Chương 167: Science Master

Meno took one normal step and nearly turned it into three. Now that False Wings EX applied the same Movement Speed modifiers in the air and on the ground, the difference between the two was impossible to miss. Airborne, the speed came in two stages: a False Wings kick set his direction, Jump Power launched him, and Movement Speed kept the distance pouring in. On the ground, his body still ran normally. The world just slipped under each stride far faster than his brain expected.

At full HP, Inexhaustible EX pushed him to 250% increased Movement Speed. Even then, a hidden acceleration stat kept him from hitting full speed in a single breath. It was easiest to feel while airborne, where Jump Power supplied the initial burst before Movement Speed took over. That much speed punished sloppy inputs. Push too hard and he blew past his target; hold back and he left part of the bonus unused.

Meno knew how to handle fast VR movement, but stacked this high, Movement Speed was becoming another mechanic he had to control instead of free speed. His phone-link pinged with a text, and Meno checked it in case it mattered. Oxy: I'm ready. Send it. Meno opened GraveMistake, sent the invite, and watched Oxy's name pop back onto the guild roster before turning toward Karmabeast.

"Are you done sulking? Show me your class."

"It's clipped on my stream. Damage looks broken, but I am still processing." Meno sighed and opened Karmabeast's stream in an overlay. The relevant clip was already near the top, so he skipped past Excrino cutting him into pieces and went straight to the new class panel. [Venom Tormentor Tyrant EX] You may only use Massive weapons. Massive weapon hits deal 10, 000% increased damage against Crowd Controlled targets and 15, 000% increased damage against targets immune to Crowd Control.

Massive weapons ignore Dual-Wielding penalties. Massive weapons can Deflect attack and spell projectiles. All damage you deal is converted to Poison damage. Poison damage bypasses Defense and is considered an Elemental Damage Type. Massive weapon hits apply Venom Tyrant for 1 second. Does not stack. Venom Tyrant (Debuff): 50% more Damage Taken 50% reduced Action Speed 100% less Crowd Control Recovery Speed Against Bosses, these effects are capped at 25%. Similar effects do not stack. [Debillionator EX] Active.

Lasts until canceled. Combine 3 Daggers into a linked Massive weapon with no modifiers. Debillionator consists of two parts and can only be Dual-Wielded. Its Damage Tier equals the highest among the weapons used. Debillionator has 75% reduced Weapon Size. [Venom Shade EX] Active. Instant. Crowd Control. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Vanish and enter Stealth. Taking damage, using a damaging ability, or landing an attack ends Stealth. The first Massive weapon hit that ends Stealth applies Suppressed for 5 seconds.

Suppressed: Unable to use abilities, and Avoidance has no effect. [Venocide EX] Active. Instant. Crowd Control. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Range: Short. Create a venom-filled sphere around the target for 5 seconds, obscuring visibility within the area. Hostiles within the area suffer Venom Tyrant and cannot escape. If a target dies within Venocide, all non-Elite, non-Boss monsters of the same species affected by Venom Tyrant also die. [Venom Cloak EX] Active. Instant. Cooldown: 30 seconds.

Purges all Debuffs and applies Venom Tyrant to all hostiles within long range for 1 second. Gain 100% Magic Avoidance for 5 seconds. Magic Avoidance can be pierced by certain effects and modifiers and does not grant spell immunity. Gain 1 second of Nullification Immunity after use. Can be activated at any time, even while Nullified. Augmented: Unshackled Gain Crowd Control Immunity for 5 seconds. [Sky Tormentor EX] Active. Instant. Cooldown: 30 seconds. After jumping, you may kick off empty air for 15 seconds.

All airborne modifiers apply while grounded. Augmented: Arrival While airborne, gain 100% increased Movement Speed and Jump Power. Jump Power also boosts Sky Tormentor EX kick strength. [Venom Step EX] Active. Instant. Cooldown: 10 seconds. Charges: 2. Range: Long. Teleport behind your target and apply Venom Tyrant for 1 second. Interrupts spell casting. [Toxic Crash EX] Active. Instant. Crowd Control. Stun every target affected by Venom Tyrant within long range for 5 seconds.

Within any 30-second window, the third Toxic Crash stun has 50% reduced duration. The fourth application makes the target Crowd Control Immune for 30 seconds. Calculated separately for each target. [Mush EX] Active. Instant. Divine. Cooldown: 6 minutes. Become an Incarnation of Excrino for 3 seconds. Your body and weapon triple in size. You can fly using your airborne Movement Speed. Gain 100% increased Action Speed. Gain Crowd Control Immunity.

Your attacks cannot be Blocked, Deflected, Parried, Absorbed, or Reduced. All hostiles within long range are affected by Venom Tyrant. [Venom Master EX] Gain an extra 8% Action Speed for each Leather armor piece equipped. Gain 1% Lifesteal for every 10% increased Action Speed you have. Gain 1 Multi-Strike for every target currently affected by Venom Tyrant. Multi-Strike: Each stack grants one additional hit on a weapon attack.

