Lauri plummeted past floor after floor of the dungeon like one of those protagonists who start out weak and don't become strong until after a fall that makes everyone think that they're dead. Unlike them, he's got someone falling right after him and they're getting so much conversation in that Lauri is starting to wonder if the physics of this dungeon are working correctly. Looking around, there's still a bit of a haze that he can't quite put his finger on, so Lauri considers it a possibility. His enemy, Sir Asshol, was neither catching up nor falling behind in his pursuit so at least one rule of gravity was proving true. Looking up, from his perspective, Lauri could see the ground of floor 59 where the stairs ended and decided it was time to gently slow himself. He couldn't help grin as he wondered if Sir Asshol could slow himself or would splat on the ground. He'd best ask, actually, "say, how do you plan to slow yourself?"
"None of your business. Why are you grinning?"
"Equally none of your business." Lauri grabbed a chain out and tossed it at the Slime King as he whizzed past. As soon as it touched the monster the chain started wrapping around and Lauri flicked his left wrist around the chain a few times to make sure it didn't slip through his grip.
Lauri remembered there was no need to actually worry about grip as he felt the chains quickly tightening. As he'd expected, the slime was squishy and made for a good trampoline-like effect. He heard Sir Asshol shout "Sword of Rending!"
"So Sword of Sunstrike is the skill, not the name of... ouch, what was that?" Lauri finished his sentence as his right arm went flying off, with a clean cut of Sir Asshol's sword.
"Take that!" He shouted as he passed by the slowing Lauri.
As the slime couldn't be compressed any further Lauri was suddenly forced to a stop [Lost 18,900 SP. Lost 917,183 HP] [Shared 1,872,166 damage]. Lauri started falling again and the King Slime was instantly killed. "Take that! I think..."
"What was that?"
Lauri couldn't let his fall increase too much again so tossed a chain at the railings of the stairs he was falling past. This time he was taken to a sudden stop [Lost 1,185,145 HP] [Shared 2,370,290 damage] "Are you dead now?"
"How are your chains..." He started to say but Sir Asshol was still falling until he reached the length of the chain connecting him to Lauri, where he was suddenly brought almost to a stop. [Lost 2,621,838 HP] [Shared 5,243,676 damage].
Lauri's left hand was torn off and the chain was yanked free of the handrails. "How about now?"
"KA KA KA KA KARRR!!!"
"I'll take that as an almost."
"You're disarmed. I've won this fight."
"Oh, thanks for reminding me." Lauri cast Regeneration on himself and his limbs started growing back.
"You're still disarmed of your billion SP warhammer."
Lauri was wondering how his HP was going so gave it a check.
{
Class: Ritualist
Professions:
- Level 10 Sealer
- Level 1 Unrestricted
- Level 90 ????? [Amnesiac Subconscious Potential]
- Level ? Enslaver
Effective Level: 63, EXP 42,980/60,900
HP: 2,242,188/6,965,909, PP: 15,313/21,680, MP: 185/225
Strength: (338) 1,548/1,953, Toughness: (286) 2,786/3,150, Agility: 258/1,890, Memory: 888/1,890, Reasoning: 905/1,890, Charisma: 1,890, Luck: 63/126, Destiny: 252
Available Attribute Points: 5
Skills: 14
}
["System, hide individual professions. It's not like they're changing often."] He saw that at only level 63 he was already well past the attribute caps for what his equipped items added. He couldn't help lament having been forced past level 1, as he could have been so much more powerful otherwise. Doing a double-take on his HP he realised that he should expect about the same damage when he hit the floor below, or more, which was not survivable.
"Surrender now you cur or I'll kill you for real."
"I mean, I don't have a way to survive the fall anymore. Do you?"
"I've health to spare."
"You have more than 5 mill HP then."
"I told you it was more than 5 mill."
"Yeah but... oh, I can use you to cushion my fall."
"No you can't. That's not how falling works."
