“Acid Shot,” x5. I melted another four-armed giant. They were about twice my height but they were incredibly annoying. After this next dungeon I would probably sleep in the mists. I had been going for quite a while and was starting to get tired.

I just needed to find this dungeon and I hated mistlands when I had to look around. I could work out my direction by jumping and checking the light source, but overall, they were quite annoying. Still stonelands were worse.

Out of level 1 zones, forest was the best, then flowerlands, and then grasslands. Forests didn’t have under brush so you could see, but also had cover. It was perfect. Grasslands were the worst since they had tall grass which made it annoying.

For level 2 zones, swamp was the worst hands down by far. The shadowlands and deadlands were both the same in my mind. Neither one of them that bad. I would have to say I preferred the deadlands a bit. I liked things being bright and clear.

For level 3 zones, stonelands were the worst. Traveling, monsters, and everything about them made them annoying. Mistlands were less bad but still annoying with all the mist. Even with it pushed back from me, I couldn’t see far in it. Frostlands were all right and I didn’t even notice the cold that much.

Level 4 zones, the mushrooms were the worst. Just thinking about that experience made me want to hurl and my stomach hurt. Like being on a party boat in the middle of a storm. The Almighty System was probably high on some mushrooms itself when it designed that zone. The jungle was less bad but still terrible. The thick underbrush, trees with branches, and the lack of vision made it ambush central.

That was the other thing, level 4 monsters wouldn’t just charge in, so you had to hunt them down as they maneuvered. What would have just been bad, turned into a nightmare when you combined both things. The darklands were good, but I hadn’t been there when the light source went below the horizon.

That was something that was bothering me as well. If from horizon to horizon was one hundred eighty degrees, or half a circle, why did the light source spend twice as much time in the sky lighting things up as it did tucked away?

The fact it moved overhead but the days weren’t the same length as the nights was something I had missed for the longest time. Now that I realized the issue, it made my head hurt thinking what kind of shenanigans were going on with it.

The light source, could that be the Almighty System? It had a golden glow to it and the Almighty System liked the golden color. The Avatar used it and there was that massive explosion in Purgatory with that color.

That meant it wasn’t a super weapon by the Astrologer, but probably something he forced the Almighty System to do and pissed it off. Well, glad it wasn’t me.

“You are pissing me off! Acid Shot,” x2. I melted another four-armed giant. They were annoying as I was trying to find the dungeon. Also, I kind of meant that for the Avatar if she was watching me.

Oh a cliff, perfect, it was a terrain feature. I was on the high side and the low side of the cliff was stonelands. I jumped down and followed the base of the cliff, killing more four-armed giants coming at me. Their point crystals dropped between the boulders into the dark crevices between them.

Another reason why I hated the stonelands. They would be a nightmare to grind in. Only the craziest or most desperate people would want to grind in a place like this, having to snatch every point crystal before it fell.

I saw a cave in the side of the cliff and the opening was quite big. More of these four-armed monsters most likely.

My guess proved correct. The level four versions had weapons in their hands and shot beam attacks out of their mouth. Easy enough to dodge and then melt. The level 4 monsters were either hit or miss. Energy typing was a big deal. Or it could be dungeon monsters were easier.

That didn’t make sense since the Bulwark Shield had been easy. I guess it was that level 4 monsters had more abilities so mis-matches were more pronounced. If my main attack didn’t hurt them much, I was out of luck.

I was not about to get in a sword fight with a level 4 monster despite having a sword on my waist. It was way to risky and I wasn’t a sword fighter. I only kept the sword since I was used to it and for intimidation purposes.

If I had to draw it at some low leveled idiots I would rather not kill it was better than melting everything as a threat. Also melting stuff was kind of my signature move. I needed to be discrete and not leave clues everywhere as to my location.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I knew one person was after me, looking to turn me into a chair and I had pissed in her bed and stolen her kid. Also wrecked her home. Back on Earth that would have been the twist in my case to bring it to national attention. The bed pisser strikes again!

I had only done it since she had called me a dog and I thought it would really piss her off. I smiled at the pun as I made my way towards the dungeon skill crystal after wiping out the monsters. I wasn’t going to complain, and I should probably be grateful the level 4 monsters in the zones I had checked had ways to counter me.

