Even a Trash Affix Has Its Day

Figuring out why a Minor Heavenly Tribulation — the kind that lands unavoidable, undodgeable random fixed damage — had ended as nothing more than a sharp sting was almost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠insultingly simple.

It was the Immovable prefix effect attached to one of my Dharma Treasures, formerly one of the Five Great Calamities and now, officially, one of the Six.

A garbage affix that dropped your movement speed by thirty percent in exchange for halving fixed damage — and flat-out ignoring the weaker stuff entirely.

In this game, the only monsters with fixed-damage attacks were two specific elites, and most fixed-damage skills were player-exclusive to begin with. In a dead-on-arrival title with no real PvP to speak of, that was more than enough to earn Immovable a permanent seat among the absolute worst trash prefixes in existence.

The complete absence of any fixed-damage events only cemented the ranking.

"So there really does come a day when this thing is useful."

No — looking at it now, I was pretty sure the Xianxia Mode creator had just slapped the mode together without so much as glancing at the worst trash prefixes on the list.

For the moment, I scooped up Cheon Nan-cho — who looked like one more hit from a Minor Heavenly Tribulation would finish her off — and stuffed her straight into my inventory. Once she came to, she'd recover on her own and pop back out.

Which left me, Help-less as I was, trying to make sense of this sudden mess.

Hmm.

"Weather anomaly?"

Lightning was coming down in absolute sheets — wait a second.

A closer look at the base told a clearer story. The monsters that had poured in during the Invasion Event were being reduced to ash by the Minor Heavenly Tribulations and falling back in droves, while the ornamental constructs Cheon Nan-cho had been piloting were thrashing around on autopilot after she blacked out — and getting obliterated by tribulation strikes one after another.

"Ow, fuck—!"

I took a couple more hits myself, but roughly half of each one got nullified. Still stung like hell, though.

Either way, watching that spectacle sparked a thought.

If this event was hitting every map right now…

"…Could I push into higher-level maps?"

From the look of it, this wasn't just targeting me — bolts were raining down indiscriminately across the entire map. Invasion Event monsters, ornamental constructs, even my prisoner Cheon Nan-cho had all taken hits. That said plenty.

On top of that, Cosmic Misfortune had locked the regional debuff in place, which meant map-level eok-kka was less likely to screw me and event frequency had probably plummeted. Perfect conditions for farming slaughter energy, right?

And sure enough, my guess held. Even the monsters on high-level maps were getting hammered by Heavenly Tribulations — left half-dead, killed outright, or scrambling into cover in a desperate bid to dodge the regional penalty.

Which meant just rolling the wheel was enough for easy hunting. They showed up on the minimap even while hiding, and whatever weird defensive arts they threw up still left them full of holes against the undodgeable, unblockable lightning of the regional penalty. A little wriggling and you could slip right through. Free real estate.

"Experience is way lower, though!"

But the slaughter energy was pouring in!

I still didn't fully understand why. Experience and slaughter energy felt similar, yet clearly ran on different rules. Both required killing living things, at least.

The annoying part was how often the monsters, the second they spotted me, threw themselves into desperation patterns — last-gasp thrashing, like a final flash of life before the end.

And since field mob density dropped visibly the higher you climbed outside of dungeons, those desperation patterns hit harder in proportion to how much stronger the monsters were relative to their level.

"Auto-Battle."

Auto-Battle was strong.

I felt it every time I used it — disgustingly, absurdly strong.

Especially since slaughter energy fed into my innate talent, and the mods ran through that same innate talent. The more I used a mod, the better it performed.

Double Speed Mod's multiplier had already climbed to nearly twenty-two times. Auto-Battle Mode's combat seemed to scale the same way.

Limbs that moved on their own. Slaughter energy that hunted without me lifting a finger. Put those two together and you got the finished product: Auto-Battle — a machine that found living things and killed them with ruthless, mechanical efficiency.

How strong? Assuming no [Boss] designation, it could beat monsters two or three tiers above me. Against NPCs whose power ratios were completely shattered in my favor, it could kill them even across a full realm gap.

Of course, there was the charming little downside that bad luck flipped the script exactly the other way.

You could get wrecked and teabagged by a monster two or three tiers below you, or end up a prisoner of some neutral NPC from a higher realm.

The odds were low — but the fact that it could happen at all was, in its own way, terrifying.

