Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Fifty-Three

“I cannot do that for only forty points, Adam,” Weaver said from atop her web-spun stall.

“How much then?”

“For ninety points, I can make you ten metres of silk.”

“Can I reuse it?” Adam asked.

“Very few things can destroy my spidersilk,” Weaver remarked proudly.

“Guess I’ll have to go fishing after all,” Adam muttered to himself. “I’ll be back later.”

“Bye for now,” Weaver said, waving one of her small arms as he left.

Adam had been putting it off for a bit, but finally decided it was time to go visit Meilo and see the flower that’d bloomed from his sister’s soul seed.

Going from the market to the garden took him no time at all, now that his speed was almost exactly 1,500%. In fact, it was so fast that he struggled to see where he was going, and thus had to slow himself to avoid splattering against the side of one of the dumpy melted-wax-like houses.

He came to a stop next to the flowerbed where Meilo had planted the seed, and while she tended to some nearby plants, Adam stared at the flower left behind from his sister’s passing.

It was a Gray’s lily, just like he’d predicted.

Adam put a hand to its thick black-spotted red petals and felt the same zap as when he’d touched Kat’s flower.

In his mind, he saw brief glimpses of Helena as a child, looking up at a Gray’s lily they’d found on a hiking trip with their family. Adam still remembered that trip. It was one of the few fond memories of his childhood. Back when his family was whole. Before they’d lost their mom to cancer, and before their father had forgotten all about them, following a risky procedure on his brain to save his life.

Adam’s slime body couldn’t shed tears, but still a deep sadness filled him.

I killed my sister. Just like that.

I know it’s not my universe, but she’s still my sister.

Once I stop the Flayed Lady, I’m going to make it right.

With the power I have now, I can make it to the Singing City.

I can get the Self-Devouring Eye and start this universe fresh, with everyone still alive.

As Adam pulled his hand away, a soul drop floated out of the flower and into his chest.

< < Soul Drop Obtained > >

With his resolved hardened, Adam consumed the twenty-two elemental cores, boosting his damage and health by 220%. The boost took his health from 390 to 819, and his damage from 1,365% to 1,651%.

“The health boost is weird,” Adam immediately noticed. It was definitely a huge boost, but still not as high as he had expected. With his upgrades, before the glass tree’s boost, he had 300 health, so he should’ve gained 660 on top of that, instead he was only getting 330.

[The Slime Emperor’s Crown only boosts your base Health and Damage, before upgrades are applied. Since your Damage upgrades are all additive before the Glass Tree multiplies the total, it is not noticeable there, unlike with your Health. The way these bonuses are added are intended to avoid highly exploitable Health growth.]

Adam frowned. He wasn’t exactly mad, though he did feel kind of snubbed. If he hadn’t had the hundred-point boost from the meta upgrade to his health from Luvicidix, it would’ve felt quite a lot worse, but as it were, he had more than doubled his health, so it was hard to be upset.

“Health still makes my cores sturdier though, right?”

[To an extent. The cores of an elemental are meant to be a weak-point. You functionally take no damage when other parts of your body are hit, though attacks may affect the composition of your body by removing material and limbs. Therefore, you will be unable to get enough Health and Defence to make your cores pseudo-invincible. Certain types of attacks, as you may have noticed already, are quite effective at breaking cores, regardless of their individual Health and Defence.]

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

[I am not.]

Adam let out a deep sigh.

“I want my cores back. Investing into the crown was a waste of points.”

[I am afraid I cannot do that.]

“I thought legendary relics weren’t meant to be traps,” Adam remarked.

[You thought incorrectly. There is no power without drawbacks.]

“So, just to get this straight. Anyone with crushing damage can make my cores explode, if they just hit them, regardless of damage actually dealt?”

[They must deal a certain amount of damage to break a core. Piercing damage is the same. It is meant to be a trade-off with the fact that you are functionally immune to almost all organically-targeting afflictions. You cannot bleed. You feel no pain. Your head may be destroyed and you would survive so long as you have at least one core in what remains of your body.]

“Fine. So it’s a trade-off…” Adam conceded, much as it pained him to do so. “But to be clear, the boost to my health is basically meaningless, right?”

[Incorrect. Health is still affected by afflictions and similar life-draining powers. Additionally, True Damage attacks Health directly. Having more Health is useful, even for a slime such as yourself.]

“Normally, I would agree, but I’m up against the Flayed Lady. She knows precisely what my weakness is.”

[That is… true. I suppose that I should have alerted you to this weakness, given my stated goal is to help you survive to reach the Forbidden Altar.]

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Adam said, tossing one of his bear traps into the air, where it was surrounded by two ghostly clones, before he caught it again and they disappeared. “What happens if I toss you?”

[I would not recommend it. There can only be one of me. Unlike your friend, Player Benjamin Sharpe, this universe would not be able to handle there being more than one of me.]

