Cosmic Luck

Abyss Runs came in all kinds of varieties, too.

That was because this was a garbage game where, even though builds diverged by player, the structure made identical characters impossible in the first place—so copying someone else's run was basically out of the question. Guides would say things like, "I made this build for Abyss Runs, but to make this build you have to keep firing the trigger until the special event that spawns under these conditions finally pops!"—the kind of brain-dead approach that defined the whole thing.

So while Abyss Run types were subdivided into a disgusting number of categories matching the sheer variety of builds, they broadly fell into just three kinds: Corpse Runs for item farming, Bed Runs for experience farming, and Copy Runs for speedrunning.

Corpse Runs, where you piled object corpses high in the Abyss and prayed for jackpot drops. Bed Runs, where you set up a kill zone, ran Auto-Battle, and woke up to find your gear wrecked from durability loss but a mountain of experience waiting. And last, the Copy Run—the Abyss Run I'd done before—where you entered the Abyss through a low-level event and exploited the Capybara event and bugs for explosive leveling.

There was a reason it counted as endgame content, even by vanilla standards. The options that appeared were random based on prefixes, different depending on the equipped gear, further varied by equipment grade, and the numerical values themselves were random too. It drove people so insane that some just built custom setups around unique items—but even those people still had to run the Abyss.

This was exactly why. There was a reason mods like the Random Option Increase Mod existed! Even the base in-game gear, from Unique grade and up, already had options that fluctuated by about 50% to 100%. Of course, players went further and used mods to make them swing from 10% all the way up to a ridiculous 300%.

That was why the Humanity Clones who retained memories of their past lives had to check every single drop one by one. Slap a Tier-2 prefix on some garbage item, roll top-tier options at max values, and the actual performance would be absolutely broken.

"...Come to think of it, has this mod been enhanced too?"

With the Reality Patch and Slaughter Karma collab buffing the mods, maybe this one got enhanced as well? What if the max had climbed past 300%?

"Looks like it did get enhanced, Main Body!"

"Look at this!"

Looking at the options on these speed shoes that only rolled two flee-related lines, even at the old max of 300% the ceiling would've been 1200%—but here it was showing a weird 1319%. Yeah, this mod had definitely been enhanced. Judging by how the Humanity Clones were making a fuss showing it off, this one had probably hit absolute max rolls—but why the hell did it have to be flee shoes of all things?

"You have to collect Abyss Crystals and synthesize them just to reroll Epic-grade options, then synthesize those again to reroll Legendary-grade options… how much grinding is that going to take?"

"Looking at how Auto-Battle's going, won't we gather them pretty quick, Main Body?"

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"Count yourself lucky! Abyss Crystals stack infinitely in the inventory thanks to the item-stacking mod!"

"If you don't stack them, an Abyss-exclusive debuff event triggers, you know."

True to endgame content, Abyss Runs had plenty to worry about—but if you were strong enough to come in and farm infinitely, the rewards were just as plentiful.

"The problem is that this is a Reality-Patched xianxia mod."

Growth levels were infinite. Given the Reality Patch's nature of exponentially reducing monster numbers the higher your level climbed, leveling up from here on was clearly going to be a garden of countless headaches. No matter how many monsters and even NPCs I slaughtered to pile up Slaughter Karma, if the targets were low-level, the quantity and quality of Slaughter Karma needed for a single level-up would never be enough. That much was obvious.

I turned my gaze to the screen—or rather, the view of the outside world beyond the tower in my Mental World—and took a quick look.

My body, moving under Auto-Battle, lifted a stone slab and smashed it down on a monster's head. One arm, severed by a charging monster's strike, became a bomb and exploded, blasting the monsters away. With both arms already regenerated, the body tore off the horn of a monster that had charged through the explosion, spat out the chunk of monster flesh it'd been chewing—and behind it, a monster with its neck flesh ripped away, spine visible, staggered while clutching its throat. Watching the scene, Yu Hee shook her head.

Auto-Battle had completely stopped using active skills and was just crushing everything with raw base stats. Using the only ranged skill—Chopsticks—in an AoE would just get reflected, nullified, or blocked by shields from the swarm of elite monsters, so it was simply tearing them apart with body stats enhanced by the Heavenly Slaughter Art transformation skill alone. Auto-Battle seemed to think that was the efficient approach, but trying to copy it myself was something I couldn't even begin to attempt.

