Chương 183: Nothing Happened

The last boss turned out to be an absolute nightmare before they even saw it. The trolling started the moment they passed through the barred gates. BrineSaint's first step landed on black stone, and cracks immediately tore across the courtyard. The walls split, towers folded inward, and frozen battlements sheared away in slabs as the ground collapsed beneath all five players. It would have been a cool cutscene if gravity had not immediately become part of it.

Meno jumped and kicked against empty air, but False Wings barely slowed his descent. Karmabeast activated Sky Tormentor, Arayu blinked, and Kestrel burned his own movement, yet something kept dragging all of them down with the collapsing ruins. They crashed into the bottom of the new crater together. The endboss waited there. [Velnir, First Cryarch of the Outer Circle | Raid Boss | Level 104] Velnir towered over them with a beard hanging nearly to his waist and three pale-blue eyes set across his broad face.

He gripped a staff thick enough to look carved straight from a tree, with a crystal focus the size of a fruit basket mounted at the top. Nobody had time to study him, because gravity suddenly reversed and yanked the entire raid into the air. Meno's stomach twisted as his boots tore away from the crater floor. Rubble, shattered ice, and chunks of the collapsed fort floated upward around them while Velnir raised an upside-down mountain above the crater, its frozen peak pointing straight down.

The broad surface above was packed with undead mages. Hundreds. Meno started kicking against the pull with False Wings, barely keeping himself from being dragged higher. Karmabeast handled it better with his aerial movement, while BrineSaint had no way to fight the lift and was already floating away from the group. Velnir fired an icebolt at the highest-Threat target every second. Meno took the first hit and gained a stack of an unfamiliar debuff. The second raised it to two, and because every hit refreshed the 1.

1-second duration, the stacks kept climbing as long as Velnir stayed on the same target. Meno tried Crownmind, but nothing happened. The debuff had Dispel Immunity, and at ten stacks, the target became permanently frozen. It was not a Stun or Root with a timer to wait out. The player simply froze solid with no duration and no way to remove it. Conqueror did nothing because the mechanic was not an instant kill. Velnir was forcing a tank swap by slowly turning whoever held Threat into an ice statue. They kept wiping.

The mechanic would have been manageable if BrineSaint could stay near the boss. At nine stacks, Brine Taunted and took the next icebolt. Meno's stacks expired while Brine started building his own, exactly as intended, until reverse gravity began dragging him toward the mountain. Karmabeast had to give up most of his damage and stay on Brine, cycling Sky Tormentor to force him back down into Taunt range. When the movement skill ran dry, Fatebreaker refreshed it.

If Brine drifted too high, the undead mages above opened fire and erased him almost instantly. And they created a second problem at the same time. The undead mages had their own cast, and if too many remained alive, glowing lines began connecting them across the underside of the mountain until the entire formation lit up. Then the mountain fired.

Every second, a massive beam tore down from the inverted mountain and blasted through the crater, flooding the arena with light while shredding anyone trying to stay near Velnir. The damage was pure AOE rather than an instant kill, which made Conqueror completely useless against it. Karmabeast already had both hands full keeping BrineSaint in Taunt range, and Meno could not leave Velnir without sacrificing Chain.

Kestrel and Arayu were left staring at an entire mountain packed with undead mages they somehow had to kill fast enough to stop the beams. Their first attempts barely made a dent. Meno finally handed Kestrel [Legendary V | Serrakhal's Cryofall]. He hated swapping off his Ancient I bow and losing the better modifiers and Attack Speed, but hundreds of undead casters were linking together overhead and preparing another orbital deletion.

The higher Damage Tier made a noticeable difference, but they were still losing the race. Arayu had a new tool too. [Legendary VI | Orzathuun's Iterance] Using it properly inflicted brain damage. The ring messed with her spell rhythm and forced her to track Multi-Action timing alongside her gloves. For several wipes, she lost the count, broke the sequence, or fired the wrong spell when the effects lined up. Eventually, she cracked it. Earthbolt into Fireball.

