I waited a distance aways for day to return looking at the mushroom terrain that was in constant flux. Mushrooms growing, changing colors, and then dying. The land itself seemed to shift up and down. It was just as trippy as I remembered from the first mushroom zone I had seen long ago.
The light source finally began to come up over the horizon and I stretched and steadied my breathing. Time to take a plunge. I walked towards the mushrooms, ready to activate my skills in a split second, my tongue ready in my mouth to speak the words.
There were little mushrooms as I walked that released bright spores when I stepped on them. I stayed at the edge of the zone, with the frostlands a stone throw away as mushrooms grew around me. At least they didn’t grow on me.
I felt a tingling in my chest, but nothing happened. I slowly walked back out, and everything was tilting slightly. I frowned at this. With my energy Sense stat, there were dense swirls everywhere in the zone. The changes the mushrooms underwent seemed to be related to the energy.
About a minute later everything stabilized. I was still affected by the terrain with my stats. That was highly concerning. At least my brain didn’t melt, or mushrooms grow out of my lungs. I went back into the mushrooms.
It was completely trippy and it would make it very difficult to find my way back. I didn’t like mushroom terrain. It was getting put into the same category as swamp and stonelands terrain. Bearable, but my least favorite for that level of zone. I still had to check out the jungle, but even a nightmare jungle was better than the world seeming to rock back and forth.
The worst part was that it made my footing unsteady, which would compromise my ability to fight in combat. Oh, there was the level 4 monster. A large carpet that was changing colors swept across the landscape. It was like one of those Persian carpets but was at a rave.
“Acid Shot,” the flying carpet turned blue and the acid dripped off. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair at all. “Acid Shot. Acid Shot.” The monster was completely immune as I retreated back into the frostlands. This was some massive bullshit.
The carpet began to fly in a circle around me as the world slowly became more level. I was forced to draw my sword as the monster kept circling. This was incredibly annoying behavior. I had kind of forgotten level 4 monsters could do things like this. They weren’t all mindless brutes.
How was I even going to kill it? That was when I noted it had been damaged slightly, so not immunity, just very high resistance. “Acid Shot, Acid Shot, Acid Shot.” I kept using the skill over and over again, the monster just changed energy types to counter me and kept circling, but didn’t attack. After 10 Acid Shots it finally died.
What an annoying monster, but it highlighted a critical weakness in my skill set. The nearly useless minor effect upgrade seemed a lot more inviting right about now or a second attack skill. What I really needed was Force Shot. That was the opposite type of Acid Shot.
Despite brown force creatures being some of the most common, that skill had not come up. With both skills combined, I should hopefully be able to create an annihilation effect. Hit something with acid, then follow up with force and boom! It was liquid slash melt type not acid, but that didn’t really matter.
It would be a devastating attack that would cut through all defenses. Even if something could tank the acid, the annihilation effect should cleave through them like they weren’t there. Even if they had high stats or were a super monster, annihilation would still burn away a chunk of them.
Things could resist it to some extent, like that super worm the Ritualist had made, but even that had taken damage from the explosions. Annihilation was an incredibly overpowered effect that ignored defenses and did direct damage.
This Rainbow Carpet monster was the perfect example of why I needed something like that. I had asked around and had been keeping my eye out for it kind of, but this monster added a sense of urgency. Having a Force Shot would allow me to hit targets that were tricky and blow them away despite the defenses they might be able to conjure up.
That was the nightmare. A high level monster my Acid Shot wouldn’t be able to damage. Well, at least I learned something critically important without almost dying. I looked at the dark jungle and let out a sigh. I made my way over to the corner of the terrain and entered.
The massive trees loomed over me. There was a lot of plant life and thick branches. That made no sense. Jungles tended to be clear at the forest floor since sunlight didn’t reach the bottom. Well, that was Earth Jungles, this was a Systemic Land jungle.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I kept the level 3 zone in sight while I looked around. This was better than the mushrooms, but the darklands were clearly the easiest. Well, unless it was night time. I wasn’t that motivated to test it out after the headache from the mushrooms.
“Kiiiiiiii!” A high pitched scream hit me. I felt my head hurt. I looked for the source, but it quickly came from another direction.
“Kiiiiiii!” More screams quickly followed me as I left the jungle. I waited in the frostlands as twenty large toads jumped out with oversized mouths that hung open.
“Kiiiiii!” “Kiiiii!” “Kiiiii!”
“Shut up!” I shouted back but they began to spread out around me and kept screaming. “Air Burst. Acid Shot.” I killed one off and the rest maneuvered to keep a set distance from me. My head was really starting to hurt. I killed one toad after another until they were all dead.
