Chương 151: Chapter 150: Deflect God

Karmabeast was still thinking about the Divine Writ of Bestowal when Meno started back toward the previous cavern.

"That's cool. Really feels like it has my name written on it."

"I don't see it." Meno ducked into the narrow passage without slowing. Karmabeast followed after him.

"Anyway, aren't we going to enter the portal?"

"Don't think that's possible yet. Excrino could go through. We got set on fire for poking it." Meno stepped over the thin stream of seawater running down the passage.

"Let's take the respawn XP first, then keep exploring." By the time they returned to the Balvath cavern, the water had spread into a shallow puddle over much of the lower floor. Without Airwalk, it probably would have become an annoying environmental Movement Speed penalty; with it, Meno mostly had to remember not to waste his kicks and strand himself ankle-deep in water while five monsters with Tremor-Sense waited for the landing. The respawn was slower than he wanted.

Another 10 minutes put the full timer somewhere around 15, which was bad for a two-player farm but probably not the intended rate. Meno suspected more players occupying Layer 4 would accelerate it, and for a brief moment he considered telling GraveMistake to start swimming into the hole purely so they could function as respawn batteries. Karmabeast used the downtime to continue campaigning for Tyrant.

"I'm just saying, two Tyrants down here. Imagine the XP."

"You might lose the Umbral air movement and your area stun."

"Maybe Tyrant gives me better ones."

"Or it gives you a weapon combination skill and ruins the whole farm." Karmabeast considered that with far more seriousness than Meno thought it deserved.

"Still feels worth."

"No." The argument went nowhere, so they used the remaining wait to clean up the previous pull instead. Their first clear had worked, but they had wasted too much effort keeping all five Balvaths inside Xenocide from the beginning. The skill only needed the full pack inside its death zone when the marked target died. The cleaner route was obvious: split one, control four, burn the isolated target, then let the pack collapse together for the execute.

When the orange eyes reopened in the wall, both players were ready. Meno baited all five toward one side of the cavern without attacking, using ground contacts to exploit Tremor-Sense and pull the pack exactly where he wanted it. Once every Balvath committed, Karmabeast appeared behind the last one and locked it down while Meno crossed the room, dragging the other four after himself. Karmabeast vanished and reappeared ahead of the pursuing pack.

A poison dagger detonated in the opposite corner, and shadow chains dragged all four into the cloud while Meno doubled back toward the isolated target. From there, the fight settled into a cleaner rhythm: Karmabeast kept the healthy group slowed and stunned while Meno rotated Xenocide and Quadrillionator on cooldown against the main Balvath, then stayed airborne with Sinseeker between Massive hits. The second pull also gave Meno enough breathing room to understand Airwalk properly.

Going up was easy because every jump or kick changed elevation immediately. Going down without wasting another kick took more work. After each air kick, the 3-second walking window held Meno in place as though an invisible floor had formed beneath his boots. He could let the platform expire and drop naturally, or tilt forward and lift one foot like he was trying to stand on a wall, which broke the horizontal footing and made him start falling again.

It felt less like flying and more like moving across invisible scaffolding wrapped around a transparent tower with unlimited floors. Meno could stop almost anywhere for 3 seconds in exchange for a kick charge, reposition, then spend another kick to change levels. The real skill was conserving the kicks. Every unnecessary landing cost Arrival's airborne Movement Speed.

Once Meno got comfortable holding the last kick for an emergency reset, the main target had a much harder time predicting where he would actually touch stone. Quadrillionator made the whole thing look even dumber. The siege-bow form was too huge to fire like a normal weapon, so Meno treated the shaft like a surfboard. He formed it beneath himself while airborne, stepped onto the pole, hauled the gigantic string upward, and released. It was way slower than Sinseeker.

His current Attack Speed and Action Speed put the Sinseeker's theoretical maximum around 2. 43 attacks per second, a little over 0. 4 seconds between releases. Against a training dummy, that was manageable. While juggling a Level 90 monster, preserving Airwalk, dodging Frostbite claws, and keeping the target away from Karmabeast's controlled pack, Meno landed closer to 2 clean shots per second. Still plenty. Karmabeast had tightened his own rotation too.

With the pack properly split, he no longer burned the thrown-dagger chain just because something moved. He could line up the poison explosion through all four controlled Balvaths when he needed maximum slow, then shadowstep back to the isolated target during safe windows, dump a quick dagger combo, and leave before the others recovered. The monsters were not weak. They still spread across walls when control ended, read Meno's landings, and used Frostbite claws to punish predictable routes.

