Chương 110: Break Infernal V

Meno appeared beneath the green-leaved resurrection tree and tried to wipe the morning out of his head before it could poison his hands. Veyrath helped. Blue Naraltan glow spread beneath him while silent lightning pulsed across the black clouds, and real-world problems stayed far away unless he dragged them in himself. He had three Essence, a broken mood, and no interest in pretending today could be fixed anywhere outside the game. A notification opened immediately.

[Announcement] Fractera has won the global vote and has been unlocked. Recommended Level: 60+ A barren continent split by ancient fractures is now accessible by ship. Beneath its razed surface, the Riftkings march ever deeper through vast underground reaches, driven by an obsession no outsider fully understands.

"Great. Hope you guys like crawling underground." Fractera gang Daxolon robbed caves are content no thanks Riftking arc Meno had voted for Daxolon, but it did not matter much. He was stuck in Naraltan anyway. Fractera meant easy XP, new mobs, new quests, new gear, and a normal race everyone would understand. Essence meant permanent power. Anyone who went to Fractera first would still have to come here later if they cared about upgrades, so even if Meno fell behind in levels, he could catch up. Probably.

Unless the upgrades were tiny enough to make the time investment bait, which he doubted because Naraltan was a very difficult zone. The calamity also put a clock on him. The warning had said the Second Dream would eventually reconstruct Vervenzal if left alive, and while it gave no exact timer, Veyrath loved weekly pressure. Monday raid reset was the obvious guess. Three days to farm as much Essence as possible before the winged monk turned into a bigger problem with a god attached. Meno opened the leaderboard.

[Launch Leaderboard | Global Level Rank] [1] PrayerBeadGod — 60 | Swing Master Infernal | GC | GraveMistake [2] Kestrel — 59 | Orbit Prism Detonator | RB | Crownfall [3] BrineSaint — 57 | Dawn Bastion | RB | No Guild [4] Thorn — 56 | War Anchor | RB | Stormhold [5] Pike — 55 | Terra Siege Channeler | RB | Highbanner [6] VantaRush — 55 | Knifeclock Pattern Rogue | RB | HypeForge [7] Moon — 55 | Crimson Mercy Herald | RB | Silverwake [8] JaxxonVale — 55 | Gilded Rift Warlock | RB | No Guild [9] Oxy — 54 | Bloodrush Pit Juggernaut | GC | GraveMistake [10] Honeygrave — 54 | Rot Savant | SC | No Guild Red Bastion everywhere.

Only Meno and Oxy showed Grave Crown near the top, with Honeygrave sitting in Sunring Concord for the dungeon loot buff. BrineSaint, JaxxonVale, and Honeygrave still had no guilds, which surprised Meno less after the panel. Either they were waiting for huge offers, or they enjoyed the flexibility before everyone started locking rosters for raids and territory wars. The ladder looked about how he expected. Except Crownfall had cut ahead with his stolen mythic lead.

"Kestrel really got one up on BrineSaint with that Korka kill," Meno said.

"He will hit sixty soon unless they are trying to solve the mythic item chain." salty scroll donor thanks for mythic Crownfall fishing guild Patience diff"Kestrel probably has other people working on the quest while he farms," Meno said.

"Then they will conveniently hand him the item." yep why not that's the point of a guild mailman coping"I wouldn't have had the patience for a long quest chain anyway. It definitely requires a bunch of annoying steps." Meno closed the leaderboard and opened his Essence menu.

"Okay, time to spend some Essence and see if this thing is bait or actually good. If I upgrade Break Infernal and the number goes up by one percent, I will not be happy." Storm Infusion new skill first storm build do the cool one gamble"No." He selected the upgrade tab but did not press yet.

"The best investment is the one that makes farming more Essencefruit easier. The whole strategy relies on Break Infernal. That is the only thing that matters right now." He counted the skill list in his head.

"To upgrade all my Infernal stuff five times, I need thirty-five Essence total. Also, some things might need modification or replacement, so probably more. I haven't planned it out yet." Core Revision spam can't wait go there forever Naraltan roll the dice coward"Let's not even mention Core Revision, which is probably a huge slot machine." modify first refine break do it bad upgrade bait"Don't need to modify first. Only Replacement deletes upgrades. Break Infernal is strong enough as it is." He hovered the option.

"Modification would probably reduce Action Speed and give some useless compensation like fire resistance while crawling. I do not want that." [Upgrade] Required Essence: 1 Upgrade one class ability or passive by one tier. Each class ability or passive may be upgraded up to 5 times. Meno focused on his Essence. [Essence: 3] He selected Break Infernal and invested one point. [Break Infernal I] When Chain breaks, gain 100% increased Action Speed for 1. 2 seconds.

