c86: Pthumerian End
8/2/26
Sorries Pookies. I got held up with something that took me past midnight to get home on and finally publish this. Thats my fault and I take ownership of my lazy flaw when I could have done this alot earlier in the day. Ive saved up a few chapters by this point and I feel my motivation rejuvenated so I should have any trouble restarting my 3/day cycle of chapters again. We are speeding up quite a bit in the story. Stay on your toes.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"And you're sure it's this way?" I ask the two subsystems as they guide me with yellow markers towards the brain of Mensis. I've returned to the giant room just below the 2nd area, aka the first upper layer where you fight Nicolash. It's just past the room with the first shortcut back to the lamp that is the mini hub area of all shortcuts.
The room is massive with visceral cracks spread out everywhere, the only things here are a few bookshelves that haven't fallen into the abyss below while the enemies here were the mergo servants and chief servants, aka the metal kids and the fat overlords.
Now I find myself in the middle of the room standing before a lift that most certainly was not here until after I dropped the brain. I remember when I was sensing around with my air bubbles for nicolash that I noticed it at first and found it interesting of where it came from but was busy with more important things.
Like my new telepathy skill which got immediately subsumed by my cosmology which immediately made the skill enter its maxed state which allows me to mentally connect to multiple 'beings' and commune with them as if speaking a common language since the brain auto translates for us both. While the link is active, I can keep hearing the target's thoughts while they remain unaware but this includes all thoughts, even the most random ones.
I could also send images and vast pockets of information which comes at the cost of my own insight which feels like a debuff but also that is totally an eldritch skill of communion between a 'mortal' and 'god'.
As for my current predicament in going down the lift to the abyss. It started when I just got done mastering the telepathy skill and Nicolash had his eyeballs pop out of his asphyxiated head so I had to finish him off before he died a normal death. I not only didn't get a vast amount of echoes for destroying his pathetic soul but the quest bugged out as all i get from the main system is:
[?????????
?????
??????
????????
???
?????]
Cute, right? Well since im softlocked in the system questline, I chose to return to my current strange obsession with the dungeon which led me to audibly ask.
"Now how do I get the Living String when I dropped the 500lb sack of shit brain down into the abyss." Naturally my first instinct was to try returning to the dream in hopes that I could get it from the messengers now but the skill refinery system pitched in.
[Living string is not available until the Brain of Mensis is properly finished off]
"You mean it's still not dead? Then how do I get to it?" I ask and the pet system pitches in this time.
[First make your way back to the shortcut area and…] The Pet system is interrupted by the SRsS (skill refinery sub-system).
[I'll mark it on your map.] it simply pops up in front of its sister system.
"My what? Uh" I question with confusion on my face before my eyes itch for some reason and after blinking a few times. I find yellow arrow markers guiding me the whole way to the big room with the lifts and crevices. I take the elevator down to the abyss where the brain supposedly is. I would be very unhappy if I randomly die at this point or get an out of bounds message but surprisingly I don't.
I certainly don't remember doing any of this so why do I feel the need to go further into the dungeons that I should know nothing about?
Duuuu, clunk.
I hear the chains rattle a bit as I can tell that i've stopped moving. The abyss truly surrounds me now but with the expansion of my wind bubble, I find the Brain of Mensis, long corrupted by my chaos powers and in agony of it's current state.
I step up to it and take out my cleaver, about to put it out its misery as it serves no other purpose. I can't even sense a soul in it which means that the dream was all it had ever known and that is how it shall end for choosing to betray the bit of goodwill I gave it.
[Wait] the pet system interrupts me mid swing and I retract the blade since I have no reason to doubt the sub systems.
[There is a Caryll Rune that the Brain of Mensis can provide you via gesture.]
"Oh? Which rune is so important to me at this point?"
[T3 Moon Rune]
"Hmm, yea that'll do it. I'm greedy as heck. What is the gesture?" I nod in acceptance and ask it.
[A fee is required to obtain the rune without acquiring it yourself.]
"Ohhh, and what is your fee little one?" I ask as I'm actually curious.
'If it's too much of a hassle to get the gesture the normal way or through the fee then I'll just kill it. A simple 30% boost won't be the end of the world, especially since I still have a ton of Echoes in savings, it's only 5m but that's still a crap ton.' I think to myself as I ponder my thoughts on the possibilities of the fee when the pop up shows up.