It had gotten my brain thinking about the type chart a lot more and how I could utilize that knowledge to my advantage. I poked the skill crystal hoping for one of the skills I was looking for. Void Grasp was pointless in my mind. I was not a melee fighter. Arms now that was interesting. It would give a person two extra arms.

A physical change type skill. I hadn’t seen one before. That would be interesting and allow a person to use multiple skills at the same time if they had the silent upgrade. Get a quad skill attack going. I took the upgrade instead since I wasn’t about to waste a skill slot on something like that.

I picked minor effect death, instead of nullification. I wanted to vary up the type of my skill a bit. While nullifying defenses was also good, it was already quite strong. I also had no doubt in my mind that the Divine Empress hadn’t invested a lot into the Aura stat. Maybe 5,000 stat points at most but probably less than that, could even be 1,000 if things were in my favor.

Personally I would put my money on 5,000 or higher for the Aura stat. The point being, was that my Acid Shot was already strong enough to deal her damage if it landed and she was so fast that having it hit her shield skill and hoping it would break was pointless with it being a higher level.

Better to have some of that death energy in the skill to target monsters that adjusted their defenses and to deal some death energy damage to the Divine Empress. If she had some personal defense, or direct energy manipulation, I figured another type was better.

I could be wrong about this, but at the very least it gave me more confidence when dealing with monsters. My main attack had to work. If it didn’t, I was screwed. Especially against level 5 monsters. It would work much slower at melting them due to their innate defenses and struggle heavily with level 6 monsters most likely, but it was a good tradeoff in my mind.

After leaving the dungeon, I continued my Southernly course. There would be two more zones and then a void zone. I might go East or West I wasn’t sure. I had a die in my pack to roll to keep things random. If the Avatar or anyone else had some kind of prediction based skill, hopefully that would make it a lot more difficult for them.

Or one roll to decide how many rolls and add up those numbers of all the following rolls and then deciding based on that. That way if there was any subtle manipulation of the die the person doing that at a distance, cough Avatar cough, would have a much harder time working out the process.

Then I would change how the randomness worked each time I had to make a decision where I could go multiple directions. Just piling on the randomness and obtuseness as much as possible. Hopefully she got a headache from trying to figure it all out.

That was the thing about having all this time to think. I could really think and work out counter measures in a way I couldn’t before when I was under a lot of pressure. I had to keep thinking constantly against both of my enemies. Neither of them was a joke and they were both good at different things.

If the Divine Empress and Avatar had gotten along I shuddered to think what would have happened. It would have been game over for everyone else. But that would be like the Ritualist and I hugging it out and getting along. It was just impossible with our personalities. After what the Divine Empress did to the Avatar, and the Avatar having a hand in what I did to the Divine Empress, there could never be peace between the two.

It would have been a power couple to be sure. It made me wonder how the meeting between the two had originally gone. The Avatar had to have known the Divine Empress was super dangerous after getting beaten.

Then I realized the Avatar couldn’t talk about stuff most likely and the Divine Empress wanted answers. With the threat of doom from killing the Avatar, she wouldn’t take that risk. Instead, she turned the Avatar into a human shaped nugget slowly. But after a certain point, you can’t remove any more.

So you toss her into a pit and leave her there, hoping she will mentally break and give you answers that you want, even if she can’t. The Avatar would plot and communicate remotely, to tell her people the best ways to get stronger while spying on everyone. Then, she would make a break for it once I through everything into chaos.

“You are an ass Avatar,” I said aloud. No response like all the other times. Still it was comforting in a way. I liked to joke on car rides with my phone saying words like bomb, terrorism, Allah Akbar, thinking one of the government alphabet agencies was listening in. Nothing ever happened, but it was amusing to think of some poor cubicle worker looking at the alert from their monitoring software about my phone and them saying, ‘not this guy again.’

The Avatar was just like that, but I knew she was listening in no matter what and I was important enough to monitor. I should change it up a bit. “Avatar, your mother smells of elderberries and your father is a shrubbery,” I said aloud. No response.

Well one of these days she would respond or be listening in and be confused how I knew she was spying. Then she would waste time trying to figure out how I knew before realizing that I was just saying things randomly into the air as a counter intel procedure.

These were the little things that kept me amused on my trek through the zones for more skill upgrades.