Chương 154: Chapter 153: Muted Mode

The Cryo-Balveth pack would respawn again. The Rift portals might not. That made the choice easier than Karmabeast wanted it to be. The original five-pack was still the best XP either of them had ever seen, and repeating the split-and- Xenocide route could have pushed them through several more levels before the rest of Fractera understood what was happening. Trash mobs could wait.

Even if other groups took over the first cavern, the monsters would come back eventually, and Layer 4 had to contain more packs than the one they had already solved. The portals were different. Each one seemed to hold one Rift King, and every Rift King advanced Break It only once. Once a portal was empty, it stayed empty.

When scouts started filling the Depths, finding untouched ones would mean racing every other party through the same cracks, fighting over access, or pushing into routes too dangerous for ordinary exploration. The stream agreed for completely different reasons. Every time Excrino showed up, Karmabeast's numbers jumped harder than they did from a normal level-up, and his viewers cared way more about a new Rift portal than another five Balveths falling over.

He still hated giving up the cleanest leveling route he had ever touched, but scouting ahead was better content than standing beside Meno in a solved farm. So he moved ahead. The first untouched portal after their decision still felt like an event. Karmabeast marked the chamber, returned to Meno, left the party, and braced for the routine they had invented. Meno landed a Massive weapon hit, then activated Mush.

Excrino arrived, crushed Karmabeast, restored him, noticed the portal, and crossed through to retrieve another thin blue Rift King. The Hanged God ate it without ceremony. By the fourth new chamber, Meno had started moving toward the next one before Excrino fully faded. Behind them, the Jagged Sea kept spreading through Layer 4. The narrow stream that had first followed their boots now split whenever the floor dipped, feeding separate cracks and pooling in low caverns that had been dry less than an hour earlier.

Neither player knew whether the sea itself was losing enough water to matter. Down here, it was enough to rewrite the map. The portal routine settled quickly. Karmabeast scouted ahead through Stealth, marking tunnels with quick symbols for portals, packs, elites, dead ends, other players, and flooding. Meno took the shortest route that worked and killed only what got in the way. They waited only long enough for cooldowns to clear between portals. Then Karmabeast disappeared down the next tunnel.

The first 2 hours were still full of monsters. Most were familiar Level 90 Spawn appearing in identical groups of five, and those packs had become nearly automatic. Karmabeast isolated one, contained the other four, and let Meno build Chain with ranged Quadrillionator hits until the priority target entered kill range. Once the pack rejoined, Xenocide removed all five. Other caverns had Level 91 to 93 groups of seven mixed between Balveth trash that had evolved in different directions.

Balveth Chargers lowered their heads and tried to gore anything on the ground, Frostspine Balveths fired volleys of ice needles from their backs, and Hollow Balveths screamed loud enough to count as crowd control if left alone. They were still trash mobs, just trash mobs with extra spice. That made the pulls messier, but not complicated. Karmabeast split the pack by type, Meno pushed one target in the largest group down to low HP, and Xenocide erased every matching Balveth once the kill landed.

Whatever survived usually died before it could make the fight interesting. The XP showed up much faster than the loot. Claw fragments, cracked elemental stones, heat organs, tail plates, and low-value materials filled the inventory without producing a single beam worth stopping for. Meno reached Level 74, and Karmabeast reached Level 71, but Break It moved much slower. After 2 hours, they had reached only 7 / 66. That was when Pike's resurrection lock ended.

Meno checked the stream mostly to see where Pike's group had come back, then found something much worse. Pike and Moon were standing in a cavern choked with pale invasive growth, and Pike was carrying molten glowstone through it in a bucket. A real bucket. Not the Ancient III reward Meno had received, but possibly a weaker version from earlier in the chain. Meno searched Pike's latest footage and found the item that explained what Highbanner and Silverwake had actually been planning. [Questmorpher] One-Time Use.

Crafted by Inkognito. Allows you to copy a quest scroll from a nearby player's inventory. Quest prerequisites and progress are not copied. The planning footage filled in the rest. Pike and Moon had found the Layer 1 maintenance scroll through the restored Saints. One Saint confirmed that the full maintenance chain mattered and hinted it might connect to one of the undiscovered gods, though the NPC had not said which one. They had never needed to kill him for it.

