Chapter 38: [37]: Farming Misfortune, The Pity Accelerator

The item activated right away. The System’s pity economy was now doubling its reward.

Now he had to get the most out of it.

His first attempt proved the idea worked. Twelve kills in six hours, all blindfolded, all bare-handed. But twelve kills was not fast enough. He needed higher numbers. More enemies per hour meant more rolls per hour, which meant more KP per hour.

The fix was simple and terrible. Fight multiple creatures at the same time.

Blindfolded.

In the mid-Warrens.

’If I die doing this,’ Alvian thought, tying the cloth tightly over his eyes, ’the System will probably laugh at my funeral.’

He walked down past the mid-Warrens border. The Rank 3 territory was busier here. He could hear many creatures in the tunnels around him. Clicking. Scratching. The wet sounds of unnatural monsters.

His first fight happened quickly. Three Corrupted Crawlers, drawn by the noise of his footsteps. They came from different directions. Without sight, he could not track all three at once.

The first Crawler’s acid spit hit his shoulder. The second one’s jaw caught his leg. The third moved behind him, waiting to attack.

[HP: 114 → 98 → 89]

He turned toward the nearest one and slammed his Clearwater Palm into its body. The acid hissed against its shell. The monster pulled back. He grabbed its jaw and threw it into the third Crawler’s path, causing a messy pile of legs and clicking claws.

’Use their numbers against them,’ he reasoned. ’They do not work together. They attack alone. If I keep moving, they get in each other’s way.’

The fight took seven minutes. He took hits from all three creatures. His HP dropped to 52. But all three died, and the System processed the kills.

[DING!]

[Kill: Corrupted Sludge Crawler x3 (Rank 3)]

[Roll 1: 3x. EXP: 300. KP +2.]

[Roll 2: 1x. EXP: 100. KP +2.]

[Roll 3: 4x. EXP: 400. KP +2.]

[Total KP gained: 6]

[Pity Accelerator active. Double KP applied.]

Six KP from one fight. The Accelerator was working.

He went deeper. The number of monsters grew as he entered a spot with stronger dimensional energy. He ended up fighting four creatures at once, a mix of Crawlers and an Ironjaw Alpha that guided its attacks with smart teamwork.

The Alpha was the hardest. It guided the Crawlers, forcing them to attack from angles he could not see. Without eyes, he could not tell if an attack was acid spit or the Alpha’s metal bite until it hit him.

A jaw caught his ribs. CRACK. Something cracked inside him. Not a full break, but a thin crack. His 57 VIT kept him standing, but the pain came instantly and sharply.

[HP: 52 → 38]

He turned on Clearwater Coating on both palms and grabbed the Alpha’s mouth. The acid melted the metal teeth. The rat thrashed, trying to pull away. Alvian held tight, letting the Coating do its work. The monster’s jaw melted. It let out a high-pitched scream that echoed down the tunnels. He finished it with a Clearwater Palm to its head.

[DING!]

[Kill: Ironjaw Alpha Rat (Rank 3, Level 39)]

[Roll: 2x. EXP: 200. KP +2.]

The remaining Crawlers ran away. He let them go. His HP was too low to run after them.

He sat against the tunnel wall, breathing heavily. His ribs hurt with every breath. His arms were covered in blood and acid residue. The blindfold was soaked with sweat.

’Three hours in,’ he calculated. ’Fourteen kills. Twenty-four KP. On track for forty-eight KP today.’

He kept fighting.

The hours blurred together. Every fight was a hard, sightless struggle against monsters that could kill him if he made one mistake. His Danger Sense grew sharper with every battle, forced to replace his lost vision. He began feeling attacks a moment earlier. His body learned to dodge before his brain realized the danger.

The most dangerous part happened in hour five.

He was fighting two Crawlers when something wrapped around his neck from behind. A Stonehide Lizard. Its long tail caught his throat. The creature lifted him off the ground.

Blind. Choking. His Danger Sense screamed, but the blindfold made it hard to tell where the attack came from. He could not tell where the lizard was standing. His hands clawed at the tail, but the rock skin was too hard for his fingers.

[HP: 61 → 45 → 32]

Black spots appeared in his vision. Not from the System screen, but from lack of air.

’If I don’t act now, I die,’ he realized with cold clarity.

He released a small touch-based Domain burst around his neck. Smallest size. One meter. Just enough to melt the tail without melting his own neck.

[Essence: 33 → 16]

[Abyssal Dissolution Domain activated. Minimum radius. Contact-based.]

[The System notes that melting things attached to your own neck requires either great control or great stupidity.]

The tail melted away. The lizard shrieked. Alvian dropped to the ground, gasping for air. He found the creature by listening to its sound and killed it with a Clearwater Palm to the face.