While Venom Tyrant is active on any target, gain 300% increased Attack Speed with Massive weapons. While Venom Tyrant is active on any target, you are immune to movement-impairing effects. THIS IS NOT A ROGUE THIS IS A RAID DEBUFF KARMA WON THE WRIT LOTTERY 300 ATTACK SPEED BTW NO CD AOE STUN HELLO??? PBG GOT ACTION SPEED TROLLED SO KARMA COULD HAVE IT MULTISTRIKE LINE IS ILLEGAL Meno's brain was about to explode.

Karmabeast had gotten the Action Speed Meno wanted and Lifesteal on top instead of having one converted into the other. His class was juiced. Against Crowd Controlled targets, Massive hits gained another 1, 000 Chain worth of increased damage. Against Crowd Control immune targets, the bonus climbed closer to 1, 500. Debillionator EX gave him two Massive weapons, and Venom Master EX piled on 300% Attack Speed whenever Venom Tyrant existed on anything.

Meanwhile, the debuff boosted everyone else's damage while shredding the target's Action Speed and Crowd Control Recovery. Venom Cloak EX was absurd too. It purged debuffs, spread Venom Tyrant across long range, gave 5 seconds of Magic Avoidance, kept the Nullification protection, and still carried Unshackled for Crowd Control Immunity. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. The nastiest line was simpler.

Gain 1 Multi-Strike for every target currently affected by Venom Tyrant. Unlike Meno's Quadrillionator EX, Debillionator EX could Multi-Strike. Venom Tyrant on the boss already meant one extra hit in a single-target fight, but the AOE tools were where things got stupid. Tag 30 trash mobs, tunnel the boss, and every attack came with 30 additional hits. Swing Master and Venom Tormentor just wanted completely different fights. Swing Master wanted one target it could keep beating on while Chain climbed into orbit.

Venom Tormentor wanted as many enemies marked with Venom Tyrant as possible, then turned every one of them into another Multi-Strike against the target Karmabeast actually cared about. And even if his own damage fell off, Venom Tyrant kept boosting everyone else. Meno still preferred his own class once a fight lasted long enough for Chain to really take off, but Karmabeast had much better cheese. Meno closed the overlay.

"You are officially number one support rogue in Veyrath. Congrats."

"Can you even read? My damage is sick." Karmabeast activated Debillionator EX on three daggers. Two thick, serrated blades formed in his hands. The 75% Weapon Size penalty had shrunk them well below normal Massive weapons, but next to his old knives they were still monsters, each reaching about as far as a one-handed sword. At least he still looked vaguely like a rogue instead of someone dual-wielding slabs of metal.

"See? Now you full-set it at Legendary IV Damage Tier. You can thank me." Karmabeast gave each blade a swing. Without Venom Tyrant active, Venom Master EX did nothing, and the Massive base speed dragged the attacks out compared with the quick snaps of his old daggers.

"Yeah, but it's a vanilla weapon with no mods. Why did you have to remove that? There are some cool weapon mods, and now even a Mythic weapon is useless besides the higher base damage. Also, this unbuffed Attack Speed is disgustingly trash."

"Who cares about Mythic weapons? Those are almost impossible to get anyway, and we progress too fast for them to be worth farming. You can still use Mythic armor." Mythic weapons made Meno check what Quadrillionator EX had done to his own. He selected Mythic I Sinseeker, Legendary III Marcel's Reacher, and Legendary III Marcel's Vainglaive. All three flowed together into a glaive towering over him, with a long pole beneath a crimson crescent blade.

The edge hooked backward and swept down nearly a third of the shaft. Even without Weapon Master's old two-handed size bonus, the Massive weapon still reached around one and a half times Meno's height. Reacher and Vainglaive had become most of the pole and the structure around the blade, while Sinseeker had abandoned its bow shape completely and turned into the huge crimson crescent.

[Quadrillionator] Type: Two-Handed Massive Weapon Damage Tier: Legendary IV Durability: Indestructible Meno swung the glaive through the cavern and felt the difference immediately. It still moved with the weight of a Massive weapon, but Annihilator EX and Jetstream had stripped out enough of the sluggish recovery that one swing could feed into the next without the old crawl between them. Losing the item modifiers hurt at low Chain, but that was the trade.

Once Chain started climbing, it would replace the missing damage anyway. The components only had one job now: bring the highest Damage Tier possible. Which meant Sinseeker was no longer sacred. Meno pulled open his inventory with a grin.

"Okay. Science time." NO SCIENCE TIME ALWAYS COSTS MILLIONS PUT THE INVENTORY DOWN remember the common axe DO NOT TOUCH SINSEEKER we just got the build working PLEASE"So you admit you were going on all vibes until now, Mr. Pluto," Karmabeast said.

"Good vibes." Meno found the item he wanted. [Cursed Divine Teardrop (Diluted)] One-Time Use. Unpredictably corrupts an item, increasing its Rarity Tier by 1. Meno shared the tooltip with Karmabeast.

"What do you think happens if I apply this to a Quadrillionator?"

