Flipped Fate
I managed to catch up to the monster that had been fleeing for dear life, but the second I smashed its head in, it dropped dead. What the hell? I'd been carefully controlling my strength so I wouldn't kill it.
I wanted to ask about the clone technique, but it was way too fragile!
Fortunately the head turned into a green material item, so I could stash it in my inventory.
I'll hand it over to Cheon Nan-cho later and have her extract the technique or something.
A clone that stays perfectly fine even after its main body takes a hit from my slaughter energy? That's wild!
Because I went full extreme-offense build, even my strongest attacks only pop the clones while the main body stays completely unharmed? Of course it'd be a good technique! That was why I'd chased it down in the first place.
But isn't it a slaughter-energy-based skill, so I can't use it?
I don't have to use it—I can just make the Humanity Clones do it!
"Yeah. Why else would I bother grabbing the head? If you guys get spiritual-energy-based skills, I can use them too. Just like how I borrow Yu I-seong's ultimate techniques."
As if asking Did you call?, the scanner quietly slipped out of my heart. I pressed it firmly back inside with my fingers.
"More than anything, if you use that, you might be able to create actual physical bodies instead of just moving mine from the Mental World, right?"
Personally, if a clone skill appeared, I wanted to use it to boost efficiency.
After all, the Humanity Clones are just other versions of me!
Since our souls are the same, they carry the Status Window as-is, so growth would be fast too. If each Humanity Clone just took one production job at the base, I could become an all-rounder all by myself!
Aren't you burning the happy-circuit a little too hard there, main body?
Right, and even if you summon us with clone techniques or reception arts, if we can't break our limits, we're still stuck as level 10 Mortals?
"Take a page from Yu I-seong and transcend already! If you can't transcend, at least get a job so you can raise your level cap!"
Sub-jobs probably don't raise the level cap.
And that's just I-seong being special.
She's a mutant!
Anyway, it's something Cheon Nan-cho or Elder Togo will have to confirm later, so I'll just jot it down in the memo pad and farm some more for now!
The best thing is still finding secret rooms, accepting missions, farming treasure chests, or hunting field bosses and elite mobs for drop items.
I don't even know what materials I need to make a Nascent Soul yet!
I'll just roam the map thinking, If I get it, the info window will show up. Even with the event probability jacked up by a full 500%, the events that are supposed to appear do, and the ones that aren't just refuse to show no matter what.
You receive the mountain's spiritual energy and permanently increase your HP!
I'd only seen the permanent HP increase event once, and I'd never even caught a glimpse of the accuracy increase event.
Still, HP is better than accuracy anyway—I'm already taking an HP penalty from the Dharma Treasure! I comforted myself with that thought and somehow kept the happy-circuit burning.
◈ While possessed, six prefixes are permanently applied.
◈ While possessed, select one prefix to strengthen its effect.
◈ Applied prefixes: of Terror, Mysterious, Sharp, Gigantic, Immovable, Communal
—The total embodiment of six calamities forcibly united by the power of the cosmos. Unless the whim of the universe is added, the calamities will always rain down without distinguishing between enemy and owner.—
"Wonder if this thing can evolve one more time."
Huh? Wouldn't Seven Great Calamities sound cooler?
During the previous Four Fiends Star eok-kka event, it had fused with the Dharma Treasure that popped out, adding the "Communal" prefix and a single-prefix strengthening effect. Even so, it had only evolved from pure garbage Dharma Treasure to slightly less garbage Dharma Treasure.
After all, the Communal prefix is the annoying one monsters wear so they can share life force with others of the same prefix—it barely does anything for a player.
The effect just slows equipment durability consumption in exchange for making HP drain faster.
"Wait, huh? Eh?!"
My radar—or whatever you call it—stayed quiet. My hair didn't so much as twitch, and my senses sent no danger warning at all. What? Was there actually an Amazing Misfortune event that helped me instead of being pure eok-kka?
"Ow, hot!"
The sparkling coin I was carrying absorbed spiritual energy and flared with light. I yelped from the sudden sting, and at the same time—
The sparkling coin flips over!
