C67: Chalices speedrun Challenge (4)
One of the last in a while.
5/7/26
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The second floor of Ailing Loran was quite long as it immediately leads into a small room with a ladder leading down into an underground passage akin to sewers, there is the rolling sludge creature at the very bottom of the immediate area along with two side by side rooms filled with giant rats with pulsating bubbles of exposed flesh on their backs.
Naturally I killed them before realizing that I had to take the second ladder I unknowingly passed by since the airflow between the sewer coated walls and the ladder was very miniscule. Besides, killing the large hordes of rats gave me plenty of time so I'm not complaining. Jumping up said ladder, I crossed a bridge with no enemies on it and a door on the other side. This made me very sad since there was nothing to kill and but since I killed those rats, I was still a one second net positive on my starting time.
At the end of the path, I'm led to a large room that is primarily just steps leading up. There is quite a few beast patients here which I selectively slaughter the original creatures as what has been made unmentioned was that the duplicated enemies glow red. Making them stand out quite a bit, though ill still use magic to kill them at least to reduce any chance they could hinder me later in any way, shape or form.
In doing so, I get up to the middle level of this big stairwell room, I could progress further up but I'm getting better at sensing with this technique and thus realize that at the very end of this middle lined path, lies the lever to open the boss door.
Naturally this means I take the center path, leading to a few rooms before finding a small room with a raging sage standing before the lever and a gravedigger with a gun. I use shadows to kill the gunman before dashing in to kill the sage with overkill strats. I then switched the lever before dashing back rather than teleporting back as the time cost was more pricey, afterall, one second is one second.
Reaching the door leading to the boss, I'm surprised by the system message.
[Time momentarily stopped. Random floor chalice miniboss selected: Chime Maiden. Multiple enemy challenge mode has doubled the mini-boss]
Finishing the message and opening the door, I find two chime maidens but much bigger. They ring their bells and actually summon two enemies each. The left one is the copy boss yet surprisingly the summons it brings don't have the glow. As such I test if killing the summons also gives me extra time.
I'm satisfied to find that is how it works. Though I am a bit annoyed that I have to use two skills to kill the summons. As such I created a strategy of summoning my own shadows to stab into the butts of the giant spiders which hung them out to dry before moving behind them to slash them apart. Alternatively, I take out my torch and manipulate the flame to burn them from a distance.
While they are spirit creatures, they still are affected by basic stats related to real giant spiders, that means that they can burn to ash. Doing this allows me to farm the time while occasionally burning or freezing the chime maidens to damage them bit by bit.
I soon accumulate a whole minute through farming the giant spiders as well as finally finishing off the minibosses. Doing so dropped a gray key that I pick up and stab into the open door to the boss which had a fog gate.
Stepping through it wastes another second which I know had a bit more than a minute since the miniboss itself gives an additional 5 seconds for beating it. Stepping through, I lay eyes on the boss and find that it too is doubled yet as I see it's healthbar is a single one compared to the miniboss which had two.
I can only assume that damaging either boss, original and clone, would damage the singular healthbar, similar to the original witches of hemwick. Not mine since I screwed that up.
The boss themselves is the Keeper of the Old Lords. Naturally, I had no issue with this as they are weak. Even in base game, I took no issue with them unless they caught me in their fire but that was so rare and required me to go full dumbass and super greedy in attacking.
In my current state, I instead trap them in place by using ice on their legs and shadows on their arms. While they could summon some basic fire to dispel the shadows, they typically use special movements to summon the flames and then coat their swords which they then use to shoot out the flames themselves.
As I have the ice spread to their waist, they finally remember to use fire to shake off the shadowy darkness restricting their hands but by that point it's already too late. I rend their sword hand off, specifically their right arms, though the clones has it in their left hand. I realize that my idea was right with the shared health pool. Perhaps other bosses will be able to make use of this better but these are indeed too weak.
It doesnt take long before I finish them off and collect my rewards. There is greater diversity in these as I get frenzied coldblood, Ritual blood (4) & (5) , the beast claw and a few bolt damp bloodgems. Most interesting is the cold blood flower bulb . "Pale vegetation that commonly grows on cold-blood in a place long abandoned, said to mature slowly in close proximity to death, and eventually bloom. "
"That sounds ominous but these are chalice dungeons. I believe I had stumbled upon a video long ago that talked about the Pthumerian society and how these are the crypts of their long dead. Though, in my opinion either their corpses got infected or these beasts and whatnot im currently fighting are followers of the various old ones or Yharmanites that got infected and turned into these beasts.