Gain [Break], allowing you to intentionally break Chain at any time. 0. 2 LOL tiny bait fruit scammed actually 20%"Of course. An extra zero point two seconds." Meno tilted his head.

"So at rank five it is probably two seconds. Twenty percent increase each time from base duration, so not bad. Hopefully later ranks give something extra." The next notification hit before he could spend another point. [World First Achievement Unlocked: First Taste of Essence] If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. You are the first player to consume Essence. Reward Acquired: Champion Design Credit Submit one Champion design seed for Naraltan.

Submission cannot be delayed. Describe the champion. Veyrath faded and a single text box filled his vision. DESIGN CREDIT WORLD FIRST RIP VEYRATH NOOOOO UNPLUG CAPSULE"What the hell?" Meno stared at the box.

"Another useless design credit. Really love these." He still had a Mythic I item design credit and a Legendary III item design credit unused. Solar had apparently had enough of him hoarding rewards and forced his hand this time. Unfortunately for Solar, it had not considered how creative Meno could become when people forced him to do useless flavor work for them. Meno input the specifications based on the first thing that popped into his head that seemed both ridiculous and potentially useful.

Extremely slow and durable. Hates all other champions and attacks them on sight whether they have Essencefruit or not. Looks like the player Thorn: huge arm muscles, tiny thin legs, tiny head, small brain, constantly flexing for no reason. Loves players and tries to join their groups for adventures. Uses helpful support skills on players and extremely annoying skills on opponents. Does not care about Essencefruit at all. He submitted it.

[Design Accepted] [New Champion Race Added: Thornado] Thornado Champions may now appear in Naraltan. Behavioral seed: slightly more player-friendly, champion-hostile. For half a second, chat did not process it, and then the stream exploded. THORNADO CLIPPED tiny legs small brain accepted AI hates Thorn Meno nodded with satisfaction.

"Yes. Clip it and send it to Stormhold." He closed the design reward.

"With these, I can test the party invite again. Maybe find a way to do the Titan Trial finally. Then I can spam Core Revision until I get Swing Master Titan, if it even exists." Titan cope Thornado carry small brain meta why make it dumb"Anyway, we are done here. Back to upgrading." Meno spent the second Essence then the third. [Break Infernal III] When Chain breaks, gain 100% increased Action Speed for 1. 6 seconds. Gain [Break], allowing you to intentionally break Chain at any time.

"Cool, I guess. It will make the loop smoother." Meno closed the panel and stood.

"I am still betting rank five gives an extra capstone bonus. If not, that would be way too lame. Time to farm two more Essence and see." He summoned the Gravewurm and opened the map. Naraltan's square shape stared back at him, its center hazed by storm density and whatever the system refused to mark directly. Meno rode toward it, weaving through lightning strikes that still tried to punish straight movement. No fruit appeared on the way.

The Second Dream Incarnate waited exactly where he expected, hovering above the central storm scar with its wings spread and golden eyes bright. Champions fought around it in permanent conflict, and the fight looked too stable to be natural. This was not intended behavior anymore. The raid boss had damaged the zone's whole routine, and Naraltan kept throwing champions at it like the world could outlast a calamity. Meno wondered how many it had killed, though the zone probably could not run out in any useful sense.

Each dead champion likely opened space for another spawn, up to some hidden cap based on player presence or storm pressure. Once spawned, they might never truly despawn, because these NPCs were part of the world, not simple mobs waiting in a cave. The calamity still showed full HP, and that bothered him. The champions were clearly damaging it, but the bar refused to keep the damage. Maybe the fight had breaks where it reset. Maybe NPC damage did not count against the invocation rules.

Maybe the original scroll promised no healing from player damage, and the current Zone Calamity version no longer cared about the old contract. Bugs on bugs. The kind of stack where every line worked alone and the total became nonsense. Meno repeated the previous strategy, and it stayed annoying. Waiting for natural lightning to hit a tree close enough took too long, so he baited the calamity into doing the work again.

He placed a leafless tree behind himself, used Cannon Infernal, and made the winged monk aim a javelin. The first attempt missed the tree and forced him to burn movement for nothing. The second clipped a champion and sent the poor thing flying. The third hit clean. Fifteen minutes in, the tree charged, the Essencefruit formed, and Meno latched onto the calamity's back with Pursuit while every champion nearby decided he had become loot.