Not that that was any reason to stop using Auto-Battle!

Mowing down higher-level monsters that were already wheezing under the regional penalty or had their morale completely gutted meant slaughter energy was flooding in. Before I knew it, the wheel spinning above my head was swollen fat with the stuff.

I spun Tatar's Wheel faster, compressing that swollen slaughter energy, then compressing it further still.

And the moment I was about to swallow it down and convert it into residual ability points—

"Gyaaah—!"

That stung!

This round of random fixed damage must have rolled high — instead of nullifying, it hit like a vicious static shock that left my whole body convulsing. In ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that brief flinch, the slaughter energy I'd been so carefully refining scattered out of the wheel. I scrambled to dump more back in and spun it hard.

"…Huh?"

Looking at the refined slaughter energy again, I caught a faint glitter of lightning qi — leftover from the Minor Heavenly Tribulation that had just tagged me via the regional penalty. Barely a spark. And I found myself wondering whether I should even swallow this.

Residual ability points were different.

They were the foundation at the bottom of that triple-layered sea of slaughter — the deep-ocean floor holding up a slaughter-energy ocean far too vast for my realm. A kind of bedrock that made the whole base sturdier still.

That was the miracle of refined slaughter energy, of residual ability points: something I had painted into my Mental World, and something that actually worked at the root of things.

Was it really okay to add even a scrap of this alien lightning qi — weak as a static shock — to that foundation?

"Hup!"

I detonated the slaughter energy into the shape of the wheel, burrowed straight into the ground where I stood, floated my dedicated weapon — Tatar's Wheel — over my head, and fully deployed Chopsticks into a halo of light for safety.

Then I sat down, swallowed the refined bead of alien slaughter energy, and shut my eyes.

The Mental World.

A triple-layered sea of slaughter energy, lit by a Golden Core that was pure spiritual force made manifest — my Mental World. The slaughter-energy essence that should have become residual ability points dropped into that sea like a stone.

Past the three seas, down to the deep-ocean floor.

It was supposed to become part of my innate talent — the Status Window, the root of everything I was — and harden the foundation.

But somewhere past the second sea, that faint scrap of lightning — foreign matter, basically — kept it from sinking. It bobbed back up and drifted along the currents of the first sea, floating lazily on the surface.

Ah, shit. It turned into ocean trash.

Leave it like that and the slaughter energy would unravel and get absorbed into the sea. Even refined, it was less than a cup of water next to that ocean.

That was the thought running through my head when lightning struck inside the Mental World.

Even with my dedicated weapon and Chopsticks set up so nothing could interrupt my focus, they weren't enough to stop a Minor Heavenly Tribulation dropped by a Misfortune Event. That was clearly what had happened.

The Minor Heavenly Tribulation that fell into the Mental World tore through roughly one layer of the slaughter-energy sea, bounced, and was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about to vanish — then, unnaturally, it veered mid-flight and got absorbed into that little slaughter-energy essence I'd written off as ocean trash.

…?

Did that thing just get a little bigger?

I pulled out of the Mental World, opened my eyes, and drew the wheel back into my body. Ocean trash could wait. I dismissed the halo of Chopsticks fanned behind me like a backlight, and stood.

The burrow was already half-collapsed from the tribulation's aftershock, so I simply jumped, launching myself back onto the surface.

I checked the sky — still a sickly yellow, still rumbling, still scattering lightning in every direction — and sighed. This Misfortune Event was going to drag on longer than I'd hoped. Then I started working the maps again, gathering slaughter energy.

"Ow. Stings."

Taking periodic hits from Minor Heavenly Tribulations the whole way.

And after clearing a few maps, Cheon Nan-cho burst out of the inventory, took one look at the situation, and spat out a crystal-clear interpretation. Truly living up to the Help role.

"That means someone's fighting up in the Upper Realm."

"…What the hell is that supposed to mean."

An Upper Realm brawl turning the lower server into this? That couldn't be right… could it?

"This is exactly why the Lower Realm never develops. You protect the Mortals, you try to raise them up — then the Upper Realm pulls one of these stunts and the fallout alone wipes out anyone who isn't a cultivator."

"Do sects get wiped out too?"

"Not that far. Cultivators can throw up barriers and arts and scrape by somehow. This one's pretty big, though — a lot of the weaker sects and cultivators are going to die."

"That's just pure public nuisance!"