Chương 134: XP Cliff

The next clear took Meno a little under fourteen minutes. With the route solved, the Forbidden Gaol had become exactly what he wanted from a dungeon: dense XP, almost no dead travel time, and enough execution in the bosses to keep the run from becoming completely braindead. The Confessor died through the same Reactor stack burst, the Jailer went down once Meno routed the haunting ghosts properly, and the final purification was already turning into muscle memory.

When the Prisoner reached 100% HP, it simply disappeared. No Saint Edras speech. The XP was still good enough to push Meno over the next threshold. [Level 65] He waited for the usual class-passive selection notification. Nothing came. Meno checked his class panel in case Solar had hidden something there, but False Hero looked exactly the same. He had no idea whether Challenge Classes skipped the normal Level 65 progression choice or whether the system itself had changed after Level 60. Probably the latter.

Enough people on the leaderboard were close enough that he would find out soon anyway. Meno reset the dungeon and kept going. Two more solo clears pushed him to Level 66, but after that the XP curve fell off a cliff. The next run barely gave him 20% of a level, and Meno suspected most of that came from the Prisoner encounter itself. The purified version never showed a normal level, but with the dungeon's recommended range and reward scaling, it was probably technically around Level 70.

The first few clears had been absurdly efficient, but the free ride was ending fast. Throughout all of this, Aurelia had gone strangely quiet. She still occupied Meno's chair, but the constant commentary had died down to occasional remarks while Honeygrave looked increasingly trapped. He tried getting her to leave with him once his party reached the area. Aurelia refused. Eventually, Honeygrave gave up.

"I really have to bounce now." Meno was halfway through resetting the instance.

"Fine. Thanks for coming." Honeygrave stood, waved once at the camera, then moved out of frame so quickly that he might as well have used a movement skill. Aurelia watched him leave, then turned toward the capsule.

"Finally. Meno, are you going to come out of this capsule any time soon? We seriously need to talk in private."

"I'm still busy. We can talk on the phone later. Just go."

"That won't work." Meno had no clue what was so important that she needed to invade his hotel suite, hijack his stream, refuse to leave, and wait through hours of dungeon farming to say it face-to-face. He also had zero desire to log out. His brain was fully locked into the route now. Stopping for some uncomfortable conversation and returning later would mean rebuilding the rhythm from scratch, and Meno wanted to finish farming the place while every jump, shelf, ghost line, and symbol sequence still felt automatic.

Then he remembered something much more useful. Every time somebody equipped a new item rarity first, there had been an achievement tied to it. Meno could not equip either Masterwork weapon because False Hero disabled his normal weapon slots, but the Masterwork III pants were still pants. He pulled Drowned Pilgrim's Sunker from his inventory.

"World First achievement coming up. Another design credit for sure. Come on, give me something useful." [World First Masterwork III Item Equipped] Reward: Masterwork III Design Credit THERE IT IS FREE ITEM DESIGN AGAIN make something normal for once PBG certified item coming up -99% MaxHP for +200% Damage please no"Great. And I have to use it immediately like the Champion Design Credit. No hoarding allowed." Meno checked his achievements.

"Still have an unused Mythic I and Legendary III too." Aurelia finally sounded interested again.

"Try to make something serious for once." Solar forced the design interface open before Meno could answer. The dungeon faded away, and a blank item template appeared around him. Meno was getting tired of these credits for one simple reason: by the time he could realistically acquire whatever he designed, the item would probably already be obsolete for him. He was basically creating equipment for everybody else to use. At least it was free stream marketing. Not that he needed much of that anymore.

Between the leaderboard and everything that had happened during the last several days, most active Veyrath players probably knew exactly who PrayerBeadGod was. Meno wanted Action Speed. Solar clearly did not. Every time he tried raising the value, the design budget rejected it until he added a downside strong enough to compensate. After several adjustments, the system finally accepted the item.

[Masterwork III | Meno's Lesson] Type: Ring +33% Action Speed for 1 second after a successful Dodge -33% Action Speed for 1 second after taking damage Chat instantly declared it unusable. WORST ITEM EVER wasted wasted wasted 33% SLOW WHEN YOU GET HIT LMAO PBG MADE GEAR FOR PEOPLE WHO NEVER GET HIT DODGE OR BECOME A SLUG pure ego design"Tss," Aurelia said, making a dismissive sound.

"Why are you still making items for yourself?"