"Maybe world-state progression, AI short-circuits, all the gods descend, Veyrath explodes, space becomes real, the world economy collapses, aliens invade, spicy women release a new album, our brains grow an extra dimension, or you get banned. Fifty-fifty odds on any of them." SPACE BECOMES REAL LMAO ALIEN PATCH CONFIRMED 50/50 banned or divine weapon please corrupt the temporary weapon this is peak science AI RED ALERT RED ALRET RED ALERT"Very funny."

"Go ahead, press the button. Press it very hard. Haaarder. Haaarder."

"You done?" Meno considered the interaction one more time. Quadrillionator showed no Rarity Tier, but its Legendary IV Damage Tier was close enough for the background weapon scaling to treat it like one. If the Teardrop raised that to Legendary V and Quadrillionator could still split afterward, there was a chance all three component weapons would come back upgraded too. That would be absurd, but it wouldn't be cheating.

The game allowed the Teardrop to target the weapon, and Meno was using the item exactly as written. If Solar had left an item-duping interaction in there, that sounded like a Solar problem. The lack of modifiers made the attempt safer too, since there was almost nothing useful on the temporary weapon for corruption to ruin. The more Meno thought about it, the smarter the test seemed. [Are you sure you want to apply Cursed Divine Teardrop (Diluted) to Quadrillionator?] Meno pressed Y.

The Massive glaive flowed out of his hand and began floating in front of him. Black liquid gathered from nowhere, circling the weapon in tightening streams until the whole thing looked trapped inside a whirlpool made of ink. Then the liquid seeped into the metal. The glaive began to shake as yellow light crawled along the blade, deepened into orange, burned red, then collapsed into black.

A shriek ripped through the cavern hard enough that Meno and Karmabeast both ducked and covered their ears while the shaft flexed and cracks raced across the blade. A black beam erupted upward. It punched through the cavern ceiling like an angry laser and kept going, vaporizing a clean line through the stone above them. The beam widened as the shriek intensified, black light flooding the cavern while orange glowstone flashed through the haze and the weapon broke apart inside the beam.

Pieces of blade and shaft vanished into the light until nothing remained. The effect continued for eleven seconds before the beam cut out and the shriek died with it. Something heavy slammed into the cavern floor where the weapon had been. Its basic shape remained recognizable, but the clean crimson glaive was gone. The shaft had darkened almost to black, faint smoke leaked from its surface, and the crescent blade had grown thicker and serrated, curling farther backward into a deeper hook.

Before, it had looked like an oversized weapon. Now it looked like something that should have dropped from a raid boss. Meno picked it up. [Corrupted | Sinforged Trinity] Type: Two-Handed Massive Weapon Damage Tier: Legendary V Durability: Indestructible Created by: PrayerBeadGod Corruption: Activate to summon a ghost of your most recently slain opponent once, for 3 seconds Corruption: Cooldowns cannot be reduced by any means LEGENDARY V CREATED BY PRAYERBEADGOD????

HE CRAFTED A CORRUPTED WEAPON SUMMONER PBG ARC COOLDOWN REDUCTION IS DEAD LMAOOOO SINFORGED TRINITY GOES HARD SCIENCE IS REAL"Wow, it actually worked. I am summoner now."

"Share it." Meno sent Karmabeast the tooltip, then looked back at the second corruption line. Cooldowns cannot be reduced by any means. His Aurastone setup was toast whenever Sinforged Trinity was equipped. Mush EX shot back to its full 6-minute cooldown, Xenocide EX returned to 1 minute, and Crownmind EX lost the reduction too. Still, Tyrant EX barely depended on cooldowns anymore. Quadrillionator EX had none, Annihilator EX was passive, and nothing touched his speed or Chain engine.

Cutting Mush EX availability in half sucked, but not enough to give up Legendary V Damage Tier. Meno equipped the weapon. [World First: Corrupted Item] You are the first person to equip a Corrupted item. Reward: Cursed Divine Teardrop (Diluted) INFINITE TEARDROP LOOP???? he got it back world first printing machine INSTANT REFUND science budget restored world saved DO NOT GIVE HIM ANOTHER ONE"Instant profit. Thanks!" One test remained. Meno focused on Quadrillionator EX and tried to cancel the combination.

Nothing happened, so he tried again through the skill interface, then once more by focusing on separating the three component weapons. Sinforged Trinity remained locked in his hands without so much as a flicker. Karmabeast caught on and started laughing.

"Minus one Mythic item, good job. That thing was worth massive gold. Now you got a Massive weapon nobody else can use." Meno turned the dark crimson glaive in his hands, searching for any sign that the three weapons were still buried somewhere inside it. Sinseeker was gone, along with Marcel's Reacher and Marcel's Vainglaive. The Teardrop had not upgraded a temporary Quadrillionator.

It had taken the combined result and forged it into a permanent Legendary V Corrupted weapon built from three items he was never getting back.

"Limit testing. That's all. Now we know." The cost of scientific progress could not be measured in gold, mostly because putting an actual number on this one would ruin Meno's mood. He filed the whole thing under research expenses, rested Sinforged Trinity against one shoulder, and turned toward the passages leading deeper into Layer 4. He needed to blow off some steam, and deleting a dungeon sounded about right.