Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Forty-Nine

The hobgoblin lord dummy exploded with a loud snap from Adam’s bear trap. The entire room shook as the goblin turned into mist.

“Holy shit,” Adam muttered. “Is it doing more damage than my normal punches?”

[The effect appears more powerful, because the entirety of the damage is dealt by the first of the trap’s teeth that connects, concentrating the power on a very small spot. It is the same amount of damage even if it appears more violent. However, the Crush upgrades totalling 270% more impact are likewise concentrated into a single point with the trap, which does seem to increase the impact.]

Adam stooped to pick up the trap. Try as he might, he couldn’t pull it back open to a ready position, due to its cooldown. He returned it to his belt with the other one, where it minimised itself to be easier to carry around.

Though he’d been trying to shape his slime body once again today, he’d yet to get much closer to figuring out how to control anything that wasn’t his hands and feet. One small trick had come out of his experimentation, however, and that was that he’d found a way to use his feet almost like springs, allowing him to jump half a metre higher than normal. With more practice, he was hoping to be able to use it to reliably leap much further than any human could do unassisted.

[30 minutes remain.]

Adam stepped away from the target dummy, shaking out his body, even though he had no muscles or joints that could ache.

He took a deep breath and descended the stairs to the basement restaurant.

“How many players survived stage two?”

[802 million Players,] Parvillo answered.

That’s so absurdly high…

At any other time, I would have been elated, but given the circumstances, that number terrifies me.

“Show me the players who obtained the most points across stage one and two,” he told Parvillo.

[Understood.]

A few people appeared, all of which were known to Adam, but the one that caught his attention was his sister.

She had beaten the secret boss in both stages. Along with that she had the flawless achievement, speedrun, and all secrets.

That’s between 4,000 and 7,000 points, depending on whether she got all the trophies and cores from the stages. With six upgrades per stage and more than enough points to buy six more from the market, she no doubt has a fully evolved weapon. More than that, ‘Second Sheath’ only costs two mastery shards, so she may have a second weapon too. She could even have evolved that second weapon if she got the collectibles to sell, and if she didn’t fully evolve her first one, both may have two evolutions…

There are a lot of pretty scary builds possible with two weapons and potentially four evolutions.

But, she doesn’t have enough points to buy some of the really scary weapons and evolve them fully, and I don’t think the Flayed Lady would be able to completely break the rarity drops available, given that not every single player has blood magic.

Adam had at first assumed she was just spreading out her pawns to have as many tools as possible, but from what he’d seen earlier, he was starting to realise that the players’ Classes followed the standard rarity curve from other stages, meaning they were locked into mostly common and uncommon starter weapons. A few might try to get Blood Mage from the market, but it was a big expenditure of points.

“Can you tell me what weapons Helena Fischer has?”

[Unfortunately, no. I am not allowed to peer into their dimensions, though I am able to connect you to any player who is on Interim Island, whether or not they are sitting in the Dimensional Tavern.]

Adam had expected as much.

Early low-rarity Class combinations are likely to be speed builds using Lancer; reflect builds using Lancer and Defender; parry builds using Backstabber and Duellist; rush builds using Berserker and Warrior; blink ring projectile builds using Javelineer, Backstabber, and Ranger; or trap builds using Woodsman or Spellcaster.

If I’m unlucky, I might face a rare Priest and Brawler close-combat damage stacking build. That would be a good choice if I was trying to counter myself, since I don’t have any ranged attacks and need to be up close.

“What do you think my odds of winning a fight against my sister are?” Adam asked Parvillo.

[You will win. Even if the Flayed Lady knows everything about you, which there is cause to believe, you possess power far beyond what any other Player in this universe is capable of obtaining at this current moment.]

“Hearing it put so objectively does make me feel better about my odds,” Adam said. “But what if she’s forcing them to put sigil magic on their bodies?”

[Even then, you should be fine. They would require Mana to activate such sigils, and currently you are quite resilient against magical Classes. Although, as a slime, you possess a significant weakness to ice magic.]

“Summoner gets magic like that,” Adam muttered.

Someone who maxed out Summoner to get the Erudite Archmage evolution that lets them instantly use a spell would be deadly.

Although… That particular evolution skill requires triple the mana to activate, which means no one is likely to possess enough mana for it yet, unless they have a lot of ‘Casting Efficiency’ upgrades.

It’s an epic Class, so it’s as rare as Blood Mage.

Would Helena have something like that?

“How many players have Summoner?” Adam asked.

[I cannot say. It appears all Player Classes and Relics are hidden from us, except for the Blood Mage’s sigils.]

Adam took a deep breath.

It doesn’t matter.

I’m stronger than I’ve ever been at stage two before. I won’t lose.

And more importantly, I need to free my sister.

I can’t save them all before stage five, so I need to pick the ones I want to spare whatever the Flayed Lady will do to them once they can worship her directly.

Adam pulled out his challenge stone and pointed it at Helena.

< < Challenge Stone Activated > >

< You have forcedPlayer Helena Fischer into fighting you >

Adam was immediately transported to the arena, landing atop the sand with his cloudstrider boots.

She didn’t give her a creepy nickname, he noted.

The red shadow in the audience was back again, sitting in the same spot and staring right at him. It had to be an extension of the Flayed Lady somehow.

