Chương 235: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Five

When Adam awoke, Kat was still in his dimension, sleeping right next to him in the bed they'd shared. She looked peaceful just lying there. He thought back to Emelia and his time spent with her. Just like her, I'll never see this version of Kat again after this loop. From his own experience, he knew that the ' Scale of Remembrance' was not something that overwrote memories, and while it had made him change how he saw Emelia, he was also aware that it was borderline brainwashing.

I don't know if I want to be that kind of person. Love feels fake if it's not something that grows organically, but is forced on a person by having them experience a past they never lived. What he and Kat had wasn't love, but it still felt wrong to impose those memories on an alternate version of her. Even if he stayed within the same universe when he looped, it would still not be the same. And repeating the steps that led us here also feels subtly manipulative.

Like knowing all the answers to a quiz before taking a test. Adam would use all the knowledge he collected to beat the Trials of Defiance and truly free humanity, and he was more than willing to cheat, exploit, and take any shortcuts possible for that goal to manifest itself. But to do the same with personal relationships… That's not why I have this power. He got out of the bed, Kat turning over as the weight on the mattress shifted. Adam held up his kunai, looking at it intently.

Is this weapon really going to be my best chance? he wondered. He thought back to the other builds he'd seen, wishing he had something closer to what Lasse had stumbled upon. Something strong enough to take out a Voidspawn if I need to. Right now, the kunai swarm build was not terrible, but it felt like it was too simple.

He had a lot of boosts to copying projectiles and dealing increasingly higher damage to a single target thanks to the silver armlet relic, but the core of his build was the barrage master's coat, which had a 30-minute cooldown. Without that, his damage went from overwhelmingly powerful to less than what he'd dealt with his blood mage finger bullets. Compared to my Red King build, my kunai build has basically just one special move and no good forms of defence.

Adam went over to his weapon rack which held quite a lot of weapons now, since he'd been busy collecting. There was the mythical sword Gram, which he'd fully cleared of stone; the obsidian spear Solbor that he'd fully evolved; the Crawler's Arm, which was also evolved completely; and magical weapons like the Cloudmaker staff, spidersilk needle, Fire Mage's glove, Healer staff, and the Librarian spell-tome, not to mention oddities like the forlorn banner. It's a shame I didn't keep the tainted blade from stage four.

Adam hadn't purchased the weapon rack until after the stage, and had decided to keep Gram at the time. Granted, he doubted the tainted blade would have helped, but not having the option at all felt worse. Plus, its special attack might've worked with a projectile build, he mused, recalling its description.

< < Secret Weapon > > < Tainted Blade (Rare) — The greatsword of a Forlorn Knight > < Unique Skill (Shadowy Strike) | Cleave the blade through the air to release a shadowy strike that travels until it hits a target, inflicting Taint on impact > I'm locked into a throwing build, unless I want to spend more points on rolling for relics, so maybe I could try and evolve Lancer and fuse it with Solbor, Adam thought, bringing up the obsidian spear's information.

< < Secret Weapon > > < Solbor (Rare) — Spear of a forgotten Elphin hero > < Unique Skill (Scattershot) | Launch the tip of the spear forward as a barrage of piercing darts > < < Evolutions > > < Elphin Bravery — Reduce physical damage taken by 25% > < Elphin Agility — All non-hostile forms of movement consume no Stamina > < Nature's Chosen — Unique Skill (Nature's Chosen) | Compel the forces of nature to aid you > Actually. This might work better.

Reduced damage taken, the ability to 'compel nature', and no stamina consumption on anything that isn't an attack would be much better than purely damage-focused evolutions like my Ghost has. Not to mention, the weapon skill might count as thrown projectiles, or at the very least just projectiles, and it should only have a 10-minute cooldown.

Plus, if I can fuse it with the throwing-oriented evolutions of Lancer, it should be possible to swap out with Ghost and not lose much damage, while potentially gaining some kind of overpowered evolution from it. Adam didn't need to think on it much deeper. He immediately swapped to Solbor and ran out of the house to the market, taking advantage of the fact that Elphin Agility made running effortless and cost no stamina.

