FB: Chapter 62 – In The Mud

The monster War Dogs rushed at our star fortress once more. “Concentrate fire power on the highlighted monster!” Combat Officer Kill Blade ordered as members of the Fanged Fox guild fired with their magical guns. Beams of white light shot from the top edge of the star fortress like tiny threads to strike the massive War Dogs rushing at our fortification.

I popped a potion of feather fall and leapt over the battlements. A War Dog the size of a house impacted the base of the star fortress, damaging the stones. It then unleashed a blast of white fire, melting them partially, contributing to the massive damage that had already been done.

Vomitatis. My skill hit the War Dog, as it was covered in horrible smelling poisoned barf and acid. It was a level 140 trash mob for this black zone. I was only level 57 after two months of battle. I could only kill monsters so quickly, since this wasn’t an altar set up. The fact that I had managed to gain two levels was impressive.

Blink. Vomitatis. I damaged another War Dog with my skill. The actual poison damage was barely anything, but the critical damage from my Luck stat allowed me to deal ongoing 1% critical poison damage bypassing the absolute level advantage the War Dogs had.

I popped a couple more consumables while continuing to use Blink and Vomitatis. Combined with hundreds of guild members firing magical guns, the War Dogs finally began to fall one by one. A massive hammer slammed into the last one, sending its head jerking to the side, its massive body mitigating the force of the blow.

“Impact!” Champion Hammer Crusher roared and swung his hammer into the monster once more. I floated down to the ground while the guild members cheered him on. He had gotten quite good at fighting high level opponents, making sure to avoid damage, while dishing out as many critical hits as possible. That was why he kept targeting the War Dog’s head with his attacks. It eventually went down.

“Good job,” I told him.

“Still too slow. That took a minute, and it was already damaged,” he said with a sigh.

“The absolute level advantage is a bitch,” I joked with the crude humor that had begun to set in at the fortress.

“She truly is,” he joked back. “She is extra critical.” The joke didn’t work precisely, but neither of us cared that much. The constant fighting was exhausting and soul crushing. Anything to take our mind off it was appreciated. After two months we had only accumulated 2,857 war merits when we needed 25,000 for this nightmare to end.

“At least the guild members are being rotated in and out. That is helping quite a bit,” he said.

“And costing us a fortune to move people out here and back to the Human Empire,” I replied with a sigh. Unfortunately, there was no other option. No one wanted to be out here long term.

“You could always leave,” Hammer Crusher suggested.

“Thanks. But I am needed here. Without my support in dealing damage, the fortifications would have taken too much damage,” I said heavily while looking at the repairs that were already happening. That was more money down the drain. We were burning a lot of money and barely doing anything against the hordes of enemies arrayed against the Human Empire in this black zone.

The only good thing was that I had mobilized the Fanged Fox guild very early and was able to get the best possible position for our forces. On top of a large hill, with one flank anchored by the Sea of Torment. The other flank was anchored by a military base of the Human Empire. Every time I visited there, it was depressing, since we were like toddlers compared to their strength.

All the guild members out here were just wasting time instead of getting stronger. The amount of money that was being consumed was painful to think about. I mentally cursed the Human Emperor for issuing the mobilization order himself, making it impossible to get out of.

We couldn’t keep going on like this. I couldn’t keep going on like this. Our guild was being dragged to its death by the constant expenditure of money. I had to loan the guild quite a bit from my income streams like merchandising to keep us afloat.

It would take another 19 to 20 months to get enough war merits at this rate. That was unacceptable. The intelligence reports the army was willing to share, indicated that Saint Gamabuturon was in the area. If he arrived here, our position would immediately collapse. That would force my forces to directly aid the penal legion, and I would lose command. That would be the precursor to my guild falling apart.

I had been considering my options for the longest time and had finally decided on a daring strategy to escape this hell. I had planned for this before, but I hadn’t expected to have to use this strategy now. I had been hoping to keep this use of the game mechanics under wraps for as long as possible, but we were nearing the breaking point and there was no other option.

I had managed to get a legendary antidote and use that to get a special legendary skill created from Poison Resistance, the unique legendary skill Poison Absorption. It would allow me to absorb poison damage over 100% resistance, which meant poison would heal me. Also, it increased my max poison resistance by 3% per rank. Since it was legendary, that meant the skill shard was rank 6 with another 5% boost to the overall skill, which added 18.9% max resistance on top of 85% resistance, pushing me to 103.9% poison resistance.

I replaced one of my epic skill shards of Sample Poison. That reduced my critical poison chance from around 17% to around 12%, which was annoying, but I could deal with that at the moment. It had taken a while to arrange all of this while stuck here in the black zone, but I had managed with some help from my personal secretary Henry.

