Six hard days and eight more dungeons. I had done a loop out to the West of Esperanza and then to the South. I was headed for Neo Brasilia to resupply and then I would poke the Bulwark Shields to the South and looking for the roaming boss and upgrade my skills some more.

I wanted to find a roaming boss in a level 4 zone that had monsters that were easy to defeat. From my understanding of what the Astrologer had told me, was that the roaming bosses were based off the monsters in the zone.

But the conversation had been a long time ago and unfortunately the Mind stat was not improving my memory, which was unfortunate. It would have been nice to have a supercomputer for a brain. Just think and have perfect recall.

I missed having my notebook with me. Once the current crisis was done and the Divine Empress killed off, I would be keeping detailed notes and journals. While I didn’t think it was possible, I wanted to try and check for long term memory manipulation.

Checking for such things wasn’t easy, but it was something that needed to be done. Set up codes in my journals. That was one reason I had kept detailed notes of things I had discovered, but I didn’t have anything like that with me.

I had considered it, but I couldn’t allow a lot of my knowledge to fall into the wrong hands especially the Divine Empress. While I doubted, she would care, I wouldn’t be careless with key knowledge. It was too big of a risk. Also carrying something like that on me would be annoying and make me hesitate.

In the past I had liked to keep my journal safe. Then I ended up carrying it on me and then it was lost when Purgatory was destroyed. Now I felt like I needed to be able to sacrifice the pack on my back without a second thought.

I couldn’t be concerned about it in the slightest. It was about having the right mindset for fighting. It was annoying, but every bit of improvement I could get was too critical not to take into account. I didn’t have the luxury of allowing myself to get distracted mid fight, thinking about my pack.

If I had a journal or something I invested a lot of time in, then it would be a problem. Also, I was moving constantly from zone to zone. There was no time to rest. Either I was traveling, killing monsters, sleeping, or eating.

There was no down time. I was on a clock. I had to push myself and my mentality harder than ever before to even have a chance of surviving.

I had almost maxed out the upgrades on Force Wall. The upgrades were power, shape, minor effect fire, nullification, silent, power, shape, minor effect life, and then nullification. I already had the first upgrade power from before, and the next eight were easy enough to pick.

The entire idea was to maximize damage. It seemed odd to pick the minor effect of life when it was going to be a damage dealing skill. It was all thanks to the information on the type chart from the information I had recovered and the annihilation effect.

It was also an experiment on my end to better understand what minor effect did and how it interacted with other skills that had that upgrade. Acid Shot had minor effect death for its fourth upgrade, which was opposite life.

I had noticed a much stronger annihilation effect when both skills were used together. This was a clear case of one plus one equaling two and a half or maybe even three. It made me think that if two opposing skills were chosen along with all four minor effects from each skill, then the result would be much stronger than just combining two skills.

I tried to think why this would be or if it just might be Force Wall growing in strength and using specific shapes to better interact with Acid Shot. I had been experimenting constantly with both skills to practice and understand every nuance about them, since I would have to make the one attack I had with both count and wouldn’t have time to plan or think in a fight with the Divine Empress.

A real fight, was quick and there wasn’t time to think or plan. One had to act, or they were dead. Only in a chase could a person think, but in actual combat it wouldn’t be that simple.

Fights happened in an instant. While there might be dialogue afterwards, there was no dialogue in the middle of an actual fight and people monologuing. While I had known this, it was also something that had been driven into my brain after fighting both people and monsters.

That was why I was trying to understand the nuance of both of my skills. I had even tried Aqua Sphere and Force Wave and the results were quite scary. A blast of annihilation energy right in front of me. Aqua Sphere formed up water around me near instantly and swirled around me. While Force Wave pushed outwards.

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After thinking about it, I would be using my defensive skill as a point-blank attack. I had never really given it that much thought before. To turn my defensive skill into an attack skill, but it would be a good trap.

Use Acid Shot retreat, set up Aqua Sphere and then wait. The Divine Empress would charge in eventually and I felt confident avoiding ranged attacks. That was the risk of being a close-up fighter. Once she got close and reached through Aqua Sphere, I would vaporize her at point blank range.