Pike only needed to stand near Meno long enough to use the Questmorpher. The clip made the setup obvious. Pike had brought Oxy because Meno would look at her instead of the rest of the group. In return, Oxy had been promised Legendary III equipment because her current gear was weak. Moon had warned that talking about the plan on stream was stupid, but Pike assumed Meno did not watch other players and thought the eventual realization might take him down a notch. Meno reopened the start of his own PvP footage.

Behind Northwatch's raised shield, while everyone was supposedly negotiating, Pike's hand had moved once. A small scroll-shaped flash disappeared into his inventory. The copied quest barely mattered. Meno still had his original scroll, and the bucket chain remained exactly the kind of quest he hated. Pike had not stolen progress, removed the reward, or stopped Meno from finishing anything later. What bothered him was simpler: they had deliberately used Oxy as bait, and Oxy had agreed.

Meno closed Pike's stream, then closed his own fight clip before the next replay began. Chat was still moving fast enough to cover the side of his vision, arguing over whether the plan was smart, whether Oxy had betrayed him, and whether he should swim back up to interfere with the maintenance chain. He hid it. The stream overlay went next, viewer count, clip notices, and every other panel that did not help him move. After that, Meno stopped explaining his decisions.

Karmabeast still talked to his own stream and kept producing discovery clips, but Meno's side of the session narrowed to paths, monster types, and the number on the quest tracker. Ordinary levels stopped mattering. Loot closed without inspection. Route choices happened before the map had fully settled. Muted mode did not make him reckless. It only removed everything that was not progress. By 6 hours, the route had improved enough to keep ahead of the growing distance between portals.

Karmabeast marked tunnels more cleanly, and Meno had learned which orange-veined seams could be broken with a Massive weapon without bringing the cavern down. Some portal clusters sat inside deep chimney caverns, with side cells opening from the walls above and below each other, but other stretches ended in nothing except excellent XP and no quest progress. Level 90 packs were already falling off for Meno, so they increasingly ignored them unless one blocked a marked route.

Level 92 and 93 mixed groups still moved both bars well enough to justify fighting, especially when Karmabeast could separate a large matching type for Xenocide. By then, Meno had reached Level 76 and Karmabeast had reached Level 72, but Break It had only crawled to 13 / 66. Vivi contacted Meno through the capsule comms around then to say she was leaving the suite. Meno answered just long enough to establish that he was not logging out to let her back in later.

Once the call ended, the outside world dropped out of the part of his attention that mattered. The first serious run-in with another group came around 9 hours into the session, near 18 / 66. They reached a cavern just as Pike's party entered from the opposite tunnel. Oxy was still with them. There was no posturing, negotiating, or checking whether Meno wanted another fight.

Pike turned his group around the moment he saw them, threw an Earth barrier across the junction, and used the wall to cover Moon speeding up the retreat with a buff. Oxy backed through last with her shield raised, but nobody attacked. Karmabeast turned toward pursuit on instinct, his brain clearly converting the retreat into content: enemy party running, rematch available, free momentum if they pushed now. Meno grabbed his shoulder before the shadowstep could happen. Pike's group was already wasting their own time.

If Karmabeast wasted more of theirs, Meno would email every stupid thing he had said today to his mother. The immediate lack of argument confirmed it was the correct threat. After 11 hours of stupid caverns, trash packs that refused to be interesting, and constant backtracking to avoid elite rooms they had no reason to clear, the orange glow started to blur together. There was only movement now: reach the portal, kill what blocked them, feed Excrino, double back, choose the next crack, do it again.

By then, Meno had hit Level 79, Karmabeast had hit Level 74, and Break It had only crawled to 21 / 66. The routes grew less friendly. One tunnel opened into a chamber containing another Level 90 Seeker. Karmabeast baited the elite into blinking toward the passage while Meno triggered a partial collapse in the orange-veined ceiling. Mana Detonation finished the job, bringing enough rock down to block the Seeker while both players escaped through a narrower crack.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Knowledge turned a previous boss-level encounter into terrain management. The next complication was harder to route around. Two Balveth Witherers emerged from the walls at once. [Balveth Witherer | Elite | Decay | Resource Drain | Healing Reduction | Level 91] The Witherers were the first room that made the route say no. Their effects latched on before the elites had fully dragged themselves out of the walls.