"Educational content." Meno closed the design interface and went straight back to farming. Four more clears pushed him to Level 67. Veyra must have taken the earlier comment about killing her personally, because the dungeon stopped dropping loot. Nearly two hours passed without another Masterwork beam, leaving Meno with XP and nothing else to show for the repeated clears. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Then the island outside became crowded. Meno emerged from another reset and found five ships surrounding the island while fourteen Stormhold players spread across the sand. Thorn stood in the middle looking extremely pleased with himself.

"Took a bit to organize people and make sure everyone's stream was off while navigating," Thorn said with a rough laugh.

"But we're ready to blast. Other guilds will find the rest of the prisons soon. Everyone's out there sailing now." The tiny island looked busier than the Royal Docks had. Stormhold had tanks, healers, DPS, supplies, and enough people to run several dungeon groups at once. Merry had already entered earlier with Honeygrave's party, and more players were clearly going to arrive once the location spread through private guild channels. Thorn held something out.

"Your compass." Meno took it. [Ship Compass: Fractera] Always points toward Fractera or the nearest coast of Veyran. Directions setting: Fractera / Veyran"Make sure you set it to where you actually want to go with the knob on the back," Thorn said.

"Otherwise you'll grief yourself. Veyran is the main continent, by the way, and Veyrath is the world, because I know you haven't read a quest text in your life."

"Thanks." That solved his Fractera problem whenever he finally decided to leave. Meno entered the dungeon again, and the clear only gave him around 10% XP. The drop-off was brutal, but at least loot finally returned. Only one beam appeared after the escape, but one was infinitely better than zero, especially when the item was actually useful. [Masterwork III | Drowned Pilgrim's Vitality] Type: Ring While in combat and below 20% Maximum HP, regenerate 10% Maximum HP per second.

"Using this would cost me the +50% Maximum HP from my current ring. But if I'm reading it correctly, this would basically lock me around 10% HP and sustain Engulf." He thought through the timing.

"Or if I'm also taking a bit of damage, maybe it could hold me around 19%. With pure Engulf, though, it doesn't even turn on until the ninth damage tick, so I'm not sure it's worth permanently switching." Very situational. Still, this was the first dungeon drop that directly interacted with False Hero in an interesting way. Aurelia spoke from the camera.

"Cool math, Meno." Meno paused.

"Did I get it wrong?"

"Who knows."

"Okay. Thanks for the input as usual." He put the ring away. Nine more clears followed over a little more than two hours. No additional loot, but enough XP to finally push Meno to Level 68. By then, Aurelia had fallen asleep in his chair. That was somehow even stranger than her refusing to leave. She had curled herself partly sideways with her legs drawn up and her head resting against the chair, apparently comfortable enough to sleep while more than six million people watched the corner camera feed.

Meno shut the camera off. Chat immediately revolted. TURN IT BACK ON NOOOOO CAM BACK ZZZZ STREAM GONE WE WERE WATCHING THAT RESTORE THE AURELIA CAM PBG CENSORSHIP Meno ignored them for several minutes, but they kept going. Eventually, the wall of spam irritated him enough that he turned the camera back on just to shut them up. Aurelia was still asleep.

"Look at that. Still sleeping. Dungeon farming isn't that boring." Meno entered the instance again.

"I'm having fun, and I've been doing this for over four hours." ZZZZZZZZZZ she disagrees DUNGEON SLEEP AURA WAKE HER WITH WORLD FIRST four hours of hugging ghosts bro PBG FARMING ARC HAS CLAIMED A VICTIM we are over it too ngl Getting from Level 68 to 69 was going to be ugly. At the current rate, Meno needed at least twenty clears, probably more. That meant nearly five hours if he held the route around fourteen minutes every time. It could not be helped. The first Level 68 run confirmed the worst estimate.

Even solo, a full clear gave roughly 5% XP. Strangely, it did not bother Meno as much as the Sunken Spire grind had. False Hero made the dungeon fun enough that every run still had small optimizations: cleaner Jet Lag landings, faster book retrieval, tighter ghost routing, better Reactor timing, less wasted movement in the purification room. He also wanted more Masterwork drops. Even when the items were useless, the modifiers were weird enough to be interesting, and everything had value in gold.

Meno called out to Vivi to remove Aurelia from his stream, but there was no response. Either Vivi had also fallen asleep somewhere or she had quietly abandoned the suite. Spectacularly useful employee. After the fifth run at Level 68, Thorn sent him a text instead of whispering in-game. He had dropped a Drowned Pilgrim's Sunker. Thorn was weirdly excited about it. Thinking about War Anchor Dominion for more than a few seconds explained why.

