Chapter 43
Chapter 43
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 43
Chapter Title: Transmigrated into a Mod-Overloaded Game
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The damage formula for falling attacks was straightforward.
It dealt damage proportional to the fall distance—a fixed percentage of the enemy's max HP—and then added the damage from the weapon you were holding.
In other words, the higher the character fell from, and the stronger the weapon's single-hit damage, the more devastating the falling attack became.
On top of that, if the falling attack damage killed the enemy outright, you could even ignore fall damage.
But if it didn't kill them, the character would slam into the ground while attacking, taking damage themselves—and sometimes even dying outright.
However, when the target did die, the character performed a special motion unique to their weapon type, finished off the enemy, and landed safely.
No matter the height of the fall. In fact, falling from higher up was better, since it scaled the HP-proportional damage even more.
My current situation was exactly that kind of setup.
Dozens of trash mobs teemed at the bottom of this pit, positioned so that no matter where the player dropped from, they could kill an enemy with a falling attack and land without a scratch.
Sure, it meant staring at dozens of human-sized centipedes writhing together in a cluster.
‘Perfect. It’s right below me.’
After confirming the mid-boss was in my drop zone, I gripped my sword with the blade pointing downward.
The monster—a mass of centipedes fused into one, several times larger than the others—lifted its head at the rumbling from above.
The instant it did, I plummeted toward it.
“—!!!!!!”
I crushed both its shoulders under my feet and drove my sword into what I figured was its head with all my strength.
As expected, there was no impact from the landing. Instead, its shoulder plating absorbed the full force, collapsing inward with a crunch. My feet sank into its shell.
The blood-smeared blade plunged deep into its face. I gripped the hilt from the side and below, shoving with everything I had. The entire blade buried itself up to the crossguard.
—Crack! Crunch-crunch!
While I handled the mid-boss with my falling attack, the belatedly falling rock fragments mercilessly pulverized the centipedes squirming in the puddles below. Shells shattered everywhere.
The trash mobs on the side where the player wouldn't drop got taken care of by the rocks like that. Which meant I didn't have to bash them one by one.
“……”
The mid-boss met the same fate. Its countless legs twitched violently before curling inward tight. The telltale sign that it was done for.
Its body lurched. I yanked the sword free from its head, spun once in midair, and landed on the ground. It was a move I'd never tried before, yet it flowed perfectly naturally.
The thing flopped into the puddle with a splash, sending up a spray of water. A nauseating colored liquid oozed out around it. I wrinkled my nose and turned away.
‘This area's cleared.’
I scanned the surroundings. Not a single one of the nearby wriggling centipedes had survived; every last one had been flattened by the rocks from the ceiling.
In the original game, this was a nightmare section where you'd falling-attack one of the scattered trash mobs to land, then have to fight the mid-boss plus a handful more at the same time.
But players had spotted a tiny exploit here and eventually figured out a spot to falling-attack the mid-boss itself. Deluxe mode hadn't changed that.
The drop height was insane enough to one-shot the mid-boss—even with its HP dozens of times higher than regular enemies—and all the other trash mobs got crushed by the falling rocks.
No reason not to use it.
‘Any chance it dropped an item?’
I poked around the corpses of the rock-squashed centipedes. Just in case there was a legendary drop or something. But aside from pools of blood and chunks of filthy flesh, nothing.
Whether that was disappointing or a relief, I honestly couldn't say. I had no inventory or status window anyway, so even if items dropped, I had no way to pick them up.
In the game, you just hit E and they'd neatly sort themselves into your inventory by type—no limits on quantity.
But not here.
Even something like the headless armored knight's spear—which I'd have casually picked up and checked in my inventory if this were the game—had required me to grunt and haul it onto my horse and tie it down.
And even in the knight order, testing items treated as such in the game did absolutely nothing.
‘At this rate, no clue how I'm supposed to farm reinforcement materials later.’
I'd already tossed realism out the window, so why not throw in an inventory too?
—Rumble-rumble-roooar!
A distant rumble shook the cave. The vibration instinctively sparked my irritation. A sign that my time to face this dungeon's boss was drawing near.
‘Damn rock centipede.’
