Event Probability: 400%

There were plenty of ways to get stronger right now besides leveling up. I'd just been putting them off because they were a hassle — once I hit max level, I'd have to scrap or replace all of them anyway.

The easiest was putting together a clean skill set. Two of my Humanity Clones were already hard at work training spiritual energy techniques, and I had grand designs of snatching whatever skills they cooked up for myself.

Next was gear. Normally you'd farm equipment after hitting max level, but the eok-kka events in this world were so brutal that the need to kit myself out properly was starting to feel desperate.

Especially since my beloved raid boss set — pieced together from legendary and epic gear I'd carefully collected — had been completely annihilated when the Angel War shredded every last point of durability. And the boss set I'd managed to salvage after that had mostly evaporated fighting the last field boss, leaving me with nothing but the lower-body and footwear pieces.

At least I had Spoon, my weapon-buffing skill. As long as I grabbed gear roughly matching my level, I'd be fine. If I'd had to hunt down a proper weapon on top of everything else, my head really would have exploded.

"Titles stack their passive effects if you hoard enough of them, which is nice… but I have no idea what the criteria even are."

They seemed to have spilled over from Seonhyeop Mode, but the conditions for earning titles were a complete mystery. No requirements displayed, no way to grind them out.

And then there was the last method — the easiest and simplest of all.

"[Event Probability Mode]. Confirm mode."

Crank up the event probability and milk every event for stats and items. If I could just survive the tidal wave of eok-kka without dying, I'd get strong fast.

"No resistance skills, no defense skills… can I even tank this…?"

Close my eyes and push it to 500%, just to try? Right now I was getting roughly twelve events a day. Six times that meant handling over seventy events daily at minimum.

A thousand percent was genuinely impossible. I could wrap myself in Immortal-prefix Dharma Treasures and mythic resistance gear and still guarantee that within a single in-game month, the eok-kka events would detonate my character before I could lift a finger.

Though with the reality patch, even instant-death character events had become resistable. Maybe the main body could hold out?

"Then why don't you lot tank it yourselves?"

Yeah, no. Hard pass.

"Ugh…"

For stats, map objects, and items — if I wanted to get strong fast, cranking this was the right call. The only catch was that I'd be the one who had to steel myself for it.

After agonizing over it, I finally settled on 400% and modified the mode. Slaughter energy drained so violently that a wave of weakness hit me for a moment, but the Sea of Slaughter Energy began circulating, slowly replenishing what I'd spent.

"Whoa. If I'd gone to 500%, I would've had to burn slaughter energy permanently."

The consumption was bigger than expected. Probably because I was directly tampering with event probability. I'd considered just slamming it down to the minimum if things got too rough — but that would've killed me outright.

Mm. It had begun.

The flood of events.

I'd always built defensively in the early game — turtle up, then farm stats through events — so I didn't sit still. I moved immediately.

Every event had conditions or triggers. Combat, location, map, player level, current status — all kinds of conditions and triggers were attached to make events fire.

Drawing on my past-life experience, I moved in ways that satisfied the conditions and triggers least likely to spawn eok-kka or misfortune events.

Not that misfortune events were all bad, or fortune events all good. The only thing that mattered was whether an event was actually beneficial to me — or the kind of eok-kka that made me start swearing out loud. Either way, surviving enough of them meant my stats climbed pretty well.

It was just that hard, is all!

I wiped my mouth with a tattered sleeve, coughing up blood from debuffs, and started walking again.

Sitting still limited which events could spawn, so I had to keep clearing maps on the side anyway. I began roaming the low-level maps, grinding them out one by one.

Of course, the constant event interruptions slowed my clear speed to a crawl. That much was unavoidable.

Events that simply raised or lowered a stat were the merciful ones. The sheer variety of useless garbage these events could throw at you was staggering. And why so many? Because every single mod packed in dozens — sometimes hundreds — of events of its own. Of course it was like this.