The difference was that neither player gave them enough mistakes to turn those tools into a swarm. Once the isolated Balvath entered kill range, Karmabeast deliberately released the other four and let them converge. Meno waited until the whole pack had entered medium range before activating Xenocide, and when the damaged target died inside the shardstorm, the healthier four collapsed with it. The second clear looked less like surviving Level 90 monsters and more like a route they had already practiced for hours.

The XP remained ridiculous. [Level Up! | Level 71] Karmabeast jumped all the way to Level 64. THAT FARM IS ILLEGAL that was clean EZ standing on your weapon to fire should be banned PBG airwalk actually looks better now Karmabeast best support Meno checked all five corpses and came away with more junk that barely deserved inventory space.

"Either the AI moved all the actual crafting materials and gear onto elites and bosses, or we're incredibly unlucky." They returned to the portal cavern, where the seawater was still feeding into the blue surface, and chose one of the two narrow exits at random. The passage squeezed tight enough in places that they had to move sideways, making direction almost impossible to judge. Meno checked the map several times, but Layer 4 refused to draw anything useful beyond the rooms they had physically entered.

They could have been descending toward Level 100 content or circling back toward Layer 3. There was no way to know. The Level 90 Balvaths were the only clue. Since Layer 4 covered Level 90–100, Meno doubted they had reached the dangerous end yet. Finding a dungeon would have been ideal because a clear meant guaranteed loot, assuming the two of them could survive. The passage finally opened into another large cavern, and something was already there.

It looked related to the Balvath Spawn, but larger and built less like a pack predator. The thick tail was gone, its posture was more upright, and instead of Frostbite claws it carried a staff grown from the orange-veined stone running through Fractera. The creature seemed completely absorbed in using the glowing end to write symbols across the cavern floor like it was trying to solve some ancient puzzle. Unfortunately, it was doing that directly between Meno and the two exits on the far side.

[Balveth Seeker | Elite | Spell Storm | Mana Fountain | Mana Detonation | Level 90] Karmabeast stopped beside him.

"Elite caster is a big no-no. Spell Storm sounds like a lot of spells fast. Mana Fountain means it won't run out, and Mana Detonation is absolutely a huge AOE." Meno studied the cavern instead of the monster.

"Can you Deflect? Interrupt?"

"Interrupt is 10 sec cooldown." Karmabeast rolled one serrated golden dagger across his knuckles.

"Deflect depends. Fire, Earth, Nature, sure if they're projectiles. Ice is fast and sketchy. Shadow and Light depend on what they actually do. Lightning and Water suck with daggers because even if I touch them right, they still arc or splash. Air and Arcane? Forget it."

"So yes." Meno was already building the plan.

"It's a mage with heavy Mana tags. Probably gets a Mana Absorption Shield, so normal damage is going nowhere. We stay grounded at the start. If Spell Storm fills the room, being in the air just gives it more angles." He indicated the outer edge of the cavern.

"Circle near medium range. I want Xenocide in reach long enough to test it, then I stack Chain with ranged Quadrillionator hits. You stay in front and focus defense. Save interrupt for Mana Detonation if the cast is readable. If it isn't, we disengage." Karmabeast nodded toward the Elite.

"How many stuns do you want?"

"How many work?"

"Usually two full 5-second stuns on an Elite, maybe a third shorter one. After that it'll probably go immune. Trash lets me get four or five because my passive starts shortening them after the second."

"Two or three?"

"Impossible to know. Depends on its stats and crap."

"Then hold them. No reason to burn CC while we can Deflect. Are you ready?" Karmabeast watched the Seeker scribbling on the floor.

"Ready for what, exactly? We don't know what this thing actually does."

"Don't care. BrineSaint can make the guide later." Meno pointed toward the perimeter.

"You're my Deflect shield. Stay in front of me and circle. Don't shadowstep into melee unless you're stunning. If you fail, we both die." He glanced at Karmabeast's daggers.

"Want something bigger?" Karmabeast juggled the golden knives and caught them by the handles.

"Nah. Used to these bad boys." Then he turned slightly toward his own stream.

"I hate Deflect. Total pain. Don't copy this unless you wanna fry both yourself and your brain." This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Meno planted his feet.

"Pulling." He activated Quadrillionator, jumped forward, and used Airwalk to stabilize while the enormous pole-siege-bow formed beneath him. Meno stepped onto the shaft, hauled the string back, and released a glowing white projectile that crossed the cavern like a missile. It struck the Seeker squarely in the chest and dropped it to 99% HP. [Chain: 1100 | Damage: +11, 000% | Total: 111x] Meno kicked back toward the floor as Quadrillionator separated, equipped Sinseeker, and fell in behind Karmabeast.

