Even the Decorations Level Up
The regional penalty of Cosmic Misfortune — the tremors — finally ended.
"What a waste."
Even if I used Auto-Battle on regular mobs instead of elites, they were higher level than me, so the baseline level correction kicked in. That meant I still got a little help from the auto-battle ratio, and most of the time it spit out either a Narrow Victory or a Precarious Victory.
Against elite mobs, it'd probably just flat-out give me a defeat.
Which was exactly why I'd bolted with a quick Stronghold Recall. Level correction sounded like nothing special on paper, but it accounted for a lot more than you'd think.
And before I'd fled with that Stronghold Recall, Cheon Nan-cho had already finished her captive exploration, dumped an epic adventure saga on me, then collapsed from exhaustion and stuffed herself into the inventory — only to pop right back out the instant we returned to base.
"Looks like the fighting up in the Upper Realm is over."
"No kidding. What the hell were they brawling about for over a year?"
Even counting in game time, a whole year was a goddamn long fight — and they were just NPCs!
"Hm? This one actually wrapped up pretty short and sweet. Sometimes they go at it for decades, even centuries. Though the impact on the Lower Realm is a lot smaller when that happens."
"What a public nuisance."
I looked up at the stronghold's cloudless, sunny sky, opened the stronghold warehouse, and dumped every last material and spirit stone I'd gathered this time straight into storage.
The buildings I'd pre-queued started chewing through the materials and spirit stones one by one, and thanks to the reality patch I got to watch them go up live. Once that was done, I checked on the decorations.
I'd restocked the warehouse, the regional penalty was over, and another invasion event would be rolling in soon enough — so I was mid-inspection of the decorations when it hit me.
"You guys look... different?"
The robot, whose entire kit used to be "shoot beams from the eyes," was now holding a massive sci-fi sword and shield that definitely hadn't been among the junk I'd just poured into the warehouse. And the Death Knight was grunting and struggling to wrestle some random set of magic armor onto the spectral steed — armor from god knows where.
"...Do you guys level up too?"
The robot and the spectral steed both nodded.
Death Knight, why the hell are you tilting your head?
"You didn't level up?"
Only then did the Death Knight give a weak little nod, and I couldn't help letting out a strained cough. What the fuck — why could I even interact with the decorations?
These things were originally just pure set dressing for the stronghold. Under Stronghold Management Mode, they only moved as defense-game pieces during invasion events — game pieces inside a game.
"Goddamn fucking reality patch... You, get over here."
Reality patch, decoration interaction, whatever the hell — first things first, I could not stand looking at that inefficient garbage for one more second.
"A sword and shield? Are you a warrior? Hm? You're a one-trick beam-from-the-eyes specialist! And even that is just you taking my slaughter essence, mixing in spiritual power, and shooting something that looks similar! So why the hell are you holding gear like that?!"
Why the fuck was a skill-based ranged class walking around with melee equipment?!
KRAAAAGH! I raged, yanked a beam-firing apparatus out of SF Mode, blasted a few consumable hammers into it to make sockets, jammed in some of my slaughter stones that Cheon Nan-cho had mined earlier, and shoved the whole thing into the robot's hands. Then I turned my glare on the Death Knight.
"And you — why are you putting flaming magic armor on a dog? Hm? Because it looks cool? Or is it cold out? Trying to color-coordinate because your heart is fire-attribute even if your actual element isn't? Is your head just for decoration?"
The spectral steed's attribute naturally followed its master the Death Knight — ice. Whether it hated the cold or just thought fire armor looked badass, who knew, but you put fire-attribute gear on it? In a game you could write that off as a cosmetic skin, but this was reality-patched now. You match the damn attributes!
"Come to think of it, last time you fought you were swinging a beam saber all by yourself. Why are you suddenly fretting over the kid's armor now?"
I still had a vivid memory of that red lightsaber carving things up.
The Death Knight frantically pointed back and forth between the spectral steed and the beam saber in its own hand, then crossed both arms into an X.
Ah. Got it.
"You didn't have enough levels to equip the spectral steed too?"
Nod nod!
"Well, then there's nothing for it."
The Death Knight looked like it was about to sigh in relief — so I walked right up and cracked it over the head with slaughter essence, dropping it on its ass.