When the gloves and ring lined up, Multi-Action triggered and meteors slammed across the inverted mountain, tearing through whole groups of undead mages at once. That changed the fight. Arayu started wiping large sections of the mountain with each clean combo, while Kestrel used Cryofall to finish whatever survived. Between them, the undead finally started dying fast enough to keep the beams under control.

Karmabeast helped with one huge opening burst, combining Venom Cloak with Venocide to spread Venom Tyrant across the mountain and tear through another massive section before dropping back to his real assignment. After that, he stayed low because Brine needed him. Karmabeast kept burning movement to hold BrineSaint near the crater floor, refreshing Venom Tyrant on Velnir whenever he had an opening for the extra Damage Taken. Going back to the mountain was no longer an option.

More than ten wipes passed before they could reliably reach 1 minute alive. Then Velnir showed them why its HP was dropping so fast. Their first clean attempt had already pushed the boss to around 66%, which looked amazing right up until the timer hit 1 minute. Nothing reset. The upside-down mountain remained packed with undead, gravity kept hauling everyone skyward, and the icebolts continued forcing tank swaps. Velnir just started pulsing damage through the entire raid every second. The first pulse hurt.

The next hit harder because the first had left a stacking amplifier behind, and every pulse added another stack before the following one landed. Meno used Crownmind to strip the debuff, but even at roughly a 2. 5-second cooldown, he could not keep pace with something stacking every second. Conqueror stretched his life far beyond everyone else by cutting the incoming damage after his other modifiers, but eventually the pulses outscaled that too.

Nobody else had a comparable rapid cleanse, so the moment one player died, mountain coverage started falling apart. The undead mages linked up, the laser started firing, and everyone else died even faster. Velnir was a pure Healer check dropped into a party that had deliberately brought no Healer. Their practical kill timer was around 1 minute 7 seconds. Velnir needed to reach 10% and die before the pulses became impossible to survive.

They wiped seven more times, and their best attempt only pushed the boss to 61% HP. Not even close. Meno had no proof, but he was 99% sure Solar had tuned the encounter specifically to annoy Swing Master. A final raid boss sounded like the perfect place for a long fight where Chain could grow completely disgusting. Instead, Velnir was a short burst check demanding massive front-loaded damage, nonstop healing, rapid dispels, tank swaps, and enough ranged pressure to delete an entire mountain at the same time.

Very suspicious. The most annoying part was that Velnir itself barely did anything complicated outside the forced tank swaps. It mostly stood there casting, giving Meno nearly perfect Attack Speed uptime. That should have been paradise, except Mush still had an effective 1. 5-minute cooldown with his current setup. The fight was over before he could use it a second time, making most of his Cooldown Reduction investment nearly worthless. At least their gear was surviving the wipes.

Almost everything important was Indestructible or Unbreakable, because the death count would have destroyed normal equipment by now. The Empowered durability bonuses had already shut off once those items hit zero durability, but nothing had actually shattered. They needed more damage. A lot more.

LEVEL YOUR HEALER BRO this might be actually impossible Swing Master is now officially FFF-tier select Rush Master cmon guys just do more damage Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. kill the boss cowards"What if you Divine Teardrop Quadrillionator again?" Karmabeast asked.

"If it hits Legendary VII, that might be enough."

"And if the corruption bricks it?" Meno asked.

"That's not free. One bad roll and I'm standing here with no weapon. Too risky, and I'm definitely not feeling lucky right now. This fight is messing with us."

"No conspiracy required," Kestrel said.

"A final boss having a healer check is completely normal."

"The healer check is fine," BrineSaint said.

"The low HP is the suspicious part. This fight heavily favors front-loaded damage over ramp. Ideally, you stack as many DPS as possible, but every extra DPS also adds another player who needs healing. PBG only lasts this long because Conqueror cuts his incoming damage."

"I can't really add more boss damage either," Arayu said.

