Five Thousand Lines of Tetris

Compared to the other skills I'd cooked up myself, the Bomb skill was basically trash.

Stack it up against Chopsticks — a ranged basic attack that doubled as a support tool once mastered — or Spoon, the all-purpose ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weapon-buff skill, and the difference was night and day.

Used in a rush, it delivered the pathetic power and range of a straw hut. Even when Auto-Battle ran it with mechanical precision, the damage only toppled about as much as the slaughter energy you'd stuffed into it — like a line of dominoes.

The important part was this: if you had the time to stack the bombs like Tetris and the colossal reserves of slaughter energy to keep piling them on, the power just kept climbing without end.

It was a Charge skill — the kind you had to wind up before you could fire.

And that was exactly where the problem started, courtesy of Xianxia Mode.

As long as you poured in slaughter energy and could hold the stack without letting it collapse, the Bomb skill charged with no upper limit whatsoever. The mental image was Tetris, so if you stacked carefully you could build dozens of lines without breaking a sweat — and if you just kept dumping time into it, you could raise a Tetris mountain past the thousand-line mark.

Back in Core Formation, even months of work only got me a few hundred lines. At Golden Core I barely scraped together a thousand.

But Yu Hee — having achieved Transcendence, laid her foundation, and stepped into the Nascent Soul realm — had stacked a near-five-thousand-line Tetris wall out of sheer obsessive determination to crush the next Eok-kka event with raw force. Eyes burning, breath held, she waited.

It took forever. It burned slaughter energy like a furnace. It left her completely defenseless the entire time she was stacking. She ignored every single one of those drawbacks, because the power and the range alone were world-shaking.

Even back in Core Formation, the Bomb skill had been strong enough to wipe an entire same-level map. Now, having reached Nascent Soul and sensing an Eok-kka event on the wind, she had diligently stacked 4,987 lines — nearly five thousand — and the instant a monster that reeked of Eok-kka appeared, she detonated the whole thing.

A blood-red light, like the end of the world itself, drowned the entire map. A soundless explosion followed.

Everything simply vanished. The blast was so absolute it felt eerily quiet — and the pressure of a skill I'd fired with my own hands started crushing my whole body to pieces. I freaked out and slammed a consumable for a shield. A barrier, rather.

You weren't supposed to take damage from your own skills. The fact that the aftershock alone was dealing recoil damage said everything about how far this had gone.

The target was a cultivator of a higher realm than me, sure — but against a bomb of this magnitude, the thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough was only natural. Even so, Yu Hee didn't let her guard down.

Because there was no way an Eok-kka event ended this easily.

This was the first Eok-kka event to trigger since she'd reached Nascent Soul. It could not possibly be over this clean. She hadn't even gotten any experience yet!

That was her unshakable faith in trash games.

And as if answering that faith—

"…Kh—"

A wet cough of blood. From the heart of the explosion, a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator dragged himself into view — lower body gone, nothing left but a torso and a single arm. A Nascent Soul in the shape of a small child floated above his brow, and in its hand a True-Name Dharma Treasure of unrecognizable origin crumbled to dust, proof of how desperately he had clawed for survival against an explosion that had caught him completely open.

"Ah. Boss correction kept him alive."

That was the full extent of Yu Hee's appraisal.

And only then did Wonpa lock onto her position. Rage and irritation boiled up so hard he thought he might lose his mind. Spiritual energy in every direction had suddenly turned into crimson killing intent and erupted with unprecedented force all at once — he had walked straight into a trap!

It wasn't killing intent, of course. It was slaughter energy disguised as spiritual power. Not that the average cultivator could tell the difference.

Either way, even after calling on his True-Name Dharma Treasure and the Laws themselves, more than half his body had been blown away and the treasure itself was disintegrating. The power had been that monstrous.

Only then did Wonpa push aside a brief flicker of regret — I should have come with Monk Mudu — spread his senses in place of eyes that could barely see, confirmed the Demon Immortal's location, and forced his mouth open.

"Look upon a small lake and draw the rain. Gaze upon the tiny circles blooming within the ripples. The waves that rise between circle and circle spread across the entire lake—!"

He burned his essence blood.

In this state, facing the Demon Immortal was already a lost cause. Get eaten, and he'd only feed her power — everything he'd struggled to build in Gi-gye would become her playground.

