The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 306

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Ronan revelled in the gaining of more body combat masteries. Fighting with his fists had been how he started in the integration. While he had died painfully quite a few times in brawls with goblins, that didn’t take away the pure thrill of pitting himself physically against an opponent and seeing who would come out on top.

The only downside was that most of the monsters he faced in the lower difficulty tutorials weren’t much of a threat to him. Even with Perfectionist offering less stat points than other classes he’d taken in the past, his sub-classes and Stupendous Stats more than made up the difference.

He had thousands of stat points in the physical stats when he allocated his free points into them and it really showed. Even towards the latter stages of the harder difficulty tutorial and the Path of the Gladiator he wiped the floor with the majority of his foes. Returning to Grathen Border World 13 was strange. Even the flying ships which had once been so deadly could be shattered with a single, well-timed punch.

Most of the time he was simply increasing the tier of pugilist and grappling, but he tried to experiment to see what other combat masteries he could gain. Ronan thought about all of the martial arts on Earth. He barely knew the surface of the majority of them but he was far stronger than even the peak humans from before the integration and applying the principles would be a simple affair. I guess pugilist is already a pretty broad mastery that involves a lot of bodily combat. There likely aren’t many more, but I’ll keep trying.

After a few more iterations, where he unlocked masteries such as athletics and acrobatics through his various feats, Ronan realised he may have been too narrow minded. He did wonder why he hadn’t earned those masteries earlier, but perhaps it was just the case that the entry limit was too high and Perfectionist lowered it enough for him to break the threshold without actively focusing on those particular disciplines. In any case, it made him realise that rather than only focusing on combat, he should opt for a broader approach of mastering movement in general. Movement was the foundation of battle, after all, and the better he was able to manipulate his body, the harder and faster he would hit and the less he would get hit back.

After that his iterations were less focused on pure combat and more on just moving his body in new ways. The limits of athleticism, flexibility, and general movement were stretched well beyond what a human would have been capable of. In the first place, Ronan was no longer human, but a juvenile chronate. While his physiology was sort of similar thanks to whatever strange function of his new race let him keep it that way, it operated entirely differently on a cellular level.

His limbs could move almost a fully spherical radius around where they connected to one another. In a nerve wracking moment he tested bending his elbow and finger joints backwards at high speeds, half expecting them to snap. However, not only did they not break but they even seemed entirely unbothered by the offputting movements. That opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for Ronan. He spent some time simply moving and not even thinking about combat. Of course he still killed the necessary monsters to advance through the iterations over and over again, but for the most part it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind.

So it was that he eventually gained a plethora of new bodily-related masteries and eventually merged them to form a mastery that he hadn’t originally intended to obtain but was a huge buff to his ability to punch and kick the crap out of ugly monsters. Ronan was mightily pleased with himself.

[Pugilist V], [Grappling IV], [Athletics III], [Acrobatics II], [Dancing I], [Breath II], and [Gymnastics IV] Mastery have been assimilated into [Physical Body IV] Mastery!

Gain a minor damage bonus when landing any physical blow on an opponent. Enemies caught in a submission hold by you will find it moderately more difficult to escape. Your body reacts with near-perfect precision to your movement commands. Your body will react on instinct sometimes when faced with a sudden attack or obstacle to movement. You have near-perfect control of your physical body. Energy conversion for movement is moderately more efficient.

+50% Efficacy to vitality, endurance, agility, and dexterity

+100% Potency to vitality, endurance, agility, and dexterity

While it wasn’t where he had originally intended to be, it was certainly an improvement over what his original goal was. Ronan was more than satisfied with his new mastery and was ready to head onto the next. He was looking forward to what came after movement, because it was time to merge his weapon masteries together even further.

He suspected there would be some sort of all-weapons mastery at the end of the journey, but he was under no illusion that he would get there without first obtaining some of the more general masteries. To that end, he wanted to gain a piercing and slashing weapons mastery, which he knew would exist thanks to blunt weapons mastery.

