Anthony Alves
patreon
Chapter 55*
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 15:00:18 +0000 UTCAs I said, pay attention to the details. Remember, he didn’t get the last Trait token yet. You’ll understand why I didn’t show you until now. Here’s his status after he finished leveling up.
Name: Daniel “Dan” Branigan
Difficulty: Hell (Increase XP by 100% and drop chance by 30%)
Tier: Supreme Chief (15)
Level: 450
Soul: SS++++ Grade (7-Star)
Mana-type: Magma
Core: Perfect
Stats (capacity for and amplification of intrinsic qualities)
Agility, S+++ Grade (600 Max): 600 (624)
Mana, S++++ Grade (700 Max): 700
Reaction, S++++ Grade (700 Max): 700 (724)
Speed, S++++ Grade (700 Max): 700 (724)
Strength, S+++ Grade (600 Max): 600
Available Stat Points: 246
Attributes (intrinsic qualities averaged)
Durability (physical and void resistance): 24
Health (disease and poison resistance): 29
Spirit (mental and primordial resistance): 25
Class:
PARAGON OF MAGMA (Ph/D/Pw/Pw/U/S. Legendary 7-Star Class. Number of Slot Bonuses equal to Star Class)
Class Restrictions:
Defensive Orbment slot will not accept Indomitable, Resilient, Resistant, Resolute, Retribution, or Tough.
Power Orbment slots will not accept Barrier or any transformation Orbment.
Crown Orbments must be Defensive, Power, or Support Orbments.
Orbment Bonus (6 of 6)
With six Orbments slotted, each Orbment gains the equivalent of 1 rank.
STORM [Fifth Rank. Effective Sixth Rank] (Physical Orbment, Legendary, unique-equipped, upgraded, active): You must be holding a weapon to cast this invocation and casting it causes very heavy weapon-damage to all enemies in a 6.69 (8.36)-meter 60-degree cone in front of you. Higher ranks increase damage and mana cost by 10%, extend range of cone by 5%, and lower the cooldown by 5s. Medium mana cost, instant cast, 57s (32s) cooldown.
(C) Beads of Interception [Crown Orbment] (Defensive Orbment, Crown, unique-equipped, passive): Crown Orbment of Block, Floating Orbs, Parry. Up to 12 (24) highly durable large beads rest on your torso. Upon detection of danger, these beads float around you and attempt to intercept attacks. Beads regenerate at a rate of 1 (2) every 1m:36s.
SUMMON ASHEN RUIN [Fifth Rank. Effective Sixth Rank] (Power Orbment, Legendary, unique-equipped, upgraded, active): Casting this invocation summons an avatar of the Infernal Lord Ashen Ruin one tier above your own (current level 451) that lasts until its destruction or dismissal. Avatar of Ashen Ruin has the Hellfire mana-type. The Infernal can mitigate and absorb a lot of damage and it deals good damage to enemies with its Incinerate and Searing Armor invocations and physical attacks. Higher ranks increase size, durability, damage of attacks, and range of Incinerate by 20%. Extremely high mana cost, 20s cast time, no cooldown.
(C) Void Blast [Crown Orbment] (Power Orbment, Crown, unique-equipped, active): Crown Orbment of Void Bolt, Void Bolt, and Void Bolt. Casting this invocation sends a high-damage missile of void energy at a targeted enemy within a range of 33.9 meters. Medium mana cost, 1.03s cast, 8s cooldown.
SIXTH SENSE [Fifth Rank. Effective Ninth Rank] (Utility Orbment, Legendary, stackable (2), passive): You perceive more and are more aware of your surroundings and possible threats, both seen and unseen, in a circumference of 8.09 (72.81) meters around you. This can manifest as a precognitive flash of impending danger. Higher ranks slightly increase effect and add 8.09 meters to the circumference.
(C) Adroitness [Crown Orbment] (Support Orbment, Crown, unique-equipped, passive): Crown Orbment of Enhanced Agility, Reaction, and Speed. Increase Agility, Reaction, and Speed Stats by 24. Ignores Stat cap.
