The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 308

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The warden went down the moment the conjured trident pierced through his armour and flesh. “What the hell do you think you are doing, I—” The alien didn’t get another word out before a dagger slashed his arm open from shoulder to wrist. Blue blood started to pour from the wound, but Ronan quickly sealed it. He didn’t want to end this too fast.

“Right, tell me everything you know about this prison, including where the most dangerous inmates are kept and the best ways to get out.” He at least wanted some information so that when he gave the Path of the Gladiator a proper shot he would know how to best complete it.

“Why would I tell a prisoner that kind of information?” The warden had a defiant expression on his face, even after the two wounds Ronan had given him. That wouldn’t do.

Ronan slashed the bastard’s chest a couple of times. He was meticulous, even going as far as to let the alien resist before Critical Tempo activated. The last thing he needed was for an accidental critical hit to turn the warden into a blue mist before he had obtained sufficient vengeance and information.

About ten minutes later Ronan left the control room feeling extraordinarily satisfied, and blessed with a wealth of knowledge about the alien prison. He could probably take over and run the place himself with how much he had managed to squeeze out of the warden. The annoying little alien had been surprisingly loose with his tongue once Ronan started pricking needles in the most sensitive spots he could find. Even more so when Enchant - Ice was used with liberal abandon.

Speaking of enchantments, Ronan had picked up quite the collection during his grinding spree. They were one of the uses of magic that allowed him to apply all manner of elemental effects to his attacks even without needing to attune his mana to anything other than pure. In fact, they were highly effective because he could pump a crapload of mana into them to turn the dial on their potency to the max.

He hadn’t tested most of them out yet, because they were on the backburner, but the list was growing longer. He decided to ask his sponsor the next iteration for either information about enchantments or just a bunch of skill scrolls that had new ones for him to test out. He wanted to figure them out with sorcery, because they relied more on drawing strange symbols with mana onto his weapons before an attack than making pure mana constructs the way spells operated. He believed that he could find a way to make permanent ones that he would be able to apply to his equipment once he managed to get better at crafting. There was simply too much to do, but he had plenty of time to do it all.

Having obtained satisfying justice, Ronan ended the iteration by taking the fastest route out of the prison the warden had shown him. After collecting some more rewards in the form of a bunch of Enchant skills, he killed himself so that he didn’t need to wait two weeks to get back into combat and finish obtaining his piercing weapons mastery. It was taking longer than the others, which meant that either Ronan was doing something wrong or it was just finicky in general.

Thankfully halfway through completing the tutorial in the following iteration he finally received the notification that he had been waiting for. With that done, it was time to work on further merging his weapon masteries.

[Spear V], [Dagger III], [Bow II], [Needle I], [Blowgun], [Trident III], and [Pike I] Mastery have been assimilated into [Piercing Weapons III] Mastery!

Gain a minor damage bonus when using a weapon that can deal piercing damage. Balance penalties for piercing weapons are nullified. Gain a miniscule strength and agility boost when wielding piercing weapons. Gain a 35% chance to apply the [Armour Break] effect when landing a successful strike with a piercing weapon. Gain a 5% chance to completely bypass the target's resistance when landing a successful strike with a piercing weapon. Gain a 10% chance to apply the [Cripple] effect when landing a successful strike to a joint or tendon with a piercing weapon.

The mastery was a lower tier than he had hoped for, but the bonuses were interesting and provided crazy synergy with his ability to land regular critical hits. If he was able to bypass the resistance against the super high level bosses and mini-bosses he faced in the nightmare difficulty tutorial, that might make for a hilarious cheese moment that would leave the administrator speechless. Ronan only regretted he couldn’t witness that in person and would have to instead imagine the system’s lackey making a dumbfounded facial expression. Then again, he wasn’t sure the mastery effects worked that way and the chance was only one in ten hits. He would need to get lucky, but he was pretty good at that.

Ronan pulled up his masteries once more to check how they were looking. He had other things to work on in terms of merging, but right now his focus was on weapons and combat. Now, can I merge them all in one go or will there be another step between what I have now and an all-weapons mastery?

[Mastery]

Mana IX 11/100, Shield I 3/100, Stamina VIII 24/100, Pain III 39/100, Anti-Magic 2/100, Perception II 8/100, Leadership 1/100, Stealth 1/100, Critical III 19/100, Momentum II 1/100, Health VI 12/100, Breath 4/100, Meditation 1/100, Crafting 18/100, Enchant 5/100, Crafting 13/100, Blunt Weapons VII 21/100, Spellcasting IV 46/100, Focus II 2/100, Creativity 11/100, Thrown Weapons I 19/100, Physical Body IV 29/100, Slashing Weapons V 16/100, Piercing Weapons III 49/100

The question of whether he could merge things like mana and stamina mastery, as well as more obscure masteries such as breath and meditation remained, but Ronan was dreading such boring endeavors. He knew he would have to do it at some point, but right now he was more than satisfied with killing monsters with a variety of weapons and slowly getting better at doing so.

With the inclusion of bow mastery into piercing weapons mastery, Ronan felt that a great starting point might actually be to combine ranged and piercing weapons into a single mastery, if such a thing were possible. It wasn’t just the bow and arrow, either. Many thrown weapons did piercing damage, such as javelins and throwing knives. There was synergy there that he decided to exploit.

Another dozen iterations went by with Ronan figuring out the intricacies of how the system handled damage. He was sure there should be more specific methods of killing things, but the system seemed happy to label most hits as either piercing, slashing, or smashing. Of course there were additional damage effects like bleeding and poison and such, but they weren’t what Ronan was trying to become a master of.

He learned how to better throw knives and javelins to apply more force from the throw to the weapon’s tip, so that it pierced deeper into his foes and transferred more of his sizable stats into damage. He had stopped using Mark of the Eternal Seeker at a certain point, believing that it was a crutch that held him back from true mastery. While he wouldn’t stop using it in his toughest battles, he wanted to practice improving his own precision. If a situation ever arose where he was prevented from using the mark, he didn’t want to be left helpless to fight at range.

His effort and dedication was rewarded. Incidentally, working on his precision with thrown weapons also helped him with handling spears and the trident. Ronan had cheesed a lot of his battles through virtue of his overwhelming brute strength, but now he was developing technique. The difference between a thousand tons falling over a kilometre radius and being condensed into the size of a fingernail impact zone was tremendous. Most of the goblins he faced literally vanished after a single blow, even when he hadn’t landed a critical hit.

The bosses occasionally survived the opening blow, but even they fell to the second. Nothing had reached the third, though Ronan suspected that would change once he headed back to the nightmare difficulty tutorial.

Unfortunately Ronan ran into a wall. No matter how much better he became with all of his thrown and piercing weapons, including those that counted as both, the system refused to grant him a new mastery. Deciding that he was bored of wasting time on what might be a fruitless endeavour, he started mixing up his combat again, introducing all of his weapons back into the mix, and even resorting to wrestling or straight up punches and kicks on occasion.

For another few iterations he did that, and still he found himself going unrewarded. Not entirely, of course, as he gained plenty of tiers in all four of his newly merged masteries, but they were not what he sought.

After killing what had to be the millionth goblin, Ronan realised that what he was lacking was not understanding of his weapons, but suitable opponents to truly push his skill to the limit. The goblins barely lived longer than a single blow, which meant he wasn’t exactly learning anything actionable. So it was that he headed back into the nightmare tutorial to pit himself against a bunch of overpowered monsters once more. It was time to go for broke and see if he couldn’t jump straight to his end goal.

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