C49: I'm Legal bitch
I regret to inform you all that I will be taking a week long break to stockpile on some more chapters as ive been too lazy recently.
Barely maintaining a 2-3 chapter barrier between patreon and WN & spacebattles (yes this book is being published on that book forum too. keeping even with WN).
I may also try to do something new and potentially start working on another FF for Monster Hunter but no promises on that as it might involve ai then edited by me to retain my writing style. Do let me know your thoughts on such a thing. The premise is that the ai edited work shouldnt take me as long to do and thus allowing me to balance that book with this one but ill sacrifice the publishing time for that book if it interferes with this one as its my main book.
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Arriving back at Oedon Chapel. I'm greeted by a system message.
[Due to the hosts escape, level 25 Cleric Beast's-Lightless Night has switched to Free Roam. Be wary, the beast may hunt you]
"Oh what a dear it would be if that were so." I comment about how it's unlikely to hunt me as I get a strange feeling like it would remember me but im not sure how. Thankfully the system answers this with its next prompt.
[Due to soul shock, the boss, Cleric Beast has regained a portion of it's humanity. Merging human intellect with the power of a beast. It has naturally obtained the trait Intelligent Beast and thus it's level has risen to 30 to account for this change.]
"Oh, that's the skill Amelia had, merging human intellect with beast-like power. I'm sure there are plenty of nerds in my past life that try to embody this by not showering. Call it aura-farming." I shake my head in ridicule as I've already killed one beast with this skill, another won't make a difference.
I wave my hand at everyone I know before just staring at the nun who had told me before that her name was Adella. She had offered her blood to me same as iosefka and Arianna had offered me. Other than the vial which Iosefka had already drawn and given to me. Which I still haven't used, I now find myself staring at her. A blank expression on my face.
She originally does not notice my presence but as if on retinue. She takes in her surroundings and finally spots me. She originally curtsy' in greeting before realizing I'm just staring at her. She seems to panic a bit as if believing she did something wrong but when I do nothing else, neither speaking nor approaching her.
She instead turns shy as a notable blush creeps up on her. She loosens some of her brown straight hair from her cloth, fiddling with it a bit as she takes glances at me. Her blush only growing stronger the longer I stared. Yet the opposite what true of my situation. My right arm would tremble from time to time as my left hand has to grab it around the waist to prevent myself from pointing my gun and immediately shooting her.
Like a man possessed, I struggle against my own arm until I just storm off to the side with the well and begin to kick a bunch of things to vent my frustration. My random frustration continued until a ball of energy forms in the hand of the amygdala attached to the rooftop of the houses.
I soon found myself bound by the energy and locked within the grasp of the eldritch creature here.
It lifts me up as if to get a better look at me but in this brief time. Me combining my skills and chaos step to kick the hand allows me to loosen the grip on it's energy hold that is binding my upper body.
The creature tilts it's head as if surprised by the situation until it's surprise ends as it meets the barrel of my gun.
BANG CRUWL
I fire, it crushes me. Good times overall. Soon enough I hear a vivid voice ringing in my ears
"Curse the fiends, their children too…and their children, forever, true." A pain courses through me and I see the system message before fog takes over me.
[COK: 99.9%-> 100%]
'Awe shit' is my last thought and I vanish from where I was.
I soon wake up in Oedon chapel yet I have a strange feeling of Deja Vu. the closed off entrance from Gascoigne's arena. The side paths are also blocked or broken with rubble or just locked. Even the lamp is already lit here.
I press forward and step outside to see the distorted environment that leads me only to the right side. There is the main staircase with a lone hunter standing at the top, simply standing there in a daze. And thus I enter my own.
The trembling of my right arm doesn't stop as my rage only flows greater, my desire to rip someones throat out for no reason is catacalysmically high at the present moment.
"System" i murmur with a grit to my teeth, my anger simmering as the back of my trembling right hand touches my neck, a neck that had previously been chainsaw severed due to a rogue hunters manic attacks which killed me.
[Congrats on Completing the secondary main quest: Find and Enter the Hunters Nightmare. You may now receive the rewards: 1: 10k Blood Echeos]
"System" I murmur with more guttural force and while I get another response, I pay it absolutely no mind as I dash forward consecutively before drop kicking the 'old hunter'.
He went tumbling backwards before I flipped over with a deft usage of my wrist strength before landing on my feet when I dash forwards again and use the cleaver to slice and dice the hunter until he dies. Yet I do not stop there as i take out my hunters axe.
Yes, MY hunters axe, not gascoignes. It finally returns to my hands, my hot steaming hands clasp the cold wood and buckled steel which I use for extra grip support to chop down at the hunter. The axe remains coated into a sluggish dull blue aura that quickly covers me as I only fall into a greater rage. Splattering its blood all over the walls and when its corpse finally vanishes do I let out all my accumulated frustration.
[System primary function activated: Resisting Curse of Kosm to protect the host. COK" 100% -> 150%. Half corruption effect of Cursed Hunters Axe noted. Analyzing corruption to assist the Host in regaining mental control.]
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH" My scream goes unanswered as perhaps others would consider it as another helpless hunter being slaughtered for fun.
A pervasive silence befalls the land as I slump down on my ass. My vision fully clouded in red as if wearing special lenses. Unfortunately it's mostly working as I only feel the further urge to slaughter and mindlessly kill.