Slot Bonus (7 of 7)
(1) Paragon of Magma: You become more like magma. In addition to the old effects of Aspect of Magma seen by tapping here, you can now invoke Molten Form at will but permanently suffer from the Third Rank Enraged status effect. Slot Bonus 5, 6, and 7 supplement Paragon of Magma.
Molten Form: Your body transforms into hot lava, giving you a minor regen effect, making mana easier to manipulate, mitigating taken damage by 30%, and returning 15% of all taken damage as the Fifth Rank Barrier and Retribution status effects. The Barrier status effect given by Molten Form cannot be overwritten by higher ranks of the effect and can only stack with the BALLAD OF PRESERVATION status effect. Retribution status effect given by Molten Form cannot be overwritten by higher ranks of the effect and can only stack with the Reprisal Hymn status effect. Lasts until deactivated. Medium-low mana cost, instant cast, no cooldown.
(2) Inevitability of Magma: Killing or assisting in killing an enemy instantly fills your core with mana equivalent to roughly 32 minutes worth of the last meditation technique used and provides a small healing effect. Lower-level enemies are worth less time but no less than 1m:13s. Higher-level enemies are worth more time.
(3) Lava Stomp: Stomp the ground, sending clumps of lava spattering in a 5.56-meter 90-degree cone in front of you and trapping the parts of creatures touching the ground in lava for 2 seconds. Medium mana cost, instant cast, 2m:51s cooldown.
(4) Seismic Sense: You perceive more and are more aware of your surroundings and possible threats, both seen and unseen, in a circumference of 24.27 meters around you. This can manifest as a precognitive flash of impending danger. This provides the benefit of the Third Rank SIXTH SENSE Orbment, and stacks with that Orbment.
(5) Hot Lava: Your lava is now the average temperature of magma and cools much slower.
(6) Lava Flows: Magma is a fundamental part of you. Advanced mana techniques are much easier and more natural for you to form and manipulate.
(7) Molten Form: Instead of an Orbment slot, Molten Armor is upgraded to a major transformation, Molten Form.
Crown Orbment Bonus (1 of 1)
Inevitability of Magma has a high chance to instantly reset the cooldown of Lava Stomp. If Block or Dodge is slotted, its charges are doubled. If Revenge or NULLIFY is slotted, its cast time, mana cost, and cooldown are reduced by 25%. If a direct damage power Orbment is slotted, it gains a mirror effect doing 25% of the invocation’s damage. If any chant, hymn, song, MANA BATTERY, innate attribute, or statistic enhancer is slotted, it functions as if it were two ranks higher.
Traits (13)
(1) Lone Wolf: Pick an additional Trait. Increase XP by 50% and drop chance by 25%. Joining a party removes this Trait. Fighting within 13 meters of a friendly participant inverses Trait bonuses.
(2) Stalwart Soul: Your Soul Stat is increased by one step (F to F+, F+ to C, etc.).
(3) Hardened Channels: Your channels are hardened and can handle a large amount of mana usage without injury or damage.
(4) Intellection: Concepts, revelations, and epiphanies come a little easier for you.
(5) Gifted: Stat grades are a little easier to increase for you.
(6) Reckoner: Execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.
(7) Limitless: You don’t stop. Sleep deprivation, exhaustion, being pushed to your boundaries and then passing right through them, you don’t stop. You are now more efficient with your body’s resources. You can keep going for longer. Energy, harmony, mana, and stamina are expended at a 20% greater efficiency.
(8) Mind Bastion: Negative mental effects are easier to negate for you.
(9) Potent: All invocation damage increased
(10) Enduring: Any source of healing also creates a stacking absorb-shield equal to 10% of the healing you receive, even over-healing. Each individual absorb-shield lasts for 2m:23s each.
(11) Tester: Switching Orbments or Classes is less detrimental to long term growth.
(12) Heedless: The mental resistance aspects of the Spirit Attribute are increased for you.
