FB: Chapter 64 – Death Of A Saint

“Why won’t you! Just! Die! Slice! Slice! Slice!”

“Blink.” I escaped the Dark Saint Gamabuturon’s attack once more.

“AHHHHH!” It had been 300 seconds since I had poisoned him and he was still going, having used several healing items on himself. But apparently that was his limit. His roar of frustration and his collapse to one knee indicated that he was completely spent.

“I am defeated,” he said in shock and then spewed blood out of his mouth. Boss monsters sometimes got dramatic deaths, especially after a long fight like this one. “Foxy Blight, was it?” he asked me loudly. I made sure to stay away and yelled back my response.

“Yes, I am Foxy Blight,” I declared. More blood poured out of his mouth.

“You are the first person to defeat me. A weak follower of the Human God who uses poison. It is embarrassing.” He then fell over into the mud and died. What was embarrassing was dying like a chump. There were no nearby living monsters, since Dark Saint Gamabuturon had not held back with his friendly fire and I hadn’t held back with the poison.

I quickly raced over to his dead body. His mega blade Slice had dropped as an item along with a Pendant of the War God. Thank you, incredibly high Luck stat, for increasing the drop rate. The sword was the rarer of the items, since it was a named weapon. It was a huge struggle to lift it, but I managed to put it into my inventory along with the pendant. Since they were drops from a boss monster, they didn’t automatically go into my inventory. More monsters were rushing towards me in the distance. I popped some more consumables and continued the battle.

The battle didn’t get any easier as I ran about the battlefield causing chaos and poisoning everything that I could. Once the remaining timer on my legendary poisons reached seven and a half minutes, there was nothing left. I looked around, and everything and everyone had been wiped out from the enemy encampment.

“Huh, I didn’t think I would manage that,” I muttered. I got a couple new alerts. This new title was a surprise.

God Slayer
Awarded for killing over 100 monsters more than 160 levels higher than your own, on your own in one battle and a boss monster.
+15% Physical Damage
+5% Magical Damage
+5% Stats
+1 Title Slot
-40 Absolute Level Difference

The newest effect would make it so that the absolute level difference wouldn’t kick in until there was a 40 level difference between me and my enemy. It didn’t help against enemies weaker than me. It wasn’t that useful in my mind, since my attacks depended on critical damage or alternative means to kill their targets, at least that was the plan. Still, it would make fighting against slightly higher leveled opponents a bit easier since the absolute level difference would be reduced by 40. Too bad it couldn’t go into the negatives.

Now I wondered what would happen if I killed monsters that had an even higher level difference. The next title would probably come in at 250 or 300 levels difference. What would be after God Slayer, Super God Slayer?

War Commendation
For destroying an enemy camp in its entirety and killing a Dark Saint, you have earned a War Commendation from the Human Empire.

I could use this to exchange for stuff that was outside the usual scope of war merits. Getting a promotion in my noble rank from Baroness to Viscountess would probably be the best use of such a reward. I pulled up the quest screen I had access to from the Minor Pendant of the Human God. I submitted the Pendant of the War God.

The contribution counter on the quest screen quickly went up and my pendant was upgraded to the next level and halfway to the next one. I also got access to a new title, which I wasn’t able to equip since all my title slots were used up at the moment.

Lesser Pendant of the Human God
A pendant used by the Apostles of the Human God to commune with their deity and receive blessings.
+Recognized as an Apostle of the Human God
+3% Luck

Acolyte
Awarded for becoming a follower of a god.
+Recognition as a follower of a god
+3% Stats
+3% Max Resistances

I didn’t have another title slot, so I couldn’t equip the title. It was quite good. It was also annoying since the Dark Saint didn’t drop a Major Pendant, which should be in line with his title. But pendants were almost always dropped as one level lower than they actually were.

While this was a major victory, I had spent a lot of money to make this attack possible. Still, the God Slayer title alone was worth the expense. As the star fortress came into view, I could see everyone was lined up on the battlements, waiting to see if I made it back.

When I came into view out of the tree line at the base of the hill, there was a resounding cheer from the battlements. I trudged my way up the muddy incline. “Blink.” I teleported to the top of the battlements, where a clear spot and been left open. I landed just past the stone parapet.

“We got a notice that the enemy camp in the area had been destroyed,” Kill Blade said.

“Yes. I wiped out the enemy army myself and their newly arrived commander, the Dark Saint Gamabuturon. Killing him in single combat.”

“How did you do it?” someone shouted out and everyone looked at me. I could see the ENN reporter Dave, eagerly listening in and recording.

“Pure skill. Dodging hundreds of attacks that would instantly super critical me was no easy feat. I then unleashed my most secret weapon,” I said with a smile, and everyone listened in. “A kiss!” There were gasps at that.

“I kissed the Dark Saint, and…well you can imagine the rest. Now let’s have a celebration!” I declared to cheers.

“You heard it here first folks. Foxy Blight single handedly killed a level 230 boss NPC along with his army. This has been confirmed by an announcement from the Human Empire’s Army,” Dave reported.

I retired to my small personal office in the interior of the star fortress, completely exhausted. Already congratulatory messages were coming in. I gave cursory replies to some of them and then logged out. I was going to have a nice meal and get some proper sleep.

When I logged back in, I went to the main military camp in the rear. I turned in my War Commendation to upgrade my noble title to Viscountess, which gave me a 3% stat boost instead of 1%. I also paid for an airship to leave the black zone.