Since I could shape Force Wall with the upgrades I had chosen, I could curve the skill to perfectly match the interior curve of Aqua Sphere. The resulting collision of energy was perfect, and Force Wave was moving outwards, sending the attack outwards from me. I considered it like a claymore.

It had been a surprise to realize the interaction, but I had been an idiot. Thinking defensive skills were defensive skills and attack skills were attack skills. I had been caught in a mental rut for a long time. That was why all the practice and then using my skills in combination and quickly clued me into this energy reaction.

So while I didn’t know exactly why having multiple minor effects led to an improved annihilation effect, my practice had led to something far better. A way to defend myself up close in a melee fight against the Divine Empress without changing my skills around and just leveraging them in a new way that would be unexpected.

There would also be no time to dodge either, which was the key thing. Once you were that close, you were committed. Also Force Wave started just in front of my hand gesture. I had been practicing the timing on level 4 melee type monsters as well.

That had been the hardest part. I needed to understand exactly when to trigger Force Wave as an attack was approaching me. That way just as the person or monster hit my Aqua Sphere, they would be caught in the annihilation effect.

I tended to err on the side of caution. I hated melee fighting and letting things get close to me. But the Divine Empress would have a lot of stats. And would be moving at a high rate of speed, much faster than these level 4 monsters.

That was why I needed to practice on them to build up my nerve for when the real fight occurred. I needed to let her get in close and then blast her. If I triggered my attack with Force Wave too early, then there was a good chance she could dodge or come up with a way to cancel out the attack.

So, I practiced and every single time my heart was in my throat. Dodging the level 4 monsters’ attacks and then waiting for them to approach. If they didn’t approach then I would use Acid Shot and just finish them off. But if they did approach, then I needed to wait.

I also had Acid Shot and Air Burst on mental standby in case I screwed up. That was another reason for both of them to be silent and gestureless. They were my core attack and movement skills, to get me out of a tight spot when I triggered Force Wave into my Aqua Sphere too early.

There was a smile on my face as I approached Neo Brasilia. It had been hard, but my mental fortitude had been increasing over the last couple of fights. I still felt incredibly on edge, letting a monster get close to me, but it was needed.

Once things settled down and the Divine Empress was dead, I might try to find two opposite beam type skills and then unleash annihilation effects that way at a distance. The training had stressed me out and my stomach was hurting again, well more like my gut.

I had chalked it up to the immense amount of stress I was under recently. There was no end to the amount of stress I was experiencing as the shadow of the Divine Empress loomed over everything.

I saw the walls of the city in the distance and smiled. I then staggered a bit as a sharp pain lanced through me. Dammit! “Avatar, you better not be messing with me!” I cursed out loud.

I kept moving. I had seen some grinding teams spread out in the level 2 and level 1 zones and very rarely a level 3 frostlands zone, but I didn’t pay them any mind. I wasn’t there for the point crystals. So while I knew they saw me, there was nothing I needed from them and there was no reason for them to talk to me either.

It was a bit lonely, but I thought I was handling things well. Except the stomach pain. It was probably an ulcer. I would have to talk with the good doctor once I saw him again. They were getting more and more frequent as well.

Just as I reached the gate to the city the pain intensified, and I actually stumbled. “What…what the hell,” I muttered. Good thing I was next to the city and a restoration was close. I rushed forward, through the city trying to ignore the cramping and sharp pain that kept coming from my gut.

I eventually reached the store pillars in the city plaza. Slamming my hands down on a pillar, I quickly got a restoration. I let out a sigh of relief as the pain went away. That had been scary. I knew mental ulcers were a thing, but I didn’t think I was that stressed.

There was another possibility that was also on my mind as I began purchasing supplies. It could be the bomb the Astrologer had alluded to. That didn’t make any sense though. He had said day 1,000 or 999, which was the same thing in my mind.

The point was, that was over 180 day days from now, or half a year. I could get being 10, 20, or even 50 days off. But 180 days would be about twenty percent of the time since I arrived in the Systemic Lands. Maybe he planted the bomb later, but that would just mean a larger margin of error.

Since the proxy was dead, could that have something to do with it? That didn’t make sense either since he had the letter planned out before hand when the Almighty System took him out. I turned away from the pillars when I felt my gut twinge again.