The Awakened Earth Dragon

Respawn — or regen, for short — literally means the resurrection of monsters, and it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an essential fixture in any game built around leveling up.

In the face of a reality patch, even that phenomenon had seemed useless.

But this place was a dungeon.

A space that made the miracle of resurrection possible, so of course the rules bent. Inside the dungeon, every bug I'd slaughtered on my way to the boss room had come back to life and was writhing around in swarms.

Which meant the thing I had to do boiled down to exactly one option.

"Since the dawn of gaming, when you're stuck, the answer's always been to crush it with levels."

With a full 15x Double Speed Mod and Auto-Battle mode running, there was nothing left to fear. Even if the bugs' levels dropped below mine and the experience coming in thinned out, it didn't matter.

Killing living things still stacked slaughter energy, and that still raised the maximum capacity of my spiritual energy the same as always.

And those fixed events that always triggered when you kept hunting in the same dungeon only stacked five times each anyway. I'd just punch through them with the power of 15x speed.

The result of mindlessly running auto-hunt in this rat-hole of a dungeon:

Normally, once spiritual energy was spent, the spiritual core wouldn't refill — but at some point it had started generating spiritual energy on its own, little by little. When I opened the Status Window to check, I'd broken through a realm stage without even noticing.

"Huh. Feels like my control's a little better than before."

Whether that was just my imagination, I couldn't say. Either way, I stopped killing bugs that barely gave any experience anymore and headed for the boss room — for revenge.

Lying in front of the boss room door, radiating its presence, was a familiar lump of spiritual energy — probably a fragment of the spiritual core that had vanished when I died — glowing red. I let out an involuntary ah.

"What mode was this again."

The one where experience lost on death could be recovered as an item by returning to the place you died, and a debuff got slapped on you that only lifted when you killed the monster or NPC that killed your character.

I couldn't remember the mode name, but I remembered it was a difficulty-raising one. Of course it was — it also buffed the monster or NPC that killed the character.

People even used it on purpose: die to a monster to turn it into a named monster, just to farm gear with specific prefixes.

"...Wait a second?!"

The horrifying realization that the boss — the named earthworm — would be fully juiced up by this mode hit me, and I scrambled back from the boss room entrance.

The confidence that had skyrocketed with my level-ups wilted like a reed in an instant. I clenched my teeth.

If I went back to grinding in this state, leveling would take years. Sure, my spiritual energy max would keep climbing, but the five-stack experience debuff wouldn't go away even if I left the dungeon — not until the duration ran out. So that was off the table.

I'd already spent years of debuff-stack time just raising nine extra levels in this dungeon.

"Tsk... ah, screw it."

I stopped thinking. This was a dungeon. Even if the boss killed me, I wouldn't actually die. So there was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no reason to back down or hesitate.

The moment I picked up that red lump of spiritual core made of slaughter energy, I was automatically entered into the boss room. A debuff that wouldn't lift until the boss was dead activated, and I felt my resistance and defense get carved down.

And then—

The massive earthworm appeared — the Feeble prefix stripped away and replaced with Awakened. Feeble had been a body-stat reduction, and Awakened was an experience-gain increase, right?

That idle thought should have stopped right there. Because the Earth Dragon had already locked onto me and started moving.

"Die."

Before it could, I yanked every last scrap of spiritual energy I'd stockpiled from the bugs in the dungeon out of my spiritual core and hurled it with everything I had.

The already-named boss got even stronger? Resistance and defense tanked by the debuff? Experience debuff making it hard to crush with levels?

Who cares. Just crush it with raw damage.

My spiritual root was a vessel for slaughter energy — power made for killing things — so of course it was specialized for offense.

Kill it before it kills me!

The red mass of spiritual energy collided with the Earth Dragon mid-charge. No pure-white dodge effect, no bright-yellow critical effect — but the hit landed, that much ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was certain.

The Earth Dragon, slammed by a vortex of crimson killing intent forged from every drop of my spiritual energy at once, went completely still — head raised stiffly, unmoving.

I'd dumped my entire spiritual energy pool into that one strike, so I had zero sense of whether it was dead or alive. I tried the classic resurrection chant.

"Did I get it...?"

A twitch — the second I recited the resurrection line, the Earth Dragon, which had been about to slowly start moving as if on cue, went limp and crashed to the floor with a heavy thud. My own legs gave out and I sat down hard right where I was.

"Ah... haha... Status Window."

If I weren't a cultivator, I might've pissed myself, I thought, as I opened the Status Window.

Even under the experience debuff, I'd jumped two levels in one go. Fitting reward for taking down a named boss monster, I supposed. And more than anything, what I was looking forward to was this: unlike regular bosses, named boss monsters guaranteed a drop of prefixed gear.

If they didn't, there was no way I'd have gotten anything with the item drop rate already tanked!

"Oh... ooooh.... yellow!"

A unique item!

I hit View Details immediately and a gasp slipped out. Weapons raised body stats, armor raised resistance — accessories usually raised mind. This one had zero base stats attached.

Instead, true to the Awakened prefix, it had a single option: a raw experience-gain boost of 150% to 250%.

The Awakened prefix, which normally started appearing from rare gear up, usually carried a 20% to 100% experience-gain increase. For every other option to get stripped away and leave only this — and at that magnitude — you'd need the unique-tier correction. On vanilla, with no modes applied, gear like this was literally impossible to roll.

Only once that thought landed did I realize which mode had touched this drop.

"....Random Option Amplification Mode?"

I remembered it only applied to unique-grade gear and above. Normally, unique-and-higher equipment options scaled 50% to 100% relative to rare or magic gear options — and this mode scrambled that into a true random gacha ranging from 10% all the way to 300%.

The ceiling got higher, sure, but so did the odds of a unique piece ending up with worse options than a rare. More ways to brick, basically.

"This is so damn annoying I need to open the mod window already."

Not knowing what modes were applied, how many, or how they worked was going to drive me insane.

The Stigma vanishing took the experience and item-drop penalties with it. An unexpected windfall — I couldn't help laughing.

This was a famous bug, too. Lucky the mode that fixed it wasn't applied. I opened the minimap and checked the chart.

Terrain scouting complete. Finally time to get out of this godforsaken Wasteland.

"How long am I gonna have to walk this time...."

Of course, escaping the Wasteland meant days of walking from here — the very center of it. I let out a long sigh and started dragging my heavy feet forward.

Until the warning windows started popping.

My current level was 42. Warning windows only triggered when the recommended level gap hit at least double — so whatever this was, it was level 84 minimum.

"Even eok-kka has to have limits..."

I stared blankly up at the sky. A cultivator was up there, pouring out terrifying spiritual energy.

The cultivator who managed the mortal villages scattered across the Wasteland. The one who'd checked my spiritual root when I was still a baby and said he'd come collect me once I became a cultivator — a member of the cultivation sect seated on Spirit Mountain.

"The stench of blood is thick in the air."

A cultivator whose realm was clearly far above mine looked down at me, killing intent laid bare.