After that he would attempt to merge them further to end up with something like melee weapons mastery, and then he might attempt a merge of bows and a few other weapons with thrown weapons mastery to get ranged weapons mastery. After that his final task would be made a lot easier.

Saying it was one thing, however, and doing so was another. That was why when the next iteration began Ronan prepared himself for a long grind of slicing, dicing, carving, piercing, thrusting, and stabbing.

He enjoyed most of those things just a tad less than punching and kicking stuff, but he knew that gaining the masteries would be more than just swinging a sword or an axe until he got to where he wanted to be. Understanding the weapons was his aim, and the best way to do that was see how they functioned when tearing monsters to shreds.

His sword and spear masteries were already fairly well developed, so he began with the axe. It was a weapon he had used a few times but never focused on much as it didn’t suit his particular combat style for the majority of his iterations. However, gaining an appreciation for all kinds of weapons would only serve to improve his combat ability. It wasn’t just about wielding them himself but knowing how to handle opponents who wielded a variety of weapons. The goblins were perfect for that given their proclivity to arm themselves with whatever they could find, and so the harder difficulty tutorial was once again his proving ground.

The axe was unwieldy at first. Just because he could conjure a huge battleaxe and swing it around didn’t mean that was effective. It was certainly lethal, given that he only needed a single swing to slice most goblins in half, but Ronan was fully aware that brute force was only as useful as the mind that wielded it. His aim was not just to be the strongest warrior, but also the most efficient one.

He slowly refined his ability to wield the axe until he could use it to parry blows, disarm opponents, concuss them, and of course, hack them to pieces. Once he had reached a similar level of mastery with the axe as the sword and spear, he moved on. One by one, he would master all the melee weapons in existence.

Ronan started with the slashing weapons. Swords were versatile and that was the reason they were so widely used, but they weren’t the only slashing weapons that existed. He was also aware that they could also double as a piercing weapon, which made him curious about which of the two merged masteries it would evolve into. Maybe it leads to both, or simply whichever one the wielder is more versed in. Some swordspeople are likely better at cutting while others would be more skilled in stabbing. I’m not sure which one I’m an expert in, but the only way to find out is to earn the rest of the weapon masteries.

While working on his masteries Ronan passed the 100 iteration mark. It felt sort of surreal to have lived that many lives, but at the same time he had grown used to his new method of existing. The same way mortal people measured their lives in years, Ronan had begun to mark his own ‘age’ in the number of lives he’d lived rather than such a basic and outdated method like the passing of time.

It was around the iteration 103 mark that he finally received the first merged melee weapons mastery. It was in slashing weapons and to little surprise it took sword mastery as one of its prerequisites. He wondered what that meant for piercing weapons mastery, but he would find out shortly after.

[Sword VII], [Sickle I], [Axe V], [Whip II], [Scythe III], and [Glaive II] Mastery have been assimilated into [Slashing Weapons V] Mastery!

Gain a moderate damage bonus when using a weapon that can deal slashing damage. Weight and balance penalties for all slashing weapons are nullified. Gain a minor dexterity and agility boost when wielding slashing weapons. Gain a 40% chance to apply a cascading [Bleed] effect that starts at 60% of the damage of the strike when landing a successful blow with a slashing weapon. Gain a 10% chance to apply a double cascading [Bleed] effect that starts at 25% of the damage of the strike when landing a successful blow with a slashing weapon. Gain a 5% chance to apply a [Heal Block] effect to the wound when landing a successful strike with a slashing weapon.

With that done, he was ready to master piercing weapons and then move forwards with merging them all into a greater melee weapons mastery. The grind wasn’t as boring as Ronan had expected, and in fact he found himself enjoying the simple act of refining his skills. Thinking about battling old opponents he had lost to with his new skills was thrilling; he couldn’t wait to head back to the nightmare tutorial once he was done.

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