The red glow did not dissipate as a second swipe at Degritone's chest came in. He brought out his condensed armor to block the attack, reducing the damage to around two hundred thousand damage. He Moved to get away while activating Rapid Cell Division, over doubling his Health Regeneration, while spamming Revitalize as much as he could.
The guard gave chase, staying on Degritone, but he'd bought himself just enough time regain half of the damage done in the last two attacks before the next attack smacked another two hundred thousand damage off of him. Slightly more than one Revitalize.
Degritone realized that he'd not used the Immortal Troll image at all since he'd gotten back and worried he'd lost the ability to actively use it as another attack was traded for another Revitalize and a scrape from Degritone's sword hard enough to apply Withering again. While Degritone had been proactive in plans, he'd been almost entirely reactive in power. He decided now was the time to change that.
The Immortal Troll, beyond his immortality, is all about incorporating that which harmed him before right? Time to finally get some armor destruction of my own, he thought, now back at full Health. He retracted the condensed armor from one of his arms and replaced it with Mana armor before blocking the ever-red mace, which shattered his Mana armor before one of its flanges penetrated his new body.
He imagines the Immortal Troll blocking this attack in much the same way, his skin being penetrated by the powerful blow, allowing his blood to interact with the Skill, or in the case of his DnD origin, the weave, a small portion of which managed to get back into his body and begin circulating, interacting with his unique physiology and slowly becoming a part of him as the mutated blood multiplies.
For the next two attacks, Degritone traded blows, this time through the condensed armor on his chest and head, for a small bit of chip damage from his own attack and many Revitalizes to bring him back up to full. This scene of Degritone taking a bad hit, then taking 2 others while healing back up, repeated itself multiple times, all the while attempting to get the Immortal Troll's blood properly suffused in this new Skill to allow him to break armor himself.
"Just die already!" His opponent exclaimed.
Degritone was still deaf.
Separately, around this time, he wondered why this person didn't appear to be using any more than two Skills. Maybe the rest of their skills are passive, maybe they're not allowed to because the government. I've seen, what... three whole skills from this person? Another blow, another round of Revitalizes. The armor breaker, the barrier between me and the dungeon, and a perception skill to keep up with this speed. It seems like they'd at least let their employees to use actual skills, but maybe not.
But what are they doing with their class skills if they aren't using them? Another blow, another round of Revitalizes. Seriously, they have probably 6, maybe even 7, class skills, plus whatever other skills they got from paths, even before including the ones they could get if they have an image. That's easily 15 skills if not 20+. Even assuming 5 Skills are used to get up to their high damage, one perception Skill, and say 7 invisible defensive ones, that's only 13. Where are the rest?
As he took another hit to his effectively undefended arm, Degritone saw a crack form in his opponent's armor. Checking his Skills, he found a new Skill in his Immortal Troll Skill Set, Penetrative Blood. He didn't spend time to know exactly what it did, but assumed it had at least some sort of active component given it originated from an active Skill. Plus, the minor knowledge imparted by the System about a Skill's uses included an active component.
So, he activated it with his next exchange, causing his sword to glow red and nearly doubling his swing's damage to just under sixty thousand. It wasn't much and the Stamina cost was too high to properly spam in accelerated time, but Degritone used a couple more hits with it to take another few seconds off the fight.
"Just DIE ALREADY," the guard said, obviously frustrated with the multiple hour-long beating they've given Degritone from their perspective, as they sent another swing forward. With that, they finally revealed at least one new Skill. Their mace seemed to grow in size and take over Degritone's vision, as you would see in an anime when someone launches an overwhelming attack. Degritone tried to dodge out of the way of an obviously increased power attack and got clipped on the edge of his torso by his opponent's superior speed.
It wasn't enough to break his condensed armor, nothing except maybe stronger soul could do that, but it did blow a whopping 1.6 million Health out of his pool, crunching his body where it came into contact with the high velocity armor a good three inches. He panicked because he knew he wouldn't be able to recover all that in tome for another hit, and his opponent fell on their face.
Degritone, still panicking, jumped back and spammed Revitalize as fast as he could to heal himself back up, as well as spending almost all his remaining Stamina on a Bastion shield. When his opponent didn't move for multiple seconds, his panic turned into confusion. Once he was full Health, he confirmed that he was still at 0 current experience, so his opponent wasn't dead.
Degritone went over and kicked the guard. They didn't move beyond what would be expected of kicking an unconscious person. Shrugging, and not knowing if this guy had a loli that cared about him, Degritone left him on the floor with a shrug and entered the Village Dungeon. He was unsure if he'd be able to actually take out a Level 75 Dungeon boss at Level 47, but he just beat a guard who he figured to be Level 60 at minimum.
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Well, caused them to use what seemed to be a list-ditch move which sent them into unconsciousness. I wonder if they went unconscious because it failed to kill me or because they used it. That did over 1.6 mil to me and I have, what, 75%+52%+15% effective permanent DR? So, they had to have done over 1.6*4*2*(1+1/6) million damage. 8... 1.6 is 1 and 3 fifths, so 24, 3.8, so say 12, plus another 2. So around 14 million damage before DR. Crazy.
That'd kill basically anyone but a tank. I guess that's what having actual offensive stats and skills will do for ya. Anyway, to the boss. With that thought, he actually looked at the Dungeon in front of him. It was heavily mountainous and the surrounding enemies looked like very large lizards of some sort. Boss's potentially a basilisk, depending on the interpretation, a dragon, maybe a wyvern, maybe a hydra, but those are usually swamp dwellers, I think. Could just be a huge lizard, but blah.
