Sam woke up to the alarm like he had done many times before. He was sleeping out in the main room, using an Aether Crystal as a pillow. The room had considerable scratches, damages, pits and parts dug out of the walls. A few of the crystals had entirely been removed from the walls and were surprisingly still glowing. The holes they came from looked like they had been dug out over considerable time with something small.
Scratching his scruffy beard, he lifted his dirty phone and turned on mirror mode, using the selfie camera with a white bright border of light around it to work as a lit-up mirror, he could see himself in it and inspected his face.
“Good morning, beautiful, how’s it going?” He smiled and faked an ‘oh you’ reaction at himself in his simple mirror.
He had gotten himself a few new things since the start of the fourth loop of Waves. His hands had three more rings, and he had a surprisingly colourful and feminine feather hairpiece fastened to his hair on his left side.
[ Luminous band - C: Increases perception in low-light conditions ]
[ Ironclad Ring, C, Increases Defence +5 ]
[ Chalice Signet, D, 10% chance to absorb 5 Health on killing an enemy ]
[ Windwalker’s Feather Signet, C, 10% Dodge chance ]
“I think it’s time for some... maintenance.” He spoke to himself in the mirror before he changed his smiling expression. “But you just said I was beautiful!” His tone changed to sounding almost insulted.
“Oh, but you can be even more beautiful!” He pointed at himself before his smile came back.
Lifting one of his daggers from the floor he used it to shave. It wasn’t clean but rather a patchy and bad job, but he got it under control if nothing else.
“Ah, there we go.” He smiled and pointed two finger guns at himself, fake shooting them before using a Psyhand to lock the screen of his phone and turn off the light.
“Aww.” He sounded honestly sad to see himself go away as he extended his Psyhand holding the phone into the hallway, past the wall with hundreds of tally marks, the marks thickening as they went on before there was just a series of deep smashes and damages to the wall. The phone was placed against the wall on top of an Aether Crystal, working as a wireless charger as he put it onto the gem.
Next to the charging station was the bend further into the hallway where thousands of Aether Crystals had been stacked surprisingly neatly, and near it was a small pile of unused gear with armour, weapons and accessories.
“Five, four, three, two.” He counted down with the information window explaining that Wave 51 was happening in a few seconds, tilting his head back and forth in beat with the countdown and dramatically waving his hands back and forth.
“And one, and glitch, aaaaaand... Welcome!” Timing every step perfectly with the process of the window counting down, glitching and changing to Wave 1. His welcome was in perfect beat with the manifestation of a singular goblin, who looked around confused before spotting Sam in the dim red lighting.
Sam picked up a large two-handed war-axe, it looked like a robust weapon, designed for brutal encounters. Having darkened steel for the axe head, having a large volcano-like vein coming out of the central part and splitting up into several smaller veins extending along the blade. Having a small spike on the top and a small counterweight on the back, the handle was wrapped with red leather.
He picked it up with his Psyhands and handed it to his normal hands. He took a stance and lifted the sword around his back over his shoulder like he was getting ready to play baseball and he was the batter. The goblin stopped with a confused expression on his face, but as he stopped Sam reached out with a collection of Psyhands and lifted him.
The goblin shrieked and tried to cut and attack whatever invisible force was lifting him.
“And in the rough central corner, we have the ball, can he hit this, it has an odd shape?!”
Shouting to himself in an announce-like voice the Goblin started flying towards Sam at great speed, moving up, down and to the sides at an irregular speed, but as it came within range of Sam he swung his large axe like a bat and cleaved the goblin in two through the chest, leaving behind tines of electricity and a burst of fire as it passed through the small creature’s body. Dropping his corpse as soon as the damage was done, splatting both onto the scuffed floor as they rolled limply away, leaving a trail of blood and guts.
[ Ember War-Axe - Low-D Rank
Two-handed Axe.
Damage: 120
Fire Damage: +10 ]
[ Thunderous Blow - D
Adds electric damage to each attack equal to 1/5th of the weapon base damage. ]
“And he made it! The crowd goes wild!” He flung both his hands into the air, letting go of the axe which remained hovering due to the five needed Psyhands as he celebrated, mimicking the roar of a crowd.
It didn’t take long for the second wave of two goblins to spawn. As soon as they manifested, one of them was picked up with all his Psyhands and slammed into the floor repeatedly, stopping screaming and moving after a few bashes. The other looked panicked at his friend before he was picked up in his ally’s stead before he was pulled close to Sam, hovering in the air, helpless.
“Do you see that?!” Sam points to the side. In his own view, he’s pointing at his Player status screen, not considering that his helpless victim can’t see it. “I don’t know why, but I can use the thing now!” Sam commented as he looked at the numbers displaying his stats now being different.
Rather than being just a list of information, words, letters, and numbers, the fields were editable, but not all of them. His Str, Dex and Vit were marked, but only the second digit on his Spt. And in the back of his mind, he knew he couldn’t just swap out numbers, like 4 for 9 or something. No, he could only increase it with +1, which was kind of annoying.