He rerolled Nelly's options twice before the Lancer showed up, paying 500 points to obtain it and swapping it with Solbor, before going over to Thea's stall and purchasing eighteen upgrades for the spear. < < Select an Evolution > > < Hoplite — Trade throwing capability for a small parry shield > < Javelineer — Gain 3 additional spears purpose-made for throwing > Adam picked Javelineer, putting his total spear count at four and changing their shape towards something more throwing oriented.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. < < Select an Evolution > > < Hastatus — Trade spear attacks for a blocking shield > < Spear Rain — Gain a total of 9 spears specialised for throwing > Hastatus is the Class that Cathy had in my stage seven group. He remembered her complaining about it and wishing she'd gotten Spear Rain instead.

It swapped out the normal spear upgrades for shield-focused ones, which seemed a pretty terrible trade-off in Adam's opinion. He didn't need a shield, so he picked Spear Rain, knowing one of the evolutions that'd appear would be the Bolt of Zeus that Heiner had used.

< < Select an Evolution > > < Bolt of Zeus — Unique Skill (God Spear) | Activate to combine all thrown projectiles that are in the air, increasing Damage and Impact by 10% for each projectile used in the combination and converting the damage to lightning > < Echo of Aetole — Each successive hit with a thrown projectile to the same target increases the Damage, Speed, and Penetration of the following thrown projectile by 10%.

This bonus is lost if a projectile misses or a different target is hit > The Bolt of Zeus is really powerful, but it has one major downside that'd get me killed, which is that the spear needs time to regenerate after it is thrown, which would leave me defenceless.

I would be able to get some insane damage out of the Bolt of Zeus with how many projectiles I can create, but I think Echo of Aetole should be even better, and should count all my copies for the effect as well, which means that with my two gloves, I'll have a total of five spears every time I throw one, which, if it's multiplicative, means I'd raise the three stats of the next five spears by 61%, then the next set of five by 259%, until, eventually, on the ninth projectile thrown, I'd have a buff of 4, 500% from the previous forty hits stacking.

At that point, I'd activate my barrage master's coat and deal an absurd amount of damage with the 85 projectiles that'd create, all of which would fly so fast that nothing would be able to react in time to defend against them. On top of that, the silver armlet of the hunt has a similar effect for stacking damage, so they might interact and make me able to achieve insane damage overall.

If Echo of Aetole is additive, it's not quite as strong, with a total buff of 400% after I'd hit with forty projectiles, but that's still a four-times boost to damage, speed, and penetration.

The main downside of the evolution is of course that if I miss, I lose the entire buff stack, but the harpooner's belt immobilises on the first hit when I pierce a target with my spear, which should help prevent that, and I can leverage my mentalist's locket to make sure none of my projectiles go off course, like I did against the Necromancer in the arena yesterday. Actually, I should probably start off with the barrage coat, to stack the effect early.

After just the first hit, my following attacks would deal 32, 980% more damage if they are multiplicative. If it's additive, it would add 850%. And the silver armlet may also be multiplicative, which would be crazy. Adam knew he'd need to test it. From his corset of the afflictionist tests, it was clear there were some pretty serious nerfs around some forms of stacking.

When they'd helped Heiner buff up his Bolt of Zeus skill in the Forlorn Kingdom, it had seemed to be multiplicatively boosted, but either there was a ceiling or some other hidden nerf, because exponential growth on damage would quickly grow apocalyptic after a certain amount of iterations. Maybe they're okay with allowing players to have those kinds of builds? Though it would lead to extinction as soon as the public stages appear…

He was also doubtful because of the fact that he hadn't heard about anyone using Lancer for the endgame builds. It was one of the most common starter weapons, and it was possible to increase projectile counts with uncommon relics, so anyone with half a brain would've found a way to break the damage numbers if these skills were really multiplicative in nature. Or would they? Throwing spear evolutions were far less common than the parry shield ones. Nothing to do but test it out, I suppose.

< < Evolution Selected > > < Spear Rain => Echo of Aetole > Adam picked Echo of Aetole, gaining his third mastery shard, putting him at eleven. He was now down to 7, 142 points, although he could still sell the mantle of atrophy and hobgoblin necklace, as well as the mage aspirant's cowl. After picking the evolution, the javelins were now made of a high-quality wood that was flexible but strong, and each of them were capped with oxidised-green copper tips. Maybe Warrior can fuse with Gram, he thought.

Since his goal was to get to five fusions and unlock the third sheath upgrade to carry a third weapon, it made sense to use his already-evolved weapons to fuse with, so that he'd save points. I should've thought of it earlier… I was too excited about what Ritualist would do to think about this properly. Evolving Backstabber hadn't been entirely wasteful, since it'd allowed him to discover the Ghost duplication exploit, but it still felt somewhat meaningless, since he didn't have a way to fuse it.