Just thinking about it made my teeth grind. If it weren't the mandatory boss for getting the rune, I'd have skipped it by any means necessary.
Sum up this dungeon's boss, the ‘rock centipede,’ in one sentence? A filthy piece of garbage.
Aside from total newbies fresh into Brutal 4 who made it this far for the first time, opinions were unanimous. Zero praise, all hate.
The structure was so bad you couldn't help but curse even a little. The community overwhelmingly called the boss outright broken.
Hell, if Brutal 4 ever got a remake thirty years from now, people would demand they just delete the rock centipede.
Reasons abounded, but the big three were:
Boring as hell.
Takes forever.
Patterns are dirty.
‘The first one's the killer, though.’
People can forgive a long fight if it's fun. You could tell from Brutal 4's final boss, which had the same four phases as this thing yet still got rave reviews.
Still, no skipping it. I steeled myself and stepped into the gaping tunnel on one side of the puddle.
The passage was ridiculously wide. Room enough side-to-side for six or seven people abreast, and nearly twice my height overhead.
But the walls and floor were jagged as hell. Trip and you'd shred your skin easy. Hell, maybe it'd even kill you—random thought.
‘Here it is.’
After walking a good ways, I stopped at a spot anyone could see had unnatural holes punched into the walls, floor, and ceiling. This was the place.
Now, approaching one of those holes would trigger phase one. I tamped down the rising irritation and walked slowly toward it.
Just as I neared it, the cave shook hard, and a scraping sound like rock being gnawed echoed from all directions.
The noise grew louder, the tremors stronger. Scraping came from the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
‘Stay calm.’
Move carelessly here and you'd get unlucky, smashed dead by the rock centipede bursting from a hole. Best to just stand still nearby.
—BOOM!
Moments later, a massive monster exploded from the nearest hole, shattering the surrounding terrain.
Its overall shape was just like a regular centipede, but its entire body was made of rock. Not tough rock-like plating or exoskeleton—literally rock.
A perfect match for the name ‘rock centipede.’
And it was stupidly huge.
Hundreds of legs, each as long as I was tall. Even just the front section poking from the hole matched a multi-story building's height.
Factor in the rest still inside, and its full body length had to be apartment-sized.
‘Seeing it for real makes it even crazier.’
A rock-bodied, centipede-shaped monster the size of a building looming over me—it was way more intimidating than expected. That was why newbies panicked on first sight.
But that was it. Thinking about the slog ahead filled me less with fear or anxiety and more with annoyance.
—Thud!
The rock centipede's body slammed to the floor. The whole cave rumbled. It clacked its mandibles together and crept toward me slow and sneaky.
Hundreds of stone legs scraped the ground, producing an endless creepy noise. Every motion grated on my nerves.
I started backing up toward the wall. The rock centipede slowly turned to follow, then picked up speed.
The massive rock centipede thrashed its hundreds of legs and twisted its joints, charging at full tilt to ram and crush me against the wall.
The problem? Its so-called full speed was barely faster than the player's base walk. Easy to time, no chance of getting caught and killed.
‘…Now.’
I waited until the gap closed further, then rolled sideways just before its head hit, slipping out on a diagonal. The rock centipede couldn't stop its charge even after I vanished from its sight.
—Thud!
It smashed headlong into the wall at its own momentum. The cave shook, stone debris raining from the ceiling.
The rock centipede thrashed and flailed wildly. I backed off far to avoid it.
Even a single flying pebble near that thing could kill you. If you asked why scattered newbies died, nine times out of ten it was from debris.
After wrecking the area with its convulsions and frenzy, the rock centipede irritably clacked its mandibles a few times and burrowed back into the rock. Its massive body took a while to vanish.
‘Now for another long wait.’
I plopped down right there. It needed nearly a full minute to turn around and come back out anyway. Developers said its size made quick turns impossible.
Do this exact routine 59 more times total, and it'd be phase four. Vanilla had 29; Deluxe mode doubled it.
Even the Deluxe mode makers caught hell for that. Couldn't reduce the gimmick count, so why double it?
During those 59 reps, you'd wait a full minute here and there, all while meticulously dodging the hundreds of flailing legs plus every flying rock chunk.
I sat there, waiting endlessly for the rock centipede to burst out again.