Lauri saw his arms were back to full size and drew his Hanuman's Ritual Gold Gada out. Tapping it against the side of one of the walls as he fell its weight didn't change. Stowing his gauntlets and withdrawing them again he made sure they were properly equipped and tried again, successfully changing the Gada's weight to 10 times. The Gada seemed to love this way too much and magic Lauri had never felt the Gada use before activated to answer Lauri's desires. Applying its own gravity magic the Gada suddenly weighed 100 times its original weight. As Sir Asshol hit the ground ahead of Lauri there was the sound of snapping bones and the knight bounced back up into the air towards him. Lauri used Protection Bubble and feeling like the knight was in swinging range Lauri activated Limit Break and swung his Gada down at Sir Asshol with all he had... "what?" Lauri had only a moment for confusion, as rather than his weapon swinging downwards Lauri was actually swung upwards. While this did slow him down a bit it seemed that it wasn't going to reach Sir Asshol... except that it suddenly did. [41,845,751 damage delt] [Lost 20,400 SP. Lost 2,242,214 HP] [Awarded ~3.4 billion SP] [Requested user feedback on level up]. Sir Asshol was now a splat on the ground and Lauri felt like every bone in his body was broken. "Hang on, I lost more HP than I had. Does that mean I'm dead? Is this what death is like?" He wondered as he checked his stats.
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession Total Level: 11 + ?
Effective Level: 63, EXP 42,980/60,900
HP: 1/6,965,909, PP: 15,313/21,680, MP: 185/225
Strength: (338) 1,548/1,953, Toughness: (286) 2,786/3,150, Agility: 258/1,890, Memory: 888/1,890, Reasoning: 905/1,890, Charisma: 1,890, Luck: 63/126, Destiny: 252
Available Attribute Points: 5
Skills: 14
}
"Oh, I still have a HP left. Make that 11. Now make that 24. Ah, I regenerated some HP before the girl hit on me. That's... way too close, give more personel spave please. I really though I'd slow-time dance more with that attack." He tried to wipe sweat from his brow but his arm didn't move. Looking over it was not only broken but also he'd shredded all his muscles with his Limit Break. "What was that night-times problem anyway? Follow I into a dungeon to kill my arse? He had some sort of death-wish, cleaverly. Completely unlike me. Yep. Mr Deathwish here." He felt a sort of little shock as the spinal nerve in his neck reconnected and pain shot through him so bad that only a married person could possibly empathise. His eyes seemed to have fallen out but he reasoned "I must be in the floor 59 safe zone. No, I mean on. Maybe I'm in it? Well, all I hav'a do is endure this hellish pain until the divorce goes through..." He realised at this that he wasn't thinking straight. "I hope it isn't a permanent marker brain damage." Lauri kept casting Regeneration every time he noticed it was gone.
After 8 hours Lauri received the benefits of a long rest, with his HP and other stats returning to full. Even at full HP his arms, legs and perhaps his whole spine were still broken so he used Drain Level some minitours below and kept at his Regeneration spell. "I'm thinking much clearer, which is good, but why is this taking so long? I regrew two arms within seconds while falling." At least he could see again, but his old, brown, eyes creeped him out so he swept them off the cliff. "Wait, I have green eyes. Were those that knights eyes? Double yuck." His body started twisting as his spine healed back into place and then within half a second his arms and legs snapped back into shape. "So, arms regenerate faster than my brain and other internal organs? Maybe?" He checked his stats again and there really was something funky with his HP. Using his System Moderator powers he located something.
[Bug: Magical conjunction detected with max health pool. Overdrawing at dangerous levels. Could compromise realm integrity.]
"Well that doesn't sound good. I'd better report it. But maybe it can wait until after I... no, no... realm integrity sounds important." Lauri reported the bug and Red-Light arrived.
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"Hello again. How are you... umm... who's body splatter are you lying in?"
Lauri apparated the red cellophane glasses from his Item Box but his muscles were still torn to pieces and he couldn't put them on. "Half mine, half someone called Sir Asshol. Took a fall from up there."
"How far up?"
"The top."
"Then you would be dead."
