Chapter 020

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‘ ‘ for thoughts.

“ “ for speech.

* * for actions.

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Warning: May contain mature content.

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Jack entered the next level of the Infested Caves. He was extremely confident after the cakewalk that had been the previous level. As he proceeded, he encountered a group of three giant lizards. Two of them were the green giant lizards he had encountered earlier. The third giant lizard Jack observed was different.

It was slightly smaller than the other lizard and was dark blue, almost black in color. On its back it had zebra like stripe patterns of copper color. Though jack was confident of dispatching high defense melee foes without much trouble, the new variety of striped giant lizard made him somewhat cautious.

He lured a giant lizard with a force imbued dart and waited for it to get into melee range. he then equipped his sword and enhanced it with force blade. With half a dozen sword slashes, he disposed it. He lured the second giant green lizard, and repeated the process. Now all that was left was the dark blue striped giant lizard.

Jack fired a void bolt at the striped lizard. However, at the last moment, the striped lizard moved quickly and managed to avoid the brunt of the attack losing only 10% HP. The lizard was very agile and could dodge his spells, so Jack decided to use the homing Soul strikes on it. He fired a couple of soul strikes which caused the striped lizard to lose another two thirds of its HP, leaving it with barely a fourth. The striped lizard’s stripes shimmered strangely, and its speed quickly increased and it slashed Jack twice with each claw. Jack was only able to dodge the first swipe, and lost 12% of HP!

Jack tried to counter attack with his mana blade enhanced sword, but the striped lizard was still shimmering and it dodged Jack’s attacks without any problems and quickly retreated. Jack fired a void bolt while simultaneously preparing a void breath. The lizard was goaded into charging, and he released the void breath. The lizard tried dodging sideways, but it was caught it in the AoE and it died.

Jack: ‘Fuck. Each slash is weaker than the green lizard’s attack. A full combo will make me lose 16% HP. It can dodge my void bolts, so I am forced to use the more inefficient soul strikes. Furthermore, in melee range, its shimmering somehow substantially increases its speed, and it can fuck me up if I am careless.’

Jack: ‘I can’t rely on void breaths to finish them off one by one. I was just lucky that it was caught in the AoE this time. If there is more than one in a group, I will be hard pressed to deal with them.’

Jack: ‘Despite the greater offensive potential of mana blade, I just can’t react quickly enough with my sword skills when it shimmers. And my unarmed enhancements have far lower potential.’

Jack was pondering on how to deal with this new striped lizard efficiently. He had a time limit in the quest to worry about. Furthermore, he didn’t have many HP potions, and he couldn’t be too wasteful with his PP expenditure per lizard.

Jack: ‘My technical expertise with swords simply does not compare with the natural flow my unarmed attacks have. And no fucking way am I relying on system assist. That will make me look like a retard shouting names…and I will miss more often as my dexterity isn’t enough to hit this agile lizard anyway.’

Jack: ‘There is still roughly 18 hours in game before my day job calls me on Monday. I should develop some spells to counter fast foes. Looks like I will be “sick”.’

He then retreated to the first level and started thinking about new spells. He wanted some kind of unarmed enhancement, which would make it competitive with mana blade.

Jack: ‘Why does mana blade add more than 100% Magic Attack even at beginner lv1? Whereas mana fists gave around 30% bonus, and mana gloves gave around 50% bonus at the same levels? There must be some logic behind this shit. It is time to meditate on it for a bit, and I need to regenerate my HP anyways.’

Jack then entered a meditative trance and pondered on the difference in bonus damage of his three mana enhancement skills. Mana Fists had the least amount of damage, unless the used mana blasts were critical hits. When he ‘hardened’ the mana coating on his fists to form mana gloves, he lost the ability to fire mana blasts but in turn gained a significant damage boost with his unarmed strikes. Mana blade, on the other hand, had higher PP sustain costs, but had the biggest bonus to his attack out of these three skills. Mana blade, in essence was very similar to mana gloves but it had sharp edges and tip.

Jack: ‘My regular unarmed attacks do blunt damage, so do mana fists and mana gloves, whereas Mana blade can do slashing damage with its edges, or piercing damage with the tips.’

Jack: ‘These lizards also have quite good offensive power with their unarmed claw attacks. Claws! That’s the answer!’

