The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 323

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Ronan was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a thousand dissolving Orken corpses. The largest of them lay beside him, or at least the remnants of it did. A single punch had been enough to kill the mini-boss despite the fact it was a level 350 monster. Ronan had such high hopes for the mini-boss fight, but to be disappointed yet again by his opponent being too weak and dying in one punch made him feel like his favourite bald superhero. Despite that, he wasn’t going to give up purely because of frustration. He had a higher wall to surpass, after all, in the form of that weird man who nearly kidnapped him.

So Ronan allocated his stat points and chose the next evolution to his Enlightened Barbarian class, which brought it to a mythical rarity. That was powerful, but still far from the world-breaking strength of the Celestial Gambler of Fate. Even so, he was enjoying it far more. Sometimes being too lucky was seriously boring. Except when it comes to getting loot. I’ll never complain about getting rewarded too well for completing stuff.

The timer ran down to stage 4, but Ronan couldn’t bring himself to be hopeful. Even though the enemies in the next stage would be significantly more powerful than the mini-boss, he didn’t want to expect a real challenge just in case he was disappointed again by a weak monster. When he was yanked through the shifting void he could only sigh. As his feet touched the ground, he immediately was on guard and looked around, only to realise he was no longer in London. The environment for the fourth stage had been changed from the city to a hilly plain covered in black grass. He had no clue where he was.

However, there were thousands upon thousands of Orken lining the hills. Ronan was surrounded with no way out except to punch his way through the ugly bastards. He only hoped that a few of them might prove to be more than mere roadblocks to his path. Luckily this stage was guaranteed to at least have a few mini-bosses and maybe even a boss monster.

Ronan stood over the corpses of two defeated mini-boss Orkens with a deep frown etched into his face. The lines that spread from the corners of his lips made it seem as though the expression had been permanently etched into his face. The reason for his disappointment was that even the pair of level 400 mini-bosses had been barely more than a challenge for him to take down. Even though he allowed them both to hit him five times before even dealing a single punch in retaliation, they barely chipped away at his enormous pool of health points. The powers of the Chronos Clan are just ridiculous. At this rate there will be nothing left in the tutorials that can pose a threat to me. Let alone the tutorials, I can probably conquer New Earth if I go through the after-tutorial sequence…

He decided not to let his newfound prowess get to his head too much, given that he still had yet to experience the full sequence of events that followed completing the tutorials. Even for the normal difficulty tutorial, Ronan had only entered the second phase of the integration before being defeated—though he reckoned that if he tried it again as he was, he would progress a lot further before finding any opponents that would stop him.

However, what he was even more curious about was what would happen after he completed the nightmare difficulty tutorial. Would it be another round of the Path of the Gladiator, or was there an even more difficult task ahead. Whatever the case, the harder the challenge the system throws at me, the better the rewards. I’m looking forward to it.

At that moment he heard a loud belch followed by laughter. The ground shook as though an earthquake had started, and shortly after the world was plunged into darkness. Given that Ronan could still see the sun shining on the hills around him, he realised what had happened. He turned his gaze upwards and saw a grinning Orken, larger than any of those he had slain thus far.

“You managed to kill those two idiots? You must be strong then. I can’t wait to taste your flesh. Strong warriors always taste good grilled over a fire.”

The voice was gravelly and deep, but Ronan couldn’t help laughing inwardly at the cringy lines it was delivering. While he was shocked at hearing a monster in the tutorial talk to him, it wasn’t the first time he had encountered a monster with intelligence. Even the boss fox in the post-tutorial London could communicate with telepathy, so it stood to reason that a boss monster almost 300 levels higher than Veloxis would be capable of the same. However, he had no intention of letting the bastard get away with the threat it had just made.

He conjured a layer of condensed mana over his fists—powerful magic boxing gloves. They were a weapon he’d considered when he first saw the Barbarian class, but until the point the boss appeared he hadn’t needed to use anything but one or two punches from his bare fists. There was always the chance the gloves would be overkill, but it was the best time to test them out.

The orken was far slower than him—that was a given with his ridiculous stats—but it was already in the middle of swinging one of its three huge axes down as Ronan dashed out of its shadow. The huge metal blade sunk into the black grass and the soil beneath with a soft thunk. The orken’s face had a surprised expression etched onto it as Ronan dashed forwards. He jumped off the ground, soaring into the air and reaching the height of the boss’ face in barely a second.

In the corner of his eye, Ronan saw its spinal arm and right arm swinging at him, but the attacks would be too slow. His fist was already flying right at his opponent’s face, magical boxing gloves glistening over his skin in a faint layer.

The power of his conjured weapons had increased by a substantial amount ever since he had evolved his Sorcerer sub-class into Sorceric Bastion of Purity, thanks to the class skill that massively increased his affinity to pure mana. Due to that, the results of the first usage of conjured magical boxing gloves was a resounding success. The Orken boss’ head exploded after just one punch.

“For fuck’s sake!” Ronan yelled, before slamming his fist against his palm. He immediately regretted that decision as he felt a dozen bones in his hand shatter and half a dozen more fly out the back of his hand in a spray of blood. He tumbled sideways and spun in three circles before collapsing against the ground. As he fell he realised he might actually be in trouble. With one hand out of action, fighting would become a lot more difficult in the following stages. I guess with my stats the only monster that can hurt me is myself…

After lying on the ground in shame for a minute, he sighed and hauled himself into a sitting position. The fight had been disappointing, as it was yet another instant win. However, the test of his conjured boxing glove went even better than expected. It was a weapon that Ronan would certainly be using again in the future. And the countdown to stage 5 was already underway, so the next victims would be appearing soon enough.

Before he could move on to allocating his stat points, the message from the Administrator arrived. The contents were identical to the first time he had completed stage 4 of the nightmare difficulty tutorial, granting him a potion that would heal his wounded arm—he didn’t take it immediately—and the threat-slash-promise of what would happen if he completed the tutorial after the Administrator’s meddling. The rewards for completing the stages until that point were fairly average, but he hoped that this time he would pass the tutorial and earn whatever Gorax had in store for him.

Ronan had grown used to having a huge amount of luck and getting crazy good rewards all the time, so going back to an ordinary level was like living off his own paycheck after visiting his grandmother for a week. Not to say that his ‘ordinary’ level of luck was bad. Compared to the first iteration he’d lived through, it was like comparing heaven and earth. The skill he obtained wasn’t combat-useful, but it might serve as nice fuel for the Chronos Forge.

Stage 5 was similar to stage 4, but there were three mini-bosses in the horde from the get-go, and Ronan could even see a huge Orken in the distance that had to be a boss. He was hoping there might even be two, but he wasn’t sure they would even pose a threat. Stage 5 was where he had failed the last time and he had no intention of failing this time around, even if Gorax had turned the difficulty up to the max.

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