Sam was attacked by a panicked barrage of tentacles, deflecting the ones about to hit, he moved the Aura Blade towards the creature, who panicked and created distance between them. The open area made chasing a problem, but not impossible.
Recharging his breathing mask, he followed after, using his Psyhands to drag him, trying to corner the monster enough to get in range. Activating Invisibility, he hoped that it would do something, but alas the creature seemed to be able to sense or perceive him enough that it didn’t matter.
This chase back and forth ended up with Sam finally getting in range enough to send an Aura Blade at it with a Fully boosted Launch. The same underwater explosion, cavitation bubble and carnage happened, followed by the same pained screeching. Sam expected a counterattack this time, as soon as the blade had delivered its damage, he moved the Aura Points back to his Barrier.
[ Void Rot has triggered on target: 25 damage.]
[ Hydra Swarm HP: 104 850 / 105 000 ]
During this whole time, Void Rot had been doing its thing, but the creature’s regeneration was more than enough to overcome it. The blade delivered its listed 125 damage, but like before, the damage delivered didn’t match the visual of just how much it was hurt.
In an aggressively defensive move, the Hydra spun around, flailing all its arms as a collection of whips. There was no way to deflect it. Parrying an AOE attack didn’t even make sense from a logical standpoint.
[ Armour, Defence 80 has lowered the damage. ]
[ Barrier HP: 0 / 125 ]
[ HP: 150 / 305 █████????? ]
[ Barbed Retribution: 30% damage was reflected. (45) ]
The Defence and Barrier took a solid chunk out of the damage, but 155 still made it through. The reflected damage still didn’t matter due to its regeneration.
Sam wanted to take a chance to drink a potion, but that wouldn’t be a good idea. Though he could probably drink it, it meant that he would have to take the mask off, leaving him blind for the seconds he needed. Those seconds would most likely mean a hit or two. Not a good trade. He would have to calm himself and deflect attacks, perhaps attack it repeatedly to keep it on its metaphorical toes.
As he was looking for options, an idea struck in his mind, or rather he remembered something that made him feel stupid. He had already learned how to see and keep track of things without seeing!
The monster only had ten tentacles, all of its attacks used those, so it only needed to grab onto them with ten of his Psyhands. Yes, this would cut down his available hands by 1/5th, but it still left him with 80% of his force.
Keeping his defences up, he grabbed onto all the tentacles, it wasn’t anywhere near enough to cause problems for the creature to move around or attack, but it gave Sam pinpoint control of where all of them were. Taking this moment to tear off his mask after inhaling, he focused on sensing with his Psyhands and deflected the incoming attacks with his other hands. This worked wondrously and though he swallowed some tainted seawater alongside the potion, it was more than enough!
[ HP: 302 / 305 ██████████ ]
Putting the mask back on it purged the water in a bubbly mess, but he could see again. Flinging both his hands up in victory, he continued his plan.
Since the Barrier needed to recharge, he left it to do its thing as he repeated the massive Launching attack, breaking another dagger in a violent show of excessive force. A tentacle came off in the trauma, and the water grew murky enough to make it impossible to see anything.
Pulling himself to the side, he kept his hands on the creature, but luckily, this was a wasted effort as it again darted off to try to hide in the open arena.
Before it left, Sam managed to check the damage done, it was the same low number damage as before, but he took one of its arms. There was enough blood in the water that he wondered how it was still alive. Perhaps the regeneration ability helped, he didn’t know.
But at least he had a way out of this, it was afraid, Sam was not.
Pulling himself after the creature, he used some time to find it this time as the water had surprisingly low visibility. However, giving it some time for the water to clear, he quickly found it in the distance.
As he neared, the creature tried to swim away, though one lacking tentacle didn’t slow it down, there wasn’t anywhere to hide and it was in range soon enough.
Ignoring the normal attacks, Sam opted to go for what worked, though he didn’t understand just why it worked at the moment, he didn’t mind.
As soon as he got in range, he reached out all his Psyhands and repeated the attack. Manifesting a cheap dagger, he pulsed everything into it. Consuming another five seconds of his Telekinetic boost, the dagger tore through the creature. Doing it again tore another massive wound, and again. Five pulses later the creature was barely able to move.
Even though each attack only did 5 damage, and was healed up almost immediately, the wounds to the creature were nothing short of horrifying. Almost full health but weak, barely able to lift a tentacle as it started to slowly sink towards the bottom of the large room they were in.
Sam was feeling almost a bit... mean. He started with protecting himself, meaning that anything he did here felt justified. But the latter attacks, it was just running away. He was locked in here and would eventually die even if he let it live. He had learned something interesting and surprising, so if nothing else he felt that he could return the favour by making it quick.