He then returned from his meditative trance, and channeled force mana in his right hand. He shaped the force mana to end in sharp points at his fingertips. To his spirit senses, it looked like his fingers were ending in claws. He then repeated the process multiple times, until he could generate force claws almost instantaneously. He swiped at the cave wall, and was delighted to see scratches on it.

Jack: ‘Nice! Now I can use these claws to slash and stab foes with my unarmed attacks. Now I should practice a bit so that I can switch very quickly between this force claws and force gloves. That will allow me to have blunt, slashing and piercing damage with my unarmed attacks on demand!’

Jack was very familiar with mana gloves and it wasn’t long before he could swap force gloves and force claws on demand. Jack then browsed his notifications, which indicated that he had learned a new subskill of Unarmed Mastery, Mana Claws! Jack then summoned the skill information on Mana Claws.

Skill Name:Skill Rank:Skill Level:Skill Experience:Mana ClawsBeginner105.25%Subskill of Unarmed Mastery

You have learned to effectively integrate magic with your unarmed fighting. You can from claws out of mana, greatly boosting your unarmed damage. You can currently use the following elements:

Force: You do not take feedback damage when performing unarmed attacks.

Soul: Can cause the target to Panic on a critical hit, depending on the Target's WIllpower. Bonus damage does not apply to inanimate objects.

Void: 5% of damage done reduces the target's MP

Fire: Does additional Burning DoT on a critical hit, depending on the target's Vitality.

Reduces Max PP by 80 for each hand enhanced with mana. (160 MP for both hands)

Costs 4 PP/second to maintain for each hand enhanced with mana. (8MP/s for both hands)

Current level effects:

+82% of Magic Attack added to unarmed attack.

Jack: ‘So looks like I was right. It is still not good as mana blade, although my familiarity and higher level of unarmed mastery should help to bridge the gap.’

Jack: ‘Now I need to develop some skill to slow them while they shimmer in melee range. I wish I had Gravity affinity… would make them a lot simpler to deal with.’

Jack again entered a meditative trance and pondered on a way to slow the striped lizards. He had force, soul, void and fire affinities to work with. Since he couldn’t ponder a way to directly shape a spell to slow a fast moving target, he pondered the laws of physics applicable in real life.

Asunder Online added mana and gave everything a fantasy twist, but the underlying principles of physics were still effective in game, at least to a degree. Jack was well versed with Thermodynamics. Kinetic Energy (or Force in game) and Thermal Energy (or Fire in game) were essentially two aspects of a single form of energy.

Thermal Energy was essentially kinetic energy, but on a microscopic level instead of macroscopic level. A baseball launched by a pitcher followed an easily predicted trajectory by Newton’s laws of motion.

(A/N: Grossly oversimplifying here as there are frictional forces, air resistance etc. which do contribute significantly).

Whereas when microscopic bodies, like the molecules of a gas or fluid vibrated, to predict the motion of each molecule was impractical, and engineers are more interested in the effects on an overall scale. This may not be intuitive, as many associate heat (or thermal energy) with fire, but kinetic energy, can produce heat. The simplest example of this is when people rub their palms vigorously, the skin on their palms get slightly hotter!

Thermodynamics is a branch of physics, which mainly deals with heat and temperature and its relationship with energy and work. Thermodynamics introduces the concept of Entropy. Entropy is essentially the measure of a number of ways a system may arrange itself. The hotter a system, the higher entropy it has, as it can arrange itself in larger number of ways.

For example, compare water with ice. Both are systems of H20. Ice is a solid which arranges the molecules of H20 in an orderly crystalline state. Water, on the other hand is a fluid, and slight disturbances can cause the H20 molecules in water to move in relation to each other.

(A/N: Again grossly oversimplifying here as there are many applications of thermodynamics, and entropy is a complicated and powerful concept in physics and engineering to say the least.).

While Jack was pondering the relationship between kinetic energy, thermal energy and entropy; an idea occurred to him. He could perceive the mana in his surroundings. He could theoretically absorb the force and fire mana from his surroundings. Anything entering this field near him should be slowed down.

He then exited his meditative trance, and concentrated on the mana in his surroundings. Usually, he would channel mana from his body (of a certain element) to the surroundings to shape spell effects. He attempted the reverse. He imagined sucking in the mana from his surroundings and channeling it to the fire and force mana clusters in his body.

Initially, Jack wasn’t successful. But after hours of trial and error, he could maintain a stable rate at which he was absorbing the surrounding mana into his fire and force physical mana centers. The air around him was stagnant and noticeably chilly, while Jack himself felt invigorated and energetic!