"If I start throwing instants at Velnir, I'll burn through my Mana and we lose the mountain."

"I'm already pumping as hard as I can," Karmabeast said.

"If I stop babysitting Brine, he floats away like a balloon."

"Brine, how do you have zero mobility or aerial skills?" Meno asked.

"I never needed them for dungeon content, so I took more damage instead," BrineSaint said.

"The Paladin choices weren't great, but yes, it was a mistake. I'm hoping to fix that with the EX upgrade at Level 100." rare BrineFail PBG complaining about damage pick paladins can get horse that flies farming dungeon trash for weeks regret just boost him to 100 in dungeon Meno tried to think of anything they had not already used, but the only real tool left was his Dual Class. Maybe, just maybe, Right of Conquest could turn it into something broken enough to close the damage gap.

There was no guarantee, though, and if he made the plan too obvious, Solar could catch on and ruin it before he even got to use it.

"Do you guys think if I pick Swing Master as my Dual Class, I'll get the skills I had at Level 60 or random ones?" Meno asked.

"How should we know?" Kestrel said.

"It doesn't really matter," BrineSaint said.

"If you don't get those skills, you can just select them again." That was true, but Meno was more worried about the active skill he wanted to transfer to Tyrant with Right of Conquest. There was no guarantee it would even be available. Rush Master or Martial Master might have something just as broken, but he did not have time to dig through two entire classes looking for it now. If this failed, they probably were not killing Velnir today anyway.

Meno could use the Mortal Pantheon later and fix whatever bad Dual Class decision he made. He wanted that Divine Key. Giving up was unacceptable. Before clicking anything, though, Meno needed to cause some chaos. Solar was watching. No doubt about it. At this point, Meno considered himself pretty damn good at understanding how the AI thought. Solar reacted heavily to what a player had equipped and what they were doing right now, but it seemed much worse at predicting every combination that player might build later.

That was probably intentional. If Solar locked down every potentially broken interaction before anyone could find it, half the fun of Veyrath would disappear. Players liked finding things that were a little broken. Just not broken enough to turn the whole game into a clown show. Meno pulled [Mythic II | Right of Conquest] from his inventory and opened a trade with Karmabeast.

"What are you doing?" Karmabeast asked.

"I don't want it anymore. Take it, then please log out for 10 minutes. I want to discuss something with Arayu that I don't want you to hear."

"What?!" Karmabeast and Arayu said at the same time.

"Karma, it's good. Just do it, please."

"Do we have time for this nonsense?" Kestrel asked.

"Necessary nonsense," Meno said. Karmabeast looked conflicted for a moment, but eventually nodded, accepted the gloves, and logged out of Veyrath, leaving four of them in the crater. Arayu immediately turned toward Meno.

"What do you want to say? Don't make it weird."

"Can you lend me your new ring for a sec? I'll give it back."

"That's it? Sure." Naturally, Arayu could not resist making it theatrical. She dropped to one knee and presented Orzathuun's Iterance like she was asking Meno to marry her, giggling while she held it up. Meno took the ring, still unable to understand why she and Karmabeast had so much trouble getting along when they were practically the same person. He removed Marcel's Forgery and equipped Arayu's ring instead.

The whole charade might accomplish absolutely nothing, but Meno was trying to put his character into a very specific state where Action Speed could no longer meaningfully improve his attack timing. Maybe that would make Solar more willing to give his new class a skill or modification that worked around the missing Action Speed. Meno had no proof any of this made sense. He was simply min-maxing his chances with every stupid idea he could think of. The skill he wanted needed to look bad on Titan.

Ideally, Solar would see a Swing Master with crippled Action Speed and allow something that compensated for it. Meno could then modify that skill through the EX upgrade and eventually transfer it onto Tyrant with Right of Conquest, where the same effect could become completely broken. Except Right of Conquest was no longer part of his character state. Karmabeast had the gloves and was not even logged in, so as far as Solar could see, there was no interaction to worry about.

