My confidence faltered moments later. I was relying heavily on an assumption that might not be true, but all my instincts told me it was. The liches continued to lay down the punishment on me. The ambient around me was hypersaturated with magical pollution. I didn't even know it was a thing. They rotated in and out as they spent their MP pools.
The chains were designed to hold the appendages of the creature in the circle. In my lamia form, they held only my wrists and the rattle at the end of my tail. That gave me plenty to work with regarding my {Snake Fortress}.
I felt afraid. Kel'Caldor was a real threat as he figured out the only way he could pin me down, imprisonment. I couldn't help but feel a growing paranoia that a deity gave him such information.
I tried to keep count of how many clones already rotated in and out. They tried to keep the DPS steady, slowly wearing me down. Slowly was the key. Every hour, I gained a 34% instant healing. The pain was almost unbearable but I endured. And in enduring, I grew stronger. This excruciating ordeal also ticked my [Physical Mastery] proficiency's fast growth. Just like some battle-crazy woman with blue eyes, I grew stronger in adversity.
> Physical Mastery [ 525 / 590 ]. Select one ability.
>
> * Constitution VI: Multiply your Resource Pools and Regeneration by (Ego x Proficiency/11)%
The Skill that capped at level 50 no longer had such restrictions. But my HP was reaching the end of its shelf life. I deactivated {Eldritch Body}, the Perk that allowed me to burn Energy to avoid going into the negative HP zone. I needed my Energy. I needed to bet my survival on this one strategy. I couldn't think of anything else.
I lost consciousness as my HP plummeted below zero.
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Kel'Caldor watched the scene unfold. The hateful centaur reached the negative HP threshold. "Keep firing even if you get the Experience message," he told his clones. All of them were him but they weren't at the same time. Some deviation entered the process while they leveled up enough to become liches. Over the centuries, he had to eliminate a few of his clones, and that was always a messy affair. After all, they were him.
Each clone kept a tally of their own damage. Now that she was almost dead, they couldn't measure her HP with their abilities. {Appraiser} was utterly useless. Then another clone would get the mental messages and tally the damage. It had some rounding errors. For example, they knew her HP pool was around a quarter of a billion.
That didn't matter. The soul-capturing array was ready and while powering the whole trap this long put a heavy strain on the ritual casters hidden underneath the cavern, they still had plenty of slaves to sacrifice to keep it going. But he had to commend the centaur for her resilience. Even now he could see when her body would suddenly repair a huge amount of damage instantly.
"One billion," the clone responsible for tallying the damage below zero reported.
Her defensive ability kicked in. The body crystallized, forming an almost impervious shell. It rendered almost all spells useless. And those that could pierce the ridiculous damage reduction that shell granted her would also destroy the magic diagram underneath her. Grounding his teeth, Kel'Caldor told his clones to stop attacking and recover their resources.
Three minutes later, the shell disappeared. The centaur (polymorphed into a lamia) was fully healed underneath.
Fully.
Healed.
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I would've gone crazy if it weren't for the Pinnacle perks keeping my mind working and my sanity and wits untouched.
I came out of {Cyst Hibernation} and the liches resumed their barrage. The granite underneath me was coated in my blood. I felt a little dizzy, actually. Anemic. I called Pandora in her blood aspect to help me recover. I always wondered if regeneration had a hard limit. How much could one creature regenerate before their body just gave up? I believed it had to do with nutrient reserves. Because I felt hungry, starving even. My {Eat Magic} Perk was at its maximum bonus. It went down with every spell that landed and soon I felt stuffed again. I was numbed to the pain from the constant battering of spells. To focus on something, I pulled my {Physical Mastery} proficiency.
> Physical Mastery [ 552 / 590 ]. Select one ability.
>
> * Constitution VII: Multiply your Resource Pools and Regeneration by (Ego x Proficiency/10)%
To infinity and beyond. My HP went under the threshold for fast regeneration and the bonus from the latest Ability combined with the increased proficiency kicked in. I was regenerating ten million per second now. I could see that Kel'Caldor was angry. The key to read a lich's emotional responses was to watch the flames in their eye sockets. They were now licking the orbits, threatening to escape the eye sockets.
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All they did so far was useless. It only made me stronger and more determined to finish these guys (guy?) once and for all. Reviewing the non-damage messages, I saw that {Cyst Hibernation} triggered and allowed me to heal back to full health. It was worth spending a Perk to upgrade it.
I could only hope they didn't have any strategy to counter it. I had to trust the broken Perks the System gave out like candy during its inception. To pass the time, I tried to calculate my current limit for negative HP death. usually, it was minus Endurance, a very low value as far as damage overflow was considered. I had two characteristics that changed that limit. {Solar Indomitability} multiplied it by a million and {Pinnacle of Soul} by a hundred. My death threshold for damage was minus 18.9 billion damage. Damn.
I knew I had to do something, change my tactics. I shapeshifted into a humpback whale. Its size bonus increased my HP pool to more than half a billion. The regeneration remained unchanged but {Instant Regeneration} worked off my maximum HP. It triggered once per hour only but now healed 36% instead of 34%. The proficiency increases and the new form more than doubled it.
Speaking of which, it ticked up again during the barrage and I got another ability. The requirement for it was 300 points of proficiency and the kind of punishment I was taking.