The Seeker stopped writing. Blue light wrapped around its entire body, covering the HP bar with a full Mana Absorption Shield, and the staff came up so quickly that Meno barely saw the casting motion before Spell Storm started. Fireballs poured from the tip in stacked waves, all moving at once and spreading outward from the Seeker in every direction. Some swept low across the floor, others cut through chest height, and more filled the space above their heads until there were no useful gaps anywhere.

The room was being combed from bottom to top in a single cast. Meno activated Xenocide long enough to test the interaction and gestured for Karmabeast to step forward so the moving shardstorm reached the Seeker. The first wall of fire arrived.

"Too dense," Karmabeast said, widening his stance.

"Mid and head, I Deflect. Anything below knee, crouch-jump." He raised one dagger high and held the other low. The first fireball reached him, and Karmabeast waited until the last possible fraction of a second before touching it with the tip of his lower blade. He did not block the projectile; he guided it sideways, letting the fireball slip past his hip and explode against the wall behind them.

The next came at face level and met the upper dagger just before impact, changing course enough to miss Meno over Karmabeast's shoulder. Then another came. And another. Karmabeast's hands never stopped moving. Meno understood immediately why he hated Deflect. Touch too soon and the projectile exploded against the weapon while still close enough to hit you. Touch too late and there was no distance left to redirect it.

The weapon tip had to meet the incoming spell inside a tiny final window and slide it past rather than stop it. Meno trusted him and kept Xenocide over the boss until the first few hits confirmed the bad news. The Seeker remained at 99% HP. Sinseeker's Magic Piercer belonged to its arrows. Xenocide used the bow's weapon damage without actually firing ammunition, so every shardstorm hit vanished into the Mana Absorption Shield. No reason to use it again. One fireball came in too low for Karmabeast's knives.

"Low!" Meno crouched and made a tiny hop over it without rising into the chest-level projectile behind, then landed directly in Karmabeast's wake and started firing Sinseeker. Those arrows worked. Every glowing projectile curved around Karmabeast, pierced the Mana shield, and touched the Seeker's real HP. The damage was only around 0. 3% per hit at Meno's current Chain, but he could keep the stream going while Karmabeast handled defense.

Quadrillionator came off cooldown during the same Fire rotation, but there was no room to jump, so Meno stayed planted and trusted Karmabeast to keep the projectiles off him. He drove the pole end into the stone behind him, tilted the siege bow back over his own body, planted one leg against the shaft for leverage, and hauled Sinseeker's enormous string down. He released. The projectile launched upward, curved violently back around through the firestorm, and homed straight into the Seeker.

Because the Massive attack was being fired through Sinseeker's ranged component rather than used as a melee strike, Magic Piercer carried through and bypassed the Absorption Shield for roughly another half-percent of real HP. [Chain: 1200 | Damage: +12, 000% | Total: 121x] Quadrillionator split back into its components, and Meno immediately swapped to Sinseeker alone. He kept firing randomly into the chaos, trusting the bow to solve the aiming problem while Karmabeast kept the worst projectiles off him.

"Jump!" Meno crouched, fired another arrow in a completely random direction, and hopped. The elemental projectile storm ended before they could settle into the pattern, and blue runes spread across the cavern floor. Karmabeast shadowstepped toward the Seeker with his interrupt ready, but Mana Detonation completed almost instantly and gave him no cast window to catch.

"Out!" Both players abandoned damage. Karmabeast used his Umbral movement to shoot beyond the glowing script while Meno jumped, formed another Quadrillionator as soon as the cooldown allowed, and used the air platform to fire while falling toward the boundary. [Chain: 1300 | Damage: +13, 000% | Total: 131x] Blue magic erupted from the floor in a long-range blast that climbed almost to the cavern ceiling, missing both of them by a narrow margin.

"Stay long," Meno called as he equipped Sinseeker again.

"Bow reaches. Xeno useless." The Seeker disproved the plan almost immediately. It blinked directly beside them and changed elements. Earth projectiles exploded outward in dense rotating bands, then curved after the two players when they split. Karmabeast sprinted ahead, jumped, and spun in the air so he landed between Meno and the incoming storm. His daggers flashed twice to knock the first pair aside, then kept moving as the heavier stone shards followed. Earth was slower than Fire but much harder on the arms.