Meno was basically laundering his character state, trying to create the conditions where Solar would allow something harmless now that only became disgusting later. It was a long shot, but worth trying. He opened the Dual Class selector and chose Swing Master. The Evolution options appeared next, but there was not much to consider. Meno had already seen Imperial, everything below it was lower grade, and Titan was still available because he already had the Titan subclass.

Meno selected Titan, and when no skill-selection UI appeared, his hopes immediately went up. Maybe he was on the right track. The class details loaded. [Swing Master Titan EX] Chain: Each stack of Chain increases damage by 20% additive. Landing an Attack with a Valid Weapon grants 10 Chain. Valid Weapon Types: One-Handed Sword, One-Handed Axe, Two-Handed Sword, Two-Handed Axe. For Destroyers: Massive. While you have a Two-Handed Weapon equipped, gain Multi-Strike 1.

While wielding a Shield, you can Block Spell Projectiles. While wielding a single One-Handed Weapon without a Shield, gain +200% Weapon Size. While Dual-Wielding, gain +100% Movement Speed. While wielding any Massive Weapon, including Linked Massive Weapons, hits deal 100% Splash Damage instead. Dual-Wielding and Two-Handed bonuses do not apply. Chain breaks if: You miss a Weapon Attack. You fail to land a Weapon Attack within 10 seconds of your previous. You swap Weapons.

Also applies the standard -50% Action Speed for 1 second. WAIT THAT CLASS IS ACTUALLY GOOD 20% PER CHAIN BUT ONLY 10 CHAIN PER HIT TEN SECOND UPKEEP??? DUAL WIELD ALLOWED ON TITAN SECOND SWING MASTER LMAO Now that was actually really good. Titan started much slower at 0 Chain instead of Tyrant's 1, 000 and could not swap weapons freely, but it had a 10-second upkeep window, could Dual-Wield, and every Chain stack was twice as strong. Each hit only granted 10 Chain compared to Tyrant's 100, though.

Meno did not want to go full math mode right now, but in a perfect setup with massive Attack Speed investment, Titan looked like it could potentially outscale Tyrant over a long fight. That was probably the catch, since it had no Divine skills like Mush to give it immediate burst. The skills turned out to be exactly what Meno remembered from around Level 60, except rebuilt for Titan. Most kept the same effects with bigger numbers. Meno only cared about one right now. The one he needed for Tyrant.

[Hundredfold Cleave EX] [Unbound Chain EX] [Panic Pump EX] [False Wings EX] [Break Surplus EX] [Chain Madness EX] [Self-Control EX] [Chain Cannon EX] [Splitwing EX] Meno selected Chain Madness and started feeding Solar the design direction he wanted, trying to make the skill as awful as possible for Titan while secretly making it perfect for Tyrant. That was the only way this had a chance of getting through.

Solar should care most about whether the skill was balanced on the class that actually owned it, not every possible interaction with other Evolutions through a one-of-a-kind Mythic II glove. There was only one Right of Conquest in existence, and Meno did not even have it anymore. Karmabeast was logged out with the gloves. As far as Meno's current character state was concerned, there was no way for Chain Madness to reach Tyrant at all.

Checking every possible future combination anyway would be ridiculous, even for Solar. Meno knew Chain Madness well enough to push every weakness as hard as he could. First, he asked for the skill to only activate at 1, 000 Chain or higher. Then he made it last until canceled or until Chain broke, with every landed attack dealing 6% Maximum HP back to the user. That alone made the skill look nearly unusable.

Normal Lifesteal capped at 5% Maximum HP per hit, so even if every attack reached the cap, Chain Madness still burned 1% Maximum HP every swing. One hundred attacks and the user killed themselves. Without enough Lifesteal to reach the cap, death came much faster. Meno already had his Maximum Lifesteal pushed to 10%. He still did not think that was enough to buy the effect he wanted, so he added another restriction: Cooldowns could not Recover while Chain Madness was active.