If he could get that third sheath, he'd be in a much better position and could set up some really powerful builds of stacking evolution effects. I really need to beat stage ten. Adam returned to his player house, where Kat was still sleeping. The moment he got close to his weapon rack where Solbor had been stored, the obsidian spear and the Echo of Aetole's nine wooden javelins started glowing. [You have fully evolved two compatible Classes. Would you like to fuse them together? Fusing weapons—]"Skip and show me," Adam said, unable to keep the grin off his face. The cube's voice finally stirred Kat from her sleep and she looked up at him groggily, seeing the spears combine in the air to become a new weapon. Adam looked at the fused weapon. The spears had combined into a single javelin sculpted from obsidian, with green oxidised copper rings down its length. < < Fusion > > < Echo of Aetole + Nature's Chosen > < The Endless Hunt — Summons a new spear in the wielder's hand after every throw.

Each successive hit with a thrown projectile to the same target increases the Damage, Speed, Penetration, and Accuracy of the following thrown projectile by 15%.

This bonus is lost if a projectile misses or a different target is hit > While on the surface it only seemed mildly stronger than the effect from Echo of Aetole, the fact that the spears resummoned meant it was possible to keep stacking the buffs endlessly, while the boost to accuracy should make it easy to keep hitting when the projectiles would become too fast to track normally. Kat sat up.

"That looks powerful."

"Let's give it a try," Adam replied with a grin. He prompted the house to remove the bed after Kat had gotten up and put on her clothes and relics, and then he practiced against the target dummy, first without the silver armlet, and then with it on, a few minutes later. The conclusion was clear. The effect of the Endless Hunt, and by extension Echo of Aetole, stacked additively. Likewise, the silver armlet of the hunt stacked additively with itself and with the damage buff of the Endless Hunt.

It was a shame, but it still meant that with a single volley of 85 spears created by using his barrage coat and the barrage gloves, he achieved 2, 125% more damage on the 86th spear he threw, and 1, 275% more speed, penetration, and accuracy, which was quite powerful. Every throw generated five spears, and after the opening barrage, they slipped from Adam's hand and to the target in what seemed like an instant.

Of course, nothing survived the opening swarm attack, but due to how the Endless Hunt stacks applied to the next throwing projectile, that still meant that Adam was able to hold on to a weapon with almost thirteen times the damage, speed, penetration, and accuracy of a normal javelin, which, as expected, instantly killed anything where he aimed for the weak spot, even a slug dragon. This was due to the fact that the penetration buff and speed allowed the spears to fly straight through anything.

It's less projectiles overall when compared to Ghost, but way more damage and utility. And I still get two of those phantom projectiles thanks to my duplicated barrage glove, though they only do a sixth of the damage. I wonder why Bolt of Zeus seemed like it was multiplicative when Heiner used it. Maybe the interaction between lightning, damage stacking, and impact boosting has some quirky interactions. Definitely worth looking into further.

Adam was still able to do his mentalist tricks with the spears as well, enabling him to pierce a target through and pull the projectile back if he was quick enough, hitting a target with the same powered-up projectile and its copies twice, which counted for the buffs again. This meant that it was technically possible to achieve ninety stacks with his opening barrage, although nothing really survived for that to be a viable strategy.

Thanks to the Solbor spear, Adam didn't just have to rely on the barrage coat anymore either. The ' Scattershot' skill that came with the obsidian spear would shoot the tip forward as nine thin needle darts of volcanic glass, each of which pierced quite deep on their own, but, more importantly, counted as thrown projectiles. The result was that a normal activation would result in 37 darts, and stacking it with the barrage master's coat would make that 757 darts.

Given that the damage was clearly split between the darts at one-ninth the spear's damage, it meant that it wasn't very powerful, but this had the added benefit of making something like the slug dragon survive a straight-on hit. As a result, Adam was able, through activating both scattershot and the barrage coat, to achieve a buffed spear dealing 18, 925% more damage, with 11, 355% more speed, penetration, and accuracy.

When he threw the spear, it literally exploded the air, releasing a concussive burst that he was quite certain would destroy his eardrums and damage him if he was inside a stage and not on Interim Island. As Adam and Kat both got to their feet after he'd atomised his target dummy and knocked them both onto the ground with the backwash of air, he cast her a grin and said, "I think I've finally found my build."