Astrologer, you earned the rare Michael point. The Bulwark Shield monsters were the nicest level 4 monsters possible. This was frankly ridiculous. Flying psychedelic carpets and screaming toads. I could make my way through a level 4 zone, I had no doubt about that.
The fact I could tank attacks was a big help, even if my headache was a lot worse and now my stomach was heaving. “Ackk!” I dry heaved and kneeled on the ground. Those toads had really messed me up.
I got back up to my feet and looked at the jungle. What a nightmare. They could be hiding anywhere in the undergrowth or the trees. My Sense stat was struggling to make headway on the thick energy that kept swirling around.
I turned away from the two zones and slowly made my way back South. I would clear level 3 zone dungeons first. Then I would think about facing a level 5 roaming boss monster. It wasn’t a loss, just a realization I wasn’t that motivated to have a fight against a level 5 monster in those conditions.
Both the jungle and mushroom terrain were terrible for fighting in. I would need more support stats to resist the mushroom’s effects that caused everything to tilt slightly. Probably something like the Aura stat to resist outside energy from affecting me.
It was like fighting on a rocking ship. The seasickness was far worse than the monsters coming up from the depths.
The jungle was bad in another way. It was impossible to see easily see monsters. While the mushrooms felt like I was chugging down drugs by the crateful, the jungle was just a lot of foliage that provided the perfect cover.
Monsters could easily attack from stealth. I could kind of make out where they were, but the best way to describe trying to sense in a level 4 zone was like having a layer of plastic wrap in front of my face while trying to see. Everything was blurry for the Sense stat.
I could kind of make out where the attacks were coming from. If it had just been one of those Echoing Scream monsters, then I would have been fine. But a horde or whatever a group of toad monsters was called was not fine.
It was too hard to focus and fight. Give me a giant monster coming right at me any day and not this garbage. All of this made the idea of fighting a level 5 roaming boss completely unappetizing at the moment.
They weren’t life or death fights. I was never in that much danger with my stats and easily retreated, but the fact that the monsters had ways to target me and be immune to my attacks proved once again that level 4 was a dividing line.
I had been too cocky, too self-assured. But if 10,000 was the stat line for level 4 monsters, then I only exceeded that stat with Body and matched it with Mind, Spirit, and Regeneration. It wasn’t enough to curb stomp my way through level 4 monsters.
I could win, but it would be a fight, a very hard fight. I let out a long sigh of frustration as my head and stomach settled down as I raced South to find a new level 3 zone dungeon to clear.
After getting humbled, I would focus on maxing out level 4 upgrades while poking more level 4 zones to see the various monster types. The more I saw, the more I learned.
I had a hunch that the top level people like the Divine Empress and the Astrologer based a lot of their knowledge and combat ability after fighting these types of monsters. It was very eye opening to the types that could be out there.
I could even grind those carpets and toads, but they weren’t worth the headache, both metaphorically and literally. I would need to carefully find a level 5 monster I could grind and get my skills fully upgraded before poking one of them.
That was sure to be a fight and getting crafting crystals would be very difficult. I wanted to cry since that heist, which had been amazing was only a small powerup in the larger scheme of things. The amount of points needed to make me feel comfortable for poking a level 5 zone would be tremendous. I would want to get all my stats to at least 10,000 and a couple of them up to 100,000.
Some quick mental math put the cost of getting to one million total stat points at a price point of around 900 billion points. It was enough to give me heart ache thinking about that number. Call it a trillion points just for rounding purposes. That would put me at 100,000 stat points for each of my ten stats.
I had stolen one percent of that amount. Even grinding at ten million points a day, it would take 100,000 days to get that many points or over 270 years of constant grinding to get to a point where I could match up with level 5 monsters on an even basis.
The power gap was immense. The monsters didn’t need to get smarter, that natural increase in strength was more than enough to create a huge barrier to advancement. Well first skills, then I would go out and fight monsters and see if I couldn’t wrangle up a level 5 boss monster.
After that, I was probably not going to go to a level 5 zone. I might look at one from a very far distance, but I couldn’t afford to be swarmed. The superweapon would have to make do with level 4 crafting crystals. It wasn’t the best option, but unless things didn’t increase in power like I was expecting then it was the only option.
It was frustrating, but I had worse setbacks. I just needed to get my empire up and running to earn those points for me instead of having to break my back for them. An empire became an even higher priority in my mind and was a key component that any high level person would need.