Then it hits me, like a cool wind blowing down my back, I feel calmer for a few moments as with the same trembling hand. I take out a few bottles of mutagen which I pour down my gullet one after another until I realize that my curse can't drop below 40% anymore. The red tint disappeared after dropping below 100% but even then I still felt my emotions highly agitated and only once I dropped below 75% that even that finally faded away.
"Haaaa" After downing 9 bottles of mutagen essence do I finally breathe a sigh of relief. It's not that Im still not angry at the Cleric beast but as I am now, I might consider granting it the sweet mercy of death…after I torture it a few more times. But it's not to the point where I would inelegantly torture it. Just some water boarding or that crazed drop thingajig where a single droplet falls at random times, creating mental pressure on the stupid beasts equally retarded mind. Not just chopping away at random limbs to inflict physical pain. It can get used to that afterall similar to my pain resistance.
"Alright, let's go over what I know" I think to the beast and remember that I need a long discussion with my father about my sister. Second order of business is the system….it saved me, i think, im looking through the logs and thats what it's saying but it makes no mention of why the curse is stuck at 40%. I don't quite get about the whole 'main purpose' thing either.
Was it not supposed to give me all my stats and skills but just keep me relatively sane until I could complete my duty? Whatever, I can worry about that later.
Then there was the secondary main quest which I had ignored before.
[Secondary main Quest: Discover the Mystery of the Hunters Nightmare.
Section one: Step 1: Progress through Yharnam to reach the Cursed Church Paladin Ludwig
Step 2: Slay the Cursed Church Paladin Ludwig
Step 3: Reach ??? to receive the first reward.
Rewards:
1: 100k echoes
2: 50k shades essence
3: Epic skill rune- Moonlit Light
4: Unlock Section 2 questline]
"Cool beans. Nice and simple but i think im gonna delay this for a while as I really wanna get the rest of the things out of the way before I actually do the dlc area. I feel it's gonna be very important" I rub my chest where my heart is as I averred my will, a slight pulse in my chest which I had momentarily felt speed up since I had properly entered the nightmare as compared to before.
[Cursed Hunters Axe: curse- Weapon is arealocked to the Hunters nightmare. Any attempts to use it outside shall bring the user the Hunter's nightmare. Constant contact with the weapon will gradually increase the effect of the curse on the user.]
Another thing I noticed that is now newly discovered is the weapon description of my hunters axe. For now I stow it away to reduce its effect on me before I see red again. I slowly get up, quite mentally exhausted through the whole ordeal before I get to the lantern and have the cuties take me back.
I begin to make my way back to the lamp in the chapel before using it to return to the dream. When I arrive there, I get a new message from the system about my curse title.
[Compatability detected between recent 100% and Nox-Hunter Physique. Users Minimum curse counter set at 30% but rises to 40% inside the nightmare. On the other hand, user has gained permanent usage of beasthood comparable to a constant activation of Beast Blood pellet. Pellets now grant higher beasthood charge upon consumption.]
[Warning: The higher the beasthood charge, and the longer remains at such a level, the more corruption host may be inflicted with]
"Hmm, if i remember correctly, the beasthood stuff with the pellet worked to give a unique gauge that goes up the more you quickly attack an enemy. Which in turn increases my damage as the gauge rises. So the risk on me is smaller if I deal singular heavy blows and then wait a bit before attacking again. Conversely, If I gather up a bunch of mutagen vials, I can just chug those down if I get higher but I should set some sort of limit on myself to not lose myself to anger."
I come up with a few theories but ill only be able to properly know how bad it is by actually testing it. As such, I use the tombstone to head to Oedon chapel and I seek out the church servant and kidnapper along the shortcut path with the giant staircase.
I slash the servant and find a gauge appearing out in the corner of my eyes. It slowly rises a bit due to my repeated attacks but it's only strong enough to survive two hits so it quickly goes down. The kidnapper is more durable but in the brief window between them.
I do see the gauge going down. Pretty quickly actually. So that's nice. But I should probably avoid getting any sort of beast rune as that may lock it to a higher level which would be good for damage but not for my mind.
Satisfied with my tests and the fact that im not rising in curse just from hitting a few normal enemies. I finally return to the dream to properly deal with my excess of echoes from clearing the majority of central Yharnam which combined with my leftover 600k echoes (220k + 396k from soul shattering in cathedral ward) for a grand total of 658k. Very anticlimactic but that only goes to show how cheap the lives there were even when I slayed effectively everyone. My greatest gains were from the single executioner near the now burnt clinic, the select few huntsman minions (the brutes) and the scourge beasts on the bridge, crows and dogs were just extra chump change if I encountered them.
With that same amount of effort, I could probably take down all of the cathedral ward and make far more with greater ease since just four church servants permanently killed would give me the same as all the huntsmen in central Yharnam. With the exception of the handful of giants I could realistically parry everything for much greater gain.
Yet I don't since I'm not in a rush for more money and maybe conjuring the blood moon would sprout more echoes from all enemies. That should be the case but it might also not be from a few select locations like it's unlikely for central Yharnam to mutate with the few beings left in it.
For now i sit down next to the lamp and return to the dream. I walk past the sleeping doll and into the house where i find the old man resting here rather than the gardens like before.
"What the fuck is up old man. I got a bone to pick with you"
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Word Count = 2372