The tentacles were getting grabby, doing their best to get a proper hold of him. One of his Psyhands was able to get his last potion and shove it in his mouth.
[ HP: 195 / 200 ██████████ ]
The sense of relief that gave him was soon quelled by a tentacle finding a new place to enter. A wiggling, fleshy invasion tried to find its way through his mouth, but his biting reflex managed to stop it. However, that didn’t stop a glob of the viscous, horribly foul-tasting goop from making its way in before his teeth met. It burned the inside of his mouth, and as the tentacle was now pressing against his mouth, wrapping around his face, his swallow reflex ensured that this fluid made its way down the throat.
As his mouth was covered, any attempts to vomit failed, forcing him to re-swallow which just worsened the effect, it burned its way down his throat. And to add on top of all of this; the tentacles had a bunch of small mouths with sharp teeth as they held themselves around his head and body. At the same time, he was pulled closer to the core.
[ HP: 125 / 200 ███████░░░ ]
Managing to manifest enough willpower to focus on what to do, Sam brought all his weapons and cut the tentacle wrapped around his face, and using a spare Psyhand he pulled it off with a powerful yank. As the small mouths had bit themselves into his skin this was like raking the coursest sandpaper around his face. But he didn’t want it in there a second longer than he had to, it kept wriggling even as Sam threw it away. A new tentacle grew in its place, returning to where it was a second ago.
The tentacles dragging him closer were cut with more speed and the full swarm of blades, freed him somewhat. The triggered pulse of Static Charge helped here as well. He still needed a moment to get everything off him as the tiny mouths had suctioned onto his skin, still biting as the tentacle slowly went limp and lost its stick.
[ HP: 115 / 200 ██████░░░░ ]
He hated this creature, his body wanting to expel everything finally managed to vomit, the rest of his earlier meal now leaving him. Now that he was free of it, it was slightly less horrible compared to the Hive, but it only filled him with disgust and hate.
“I-hh-” Trying to speak, wanting to say something to it, he realised that was far from possible. His mouth and throat were strongly affected, the soft tissue being burned by the acid of the fluid. The lingering taste of vomit, blood and whatever puss-like substance that tentacle was covered in lingered in his mouth. There was only one thought in his mind.
Fuck it.
Every cut towards the core was blocked by the tentacles, which regenerated a moment after being sliced off. The solution was simple, overwhelming aggression.
Pulling in all blades to himself, Sam formed a large fan of blades and started spinning them around at great speed in front of him, a smaller collection pointed inwards in its centre it turned into a massive sawblade in front of him with a blender in the middle, or the handles would just make an opening to abuse. He spun it faster, faster, he needed more to close openings. He made it larger, getting the tentacles that tried to make their way around, extending a blade here and there to make the size larger in a pulse to get any longer tentacles trying to slither around. Scraping the blades along the floor enough to barely touch, making sure nothing could get under it.
The blades whipped around at great speed, creating a wind-shearing sound as they started moving the air around at great speed. The tentacles that tried making their way through this, around this, over or under, were all cut. Like a cucumber through a blender, there was nothing but fluids and gore being sent around, splattering the walls, floor and ceiling.
Sam walked closer, sending this fan of death towards the core. The regeneration of tentacles couldn’t keep up and were shredded as soon as they came into contact. This let Sam push it into the fleshy core which didn’t stand a chance, it was shredded to death, bursting with viscous fluids and giblets, splattering across the room.
Tilting the lawnmower of death horizontally, Sam moved it downwards to make sure the thing stopped existing. Though that idea worked marvellously, it also meant that all the grime and goo was going out horizontally. This let Sam take it out completely, but it also covered him completely in the sludge this collection of gore created, some of it acidic.
[ HP: 105 / 200 ██████░░░░ ]
[ Wave 50; #)”!=&£, complete, choose reward:
5x Random Box
5x Sustenance
5x Time extension until the next wave.
The next wave is in 1 minute. ]
“Exh--” Sam wanted to extend the time, and though he couldn’t say the words it seemed to work out. The time was extended by an hour, giving him valuable time to calm down.
It didn’t take many seconds for his guts to churn and empty themselves again, his stomach empty it was just remnants of blood, stomach acid and the thing the tentacle was covered in, it burned through his throat on the way, the damage to his body, though his HP wasn’t at the worst the wounds themselves felt horrible as his stomach muscles cramped and tried to empty everything.
This was excruciating, he needed a potion, at least that would take the pain. He started to use the reward windows to produce Random Boxes and opened them as soon as they landed until he got a health potion.
Having to open 9 boxes, he finally got a health potion, as well as 16 crystals, he could add those to the pile later, and drinking the health potion as soon as it manifested filled out his health and closed all his wounds. Physically, as far as his wounds were considered, he felt great. Physically and mentally based on the thing that happened to his body a few minutes ago... he felt horrible.