The coin vanished in a flash of light, and system messages exploded one after another.
Amazing Misfortune is flipped into Luck!
Somewhere in the current region, the door to a special secret realm begins to open.
"A hidden dungeon! No—wait, before that, the coin event? Why did this even trigger?!"
This was the "sparkling coin" event meant to protect newbies without a job—or with only a basic job—from getting slaughtered by eok-kka events. Holding it for a day blocked Amazing Misfortune exactly once.
Don't tell me the system doesn't count "Cultivator" as a real job and just treated me as basic?
"Holy crap, my luck is insane today. Is this one of those days? Check title."
Predetermined fate can neither be avoided nor changed, nor even altered—yet those who forcibly flip such fates have always existed.
All negative effects and penalties are reduced by 50%.
What the hell? Why is an overpowered Dharma Treasure effect that only shows up in Easy Mode for complete beginners attached to a title?
Even if the effect is only half of the broken Easy Mode Dharma Treasure, titles activate just by owning them—no equipping required.
Unfortunately it only starts working from the moment I acquired it, so the event penalties, negative effects, and debuffs already on me won't shrink. But every bad effect I pick up from now on will be cut in half.
"The hidden dungeon has to be broken too, right?!"
Without a second of hesitation I sprinted toward the opened secret realm door marked on the minimap. A timer was ticking down on it!
Miss the time limit and you can't get in!
Current map has been set as the respawn point!
Save point has been updated.
Area penalty has been applied!
"Huh?"
Every single hair on my head stood on end.
System messages about an updated save point and a respawn setting popping up the moment I entered were basically a declaration that the place intended to kill the player.
The secret realm I'd walked into thinking it was pure luck might actually be an eok-kka-filled trap!
What? It's a hidden dungeon—no, a secret realm—so it shouldn't be any eok-kka event I know! And why the hell did a newbie-protection coin event spit out this kind of eok-kka in the first place?!
"Mooooo..."
"A dairy cow...?"
What? The minimap showed it as a gray dot, so was it an NPC? Should I kill it? But what if killing it triggers another eok-kka event?
"Come out, barcode scanner!"
I grabbed the golden scanner that peeked out of my heart and pressed it with a soft beep. A rainbow beam shot toward the dairy cow, which had been chewing on bones. Only then did it look at me.
"Mooooo...?"
There was a hole in the cow's body. Okay, it's a monster I can kill, I thought with relief—right before the dairy cow rose onto two legs.
Muscles ballooned. In an instant it became a hulking, bipedal muscle-cow. It pulled a massive two-handed axe from thin air, gripped it with both hands, and flames erupted around the blade. I met the blast with slaughter energy.
"Yep, definitely a monster!"
Then I can just kill it!
My hair still rippled uneasily. I drew out the waterwheel, pulled slaughter energy through it, and looked up at the giant muscular dairy cow.
"Auto-Battle!"
Auto-Battle is unavailable during boss battles!
Huh? No—what kind of bullshit is it that the monster waiting right in front of me the second I walked in is a boss—?!
"MOOOOOOO!!!!"
"Burrow!"
The flame-wreathed axe swung with a terrifying sonic boom. I dodged late—it didn't even touch me, yet the crushing force still pulverized my right arm. I forced the pain down and spun the waterwheel above my head.
Slaughter energy poured from the fourfold Seas of Slaughter in my Mental World and instantly restored the crushed arm.
At the same time a rain of red chopsticks poured from the halo of chopsticks deployed behind my back—only for every single one to be swallowed by the flames flickering across the cow's body and reduced to nothing.
Only then did the utterly generic name float up—looking for all the world like a plain elite mob—and I was forced to assume the worst.
What if the bastard who made this hidden secret realm got lazy coding monsters and just slapped a [Boss Judgment] buff on every single one of them?
As if confirming my ominous theory—
"Moo...?"
"Moo...!"
Two more gray-dot dairy cows popped out on one side of the minimap.
"Son of a bitch."
I'm fucked.