Chapter 12: Too Easy?_Through the Abyss

Chapter 12: Too Easy?

It seemed that his new power and knowledge reduced the danger of the Yellow Knights so much that he couldn’t level up even just to 13. Maybe he shouldn’t have advanced Voiding to its new state… ah well, he had no clue how experience was calculated.

The newest monster was immediately obvious. His Perception allowed him to see clearly for miles away, even through the omnipresent haze of the Abyss. At the edge of his vision, he often saw blurry shapes in the thick haze. They were just far-off demons, and it wasn’t worth it to go that far out of his way to kill a single demon. He had dozens of closer ones in his view at any given time.

But this wasn’t a tiny shape on the horizon. It was a gigantic, vague… shape on the horizon. It had to be at least 10 meters tall. As he got closer, that proved to be a very cautious estimate. The newest demon was a towering, turtle-like beast of rock. A bit like an Avalugg made of the same substance as the ground, only rougher and bigger. Wasn’t there a huge Avalugg boss in Legends Arceus? He wasn’t sure. He never played that game.

The huge creature was quite a daunting prospect, not in the least because it could well be an ‘area boss’. While it would line up well with the pattern of a new monster every five levels, it could also be that thirty was some sort of benchmark that presented a boss fight. There was one way to sort of check, but it would be kind of boring…

Caution prevailed, and he continued past the monster and went further up the slope. If he found a couple more of them, it would be more likely that they were the normal new enemy. Then that would hopefully mean that its body proportionally weaker than other monsters. A guy can dream…

He did find a few more, but they were much less common than even the other new enemies at the time they first appeared. It made some sense, with their size. His extra caution didn’t amount to much, but he could have easily found out something important, so he certainly didn’t regret taking the extra time. Really, he should be constantly searching for any excuses to take more time to train.

However, now he was ready to initiate the battle. He stood staring at one of the distant giants. Around two miles separated him and the monster. It was time for some action. Well, he had constantly been fighting, but now was the time for dangerous and unknown action. Exciting.

He formed around one hundred void rocks for the initial volley, an unleashed them all in a few seconds. It was almost comical how fast his arms flew, especially as his Mind wasn’t enhanced to speed up his thought process. Even his absurd Perception wasn’t enough to keep up with the tiny bursts of 210 effective Agility. The rocks crashed down onto the rock turtle, covering it in a cloud of debris as it bellowed in pain or anger.

The cloud of dust was a good sign—his ammo didn’t leave dust, so it must have been parts of the turtle’s rocky skin—and didn’t hinder his perception at all. He could clearly see the damage to its front, and its head looked like the surface of the moon. He got a few more throws off before the monster retracted its head inside its body.

It was a bit worrying to see a monster actually react reasonably to his attacks, but that worry was mostly assuaged as the turtle further shifted its armor-like shell around its front and charged at him. It wasn’t all that fast though.

Trent hoped that this was the standard pattern for these beasts, but he would have to be cautious of the possibility that its giant head contained a brain capable of reason. Anyway, back to the battle.

He continued to throw rocks at the charging mountain. Its armor was steadily smashed away, and the creature eventually stopped moving. Its head had been turned to rubble along with the majority of the surrounding neck area. Did that thing have a neck? Anyway, it had died. Quite quickly and easily. In fact, it was a little bit easier than killing an Abyssal grunt of the same level.

*Defeated Failed World Spirit Golem (Lv. 30). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 15 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.* 

Maybe the ‘Failed’ part of its name referred to its relative weakness? Also, that was a lot of qualifiers in one name. It was a Golem? What was a World Spirit exactly? Again, he had many more questions for answers. Also, golems were generally created, not spawned. How did that line up with the way the Abyss was populated with seemingly infinite monsters?

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Maybe golem actually meant something else, and he just had weird ideas about them because of media he consumed on Earth. But so far, Earth media had the right ideas about most monsters and the way the system works. So, maybe he should really be watching out for the real enemy of this area: the being or beings that created the golems.

Now… He looked at the mountainous corpse ahead of him. What could he do with this.

So, it was kind of annoying to get access to harder rocks right after he finally managed to make his own. But it was probably for the best. The body of the World Spirit was even harder and denser than his void ammo, but it would be a pain to carry more than a few of them. Meanwhile, he could just make as many void rocks as he liked.

Getting access to the body of the World Spirit might have made him delay creating Create, which would be quite bad in the long term. After all, Create got stronger with him, and World Spirits couldn’t be relied on to do that. Also, just thinking about the annoyance of transporting pieces of the turtle made him shudder.

Now, to test if the fat monsters were good for exp. They weren’t. It took a good dozen before he finally leveled up, even with the experience he had gathered before encountering the turtles. They were quite a bit better than any other monster in this regard, but in terms of a new monster, they were more like Morel Fudasha in that the lack of challenge hurt his experience gain. This was good evidence for the theory that killing the same monster would slowly reduce the experience.

…

*Defeated Failed World Spirit Golem (Lv. 31). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 15 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.* 

Level up! You have reached level 13. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity.

Finally! This was probably the longest he had ever gone without gaining a level. He hoped it wouldn’t become a trend. That sweet, sweet message was one of the things that kept him going. Well, he wasn’t really in too much danger of collapsing and not moving forward. But being miserable isn’t a bad thing just because it makes you unproductive.

That should be self-evident. He was thinking himself in circles.

There was nothing much else to do besides move forwards. And hope whatever being created the golems didn’t take offence.

He killed a lot more of the World Spirits, but they stopped giving any good exp pretty quickly. While they could probably kill him just by stepping on him, and they could cover long distances quicker than he could, they were simply too unwieldy to be a threat. In the time it took for the monster to raise up its foot and slam it down onto him, he could sprint out of the endangered area.

It was a nice break from the other types—even if he still had to fight them as well—and quite the novel experience to fight a kaiju. Just looking at the scattering of huge corpses around the area gave him a slight imposters syndrome. The increased stats sort of balanced each other out when doing normal actions, but seeing evidence of how powerful he now was really made it sink in.

He once again paused after he got well into level 34. The relative weakness of the newest enemies was no reason to slack his training. He did a bit less than last time, but still made two new molds for Create and boosted Power Throw a little bit.

Skill Name: Create

Mold and solidify the power of your will into physical objects. Must have each creatable object saved within the Skill. Current saved molds: Throwing ammo, sword, helmet.

Skill Name: Power Throw

Increase the physical force of a thrown object by 150%. You can focus on this Skill to increase the effect to 676% and make the thrown object damage conceptual effects. 

Every bit of damage counts. He was coming to the end of what he could do with Power Throw without designing an entirely different connection instead of just remaking it with fewer flaws. His reasoning for working on the molds was somewhat illogical.

Firstly, it came from a sunk-cost fallacy where he wanted evidence that making a modular Skill was a good idea. Then there were the reasonable worries that a stray blow to the head could kill him, and that he might find himself in a situation where he couldn’t throw rocks. But both of those possibilities were extremely unlikely.

His Skills made a sword far less practical than a rock in almost any situation. And so far, no monster had shown any sign of attempting to attack his head. And if he was in the position to get hit at all, then he was already in dire straits. Not that it wouldn’t be extra security for new enemies, but it wasn’t at all essential.

Chapter 12: Too Easy?

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