Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Fifty

< < Now Entering > >

< Stage 3 >

< Forest Escort >

< 5 Waves >

Adam zoned out during the cutscene that took them to the sloped forest arena and didn’t realise it was over until Parvillo told him to get out of the carriage.

Belamouranthe gave him a worried look, but he put on a smile and told her to sit tight. It would be over quickly, he promised her.

Adam picked up the necklace from the dead drivers, as well as the healing potion that’d dropped nearby.

< < Secret Relic Obtained > >

< All-Mother’s Wrath (Rare) — When the wearer is damaged by an attack, curse attacker with Lethargy for 30 seconds. 1-minute cooldown >

“Drinking this won’t make my cores return, right?” he asked Parvillo as he held the potion in his stone hand.

[Correct.]

I should probably stop using the slime crown if I turn into blood when I replace my two missing cores with ones from Ezral’s summons.

The hardmode orb floated in front of him, still switched on. He still remembered how Emelia had warned him against it, but now it seemed crazy to not use it. Plus, since it tripled each summon for stage three, he’d get three times as many collectibles out of it.

As the countdown to the first wave ticked down, Adam went to the far edge of the forest arena and planted both of his traps where the three imps would emerge.

Since he didn’t have a third trap for the last imp, he went up the slope to one of the big rocks and punched it with his stone hand a few times until a big shard broke off. A few more precise hits turned the large shard into something akin to a crude blade. Adam returned to the area near the treeline and drove the rock shard through a tree at around chest level.

“Skip the remaining time on the countdown,” he told Parvillo.

[Understood.]

< < Wave One > >

< 60-Second Timer >

Two loud snaps echoed through the forest as two of the three imps emerged from the trees and immediately stepped on the bear traps, exploding their long legs and up to around the middle of their torsos. It was just barely enough to avoid destroying their hearts, which he had hoped would be the case.

[Two traps triggered. 200 Points rewarded.]

The third imp immediately leapt at Adam with astounding speed, but he used his own high speed to evade the attack. Given that the imp couldn’t reorient itself mid-air, it drove its own body right through the shard Adam had hammered into the tree behind him. Since it was shorter than Adam, what had been his chest height was directly where its neck was, and the imp was immediately decapitated.

[Trap triggered. 100 Points rewarded.]

< < Wave One Complete > >

< Choose your Upgrade >

“I’m glad that counted as a trap,” Adam remarked as he went over and broke open the headless imps torso to retrieve the heart.

< < Collectible Relic > >

< Slothful Heart (Common) — A heart borne by an incarnation of Sloth >

He went to the other two corpses to retrieve his traps, as well as their hearts. Then he walked over to Parvillo and his upgrade rewards. This time, there was a new colour to the choices that Adam hadn’t seen before.

Rainbow.

[You are doing that thing with your face again. I suspect other humanoids will find your expression unsettling, given that you do not have eyes or any other facial features besides your grinning mouth.]

Adam wasn’t sure how exactly he was shaping his slime face so instinctively, but he was hoping to crack the secret behind it to be able to do more than just shape a creepy mouth when he was excited.

< < Upgrades Available > >

< Crush (Divine) — Increases the impact of attacks by 100% >

< Bleed (Divine) — Attacks inflict bleed dealing 100% weapon damage over the course of 10 seconds >

< Movement (Divine) — Increases movement speed by 100% >

< Luck (Divine) — Increases luck by 25 >

I want everything except luck, to be honest.

After some consideration though, Adam ended up picking movement. He knew he had more than enough damage for this stage and he wanted to push his speed as high as it could go, since he hadn’t yet seen what high amounts of speed would do for his perception of reality or his own reaction time.

< < Upgrade Selected > >

< Movement (Divine) >

Thanks to his glass tree bonus, his speed moved from 900% to 1,020% following the upgrade.

Since Adam needed their cores and his traps were still on cooldown, he waited near the treeline as wave two started and three blood golems emerged.

With his incredible speed, he swept his stone hand and shapeshifter’s claw through the summons, tearing them apart and knocking their larger cores to the grass before any of them could mount much of a counter attack.

< < Collectible Relic > >

< Blood Elemental Core (Common) — The hardened soul of a Blood Elemental >

Unlike the cores of the slimes, these were the size of coconuts.

When he added two of them to his body, they resized themselves to be the same as the other three. Visually, they weren’t much different, though the blood cores were ever so slightly darker.