As for the loot from the boss itself, It's the Ailing Loran Root chalice, a blood chunk and a warm damp bloodgem (5). Now grade 5 bloodgems are still pretty new to me but from when i checked last time the gems, I found that it wasn't even compatible with my weapons, forcing me to adjust all of them to be droplet based before then finding out that it was focused on boosting bolt damage and thus lowering my impression of these gems unless their A. Cursed, or B. A default Tempering gemstone.
Since both situations are rare in the current situation. I am no longer as excited about any gems except to maybe sell them off to the messengers but even then, thats a waste since they are so common now in the dungeons.
Stepping down to the third floor, Im presented with new questline again and rush forward, passing by the side room before getting past the lamp and there is paths in all directions. Front and to the right are both open while left is blocking the way to the boss.
I firstly take out the three beast patients in this room, one of which was hidden inside a sideways oriented wooden coffin that exploded into dust once I got close and it busted out.
I was then surprised to find a horde of spiders coming at me from the center path. I strung them all up with shadow spikes and took care of them all before finding four chime maidens in that room, two original and two copied walking side by side together, constantly spawning new creatures to send at me. This netted me a HuGe chunk of time as I continued on this path which led me to a pretty open room that feels like an egyptian ritual room with sand and pots on the lower level along with a labyrinth sage while two lizard wizards hung around on the top. Taking care of the magicians, I opened the next door to a long and wide tunnel path with a sage at the end, guarding the switch.
I simply used my speed to get around the sage's back with it none the wiser. Hitting it's back with a heavy strike, I get the easy riposte and since it was the only enemy in this room, I net me extra time even though it's copy was certainly still alive and very much so mad but I just flung the lever on while my fire burned the sage 'alive'.
Rushing backwards, I jumped down to where the other random sage and a few pale men were resting before using that pathway to come out from the right side path which I had realized earlier both led to the same place, just on different floors.
I flung open the gates to the boss as the system spawns in the miniboss.
[Randomly selecting chalice enemy to be designated. Selection complete: Watchman designated as minboss, doubling miniboss.]
[Disease proc activated]
The fat overweight men were given the McDonalds supersize serum as even Wyzen from Asuras Wrath in his super planetary form would take up less space than these fat tubs of lard. I'm forced to take out the clone first before they are even able to move at all. Otherwise they would completely trap me against the wall for their attacks.
"Hwaaa?" I ask in confusion as I finally process the second notice about some sort of disease proc which I see but I don't see my health going down. But something else is certainly rising and it's not the shield hero.
[Curse of Kosm (COK): 40% ->42%]
Cough Cough "Oh shit, it's the beast disease. Ashen blood disease or something." I curse as the information combination of my hunter life and gamer life merge to guess the name as I chug down an antidote while the clone of the two minibosses makes their jiggly way towards me. Thankfully the antidote resets the effect and it is ticking up again but it's super slowly, I guess that's why it is only fully proc'ced now rather than earlier. Since It's far slower than even slow poison works at draining my health.
Since i was doing the speedrun challenge, it had never gotten a chance to activate but it did now, thankfully it was taken care of easily enough.
I take out Null and rend their flesh apart, their pitiful clothing torn apart by the moving serrated blades. The echoes and shockwaves further jammed my blade in there as the clone is torn in half from a single but continuous attack. The original was smart enough to put it's weapon in front of it as I swung.
This caused me to lose some forward momentum in my swing as my blade simply got lodged in its belly. Bits of flesh also got lodged in the weapons' way, causing the serrated great sword to become stuck. Clicking the button has little effect except to shock the boss a bit.
It has a gross smug smile that quickly morphs into pain as I click the button again for another shock as it pulls out its gun to my head and shoots. I'm able to use my arm to redirect the gun a bit but it still hits the side of my head, knocking off my hat along with parts of my head. Before, akin to a mirage, I'm all fine and dandy with my hat back on my head.