(13) Diamond Channels: Your channels are hard as diamonds and can handle an extraordinary amount of mana usage without injury or damage.
[Holy shit!]
You can say that again, brother.
[Holy shit! This makes no sense at all.]
Level 41 to 450 with a 7-Star Soul. That’s 8 Stat points per level, and there were 409 level increases. Low Jade to peak Supreme Chief.
[Even though the participants are fighting against Hell, they still have Supreme Chief as a tier 15 title instead of Bishop?]
I guess so. That’s what shows on the Profile Readers and all the info at my terminal. I never heard of Bishop. But I only recently learned of these hotshot tiers. I don’t really know how bigwig stuff works or should work. I just work here, Boss.
[I’d love to know where all these resources come from. I have a very hard time believing someone ascended 11 tiers and 409 levels in four days. The resources available in these Games continue to dumbfound me. The costs involved…these must be fake resources.]
Could be. I heard the hotshots divvy up what’s left though. If that’s true, then they’re real. Our pay comes from the world being purged.
There’re a few rumors of a tech being rewarded with some amazing bit of treasure for going above and beyond. Treasure from within the Game. Just rumors though. I never met a tech that got rewarded like that, and there’s never a name to go along with the rumor either, so there’s no way to check.
And just FYI, it took him about four and a half days to finish ascending.
[His Stats being capped out is…that doesn’t happen. This is bordering on silly. It’s impossible to raise Stat grades so quickly even with the Gifted Trait.]
Don’t forget he got a step increase ascending to Silver, Gold, Knight, Captain, Commander, Sovereign, Fiend, Archfiend, and Absolute. It looked to us like he got 2 step increases ascending to Chief, and 2 more ascending to Supreme Chief.
[I’m familiar with the tiers and the particulars of ascension. Yes, two steps are granted upon ascension to tier 14 on onwards. It increases to three steps upon ascension to tier 19.]
Jeez. It’s crazy it goes that high. What tier are you again?
[I never said.]
Well, feel free to tell me at any time. I’m a great listener.
.
.
.
Okay, guess it’s not going to happen right now.
I’ll still be here when you’re ready to finally open up and pour your heart out to me. I already poured my heart out to you, remember? I told you very secret secrets.
So, he got 13 step increases in total ascending. And that’s on top of his many natural increases and those rewards he held onto.
Well, long before he began this ascension spree, his Mana Stat just began increasing naturally like crazy, right around the time those Traits started to just appear out of nowhere. He looked surprised by that too.
Did you count the Stat points? Not one went into increasing his core. It just became ‘perfect’ when he was leveling up through Sovereign tier.
He got 3,279 Stat points counting those extra 10 from Trial SS rewards. He had already earned and spent 267. His total cap with his current Stats was 3,300. He spent 3033 and still had a bunch extra. How crazy is that? After maxing out everything, he had 246 extra Stat points. That’s insane.
[Agreed. I’m still struggling with him ascending 11 tiers in one go. And his Stat grades too.]
You’re telling me. Us techs work our asses off and get thrown table scraps. And with all those dumb Asmodite broads infecting the union, I only expect things to get worse.
Well, I guess that’s why we have planes and buildings to fly them into. Know what I’m saying, brother?
[No, and I don’t want to know. Did all this qi come from beast cores? Or is that much XP given out?]
Dan had a ton of XP banked. He probably could’ve fully ascended with just XP. But maybe a third of his ascension was from XP. The rest was from beast cores.
Hector stole his old stash, but he was a grinding machine. He had acquired thousands and thousands of new ones.
But to fully answer your question, XP is pretty easy to come by. Most of it is never cashed out since participants hit some bottleneck they can’t pass. No one ever ascended higher than a 5-Star Soul in other Games, so this is all new territory to me.
[I still...if cores from cloned beasts are so effective, why don’t we just clone and farm them too? This was…what was it? Four months of him farming?]
Over four months. Just about four and a half. Somewhere around there. Acesso LaBlacky would love to farm beasts with you, clone or otherwise. Count me in and take me along with you please. If they don’t approve my vacation request, I’ll quit right there on the spot.