Expending the remaining of his Telekinetic Boost, he got a few more Launches, which finally had the Hydra stop moving and continue its slow fall towards the bottom.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Hydra Swarm: 1/1 - Completed. ]
Sam had mixed feelings on this. On one side, this was a horrifying DPS race where defences or lack thereof would be made very apparent. And you just needed to keep doing more and more damage. A true raid boss if he ever saw one. But at the same time, the way he defeated it by doing 5 damage at a time, something that didn’t even make sense, he had discovered something he needed to test more.
As he took a moment to relax and analyse what was going on, the murky waters slowly cleared up. There seemed to be at least some natural movement in it, and a familiar window popped up.
[ Experience gained: %¤&!¤#. ]
“Oh...” Sam commented, seeing the corrupted text changed his sense of victory to dread.
The window closed and a new one opened.
[ Levelup +10! ]
“....” Sam felt a weird need to say something, but as he was alone there was no need. “Ten levels...” he ended up letting out for himself.
On one hand, this was amazing, but on the other, only ten levels also felt a bit lacklustre. Had he not ended up with the damage surpassing attacks, he would most likely never have made it out of this. Why did the system put him against this thing when he realistically wouldn’t have a chance to make it out of here?
Instinctively putting all 10 points into Spirit, another window popped up.
[ Level 30 reached. Fourth class skill granted: Thoughtform Psyhands. ]
[ Thoughtform Psyhands: When manifesting a Psyhand, it can be manifested as a hand or as an object.
-If the object is a weapon, it does 1/2 Spirit damage no matter what shape it has. ]
Sam was very happy about this, though he still didn’t like being pulled into these solo dungeons, he always came out of them with something good.
And with his spirit now on 67, other things had bumped up!
[ XP to level 40: 535 496 888 081 / 2 748 779 069 440 ██???????? ]
[ HP: 355 / 355 ]
[ Energy: 33 ]
[ Aura Points: 27 ]
His happiness calmed down a bit once he saw that he needed over two trillion XP for level 40. But instead of focusing on that, he wanted to get out of here, he had some thoughts he wanted to check with Janik.
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Pulling himself to the rough center of the area he was in, he found the exit portal as expected, at least the system was consistent. Not waiting longer than he had to, he made for the exit portal and as soon as he triggered the exit and was enveloped by the white light, he cursed internally as he realised he forgot the Core.
“Fuck!” His muffled voice behind the mask shouted out once he felt his feet stand on solid ground. His annoyance was expressed at the loss of the core, but it faded as he felt the air on his skin and was able to take off the mask.
“Fucking shit, how long was I gone this time?” He asked himself, wondering how bad this had been for the others. Though, they were probably somewhat used to it at this point.
Looking around, he was back on the path leading up towards the Third Floor exit portal, the sun had gone down and it was in the middle of the night. Like before, he was exactly where he was when he was taken. The only difference was that he was now alone, still wet from the sullied water, and smelled like salt and fish guts.
This wasn’t an issue, annoying but fine as far as his stuff went on, rather he was more interested in the Thoughtform Psyhands.
He manifested a pair of Psyhands, but he mentally wanted one to be a dagger and the other to be a greatsword. Sam’s face turned to surprise when they manifested instantly, but in contrast to normal, they were visible, barely glowing translucent teal weapons hovered in the air in front of him. A small dagger as well as a two-handed greatsword. They clooked surprisingly mundane and simple in design, but they both read the same.
[ Psy-weapon:
Damage: 33.
Type: Slashing, Piercing. ]
This had Sam wonder, he manifested another pair and focused on one of them as a hammer, it had the same damage but listed as Blunt this time.
“Oh, that’s amazing,” left his lips as he despawned the new weapons. Thought the weapon size didn’t change anything, the damage type could be controlled.
Doing some quick math, with his new Spirit, Energy and thus ability to manifest 66 Psyhands, using his current arsenal, he would do 1500 damage, which was up from 1465 before the Spirit increase if filled with 5dmg daggers. Not counting critical hits or extra bonuses. If he swapped out the 5 damage daggers for 20 damage ones, this bumped to 1725. But if he swapped everything having less than 30 damage for a Psy-weapon, his total damage output increased to 2380. Which was a substantial increase.
If he did this to all the weapons, he would lose the effects of Shadow Fang, Bleeding Edge, Vampiric Dagger and the Bloodstone Dagger. The problem with them was that they had about 10% chance to trigger their effects, which in order were a 1 second blind, 5 bleed, 1 life steal and a crit that did 5 life steal. The bleed was a bit sad to lose, but 10% chance against the damage boost made this a simple trade. He’d sell them when he got back.