Every successful Deflect drove Karmabeast's hands backward and forced him to rebuild his stance before the next projectile arrived. Meno moved in his wake and kept firing over alternating shoulders, letting Sinseeker handle the aim while he watched the Seeker's staff for another detonation. The Elite dropped through 90% HP as the pattern settled. Then the element changed, purple Arcane projectiles forming in spiraling clusters around the staff, and Karmabeast immediately stopped trying to be clever.

He vanished before the first spiral completed. Karmabeast reappeared beside the Seeker and drove both daggers into its side. The stun landed just as the opening Arcane cluster launched, freezing the Elite before the rest of the storm could release. Meno used the full 5-second window.

He fired Sinseeker at maximum speed until the stun was about to end, then formed Quadrillionator, launched another ranged Massive projectile for Chain, split back into Sinseeker, and poured arrows into the stunned caster while Karmabeast retreated before control returned. [Chain: 1400 | Damage: +14, 000% | Total: 141x] The Seeker recovered and switched to Water. A ring of compressed blue spheres formed around the staff before launching in overlapping lines. Karmabeast backed up immediately.

"Water. You're up." Meno activated Annihilator. Vervenzal's Verdict and Marcel's Reacher fused into the long crimson spear-sword, gaining enough extra Weapon Size from Weapon Master that Meno could meet the water projectiles well away from his body. The added reach changed the timing in his favor. Instead of letting the spheres close to dagger distance, he stepped toward the Seeker and started catching them near the tip, using the 100% Attack Speed bonus to deflect like he had lost his mind.

One sphere burst against the spear point, and the splash stopped several feet short of them. Meno knocked the next one wide, then immediately threw the spear-sword before Chain could break. Annihilator struck the Seeker and snapped back into his hands. Good. Chain maintained.

"Okay. Big weapon wins."

"Compensating."

"Focus." While Meno focused on deflecting projectiles, he could not keep firing, so the Seeker's HP stayed pinned at 76% until another Mana Detonation forced them away. The elite blinked after them and rotated into Lightning. The condensed spheres arced between one another, making dagger contact dangerous even if Karmabeast hit the Deflect window perfectly. He shifted behind Meno instead and started calling angles while Meno kept Annihilator out.

"Low right. Two head." The first Lightning sphere hit the spear tip and snapped into the wall. Meno caught the low one next and sent it into the floor far enough away that the electrical arcs died before reaching them, then threw Annihilator at the Seeker to refresh Chain before the weapon snapped back into his hands. He raised the oversized spear-sword again just in time for the first head-level projectile. The next rotations started to feel learnable, which was not the same as safe.

Fire came back with wider gaps between layers, so Karmabeast could Deflect in a steady rhythm while Meno fired from behind him. Earth was slower but hit hard enough that one mistake could blow up the whole line. Whenever Mana Detonation painted the floor, they abandoned the spot and moved, with Meno still firing Sinseeker as he repositioned because letting Chain break was its own way to die. The Seeker kept blinking after every retreat, refusing to become a stationary ranged target.

Rushing Quadrillionator the second it came off cooldown was too risky when the boss could reposition mid-setup, so Meno focused on steady DPS instead, keeping Sinseeker firing whenever movement allowed. Then it rolled Air.

"Stun!" Karmabeast shadowstepped through the first release and caught the Elite in melee. Invisible pressure blades had already carved long grooves through the stone behind them, and Meno had no interest in learning how Deflect worked against a projectile he could barely see. The second stun held for the full 5 seconds and Meno dumped everything he could into it and pushed the Seeker below 50% HP. That was when the fight changed.

The orange writing the elite had been drawing before combat lit up across the cavern, and Mana Detonation stopped waiting its turn. Small rune clusters started appearing beneath Meno and Karmabeast while Spell Storm was still active.

"Ground!" They split as the first cluster detonated between them. Karmabeast had to Deflect while sidestepping rune zones now, and Meno had to keep sticking behind him every time the floor forced them to move. Then Spell Storm switch to a Light-based spell. Thin glowing projectiles crossed the room and changed angle midway through flight. Karmabeast handled the first few, but Light did not behave like the other elements.

One deflected projectile snapped off his dagger, shot past Meno's shoulder, then curved behind him instead of dying against the wall. Meno kept firing, assuming it had missed, until it turned back and hit him from behind. At 50% HP, he did not have enough health to eat the strike. Meno died and Defiant triggered immediately. [Defiant: You have been resurrected with 1 HP and 100% Absorption.] Death broke Chain and reset it to 1000.

His active cooldowns refreshed too, but more Light projectiles were already crossing the room. The fresh Absorption Shield caught it. Inexhaustible started dragging his 1 HP back toward 50% while Karmabeast reacted to the death by spending the third stun. He shadowstepped into the elite and locked it down again, but this control window was already shorter.

