The Systemic Lands

Chapter 377: Day 797 – Clearing Dungeons (1)

Chapter 377: Day 797 – Clearing Dungeons (1)

I arrived to the Northwest of Normandy in a level 3 zone. It was mistlands. I began racing through it and knew where mental attacks were coming from. That was a nice upgrade after getting a thousand Mind stat to find the hidden monsters. “Acid Shot.”

Rabbits, big ones too. About the size of a large cat or small dog that ate way too much. Well, I would take the mistlands over the swamp I had to go through. At least I didn’t have pants anymore, just shorts. I even took off my boots and socks and put them in my pack for the swamp.

I was not going around with wet boots everywhere. The slime water felt nasty between my toes and the monster eels swimming through the water had not been fun. But they were level 2 monsters, so while it was annoying, they weren’t dangerous to me in the slightest.

I had even let one green eel bite me. Its teeth couldn’t break through my skin. Not a threat, but annoying and nasty. But it was nice to know that at a certain point one would become totally immune to monsters at that level.

It felt that way for level 3 monsters to some extent, but I wasn’t completely sold on that yet. There might be something crazy out there that could get me in some weird way. I doubted it, based on what I had seen so far, but I wasn’t going to let a level 3 monster nibble on me for a test of my Body stat.

The fact I couldn’t really feel anything from these white rabbits mentally was more than enough to show that they weren’t that dangerous. Still not something I would just let attack me and ignore, but I could tank their attacks now.

That was something I had thought about and thrown out long ago. Even now, it wasn’t practical. Defense against monsters or people. Defending while sounding good on paper, was just a nightmare to do in reality.

The attacks of both people and monsters tended to be overpowered. Having a dedicated defense build or a tank build just wouldn’t be practical. Mobility was the far better option. That was why Body was my highest stat, even though I didn’t want it to be.

It wasn’t possible to just stand back and blast things. Or was it? Perhaps, I was thinking about the fight with the Divine Empress the wrong way. My failure wasn’t in moving fast enough, but my reaction time. I considered how fast she moved when she stopped me escaping when we met.

She was very fast, like a blur, but I could see her move when I had been paying attention to her. But that last strike, I had dodged slightly and only got my spine punched out of my back and not my heart. I considered that very carefully trying to think how much Mind and Body stat she actually had.

I would have to put her around 60,000 for her Body stat. I had enough time at having 20,000 in that stat to say that was probably where she was at based on how speed increased with stat points. It was a logarithmic curve. So, the lower stats were worth a lot more than the higher stats from what I had seen.

That meant her Mind had to be at least 30,000 to reasonably keep up with her Body stat. Even if she trained and practiced, you wouldn’t want to get below that two to one ratio. That meant she had about 7 seconds for every 6 seconds I had and about 1 second everyone else had with upgraded stats.

The difference was a lot less than my 3.5 seconds way back in Purgatory. I was basing this off the Body stat differences I had observed and hoping Mind lined up the same way, but mentally. It appeared to based on what I had seen, but I had made too many mistakes to say I was one hundred percent confident. Still, it was a good baseline.

With gestureless and silent and multi-cast upgrades, I could get in one attack before she closed the distance fully. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but I felt like it was manageable. It was just hard to overcome the fear and gut clenching terror I had of that woman blowing my spine out and sending me into orbit.

But, the stats weren’t as insurmountable as I thought, if I could upgrade my skills. But she had skills as well. She stopped multiple Radiant Beams at the same time, and had a ranged attack that could devastate the city. Throwing needles if I was remembering correctly. So probably some kind of imbue skill.

Two, there was Imbue Void and Imbue Force based on the effects of those throwing needles at flying summons. She could also change directions in mid-air. She got above me, but was able to knock me back down. I would also add in a mental defense skill of some kind after that mess with the Astrologer if she was planning on fighting him.

That accounted for five skills. She still had two meta-points, but I felt confident I had worked it out. A barrier, a way to change flight, two types of imbue, and a mental defense skill. The level was hard to estimate, but I would the skills at level 5, fully upgraded.

That would make sense with her combat ability. She would be able to go into a level 4 zones and wreck level 5 monsters. It would be hard, but she would be able to do it most likely. If she didn’t have skills, then a fight would be even between us.

But she had probably taken the time to minimize the cost of her skills and they out leveled mine. Even if I had fully upgraded level 4 Acid Shot, she could put up a barrier and circle around me and wear me down.