I lost nearly half my health in that one shot and can still feel the phantom pain of my right ear blown off. In fact, that pain extended throughout my whole head as my current racial traits make me super sensitive to everything, including pain. My own consolation prize is that I have slightly more control over my nerves than a regular human and thus can momentarily suppress my pain.
Of course this is only suppression so it's still there but I simply disconnected the sensation before the natural order of my body resets to make it flare up again. I do this so that I don't have to actually feel the pain while my pain resistance skill continues to get experience. This clearly works as otherwise I wouldn't be getting this message.
[(Junkie) Physical Pain Resistance has leveled up. level 5-> Level 7…level 8]
I'm certainly not against the free exp but for now, I despawn my sword and take out my saw cleaver to butcher this fat piece of shit for shooting me in the head.
I then go for its arms and legs before confiscating the giant flintlock pistole. I then go ahead and gut the fat bastard before I realize that im wasting time on a useless bitch and decapitate them. Collecting the key, I push it into the fog door and pass through it right after.
Opposite of my are two Abhorrent beasts, based on their smells, they are likely the same creature as the beggar from forbidden woods. I also feel like I've had this thought before but either the previous one was too weak or I'm tripping on shrooms again. Granted, I've never been high before.
I start off by freezing their legs with shadows and ice. When they try to slam their claws on the ground to burst out of the ice. I can use the shadows as protection as well as steal some of the ravaging wind into a ball for me to hold. I repeat this three more times to further train all my elements until I finally have it.
"Rasengan" I mutter to myself as the multi layered ball of raging wind is contained to just my hand. I then SoP forward and slam it into the chest of the main beast while it's clone had it's arms wide in it's multiple attempts to claw out of the ice and shadows binding it's legs. It's posture makes it spread it's arms wide before attacking.
My timing was in the same moments it arms were wide and thus my 'rasengan' got to tear off it's arm before hitting hte main in the chest with the rest. It had lost one layer cutting off said arm but what im most surprised by is the fact that I didn't immediately dig through the chest of the boss.
While the bones of beasts are quite a bit weaker, that is primarily when they are recently changed. These beasts had been down here for a long long time and thus had perfectly mutated to their current state, thus making them so strong, that or the system is cheating on me again by making the bosses stronger than normal.
While the ribs retained it's ability to protect the beasts organs, that doesnt mean those organs are safe. Using my saw cleaver to slice open the belly. I get my hands on it's intestines which I rip or burn away with my fire and win before plunging my hand into its heart the old fashioned way.
The knockoff Visceral attack kills off the beastly boss before I move onto its clone, while it is dying, I can still train by dealing superficial damage to it using my wind manipulation to get a better handle on it in hopes I can better control a storm.
[Cosmology has leveled up: level 4-Level 5]
"Very nice" I grunt out as I feel a bit tired now after having half my head nearly blown off. At the very least I sit down to process all my gains from this floor as I get the gold trophy for this floor, which seems to also be the last floor of the Ailing Loran chalice.
The rewards include frenzy coldblood, blooming coldblood flowers like last floor. More ritual blood 5 and tomb mold 4. A few various bloodgems like fire damp, dirty damp and tempering damp bloodgems. Though the most important is four Bastards of Loran which to me looks like red jelly but if it was completely dehydrated. Aka a pale while baby on the verge of turning into ash from dehydration.
It's disgusting either way and the less I touch them the better. As for the reason I knew this was the last floor is because I got the Lower Loran chalice, my first grade 6 bloodgem, a bold damp bloodgem, whatever bold means.
"For now though, I'll return to the dream to see what I should be going next."
I return to the dream and find that I cant even enter Lower Loran since Im missing out on a bunch of ritual blood 5 and I unlike last time with the flower to enter the regular ailing loran. It's not an option to buy from messengers for insight. Though with my current set up, I can enter the Defiled chalice though I am feeling kind of bored of the same exact rooms over and over again. The rewards sure are nice for the challenges but it's still so repetitive and easy.
For now though, I set up the chalice ritual for the 'Sinister and Defiled' Chalice with 9 of my 15 ritual blood 4, 2 of 2 bastards of loran and since I had randomly burned down some of my excess tomb mold, I used 22 of my 99 arcane haze and 5.5k blood echoes. With the ritual set up, I go spend some time with the Doll. Using up my skill shards on select skills to prepare for what I will do next.
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