Everything had already been set up, I just needed him to collect the additional legendary antidotes that the Purification Alchemist had prepared for me. Once I had those, I would be able to wipe out the forces opposing us fairly easily, at least that was my hope. In fact, it was my only hope at this point.

The math was headache inducing, but I knew how it worked which was important. The main thing was that my poison resistance was over 100%. Vomitatis would heal me instead of damaging me. Today’s battle was testing it out. I didn’t like the critical hit reduction, but it was necessary, since using healing potions in combat took time away from using other consumables.

“You look like you have a plan to change things up,” Hammer Crusher said as we made our way back to the star fortress our guild had built to hold this area from monsters. I pulled out a vial of the legendary poison, Overhealth Heart Stopper. I had just gotten it, which was the second poison I needed to win against the enemy camp. The Purification Alchemist had traded a vial to me in exchange for more blood. “What is that?”

“Legendary poison. I will sneak into the enemy camp and use it to poison the people running things there. Once they are impacted by the poison, they will have no health regeneration, but their HP will spike three times the base amount. But no regeneration means I can easily kill them all without too much concern,” I explained. While the chance of being spied on were unlikely, I didn’t want to reveal the second legendary poison I had managed to acquire, since it was my trump card.

It had taken a lot of money to acquire. Thank goodness I had bet merchandising rights in the coliseum against other champions, otherwise there would have been no way I would have been able to afford this stuff. Also, my previous purchases and NPC contacts helped out through the Shadow Union and the Purification Alchemist.

“And then they swarm you? They do have a reserve of flying monsters,” Hammer Crusher said.

“Lots of consumables. I had to scrape together everything I had and then some. If the enemy encampment is taken out, then the pressure on our forces here will go down significantly. We can leave here, without worrying it will collapse,” I said.

“Wouldn’t the dark forces, move in more people here?” Hammer Crusher asked. He was a ‘S’ level fighter, but his understanding of the higher mechanics of Exponential was a bit lacking.

“When either side loses a base, they are pushed back. So, while there will still be attacks, they will be less frequent, going forward. We can change this from a money hemorrhaging hell, to a tourist attraction in our guild. If the frequency of attacks is cut by over half, we can stabilize,” I explained. Those were the numbers I had gotten from the people doing the math and projections. Specifically, one very annoying person named Quant Z.

A few more days of this and the Fanged Fox Guild would become bankrupt. I really disliked the Human Emperor, for putting my guild and myself in this position. As I made my way back into the star fortress, past the repairs being made on the walls, I thought of things I needed to take care of before implementing my plan.

“You have command while I am gone,” I told Kill Blade once we reached back to the command area.

“We could support you with scouting and trying to draw the enemy out,” Kill Blade suggested. I shook my head at that idea.

“It won’t help. Just focus on holding our defenses while I am gone,” I said. There were a few more words said before I left but nothing truly important. While these people had some hope, they were worn down as well. I popped a scent concealment potion after I left the star fortress. Quant Z had really done a great job on the design to maximize firing angles.

I headed directly towards the enemy base, which was about two hours away on foot. All the land near the star fortress had been removed of all cover and was mostly mud. This was so the people could fire upon the approaching monsters as they raced up the hill without any obstructions. I could see the aborted attempts we had made to build further fortifications.

That had been when we had hope of creating kill zones. Unfortunately, we had been attacked by several more powerful monsters and had lost ground. Now we had no money to build outwards. We had no money for anything.

“You got this Foxy,” I muttered to myself. I had replaced my Silent Casting and Gestureless Casting with two epic skill shards with the skill Invisibility. Using Vomitatis without those support skills was going to be horrible, but I needed the Invisibility and there were no other options. Certain skill shards could only be used with a weapon or armor, rarely both. That created more nuances on how to balance one’s skills, especially when a build started getting more complex like mine had.

I would have preferred to go with Sample Poison two more times to bring up the critical hit rate, but the skill slots didn’t work out like that. Vomitatis would last a base amount of 30 seconds, with another 30 seconds if a target had a chunk on them. That meant 7 critical attacks every minute. To kill anything that was immune to damage from the absolute level difference, I would need critical hits. Poison critical hits would deal double damage, or 1% damage, whichever was greater. That meant I would need around 14.5 minutes to kill anything that was over 100 levels to myself.

That in turn was the reason I waited for so long to enact this plan in order to get a secondary legendary poison. Since I had the title Poison Expert, I could consume a legendary poison, and it would be on a timer while affecting me. One of the hidden benefits of the advanced title. Anyone I poisoned as well would be subject to the same poison on the same timer, which was one hour. A lot of the more powerful titles had hidden benefits.