The thing was, I might be able to hold her off for a few seconds to twenty seconds, possibly. Two more upgrades that doubled the cost on Acid Shot would put the cost at 320 energy. I would have to do it. Since she had returned before I went into the tower, I couldn’t afford not to have that skill fully upgraded.

I needed to be able to spam it instantly to force her to keep her distance. I had no idea how to counter her throwing needles. Moving would help, but she would have an edge there as well. I thought about her meta-points. The Avatar had just mentioned she had two when I had spoken to her in the Forbidden City. I think the Avatar mentioned about passively boosting her skills with a meta-point.

Frowning, I tried to think if I was forgetting something. That night had been a mess. After the heist I had too many things thrown at me and had been focused on the Avatar, then the kid, and then getting away. The meta-points involved energy but I was entirely sure, maybe. I wasn’t about to ask the Avatar again.

Finally, there was the dungeon, a pit. It had taken a bit of searching but thankfully it was near the center of the zone. The dungeon was filled with lots of rabbits. I melted my way through them all. The level 4 monsters were bunnies with more powerful attacks and they dodged a bit. It was hard with the dungeon being a tunnel though. Even in the few chambers, they weren’t that hard to corner and defeat.

Easy, too easy. It really was hit or miss with these level 4 monsters and I paused to consider something. That defense the Divine Empress used to negate the Radiant Beams, that was probably null type energy. The opposite of that was sheer type.

I hadn’t run across many sheer type monsters or skills. But I would be on the lookout going forward for my fourth skill. It wasn’t something I wanted to pick, but if something came up I would grab it. Our skills would cancel and annihilate, and I could easily follow up with an Acid Shot through the hole in her defenses.

It would be a powerful trump card to have. While I was still banking on the super weapon, I was feeling better about myself and my chances after giving it a lot more thought. Wiping out those cultists and really thinking hard about that beat down I had received, created a lot of possibilities I had been overlooking in the past out of mental terror.

Every time I thought of the Divine Empress, it made my skin crawl and I just wanted to crawl under a blanket and hide. There was a primal part of me that she had scarred deep in my psyche that wasn’t easy to fix. Her return forced me to think about the possibility of us fighting and the steps I needed to take to be ready for it.

That was her mistake in letting me live. I had see what she could do and take measures to directly counter her skills. I had no clue on her meta-points, and there was no chance of me winning if she was uninjured, but I wasn’t about to go down in the first round either if we fought again.

Heck, I would call that losing the pre-fight banter, with how quickly I got beat down the last time. There was no fight, just her beating me up to get information. The fact she hadn’t hurt me unless she wanted to showed how gentle she had been.

It was weird to think like that, but it was true. Well time to check out this skill point. Bliss Shot and Poison Shot. Interesting but no Force Shot. That would be another great option for a fourth skill to get an annihilation effect. I picked multi-cast for my third upgrade for level 4 Acid Shot instead.

It would be good to be able to make waves of acid again. All those annoying level 4 monsters with weird abilities I could easily wipe out. These bunnies while annoying and attacking together, were vulnerable and I could win in a slug fest.

I left the dungeon and hesitated for a moment. I wanted to check out more level 4 zones and look at what a level 5 zone looked like. But I needed to upgrade my skills first, so I didn’t die by being stupid. The level 4 zones weren’t going anywhere and I had no doubt I would be doing a world tour once the Divine Empress was defeated, cataloging every single one.

Turning South, I kicked off the ground to head to the next level 3 zone. I could waste time later, right now I needed to focus and work on upgrading my skills as much as possible. Once that was done, I needed to get crafting crystals.

Hopefully along the way I would find a skill I wanted. Force Shot, Sheer Shot, or some kind of really crazy attack. Something that would catch her off guard. Astral Projection sounded great, but I had no idea where that was.

I would make copies of her son, and paralyze her for a moment while I struck, or something like that. I doubted it would work and she would easily see through such a thing, but I had a gut feeling that skills from a level 4 zone would be interesting.

It hadn’t escaped my notice that the Master Fleshcrafter had used the skill Exsanguinate. That didn’t sound like a regular skill, and I doubted it came from a meta-point. That pointed to something high level he was gifted by the Divine Empress.

A trump card for one of her most loyal followers. It made a sick sort of sense, since he seemed to be running things when I had showed up to the Forbidden City. He would need a way to add in some fear and make the minions obey. A skill that targeted blood, sounded quite terrifying and fit their themes quite nicely.

When I had an Empire, my personal guard would all have different skills and learn to recognize my energy signature. No heists or stupid impersonations. I hoped the Divine Empress was amused by what I had done.