A Billion Won's Worth of Doping
When I fought the young ogre, I could say my kit was its perfect counter. Against the corrupted ogre, that had flipped. I was the one getting perfectly countered.
The difference between a young ogre and a corrupted ogre? There isn't one. Only a gap in stats, and a gap in skill rank. But that hairline difference had finished a bizarre food chain — one where I did the feeding, and one where I got eaten.
The truth is, my overwhelming force comes from instantaneous burst. I burn mana to land attacks the enemy simply cannot react to, nearly a hundred percent of the time, and then I keep driving. Everything is dumped into attack power until it detonates as damage. They can try to guard; it won't matter. I teleport in and, in a fraction of a second, drive eight strikes home — or twelve — and their vitals are left completely bare. An attack already past +1,000% attack power, with the bonus hits that land on top of it hitting more than three times as hard. There is no withstanding that.
True now. True later. Until I meet an enemy whose stats match mine, or surpass them, the style ought to keep paying off. Run into someone who fights the same way and it's an automatic win. Even a defense-first brute like an ogre, I can just punch through with a stronger blade.
The corrupted ogre was one of the very few monsters with the means to dismantle that style. Its stats were equal to mine or higher. It didn't even have to activate anything — a shield as solid as bundled rebar wrapped its whole body as a passive, always on. And its regeneration was high enough to close the wound before I could finish taking the neck.
Square up and really commit, and I might still cut the head off. Provided, of course, this corrupted ogre wasn't that corrupted tree over there, the one just standing and staring into space.
"Graaaaaah—!"
Relative to its strength and stamina its reflexes were lacking, and they were still S−.
I was already mid-swing when the ogre's hand came flying in. The blade cut fast and pulled away, but at that reaction speed there was no room to throw another slash from the same spot. This wasn't even a war of attrition. It was closer to a one-sided caress along the nape of its neck, over and over, and it had already gone on for more than five minutes.
"Ha. Fuck. Figures it wouldn't work."
My stamina has a limit too. It isn't the kind of S-rank pool that bottoms out after five minutes of pecking, but mana was the problem. Between one item and another my recovery had climbed to 35% a minute, and my max mana to 120, yet Leap cost 4 mana a cast. Use it to dodge and recovery couldn't keep up. I could watch the bar slowly bleed down.
And it was only holding because I was spending it on evasion. The single actual path to victory — taking the ogre's neck — meant layering Double Slash on top as well, so one attempt cost 9 mana. I'd have to chain it at least five times, which meant keeping nearly half my mana in reserve. The problem was that even a rough estimate said it wouldn't be enough.
"Nothing for it."
If I could have just killed it, I wanted to. But when something isn't working, you admit it isn't working and play the next card.
I had a few prepared for the corrupted ogre. Armor and accessories, first. The armor raised my defense by the bare minimum and pushed my reflexes to S+. The accessories lifted my mana, and my attack power along with it. And then the last card — not something I'd exactly planned. When Hunter Department Store told me my VVIP total came up short and asked whether I had anything else to pile on, it had occurred to me on the spot.
Doping potions. A billion won's worth.
A billion won, and you might ask how many potions that even buys. Not as many as you'd think. From the leather pouch occupying a single slot on my belt, I drew them out one by one.
"Ah... my acorn stash. This is the finisher, though."
A doping potion is, in its way, a great deal like emergency medicine — the useful kind, if you're a hunter. When you meet a monster so dangerous you can't even run. When fleeing alone might wipe the whole party. The moment you judge that your strength, as it stands, cannot stop that enemy, a doping potion lets you draw on power that steps past your own limit, if only for a little while. Even if it's a single rank. In a fight that desperate, that sliver of difference is more than enough to overturn the result, and to overturn who lives.
Naturally, every hunter wants to carry one or two of those. In their hearts. Reality is less obliging. However short and temporary the duration, the effect across that window is large, which makes them hard to brew and expensive to buy. Even a middling potion that does nothing more than nudge your attack power up a little will often run into the hundreds of thousands of won.
The reason is obvious. For alchemists, doping potions sit in the difficult tier. The materials are hard to obtain and fussy to work, and brew one too expensive and it simply won't sell until the right buyer happens along. Better to make the potions that actually move.
I'd bought mine anyway. For a doping potion whose effect qualified as emergency medicine in my situation, a billion won was not nearly so vast a sum as it sounded.
Those three potions alone had cost the billion.
"If I'm doing this, I'm doing it properly."
I could call it my own finisher all I liked. Asked whether it was a sure card that could actually settle the fight, I hesitated. An S− corrupted ogre. Its reaction speed and its strength were so high that even after drinking these, I couldn't say for certain I'd take the neck clean. If it failed, it failed. Then I'd pour in the 20 Farming Points I'd saved and saved again for the true last resort, and come back.
I cracked the seals and drank all three.
Reflexes +1 rank — 60 seconds
Strength +1 rank — 60 seconds
Attack Power ×10% — 120 seconds
No time to stand there marveling. The moment they went down I had S+ strength, SS-rank reflexes, and another ten percent on attack power besides. I fired Leap Slash straight for the left side of its chest.
Finisher or not, taking the neck in a single blow was still going to be hard. Cut it once and the ogre — unless it was a complete idiot — would throw a fist immediately. Maybe the instant I vanished, it would throw one just to guard its throat. I was only stronger and faster. That alone would fail to take the neck again.
So I changed the plan. The idea was simple. The corrupted ogre wasn't watching me as I buzzed around it like a gnat. It was feeling me, and attacking. All I had to do was split that focus for a single second. That would be enough.
"Graaaaaah!"
Sure enough, boiling over at the faint sensation across its chest, it threw both arms wide and brought its palms together to flatten me. I saw the motion begin. By then I was already Leap Slashing to the far side of its neck, sword coming around.
The corrupted ogre noticed the movement, but a signal takes time to travel from brain to body. And the signal that did arrive had the bad luck of showing up after a command was already locked into that enormous frame. It would have to queue the new order, or cancel the old one, and that costs time too. That time was enough for my reflexes, now SS-rank, to swing seventeen times, swing once more, and loose a third Leap Slash before the hand finally reached me.
"Uuuhhh... ghh..."
Thud!
Like swatting a mosquito stuck to its own neck. The thick, gigantic hand had its orders, and whether its own throat was in agony was none of its concern. It came in at full power and slammed down on its own neck. Not a slap. A thud. The force went straight through, and the neck lolled — and came off. Flew, more precisely.
"Home run~"
Three Leap Slashes. That was all. SS-rank reflexes: eighteen cuts, three times over, fifty-four swings, and the bonus hits landed clean. S+ strength pushed attack power up to 200%, and the Sewer Sword's effect took it to 300%, ballooning the number. The crowning stroke was the high-grade attack potion.
A full grade below the reflex and strength potions, and attack-power percent is an unpopular option, so next to the other two I'd bought it for practically nothing. For me it was the opposite — multiplicative attack power, an effect as large as a full stat rank, or larger. My bonus attack power alone stacked to 1,300%. Tack another 10% onto that and you wouldn't even feel it. Multiply by 10%, and that's another 130% coming in on top.
Undoped, I'd figured I would need a comfortable five cuts. Maybe six. I took the ogre's neck in exactly three.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
Fury and a grab at once — the corrupted ogre reached for its own flying head. But the skull, launched by its own strength, was already too far out to catch. Give it ten seconds and it still doesn't make that grab. Not unless a boss ogre comes with a head-retrieval function.
Thud.
Ten seconds later, the massive body collapsed to the floor.