Predation's Headhunter

An absurdly broken unique item. Not just epic or legendary gear — even ancient-grade equipment, the absolute final tier of gear grades, got reduced to "whatever" by this thing. And a true endgame piece like that had just dropped at level 200, which was still only mid-game?

Thoughts flooded my skull in a chaotic surge.

This was a trap.

Some event-grade eok-kka was definitely waiting for me.

If this had still been on the other side of a monitor, I would've cursed and shoved it on without a second thought. But I was living through a reality-patched version of this game now. I needed to stay calm. Calm—! As if I could actually think calmly right now!

A unique item that could stack the prefix-stealing effect for two full minutes every time I killed an elite mob — even with a Dharma Treasure restriction attached — and restored a flat amount of durability with every elite kill so I never had to worry about equipment wear. By this shitshow game's vanilla standards, this was the single strongest unique item in existence.

This was the kind of drop you ate even if the event eok-kka struck you dead with a lightning bolt for it.

Trembling, I barely glanced at the epic gear, crammed it into my inventory, and equipped the belt. My old unique belt vanished, the equipment-grade bonus shrank, and my stats dropped — and still my whole body shook with excitement.

Is it coming? Is it coming? No — it was definitely coming. If this shitshow of a game ever just casually tossed you good equipment for free, it wouldn't be a shitshow!

"Grrrk."

"?"

From Tan Seon-rim of Mumo Castle, uncontrolled beast energy began pouring out in thick streams. The gray marker of the neutral NPC Tan Seon-rim — thrashing and contorting like a cheap horror-movie monster — flushed blood-red in an instant.

At the same time, the minimap flipped completely upside down, the surrounding terrain itself began to warp, and event messages cascaded across my vision.

"GRAAAAAAAAH!!!"

"Oh, fuck."

The neutral NPC I'd been smiling and trading with moments ago had been force-converted into a dungeon boss by an eok-kka event and was now going completely berserk. Just in case, I flung a red chopstick at Tan Seon-rim — it bounced off with a clean ting! and shattered into pieces. Yeah. I was going to die cleanly here.

"Hell no!"

Dying in a dungeon just meant respawning like this anyway.

I'd already shaved 5% of my slaughter energy down for Tan Seon-rim, and I'd just dumped another 10% into the dungeon, so my slaughter energy had been gutted. I'd only just reached Core Formation, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the realm itself was already wobbling unsteadily from how much slaughter energy I'd lost.

"I'm gonna die… wait, I already died… still, heh heh heh."

The price of eating a final-tier belt had been a mere 15% of the slaughter energy I'd stacked all the way to level 200. That was an absolute bargain. The eok-kka event had been a combo of [Dungeonization] plus [Corruption] that turned a friendly NPC into a boss — if it hadn't been dungeonization, I wouldn't even have gotten a respawn!

I escaped the dungeon immediately. The lost slaughter energy stung, but I had zero intention of crawling back in to face Tan Seon-rim again. Better to kill the field boss, finish terrain scouting, and bail to another map.

"Oh."

After surviving a brutal eok-kka event, it looked like I'd gotten a mild fortune as compensation. One of the game's half-assed balance modes. I nodded to myself — at this rate, I could probably hit 100% terrain scouting just by hunting around the map without even touching the field boss. But still.

"For now…"

Rest.

I needed to stabilize the realm that had been shaken by the massive slaughter-energy loss.

"Cheon Nan-cho. Spiritual domain."

Using consumables and Cheon Nan-cho's power — which artificially generated a random spiritual domain for a set duration — I settled into a mid-grade spiritual domain and turned my awareness inward. Watching the cracked, heavily depleted slaughter energy and the spirit that had formed a Core of pure killing intent flicker precariously, I began a slow recovery.

I managed to stabilize the realm, but the recovery itself failed. Of course it did — slaughter energy couldn't be restored by ordinary means.

The only way to recover slaughter energy…

…was to generate more slaughter energy.