The current champion lineup was new: two warriors, one shaman, and a level one hundred twenty Smovo monk. The monk was the weirdest one. Smoke-head, one huge arm, bare gray torso, and short violent dashes that kept placing him near the calamity's wings. He punched the boss, then tried to climb toward Meno, forcing constant corrections while Meno held the fruit in his left hand. Extremely annoying guy. Surviving had not become easy.

Break Infernal III helped, but the fight still demanded full focus: forced teleport punch, spike rain, glowing-eye kneel, wing rolls, lightning javelins, and champions trying to survive, fight the calamity, and rip the Essencefruit from his hand at the same time. It should have felt unbearable. After the morning he had endured, it felt almost restful, because here, the problems had hitboxes.

The sedative made fine control slightly mushy, and the performance fluid's aftereffects still left his nerves humming at the wrong moments. Worse than either, he noticed the X7 more now. Every hard correction came with a tiny delay that most people would never feel, but most people had not piloted a KKF-Phantom while chemically pushed into monster reflex mode. His capsule was simply not enough anymore. Meno kept moving anyway.

He tried to reach sixty-six Chain once, because the longer Break Infernal window made it tempting. After a Pursuit charge, the helmet's double-strike effect gave six Chain per attack, and with his sword's three attacks per second, that meant eighteen Chain per second before buffs. With Break Infernal doubling Action Speed, he could push close to thirty-six Chain per second, with slightly below the six max Attack Speed cap after the 1% Action Speed penalty from his gear. On paper, it started to look possible.

In practice, the calamity's wing shifted, the Smovo monk dashed onto his route, and a shaman root tried to catch his ankle before he reached thirty. Meno broke manually. No normal Detonation. Not yet. At rank five, with two full seconds of Action Speed, maybe he could maintain the buff through attacking instead of breaking every heartbeat. His Legendary III helmet made the math possible.

Vervenzal's Pursuit was absurdly good, strange enough that replacing it seemed impossible even though it came from level sixty content. The item was broken, and Meno respected that. Forty-eight minutes later, he had two more Essence. Both came out of chaotic brawls that left several champions wounded and one warrior dragged under a spike field by a stored detonation Pull Infernal combo. After the second consumption completed, Meno did not die for once.

He disengaged with False Wings, using Splitwing to chain the same dodge patterns he had developed while running from the drones in the Phantom: forward burst, angle change, low correction, no straight lines. The calamity did not chase. He had done close to zero damage to it the whole time, while the champions had been fighting it constantly. Once Meno had no fruit, the champions lost interest too and turned back toward the winged monk.

Maybe they truly wanted to defend Naraltan from Vervenzal taking over, or maybe Solar had not decided what want meant for them yet. Meno summoned the Gravewurm and headed back toward the resurrection tree. The shrine area was protected from random lightning, which made it the only tolerable place to spend points and breathe. He needed to pace himself. Unnecessary deaths from exhaustion were still deaths, and he had already given Veyrath enough gold through stupid mistakes.

He reached the green leaves, dismounted, and opened Essence. [Essence: 2]"Okay," Meno said.

"Time to see what rank five gives." He spent one Essence. [Break Infernal V] When Chain breaks, gain 100% increased Action Speed and immunity to movement-impairing effects for 2 seconds. Gain [Break], allowing you to intentionally break Chain at any time. NO WAY too good slow immune break god Infernal alive"Not damage," Meno said, because priorities mattered. Chat got offended. ARE YOU SERIOUS IT IS INSANE damage brain be happy once"Calm down. I obviously always want damage, not utility." He read the line again.

"Movement-impairing effects probably means slows, roots, ground drag, maybe sticky zones. It likely does not cover full disabling status effects, because being stunned is essentially you do not move now." He flexed his fingers.

"There are other ways to deal with debuffs, like Sleepless Grip or using False Wings to avoid touching ice ground effects. Still, yes, it is really good." Meno kept talking because he could not help himself.

"Maybe worth rolling a modification on it later to fish for damage instead." bad no leave it do not ruin it addict Meno sat beneath the tree and let his hands relax for the first time since logging in. The morning was still there, waiting outside Veyrath: Oxy leaving, Morlando's people, the lab, the eviction notice, and the impossible weight of being pulled into things he could not explain. But under this tree, with Break Infernal V glowing in his class panel, the next step at least made sense. Farm. Upgrade.

Repeat until the numbers bent.

"We farm for Storm Infusion next." Meno smiled without much warmth.

"I really want to see what it unlocks for three Essence."