“Are you saying the universe might snap in half?”

[It might.] Parvillo floated closer to his hand holding the bear trap, as if daring him to try. [Would you like to see what happens?]

Adam took a step back. “I promised myself I’d stop purposefully ruining universes.”

[Good choice. I myself do not know what might occur, but I do not imagine it will be conducive to our goal.]

Adam shook his head. “You’ve developed a very dark sense of humour.”

He looked around. Meilo was looking at a pile of ash while holding a dead branch in her hands.

“Does Fal have new options for me?” he asked while looking at the glass moth.

[No.]

I’m still curious what else she might have for me, but given what I’m up against in the Forbidden Altar, getting the Lonesome Spire after stage four is a no-brainer.

“Can you highlight Sprite for me? I need to give him the moss I collected.”

A beacon of light appeared near the dimensional tavern, even though Adam had made sure none of the denizens could enter.

He ran over there to find Sprite sitting on the roof, watching the sunset.

The shadow elemental looked down at him. “What have you brought me today, Adam? I hope it’s something poisonous.”

Adam pulled the moss out of his spidersilk bag.

“Disappointing,” Sprite commented, before sliding down the roof and hopping off to land directly before Adam, his faded blue hooded robes fluttering wildly and his shadowy body like a guttering flame.

Sprite grabbed the moss, before literally throwing it away.

< < Quest Progress > >

< Plantastic Alchemy >

< Sprite would like you to bring him plants from 5 different Stages >

< Progress — 3/5 >

“What the hell?”

“This type of moss is inert,” Sprite said. “Because you let it die.”

“It was like that when I found it.”

Sprite looked at Parvillo. “Maybe you can guide him towards something better. Isn’t guiding your job?”

Parvillo acted like Sprite didn’t exist, so the elemental looked back up at Adam.

“Bring me a branch from the large tree in the elphin’s city.”

“Sure,” Adam replied with a shrug and left. It didn’t really matter to him what he brought Sprite, since anything counted for the quest, but he guessed that since the little guy wanted something specific, there might be a reason for it.

“Can you highlight Tisa for me as well?” he asked Parvillo as he walked towards his house.

[I cannot. You must find the Weaponmaster on your own.]

Guess it can wait.

Although he wanted to do some fishing to be able to afford some of Weaver’s spidersilk rope, Adam went to the player house and spent a couple of hours practising with shaping his body. Shaping his right hand or feet had the annoying side-effect of unequipping whatever relics were on them, so he was glad to finally find an alternative by managing to shape his elbows and knees. With a squeezing sensation, he was able to turn his joints into solid spikes, similar to the purple slime of stage one. Switching between acid slime and blood slime was quite easy, but he didn’t want to use the blood at all, since it potentially posed a massive risk to himself against the Flayed Lady’s adherents.

As Adam crushed the slothling ogre dummy again and again using his right hand, elbows, and knees, he eventually mixed it up, using his stone hand, leaping backwards while flinging it forward.

The stone hand left his wrist alongside two ghostly copies.

Adam’s punch with the three hands immediately whiffed, the backwash of air making his entire body vibrate like jelly in an earthquake.

“You didn’t tell me it could do this!” he exclaimed, waving his stone hand and its two ghost copies around for emphasis.

[That is because I was not aware that Ghost could affect the Wizard’s Stone Hand.]

“You talk a lot about integrity, but I get the feeling that whoever designed the relic and skill interactions in the Trials is extremely confused about what ‘throwing a punch’ actually means.”

[I have no comment about that, as I am not responsible.]

“Whatever, this benefits me, so I’m not actually upset about it. It’s just kind of dumb how easy you make it to exploit things.”

[This is not an exploit, it is an unintended interaction.]

“Potato tomato.”

Parvillo’s eyes all blinked in unison.

[It seems there is still much I need to learn about your species. I am struggling to comprehend how that is a valid response to what I said.]

“And that’s why we’re going to beat the Trials every time, no matter what you throw at us.”

[I shall look forward to observing you fulfil that promise. But it may be interesting for you to learn this: across all known universes that I can observe, there has not been a single instance of the Trials of Defiance being beaten. The final Stage yet remains unconquered.]

The casual way Parvillo blurted out such an earth-shattering existential catastrophe made Adam feel sick. It was like a torturer gloating to his victim, but in a manner so apathetic that it was entirely inhuman. There was no sadistic glee, just a simple stated fact.

Adam punched the ogre dummy so hard it turned into nothing but meat scraps and bone shards, then he thundered down the steps to the basement restaurant.

He had to keep going and deny the Flayed Lady, such that he could get back to his true goal. If not a single universe had defeated the last stage of the Trials, then perhaps a pattern disruptor like him was what was needed to make it happen.