As the dungeon timer ticked down to zero he clicked out of the dungeon and was immediately thrust back into the relentless heat and humidity of Tantalus, facing the dungeon door with the swamp stretching out behind him.
Jeff was momentarily disorientated—a sense of something wrong nagged at the back of his mind… the sun, partially obscured by the perpetual cloud cover still hung low on the horizon, as it had in the morning when he entered the dungeon.
With a mental shrug, shaking off the dissonance, he toggled the Tournament Store icon and stepped through the glowing doorway that appeared in the cliff face.
Once inside, he immediately began browsing through the catalog.
While he was standing at the store counter, Misty made an appearance, bounding up to him, chattering excitedly.
She launched into a commentary on his impressive performance and the rewards he had been gifted by his ever increasing fan base.
“The fan boards are blazing up all across Glogly…haven’t you checked your balance? The donations are massive. It’s unprecedented in an Outer Fringe sector like this.
To my knowledge, no Tournament Contestant from a newly assimilated world has reached your level of cultivation at this stage before.
These composite mana storage rings you’ve crafted in your Core Space are fantastic, Jeff. It’s a real achievement of at your level. That degree of mana manipulation… it’s incredible, revolutionary.
Most cultivators don’t come close until they hit Grade F, at least…”
Misty’s voice took on a different tone.
“Jeff, how are you able to do this? How are you able to process Necrotic energy in your Core?”
A note of suspicion impinging into her voice along with the excitement.
Jeff had been wondering the same thing.
Looking back on his near death brush in the dungeon and his intuitive crafting of a solution, he wondered…
My Path?… Some other change made on the ship?
Jeff’s mind raced as he tried to work out where his advantage came from. Whether it was the early Path choice gifted to him by the Autochs, or something else, he wasn’t sure.
Mindful of the omnipresent surveillance on him, Jeff struggled to keep his thoughts from appearing on his features.
Shrugging his shoulders in mock bewilderment, he plastered a dumb look of incomprehension across his face and pretended not to understand Misty’s question.
He acknowledged her continued prattling distractedly, and turned his focus back to the Store catalog, navigating the extensive list of goods on display.
He eventually found what he was looking for.
After making the purchase he wasted no time—exiting the store, Jeff returned to Tantalus.
Back at the edges of the swamp, Jeff noticed that a gargantuan flightless bird, easily the height of a giraffe had appeared, and was now standing beneath the cliffs around twenty yards from the dungeon door, it’s brightly covered plumage a startling contrast against the stark granite rocks.
Jeff eyed it warily, but it made no move towards him, preoccupied as it was with a gigantic, metallic-shelled mollusk the size of a dumpster, clutched in its formidable hooked beak.
With rhythmic precision, it bashed the huge snail-like creature against a slab of rock jutting out from the cliff face, the repeated clangs echoing in the damp air as it strove to reveal the flesh within.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, softening the harsh sunlight.
Jeff entered the dungeon once again.
This time, he raced through the dark tunnels, leapt across the abyss and swung over the booby-trapped colored squares with ease.
He navigated the battlefield with confidence, making short work of the Kobols.
Marching across the gloomy field, he didn’t pause once.
As the reanimated Kobols staggered to their feet and started towards him, he unleashed a quick blast with [Mana Burst], each pulse loaded with the composite antidote to the Necrotic energy.
Jeff even found that it was unnecessary to target every single Kobol—the effect rippled out through their ranks, leaping like a contagion, severing the strings of reanimation and causing them to collapse to the ground in lifeless heaps, the effects of the Necrotic energy negated.
He continued mob-farming his way through the dim expanse of the battlefield, only pausing briefly to scoop up the glossy black dungeon drops of Necrotic energy as they fell.
Level up!
Congratulations! You have reached Level 96
Whilst in the store he had briefly asked Boz for an appraisal of the Necrotic energy drops.
The robotic store-keeper offered 50 coins for each drop, which amounted to a sizable haul.
It turned out that while dungeon drops had some commercial value, they were mostly collected and carried by Tournament Contestants, warriors and adventurers for use as a reservoir of portable mana, like MP charge-ups.
Jeff decided that the Necrotic energy drops could be very useful as ammunition in future battles, particularly against any life-attuned enemies he encountered along the way.