Karmabeast's movement stuttered almost immediately, his steps coming late and his body control refusing to line up. Meno felt the other half of it a second later, when Inexhaustible tried to pull him back up and barely moved the bar. Great. They bailed through a vertical fracture too narrow for the Witherers to follow and climbed until the elites finally leashed. Below them, seawater pooled against the orange veins, hissing into warm mist as the heated stone popped and split around it.

At 12 hours, the capsule recommended a serious break. Meno dismissed it. The session kept going, and the packs got uglier. Level 94 to 96 trash barely counted as trash anymore. Some groups had only three monsters, but each one came with a gimmick. Balveth Shellbacks carried curved plates over the front half of their bodies and tried to keep those plates pointed at every threat. Balveths Orehides moved slower, hit harder, and deflected ordinary arrows.

Balveth Riftclaws left glowing cuts in the floor that detonated if Karmabeast crossed them twice. Still trash. Just trash that kept taxing the part of Meno's brain he had reserved for portals. Karmabeast turned the priority target with chains and poison while Meno used melee Quadrillionator for 100% Defense Pierce, then let Titan delete the final 10% whenever a pack execute was not worth preserving. The worst part was damaging them at all.

They felt like tanks on steroids without shields: all bad armor angles, miserable hitboxes, and way too much effort for things that did not drop proper loot. Around 14 hours in, near 27 / 66, Meno reached Level 80. [Level 80 | Class Augmentation Available] He opened the interface only far enough to confirm the choice existed, then shut it again. Break It promised Tyrant Evolution Advancement.

That could mean new skills, replaced skills, upgraded skills, deleted skills, or some cursed Excrino nonsense that made the current augmentation menu immediately outdated. Meno was not about to grief himself by augmenting something that might change soon and turn the whole choice pointless. Around 28 / 66, two Broodcallers blocked the fastest path into another stacked portal cavern.

[Balveth Broodcaller | Elite | Summoner | Horde | Sacrifice | Level 93] The cavern filled with Spawn before Meno and Karmabeast had crossed half of it. The Broodcallers stayed near the back, swollen-throated and half-buried in the orange-veined wall, shrieking more Spawn loose from the stone while the Horde thickened around them. Killing the summons only gave the elites more bodies to sacrifice for healing or empowerment, so Meno refused the obvious fight.

They pulled the growing Horde toward a side passage already filling with seawater, then climbed out of reach and crossed along the ceiling. The summons kept following on the ground, packed themselves into the flooded choke, and left the Broodcallers staring through their own traffic jam until the room finally reset. The sea was no longer background. It was a tool. By 18 hours, Break It stood at 34 / 66. Meno had reached Level 82, and Karmabeast had reached Level 77.

The best tunnel forward had a Warden sitting in it. [Balveth Warden | Elite | Shield Wall | Disorient | Silence | Level 97] Its Shield Wall sealed the visible passage from floor to ceiling, and the first pulse hit both players with Disorient and Silence. Sleepless Grip blocked the Disorient, but the Silence landed cleanly and immediately proved why the Warden was not worth solving. It shut down active skills, passive effects, including Airwalk at the same time. He started falling.

Crownmind purged the effect a moment later, but the answer was already obvious. Any elite that could briefly turn off Airwalk was not getting a fair fight during a portal rush. Meno formed Quadrillionator and drove it into an orange-veined seam beside the chamber. The wall cracked, the opening widened, and the route gained a new passage around the Warden without ever killing it. The shortcut stayed on their map after the elite reset. Fatigue was building, but it was not stopping them.