[So many resources wasted on those doomed to die. It makes no sense. None of it does. Three Crown Orbments? Foundations for those are nearly as expensive and valuable as Stat Enhancers. I can see those being an SS reward, but he had two just drop? It’s ridiculous.]
No, he traded for those two.
[Still, this all has to be fake. It can’t be otherwise. All these treasures are fake as the qi. It’s the only reasonable explanation.]
No idea, Boss. Did you see the strange stuff? Those Traits? All those Traits that just appeared.
[Of Course. He seems to have somehow naturally acquired two Traits that can’t be naturally acquired.]
And his Class – it’s 7-Stars but only has six Orbment slots. He was offered other Classes with seven slots. It’s crazy he gave up a slot, but that Molten Form seems worth it. Maybe? What do you think?
[I’ve seen this before once a Class has more than five slots, but only if the Slot Bonus replacing an Orbment slot is very powerful. Molten Form certainly fits the criteria. As for the two Traits appearing, I don’t know what to say about that.]
Yeah. The only one that makes any sense is the Diamond Channels upgrade.
My best guess is he got Mind Bastion and Heedless from grinding the Trial of the Shining One so much. If Carnagie Hall told him he could get free Traits by grinding it enough, that would explain why he grinded it so much. There’s no other reason to grind that Trial.
But Potent isn’t ever acquired naturally. Not from what I know.
[Correct. Same as Enduring. Aren’t Trait Gems in the Game?]
No. There’re only those three Trait tokens for the forge. Oh, and that secret code Dan used to get one too.
Tester only appears for people that change out Classes and Orbments like maniacs. Dan never changed out any and he only switched to Crown Orbments utilizing a prior slotted Orbment.
[Tester is a very suspicious one.]
And worst of all, did you see what he wasted a Crown Orbment on? Adroitness? If all my Stats were at his grades with 600 or 700 points in each, no way I’d waste a Crown Orbment on Stat enhancement Orbments. That’s just plain dumb.
And so is keeping SIXTH SENSE instead of replacing it with a Crown Orbment.
[His Class doesn’t allow for a utility slot Crown Orbment.]
He was offered Classes that added a new utility slot that did! What an idiot. And 24 points to three Stats seems like such a huge waste.
[You wouldn’t be saying that if he had a normal number of Stat points. It’s one of a few ways to increase Stats over capacity. And 24 points to a Stat is nothing to scoff at. SS++++ is our SS. That’s the grade 100 points triples the intrinsic power of a Stat. Instead of being 14 times faster, he’s now 14 and half times faster. Every Stat point counts.]
Ah, when you put it that way, I guess I see your point, Boss.
Ready to see my other team members? Becky and Nick were still shithead losers, but Chet managed to catch up to Leena. And as I already said – that broken Trait didn’t slow her down nearly as much as you’d assume. She was really going hard.
[Hold. I still need another moment to wrap my head around ascending 11 tiers and 409 levels in four days.]
Four and a half days, Boss.
------
Once Dan finished ascending and leveling up, he checked his Status in the Profile Reader.
Over the last three months or so, the old Traits he had last time began showing up and his Mana Stat started going up on its own.
The Tester Trait appearing cinched what he thought was happening, the reason why he could blink and recall to that glitched bind point. There was no other explanation for any of this.
He’d take it. He’d take every advantage he could get.
Without Asmodon and his lackeys setting up ambushes, and without being attacked by waves every couple of hours, he could grind non-stop. Accumulating resources wasn’t something he had to worry about.
What he had been worried about was making the Stat grade requirements of certain tiers.
He attributed a lot of his gains to taking Intellection and Gifted so early on and at such a low tier, but if Mana hadn’t gone up so much on its own, he wouldn’t be tier 15 now.
And he was still having a hard time believing he was really tier 15.
In just four and a half months, he had become a lot more powerful than he had managed to in over 60 years.
