Chương 232: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Two

Kat stood near the entrance to the tent as Adam and Beck tried to figure out the best way to accomplish Beck's insane request. Her arms were folded and she clearly thought they were being idiots. Adam thought that the idea was ultimately not going to work, but he simply wanted to do something fun before they had to go player-killing in the tavern.

"If this works, what then?" she asked.

"Who can say?" Beck replied from where he was crouched within Adam's tenuous grip. The old guy wasn't heavy, but throwing a person taller than himself was quite awkward.

"What if it kills you by splitting you into several pieces?" Kat asked.

"Since when was your girlfriend such a killjoy?" Beck teased Adam. Adam adjusted his grip.

"He can't die on Interim Island," Adam told her.

"I think…"

"I can't," Beck insisted. [Correct. Players cannot kill visiting Players on Interim Island.]"Zip it, tin can," Beck replied. [Understood.]"I mean, it's possible that you can kill players on Interim with an exploit," Adam remarked.

"I was kind of thinking of trying to use the challenge stone to physically hurt someone in the tavern, since it has physical mass across dimensions."

"Huh," Beck muttered.

"I didn't realise that was a thing."

"Yeah, I learnt that the hard way when a psycho time-looper killed my friend," Adam told him. Kat sighed and waved Meilo over. They were quite sure the cubes would not be happy if they succeeded in cloning Beck. Even if it doesn't work, I don't want to get obliterated by my cube for experimenting with this duplication exploit. The glass hawk-moth obligingly came closer.

"Do your thing," Beck told her. Meilo crossed her arms too.

"What exactly are you doing?" Adam was crouched behind Beck with his hands under his boots, ready to toss him into the air, perhaps even with a flip for extra style points.

"It's a secret," Adam replied. That seemed to make her realise what it was they sought from her. Glass scales lifted off of her body and started to orbit them all, freezing the cubes in place.

"Here goes nothing," Adam said.

"I really hope this doesn't do the thing Kat said," Beck remarked. Adam paused.

"We don't have to do this."

"Ah, fuck it, but if I die, please ask them to revive me. They can do that right? If I die to an exploit."

"I wouldn't count on it," Adam said.

"I'm joking. There's no way this actually works."

"Right," Adam agreed. But still, a small part of them both thought it would be interesting if it did work.

"Your posture is bad," Kat told Adam.

"I've never thrown a person before," Adam replied.

"Let's go!" Beck exclaimed. Adam tensed and then pushed up with his legs while lifting his arms under Beck's tucked body. The moment Beck left Adam's hands, something happened.

"Fucking shit," Kat cursed. Adam was too busy trying to get out of the way of Beck and his eight clones to say anything particularly poignant. Next to Beck, who had indeed flipped forward as he was tossed into the air, where two clones that looked like him, and around them were six ghostly copies. All of them moved the same way, but about mid-way up, the nine Becks made a frog-like guttural noise and untucked, getting tangled up together. A second later they belly-flopped the ground and all but one disappeared.

Adam hoped it was the real Beck who was left behind, but he'd lost track given the mess that'd unfolded. Beck pushed himself off the ground.

"That was—" Before he could finish his sentence, he violently vomited all over the stone ground in front of himself.

"I do not understand the purpose of that," Meilo remarked from where she'd been watching next to Kat. Adam was too busy running through the countless applications of this absurd exploit to consider how to respond to her. He reread the descriptions of his Ghost evolution and the barrage glove to figure out where this absurd power was coming from. It has to be Ghost. The barrage glove only mentions projectiles, whereas Ghost mentions 'throwing'. I have no idea why it applies to people though.

"Can you duplicate anything you want?" Kat asked while watching Beck continuing to projectile vomit all over the ground. Adam took that to mean that the experience wasn't pleasant, though he'd be lying if he wasn't curious about just what exactly Beck had felt and seen.

"It may count for anything I can throw, but as soon as a person actually hits something, I think the System realises it shouldn't be possible," Adam replied.

