The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 311

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Ronan failed to defeat the nightmare difficulty tutorial against the strange mutated griffin-like creatures. In stage 4 the bosses ended up being even stronger than the twin kaijus and killed him. He suspected his far-less powerful class also contributed to the loss. However, he didn’t much mind as his real goal was, at that moment, to read through the list of masteries.

Thankfully he was able to do that while still in his clan’s ancestral grounds. There was no need to begin the next iteration just yet.

[Detailed Partial Status - Ronan Steele]

[Available Masteries Listed By Challenger Specifications]

Corrupting Weapons, Benedicting Weapons, Restraining Weapons, Void Weapons, Magical Weapons, Spell Chaining, Mana Attunement, Absorption, Displacement, Teleportation, Divination, Chronological Parsing, Spell Mutation…

The list was still excessive, but Ronan had technically infinite time while in the Chronos Clan’s ancestral grounds. Even the first dozen or so he read through had interesting implications. Many of them seemed to be merged masteries, which raised the question of whether he could obtain them directly without any intermediate steps and the merging process, or if he had to figure out which masteries he needed to obtain and then merge them into the advanced masteries.

It was difficult, but he would figure it out with trial and error.

Without any way to measure the passing of time Ronan had no idea how long he spent reading through the list of masteries. He had learned many things, but chief amongst them was that his goal of achieving an all-weapons mastery might be a lot, lot further away than he believed.

Limited by his previous experience of Earth, he had kept his perception to the weapons that humans had used throughout their history. However, the multiverse was vast and strange. Species that were so utterly different to humans physiologically, culturally, and technologically had developed weapons Ronan couldn’t have ever dreamt about. Not to mention the existence of deities or deity-like beings. Corrupting and benedicting weapons were their doing, and Ronan wasn’t even sure how he would go about obtaining one of either.

Maybe I can summon a demon or pray to a god or something? Would that work or would I just draw unnecessary speculation onto myself? He dismissed the idea. It wasn’t all doom and gloom.

There were at least eight to ten magic-based masteries he wanted to obtain, each of which would take his spellcasting and sorcery to new heights. He had been rather limited in that aspect, given his tendency to focus on just mana bolts or rainbow bombs. In recent iterations he had branched out and done some experimenting, even going as far as to develop his own spells, but there was so much more to mana and magic that Ronan had yet to explore.

On top of that, he knew for a fact that advanced masteries did not need every single one of their components in order to merge. He had gained slashing, piercing, and thrown weapons masteries with a small selection, while his new class showed him just how many of each category he still had yet to gain. That meant he might be able to gain some form of all-weapons mastery that evolved as he discovered and learned how to wield new weapons. He was now sure there were a few more intermediate steps before he reached that point, though.

Interestingly there was a whole branch of masteries that began with enchanting. It made Ronan realise that casting spells was only the beginning of magic. He had an expansive list of ‘Enchant -’ skills, so he planned to use them a lot more regularly.

So it was that he began another set of iterations working towards true mastery. He recognised that it was likely obsessive to do what he was while ignoring progressing the timeline of his lives beyond the first phase of the integration, but Ronan’s goal wasn’t to play along with the system—it was to break its imposed order.

Given that he had decided to start with weapons, Ronan made the choice to work towards the other weapon masteries he had discovered thanks to Hyper Perfectionist. While he had needed to branch out slightly to get the fifth merged mastery and unlock the class, going back to the original goal was the kind of focus he needed—even the class description said so.

The easiest of the new masteries to earn would probably be restraining weapons and then magical weapons. Unfortunately the list of masteries didn’t tell him which base masteries were required to merge the advanced masteries, but he could take an educated guess.

That was how Ronan found himself throwing nets and chains at monsters in order to restrain them before he even made a single strike with the intention of killing them. It actually worked really well, in more ways than one. He was forced to stretch his mana control to the limit when he first conjured a net with Conjure Weapon. In fact he had failed the very first time. Making the various threads of mana and keeping them stable in a net-shape was a far more difficult task than just creating a sword or spear.

All of his practice with mana platforms had helped improve his control and he quickly gained the hang of it. Restraining his foes and not just blasting them into oblivion the moment they appeared was also an exercise in control for Ronan, who was used to ending most of his battles in record time, with the high-level bosses and mini-bosses being the exception at that time.

As well as nets and chains, Ronan experimented with various different weapons that could restrain. In the harder difficulty tutorial, the goblins in the forest found themselves trapped in various different pitfalls, bear traps, and snares. It was quite amusing to listen to their indignant screeches while they hung in the air or struggled with a clamped leg. Ronan didn’t consider himself cruel or sadistic, but goblins were an exception. They had put him through too much.

Then again, if he encountered goblins outside of the tutorial and they turned out to be reasonable creatures he might not immediately genocide them. That was a very big if.

In any case, it only took him two iterations to obtain what he was after. Ronan had a big smile on his face as he watched the writhing goblin shaman struggle to escape the combination of conjured mana chains and physical pitfall trap. It was beautiful. Then he killed it.

[Net IV], [Chains II], [Traps IV], [Venom I], and [Slime I] Mastery have been assimilated into [Restraining Weapons III] Mastery!

Gain a moderate bonus to the relevant effects when using a weapon that is designed to restrain enemies. Restraining weapons that require setup are moderately more difficult to notice and gain a scaling potency bonus that increases the longer it remains set up. Gain a minor dexterity and tenacity boost when wielding restraining weapons. Gain a 50% chance to double the time the relevant effects of the restraining weapon you are using last for upon successful strikes. Gain a 10% chance to triple the time the relevant effects of the restraining weapon you are using last for upon successful strikes. Restraining weapons are 2x more durable when wielded by a challenger possessing this mastery.

It was an interesting mastery. The bonuses were worded a bit weirdly but Ronan basically gathered that all restraining weapons, even the more obscure ones, would become much more effective when he used them. It was technically a second-step merged mastery, given that traps was already a merged mastery that he had gained after setting up a variety of different snares, traps, and pitfalls throughout the harder difficulty tutorial.

In any case, he was now moving on from just using restraints for the majority of a battle and simply incorporating them into his repertoire as he would any other weapon. What came next wasn’t difficult, but it would be a lot harder than restraining weapons mastery had been.

Magic weapons was a curious mastery. Technically all of Ronan’s weapons could be considered magical, given that for the most part they were literally formed from mana. However, he hadn’t gained magic weapons mastery yet and he suspected that meant they didn’t count. What he did think was that using his enchantments in a physical form—by inscribing them into his conjured weapons—was the way to go. Unfortunately he hadn’t yet figured out how to do that for all of his various enchantments.

That was his next task, and he decided that while he was at it, it would be a great time to start working on his crafting alongside it. Making himself a set of incredible gear was long overdue and Ronan really wanted to know how far he could push himself. The vast majority of his lives until that point had been nothing but battle, and perhaps it was time for a break. Then again, the tutorial necessitated a certain level of bloodshed, but it wouldn’t be too hard to go through one of the easier difficulties.

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