditure and such. I received images of all 20 of your team members but no profiles or records.]
There’s more to it than what’s in the trauma profile anyway. Did you want me to tell you the whole story now? Or did you want to find out when I did? It’s not too far off.
[I’ll wait then.]
Your call, Boss. Dan purchased a hygiene kit for everyone. Ten fragments each, so they’re not all that expensive, not considering how loaded Dan was.
He bought a bunch of menstrual pads too. He also bought another blanket for three frags. No idea why. There were already two extras from Mac and Winston.
Dan asked Ace to tell Chet to get the two camera’s transmitters connected. He also wanted Ace to have everyone collect all the weapons piled up outside the Combat Trial.
After that, he wanted Ace to bring everyone to the Core Trial so they could take turns receiving its instructions on forming a core. Just instructions. Only one person can enter that Trial at a time, so the others were to train outside it while waiting for their turn.