The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 307

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Piercing weapons mastery was slightly more difficult to obtain than slashing or blunt weapons mastery. Part of the reason for that was that many of the weapons which had been assimilated into slashing weapons mastery could also be used to pierce. Ronan didn’t want to ignore them, but he decided to mostly focus on weapons which had piercing or thrusting as a main form of dealing damage. He could start with the spear as the most obvious example, but his spear mastery was already impressive and there were more weapons he needed to work on.

Things like daggers could be used for stabbing, and with his stats there was no problem getting up close and personal with monsters to do so. Even if they landed a hit or two on him, it usually didn’t do much damage and he would be restored by the system shortly after. It was only in the nightmare difficulty tutorial that there was no healing available.

Ronan decided to start with daggers. His mastery with them was rather pitiful and he wanted to improve his ability in close quarters combat. Conjuring a pair of daggers as stage 1 began, he rushed through the forest towards the two unsuspecting goblins. It was time for some more grinding.

With his prodigious speed, closing the distance to his targets and then stabbing them in vital points was not difficult. Thanks to the upgrades to Critical Tempo, he was able to dispatch all the monsters with ease. If they even lasted to the third hit, they certainly would not survive after a massively empowered critical hit tore open their neck or burst their heart.

Slowly but surely his dagger mastery increased. Once he had finished the invasion of the Grathen planet, it was approaching the same tier as his spear mastery. Ronan had been ending most of runs after the invasion, as the prison was not an ideal place for training, but the memory of being stomped to death by the guards was at the forefront of his mind each time that part of the Path approached.

He decided that rather than constantly stress about it, he should just enter it to get some relief. That iteration felt perfect. Daggers were a great weapon for assassinations. This time when he woke up in the shower room and the guards entered, Ronan didn’t waste a second. He let out a huge wave of mana that shattered the restraints on him and sent the guards flying backwards. Then he conjured a pair of daggers and rushed in for the kill.

The first fell in just two stabs, while the second guard required him to land a critical hit between two ribs. Even their metallic suits were not enough to stop his blades slipping through.

Ronan didn’t wait for more guards to arrive. He rushed out into the corridor. He wanted to find the warden, but he immediately realised a problem. Everywhere in the alien prison looked the same, the walls simply formless metallic tubes. On a whim he ripped part of the wall out and tried to absorb it with Mineral Skeleton.

Material analysis complete!

Foreign material identified as [Skaraxian Construction Alloy]!

[Skaraxian Construction Alloy]

A blend of star-iron and a number of other materials from the Skaraxian home system, this alloy is what is used to build all of their spacecraft and hyper-constructs.

Absorbing all of the [Skaraxian Construction Alloy] will cause the following changes:

+3 Endurance

-1 Agility

+4 Strength

+2 Tenacity

+6% Shock resistance

Absorb [Skaraxian Construction Alloy] using [Mineral Skeleton]?

Absorbing [Skaraxian Construction Alloy]...

[Skaraxian Construction Alloy] has been absorbed at a 100% efficiency rate!

+3 Endurance

-1 Agility

+4 Strength

+2 Tenacity

+6% Shock resistance

With the slight bonus, Ronan felt there was no harm in taking more. However, when he tried he discovered that the skill wouldn’t let him. What’s going on? System you need to be less of a tsundere. Tell me why I can’t do this. As if reacting to the insult, a new message immediately appeared.

Inorganic materials of the same type cannot be absorbed more than once using [Mineral Skeleton] once they have reached perfect efficiency!

That’s a bummer. Ronan realised it meant he wouldn’t be able to absorb more of the system wall from the hard difficulty tutorial. That stuff had been overpowered as hell and he had been waiting for an opportunity to do so. Then again, it had that qualifier about perfect efficiency. Last time it was just 3%, so maybe there’s still hope…

With that done, he heard footsteps. A door opened in the wall and three guards ran out. They spotted Ronan free from his restraints and immediately started shouting. An alarm blared through the corridor. Ronan gripped his daggers and rushed towards his new foes. It was time to seek revenge.

The first two fell like wheat to the scythe, not presenting much of a threat to the current Ronan. His level was almost at 300 thanks to the effects of all his experience multipliers. He had, unfortunately, realised that freeloader didn’t work on a multiplicative or even additive basis. Despite that, it still let him get way further ahead than he would have otherwise been by that point. The third guard caught a punch to the chest, causing its armour to crumple and legs to buckle. Ronan tore its helmet off and yelled, “Where’s the warden?”

The guard mumbled something. Ronan slapped him and slightly loosened his grip on the alien’s neck. “Control room.” A dagger pierced the guard’s throat as soon as he had the information he needed. They might not be evil, but they had killed him without warning or reason, so he felt justified in slaughtering them all. They got fast deaths, so it wasn’t that bad. Only the warden would have a slow end.

Ronan unfortunately had no idea where the control room was, but he figured if he interrogated enough guards he would eventually find his way there. So he just started running in a random direction. Every time a guard or group of guards appeared they were swiftly dispatched, with the last survivor receiving a round of questioning. After a certain point Ronan switched up his weapons, wanting to work on some of the other masteries. After all, he didn’t need all of them at a high tier to receive the merged mastery, just high enough that the system recognised his capability and understanding.

The weapons he used were varied, but also limited. He did occasionally pull out a sword to stab people, but that was more in the heat of the moment and going with the flow than a conscious decision. Ronan had a bit of a crisis when he realised that technically arrows did piercing damage, and wondered if he should be using his bow to earn this mastery. However, that might conflict with earning a ranged weapons mastery. The masteries seem to combine based on damage type rather than weapon class, so maybe bows are part of the piercing weapons mastery? After a brief internal debate he decided it didn’t really matter, given that his end goal was to merge all of them into a singular all-weapons mastery. The path he took to get there didn’t particularly matter.

So it was that Ronan started sniping the guards as they appeared. As he did so, he realised that he was a dumb idiot. He had turned down a legendary bow because it couldn’t conjure arrows when he could have just used Conjure Weapon to make them the entire time. At least he knew now. Making a good bow once he was proficient in crafting soared to the top of his priorities list.

On top of the bow, daggers, sword, and spear, Ronan tried out some unique piercing weapons. At one point he even tried to make a blowgun from mana, but the mechanics of it were a bit iffy. While he doubted it would make regular appearances in battle, even testing it out a few times was enough to give him the mastery and he had no doubt it would be assimilated when the merged mastery was granted to him.

The most fun he had was with a trident, where he started throwing around very weak water magic—limited as he was in his ability to turn his mana into anything but its pure form—and pretending he was Poseidon. That lasted right up until he found himself standing outside a door that he was certain led to the control room. The last guard he had killed said as much, but he had learned not to trust them after one led him into an isolated cell with a violent alien that attempted to tear Ronan apart the moment the door opened.

Having added one prisoner to his kill count, Ronan was even more disgruntled. The warden was going to pay for ordering Ronan’s head to be squished. He conjured a trident and smashed the door down with a kick, coming face to face with the diminutive figure of the warden. “Surprise, motherfucker.” Ronan flung the weapon at the bastard’s knee.

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