> Physical Mastery [ 560 / 590 ]. Select one ability.
>
> * Damage acclimation I: After getting hit (100 - Proficiency/20) times with the same attack in the last hour, reduce all damage from that type by (Proficiency/20)%. Track different types individually. The bonus ends if you go for an hour without taking damage from that type.
The effect was almost immediate. Since the liches were optimizing their attacks, they had very little diversity. losing 23% of their damage output once more put my regeneration above their DPS. Kel'Caldor's solution was to bring in more liches.
I had to try. I used {Divine Negotiator}.
"I'm willing to negotiate a deal, Kel'Caldor. One that doesn't end with... how long does it take to create a single one of these clones? Are you sure you want to bet it all on what the Gods failed to do for thousands of years?"
They didn't pause their magical barrage. Even with that mitigation, I went unconscious in the negative HP for the second time.
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Kel'Caldor was a cautious lich. He seldomly left his true lair these days, leaving to his clones the tasks that needed to be done out in the world. The one sent back to his phylactery in the catacombs beneath the barbarian plains was a clone, and so was the one possessing the elf Queen.
After days of constant attacks by his clones, the creature attempted to bargain. At first, he thought she was giving up, but her tone indicated all but that. There was even a veiled threat in there. He knew how long it took to raise a single clone. The transformation from [Arch-Necromancer] to [Lich] had a very narrow margin for failure. One out of ten clones made it. She'd cost him two already.
He considered the fact that she probably still had hidden powers. Obviously, she believed she could destroy a lot of his clones. Even now she looked defiant even unconscious. He didn't believe a whale could look defiant, but there it was. Smug too.
Even if she hadn't destroyed two clones, he wouldn't take her olive branch even if she could defeat five hundred of him. He wanted to trap her soul and drain her Perks one by one. If he could revive and live without the wretched Gods policing his every move, he would control not only this world but hundreds of others.
The news he waited for came a few hours later.
"She's unconscious again," the clone responsible for long-range mental communication informed.
Before that crystallization ability triggered, he had to finish her. Kel'Caldor, the original one, opened a portal and joined his clones. He winced at the sunlight shining straight at the caldera but it was just because he didn't walk under the sun for a thousand years. It didn't matter. He would now show the clones that he was stronger than any of them. He itched to use the two unique {Disintegration Affinity} and {Disintegration Mastery} Perks.
And that's what he would use to seal the centaur's fate. Kel'Caldor drew the magic circle and fired his ultimate spell. He dumped forty thousand times the amount of MP to maximize his {Overcharge Magic}. The souls of ten fourth-rank creatures were consumed to empower the spell even more. He also used several of his long-cooldown booster Perks. The centaur Queen's soul would be his. Now.
> Living Killer
>
> Overcharge Magic (x200)
>
> Death Grudge
>
> Disintegration Focus
>
> Empower Rune
>
> Soul Sacrifice (x10)
>
> Shield-Piercer
"Disintegrate Whole!"
> Your spell damaged Unicorn Queen's familiar for 93 Billion HP of damage. (Base 800 x4.6 Willpower x13 Skill x4.5 Mastery x200 Overcharge Magic x3 Critical x2 Living Killer x3 Death Grudge x10 Soul Sacrifice x2 Empower Rune x3 Equipment x2 Disintegration Focus x1 Defensive multipliers Ignored).
Under the glare from the magical barrage, he didn't see what happened. He had eyes only for the damage value. He cackled. Ninety-three billion damage! A new record!
Kel'Caldor didn't notice the lack of an Exp message. Recovering from his burst of mirth, he noticed his clones were still firing spells at the whale... the crystallized whale.
He cursed. "HOW DID SHE NOT DIE ?!"
The lich fired another {Disintegrate Whole}, without all the bonus. It did zero damage. Utterly enraged, Kel'Caldor, the real one, left the scene, cursing.
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I regained my senses still trapped, with chains around my tail and fins. This time it took longer to recover. They must've done something different. Checking my notifications, I found that Nenandil had saved my life. She was on a 24-hour cooldown for respawning.
Some of the liches from the first batch were already back. Kel'Caldor must've already rotated in all of his clones. Good. That was what I waited for. I've probably seen all of the lich's clones now. Time to break free of this shitty trap.
I shouted with all my whaleish might. "Kel'Caldor clones, if you stop casting spells at me for a minute, I'll double your MP regeneration during this minute. Just listen to me for a moment, please." I used everything on this offer. My [Diplomat] abilities, especially {Spectral Diplomacy} that gave me a big bonus to deal with undead, {Divine Negotiator}, {Pinnacle of Charisma}, my {Royalty} Perks.
They stopped casting. I activated my Wellspring at full power.
One of them said, "Speak your last words, centaur. Know this, nothing you do will spare your life."
I went back to my normal form and nodded, watching eight chains come for my limbs. "I just want to ask you guys one thing." I created a glowing diagram in the air. "Do you guys know what this magic circle does?"
They didn't at first. But all these guys were expert spellcasters. After looking at it for a moment, they now did. It was their doom.
My hunch about Wyxnos' laziness was correct. The next instant, I had five hundred lich bodies in my item box and five hundred souls floating above me.