"Although, I haven't actually tested my build yet, so I can't say if normal projectiles I throw will disappear or not. The wishing coin copies vanished when they hit the bottom of the fountain, but their effects still triggered." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Maybe there is a difference between hitting and catching," Kat wondered. Beck croaked something, followed by a hiccup and more vomiting.

"Are you okay?" Adam asked him. Beck raised a thumbs-up and managed to make a string of noises that sounded like, "Give me a moment." Adam thought about Kat's question and pulled a healing potion from the belt on his arm.

"See how many you can catch," he said, tossing the potion to her. As soon as it left his hand, eight copies appeared around it. Adam was starting to realise there was a ring-like pattern to how the clones and copies appeared. It would make grouping his attacks much easier, although he had the mentalist's locket and lucky charm to help him control where the attacks went.

Kat transformed into her enormous Bloodfiend Matriarch form and managed to catch two bottles in each hand, as well as a fifth with her large clawed foot. All but the real one disappeared, but the four that either hit her or struck the ground all broke and released the healing elixirs within before the bottles themselves vanished. She realised the same thing as Adam, because before he could verbalise his theory, Kat said, "The effects of what you throw remain, but not the things themselves.

Which means if Beck could keep his composure while mid-air, he could fire nine spells at once."

"Or 189, if Adam uses the barrage master's coat," Beck croaked. Kat returned to her human form and stooped to poke a finger into the spilled elixir from one of the destroyed bottle copies. She put the finger on her tongue.

"The healing effect is still here."

"I don't think the cubes would be very happy about this exploit," Adam remarked. Beck got to his feet, wiping his mouth while casting a glance back at the puddle he'd made.

"As for Kat's theory about using a human to fire a bunch of spells all at once, I don't think it would be doable. For the few seconds I had clones, I was seeing and feeling everything they saw and felt. I'm pretty sure someone experiencing that outside the safety blanket of Interim Island would die from the sensation. It still feels like someone punched my brain matter with a sledgehammer."

"Maybe I can use it to kill enemies then," Adam wondered. Beck laughed.

"The real exploit is obviously to drastically multiply the effect of relics triggered on hit. You could make nearly two hundred relics of epic rarity if you used all your relics and threw a wishing coin, and there are other evolutions and relics that increase projectile count." Kat handed the healing potion back to Adam and he returned it to the belt wrapped around his arm.

"One thing that may be hard to test, but could be potentially viable, is if a player equips a cloned relic. Grabbing a thrown relic seems no different than hitting a target with it, but equipping can be done with the mind, so it might work."

"Just a shame we can't really test it here," Adam replied. After all, players could not exchange relics on Interim Island. Although he felt like this limitation might be possible to break with the right exploit.

"You could just try it on yourself," Beck pointed out.

"Oh, right. Somehow that didn't cross my mind." Adam pulled off his barrage glove, since he had an available slot for a second one. He tossed it a metre into the air, focusing his attention on one of the two ghostly clones that appeared and mentally prompting the System to equip the glove. A ghostly barrage glove appeared on Adam's right hand. When he caught the original glove, the equipped clone stayed behind.

"Uhh," Adam muttered.

"It worked…" Kat remarked in disbelief. A look of greed flashed across Beck's face.

"Let's see it in action." Adam equipped the original glove back to his left hand, and when he tossed his kunai into the air, this time it had two normal coherent clones, and then an additional six phantom copies on top of what he'd had before, giving him a total of fifteen, only three of which weren't ghostly.

Given the total number, it was clear that the barrage glove triggered first, but even though it triggered twice, it didn't trigger on its own projectiles, instead 'splitting' the original projectile into three two times, giving him five projectiles that were then each given a ghostly copy by his Ghost evolution's effect. If the barrage glove had been able to trigger on itself, it would've produced something truly busted, but it seemed that such an exploit had been thought of by the System already.