I ran Auto-Battle against the regular Mumo Castle field mobs — the ones that were just ordinary field trash, nothing like the neutral NPC Tan Seon-rim. No matter how strong they were, against normal field mobs that weren't even elites, the odds of losing on Auto-Battle were basically zero unless an eok-kka triggered.

Half-mechanically, I found field mobs, ran auto-battle, gathered slaughter energy, and poured it into my spirit to recover.

"So rewarding!"

Watching the experience pile up and the spirit mend itself filled me with a warm sense of satisfaction. Was this how farmers felt?

"I'm harvesting lives, so maybe it's not that different."

Even after filling terrain scouting to 100%, I kept killing a solid number of Mumo Castle beasts — for field mobs, they gave surprisingly generous experience and slaughter energy — and managed to claw back 2% of what I'd lost.

Losing a huge chunk of slaughter energy all at once made recovering it incredibly hard.

Going to a low-level map and finding a decent dungeon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to run a slaughter spree might have restocked slaughter energy nicely… except a previous event had completely rewritten the map layout.

"Goddamn fucking shitshow of a game."

The probabilistic misfortune events that spawned the Abyss were now blocked by the Never Abyss mode that had activated once I hit Core Formation. But the forced events I called eok-kka — the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ones you couldn't stop — were a different story.

The godawful event that buried most accessible maps under the Abyss would have just been a regular pain in the ass if that was all it did. The reason I classified it as eok-kka came after: when you escaped the Abyss, or lucked into another map, survived the eok-kka, and tried to move on, the next maps that appeared were always difficulty levels ten or more above your current level — and residual Abyss energy debuffed you so hard that every single interaction was locked until you cleared an entire map.

Of course there was a bug where the interaction lock was so vaguely implemented it caused mod conflicts and crashed the game. And of course I'd patched that ages ago with Comprehensive Bug Fix Mode (True) ver1.9.

"Hmm… Comprehensive Bug Fix Mode (True_Final) ver11.2 — status check."

"Urgh."

It felt like a massive chunk of my spiritual power had been carved out. My legs gave way and I sank to the ground. Just checking a single mode had completely drained a Core Formation cultivator's spiritual power — but considering every single mod packed into this one, I couldn't help nodding in understanding.

"For now, take the time to safely recover my realm, then move to the next map."

I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠finished terrain scouting at 100%, so dragging things out too long risked another eok-kka event killing me. I needed to stretch the time as carefully as possible.

I'd only just hit level 200. By vanilla standards, a normal difficulty max level was 500. Ironman and Nightmare difficulties topped out at 800. And for the people who'd poured their entire lives into this shitshow of a game, the difficulty-boosting Wraith Mode maxed out at a full 1,200.

How far the actual max level had shifted after the reality patch, I had no idea.

Until I recovered the 15% slaughter energy I'd burned getting the final-tier belt, experience wouldn't come in at all. That made sense — slaughter energy was experience, but experience couldn't become slaughter energy. If the slaughter energy itself wasn't restored, experience simply wouldn't accumulate.

From the very beginning, I'd forged my spiritual root out of slaughter energy and become a cultivator that way. From then on, I'd stacked nothing but slaughter energy, and it was that same slaughter energy that had carried me into Core Formation.

And I'd just blown 15% of that enormous stockpile.

Recovering it would take stripping bare at least five entire maps, and even that might not be enough. Because the foundation of all the slaughter energy I'd accumulated was the bug I'd found in the Training Ground that spawned on the very first map — sixty thousand hours of nonstop grinding.

Even if I locked myself in a dungeon for ten thousand hours of infinite farming loops, I wouldn't recover even 10%.

Slaughter energy was like compound interest at a bank — the more you stacked, the more it grew exponentially. The slaughter energy built over sixty thousand hours in the Training Ground bug, with Double Speed Mod running on top of that, was that terrifying.

If not for the Training Ground's limitations, hitting max level inside it would have been trivial. But because it was a Training Ground, it only expanded the size of my slaughter energy. That expanded capacity had smoothly fueled my level-ups and unlocked modes, sure — but that was all.

So when the hell was I supposed to recover?