I was done with this place. My forces would face almost no attacks for a year or two. More than enough time to financially recover and for people to gain levels. We just had to keep enough people in the fortress to maintain our presence. But we would be able to scale back on the number of people needed, since the threat to the location had been massively reduced.

We had accumulated another 7,581 war merits after my little attack, and it would take a while to get that up to 25,000. But I probably wouldn’t cash them in. If we did, we would only be exempt from mobilization for a short period of time. Instead, I would have my guild stay there in the star fortress and just accumulate more war merits.

A mobilization order could only come after three real world years once a guild had retired from the battlefield. I was exploiting a loophole by having my guild stay out there indefinitely, but I didn’t discount the idea that the Human Emperor would screw me over once more. Better to keep our cushy spot, now that the enemy camp had been cleared.

As I took the airship back towards the Human Empire and civilization, I pulled out my newly acquired blade to look over its stats.

Unique Blade: Slice
A weapon as powerful as it is massive. Forged from the fang of an elder dragon.
+Mega size
+Unbreakable
+Drop on death
+500% Physical Damage
+Innate Legendary Skill: Slice

Since it was a piece of actual equipment, it had a hidden movement penalty. Cosmetic clothing didn’t impact movement. The pendant I wore, had a very small impact to my base speed and movement. Slice was crippling in terms of penalties for its use.

I would need so many strength focused or weight reduction skill shards to have any kind of hope of wielding this weapon, which offset its incredible traits. Unbreakable alone meant it could block any attack. Sure, there were attacks that could get around this like a well aimed Vomitatis and area effect attacks. But even with attacks like those it was still an incredible defense. The 500% boosted physical damage basically meant that any hit that landed would be a super critical hit.

Then a skill on a weapon was basically an extra skill slot to the maximum of 16. And it was a ranged weapon skill. I wouldn’t be able to get a better weapon than this for a long time. The problem was that it was completely opposite to my poison and Luck focused build.

This was the kind of weapon you made a build centered around. As a unique item, its value was priceless and could be traded for other items of a similar nature. The only one with a large enough collection was the Human Emperor and he would never allow someone to just ask for a trade. I would have to win the Tournament of Champions again and then ask that as my prize for winning. Only then would I be allowed to make an exchange from his personal vault with Slice.

Still, there was a part of me that wanted to use this weapon badly. I sent a message to my Officer of Knowledge Jacklyn Fox asking for weight reduction skill shards and if there were any legendary ones, and how many would be needed for a mega item.

The answer was an epic ranked skill shard, each reducing all equipment weight by 5%, or 1% per rank. These skill shards could be equipped on one’s weapon or armor. There was a special legendary skill shard, Feather Weight, which reduced a weapon’s weight by 2% per rank, so double the general weight reduction skill shards. To properly use a mega weapon, its weight needed to be reduced to 10% of the original weight. Strength boosting had worse percentages since they offered additional offensive advantages. That wouldn’t be an option based on the number of skill slots I had available.

There were temporary potions, but they were expensive and wouldn’t be able to close the gap without the skill shards. I needed 88% poison resistance since I had 15% poison resistance from one of my titles to maximize my poison resistance. That meant I needed both Poison Resistance skill shards, despite pushing far above the required 88% poison resistance. Poison Absorption just raised the maximum percentage on poison resistance and allowed me to go over 100%, but it didn’t actually increase my resistance itself.

That left 2 skill slots for Reduce Weight and one for Feather Weight. If I used experience, I had earned myself to level up the skill shards, that would place my weight reduction at 20.9%. If I got to level 120 and unlocked all 16 skill shard slots and used all the available ones for epic ranked Weight Reduction skill shards, I would get that percentage up to 52.1%. That was about 35% short of what I needed to actually use this weapon.

I could level up skills to regular legendary skills, but I didn’t like that. Special legendary skills were always better like Feather Weight. The problem was that only one unique legendary skill shard could be equipped at a time, so I couldn’t stack up Feather Weight.

If I made all of the Reduce Weight skill shards legendary at level 120 along with Feather Weight, that would get me up to 67.2% while using up 10 skill shard slots. That was still 20% short of what it needed to be for me to use Slice as easily as Dark Saint Gamabuturon.

It really was a build defining weapon, but I wanted it desperately. Jacklyn Fox then sent me information on a title I didn’t even know about. The titles that were known in the weight reduction chain, were Driven, Tenacious, and Unstoppable. They started at 5% weight reduction and went up to 15%. Each rank of the title was based on the number of monsters killed while encumbered going up by a factor of ten for each title in the chain.

The titles were awarded from killing monsters under an extreme weight penalty. If I equipped Slice and dragged myself around, I would get the titles. Equipping a mega item was the quickest way to get them. But I didn’t have any free title slots and it seemed a bit sub-par compared to the Acolyte title which increased my max resistances and stats.

People had tried equipping more equipment, but there were no higher versions of the title as far as I could recall, since that meant they were encumbered so much they couldn’t move which made killing monsters on their own impossible. Equipping anything beyond one mega-item and no weight reduction would do that. In the end it was probably a question of time and resources, with the higher levels of the title requiring exponentially more monster kills while the weight reduction was linear.

If there was one level higher to the title track, that would net me a 20% weight reduction. If I really went crazy, I could probably encumber myself encumber myself enough to get up to the fifth title in the chain, which would be 25% weight reduction. The problem with this title track was that it only considered the situation after weight reduction was taken into account. I wouldn’t be able to use potions or skill shards to reduce my weight.

I would also be completely immobile and would probably have to kill 100,000 monsters that were equal or above my level like that to get the title. It could be done, but it wasn’t practical and I had no title slot to spare.