[Subsystem quest offered: Complete the full Rune of Aberration tutorial. Accept?: yes No ]
"..."
"Thats cute." I tap accept as the pet system informs me of the Make Contact gesture which requires my hands in specific positions. I prepare to line up before the Brain of Mensis when the SRsS makes it's reappearance.
[Can't you just use your new telepathy on the chaos Brain to get the rune rather than using the gesture. It might even have other hard to obtain runes due to the state of Nicolash]
I drop my hands as I look into the sky from the bottom of the abyss. It takes me a solid few minutes before I look back down and simply retort.
"This is why I like the refinery better"
[teehee. AAAHHH help] the skill refinery pops up in acceptance of the compliment before I feel a small loss of connection with it, not a total cut but more like it was knocked unconscious by a vindictive sibling. I chuckle to myself a bit before using telepathy as suggested.
I got myself that t3 moon rune which I carve onto my flesh with the rest and then the t3 deep sea rune for frenzy resistance, the t3 eye rune (normally with the isz root chalice) and a few others like Oedon Writhe[1]. Lake (+7% phys reduction), Guidance (30% rally potential), and heir (+60% visceral attack kills echoes).
With all these runes and the ones I've already had, I finally slay the Brain of Mensis and collect the living string before carving on the rest. I do get a stronger Caryll curse for carving myself up so much but it's 'eh' at this point.
With everything done for now. I use the bold hunters mark to return to the lamp and then return to the dream. As I do, something flashes in the corner of my eyes but I struggle to see it for some reason as I get a headache at that moment.
[T3 knowledge has leveled up. Level 2-> level 3]
Shaking the headache off, I make my triumphant return to see Doll again as I spend some time with her and Cherry who told us that she had been having some headaches lately and complains about the taste of the sedatives we keep feeding her. I reassure her that everything will be over soon enough. The night will end after not much longer.
With all that said and done, Cherry huddles into Dolls embrace again, taking a nap as Doll tells me that they sang and danced earlier. I complained that I couldn't see it as I was interrogating a literal exposed brain covered in eyeballs.
Regardless, I finally have everything ready and set up the Chalice ritual For the Great Pthumeru Ihyll Chalice. It takes some time as the ritual is quite intense with the lights of blood flowing through the air.
I arrive in the chamber of the seal, aka the basic spawn room that all the dungeons thus far had in common. Though this one is predominantly more in common with the first Pthumeru chalice with it's basic design with only the tree roots seeping deep through the ground and stone being its most reasonable change.
There is a side path immediately on my left which I open up with an earth pillar jutting up but sense nothing of value within as there are only a small handful (4) enemies within with only throwing knives inside that my loot magnet skill collects for me.
I carry on to the lamp and then open up the next door and I pause.
"Damn, if I was still human that would have scared the shit out of me. Congrats you can aura farm, fatass. "I clap to congratulate the fat watchman standing in the middle of a big room with 6 pillars with unlit torches and statues around them. The watchman was standing still in the middle back of the room, facing any explorer from when they entered.
My clapping attracts the fat man who I give an honorable death but slicing it directly in half with the moonlight greatsword.
The rest of the floor was fairly disappointing with the exception of the wraith lady[2] that can teleport. I trapped her in a chaos bubble like I did Nicolash until she was crushed to death.
Another fatman was guarding the switch and I used a mark to return to the lamp even though I only moved through one or two rooms and still affected things another 5 or 6 rooms away. Pretty proud of my rise in power up to this point.
Opening the path up to the boss, I do find another side path, I find this one is filled with various loot: coldblood, bullets, vials, a few lower grade. Though I do find that the watchman guarding the chest drops a ritual blood 5 along with 2 more of said blood in the chest. Of course they are unharmed as I just now learn that the current level of loot magnet allows me to 'steal' things from living beings but I need to concentrate on it.
Without further ado, the boss of this first level is a Pthumerian Descendent. I met one of these in the early chalice dungeons, it was pretty tough, but certainly much stronger than the elder who was pretty much a joke at that point. I wonder if this one has anything new for me.
Barely stepping through the door, I find the descendent jumps forward twice and his blade is already in my face.
"Ohooo, you're a quick one arentcha?" I comment as I grab it's wrist before punching it in the face. I see it's health bar barely drop. I get a tingle in my hands, a grin crosses my face as I state.