Walking up the path, he made straight for the portal leading out of this place. Exiting as soon as he got in range of the exit zone, he found himself back on Earth right after. It only took a few seconds before his phone vibrated several times. Taking it out, he saw a bunch of messages from Janik. Like before, there were some pictures of Dia, Elara and the kids, they seemed like they were having fun. There were also several messages telling him to call as soon as he could, no matter what time it was.
It was nighttime, and after his phone had synced he saw that it was past 2 AM, and it was two weeks since he disappeared.
“God damn time dilation shit...” Sam commented to himself as he took Janik up on the order, calling him.
Sam was surprised when the one answering wasn’t Janik, but Dia.
“Zar! Zar back?!” She sounded almost desperate.
“Yes, I’m back,” he replied, and as soon as he confirmed it, he heard the phone being dropped and a very excited Dia running off shouting for Janik.
He held the phone for a short moment before it was picked up again. “Your girl tells me you’re back,” Janik commented calmly.
“Yep. Full of saltwater and squid guts, but I’m back.”
“I... I suppose we can meet up and you can tell me about it?” Though Janik had a questioning tone, there was a subtle hint of this not being a question.
“Yeah, that works out, I’ll get a room and clean up,” Sam commented as he caught himself smiling at Dia’s happy noises in the background.
“We’ll be there in not long,” Janik commented right before he reacted as if he was jumped on before the call ended.
Sam chuckled to himself as he pocketed his phone, heading back to TAC to get a room and some food.
Coming out of the shower, he had at least rinsed off his gear before ordering a cleaning service on the clothing and armour to get it properly cleaned. Most of the weapons were surprisingly fine, might be the fire and electricity when he uses it that takes care of things, or just that he didn’t use them that much this round, opting for the Launch instead.
He got dressed and started eating, but it didn’t take long before there was a single knock on the door, followed by frantic knocking. Assuming this was Dia he used a Psyhand to unlock it, bracing for impact.
The door flung open and an eager Dia came in. In the same movement as she saw Sam, she beelined for him, not breaking in the slightest as she crashed into him. Had he not already expected this and sat down on the couch, he would have been knocked over and most likely slammed into the floor.
She proceeded to make happy noises as she rubbed her face against his neck like a dog who hadn’t seen its owner for months. Janik was more composed as he closed the door after himself, sitting down on a chair instead of on the couch.
Janik crouched down to let Elara slither down his arm onto the floor, she came over to Sam and coiled up between him and the edge of the couch.
“I’m glad to see you in good shape,” Janik smiled, giving Dia her moment to get her thing out of her system.
“Yeah, same. It was short for me this time, I don’t think I was in there for more than an hour or two,” Sam smiled back, his head being knocked back and forth at the eager Dia who received a strong hug instead. Both for his own sake, but also to somewhat keep her calm for a moment.
Dia went into a long rant in her native tongue, though Sam somewhat knew at least some of the language, it was far too fast for him to follow it. He understood that she was lonely and felt alone, even though Janik and the kids helped her.
“Well, I’m back now,” was the only thing he could reply with. Since he thought he only got half of whatever she said.
“When, Zar leave next?” She looked at him with large, sad eyes as she asked.
“I have no idea,” he smiled solemnly at her, as he honestly had no idea. “But, that brings me to something.” Sam refocused onto Janik before continuing. “I have a few things I think I realised. I think the Solo dungeons are related to my wishes, a way for the Hax-system to give me something but not for free. Each Solo Dungeon gave me something I wanted but in a roundabout way. I wanted good gear, and I got the Vampiric Blade in the flesh dungeon. Though I had you, I was unsure and wanted a better team, I was sent to the PvP island, but got Dia and some gear. Now I wanted to speed up the levelling, not wanting to grind for days and.... Though the fight was... interesting, it gave me ten levels.”
Janik’s smile was still on his face, but it turned very fake and forced. “Oh. Ten levels... How good for you...” His voice wasn’t in it.
“Well, I had to fight a Hydra Squid thing with over a hundred thousand health, and a 300 HP a round auto heal, if you want to give it a go.” Sam countered with an annoyed tone.
This softened Janik’s expression. “Oh, damn... How did you beat that?”
Sam explained the fight, what the squid could do, and it’s deal, but in more detail he explained the weird way that he took it out.
“Wait, so... Your attack only did five damage?” Janik’s face screamed of disbelief.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense. The Health listed only the normal damage but in reality, it hurt it considerably, even to the point of losing a tentacle once.”
“That... doesn’t make sense at all...”
“I know, but I think it might be related to the System as a whole. Though the solo dungeons might be a way for the Hax system to help me grow without giving it for free, flagging something, I think I have a theory on why the damage I did was listed as low even though I severely hurt it.”
Janik looked more interested than before, leaning forwards in his chair. “Go on.”