But Monk Mudu would be here soon. Loaded down with every Dharma tool he'd stockpiled over the years.

The calculation finished in an instant. Wonpa felt it in his bones: the end of what little lifespan he had left was right here, right now. Without hesitation, he set the remainder of his life on the scales.

Across the map left barren by Yu Hee's Bomb skill, waves began to rise.

Centered on Wonpa's crumbling upper body, circular waves spread outward, growing larger and larger, until in moments a tsunami of spiritual energy engulfed the entire map.

This was the true might of Concentric Circles — Wonpa's personal ultimate art, a technique powerful enough for him alone to sweep aside the various sects that had stood in the way of Gi-gye's prosperity.

With the Laws and the last of his lifespan poured into it, the technique's grandeur matched his prime even with half his body gone to a sneak attack.

The problem was the opponent. Really, truly, catastrophically the wrong opponent.

No — the moment Wonpa's final technique took the image of a tsunami, of waves, the matchup was already lost.

The instant she saw the tsunami, Yu Hee widened the Erosion skill she kept running as a passive and spun the wheel, opening the door to her Mental World.

The Great Sea of Slaughter poured out into a world already eroded and assimilated, flooding everything like a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rising tide.

No matter how fiercely the waves crashed—

the ocean did not so much as flinch.

Even if a tsunami swallowed the world and swept all things away—

the ocean simply was.

Wonpa's tsunami, laced with Law and capable of shredding any spiritual barrier or defense, was swallowed whole by the Great Sea of Slaughter.

"Map-wide true-damage AoE patterns are completely insane."

And he wasn't even an event raid boss — just some mid-tier boss mob.

[Isn't the main body who just chewed through it with a bug the more insane one?]

"But map-wide AoEs are supposed to be skipped with effect bugs. That's the normal clear strat."

Classic trash-game logic: when a boss fires a full-map AoE, the effects lag the client, and if you throw out something with a similar color or shape, the layers overlap and you go invincible. Of course, what had actually happened wasn't an effect-bug lag — that was the Double Speed Mod doing its job — and she hadn't gone invincible so much as the Great Sea of Slaughter had hard-countered the whole thing on elemental matchup. But that was how Yu Hee understood it, so whatever.

"Alright — how much exp am I about to get!"

An Eok-kka event boss, and he'd felt like mid-stage Nascent Soul, a full realm above her. At least level 600, right? Hell yeah. The exp was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠going to be beautiful.

"Beep!"

"Huh?"

A barcode scanner popped uninvited out of her heart and spat out aurora light. She looked over in surprise — and watched the dying boss regenerate, body and soul, on a scale that bordered on complete physical rebirth.

"What the hell kind of troll move is this?!"

[Trolling?]

In the Mental World, Yu I-seong tilted her head with shameless innocence, twirling a golden spear and smiling. Yu Hee was about to snap at her when—

"…I lose, Demon Immortal."

Huh?

"In the name of my Knight!"

[Why are you dragging me into this?]

"For the oath of my Knight!!!"

[Ran-ah? Can you not hear me!]

"Let there be glory before ussssss!!!"

Gamran — Yu Gisa's friendly NPC, now eighteen years old and touching late Qi Condensation at level 99 — had equipped Yu Gisa and torn through nearly fifty levels in three days of nonstop slaughter. Somewhere in the middle of it, her head had completely snapped.

The debts of gratitude and grudge piled up while rescuing a master who was like a parent to her, mixed with the jealousy and greed of cultivators who couldn't stand that some Qi Condensation nobody had lucked into an Earthly Treasure and dared talk back to her seniors. In no time she became the target of countless cultivators' attacks.

When it finally reached the point where she couldn't even protect her master, Yu Gisa — terrified that Ran's mental state would shatter for good — had simply yeeted the friendly NPC who was Gamran's master straight back to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠base.

And with that weakness, that hesitation, that master completely removed from the board, Gamran went berserk.

Trying to stop her was pointless. She wasn't looking after her own body at all; if he forced her to halt mid-rampage she looked ready to collapse, so he'd left her alone. The kid had gone more than a little off the deep end.

Clutching her Dharma tool — a broom held like a sword — eyes rolled back in her head, Gamran charged the cultivators surrounding her with a raw war cry. Yu Gisa let out a long, deep sigh.

Raising a single friendly NPC was this hard, huh.