"Fast and tough, that's good. I like my playthings, extra durable." I turn on the Lunar Moon to ensure everything I'm experiencing is not an illusion of some sort.
From there I begin the beatdown. Though not before disarming him completely. Fist to fist like proper gentlemen.
My right fist met him in the clavicle, I feel his chest ebb in a strange way as his punch from the left arm strikes with a force greater than mine when I did not initially sense that level of power.
I bend my waist backward and transition into a back-wheel kick to his neck that the Descendent crouches under before hopping back out of range.
I regain my stance as we walk towards one another as he throws the first strike by attempting to claw at me with his long vampiric nails. I block his arm with a sideways block before sliding my arm around the descendents arm to lock him in place before I pirouette along the locked arms to flip the both of us.
I land on my feet but the same cant be said of the descendent who I use the locked arm to slam him into the ground, my arm had disengaged at the last moment to ensure I didn't harm myself with that maneuver. I use my other hand to grab my enemies head and slam him down against the ground again before using my right to punch down hard with my two skills, Power Boost and Greater Rage , to slam down hard in an attempt to shatter the descendents skull.
Unfortunately I missed, but not completely as he shifted his head just a smidge so that I only nicked him with the knuckle of my Index Finger. His health chunked but the off course strike shattered the ground which loosened up my grip on his head, allowing him to escape from out under me as he flip kicked me in the chest to knock me back.
The strike hurt a lot less than his first counter, I can only assume there is some sort of prerequisite for him to be empowered by my attacks. Not that it really matters since with Greater Rage active, my own movements keep up with his and even surpass them as I land a series of blows to him. One of his left shoulder with my right hand. The second to his belly.
Then the last to his knee which hit him as he hoped to strike me with a powerful counter from what I could sense. Yet instead my Riposte Strike triggered and he fell to his knees in a daze as all strength left him momentarily.
I get into a horse stance equal to the kneeling Pthumerian as I condense my mana into my fist, a prototype technique to strengthen my body with my own mana like so many close combat anime characters do. Gon, Jujutsu kaisen Sorcerers and countless more reinforce their bodies like this so I figured I could too. With PowerBoost reactivated. I strike out.
BAM
The strike connects properly as the Pthumerian Descendent flies away, shattering pillar after pillar until he collapses against the side wall, there are only 2 pillars left on one side of the room with the other side still being normal.
The descend stumbles to his feet as he uses his hand to support himself into a crouch at the very least. I notice that even with all that power flowing through me. I only dealt with about a third of his health. A grin crosses my face as this is the first proper enemy that I couldn't outright overpower with all of my abilities. A face-tank to be exact is what this guy has become. No strange gimmicks, no random power to counter my own. Just pure physical power and the ability to utilize my own against me.
I just realized that this is just Meliodas from Seven Deadly Sins. It feels weird to come to that premise, though I'm not against it as he is still a 'beast' either way.
The fight continues as I refine my bare handed fighting techniques and better manage my own body to refine my mana strengthening technique against a worthy foe.
It takes about half an hour later for the Descendent to fall to his knees before his eyes roll back and he falls over completely. Not a single part of his body was spared from my onslaught. Other than the first few attacks where he showed the level of his reflexes and powers, He was only able to hit me once when I got overconfident with properly creating Mana strengthening as a skill within the skill refinery.
I get blood chunks and a Tempering blood gemstone for my efforts, but the system certainly is stingy as it didn't provide me any rewards. Granted I did take far longer than I ever did with all the previous dungeons combined but it's fine, totally fine.
If it wants to act so dumb against me and just ignore me, then I'll just upgrade my new Mana Strengthening up two tiers as it started out as T4 and so I'm bringing it up to T6 which sets it to MAX. Tee hee.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Word Count = 2926
[1] The Oedon Writhe makes it so that visceral attacks grant the user quicksilver bullets. The first tier is obtained by killing Adella the nun in all three known locations. The second from Iosefka before beating Rom. the third is from the Ihyll root chalice (very unlikely).
[2] Fun fact, while playing out this section, I had accidentally kicked the wraith off to the lower floor since it was one of those 2 floor sections connected by a ladder to climb up from. But yea, I knocked her off and instead of being smart and teleporting back up or something , it climbed the ladder like a schmuck.
discord channel still has the next chapter preview like usual: https://discord.gg/rE6gtg28XH
Patreon.com/Xanok to find me.