That was why this dumpster-fire game's mods split into two categories: ones loaded with events, and quality-of-life mods that weren't. Bug fixes and patch mods worked the same way — they rewrote things by stuffing events into them. Naturally.

Anyway.

"Ah."

The first two were duds, but the last one was a good event. I swapped my gear set on the spot and, without a second of hesitation, opened my mouth toward the swarm of monsters radiating that distinctive elite menace.

"Auto-Battle."

During Auto-Battle, neither I nor any of the other Humanity Clones could interfere with the body at all until the result came in.

The most I could do was pour my consciousness into my True Name Dharma Treasure — the Wheel — and move that around on the side.

The surprising part was that if I kept maneuvering the Wheel like this, the Auto-Battle body would eventually factor the Wheel into its combat calculations.

It was so mechanically precise, so coldly computational, that I'd once started to wonder.

What if Auto-Battle is just some star up in the sky piloting me by proxy? Thinking about it that way, it almost explained how I'd Auto-Battled high-level eok-kka mobs I never should have been able to beat at low level.

But then again — after getting captured by elite monsters a few times and teabagged into the dirt, pure luck started to feel like the more honest answer.

When an elite took me prisoner, it usually tried to use me as a cultivation resource — drain my spiritual energy or just eat me. But Prisoner Mode made it impossible ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for them to actually harm me, and when they tried to absorb ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my energy, most of what I had was slaughter energy anyway. So seven days later, when the prisoner status automatically lifted, they'd get ambushed by me at point-blank range and torn apart, completely defenseless.

Losing an Auto-Battle was rare ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to begin with.

So why the hell was I getting a defeat right now?! Even if they were elites, the level gap and the stat gap were enormous! Pure probability-wise, this was lottery third-prize odds!

Isn't that actually pretty high, main body?

I've never won the lottery, so no, it's low!

The elite that had captured me slung me over its back and tried to leave — only for the other elites to surround it in unison.

And of course, no matter how hard it tried to use me as a human shield, the numbers won out. The elite got dogpiled to death, and just as naturally, I was freed from prisoner status.

I transformed on the spot, ballooning to giant size, and crushed every last dazed elite underfoot — stomping, slamming, pulverizing them all.

God, I was exhausted.

I wanted to head back to base and rest, but I'd have to lower the event probability first. Otherwise the base might turn into a war zone.

But I'd just burned a ton of slaughter energy using the power of law and the transformation skill to clear that elite defense wave. I'd need to wait for it to regenerate, or farm some trash mobs to recover — and if I was going to do that, wasn't it just more efficient to keep map-grinding?

With the leveling goal blocked off, my brain was spinning in every direction. All I really wanted was to mindlessly level up without thinking about anything.

"Wait. Come to think of it… doesn't the cultivator class have no level cap?"

If I couldn't break through the limit, was this just… my max level now?

Obviously nonsense, but obsessing over max level was only natural. Most of this dumpster-fire game's content only unlocked after you hit the cap.

Early game was all about surviving the eok-kka event gauntlet. Mid game focused on growth. And only after max level could you start devouring the real content. That was how this garbage game was designed.

"I'm not even asking for mythic or ancient gear. Just please, give me a legendary. Anything."

Armor, preferably — weapons became single-use disposable junk the moment I activated Spoon. Or crafting materials. At least those I could throw into the crafting window and make something with.

A golden radiance burst out from a monster I'd just killed, and I shouted before I could stop myself.

"Is that a legendary?!"

"Why is it another consumable?!"

I finally get a legendary and it's this?!

Stat-boost consumables were mid at best. There were consumables out there with permanent attack speed increases and all kinds of special options!

I frowned slightly. My hair prickled upright as if sensing something ominous. Eok-kka event probability was up 400% — it was about time one hit. I fully deployed the Wheel and Chopsticks, activated my slaughter energy, and braced myself just as another system message appeared.