The Cosmic Roulette

"Nice, nice."

Once it hit field-boss tier, I'd finally get a read on the attack multiplier when I burned a Unique weapon with Spoon.

Dungeon bosses had gone splat from a single Spoon strike that sacrificed a Rare weapon — but I'd also watched a same-level field boss take five hits from a Rare before it dropped. So what would happen if I fed it a Unique?

I lifted that low-level Unique one-hander I no longer used, activated Spoon, and casually hoisted the giant slaughter-energy spoon before slamming it into the field boss charging at me with terrifying speed.

A bright yellow effect flared — the telltale sign of a critical — and the power of a Spoon that had just sacrificed a Unique weapon as a one-time offering hit hard enough to turn a field boss into a former field boss in a single blow.

"Holy shit!"

My right arm, the one that had swung the Spoon, couldn't take the recoil. It didn't just break — it twisted, then reknit itself through slaughter energy, the whole process filling the air with the grotesque sound of flesh and bone grinding back into place.

"So from Unique tier up, going full power comes with self-damage too."

After dumping the rest of my free stats into my body on the map after next and running a rough slaughter-energy physical reinforcement on top of that, the self-damage stopped at a broken arm. That told me the burden would vanish once my physical stats climbed high enough.

"With this, I can even tank an event Eok-kka once or twice!"

A Unique alone was enough to crack a same-level field boss's skull. Feed an unused Epic weapon as a sacrifice, and I might just stop an event Eok-kka cold.

An event message popped up like it was laughing at me for spinning hope circuits so hard. I ignored it and pushed on to the next map.

"More than that — the exp gain is absolute garbage."

If I dodged field bosses, ignored every minimap marker, and spent the whole day hunting, I could clear anywhere from one to three maps. Thanks to this damn event, though, even on a good day I was lucky to clear two.

There'd been times I ate five Misfortune events in a row and got stuck on a single map for two or three days straight. Even I had no answer when one of my stats hit zero, or when I got hit with something as vile as a ninety-point movement-speed reduction debuff.

"Out of nowhere? No — nothing shows up for no reason… so this is a secret room!"

Stepping inside guaranteed one positive event, and residual ability points had just rolled out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of it.

A collapsing abandoned house being a secret room was weird, but I chalked that up to the Not-So-Secret Secret Room mode being active. All that mode did was slap secret-room markers onto a minimap once terrain scouting was done — so I'd just gotten lucky and found one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before the scouting even finished.

And inside that abandoned house sat no fewer than five secret chests. The absolute maximum a secret room could drop.

"…There's no way I'm this lucky."

The sight of five secret chests hit me like a bucket of cold water. There was exactly one Eok-kka event trigger that required five secret chests to appear.

I remembered the contents of that guaranteed Eok-kka — the one that split a player's skull in two the moment they opened the chests in giddy celebration at hitting the maximum of five.

The so-called roulette event.

What made this Eok-kka even more infamous was its sheer malice — it auto-saved even without Ironman Mode installed. In fact, the auto-save that formed the foundation of Ironman Mode had originally come from this very event.

So if I triggered this Eok-kka and it auto-saved…

"…Load."

"Save?"

And of course this bastard gave me nothing back.

Still — if it auto-saved, that meant Load would become available. The treasure chests had drop tables locked at map generation, so cracking all five for loot was off the table either way. But still.

"As long as it's not the worst outcome…!"

Out of the ten options, as long as I didn't land on Stat Reset — the absolute worst — everything else was either second-worst or actually decent.

I forced my trembling legs forward, stepped into the center of the five treasure chests arranged in a semicircle — and the ceiling of the secret room tore open, revealing the black cosmos beyond.

If heavenly energy was the qi of the sky, what the hell did you call the energy of the cosmos? A force completely different from anything I'd felt during the last Heavenly Tribulation — cold, violent, and intent on destroying everything inside my body — flooded over me from head to toe.

Even as slaughter energy regenerated and held me together, the roulette arrow floating before my eyes like a hallucination began spinning with cold indifference.

The best outcomes were Acquire 100 Residual Ability Points, All Stats Increased by 20%, and All Stats Restored — which would recover every permanent stat loss the events had stripped from me.

The relatively okay options were Skill Proficiency Reset and Skill Reset — only two skills, so the damage wasn't catastrophic — plus Debuff Reset, which would wipe every permanent debuff the events had stuck me with.

Level Reset left stats intact but dragged a whole chain of penalties along with the level drop. All Stats Decreased by 20% and Buff Reset — which would erase every permanent buff the events had given me — ranked as second-worst.

And the absolute worst option of all was Stat Reset: level stays the same, stats alone get wiped. I'd drop to 1 — worse than a basic Mortal.

"…Activate mode!"

There was no way I was testing a gamble like that with my own body.

The slaughter energy holding back the cosmic force burned away in massive quantities as a single mode activated.

An Eok-kka event with a fixed trigger instead of pure randomness? I'd spent how much of my past life glued to this godforsaken trash game — where patches were made and distributed by modders, and bugs spawned from mod conflicts — and if an Eok-kka had a fixed trigger, a mode could block it.

"Known Cosmos mode!"

A mode that turned certain Eok-kka events from roulette or random rolls into selectable options. Just activating it should be enough.

Options appeared, forced open by my innate ability after it had swallowed a massive amount of slaughter energy. Of course the best ones were completely locked out.

Maybe I just didn't have enough slaughter energy.

Either way, there was only one choice I was making.

An overwhelmingly strong option that restored every permanent ability loss the events had inflicted on me.

If this were still a game, I would have picked Level Reset without hesitation — double-stacking stats and freely farming low-level events all over again. But the thought of the shock from dropping a realm, plus all the other penalties that came with it, made me steer clear on pure instinct.

"Gyaaaaah!"

My muscles twisted. Pain like bones being wrung tight and then forced open, a pulse that raced and stopped and raced again in a nightmare loop — all of it flooded my entire body, and on top of that came a comprehensive assault of stabbing, bludgeoning agony inside my skull, all at once.

I'd burned so much slaughter energy activating the mode that there was nothing left for regeneration. It wasn't pain a conscious mind could endure. I blacked out on the spot.