The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 322

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Ronan skimmed through his status when he returned. There wasn’t much point looking through it when he’d checked it out right before the iteration began. After skipping through the rigmarole of getting into the right tutorial, he was yanked into the shifting void for a brief moment and then dumped unceremoniously into the streets of London.

His surroundings didn’t shock him, as most of his nightmare tutorial attempts had brought him to his home city. A few of the attempts had sent him to the coast or other random locations, but for the most part they began in the city.

It felt strange being back there. His strength was on a different level compared to the first time he had attempted the nightmare difficulty tutorial. Back then, even an ordinary monster posed a small challenge to him and only the mini-bosses and bosses were real threats capable of ending his life. The tsunami iteration had been a terrifying experience, yet it had led him to so much growth. Growth that meant if he faced the same monster again he would obliterate it without breaking much of a sweat. However, there was a negligible chance of him experiencing the same tutorial twice in the nightmare difficulty. It was an endlessly shifting trial that rarely put challengers through the same battles more than once. He was curious to see what it had in store for him this time, especially once he pushed further than the wall he had reached the previous time.

He didn’t even need to wait that long for the first signs of the tutorial to show themselves. Screams broke out in the distance, echoing between the steel-and-glass buildings that filled the centre of the city. As always, Ronan began to move in the direction of the commotion—where there were screams, he would find the monsters.

Unfortunately for Ronan there were no giant beats to slay, just a horde of what looked like oversized goblins with rounder faces and tusks protruding from their bottom jaw. And a third arm that stuck out from their spine and was surprisingly nimble. Orcs or ogres or something? I don’t think I’ve seen them yet, but there’s probably anything you can imagine in this new world…

Unfortunately despite their somewhat imposing appearance and the fact that they’d been killing and eating people until the moment he arrived, the creatures—identified as Orken by the system tags floating above their heads—didn’t pose much of a challenge. Ronan slaughtered them all with barely more than a single hit to kill each of the bastards. In fact, one of his strikes took out three of them at once, bringing down his average hits per kill. Despite how easy clearing the first stage of the nightmare tutorial had become, it was an empty feeling. There wasn’t any excitement to be had in facing such pathetic foes, which was why Ronan could only hope that as he advanced to the later stages he would face an enemy that would truly make his heart race.

Even though the orcs weren’t challenging, his level had soared up from taking them out. His multipliers were pretty high after grinding for so many iterations after his condensation, to the point that he had to not only choose a class, but take multiple evolutions for it after clearing just one stage of the tutorial. The choice between taking the luck-based class line again or a new one was tough. Having high luck would give him the greatest rewards and probably better chances in battle, but the main downside was that sometimes when he fought as a Celestial Gambler he’d felt that fighting was almost like a game, with random occurrences causing him to do huge amounts of damage or evade devastating attacks despite not even trying. In short, it wasn’t fun.

There was one class that had caught his eye in the past but he’d never chosen as an option. It was perfect not just because of his personality and way of fighting, but also because of his ability to not be dead when he was killed. The class was called Barbarian. The class skills were both passive and were focused around the new stat the class granted called Rage. It was similar to Momentum in that it was a stat with a cap that fluctuated depending on the circumstances. The more he was hit, and the harder those hits were, the more his rage would increase. The second skill made his physical hits do more damage the higher his rage stat was. Unfortunately the higher the rage stat increased the faster it would drop. There was also the downside that the higher the stat was, the more his mental state would be influenced by it—making him into some kind of mindless berserker.

Those downsides were what had put Ronan off choosing the class originally. However, as he had progressed more and developed his stats and accomplishments further, another class became available to him that seemed to be an advanced version of the original Barbarian class. It was called Enlightened Barbarian. The name was a contradiction, but the class itself was anything but. The essence of it was the same as the previous class, except with a greater rage cap and the ability for rage to empower his magic as well as physical strikes. There were even some cultivation bonuses thrown in the class benefits, which Ronan was always glad to take. What really made the class worth taking was the fact the Enlightened Barbarian no longer lost his intellect and rationality when his rage stat increased. While the rarity was only Legendary, that was just for the base class at level 10. When evolved it was sure to match some of the stronger classes he had taken in the past. Besides, he doubted he would get beyond a Celestial class for some time, so there was no need to go hunting for the best possible rarity. Ronan simply wanted to have fun fighting again.

The evolutions for the class took it to Mythical rarity and he was hoping it might push a bit further on the next one. For that, he would need to complete stage 2 of the tutorial, which he was a few seconds away from starting.

He had dumped all of his free stat points into agility and strength right before he was transported to stage 2, which meant he would be taking full advantage of his new class. Magic was fun and all, but sometimes he just wanted to punch stuff. Stage 2 was a similar scenario to the first, but with about five times more Orken and a bunch of much stronger and more muscular bastards littered throughout their horde. They still didn’t pose much of a challenge. In fact, Ronan felt he might push his rage stat higher out of pure spite for the lack of difficulty than from actually getting hit by his opponents.

The same went for the third stage, though the Orken tore through a majority of the city before Ronan even arrived to fight them. The commander in the third stage took a much stronger hit to kill than the previous monsters, but a stronger hit was still just one hit. Ronan didn’t feel challenged, but he had somehow made his way to almost level 300. He looked forward to stage 4, where hopefully the first boss or mini-boss would put up a real fight and give him the thrill he’d been missing while simply grinding iterations.

The beginning of stage 4 was a disappointment. Ronan faced the same ordinary Orken he had defeated in the earlier stages, as well as the stronger variants and some of the commanders. The ranged attacks were somewhat annoying to dodge while fighting up close and personal with the melee fighters, but overall the challenge difficulty was similar—not exciting whatsoever.

Then the mini-boss appeared.

It was worlds apart from the fodder monsters Ronan had fought until that point. Standing at least three metres taller than even the commander Orken, the mini-boss gave off a fearsome aura. In each of its three hands it held a cleaver, the blades of which were larger than Ronan’s entire body. If he was hit by one, it might just cut him right in half. If the mini-boss had the stats, that is. Ronan had been a veritable tank at level 0, but at almost level 300 he was practically a hydra. His regeneration combined with his enormous vitality made him unkillable except by the strongest foes. The tag floating above the huge Orken’s head gave him hope this would be a fun battle.

[Gothuron - MINI BOSS][Orken War-Chief Lv.350]

The level was one that should threaten him, but to be honest Ronan wasn’t even sure given how overpowered he was at that point. Even if the mini-boss hit him directly with one of its cleavers, his ridiculous health points might even let him live to counter-attack. Not that he wanted to waste this opportunity on that risk. No, he was going to embrace the battle in the spirit of his new class. With a gleeful battle-roar, Ronan rushed through the fodder monsters, cleaving them apart in his wake as he ran directly for his true opponent.

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