[DING!]

[Kill: Stonehide Lizard (Rank 3, Level 37)]

[Roll: 3x. EXP: 300. KP +2.]

He sat on the ground for ten minutes, rubbing his sore throat. His voice was rough. His ribs hurt. His HP was down to 28.

’That was too close,’ he admitted to himself.

But he did not stop.

By the end of eight hours, the Pity Accelerator turned his suffering into a big reward.

[DING!]

[Session Summary]

[Duration: 8 hours]

[Kills: 28 (Rank 3)]

[Sub-5x rolls: 24]

[Above-5x rolls: 4]

[KP per sub-5x roll: 2 (Pity Accelerator)]

[Total KP gained: 48]

[Current KP: 15 + 48 = 63]

[Total EXP gained: ~5,040]

[HP damage sustained: ~180 (offset by passive regeneration)]

[The System formally recognizes the Host’s willingness to hurt himself to get rewards as a valid plan.]

Sixty-three KP. Up from 15 at the start of the day. The Pity Accelerator tripled what he got from his previous run.

But 63 was still far from 500. He still needed 437 KP.

He put all 5,040 EXP into VIT. His body needed defense more than anything else.

[VIT: 57 → 62]

[HP pool increased: 114 → 124]

[Flesh Limit expanded: ~4,000 safe absorption]

His body was turning into a tank. 62 VIT was super high for a Level 32 Awakened. Most Level 40 fighters did not have VIT that high. But his KP farming plan needed it. Every point of VIT meant he could take more hits, survive longer fights, and farm more KP without dying.

’At 48 KP per day with the Accelerator, I need nine more sessions,’ he calculated. ’Nine days. But the Magnus family will not wait nine days.’

He needed to kill more monsters faster. A natural narrow path marked on Tobias’s map forced creatures to come one by one. Fighting there could let him kill forty to fifty monsters instead of twenty-eight. Even with the same KP rate, that would boost his daily gain to eighty or more.

Six sessions at eighty KP per day. Six days.

Still slow. But he could do it. Maybe.

He climbed toward the surface, his body covered in healing wounds and new bruises. The thirteenth level was quiet in the early morning hours. Hendricks Cole’s shipping container was closed. The scavengers were sleeping.

Tobias Finch was not.

The old man sat outside his scrap hut, resting his metal arm on his knee. He looked up when Alvian arrived, covered in blood and monster juice, limping badly.

"What happened to you?" Tobias asked.

"Training," Alvian said.

"Training." Tobias’s metal arm sparked. "You look like you fought a house and lost."

"I fought twenty-eight Rank 3 creatures. Blindfolded. Bare-handed." Alvian sat down slowly on a wooden crate. Every muscle burned with pain. "I have to do it again tomorrow. And the day after. For six more days."

Tobias stared at him. The metal arm sparked twice. "Why?"

"Because I need something from the System. And the only way to get it is to suffer."

The old scavenger stayed quiet for a long moment. Then he stood up and went inside. He came back holding a bowl of cold soup and a roll of bandages.

"Eat," Tobias said. "Then sleep. I will watch Martha and Leo."

Alvian took the soup. It had no taste, but his body needed food. He ate quietly, watching the first morning light bleed through the Undercity air shafts.

Six more days. Six more days of blindfolded fights against Rank 3 monsters. Six more days of intentionally creating bad luck.

Then, with 500 KP, he could unlock the VIP Shop and buy Fate’s Loaded Dice.

One guaranteed Epic roll. With the right amount of EXP, it could change everything.

He finished the soup, wrapped his worst wounds, and lay down on Tobias’s floor. He fell asleep right away.

His last thought before falling asleep was about the System’s daily report.

[DING!]

[Daily quest complete: Suffer productively.]

[Reward: 48 KP and a body that hates you.]

[See you tomorrow, Host. Same pain, same place.]

┌──────[ Profile]──────┐

│ [Host]: Alvian Vance

│ [Level]: 32

│ [Talent]: Clearwater [E-Rank, S-Rank effective]

│ [Skills]: Abyssal Dissolution Domain [S-RANK]

│ Clearwater Coating [E-Rank]

│ Severing Sword Aura [A-Rank]

│ [Weapon Mastery]: Short-Sword [MAXIMUM, evolved]

│ [STR]: 40 | [AGI]: 38 | [VIT]: 62

│ [INT]: 22 | [Essence]: 33

│ [Karma Points]: 63

│ [EXP Bank]: ~604

│ [Pity Accelerator]: Active (17 hours remaining)

│ [System Version]: 2.0

│ [HP]: 68/124 (regenerating)

└─────────────────┘

Six days to go.