“You see that, Johnny?!” Sam pulled the Goblin closer, squishing the side of his face close to his own, forcing ‘Johnny’ to stare at the nonexistent screen before continuing. “Boop! And just like that, my Spirit is now 40!” He was glad that though only the last digit was marked, his Spt was 39 before he moved it and it turned to 40 instead of 30, he would have been very sad if it was the latter but as it was a +1 value it seemed to work out!
Suddenly moving them apart and sporting an insulted face towards the Goblin, Sam scoffed.
“The fuck do you mean ‘it is kind of shit’?!” Changing his tone to a mocking repeating ‘this is what you sound like’ kind of tone in the second half of the sentence. “I don’t know how to do more than just this yet. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the shit to even display like this?!”
Sam looked angrily at the poor Goblin, who was nothing but terrified and confused. Shouting and trying to get loose from the invisible grasp on its body and limbs.
“You know what, I think you’re just envious of my amazing powers! Trying to talk smack because I can ‘only change the ones’.” Again ending with a mocking tone Sam waved his hand upwards like he was swatting a fly, which had the goblin fly upwards and his head creaming against the hard, smooth ceiling. Dying instantly.
Letting go of its corpse it fell to the floor with a limp thud. “That’ll show you, Johnny. I thought you could see how amazing this is, but I suppose you were like the others. Just... A dungeon mob.” His eyes teared up a little, Sam wasn’t sure if it was in pity for Johnny’s lacking intelligence or if it was that the only interaction he had was with the not-properly-sapient Dungeon monsters.
The next wave spawned a minute later, Sam Psyhand grabbed one of them and used him as a weapon to bat the other ones to death, it didn’t take many hits before the victory screen popped up. Sam’s expression was the same kind of bored as someone watching the dust settle on a shelf.
This process of mindless violence and ‘entertainment’ happened again and again, to the point where he wasn’t even looking and just timed his blades to hit the target as soon as it manifested. The lighter enemies like the goblins and bats were flung around like ragdolls, playing with how to damage them and how to fight, seeming barely interested or talking to himself in a weird third-person way. His eyes were glassed over like he was barely mentally present.
The waves he wanted to be over fast disappeared instantly after spawning, the ones where he toyed around with his targets took longer and were often quite brutal. Eventually wave 50 came along.
[ Wave 50, boss wave ]
[ Wave 50; %!(¤#”! ]
“Oh, you again.” He smiled almost as if he greeted an old friend before it had even spawned.
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The white light pulsed and deposited a large creature made up of tens of thousands, if not millions of bugs. It clicked and clacked as it settled on the scuffed floors.
“Clickety clackety to you as well, Mr Clickyboi!” Sam smiled back at it, though with dull, dead eyes with lacked interest and mental presence.
The creature sent an insect projectile towards the barely mentally present Sam, who disappeared and reappeared to the side.
[ Flash Step activated ]
As soon as he landed, he pulled a few of the named weapons towards himself, through the Hive in front of him. This not only did damage to it directly with some electric and fiery aftereffects, but it pulsed Static Charge enough to spread out a bunch of insects that clacked against the irregular floor. As they started running back to the main body, Sam dropped the second part of his plan. Letting go of the larger, heavier, weapons he grabbed as many smaller ones as he could hold before he teamed them up in collections of 5, and started attacking the insects with Cluster Strike. This overkilled the individual insects something absurd, but that wasn’t the goal, the goal was to trigger as many Static Charges as he could, and so he did.
The area became a carpet bombing of electric discharges, 40 blades, most his but some borrowed by goblins, paired up in 8 groups of five moved around, stabbing at the bugs again and again, triggering more and more exploding waves of electrical force. He made sure they were all within range of the main body, each doing 80 damage, and with 8 groups per ‘wave’ it didn’t take many seconds to obliterate this encounter.
“Oh... that was faster than expected.” Sam commented on the shredded pile of bugs as he dropped the shit-tier goblin daggers and picked up his proper weapons, sheathing his low-level daggers to have them ready. “You lasted at least... I think... Five seconds or something longer the last time we did this.”
As the victory screen opened again, he simply moved it to the side, not caring in the slightest, rather finding interest in squatting down and picking up a pile of bugs with his Psyhands, pouring them back down.
“For being so fucked up, I do like the shimmer in your carapaces, to the right collector I’m sure you’d be considered pretty.”
Getting up, his face twisted in anger and disgust he started stomping on the pile of bugs. “But I still think you can fuck off back to the asshole you came from!”
Stopping the stomping after a few solid seconds he inhaled deeply and exhaled. “And five... three... two...” He waved his hands back and forth like a conductor, almost like he was setting the countdown pace.