His mind forced him to think of other things, perhaps as a defence mechanism given the things he has experienced lately, he started thinking of the spinning blade swarm he made. It was not only ‘neat’, but it was highly practical. Since he can swing each weapon faster than humanly possible due to the lack of danger, restriction of joints and surprisingly perfect control over the movement like that, it turned into both defensive and offensive.
Sure, guns could make it through, the Psyhands weren’t that fast, but spears or thrown things probably wouldn’t, he was unsure about arrows but all things considered it was amazing and would just become better the more blades he had. Not only was it good both offensively and defensively, but it made quite the sound so it would probably work to instill terror as well.
He could test it on the weaklings if the thing reset again.
For now, he just sat there, staring at nothing as his mind tried desperately to think of anything that wasn’t the two last large events of his life. He felt sick, though his body was healed, he could still feel his body covered in the slick, viscous fluid... He wanted a shower... He just wanted out...
Not exactly having an appetite, his empty stomach demanded something to work with, he had used a lot of energy lately and the requirements were simple. Turning in a reward for some food and drink, he forced it down the best he could, holding back and throwing up as something just entered his mouth, almost feeling like he had to relearn how to eat for a few moments. In the end, after a lot of forcing and leaving this place mentally, imagining anywhere better, he managed to slowly consume the sandwich and drink some water.
His stomach had stopped growling at him, but everything else felt horrible. He still didn’t know how to win this thing but if this was going to keep happening, he needed to do something about it... He didn’t get any XP so he didn’t get more powerful, the only way that could happen was using the Random Boxes, but wasting those didn’t sound smart as that was his source of downtime and sustenance. But...
If this process were going to keep this pattern, he would be fighting cannon fodder for a while, then some enemies barely a danger due to only damaging him if they crit, and some actual enemies before another eldritch nightmare kicks in...
Relaxing as best he could for the remainder of the hour, he mentally got ready for a new abomination to show itself, and that the numbers would keep climbing until he was done, but based on the pattern so far he assumed it would glitch itself back to 1.
The timer finally hit zero and the wave window popped up.
[ Wave 51 ]
[ Wave %1 ]
[ Wave #Ӥ1 ]
[ Wave 1 ]
Just like last time, the number glitched out and reset to one, Sam sighed, both in relief but also in annoyance before flinging his head back, looking upwards and extending his arms in an I told you so expression.
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“Fucking called it!”
The first wave spawned in, a single level 1 Goblin. The poor creature had zero chance, before it took its second breath it got a sword in its forehead, doing about 8 times its total health.
Sam got up and started pacing around the room, it wasn’t easy to see details in this room due to the way it was made, the only illumination was the glowing crystals embedded in the glossy surfaces. It lit up things plenty to see but it was all in a dull red colour, like emergency lights. It made seeing details surprisingly hard and seeing colours harder. The only way he knew what colours things were was that like many other kids, he had a flashlight you could change slides in front of, one making the light red, so he had played with this a lot when young.
As the second wave came, and went, he noticed that though all the monsters and their stuff disappeared before the next wave came, the damage done to the room remained. The surfaces were stone hard, but this meant that anything abrasive or strong enough could leave a mark, and Player weapons were especially strong enough. Just seeing that his weapons hadn’t dulled yet, even though the blade fan he used against the tentacle ball made some considerable damage to the floor around it.
At least it was good that the crystals didn’t stop glowing even though they were scratched and cut, he was fine for now as far as lighting was, and even if they disappeared he could use his phone, he had enough Aether crystals to keep his phone running probably forever.
Pacing around, trying to find something new in the room, he kept remotely slaughtering anything that dared to come close, but he didn’t actively hunt them down, wanting to postpone the next 50th wave, he let it happen more organically. As something came close to him he shredded it out of existence, which worked fine as far as a threat went for the others. At least giving him some more time before they tried their luck.
This lasted for quite a time, it wasn’t until the 20-numbered waves started that he decided that, at least for now, he couldn’t find anything interesting. The walls sounded solid everywhere, he could scratch and damage the surface, but nothing more. He couldn’t get the gems out as if he dug out pieces of them, the pieces stopped glowing but the rest of the gem in the wall still glowed its red colour. Changing tactics he tried to look at his stats again, wanting to find out if there was something he could affect on it.
Since this was a game to the Entities, and everything was somewhat structured as such, perhaps he had been considering this wrong. He was trying to force values to change, even going as far as to wish or ask the system to change things for him. But perhaps he should treat it as the game it was and assume he had super-user access. It was somewhat like using cheat codes or the console commands in certain games, perhaps he just needed to find out the correct code, or what metaphorical button opened the console.
Having sat back down within range of the spawning area he was staring at his stats again. Rather than affecting it directly, like everyone might be wishing, he tried thinking about things like a kid with cheat codes or some IT guy with superuser access.
The waves didn’t stop coming, but they had become routine by now, sitting still and looking at his screens he had his weapons spin around him, so within his blade-dome, he was relatively safe from the small fry at least.