"About that, I looked into that and there seems to be a bug with my health pool."
"Yes, I saw that. Oh... the bug is how you survived? Yeah, I can see the problem."
"What sort of insect we talking?"
"Not really an insect but it's an Excel spreadsheet error where the 10 times multiplier additional to the 250 multiplier when it should have replaced it."
"What's excel?"
"It's when you do really good at something."
"Oh yeah, that makes sense."
"Anyway, all fixed up now. I'll just double check if I should change your status to dead before wrapping it up here."
"If I'm dead... ?"
"I can't give you any information of the afterlife, not even if it exists or not."
"Okay but can I get back to translating if I'm dead?"
"You ready to get back to it?"
"Nothing life a near death experience to give someone a new lease on life."
"Well, I can't technically answer your question... but we techies are so busy now day that I think I'll skip that near irrelevant check."
"Well, it's been good seeing you again Red-Light. I had a question I tried to ask just as you left last time but it's slipping my memory."
"It was Dike who issued that quest."
"She doesn't... hate me too much, does she?"
"Honestly I know you better now than I know her."
"Yeah. We're friends. Sure."
"Is my name Red-Light?"
"Oh, it's what I started calling you, yeah."
"I have a name while within this realm now. That's so great. I've assigned you a few books you can translate. If none of them interest you then I added a button to request more options. The filters aren't very sophisticated though. Only language, genera, topic and specific word searches, either titles or anywhere in the books content."
"I get to pick? Wow. That's even better than I imagined. This is going to be fun. I might as well get started now while my limbs aren't functioning."
"Great thinking. Want me to move you to somewhere you're not lying in gore?"
"Please do." Lauri says more seriously than he usually talks, a slight darkness to his tone.
Once moved Red-Light disappears with a "bye now, then."
Lauri is able to translate 2 full books before he's able to stand and stretch his legs. He collect his weapons a repairs their durability. Then he looks down at the minitours, each a potential Potion of Toughness. Now that Lauri's physically active the System highlighted a notification that had been waiting for him. Lauri gave it a mental tap to open it.
[PvP bonus levels can bypass Necklace of Greed as they are not EXP based. Do you wish to accept 4 level ups?] [Yes] [No]
Lauri immediately selected ["no."] Leveling up wasn't difficult right now and even if it was, he hated what were called Blood Levels. Thinking about how Sir Asshol was level 250, there was a decent likelihood he'd used Blood Levels. Doing so was the norm for getting through the higher levels, which otherwise required grinding insane amounts of XP. Speaking of grinding, Lauri headed down to fight the minitours. There was only two in the first room so he put them to sleep and practiced with the Warhammer and Gravity Gauntlets combo. Hitting the first one it woke up and took another two hits to kill it. Worst, it managed to wake its friend up and Lauri needed to put up a Protection Bubble then fight it normally. He was half disappointed that they didn't feel like as much of a threat as they once did but that was made up for when they dropped 4 gold coins and 6 gold coins between them, worth 1,000 SP, in addition to the two potions. "These guys are worth a mint."
In the next room Lauri decided to try out his gada. He figured that since he couldn't even wield the warhammer properly at 10 times weight then he couldn't increase the weight of the gada beyond that to any real benefit. In fact he found he could only handle 4 times weight when wielding his gada. To his surprise, though, his gada was all too happy to increase its weight by 10 times more when being swung downwards, killing each minitour in 1 hit. "Wow, I wish I'd known about this feature earlier." With a 5 minute cooldown on Sleep Lauri got impatient and aggroed several rooms at a time before putting them all to sleep, to speed things up, drinking Potions of Toughness as he went. A total of 48 Potions of Toughness later Lauri arrived at the end of the labyrinth where he could see two rooms and an elevator downwards. The first room housed the Minitour King, level 150, and the second a treasure chest. Lauri hit it with Drain Level, taking himself to level 105 and dropping it to 145, before asking it, "Mr Minitour King, can I beat you solo or do I not have a chance?"
