Chapter 124: Day 266 – The Power of Ten

We left the liquidating corpses behind and made our way to the Southeast clearing the monsters in our path in silence. I tried to count up all the people I had killed, but I couldn’t remember them all. They just blended into the background over time.

The only one I really remembered was Carlos. I liked him, but he still needed to die, otherwise I would have lost control of Purgatory. I wasn’t strong enough to allow it to happen. I actually liked the man, which was probably why his death still kept rattling around in my head. Now there was Tyrese and Ken to add to the growing pile of bodies. The once mighty Triumvirate, no more.

It was the afternoon when we came to a pit. There was no one else around. “Staying here, or coming with us?” I asked Aahan.

“Stay,” he said. If that was his choice, that was fine. A man of few words. I could respect that. Well time to go inside a deer dungeon. My father liked to hunt. I remember having to help clean the deer he hunted as a child. Blood and guts everywhere.

That turned me off hunting funnily enough. I didn’t mind knowing where meat came from. But cleaning and gutting an animal was a messy process. Also, the smell was quite terrible. No fun hunting part, just the skinning and gutting.

I had gone from cleaning deer, to hunting people, now about to hunt monster deer myself. Was my life coming full circle? One of the scariest things to think about, was that this was all a simulation in my mind like some sort of trippy dream or the Matrix. All I could trust in was, I think therefore I am and to keep moving forward.

Get too caught up in the silly things, you will get pulled down. Time to focus and get my head in the game, not that this was a game. Focus.

Naran held a lantern behind me. The tunnel went down to a massive cavern filled with deer. There was no discrete chambers or side tunnels. I counted at least 50 level 1 deer ranging from brown, white, yellow, and green. The weird colors were disturbing.

In the center of the herd were three large yellow deer emitting light. I counted another two patrolling around the outskirts of the herd. Deer had herds, but monsters had groups. Groups, they were all monsters, ignore the similarities.

I noted the large deer had antlers while the smaller ones didn’t. I had never investigated the gender of the monsters, since they always turned to dust. Something for someone to research or investigate in the future.

“We use the tunnel as a choke point. Back me up, if they swarm,” I said quietly.

“Got it,” Naran replied. Acid Shot x3. Four deer went down to three acid balls. The nearby monster deer looked in my direction and then went back to wandering about aimlessly in the chamber. I waited for my energy to come back.

Acid Shot. I took down several more deer. I always kept some energy for emergencies, but began to grind my way through the monsters. It took about 2 hours to kill them all off.

A skill crystal appeared. Ritualist you were slacking. Letting your skill points be open for theft. I wouldn’t complain. I poked the crystal. I had to choose my ninth upgrade, which was between nullification, persistence, and minor effect. I already had power, size, minor effect: death, nullification, silent, power, size, and multi-cast for Acid Shot.

I went with nullification. It was tempting to go with persistence, very tempting. But I wanted to counter magical defenses. Death was resistant, and I wanted my skill to work against anything. Persistence probably meant it stuck around for longer.

I thought back to the trap in the tunnel and how it took time for the slimes to die, despite all the upgrades to my skill. It was frustrating that I was put in that position despite my skill being upgraded so many times.

Persistence would be only useful against a super large monster or terrain if I had to melt my way through it. Otherwise, it was better that the acid went away more quickly with how dangerous and messy it was. Better to melt whatever monster was hit more quickly, hopefully nullification reduced their magical defenses. The two skills offered were Radiant Breath and Glowing Sight.

An attack and a utility skill. The utility skill was tempting, but I only had three skill slots available and all of them were in use. Where was my super powered cheat of an eye of a sharingan or a rinnegan? If either of those were an option, I would have dropped a skill in a heartbeat to pick them up. Probably a level 10 skill or something equally ridiculous.

I told Naran about the skills as we left the dungeon and made camp for the night. I was now faced with a massive headache. I wanted the tenth and final upgrade for Acid Shot to be gestureless. It would make the skill just a thought away with no tells or warnings.

But the cost would increase. Most likely to 20 energy if the cost doubled like it had at 5 upgrades, or it just increase another 5 energy to 15. That was unacceptable since I only had 100 Spirit. My skill had outpaced my stats. It would even impact my grinding speed, which was also unacceptable.

There was one thing that made me question all of that. One of the upgrades at the fifth upgrade had been cost. If the repeating pattern of upgrades held, cost would come again on the tenth upgrade. Why have cost as a final upgrade?

It made absolutely no sense to upgrade a skill ten times and pick that upgrade option unless there was something really good for maxing out all the upgrades on a skill. The flip side of that, was the fact that the Almighty System was completely unpredictable and unfair. My mind drifted to the Ritualist.