Adam looked across the sand at his sister. They looked a lot alike. Both with brown hair and amber eyes, though her hair went halfway down her back. Unlike Adam, her face was narrower, and her lips plumper. Her eyes also had an innocent tilt to them, while Adam’s might be thought of as slightly threatening.

“It hurts,” Helena said. It was her real voice, not the Flayed Lady speaking through her.

“I know,” Adam replied.

“She said my Laura can be saved. I just have to convince you to stop resisting.”

“Don’t believe anything she says,” Adam told her, clenching his jaw in anticipation.

Helena was using Priest and Brawler. She had the duellist’s glove and blue trophy, which would boost damage by 15% for ten seconds. Based on the appearance of her Brawler gauntlets, she was using the damage-stacking build that increased damage based on proximity to her target.

Her Priest class must be evolved to Zealot.

I have a lot of health and it’s split across my five cores, but the benefit of that build is that it doesn’t rely on skill or relic activations. She can just punch me a few times to destroy my body and my cores…

“Christian is alive too,” Helena said, the words piercing into Adam’s breast like a cold steak knife. “Once Laura is back, we can be a family again. It hurts, but that thought makes it feel okay.”

Adam’s body was tense as a spring. “Just close your eyes. I will make the pain go away.”

The moment they were released and able to move, Adam teleported directly behind Helena with the night moth’s bracelet, swinging his shapeshifter’s claw at her upper body.

It wasn’t Helena in charge anymore, because his punch was deflected to the side, the energy releasing impotently as a massive explosion of air that send a cloud of sand out and away from them.

A gauntlet knocked into his left side, exploding his slime flesh away painlessly, along with two cores.

Adam used Prankster to activate his bracelet again, teleporting behind Helena a second time, using the shadow of the dust cloud.

She turned to quickly face him, already mid-swing, but Adam shot himself back using his new spring trick with his legs, activating his boots mid-air to make a cloud that allowed him to skate backwards and away from her follow-up swing.

That same swing brought her foot forward, and directly onto the trap he’d dropped at the same time he teleported.

Helena’s body exploded from the foot and up through the legs and abdomen, the insane force of the trap boosted by his crush upgrades, reducing her to half a person and sending her blood everywhere.

[Trap triggered. 100 Points rewarded.]

Thankfully, she was dead on the spot, but the sight of what he’d done to his sister made him feel sick. He was glad that his slime body didn’t have a stomach.

Adam hopped off the cloud and went over to her body. The brooch on his chest sent a flame washing over Helena’s remains and he picked up the seed left behind.

< < Object > >

< Soul Seed — A flower seed birthed by the passing of Helena Fischer >

A pang of guilt and regret flourished inside him, clenching his non-existent heart, but painful nevertheless.

A Gray’s lily will bloom from this, Adam knew. It had been her favourite flower since they were kids.

< < Challenge Stone Deactivated > >

< You have defeatedPlayer Helena Fischer in the arena >

< < Victory Pearl Obtained > >

It didn’t feel like a victory when Adam returned to the basement of his player house.

He kicked his chair aside and went up the steps, while his slime flesh slowly returned, thanks to the healing effects of the island.

However, the two cores he’d lost didn’t come back.

“Does this mean my health is stuck at three-fifths?” he asked Parvillo.

[Yes. Unless you replace your lost cores.]

Good thing stage three has the blood summons, Adam thought to himself, feeling weirdly disconnected from the loss of so much health all at once.

[I would like to revise my earlier statement,] Parvillo remarked. [Challenging other Players after Stage Three is highly likely to get you killed. I was unaware that the Flayed Lady could induce Players to move in certain ways. Helena Fischer should not have been capable of fighting in such a manner, based on what I can glean of her past.]

Adam agreed. His sister had been quite a fast runner in high school, but she’d never shown any interest in martial arts, and the casually efficient deflect of his fast-moving punch was something he suspected only a master might be capable of, especially when paired with the perfectly timed counter.

Perhaps the Flayed Lady is able to transfer the skills of people under her control to others at will. Maybe even their very minds?

“I won’t hide from the fights,” Adam said. “But I’ll have to treat them all like Voidspawn. I need to look at them not as individual players, but rather as parts of a whole. A whole which shares knowledge and power amongst its many minds, and a foe that will not fall for the same trick twice.”

[You have only defeated one minor Voidspawn. What you are suggesting is not something you have actually proven yourself capable of until now. You must survive until the Forbidden Altar. Perishing before then throws all of our plans into disarray. Do not take undue risks for your own selfish reasons.]

“You know, I was starting to like you, Parvillo, but maybe I was kidding myself. Loneliness is making me consider you as more than you are, but clearly you’d never understand. I’m going to do what I must, for the sake of those I love.”

Adam left his house and ran to the garden, something that took only a moment, thanks to his insanely high speed.

He handed the soul seed to Meilo without a word and then headed to the market to find Yenna.

She was leaning against the fountain, watching the other denizens talk while eating the food that Charlie made for them with her grill.

“Good evening, Adam,” she greeted him.

“Would you mind playing me something calming?” he asked, sitting down with his back to the fountain’s edge, watching the market.

“Of course,” she answered and pulled out a small flute, before beginning a meandering and subtle melody.

Adam closed his eyes and tried to forget what he’d just done.

I did the right thing.

Right…?