Status User William (1oPg72j9) -
[Class] - [Ruined Lightning Inquisitor (C+)]
Level - 6 [6/99]
Runes Held - 3187
Runes Needed for Level Up - 1102
William dumped his runes into one level up in both of his (C+) [Class]es. He watched as the system pinged him for fourteen unallocated points and nothing else. No new skill or ability. He was getting a bit greedy with how much he had been gaining in such a quick amount of time, he pulled up his status page.
Status User William (1oPg72j9) -
[Class] - [Ruined Lightning Inquisitor (C+)]
Level - 7 [7/99]
Runes Held - 983
Runes Needed for Level Up - 1263
Strength - 67
Dexterity - 53
Endurance - 38
Vitality - 66
Intelligence - 28
Wisdom - 28
Arcane - 45
I still have enough to level up my [Pathetic Tavern Brawler] class.
William dumped those runes into it as well, earning himself another measly two unallocated stat points. It felt like a pittance compared to the seven he got from each level up of his (C+) [Class]es. But free stat points were free. More so if they were from an extra level he would not have been capable of getting otherwise in an area filled with monsters that were bank bags filled runes to be farmed.
Now, with sixteen points available to him, he wondered whether he needed to readjust the way he split his free points. Should he start min-maxing for specific stats and builds? Or was it smarter to dump the majority of his stats into arcane and hope it affects everything else properly.
It only took a moment for him to decide.
Might as well keep the same plan I've been using. Even distribution on all my stats. I wont ever lack free stats to dump into attributes with so many classes.
He ended up rounding out most of his attributes into fives or tens. Three into Strength, two into Dexterity, two into Endurance, two into Intelligence, and two into Wisdom. That left him with five remaining that he had to split between his Arcane and Vitality. He couldn’t even out both at the same time, only one or the other. In the end, he placed four into Vitality to get to seventy points overall and the last one into arcane.
William would only need four more unallocated stat points during his next level up to get Arcane to a clean number, which should not be long from now.
It was only a matter of aggroing the Corrupted Dead without waking the Death Knight for as long as possible.
Or experiment on what actually activated the Death level threat.
Regardless, William had to reach level ten as soon as possible, without wasting any more time. His goal would stay to reach level ten in all of his classes at the same time before he finally returned to report his successes to Zefor. Maybe even make a couple attempts at the Death Knight before resolving itself to turning in the quest and figuring out what the ancient monster had planned for him.
Not that Zefor would not notice him reaching it as soon as it happened.
The old man had proved that he was keeping a close eye on whatever William did, otherwise he would not have noticed the whole respawning after death thing.
William resolved himself to his updated rune farming strategy. He would target only Corrupted Guardsmen and Soldiers, refusing to fight any other type of Corrupted Dead; including the Archers, Mages, less armored dagger wielding, and the full plate soldiers with a longsword as their primary weapon. Eventually, he would test them all out and experiment, maybe even loot the weapons for future purposes, but for now, he would stick to this plan.
Get to level ten as quickly as possible without any unnecessary pauses in between that didn’t involve resetting the Death Knights aggro. He was hopeful that he could get strong enough to finally be able to fight it on even footing.
He went about targeting lone Corrupted Dead that fit his plan. Never so much as attempting to aggro two at a time. This wasn’t the timeframe for experimenting on how strong he was, only tests for his skills would be acceptable during the grind. Especially at the risk of dying again for no reason. He would take advantage of what he understood and how he understood it without new things coming in to ruin everything.
William kept grinding them down and testing his abilities and ways to kill things. Discovering more and more about his strengths and weaknesses, that also meant a ton of skill level ups too. He quickly learned that his initial plan to use the venom on the ground as a slippery agent of chaos due to its slime-like attributes was a horrible idea. The only thing it did on the ground was damage the structural integrity of the stairwell.
That had been a massive mistake.
The only thing that saved him from a horrible fate was that the corrosiveness only lasted for a few moments. Not long enough to cause enough significant damage to drop him into the dark abyss underneath. It hissed and sizzled out of existence, leaving black smoke as a sign that it had been there if he didn’t consider the gaping hole that was in the ground now.
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He also learned, after the ninth attempt at a venom blob and his lightning domain on at all times, that it had begun to leave a bad migraine, closer to a weak brain freeze than the traditional headaches.
Yet, no matter what he tested or how he tested it, the safest option remained pushing them off the ledge. Even if it wasn’t the most effective, it was the most reliable for the time being because it didn’t rely on him having to fight through the headaches and mental strain of using the venom in tandem with his other skills as well. It cost him the least in whatever metric accounted for that.
[Chained Lightning Domain] and [Heavy Strike] cost him less per use.
Not to mention his habit of missing vital pieces when throwing his venom around causing long unnecessary battles.
More so with the crazy, relentless pressure caused by the Corrupted Guardsman compared to the Soldiers' more cautions and measured approach.
His best process remained to kite and get them into position, stun them with a barrage of lightning zaps to stun them into place and follow it up with a single [Heavy Strike]. Keeping good momentum and space to prevent any mistakes while launching them off the ledge and into the dark abyss below. All while making sure he never got close enough to the edge to fall himself with being slightly unbalanced after using [Heavy Strike].