Summoning hordes of monsters was completely broken, but the Ritualist still pulled it off. It was incredibly frustrating, but that was the feeling of reality butting in. This wasn’t a game, there was no balance, progression, but rather cold hard logic of how things worked. If there was a rulebook, then I could have min-maxed this place easily.

All I could do was guess and my best guess was that the skill would be given an option to upgrade to a higher-level version of said skill. But with the costs of my level 3 skills, this didn’t make sense. I would rather have an upgraded level 2 skill, than a level 3 skill that did something very similar. The upgrades were too good. Unless there was a qualitative difference regarding the level of a skill.

The mental download from the skill crystal indicated that each skill could only be upgraded 10 times. But like usual, it didn’t give any other useful information. I also couldn’t undo skill points. I had no doubt I would have to pick an upgrade first to get more information, similar to how all the upgrades functioned.

The problem came down to the cost issue versus upgrading the skill with gestureless. I couldn’t afford to have the skill cost any more than it currently cost. Even 10 energy was pushing things. I needed a lot more Spirit.

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It was aggravating having to give up on a skill point. I looked at Naran. “How many upgrades does your Rock Lance have?” I asked.

“Three, speed, trajectory, and multi-cast.”

“Let’s grab the other skill point and you can take it.”

“Really?”

“I can’t afford the energy cost to go up again right now.” Naran nodded at that. Aahan was quietly sitting munching on a vegetable. “What about you Aahan, what do you think?”

“Pull the cart. Don’t die,” he said and went back to eating. I couldn’t tell if he was mentally defeated, accepting of his new job, or incredibly grateful to me and sticking around.

“Well, we can clear the other dungeon tomorrow and get you another upgrade Naran. After that, clear all the gates for any more clearing teams,” I said.

“Wouldn’t that let the Ritualist know we are here?” Naran asked.

“He has to know we are coming, and I don’t want to go into the city if possible. Killing any grinders, puts the pressure on him. With crystals needed to summon monsters, cutting off his supply will force him to act. His only move is to leave the city.”

“Might be tricky getting away against a horde.”

“There are range limitations. His monsters aren’t leaving the city and he hasn’t launched remote attacks on Purgatory. What he isn’t doing is just as important as what he is doing. If he could use his monsters to grind crystals he would. The main issue is that summoning monsters and using them remotely is very good at defending.”

“So, you want to force him to attack,” Naran said, and I nodded. I hated giving up the initiative, but I needed to get at the Ritualist in some way, and this was the best idea I had come up with.

“The issue is that he has a lot of crystals from what he stole from Purgatory. I hate reacting, but I can’t think of anything else I can safely do. Going into the city is just asking to be trapped and killed.” Naran thought over the issue a bit before responding.

“The problem is that we will be reacting. If the Ritualist can maneuver a force outside the city, he could surround us.”

“That is possible, but there have to be limitations of some kind. Hopefully. This place is unfair, with no sense of balance. The long range and sensing through his monsters are already insane.”

“My concern are those hybrid monsters that were brought up,” Naran said.

“That is why we need to poke him and see what he does.” All we could do was wait and see.

I had been going over how to handle this fight over and over in my head. The Ritualist could only kill me by attrition or by a trap. Even then it would not be easy. After getting my feet melted off once, I was not about to let it happen again. If I went into the city, Naran would be keeping the tunnel into and out of the city secure.

I couldn’t find the Ritualist. That was the biggest problem I faced. While I suspected he was near the store for convenience, that still meant hundreds of buildings. Even if I found the right building, I wouldn’t have a moment of rest and would be constantly under attack.

While my stamina was insane compared to when I first came to the Systemic Lands hundreds of days ago, it wasn’t infinite. Also, the monsters could employ advanced tactics instead of just mindlessly charging in. Their ability to juke and dodge made them exponentially more dangerous.

That was even before one got into the combination of slimes being on top of wolves’ heads. How was one supposed to fight a large group of monsters like that? Then there was Nox, or Ruth. It would be just like her to attack at the most annoying time possible.

I knew why I left her alive when we parted. She had saved my life and had been a teammate. I could only shake my head at my foolishness. I still had the earrings tucked away in my room. My thoughts drifted to Gertrude.

Now there was a woman who wasn’t horrible. I could only hope she kept up with her stats. What would life even be like with insanely high stats? It always just seemed to work out for people with super strength or other super abilities. Hopefully there would be a solution. Maybe depowering equipment of some kind, so I wouldn’t kill a person. I opened and closed my hands thinking about my grip strength. I hadn’t had issues yet, but who knew when they might occur?

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