With this in mind, Jeff decided to collect as many as possible.
In double-quick time, Jeff reached the far side of the battlefield and, ducking down, slipped through the entrance of the low slung grave barrow.
Once inside, he continued his inexorable forward progress—straight past the Skeleton Knights lying immobile at their banquet table—and up to the throne of the Bone Baron, who was beginning to awaken from his slumber.
“The time hath cometh…” intoned the baron sepulchrally, a skeletal finger poised to unleash a stream of reanimating energy at the skeletons around the table.
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“No time to chat, sorry Baron…”
interjected Jeff in a cheerful voice, preemptively unleashing his own emerald blast of mana first, striking the Boss square in the chest.
The Baron, caught by surprise, attempted to climb to his feet using his scythe as a crutch, like some demonic boomer, but the corrosive effect of Jeff’s Life/Acuity bolt had already begun to ravage his dark composite-mana-fueled biology, devastating his pathways and Core.
He stumbled and fell, his armored form clattering noisily down the steps of the dais, landing in a heap at Jeff’s feet.
Jeff grasped the back of the Baron’s chest plate and lifted the weakly struggling form, hoisting the barely-alive dungeon boss so his gaping jaw rested atop the lip of the first step of the dais.
Raising his knee high, he brought his foot crashing down on the back of the baron’s skull, curb-stomping him.
The first stomp landed with a grisly crunching sound, snapping multiple teeth and sending them tinkling across the floor.
The Baron groaned feebly, his face a bloody ruin.
Jeff raised his foot and brought it hammering down again, even more ferociously—this time imbuing his attack with [Cutting Edge].
The Baron’s skull cracked, then shattered into two pieces, neon brain matter spurting across the floor and painting Jeff’s bootlaces a vivid blue.
Grimacing with distaste, he wiped his boot on the Baron’s cloak before placing the corpse and scythe in his ring storage.
He was momentarily distracted by an obscene torrent of system coins filling his balance, no doubt heavily swollen by his ever growing fan base.
He was also awarded with something called an ‘Achievement’ which was permanently reflected in his stats.
Level up!
Congratulations! You have reached Level 121
You have killed a Grade I Dungeon Boss
Reward: Forty Omega Energy Points
Achievement!
Brutality Unleashed
For dispatching a dungeon boss with exceptional violence
Reward: Ten Free Attribute Points
Jeff immediately put all the unallocated attribute points towards bolstering his Endurance.
He figured he was going to need the boost for the next step of his plan.
Brushing aside the System message about respawning or leaving the dungeon, after looting the throne room once again, Jeff made his way around to the the rear of the throne dais.
There, the entrance to the bone tempering chamber was revealed.
This time, he had come prepared.
Jeff had initially thought about somehow repurposing the goblin chainsaw, envisioning a makeshift winch system of some sort, cobbled together from its parts. But, when he saw the vast array of tools and gadgets on offer in the Tournament Store's catalog, he realized he had been overthinking the problem.
After some thought he had finally settled on a robust anchor-winch, the kind especially designed for the deck’s of large ocean going vessels.
With its heavy-duty steel chain and over-engineered build quality, he felt it should be able to withstand the rigors of the bone tempering broth.
Gingerly, he dangled a segment of the iron chain into the bath, his muscles straining under its significant weight.
Each link of the chain weighed as much as a quarter of a metric ton, and it took his System-augmented strength to lift it.
He maintained the submersion for over a minute before heaving the length of chain out of the bath. He was satisfied to see that while heavily corroded, it was still functional and would serve its purpose.
Next, Jeff set to work bolting the winch housing to the floor of the chamber some distance from the Bone Tempering Bath.
He used a sledgehammer to drive the heavy rivets deep into the flagstone floor. When he was finally satisfied that the device was securely fastened, he took a moment to familiarize himself with the workings of the control panel.
Ordinarily he would have been fascinated by the ‘rune board’—a mix of tech and magic—the System equivalent of a computer, which served to operate the winch.
The glowing touchscreen on the side, flashing with an array of control runes, allowed for a number of different programs to be plugged into the motor.
But Jeff was on a mission and didn’t have time to get his geek on.
Jeff reeled off a substantial length of loose chain from the drum before setting the winch to automatically wind the chain back when the countdown timer had run down to zero.