[ Spt: 36 → 37 ]
A smirk grew on Sam’s face; he had figured it out, though as he tried to do it again it failed, souring his expression. The way he had to do it was surprisingly simple, but also kind of dumb. Since everything in the System was controlled mentally, he had to mentally imagine himself as ‘the Ascendant with admin privileges’ and then command, not request, the ‘console’ to change something for him. He didn’t know if this was the correct way to do it or if it was just some weird metaphor that let his mind and the System talk together to make things happen, but he couldn’t figure out why it didn’t let him do it again.
He had increased his Spirit by 1 point, it was good this edit didn’t happen on his Strength or something, sadly it didn’t go more than 1 as he was now on an odd number, though it scaled his weight and health, it didn’t give him extra hands as that was based on his Energy, which happened at every even number, it also boosted the damage done by Static Charge a little. It was still an improvement and a great find!
Now he just needed to find out how to do... more. +1 was huge, as it was a free level in a sense. But, something was blocking a second time, He tried doing the same to other stats, other values, anything and everything, and even tried to swap specific words in descriptions to make edits to skills but nothing worked. Was there a cooldown?
Struggling with this new problem, he at least didn’t have any problems with the incoming waves. He had stopped caring if the waves overlapped, since everyone was severely lacking ranged attacks he was quite safe at the moment. However, there was the odd distraction as something decided to charge him, only for Sam to be covered in blood and gore shortly after.
A shower was sorely needed, but at this point, he was so covered in random shit that a little more didn’t change anything. For now, he was just happy that he managed to use the abilities the Entity said he had, though he wondered how far this could stretch once he properly got the hang of it.
It had been a few hours since he fought the tentacle ball, and as wave 46 came and went, he was wondering if he should rest now or wait. He was feeling fine, but he didn’t know what was going to happen in a few waves. He was out of potions so it was probably a good idea to stock up on resources, he had hoarded quite a collection of Reward windows. He had used some for food, time and Boxes to get potions since he was now on his third loop of almost 50 waves, which had a total of 150 boxes. Though he didn’t care how many he had used, he had plenty left and would most likely get plenty more.
Weirdly, this was super lucrative but... he’d just rather go back and grind normally, he didn’t like these corrupted boss fights.
“Extend.” He used a reward window to refund that hour he just got, and started opening random boxes. His goal was to have at least two, perhaps three health potions, whatever else he got was just bonuses.
He had to open a staggering 49 Random boxes until he got the third Health Potion. Feeling dumber and dumber as time went he was kind of miffed that until that third potion dropped, he got 3 mana potions as well as 83 more Aether Crystals... Another surprise was that he got a weapon on his 49th box as well.
It was a two-handed sword, including the leather-wrapped handle, that reached up to Sam’s chin from the floor. The dual-edged blade was about as wide as his fist was thick made of an obsidian-like material having an almost translucent feel as he looked through its reflective surface.
[ Obsidian Warblade - D-high
Damage: 80
+10% critical damage multiplier ]
This... was an amazing weapon. He knew that two-handed weapons were stronger than daggers of the same rank, but even compared to the Moonblade, which was a similarly ranked weapon, it was double the damage. Comparatively, it also required both hands compared to the Moonblade’s one hand, so... it somewhat checked out.
Trying to lift it with his Psyhands, he found that he could almost lift it with 6 hands, but he needed the 7th to be able to lift and wield it. This brought up the following question; was it worth swapping out 7 bottom-tier daggers with this one sword?
Pure numbers, it was better, 7x 5dmg daggers didn’t even reach half of the sword’s damage, but 7 daggers could be used to trigger almost 1.5 Static Charges if spread out. Even if not spread out, assuming that all of them are on the same target, adding together his new boosted Static Charge damage and the 7 daggers, the large weapon lost out.
Pondering this for a brief moment he spent some time cleaning up the hoard of Aether Crystals, piling them up in the hallway where he landed originally, with the other ones. Once he was done moving them all, which took a few minutes, he had come to the simple conclusion that, against a single, or few targets, using the sword was worth it as the other weapons would trigger Static Charge, against a bunch of smaller targets it might be better to use the other weapons to spread out more.
Lucky for him, the timer was running out for the 47th wave. Some bats and Golems were coming in, sheathing 7 of his small daggers he properly grabbed the new weapon; this could be interesting.
As the last Golem fell, leaving only one bat, Sam was happy with the sword. It did make it harder to multi-trigger Static Charge, but for fewer targets, it was performing quite well. Taking out the bats in one swing was also strangely fun, it still took a few hits for the Golems but they were so slow that it didn’t even matter in this case.
Though, had it not been for the AOE pulses and a few mobs at once, it could have become a problem for him. So, weirdly, he was specifically kitted for this kind of thing. He started mixing up his attacks, swapping the use of multiple daggers or the Warblade, using his normal hands to hold the non-active weapons for easier swapping proved to be a surprisingly practical tactic.
In his glee of testing out new things, he missed the end of the 49th wave.
[ Wave 50, boss wave ]
[ Wave 50, &”#¤@]
As before, to Sam’s eternal annoyance, the information glitched out again and... a new seemingly random selection of characters came out... This was going to be annoying.