Meno burned one unnecessary Airwalk kick during a routine Level 92 pull and nearly dropped into a bubbling lava vent the Balveth Cinderback had cracked open below him. He read one mixed pack half a second late and fed the wrong targets into Xenocide. Each mistake was fixed immediately. Their system had been hammered flat by repetition, and fatigue was only denting the edges. The session crossed 23 hours with Break It at 40 / 66, Meno at Level 84, and Karmabeast at Level 79.

A stronger capsule warning confirmed they had crossed into Thursday. The orange underground light had never changed. Wednesday had simply disappeared while they moved through the same colors of stone. More people were definitely entering Layer 4, but Meno could not be bothered to scout other streams for information. They were too far from the entrance now, too deep into the cave system, and moving too quickly for a PvP ambush to matter. The ladder had become ridiculous anyway.

Karmabeast was sitting at rank 2, while Pike, Moon, and Oxy kept rising fast. Sereth and Northwatch briefly appeared at rank 9 and rank 10, then vanished from the top 10 again. Probably reassigned to bucket duty as full-time plant exterminators. Poor guys. Meno hoped they enjoyed every second of it. After that, the session became more movement than fighting. One deep shaft opened into four side chambers on the way up, and each chamber held a portal.

Then the map went back to being annoying: flooded dead ends, occupied junctions, and too many empty stretches between anything useful. Near 43 / 66, three Spineshots ruined the best lead on the map. [Balveth Spineshot | Elite | Multi-Projectile | Speed | Forking Arrows | Level 95] Three of them. Their first shots were already fast, but the real problem was what happened after a miss. Arrows that struck stone forked into fresh projectiles, so hiding behind a stone pillar only loaded the pillar with more angles.

Within seconds, the cavern stopped having cover and started having spikes. Karmabeast deflected what he could, but the forked shots kept spawning from walls, pillars, and ledges behind them. They retreated through a narrow vertical zigzag and the portal beyond the elites disappeared from the plan. At 26 hours, near 45 / 66, Karmabeast reached Level 80. He opened his augmentation interface inside a dead end and selected something almost immediately.

Meno had hidden chat and kept studying the map while Karmabeast explained why upgrading his cloak magic resist dispel thing was somehow better than taking more damage. Meno found the reasoning beyond cooked. Damage was always best. By 30 hours, Meno had reached Level 87, Karmabeast had reached Level 82, and Break It stood at 51 / 66. Meno was hungry enough that it had stopped being background noise. Annoying, but not worth logging out over.

If he slept now and came back to every portal camped, the quest could turn from awful to impossible. So food lost. That was when Layer 4 reminded them where its ceiling actually was. [Balveth Champion | Elite | Multi-Strike | Unblockable | Defense Pierce | Level 100] The inspect was basically a list of reasons not to be there. Unblockable removed defensive angles, Defense Pierce made armor feel fake, and Multi-Strike turned one mistake into a full combo. They tried to avoid it, but the Champion caught them anyway.

The Champion crossed the cavern like a bulldozer with legs. Plate covered it from neck to claw, layered in jagged slabs with orange veins burning underneath like the monster had been forged out of Layer 4 itself. Its axe was worse: a massive chunk of orange-veined stone shaped into a blade, too heavy to look usable until it blurred through the air anyway. It intercepted Meno during an Airwalk reset.

The first combo hit so hard and so fast that Defiant triggered instantly, resurrecting him back at 1 HP behind a full Absorption Shield while Chain reset and Indignation deleted his damage bonus. Karmabeast threw his strongest control into the follow-up, but it did not work, only buying part of a second. They ran. The Champion followed. Meno dragged it into an unstable cavern and collapsed the ceiling with Quadrillionator, but the elite broke through the first blockage before they reached the next junction.

The sound of it tearing through the cave-in chased them down the passage, stone cracking behind each axe swing like the monster was mining its way through by force. They dropped a second section behind them, and that one finally held long enough for the Champion to leash, taking several potential portals off the map with it. Level 100 was still a wall. The capsule warnings became harder to dismiss around 30 hours. Meno cleared them without opening the details. After that, portals became the bottleneck.