Adam’s body turned from milky-white to an unsettling shade of fleshy pink.

“Do these two cores count for the crown’s special effect increasing my health and damage?”

[They do not. Seeing as you were missing two cores, these have replaced those and are thus not considered as additional cores.]

That sucks.

He could sense the energy inside the last core he held in his stone hand was different than the ones from the slimes, and that energy was now inside him as well.

Well, I haven’t turned into blood, so that’s a plus.

With a flex of his body though, he was able to turn his entire right arm red like the blood golems he’d killed. He turned it back into acidic slime with another thought.

[You gain the powers of the cores you absorb into yourself, regardless of whether they replace missing cores or not,] Parvillo explained helpfully.

“Did inserting them put me back to full health?” he asked.

[No. However, consuming the healing potion you possess will bring back the missing health. Before regaining your two missing cores, your Health would not have gone over 60%, no matter how much you healed yourself.]

Good point, Adam thought, consuming the small healing potion which restored exactly the 40% health he was missing.

He looked at the core still in his stone hand. After a moment’s consideration, Adam decided against absorbing it for now, since he thought it might make more sense to sell it later, especially if he wasn’t going to stick with the slime crown for his build.

After looking over the upgrade options, he decided to grab the divine ‘Dodge’ available, telling Parvillo to pick the upgrade once the next wave would start. Since it was divine, it would give him 100% extra dodge, which would put him at 142% after the glass tree’s boost, guaranteeing he would dodge any direct attack aimed at him. Importantly though, dodge had a two-second cooldown when triggered, something which he’d found out a long time ago, but only now could actually put to the test.

Regardless, I shouldn’t rely on this to save my life.

If anything, the fact that Helena had landed a hit on him in the challenge arena, when he’d had 71% dodge, was proof enough that relying on chance wasn’t a good idea.

Especially since I don’t know what counts as a direct attack and what doesn’t.

While it was sloppy that I let myself get hit, I’m fortunate that my health was split across the cores, because it might’ve killed me if I’d been human.

Adam hadn’t tried to think too much about the fight, but in hindsight, it was very clear why Emelia had favoured the Priest Brawler build, because the damage from a single punch had been incredible.

While Parvillo is right to be concerned about future challenge fights, I know I can keep winning, so long as I don’t get complacent. Plus, I know the Flayed Lady’s trick now. She revealed her hand too early, so now I can prepare for her pulling the same trick again.

The main thing is just to not let her see me coming. I have the advantage in terms of relics and raw stats, so instead of trying to use my teleportation every time, I just need to find a strategy that lets me win before my opponent has a chance to respond.

While he mulled this over in his head and the final seconds ran down, he had finished his preparations for wave three. His traps still weren’t ready, but there were plenty of trees available for him to use.

The moment the wave started, five different trees collapsed directly on top of where the six imps spawned, killing four of them immediately, and Adam was quick to behead the last two with rapid slashes of his clawed glove.

[Four traps triggered. 400 Points rewarded.]

I’d hoped the two survivors would still count, but I guess they dodged the trees, so it doesn’t count as the trap affecting them.

He grabbed their hearts and added them to the spidersilk sack inside his body with the other trophies.

Since he kept beating each wave fast enough to receive upgraded rewards, he continued to receive exclusively divine upgrade options, which felt somewhat absurd.

If not for the glass tree, it wouldn’t be possible, and it’s truly becoming the most overpowered part of my meta upgrades.

This time there was a divine damage upgrade, which would add 100% damage, the same as his meta upgrade from Luvicidix that’d cost him a lot of points, and though there were movement, force, and luck upgrades too, he settled on the damage.

For the fourth wave, where three of the slothling ogres would appear, Adam prepared trees as traps again, even though they wouldn’t kill the mini bosses.

I should’ve saved my bear traps for later, but at least they’ll be ready against the final boss.

He was saving the blade pendant for the nightwing secret boss as well, since he was hoping it would be weak to holy damage.

As the fourth wave began, trees crashed into the three ogres that emerged from the treeline.

[Three traps triggered. 300 Points rewarded.]

Adam was already atop the first one following a running leap, and with a punch aimed at its very small neck, he decapitated it, before moving to the second one, repeating the trick, and then for the last he used his shapeshifter’s claw’s effect, which pulverised most of its upper body in a mist of blood. Unfortunately, it was too much damage and impact, which crushed the uncommon heart inside the ogre, leaving him with just two to harvest.