William shouted as booted the latest Corrupted Guardsman off of the stairwell. His hands had begun to grow heavy with all the skill usage and brain foggy causing him to miss the direct attack with his sword, but not enough to stop him from getting close enough to kick the Guardsman in the chest.
Battle Concluded!
Killed - [Corrupted Guardsman (E-)]
Runes Gained - 2512
This was only the fifth kill he had gotten.
It was a much slower pace than he had expected, but it still provided him with a ridiculous amount of stats and levels.
He stepped away from the edge, making sure to step over the holes his venom had caused all over the ledge and pressed his back on the doorway to the courtyard. It was getting harder and harder to see as the sun started to set from the outside of the building. The small windows weren’t giving enough light to make him comfortable with walking down the stairwell as exhausted as he was.
A groan escaped his lips as he let himself slide down and relax.
Guess I’ll find out if I keep looping to the same time or whether it’s just a basic respawn.
William was soaked in sweat, dripping as though he had wrestled or shadowboxed for hours, endlessly, with no breaks. His lungs burned, a few hits he suffered ached in dull pain, and head felt ready to split in half and fall off his shoulders. He wasn’t sure he could take on another Corrupted Dead in the state he was currently. It took six of them to reach the same state he recalled himself to be in after beating the very first guardsman in front of his original cell.
That was a massive improvement.
“Status,” he said between deep breaths.
Status User William (1oPg72j9) -
[Class] - [Pathetic Tavern Brawler (F-)]
Level - 6 [6/49]
Runes Held - 2645
Runes Needed for Level Up - 1102
Strength - 70
Dexterity - 60
Endurance - 50
Vitality - 70
Intelligence - 40
Wisdom - 40
Arcane - 50
Skills -
Block Head [12/99]
Novice Heavy Strike [15/99]
Chained Lightning Domain [11/99]
YaKinov Venom Manipulation [14/99]
Venom Immunity [1/1]
Lightning Immunity [1/1]
Fearless Earthling [1/1]
William had already pushed all his other classes to level 9, leaving [Pathetic Tavern Brawler] as his last one. He could get two more levels from this kill alone, putting him at level eight. Then he could finally start working on getting them all to level 10 at the same time. He leveled it up and dumped the four stat points into Arcane to bring it up to fifty-four.
Runes Held - 280
Runes Needed for Level Up - 1438
He smiled as he studied his status page over and over again, taking the moment to enjoy it all. From the [Class] level ups, his skill increases, and even the jump his attribute points had taken. Overall, including the latest four points, he had gained a total of forty-three unallocated stat points he had dumped into his attributes without waiting a few moments.
It was better than letting them gather up only to die at the hands of the Death Knight and risk losing them all.
Thankfully, sticking to the very edges of the buildings he was in and targeting specific Corrupted Dead kept the Death Knight from activating. Though that led to him developing a few educated hypotheses about how it aggroed in general. Most that had developed once he noticed that the screaming Corrupted Guardsman did not wake it up at all, but rather something else that had it hunting him down the first few times around.
Williams theory revolved around a sufficient damage threshold that needed to be crossed within a certain radius around it for the Death Knight to be triggered from its position. He wasn’t sure if getting in its line of sight or if opening the courtyard’s primary gateway to the outside world would affect that, but as it stands, that was the only thing he could come up with.
At least, from the ideas that made sense.
There were other ways to test it out more, but that would be useless to him now. He had rune farming to accomplish, levels to gain, attributes to grow, and not enough time to grind them all. For now, the only thing that mattered to him was to take advantage of all things made available to him until something or someone forces his hand to stop him from abusing the system provided to him.
William knew without a shadow of doubt that soon enough, faster than he expected, he would be faced with monsters beyond his greatest imagination that all had a single purpose. Hunting him down and ripping his life from his chest without a moment of hesitation. Bounty hunters, as Zefor put them, sent by the system to remove bugs within its code.
If he wasn’t ready by then, then he and likely all of humanity were screwed, much like Zefor believed.
Or maybe not.
He had no clue what was going on back on Earth. For all he knew, they could be thriving and surviving the entire ordeal without his help.
William wasn't special, he wasn't some miraculous hero. All he could claim to be was an average guy that had been given a chance, a singular opportunity to become more than what he had been. An opportunity that was provided to him whether through sheer coincidence and chance, or plotted by someone far more powerful than him. An opportunity that he would refuse to let escape him, no matter the consequences.
Struggling again and again had only reaffirmed his resolve.
William raised his head above his head and into the last rays of sunlight that beamed into the stairwell ledge, it was moving visibly. He stared at the pieces of sliding metal that gave his fingers flexibility and thick cloth covering his palm. He balled his hand into a fist.
He was determined to prove Zefor wrong. To prove everyone wrong, even if it was the last thing he did.
Forget this! We ball!
William pushed himself up and turned towards the door. He expected the Death Knight to be outside, if his theory was correct.
He had intentionally damaged the latest Corrupted Guardsman like he had done the first two he fought from the courtyard, copying his same original plan. He rushed back into the courtyard after dealing the damage and waited for it to scream and charge after him, closing the door as it stumbled into the stairwell ledge. If his guess is correct than he had caused enough damage to activate the Death Knight
It would be right behind the doorway, waiting for him to crack it open.
William would get a chance to finally test his growth against it, see how far he had actually come.
Though he knew, well enough, that he would die anyway.
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