Thorn's build was already designed around standing still, so gaining 5% Maximum HP as Absorption every second fit naturally into what he wanted to do anyway. At full Anchor, the eventual explosion would also benefit from the class's 100% damage bonus, turning the 5000% weapon-damage burst into roughly 10000% before anything else. As a tank, Thorn probably would not even care if the shield never reached full. Enemies constantly hitting him meant the Absorption would get spent as sustain instead.

He had also been wearing Epic III gear during the Titan Trial, so Masterwork III was a giga upgrade even if half the unusual modifiers did nothing. Meno kept farming until the fourteenth Level 68 clear finally produced another loot beam.

[Masterwork II | Jailer's Determination] Type: Leather Chest Durability: Augmented Defense: Medium Leather Bonus: +2% Action Speed +50% Damage Reduction on the next damaging hit taken after a successful Parry +50% Damage Reduction on the next damaging hit taken after a successful Dodge +50% Damage Reduction on the next damaging hit taken after a successful Block +50% Damage Reduction on the next damaging hit taken after a successful Deflect Conditions: Only bonuses from different conditions can stack.

"This item makes no sense. Big trash. Medium Defense leather chest with tank mods." It was also becoming clear that Masterwork III was not just Masterwork II with slightly higher numbers. There was a threshold. Masterwork III items seemed allowed to roll stranger, more build-defining mechanics, while Masterwork I and II still looked much closer to upgraded normal gear. GIVEAWAY I WILL TANK IN LEATHER TRUST FREE MASTERWORK PLEASE BIG TRASH = GIVEAWAY ROLL IT OFF PBG COMMUNITY LOOT"Yeah, maybe. A giveaway."

Meno turned the item over in his inventory.

"Not sure how to make that happen or if it's even allowed. It'll definitely cause endless drama." Chat did not care.

"You guys would just sell it for gold to Crownfall anyway." CORRECT absolutely gold is gold bro WE HAVE NO LOYALTY sell high buy pants"It was obvious." Meno had no real idea how the Damage Reduction math worked anyway. That was Thorn's area. Hard caps existed somewhere, maybe 90%, and stacking multiple 50% reductions probably meant each one applied in sequence instead of adding up to immunity. Who knew. Defensive math was boring, and damage and speed were much better anyway.

Meno finished the remaining clears and finally reached Level 69. By then, he had been farming the dungeon for more than ten hours with everything included. Aurelia was still asleep in his chair, curled almost into a ball, but it was already 3 AM on Monday, and Level 70 was not happening tonight. If the XP falloff continued, another level could take ten hours or worse. Meno could probably push through if this were a capsule marathon with something important at the end, but the mental drag had started winning.

He needed to log out, eat something, get actual air, and sleep.

"That's it for today, guys. I'm logging off." Meno finished the current inventory check and looked once more at the viewer count.

"Productive day, all things considered. Try not to make Aurelia look too bad in those clips. Bye." TOO LATE CLIPS ALREADY EVERYWHERE ZZZZ AURELIA CAM ENDING LEVEL 69 NICE GO SLEEP PBG HONEYGRAVE ESCAPED SHE DID NOT MONDAY STREAM WAS WILD SEE YOU IN 10 HOURS LMAO Meno logged out and ended the stream. The capsule opened into a quiet suite, and for the first time all day, nobody was talking at him.

He climbed out and stood there for a moment, unsure what to do with himself now that there was no dungeon route running through his head. Vivi was asleep on the living-room couch, and Aurelia was still in his chair. Meno considered waking Vivi, but that would probably wake Aurelia too. Then the private conversation Aurelia had been demanding all day would happen immediately, and Meno had absolutely no patience for that. So he did the sensible thing.

He changed into a hoodie, put on his shoes, and quietly left the suite. The elevator carried him through The Pearl while the hotel sat mostly silent around him. Its restaurant was still better than anything Meno could find outside, but for some reason he did not want any of it. He wanted the pizza slices from the old place near his previous apartment. It was not particularly close to downtown, but that was fine. Meno wanted to walk anyway.

After spending most of the day inside a capsule, even cold pavement and empty streets sounded good. He stepped out of The Pearl and into the Vernova night, hands buried in the front pocket of his hoodie while he considered the only problem worth solving right now: pizza topping. Monday felt like sweet-and-salty, and pineapple was a clear DPS buff.