Jack: ‘Looks like this aura is stabilized. This should result in a new spell. I wonder what skill the AI named it? Let me see the notification log.’

Skill Name:Skill Rank:Skill Level:Skill Experience:Entropic LeechBeginner100.00%

Your control over Mana and your deep understanding about the nature of force and heat allows you to absorb similarly attuned mana from your surroundings. This allows you to slow nearby enemies while simultaneously replenishing your PP. This spell is more effective on foes having a higher fire affinity, while being less effective on foes having a higher ice affinity. The closer your foes, the more severe the effects of this spell are.

However, maintaining this shaped spell is taxing, and it reduces your total magical attack by 5% when this spell is sustained.

Current level effects:

Reduces maximum PP by 500 when spell is sustained

Slows everyone in an AoE of 3m around the caster.

Recovers 6 PP every 5 seconds for everyone slowed.

PP recovered and magnitude of slow effect is further modified by the target's fire/ice affinity and proximity to the caster.

Jack: ‘Fuck Yeah! Not only do I get a slow AoE spell, I also get some PP regen! Well the -500 max PP and -5% to magic attack is less than ideal, but this spell synergizes nicely with unarmed attacks. The closer the foe is, the slower it is, and the more I can hit it! Haha you striped lizards better watch out!’

He had long since recovered his HP, and had developed two new spells to boot, of which Entropic Leech had pretty unique effects! Jack then re-entered the second level of the infested caves and proceeded to test his new spells.

Soon, he encountered another group of four lizards in the distance. Three of them were the giant green ones, and one of them was the striped one. Jack activated Entropic Leech and fired void bolts from both his arms at the lizards.

Each of his void bolts hit the clumsy giant green lizards for around 25% HP. While they were charging at him, he prepared a void breath and unleashed it, catching all the lizards, except the striped one in its AoE. The void breath caused the giant lizards to lose a third of their Hp leaving most of them with less than half HP.

As the lizards entered the AoE of his Entropic Leech spell, he let out a soul scream, disrupting the striped lizard from its shimmering spell. While the lizards were disoriented and slowed, he activated force claws and attacked the giant green lizards. His force claws were slightly more effective than a critical force blast, with each slash damaging the green lizards for around 12% HP!

Jack: ‘Nice, I get almost as much damage as a force blade, but my attacks are faster and more natural. I am no swordsman, that’s for sure.’

Jack had finished two of the green lizards in quick succession by the time his soul scream wore off. The striped lizard shimmered, and rushed at him while the green lizard attempted to bite him. Jack dodged the green lizard without much difficulty.

The striped lizard was noticeably slowed by his Entropic leech as it approached him shimmering. Jack quickly sidestepped out of the way and finished the sluggish green lizard with three swipes of his force claws enhanced arms.

The shimmering striped lizard was now engaging Jack alone. However, its speed was manageable, even in its shimmering state, with the effects of his entropic leech spell. Even though he had just learned this spell, the lizards had decent fire affinity and fire resistance, thus making them more vulnerable to Entropic Leech! He nimbly dodged another attack from the striped lizard and countered with a swipe of his hand.

The striped lizard was noticeably less resilient than its green counterpart and it lost almost 20% HP for every mana claw enhanced unarmed attack! In a short time jack disposed of the striped lizard and deactivated his mana claws.

Jack: ‘Hehe. A bit of slow, shows these striped lizards who is the boss. This means that I won’t need to pump too many stat points into agility if I level up my Entropic Leech! I should keep it on all the time while I am in this dungeon.’

Jack: ‘it will probably be a waste turning it off, and regenerating 500PP just to lose it again on activating this. My offense potential is slightly lowered due to the -5% magic attack, but that is more than acceptable!’

Jack: ‘Now I guess I should slaughter more of these lizards and find some of their eggs. I wonder how a hard boiled lizard egg tastes. It probably won’t be as awesome as that big brown crow… I will find out soon enough anyway.’

Resolving to use this combo of Entropic leech and Force Claws, and try out newer disgusting monster dishes, Jack proceeded deeper in the second level of the infested caves.

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A/N: I will probably be able to squeeze out another chapter the coming weekend, unless some RL stuff comes up.

And how did you penguins like Entropic Leech? Mana claw was suggested to me in a PM, and I found a way to integrate it into the story! Hope you penguins enjoyed this chapter!

Please do rate and provide feedback!

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