Chapter 18
Impiety
The tide of monsters never ceased--though they were being ripped to shreds, their souls torn asunder, they never stopped coming. Despite the fact that wyverns appeared in the sky, they fell too, but not immediately. In fact, they came close to reaching him several times because they were effectively immune to all of the 'post-damage' AoE that he was relying on to clear the hordes of enemies. As such, unless the spear targeted them directly, or one of the random abilities that he unleashed during the Chant or after a Level-up, they wouldn't take any damage. Luckily, they seemed to only have around 25 Health and would mostly die in one hit.
Asher realized that, even with the mind-bending variety of monsters that were swarming him, their stats seemed to be ‘hard-coded’, as it were. Something like a twenty-feet long python, for instance, had the exact same HP as the ordinary goblins. So, even if the quantity was brutal, they were shoved into ‘archetypes’ and their stats mimicked that. Though their abilities did not.
For the next several level-ups--in fact, all the way to the 20th, he always got upgrades to the existing abilities.
Entropic Vanishment [+1]
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Cooldown: 30s (lowered by 0,6 seconds for every 10 monsters killed by a Chaos-school spell)
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Psalms of Ataxia [+1]
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+20 yards range (80 -> 100)
60% Magic Damage reduction (50% -> 60%)
-5s CD (45s -> 40s)
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Hand of Tumult [Uncommon--Chaos Evolved]
+0,66 Luck
Level: 2/3
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Vassal of Infinity [+1]
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-- Higher chance of using high-tier spells.
Multicast Chance: 5% (3% -> 5%)
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Soul of Chaos [+1]
+10% to all Minimums (min. Increase of 1)
...
Though the effects weren’t readily apparent, few things were in the current cacophony. After all, none of this made sense--not in any capacity. He was fast outpacing the enemies, and the only way he could die was if he was accidentally one-shot. But none of the enemies deal enough damage to one-shot him--at least with the abilities that had a chance of actually hitting him. The most he took from one spell was 8, and it was an arrow-shaped array of golden light that he didn’t notice that hit him just as the Vanishment ended.
Because of the Blessing as well as the artifact, he restored both the missing Health as well as the overheal shield within seconds, rendering it almost pointless.
The world blurred--and the number of monsters he was killing ceased to matter. He’d grown numb to it, despite knowing that he shouldn’t have. But the corpses, the screams, the rivers of blood that tangled with the earth... numbness was the only shield that kept him alert.
As soon as the number of monsters killed hit 1,000, three things happened--first was that every side spawned 500 monsters at the same time, totaling 2,000 monsters spawned at the same time. Asher earlier hypothesized that he might have to face 1,000 monsters for the last wave, but it was apparent now that he was having sweet dreams.
The second thing that happened was that the 'arena' abruptly expanded, quadrupling in size within the blink of an eye. The lush greenery still untouched by hell lay juxtaposed with the cataclysmic ruin at its center, painting a rather morbid picture. Nonetheless, Asher sighed in relief--he was already beginning to wonder just how he'd navigate the world once there was nothing to really navigate.
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And the third thing that happened was that a choice wasn’t automatically made for him. The world paused and he let it sit as he desperately needed a breather. Two choices appeared in front of him, both gilded in gold, though they weren’t Callings but rather two abilities--Ultimate Ability, it said and mentioned he had to pick one and could use it on his own. Finally, he smiled bitterly, he had some control over his fate once again.
Note: Due to your calling, your choices are restricted to Chaos-school Ultimate Abilities.
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Severing of Fate [Ultimate Ability]
Level: 0
Effect: Sacrifice 80% of your Max HP (cannot be used if it would kill you). Instantly kill the number of enemies matching the amount of Health sacrificed. If there are no ordinary monsters, instead deal damage to the Elite / Boss monster equivalent to the sacrificed Health.
Cooldown: 300 seconds
Sword of Impiety [Ultimate Ability]
Level: 0
Effect: Slash out in the desired direction, summoning a chaos-infused array of swordlight. Every enemy the ability hits is temporarily corrupted and turned, forced to fight for you. For the duration, they gain 300% boost to all their stats but also take 100% more damage. If the sword hits an Elite / Boss monster, instead stun the enemy for a duration. Cannot be immuned (excluding Special Statuses)
Max Converted Targets: 15
Conversion Duration: 60s (or until death)
Elite Stun Duration: 8 seconds
Boss Stun Duration: 3 seconds
Cooldown: 300 seconds
Asher whistled lowly at the descriptions. He knew immediately that he'd pick the second one as the first ability was severely limited by his current Health. He had 30 Health in total, which meant that using the ability he'd sacrifice 24 and kill 24 monsters. He was killing twice that number with each passing second. However, this was one of those build-defining abilities when all things come together in perfect unison to create something transcendent. He simply wasn't 'there', at the moment.