"Last one!" Meno used the brief pause to rebuild position instead of panicking. He fired another ranged Quadrillionator hit to restart the ramp. [Chain: 1100 | Damage: +11, 000% | Total: 111x] The Seeker was at 38% HP. Ice came next, and it was at least survivable for the stupidest reason possible: Karmabeast could actually keep up with it. The Seeker fired tiny ice shards in rapid bursts, more like a machine gun than a spell pattern.

Karmabeast called angles while moving backward, both daggers working nonstop as Meno stayed behind him and kept Sinseeker firing over his shoulder. Floor runes kept forcing them to relocate, turning the Ice storm into a moving Deflect check where one late touch meant a shard slipped through. Karmabeast was ridiculous at it. One blade clipped a shard just wide enough to send it past his ear, while the other rolled the next away from his ribs.

Whenever a ground rune forced him sideways, he crossed in front of Meno without breaking rhythm and rebuilt the defensive line from a new angle.

"Deflect god."

"Shut up." Meno kept shooting until Quadrillionator came off cooldown, then formed the Massive weapon while reading Karmabeast's next sidestep. Instead of fighting the movement, he planted the pole in that direction, let the huge siege-bow frame drag his body with it, and pulled Sinseeker's string back in the same motion. He released as Karmabeast crossed in front of him. The Massive arrow curved around Karmabeast's shoulder and punched into the Seeker pushing it below 25% HP.

[Chain: 1200 | Damage: +12, 000% | Total: 121x] Purple light gathered around the Seeker's staff, and Meno had no interest in seeing what Arcane looked like without stuns available. He activated Mush immediately. Excrino appeared beside the elite and flattened it into the cavern floor with one closed fist. Karmabeast reacted the instant Excrino appeared.

He rushed to the spot where the Seeker would revive, shadows wrapping around his body as he triggered a DPS cooldown, and the moment the elite reformed without its shield, Karmabeast unloaded everything into it. Daggers flashed through the Seeker's torso, poison detonated under its ribs, and black chains snapped tight before Karmabeast shadowstepped back to Meno. Meno was already firing Sinseeker.

Mana Fountain immediately began rebuilding whatever resource supported the shield, blue light gathering around the Seeker again, but the dangerous Arcane overlap had vanished before it could become a problem. The Seeker had 18% HP left, and with the stuns gone and Mush spent, neither player had another emergency reset. Fire returned. Karmabeast stepped in front again, but Meno could tell the fight was wearing on him now.

His hands were still too fast to follow cleanly, yet every Deflect demanded more body movement as rune fields forced him sideways while the fire waves kept coming. Meno slipped in a quick ranged Quadrillionator shot for another 100 Chain, then split back to Sinseeker and kept firing from behind him. [Chain: 1300 | Damage: +13, 000% | Total: 131x] They stayed close enough to preserve the defensive lane and keep Sinseeker firing.

The Seeker dropped through 14%, then 12%, while another ground detonation forced them toward the cavern wall. Karmabeast caught two Fire projectiles on opposite daggers during the retreat and shouted for Meno to jump the third as it skimmed low across the floor. Meno cleared it without interrupting his next draw. The next Sinseeker arrow curved around Karmabeast and drove the Seeker below 10% HP. Meno stopped firing. On the Balvath trash packs, Titan had been deliberately useless.

If Meno kicked the damaged monster to death before Xenocide scored the kill, the same-type execution never triggered and he would still have four healthy Balvaths to finish manually. There was no pack to preserve here, and the elite had crossed the line.

"Done." Karmabeast understood a second later.

"Oh. Right." Meno jumped immediately as Lightning gathered around the Seeker's staff. He kicked behind himself once, twice. On the third kick, Meno tucked his head down and rolled into a forward somersault, bringing his legs around first. His feet smashed into the Seeker's face at less than 10% HP. Titan triggered. The Level 90 elite died instantly, bypassing its Mana shield, remaining spell rotation, and whatever last trick Solar had intended below 10%. [Level Up! | Level 72] Meno gained a full level from the elite, while Karmabeast gained three and hit Level 67. At this pace, the entire leaderboard was going to crash out and demand they both get banned.

"Elite? This thing was easily a dungeon boss," Meno said. Karmabeast lowered his daggers and stared at the corpse for a second.

"Man, it was Level 90. Only reason we got it is because I am a god."

"Pacifist god with zero damage." A loot beam rose from the dead Seeker, thick enough to wash the orange stone around it in a completely different light.

"That's not junk," Meno said, wondering what rarity tier such a high-level monster would drop.