Let's try the nearest mountain first, he thought before making his way over to it. Moving at such high speeds, it didn't take long to reach the mountain, climb it, find nothing, then scour its faces for any hard to see or hidden caves. It took him roughly 2 hours of relative time to find nothing. He went from mountain to mountain, finally finding a cave at the very bottom of the 9th mountain he checked.
As he entered, he got a notification.
Final Trial!
Reach the bottom of the cave system and destroy the Menace to complete this Dungeon!
So probably not a dragon or wyvern, then. If the lizards outside were even related to the boss in any way. He sprinted down the cave system to find the bottom of the place, systematically checking every passageway. It took him over 6 hours of relative time to finally do so, the cave opening up very slightly with a pool of water at the bottom. Hydra's back on the table and I have no fire damage.
From the pool emerged a massive creature with a frog-like torso and head, but bipedal and with tentacles coming out of where its forelimbs would normally be. Oh, cool. A froghemoth. I really hope its insides are as easily survivable as in DnD. It'd be an easy win to just sit in its stomach and slowly burn it to death with Withering and Acidic Blood.
The Menace croaked a deep croak that would have caused even Degritone's insides to expand and contract if he were still made of flesh. While doing so, it bent forward and lashed out at Degritone with one of its tentacles, revealing surprisingly no surprises inside its mouth. It was just a straight froghemoth. So, Degritone let the tentacle grab him, and the froghemoth swallow him.
On the way down, he sent a small punch into its mouth to apply Mark of Antipathy and Withering. Once he landed in its stomach acid, he kept a close watch on his Health. No real change after a few minutes of accelerated time, so he slowly returned his time to normal. He felt the Menace make its way underwater and swim somewhere before nestling in, but his Health remained steady at 100%.
So, as he returned to normal time, he counted out 7 seconds and sent another punch at the Menace's stomach walls. It only took two applications to kill it, and not even the full second application.
Dungeon cleared!
For your first time clearing a Level 25 Dungeon, you gain
250 SP
25000 experience
25 Free Stats per Level
Well, that was anticlimactic, Degritone thought, accelerating his time back to its fastest as he was back outside the Dungeon. It only took him an hour to return to the Menace and go for another round, under 12 seconds each time. 2.4 seconds of time outside that someone could come into the Village Dungeon's building and see an unconscious guard.
He decided he could train Skills later, since he'd be getting at least 5 more from his Class, and didn't need any more to kill this Froghemoth with relative ease.
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Padina was not having a good time.
In front of her sat the 12 high nobles and the king. "Tell us exactly what you feel from the Skill and its feedback in the events leading up to this most recent change," the one her slave mark was keyed to demanded.
Padina was glad they still didn't know of her image and Skill Set, but having to go through this process while dealing with the current, permanently overwhelming dread was not a good time. Regardless, she was forced to say, "Around a month ago, a spot of dread around the strength of Kaldra appeared around the world gate. It quickly broke out of containment and made its way over to a nearby village.
"There, it stalled before moving to the woods alongside some smaller, weaker threats. It moved to another town and did the same thing, moving them to the same place. Faldor asked for a status report and I told him this information. He went and found a bunch of freed slaves along with a device that was creating endless bread and another that could negate the slave mark's effect without actually removing it, making it so we could not apply a new one.
"They made the decision to kill all the slaves and did so before coming back to me. The threat was on the move, going from town to town, with seemingly no goal. We tried to track it, but it was always gone before anyone could get to it. Then it went to a known terrorist organization's hideout and stayed there for a whole day. It took some of its members to where it'd originally taken the slaves.
"Then the storm started. I cautioned against sending the high nobles because the closer they got to the storm, the more dangerous the threat appeared to be. After a few weeks, it stopped doing whatever it was doing and moved back to the hideout, taking the storm with it, though a much weaker version.
"It spent a few minutes in there before coming back out and heading to the nearest town with a Level 25 Village Dungeon. There, it encountered a Dungeon guard and the Skill froze. I'd originally thought the Skill'd broken. It didn't, apparently just needing a few seconds to calculate the threat or something. I'm still unsure what happened. After the Skill finished calculating the threat, the area the threat was originally became significantly worse before spreading to cover the whole of the planet.
"As of right now, it doesn't matter where I attempt to feel, I feel an infinite dread. When it originally happened, I passed out from the fear. It's so horrible that, if it weren't for the slave mark forcing my body to talk against my will, I doubt I'd be able to properly speak for this long in a single sitting," she finally finished. She coughed a few times from having to talk through a rapidly drying throat.
"Has there been any change since your Skill began telling you everything was a threat?"
"It got significantly worse when said he was going to Maldol report to the king immediately after it originally happened," she said before another coughing fit.
A couple of them quickly glanced at the man who had threatened Padina before looking back at her. "Are you saying Maldol is a threat to the country?"
"I-" she coughed, even through the slave mark's compulsions, "I'm not saying he is or isn't, just stating the facts, as you know I must in response to your que-" coughs, "-questions."
"Get it some water. It may be a halfling, but it is still a valuable asset to the country," the king said.
All but 2 others scowled, one of which disappeared for a fraction of a second before appearing in front of Padina with a cup of water and a small sonic boom. "Thank you," she said, gulping it down.
The man nodded and returned to his seat. No one talked for a few moments before the king said, "If we have no more questions, let's return it to its cage and deliberate what to do with this information."
"Yes, let's," someone said.
And so, Padina got escorted back to her cage of a castle. Just before she left earshot of the group, she heard, "It may be defective. We'll need to redouble attempts to create another to confirm its readings."
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After almost 6 minutes real time, after just reaching Level 68, Degritone had some visitors.