And even though he regressed, some of what he earned in those 60 years was even increasing his power this time too.
He kind of felt guilty about that. He felt like he was cheating – getting free increases to Mana, those Traits, and being able to blink, use a modified version of Void Barrage, and especially recalling to that bugged bind point.
Aphariel had told Dan it was nearly impossible for a mortal to achieve an 8-Star Soul. He believed her, but he planned on being an exception to that and proving her wrong.
He really pushed himself during his time in the Sanctuary of Revelations. He was surprised by his gains. It worked out much better than he had expected. He was able to eke a lot more out of it than he ever hoped was possible. More than a full Soul grade.
When he had finished his allotted time, he felt he was close to increasing his Soul another step. Months later, it still hadn’t increased. He knew it was really close though, but it had felt that way for months.
He planned on ascending and entering the sixth area only after gaining that step increase, but he had waited as long as he could.
He hated to change his plans, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Some of the stronger participants were getting antsy. If he didn’t enter the Boss area himself soon, someone else would.
He didn’t want to face any of those folks in the arena. He didn’t want to kill a friend or anyone that could help against Asmodon.
He was sure if he was the one to enter, he’d face Hector. And he wanted to kill Hector very badly. He needed to.
Dan felt responsible for the deaths of Austin, Ace, Carlos, Luke, Andrew, Ida Mae, everyone else that died that day.
He should’ve somehow known Hector was a traitor. From the story Leena and Chet told, Hector hadn’t just turned traitor a short time before attacking his friends. To be that powerful, the man would’ve had to have been a traitor for a long while.
Dan racked his brain for some clue he missed. There was nothing. There just wasn’t any signs or way to know the man was a traitor.
He wondered how he had never heard of the guy last time. Hector was good. Notably good. And notably good people tended to remain.
Hector had to have died off early somehow. Maybe a bunch of people ganged up on him? Doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill him soon anyhow, thought Dan.
He wasn’t worried about the demons pitting him against his brother in the arena. Not when they had someone as powerful as Hector.
The forces of Hell were depraved, but they wanted to win the Game. Putting Nicky in the ring instead of Hector just wouldn’t make any sense.
Dan closed the Profile Reader.
Dan hadn’t waited so long to ascend just to maximize natural increases. He also wanted to throw the demons off and make a big play before they had time to modify their plans.
He only wanted to spend a short time adjusting to his new Stats, but the increases were massive enough that it took a lot longer than expected.
Once he felt like he had his body under control, he spent some time invoking and getting used to his new core size and power level.
He filled his core without summoning Ashen Ruin. He wanted to kill Hector with his own two hands.
Once his core was filled, he ran right to the entrance of the sixth area.
He was really, really looking forward to killing Hector. Enough so that it made him a little worried about his mental state.
(I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.)
Comments
Tony
Thank you
Eric Kellar
Really impressive I do love me big numbers and stats. Enduring: Any source of healing also creates a stacking absorb-shield equal to 10% of the healing you receive, even over-healing. Each individual absorb-shield lasts for 2m:23s each. Because of this trait + inevitability of magma he is now insanely op I think. Because should he kill hordes of weaker enemies he will basically have built up an incredibly powerful shield.
Tony
Thank you all
Tony
Thank you. I think you're right. The 7 stat points, right? Let me look at some stuff to see why I said that, because it was 10 in total, but I don't remember if I was talking about the wrong thing or what. Thanks for catching that.
tibbish
The way the MC powered up, and the demons reactions to it (BOTH of them), to me suggests strongly Hector won't really be able to go toe to toe with Dan anymore tho
Actually
Got it. Yeah that makes sense
Arnon Parenti
They meant at the previous run.
Actually
I hope not. I want a climactic fight when he dies. A good one. He has been built up to much for that not to happen.
Arkeus
Very likely hector died to one of the heroes who turned traitor this time around
Actually
I love stat sheet chapters. This one was crazy. I think the 7 extra was wrong. Shouldn’t it be 10. I know you can’t reply until you get back but just asking Tyftc!