Adam looked at his blood-covered glove. I guess there is such a thing as too much damage.

Still, when he thought back to his first fight against the ogre, it was night and day. Back then he’d used the fiendbarb, but still needed to stab the large demon several times before it perished. Now all it took was a single punch.

Adam added the large hearts to his bag that was already about to burst at the seams.

< < Collectible Relic > >

< Greater Slothful Heart (Uncommon) — A heart borne by a greater incarnation of Sloth >

I need a more convenient way to carry stuff…

From the upgrade selection, he picked another divine movement, which put him at 1,140% speed.

Just to test how absurd it really was, Adam zipped from the treeline and up to the carriage and back in only four seconds.

He didn’t have any more nearby trees to leverage as traps, so he decided to just do it the old-fashioned way.

I should’ve asked Weaver for some ultra-fine strings of silk. They’d have been perfect for this.

As the nine blood wolves appeared, Adam moved through them at speed, going from one end of the treeline to the other, while using both of his hands to break their bodies and liberate the cores inside them. No sooner was he done than six more wolves appeared.

Although he had a lot more stamina than usual, he was sparing with how much he exerted himself as he rushed back in, defeating the next set of wolves.

Ezral yelled something at Adam and tried to hit him with a Heart Lance spell, but Adam avoided it without even needing to rely on his dodge. At any other time, Adam might have engaged Ezral and tried to pry more information out of him, but he found he wasn’t in the mood and just wanted to get the stage over with.

Unlike when he’d used Blood Mage in his last loop, this time the boss didn’t skip the other summons and brought out six imps.

That’s a bit too many for me to handle all at once, Adam decided and threw his traps towards the groups of three on either side of Ezral.

Loud snaps exploded two of the closely-stacked imps on the right and killed all three on the left. Unfortunately, he’d hit them centre mass, so their hearts were pulverised along with their bodies.

[Five traps triggered. 500 Points rewarded.]

The surviving imp flew at Adam and he caught it mid-air with his stone hand, halting its momentum immediately, before slamming it into the ground and stomping on its head.

Ezral made a sound of displeasure and summoned six blood golems, while Adam tore open the torso of the imp he’d curb-stomped. Then the boss immediately started preparing to summon the nightwing.

Adam moved in and around the space between the golems, avoiding their hardened fists, while using his own hands to destroy their bodies and grab their large cores.

Almost as soon as he was done with them, the secret boss was manifesting next to Ezral.

< < Secret Boss Discovered > >

< DwarfNightwing >

< Wave Timer extended to 150 seconds >

Adam rushed the boss, and the moment the nightwing became corporeal, he removed Ezral’s arm holding the ‘Fetish of Sloth’, and then punched his body hard enough to turn it into nothing but mist. He picked up the relic and added it to his belt.

< < Secret Relic Obtained > >

< Fetish of Sloth (Rare) — Summons a Slothling Imp to perform a single attack on designated target. 1-Stage cooldown >

Since he’d already cleared away all the trees in front of the treeline where the giant bat appeared, it was fully exposed to the waning sunlight.

Adam charged his shapeshifter’s claw and activated the hero’s blade pendant, before jumping up to swing his right hand through the secret boss’ head, hoping to avoid damaging its torso and the heart within.

A loud pop sounded when his fist deleted the nightwing’s head, and the holy nova the pendant’s effect created washed over the headless remains of the boss ineffectually.

Still, as Adam landed back on his feet, the boss was dead.

He looked down at his clawed glove that was smeared in the blood of the ogres, imps, and now the nightwing as well.

This thing is so powerful.

If I get a conjuring stone, I should combine it with a bear trap.

[You are certainly going through these Stages much faster than I was led to believe was possible,] Parvillo remarked.

< < Wave Five Complete > >

< < Stage Complete > >

< Tallying Score >

< < Score > >

< 30 Seconds Completion Time >

< 600 PointSecret Boss Bonus added >

< 500 PointFlawless Bonus added >

< 300 PointSpeedrun Bonus added >

< 150 Point All Secrets Bonus added >

< 0Damage Received >

< 4410 Points Awarded >

Once again, another personal best. I’m three for three so far.

Adam looked towards the upgrade podium Parvillo had turned into, as well as the chest next to him.

I wonder what the legendary for this stage will be.

And, more importantly, what divine relics will I see?