Yeah, zero reference value!

For the record, when I tried to help Auto-Battle by possessing the Dharma Wheel and manually casting skills, my body treated it as interference and blasted the Dharma Wheel far away—using Slaughter Karma to do it, no less. At first I thought it was a mistake and tried again, only for it to smack the Dharma Wheel clean off and stomp right over it. I was so hurt my hands and feet were shaking and I almost cried.

"Well, Main Body can't even cry, though."

"You wanna get hit for real?"

"If Main Body hits me, isn't that just self-harm?"

"Before that—if Main Body, who's a cultivator, hits us, we die! Ever since Main Body reached Nascent Soul, even talking like this has been hard!"

"If you're jealous, transcend like Seonga did."

"Easy for you to say. Getting a job or making even a tiny change to the Status Window is this hard."

In reality, only four Humanity Clones had obtained jobs so far, and two had raised their Mental stats. Despite having past-life memories, running through every job motion they could remember, trying every method, and experimenting endlessly to see if the Reality Patch had changed anything—this was all the progress they'd managed.

For reference, the jobs the Humanity Clones had obtained were Alchemist, Gravekeeper, Chef, and Songstress respectively.

Alchemist was like a xianxia-mod sub-job specialized in consuming material items to craft pills and elixirs that permanently raised stats. Gravekeeper looked for all the world like a spirit-magic class that evolved into a necromancer—but true to the xianxia mod being the biggest mod of all, it was just a job where you collected remains from corpse objects, built graves, and gained ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stats or special abilities. Chef was a sub-job for making long-duration buff consumables, and thanks to the Reality Patch, you could actually taste the food based on cooking skill—making it feel like the most decent job of the lot.

Songstress was just the xianxia mod's bard-type job. Aside from being able to sing well, every other effect had been gutted—a total garbage job! Originally it was a solid class that played random BGM, raised morale, and applied AoE buffs or debuffs—but the Reality Patch had rendered the morale-raising effect completely useless. Since the skills were structured around raising morale for buffs and lowering it for debuffs, of course the whole thing became brain-dead!

"But your voice did get better!"

"How was I supposed to know I'd achieve vocal enlightenment just from testing how high the volume could go…"

Even the depressed Humanity Clone's teary voice came out as such a beautiful tone that I couldn't believe it was my own. The job effect was bigger than expected, I thought.

Yu Hee glanced once more at her body running the Abyss under Auto-Battle, then started skill training in the Mental World. After all, no matter how hard Auto-Battle carried the Abyss Runs, the penalty of not gaining combat skill proficiency was still in full effect!

I really shouldn't have picked this penalty during that event. But +100 to all stats for early boosting, and +1 max Dharma Treasure slots—useful from early game all the way to late—had been far too tempting. I'd been an idiot for thinking there was no skill window. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Really.

It was a debuff from Cosmic Misfortune, so removing it required equivalent luck—but no fixed event guaranteed Cosmic Luck, so there was nothing I could do. All I could do was desperately pray for a chance to remove it through pure luck!

"As always, the prayer meta is not good, Main Body."

"Main Body burning through hope circuits for nothing again. In the Abyss, regular events barely even trigger unless it's an Abyss event."

"Hoping for Cosmic Luck from an Abyss event? That's not just shameless—that's pure greed, Main Body."

Under the Humanity Clones' merciless, ruthless fact-checking violence, Yu Hee stopped thinking and just trained skills while watching the action movie unfold.

My body, which had been tirelessly rampaging with every method imaginable in high spirits, suddenly stopped—and while Yu Hee was still reeling from being forcibly dragged out of the Mental World like someone had grabbed her by the hair, white steam rose in wisps from her overheated entire body. Before Yu Hee could even scream internally, every hair on her head stood on end.

Wait. Hold on. For real?

The Abyss raid boss monster that only appeared in multiplayer mode with low probability in the Abyss—the Abyss Knight. A raid boss that only had a chance to spawn if another ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠player died in the Abyss and left behind a corpse object.