The easy tunnels were empty, and everything left meant deeper water, Level 97 to 98 trash with awful gimmicks, unstable caverns, elites, or other guilds. Level 90 monsters barely moved Meno's XP bar anymore. Level 94 to 96 packs still paid, but slowly, and even Level 98 trash could not recreate the stupid gains from the first hours. The worst seven-member packs were basically trash mobs pretending to be a coordinated party. Shellbacks faced their crescent plates toward damage.

Orehides crawled forward like walking armor checks. Riftclaws left glowing cuts in the floor that punished bad movement, and Cinderbacks opened lava vents under anyone who stopped too long. Karmabeast separated the largest matching group, Meno drove one of them into execute range, and the same-type kill removed that section of the pack. Whatever survived usually was not worth the extra time unless it blocked the way. Burrowers were even more annoying because they refused to stay targetable.

They tracked vibrations through the floor, so Karmabeast became the bait while Meno stayed airborne. One step drew the ripple. A shadowstep made it miss. The monsters burst up where Karmabeast had been, and Meno slammed a Massive hit into the first exposed body before the pack could dive again. The grind worked because neither of them played like a normal group. A normal party would stop after every ugly pull, heal up, refill Mana, kill the leftovers, and pretend this was a reasonable way to spend a day.

Meno and Karmabeast skipped the boring parts. Sinseeker took aiming off Meno's plate while he handled movement. Quadrillionator gave him burst and Chain. Xenocide turned one low-health Balveth into a same-type wipe, and Titan deleted the final 10% from isolated problems when a pack execute was not worth saving. Karmabeast scouted ahead, split packs, and built the exact angles Meno needed. It was not a strat average players could reproduce by staying awake and believing in themselves.

By the second Pike-party encounter, 34 hours had passed. Break It was near 56 / 66, Meno had reached Level 88, and Karmabeast was somewhere between Level 84 and Level 85. They heard fighting before they entered, then found Pike's group already mid-pull inside the cavern. Pike saw them, and no discussion was needed. They bailed immediately, leaving the monsters. Pike threw a rock wall across part of the cavern while Moon covered the retreat. Oxy vanished through the tunnel with them.

Karmabeast reluctantly turned back, split out the largest matching group, and helped create an execute target. Xenocide wiped the rest. The XP was useful, but the loot was junk. At 36 hours, Break It reached 60 / 66. Karmabeast had gone quiet too. Early on, every portal got a performance and every level got a celebration. Somewhere in the middle, the reactions shrank. At 63 / 66, an unavoidable Level 98 pack pushed Karmabeast to Level 85.

The mixed bodies blocked the easy Xenocide wipe, but the fight stayed clean enough to finish without spending either cheat death. At 65 / 66, another capsule warning finally made him check the clock. Thursday evening. They had started early Wednesday, which meant roughly 40 hours had passed. The last portal was guarded by a Level 98 pack that refused to stay where the fight started. [Balveth Stalker | Phase Step | Claw Frenzy | Pack Blink | Level 98] Six of them.

They looked like failed warrior-mages after the cave had finished chewing on them: long arms, cracked ribs, orange veins glowing under dead gray skin, and clawed hands wrapped in broken stone gauntlets. Every few seconds, the whole pack blinked at once. Not far enough to escape, just far enough to ruin every angle, every poison field, and every target Meno had already decided was supposed to die first. Karmabeast opened on the nearest Stalker, and it vanished before the second dagger landed.

The pack reappeared around him in a half-circle and clawed inward. He shadowstepped out, but one blinked with him, appearing close enough to rake his back before the movement finished. Karmabeast stunned it and cut the follow-up short. Meno switched to Quadrillionator, kicked sideways through the air, and tried to force one Stalker below execute range before the pack blinked again. Karmabeast pinned it for less than a second. That was enough.

The Massive hit landed, Xenocide followed, and the same-type execute finally caught the whole pack before their next blink cycle. The final corpse fell beside the portal. [Level Up! | Level 89] Meno minimized the notification, leaving the unopened Level 80 augmentation icon beside it, and moved past the bodies to the last portal. The Hanged God entered, returned with the sixty-sixth Rift King, compressed it between his hands, and swallowed it without explanation. Behind him, the blue gateway darkened.