Standing naked on the chill flagstone floor, he fed the winch’s rune board a trickle of mana to initiate the timer. Then, grasping the loose length of chain, he securely wrapped it around his torso.
Jeff hesitated for a moment, quaking at the thought of the agony to follow.
Then he reminded himself what it was all for.
Memories of family and friends flashed before his eyes like an old movie montage.
His father, now a recluse obsessed with conspiracy theories in his cabin in the Smokey mountains. His mother, no doubt out of her mind with worry right now. His older sister and her two daughters.
Sally…
Images of Earth paraded before his mind’s eye—the people and everything in it: sunlit meadows and bustling city streets, grinning kids eating ice cream, symphony orchestras and rock bands in full swell. All the best elements of his planet and species.
Whether he liked it or not, he was the one responsible. For its salvation…or its doom.
Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he shuffled forwards—barely able to move with the crushing weight of the chains wrapped around him—until he reached the edge of the bath and its roiling, ominously seething contents.
“No pain, no gain…” he muttered to himself, gallows humor in his tone.
Gritting his teeth, he allowed himself to fall forward, plunging headfirst into the thick, turbid grey broth of the bath.
Instant agony.
The moment Jeff’s body splashed below the surface, fire coursed through every nerve ending in his body as his skin was flash-burnt off.
Instinctively, Jeff opened his jaws to scream before realizing his mistake—too late.
The corrosive bone tempering broth surged into his open mouth, a merciless, destructive tide that scoured his oral cavity to the bone, cascading down his throat into his belly and dissolving his soft tissues from the inside out.
Jeff had never felt pain like it.
Thrashing about in torment, he frantically tried to grab for the chain, instantly regretting his plunge into the bath.
Thoughts fixed on escape, he fumbled, trying to pull himself out, but the bath had already started its work—his hands, stripped of sensation, could no longer feel the individual links of the chain.
All his nerve-endings had been instantly destroyed by the acidic broth, leaving his fingers unable to grasp.
Through the white hot blaze of excruciating pain, Jeff yearned for oblivion—he was desperate for the merciful release of unconsciousness, but something kept him awake, kept him alive.
In the depths of the pain, a brief flicker of awareness…a realization that the healing arrays embedded in the ceiling were hard at work, countering the bath’s destructive force and keeping him conscious in the process.
Congratulations!
Your High Pain Threshold Skill has now reached Level 5,6,7,8,9,10,11….
The broth continued its grisly business—stomach, kidneys, liver, and then his heart—all systematically erased.
The soft fleshy bits between his legs…gone.
Jeff had squeezed his eyelids shut automatically in some vain attempt to protect his eyes, to no avail.
He felt the broth bubbling around his jaw bone and teeth, scouring his cheeks away, sheering through the soft cartilage of his nose, snipping off his ears, nibbling away at his lips.
Nothing was left behind, nothing but the stark architecture of his skeletal structure.
Jeff felt that the pain could not possibly get any worse…until the broth burnt through the orbital sockets of his eyes and started eating his brain.
The effect was indescribable.
As the broth invaded his skull, Jeff lost all sense of time and space. His universe was whittled down to a single point—a spiraling vortex of raw pain.
Every second remaining on the timer stretched into an infinity of suffering, the longest minute in the history of minutes.
Jeff knew somehow that he had to retain his hold on sanity.
The only thing left to him was his personality. His mind.
The temptation to fall into a state of delirium—let slip the last remaining link with reality—beckoned to him.
But he knew that that was a one-way road. There was no coming back from that level of madness.
Endure…he told himself. Just a few seconds more. Endure.
His will reared up and burnt brightly within him, drawing on some deep well spring of resilience he had not known he possessed until now.
He rejected the call of madness.
And he lived… somehow.
He continued to exist, despite his brain literally boiling within his cranium.
As the broth attacked the individual neural cells in his head, the healing arrays built into the ceiling went into overdrive, burning fiercely as they flooded the chamber with deluges of pure Life mana.
Brain death was averted, the runic arrays refusing the bone-tempering bath its final victory over the flesh. The corrosive broth fought to erase his mind, but the arrays countered with precision, reforming the neural pathways as swiftly as they were destroyed.
And then, Jeff was reborn.