Unfortunately, the pattern that the stack of projectiles took this time wasn't spherical, but more like a square, and the gaps between them had grown wider. Adam had to let the projectiles hit the ground before he could retrieve his weapon, since it was impossible to grab it from within the projectile stack without hurting himself.

"Why were only three of them normal-looking?" Beck asked.

"Show me the relic description of the glove you just copied." < < Relic > > < Ghostly Barrage Glove (Uncommon) — All projectiles are split into 3 phantom copies, each dealing a 6th of total damage and bypassing all physical defences > It had retained the effects of Ghost, but since the evolution lowered projectile damage by fifty percent, and the barrage glove split it into thirds, it resulted in much weaker copies, though they would bypass physical defences, which was extremely useful.

And even though they dealt less damage, more projectiles overall was a pure boost to his power. Beck grabbed Adam's shoulders, a manic look in his eyes.

"We've gotta exploit the shit out of this!" he exclaimed frantically, the stench of puke wafting off of him. Kat nodded.

"This is quite powerful if you can add special effects to relics you are duplicating. But, I doubt the cubes will allow you to keep this." Beck didn't seem to be listening and instead just pushed on with new things to try.

"What about stage currencies!? Or mastery shards!?" he asked frantically. Meilo eyed the puddle next to Beck.

"Are you quite done? I would like to tend to my plants if I am unneeded."

"You can't leave!" Beck demanded.

"I do not answer to you, visitor," Meilo told him, looking to Adam.

"Please just let us borrow your time-stopping effect for a bit longer," Adam asked her.

"Fine," she replied, clearly annoyed. Adam pulled one of his mastery shards out of his body and tossed it into the air. However, nothing happened. He tried the same with the victory pearls and evolution encyclopaedia, but they didn't have an effect either.

"You cannot copy soulbound items," Meilo remarked from the sideline.

"Do you mean that if he throws me into the air again and I pull out my own mastery shards, only one will appear?" Beck asked her.

"Yes," she replied.

"Do you wanna test it?" Adam asked Beck.

"Fuck no." He raised his hands up towards Adam.

"Look at me, I'm still fucking shaking."

"There's still some healing juice on the ground," Adam pointed out. Beck didn't seem to consider the invitation ludicrous and went over to one of the red elixir puddles, grabbing as much as he could between two hands and slurping it down. Then he raised his hands again. They were still shaking.

"Sorry," Adam said, feeling genuinely guilty for traumatising his friend.

"It'll go away on its own," Beck replied. He opened his mouth to add something else, but then closed it again and looked away. It's almost like he was about to say, "It wouldn't be the first time." Adam tried to duplicate some more relics, such as the choice ring and relic renewal stone, with the hope of sending them to his player house's storage before they landed, but it failed to work every time, and taking off the duped barrage glove to try and equip a duped ring made the glove disappear.

He wanted to keep the phantom barrage glove for now, so he duped it again and equipped it. The exploit seemed to only work with equippable relics or ones that had an effect triggered when they hit something. He was heavily considering selling his hobgoblin pendant and mantle of atrophy to buy other relics to test the exploit on, but the main issue was the fact that the cubes would definitely know if something was off, given the previous comment about him exploiting the wishing coin. Or would they?

Given that it took place while they were frozen in time, maybe they won't notice?

"Alright, time to face the music," Adam said.

"Meilo, please return time to its normal flow." Her glass scales pulled back to her body and a look of relief washed over her. Adam vaguely remembered Luvicidix scolding him for abusing her time-freezing power once. All three cubes groaned in the same deep tone. [Urrr—] Oh shit. But then nothing happened.

"Guess they don't have object permanence," Adam remarked. Beck grinned. Adam was sure his brain would be working overtime to figure out how to break this exploit wide open.

"I know what new weapon I'm investing my points into," he said.

"First, let's use the challenge stones," Adam replied.

"I will go and evolve a weapon to unlock a stone of my own," Kat said and headed west for the market.

"We'll be in the tavern under the player house," Adam told her as they went north.