“Aaaand 51... aaand glitch... and one!” Again in perfect timing with the happenings it all reset back to one, and as the first goblin spawned Sam Psyhand pulled it close to him and proceeded to vent all his anger out as he punched the poor thing to death with his bare fists, holding the Goblin helpless in the air in front of him.
The next waves happened just like the ones before, he either blitzed through them in seconds or vented his frustration and anger on them in some horrifying ‘entertainment’ way. The only thing making the next 50th wave take so long to happen was the 1-minute countdown to the next. He would pace back and forth, shouting obscenities or talking to objects, sitting down and waiting, petting an Arcane Crystal like it was a small cat, cooing to it like it was some living creature. Only to fling it into whatever creature spawned next.
[ Wave 50, boss wave ]
[ Wave 50; ))!”%&# ]
“Welcome, Spiderwoman!” He made an elaborate bow as the glowing light landed a massive, half-humanoid, half-arachnid creature. Her torso looked like an amalgamation of shattered faces and screaming mouths, moving in an unnatural lurching way. The bottom part was that of a massive spider, sleek black exoskeleton like a black widow.
As soon as ‘she’ could move, a bunch of small spiders started running off her body, down her legs and towards Sam, who expertly handled it by triggering Static Charges on demand.
“And three... two... one...” Right on cue, he stepped to the side, dodging a jet of fluid from the creature in front of him, that hardened as soon as it hit the wall, becoming a spider's silk-like structure.
“You know, for being such a pain in the ass, as long as I don’t cut your threads and heal you, you’re not that problematic.” Sam commented dryly and monotone as his swarm of blades came down in pulses, cutting into her and breaking her exoskeleton, focusing on her legs, hindering her mobility before focusing on the large hind section of the spider part.
It didn’t take many seconds before she fell, then only a few more for her to stop moving and the victory screen open.
Sighing deeply, Sam simply fell back, landing on his back as he started counting down alongside the next Wave window in the most bored voice he had ever produced.
“47, 46, 45...”
[ Victory condition completed ]
“Excusemewhatthefuck?!” Sam sat up with a jerk and looked at this new window he hadn’t seen before. There was hope in his heart but at the same time, an unhealthy dose of paranoia tried to drag him back down. Mentally focusing on the window with a questioning feel opened up more info.
[ Victory condition: Kill all !”%&%#& bosses without taking a single hit, 20 times in a row. ]
“Oh, so that’s all, huh?” Sam shouted out seething with anger. “That’s fucking it? You could have fucking told me that before. That shit’s easy after the first few rounds. Then you fucking send a new piece of shit I haven’t seen into the mix and I accidentally get hit by one fucking little spider or some shit. That’s it?! Mother--” Rambling to himself, ranting in a long string of swears he stops moving and ranting for a few seconds as it all boils over, squatting down he punches the hard stone-like floor with all his might, his fist breaking and cracking horribly as some of the fractures extend from his hand.
This was followed by a long, loud and powerful scream in pain and agony.
“Ok... fine... Calm down...” Speaking to himself he calmed down considerably. Inhaling deeply and exhaling, almost as if he’s going to his mental happy place.
[ Focusing on passive skill; Vital Recovery ]
He stood there in an almost meditative stance, the bones in his hand pulled themselves back, forcing himself to not react too much he couldn’t entirely avoid a twitch of pain in both his hand and expression as the broken bones snapped back in place before the skin slowly healed itself.
A few minutes later his hand looked fine, he opened and closed it a few times as a test before feeling satisfied, but then his face turned back to pure fury as he turned around to look at the information window, which was in the rough centre of his view the whole time.
Pointing at it judginly he continued his shouting. “The fuck do you mean that this is done now? Can I leave? The hell kind of reward are you going to give me for this? I hope it's that all of you assholes keel over and die in a woodchipper, cock first... if you have cocks... whatever, painfully!”
[ Please select a reward ]
Sam scoffed as he checked the date on his phone, he knew there might be some time drift but that would only be a few seconds, minutes at worst. If what he saw there, based on the date and timestamp of the last messages from Janik, he had been in this place for 51 days.
“Almost two months, this fucking better be worth it.”
[ Please select from the following rewards:
-Armour
-Weapon
-Accessory
-Skill ]
“Well... That’s underwhelming...” Sam shook his head in disbelief, looking both disappointed and angry. “You could at least list what I get. If I choose ‘weapon’ and get a shit-tier dagger... I mean...”
Sam was waiting, hoping that things would change, almost as if his command for shit to change would be heard. “Well? I have opened enough random boxes to know that randomly selecting shit is not a good way to do things if you can avoid it.” Moving the reward window a bit to the side in his view he started looking around he almost expected to see the man behind the curtain, but there was nothing besides the damaged room from his time in here.
In the side of his vision the reward window glitched for a brief moment, flickered away but came back immediately afterwards.
“Oh? That fucking worked?” Sam commented as he moved the window back into focus as a small smile grew on his lips. “Well, this turned into a no-brainer.”