"That's that, and this is this! Match the attributes when you equip gear! Are you a player? Hm? The kind of player who can slap on whatever attribute gear they want and still walk away fine?"
"No! Even a perfectly healthy newbie player wouldn't do that! Only the absolute petroleum-grade fossils who are so stagnant they've gone rancid do that — the ones who pick gear purely for looks in multiplayer mode! Huh? Are you the same as those evil-spirit bastards?!"
By the end of the lecture the Death Knight had wilted into a dejected heap in the corner, and the spectral steed shuffled over to nuzzle against it in consolation. I grabbed the steed on the spot, unequipped the half-fitted magic armor, and started digging through the modes.
"At the very least give it synergistic attribute gear — no, you're ice-attribute yourself, so why did you put fire gear on it, the half-damage counter element?"
Hmm. This one looked decent.
I found a glass-bright ice magic armor skin and equipped it right away. It was nothing more than a cosmetic reskin, but whether it was the slaughter essence I'd poured into everything or just the power of the reality patch, the spectral steed's aura clearly got stronger.
Only then did the Death Knight, still crumpled sulkily in the corner, sidle up next to the steed with its red eyes gleaming — so it must have liked the look after all.
No, hang on — why have the rest of you crowded this close in the meantime?
I'd been dealing with two epic-grade decorations, and now every other decoration had swarmed in and was staring straight at me.
"Ugh. Honestly... taking care of all of you too is just too much work!"
And the best any of you are is unique — most of you are rare trash.
"So! I'm dumping some unused armor and weapons into the warehouse. Grab whatever you want! If you want decorations that actually use modes, evolve yourselves up to their level — epic grade — on your own! That is all!"
Dismissed! I said dismissed!
An Invasion Event is occurring!
Right on cue, an invasion event kicked off like it'd been waiting for the order, and the decorations scrambled off in a frantic stampede. I let out a sigh of relief.
Fuck. Why am I reading the room for a bunch of mode-made decorations?!
"Cheon Nan-cho, did you know those things had self-awareness?!"
"Hm? Well, of course? Weren't those your puppets, Hee-ah?"
"What's a puppet?"
"Ah, so we have to start from there..."
Cheon Nan-cho launched into a grand, sprawling two-hour explanation that, boiled down to a single sentence, meant a puppet was a marionette doll with a soul jammed into it.
Except the soul was someone else's soul used as material, and the doll's body was someone else's corpse repurposed for the job.
"So if you jam a soul into monster junk loot, you get something like a puppet...?"
"You don't make them that sloppily. There are separate methods for handling puppets, and techniques for crafting them, you know?"
Apparently it was a proper specialized profession — like an alchemist who refined pills, or a formation master who built arrays. So the title would be Puppet Master, then? The "-Master" suffix did have a nice ring to it.
"Anyway, so in Xianxia Mode the decorations are classified as puppets!"
What a goddamn mess of interactions.
Why is there so much to keep track of?! I'm done! Fuck it! I'd really quit and strip the modes out — except I'm pretty sure either I die or the world collapses, so I'm too scared to actually try.
I watched the decorations fighting hard in the invasion event. Either way, both the invasion events and the decoration defense fell under the Stronghold Fortress Management Mode, so the longer this went on, the stronger both sides would probably get.
If the robot — spitting eye-beams and now also firing off massive beam-cannon-like guns for wide-area ranged support — was the ranged DPS, then the Death Knight, riding the ice-armored spectral steed and carving through monsters with a beam saber, was the melee DPS and the hammer.
And the rest of the decorations were basically just anvils. But this whole cycle of invasion and defense coalesced into a single mass of slaughter essence.
The more that slaughter essence repeated and repeated again, the stronger the decorations powered by it would become, and the stronger the mode itself would grow. As long as this stronghold held, it was a kind of half-shackle that would go on forever.
Of course, if I slacked off on restocking the warehouse with spirit stones and materials, that shackle would just snap limp and break — but still.
"Alright, I'm heading into the training grounds. Keep an eye on the stronghold for me."
"Sure. Go on in, don't worry."
As Cheon Nan-cho drew up her spiritual power and started piloting some of the puppets, I watched a portion of the experience those puppets should have been eating divert over to her instead. I just tipped my head in acknowledgment and walked straight into the training grounds.
A good idea had come to me while listening to Cheon Nan-cho's lecture, and I intended to test it in there.