The second ability, too, wasn't exactly run-saving, but was quite interesting. While the conversion was a nice addition that would speed up his clear, especially if he used it on the flying enemies to get the full duration of the ability out, he was vastly more interested in the secondary part of it which was the stunning of the Elite and Boss enemies, especially so for the Boss ones. While three seconds weren't a lot in general, in a fight... they might be everything. Those three seconds could save his life and were a sort of life-saving guarantee that didn't depend on RNG and was entirely to be used at his own discretion.
The cooldown itself was borderline abusive, but it was fine. He’d use it whenever it was available until he had to save it for the boss.
He held back from selection for a moment, scrying the battlefield in its entirety. He was eastbound in his positioning and was just some forty yards from reaching the newly opened parts of the map. The monsters from the other sides couldn't simply beeline toward him due to the wreckage at the center and would instead have to take the roundabout way. This would buy him several minutes at the very least to gut his way through the 500 on his side, creating some breathing room.
Among the newly-spawned monsters, strangely, the variety diminished severely. The most populous species were goblins, comprising some 70% of all the spawned ones, with orcs, ogres, and trolls filling out 29% of the rest. The remaining 1% were the occasional flying wyvern and hellhound-like dogs with four heads.
Selecting Sword of Impiety, the gears of time began to spin again as the collective roar of the monsters shook the world. He rapidly moved over to the new land, feeling almost like crying once his feet touched the unbroken grass and dirt. Though he knew it wouldn't last for long, it was strangely comforting still.
Because of the Level-up, three random abilities began firing at random--two bolts of lightning from the sky, six ethereal blades that spawned in a ring around him and circled him for some 10 seconds and the fire that spawned behind him whenever he'd walk. The fire didn't last long either, and he kind of despised it as it began to burn away the grass and spread out wildly. As he didn't know whether it'd hurt him, too, if he got caught up in it, he had to make a wild circle and walk back to the already-scorched portion.
The abilities never stopped firing, however--the 500 soon became 450, and then 400, and soon after 300. He managed to Level twice in that span, increasing his Health by an extra 5 and his damage by 1. The leveling was rather slow, but he already expected that. Though it was a bit preemptive, he estimated roughly that he'd be around Level 40, at most, by the time the boss spawned.
"AAAGHHH!!!" he screamed in pain as a sudden jolt of agony ripped through his left side; glancing over, he stared in horror as the charred flesh fell down, blood spraying out. His entire left arm was chopped off by an arrow that lay softly embedded in the dirt right next to the limb. The pain was excruciating, but he endured, his heart drumming out in terror. The arrow was swift, accurate, and, most importantly, deathly silent.
To his shock and awe, he watched his left arm regrow whole after just 8 seconds and some 80 kills. The sensation was strange--it felt as though it was burning and freezing at the same time, invoking a feeling of dread that he had to consciously suppress.
"Shit," he threw himself as quickly as he could to the side, just barely in time to hear a soft whimper of a wind whiz past him. The 'invisible' arrow landed on the ground next to him, stirring dirt ever so slightly but not much else. Asher immediately looked over through the central cataclysm and toward the source--among the group at the northern end of the plains, there was a human. No--his ears were curved and elongated and he had three eyes instead of two. He was crouching in the midst of the slowly moving army, his arms grasping an ordinary-seeming wooden bow and nocking backward. But...there was no arrow. At last not the one Asher could see.
As soon as he saw the string flutter, however, he used Vanishment as though by instinct--less than the blink of an eye later, '-1' appeared above him. The arrow streamed through his chaotic self and landed on the ground, visible once more. It was akin to a white shadow whisked into the shape of an arrow. It bled white in the wind for a moment, as though it were smoke, before disappearing.
Chains wrapped around his heart and he felt terror--unless he was consciously looking for it, it was impossible to dodge. Even constantly moving wasn't enough since the archer fired at where he would be, not at where he was. It was an ordinary mob, and yet was the deadliest one he'd met today--even among the shower of flashy magic that should have wrought his heart in terror, it stood out.
At the same time, another curiously morbid thing happened--the wind... the wind was no longer silent. It was faint, distant, buried under the countless explosions and effects of magical spells, but he heard a voice. It was soft. Lingering. Detached. He managed to focus on it for but a moment and caught a glimpse of the heavenly whisper that chilled him to the bone. Somebody was singing, jovially, their voice an instrument of beauty.
~~Hark, child born of war, draw near,
Come hither, let thy hope appear.
Attend, child, behold His breath,
The master whom we all owe in death~~