Unsurprisingly it didn't answer. Simply staring at Lauri and awaiting him crossing the threshold of his room. "Oh shoot. I've been drinking Potions of Toughness while I have an artificially high level from Drain Level. Have I been wasting them?" He quickly checked.
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession Total Level: 11 + ?
Effective Level: 105, EXP 42,980/60,900
HP: 858,864, SP: 18,147/31,500, PP: 21,907/26,050, MP: 166/374
Strength: (563) 1,773/3,255, Toughness: (935) 3,435/5,250, Agility: 430/3,150, Memory: 1,480/3,150, Reasoning: 1,508/3,150, Charisma: 3,150, Luck: 105/210, Destiny: 420
Available Attribute Points: 5
Skills: 14
}
"Phew. That Toughness value would indicate that I'm getting the full effect from each Potion of Toughness." Lauri looked back at the Minitour King. "Why isn't Ken and... the other one.. here with me?" Lauri tried to remember. "Ah, because I fell. So Ken and... and... Bill? Yeah. Ken and Bill must be on a higher floor." He looked over at his party screen and saw that Ken, Billy and Sophie's HP were all full. "They seem to be okay. Oh yeah, Billy. Not Bill. Wait, who's Sophie?" He decided it best not to take on a boss, or maybe mini-boss considering the floor level, without the others and started heading back up. As he did so he tried to remember who Sophie was. "I can't seem to remember him or her. Sounds like a female name so I'll go with her. Yet I have a strange feeling like I need to... protect her honour? Yeah, it's my job to guard her. Oh, I'm the party Tank, of course. Such a relief that none of the damage to my head was permanent. Everything is coming back like a lake into the ocean." He did a double-think as he wondered whether that analogy checked out.
Arriving at the top he found his party, plus Sarah, waiting for him just outside the dungeon. "I survived the fall, everyone. And the duel."
Sarah run up and hugged him. "Are you alright?"
"My head got scrambled something fierce but I remember everything now. Except for what I don't remember that I remember, you know... cos I don't."
Sophie giggled. "Good to see that you're still being you."
"Yeah and... ummm... would you be Sophie?" He was taken aback at how hot she looked but he reminded himself that he was waiting for Sarah.
Sophie was dead silent and Sarah answered on her behalf. "Yeah, she's Sophie, your girlfriend."
"Girlfriend? Excuse me?"
"You're not joking are you?"
"My jokes are never lies."
Sophie kept a calm demeaner and smiled, "can't say you're the first to forget about me."
"Oh, phew. Anyway, if we're a couple, then I look forward to being reminded all about you. Whether from my memories recovering or you could tell me."
"Let's go back to your house and I'll remind you in other ways." Sophie winked at him.
"Oh my goddess I've forgotten all about my house or where it is!"
Sarah shook her head, "no no, this is the first time you're hearing about your new house. Your dad made arrangements. Sadly the slave ended up female but it's not locked in just yet, she's asked that her mother be a live-in with her."
"Yeah?"
Sarah was tearing up for some reason and Lauri wondered if it's because he apparently had a girlfriend. "They lost their house and couldn't feed themselves and her mum is disabled so couldn't sell herself as a slave."
"Oh, is that why you're tearing up?"
"I'm not tearing up. Anyway, I'll show you the way."
As they headed towards Lauri's house he asked "do all slaves have such a sad story?"
"No." Sarah started to explain. "Most are from gambling debts and some are from defaulted business loans. With the famine starting some are selling themselves because owners are legally obligated to feed them."
"Oh, so not that many will be forced to starve then?"
"Not many people are buying slaves right now because of that. In fact many are trying to sell their slaves cheap. If things start to look dire, they may even start offering to pay people to take their slaves. That's when things start to get... I forget the work Frank used."
"Questionable?"
"No. Something to do with board games."
"Dicey?"
"Yeah. Dicey."
"Say... I think I'm supposed to go see the king."
Sarah pouted "make him wait."
"Seriously?"
"Frank said you should, so you should."
"Well, if Frank said it..."