That wiped out a whole pile of potential cooldown abuse at once and should make Solar much more generous with everything else. Finally, Meno asked for the Stop Prompt nonsense to disappear. Being forced to stop attacking had always been the worst part of Chain Madness. Every pause was free DPS thrown away. He told Solar to leave everything else alone and submitted the modification. The requests went through, and the rebuilt skill appeared exactly how Meno wanted it.

Anyone who did not understand Veyrath deeply would probably call it unusable trash, especially on a class built around stacking Attack Speed. Either bring absurd healer support or kill yourself with your own skill in seconds. Meno knew better. Chain Madness was horrible for Titan. Titan started at 0 Chain, so it had to ramp all the way to 1, 000 before the skill even became available.

Its lower early damage also meant stacking much more Lifesteal just to reach the normal 5% healing cap per hit, never mind pushing higher. Tyrant started at 1, 000 Chain by default. And Massive weapons hit hard enough per swing to make reaching the Lifesteal cap much easier. That changed everything. [Chain Madness Titan EX] Active. Available at 1, 000 Chain. Assign one Weapon to your Madness Slot. Activate to instantly equip your Madness Slot Weapon.

While active, you can Attack with your Madness Slot Weapon every 0. 1 seconds, unaffected by Attack Speed modifiers or limits. Each damaging Weapon Attack causes you to lose 6% of your Maximum HP, and your Cooldowns do not Recover. Chain Madness ends when canceled, when your Chain breaks, or when combat ends, re-equipping your previous Weapon Setup. Equipping the Madness Slot weapon or restoring your previous Weapon Setup through Chain Madness does not count as Weapon Swapping for Chain purposes.

Chat needed a moment. Then it exploded. 0. 1 SECONDS???? TEN ATTACKS PER SECOND FIXED ATTACK SPEED CAP BYPASS 6% HP PER HIT HE DIES IN TWO SECONDS THIS SKILL IS TERRIBLE WAIT WHY IS PBG HAPPY HE DID SOMETHING AGAIN"We are so back." Meno grinned.

"Actually, we are unbelievably back."

"How did you do that?" Kestrel asked.

"Do what? Nothing happened, right?" Kestrel understood immediately and changed direction halfway through his next sentence.

"Ah, yeah... I just meant I thought Swing Master couldn't select itself as a Dual-Class. That's all."

"That's a bit dumbo," Arayu said.

"Doubling up instead of picking the fun, fun."

"I'm honestly disappointed this is possible," BrineSaint said.

"Most warrior Conquerors will probably select Swing Master as their Dual-Class. We need more class variety at the top, not less."

"Let them," Meno said.

"If they don't understand which direction the juice flows, they will suffer."

"Juice flow?" Arayu asked.

"Please translate."

"Impossible," Kestrel said. Karmabeast finally logged back in, sounding just as confused as when he had left. The first thing he did was trade Right of Conquest back to Meno. Meno returned Orzathuun's Iterance to Arayu, then equipped the Mythic gloves. His left ring slot disappeared again, but that was fine. The new mail chest replaced the Threat lost from Marcel's Forgery, and it wasn't necessary anyway. With Meno's damage, nobody in this group was realistically stealing aggro from him.

He ignored the rest of Swing Master Titan and used Right of Conquest to take the one skill he actually cared about: Chain Madness. The glove accepted it and transferred the active into his Main Class exactly as planned.

"This was some Grade-S misdirection alchemy conspiracy smokes-and-mirrors nonsense," Karmabeast said.

"What do you mean?" Kestrel asked.

"Nothing happened."

"Come clean, Karma," Arayu said.

"Did you stare at my pic?"

"I have many all over, so I never have to stare." Karmabeast winked. Meno turned back toward the crater.

"Okay, let's go. We are vacation-proof. Everything is organic, grass-fed, 100% balanced, and completely ethical." Velnir still waited beneath the upside-down mountain.

"The new strategy is simple," Meno said.

"Hit the boss."