Chapter 188: Bloody Colossus

It’s been a month. He should’ve been here by now. He’s planning something, but the sheer amount of time he’s spent suggests he’s growing complacent. The enemy does not wait for your convenience. Send the newly-minted assassins and scouts. I want him dead, or failing that, I want to know what he’s up to.

-          Caddock, level 63 High Paladin

Sickle of Malignant Silence

+20 Strength

+14 resistance

+8 Kinesthetics

+12 Acuity

+35 Focus

Active: 1 Charge. Wearer may shush a target and apply a debuff that makes it more difficult to speak. Duration and potency scale with Focus.

+15% potency of debuff Abilities.

Debuffs inflicted by the user that have expired or been dispelled, will leave behind ‘seeds’. These seeds will regrow into new debuffs as soon as the their host loses focus on them.

Number of seeds and their duration scales with Focus. Debuffs from seeds do not spawn further seeds.

Debuffs applied by the wearer also apply Bleeding, paralysis, and psychic damage.

Bleed damage is increased. Scales with Focus

Debuffs applied by the wearer may spread to other enemies. Chance scales with Focus, opposed by enemy Focus.

The hairs on Will’s arm stood up as he inspected the Relic.

This thing is EVIL.

Will consulted his slotted items, looking for ones that he could overwrite.

Phantom Hand Slots: (Ring of Accuracy*) (Ring of Explosive Doughmaking) (Wand of the Undead Retainer) (Stormfists) -(Dimensional Coiled Serpent Amulet)-

Okay, so the Stormfists and the Ring of accuracy are wildly outdated and need upgrades, but…their upgrades are…these two.

Will turned his attention to the bow and the chestpiece.

Hammer of God

+24 Strength

+12 Resistance

+18 Kinesthetics

+22 Acuity

+8 focus

8 degrees of correction.

+25% to Lightning damage inflicted by user.

Lightning damage dealt by the user will chain to up to 3 other enemies, dealing 60% less damage with each jump

Upon striking their target, projectiles fired by this bow are converted to lightning bolts, with potency based on the arrow’s potential damage on impact.

Arrows gain a small amount of mass and speed over distance.

Without missing a beat, Will replaced the Ring of Accuracy in his Phantom Hand, wincing at the familiar pain shooting through his hand.

And the armor…

Armor of the Bloody Colossus

+30 Strength

+35 Resistance

+16 Kinesthetics

+6 Acuity

+8 Focus

Whenever the user heals, they temporarily gain a tiny amount of size that persists as long as the armor is equipped. Other Equipment worn by the User scales to match. Vastly increased size may damage the User if their Resistance is not high enough.

New equipment scales to match as it is attempted to be worn.

User and their equipment return to normal size when the armor is unequipped.

User gains a bonus to attack/movement speed when damaged.

Thorns 60%

Lifesteal 6%

…yep. Every single one of these is mind-blowing.

Will’s current dilemma was that he had only so many slots available in the Phantom Hand, and two more astonishingly powerful items with their own soft-set effects just waiting to be slotted.

Some of the effects had been diminished. ‘small’ amount of size had become ‘tiny’. Will was confident that if he slotted it in Phantom hand, Tiny would become ‘small’ again, or even ‘Large’.

But do I really want to become a giant all the time?

It was good. There was no denying that, it just didn’t have the same ‘magic’ feeling that Will enjoyed.

Will wasn’t going to replace the Coiled Serpent amulet, nor would he replace the ring of explosive doughmaking, Which left the Stormfists and the wand of the undead retainer.

I still owe those fellows an upgrade, not a painless death.

Will knew his ghost butlers didn’t care one way or another if they ceased to exist, but he’d be damned if he repaid good work with callous replacement.

That meant only the stormfists were available to be overwritten.

Now, the armor was a direct upgrade over the stormfists. It increased movement speed and attack power throughout the fight and was similarly physical in nature. It fell into the same category of ‘move faster and smash things harder’.

But…Will liked the sickle more, and if the sickle wasn’t slotted, its effects would be more of a nuisance than deadly.

And Will wanted it to be deadly.

Not to mention…

Will glanced at his Aspect description, scanning down to the single line hanging out there by itself.

Grants a passive boost to any lifesteal effect wielded by the user.

With that effect, Will could probably create a couple more lifesteal/thorns Relics and have them ready to go before it was time to leave.

Although…I’ve never really had the opportunity to test the lifesteal boost effect. That could effect how I use it.

Will took off all his gear and started trying on different Lifesteal items, inspecting them both on and off his body.

Each item that already had lifesteal gained 2% more after he put them on.

I’m not wearing any kit, so…

It looked like he got a flat bonus to the lifesteal of any item he wore.

Does it scale with Resistance? Will wondered, putting on his Dimensional bangle that boosted Phantom hand. He still had the ring of explosive doughmaking slotted, so his Resistance jumped up above 300.

Will checked the items again. That flat bonus had increased to 3%.

So, 1% extra lifesteal on each Item with lifesteal for every 100 Resistance. That’s not that bad.

Despite being a small boost, If Will wore 4 lifesteal items, that was a free 12% extra lifesteal, which was nothing to scoff at. Any lifesteal build would be more than happy to add that extra little bit to close the gap and try to reach 100%.

Will glanced over at his Set items, and a thought occurred to him.

…Full set bonus increases the effects of Aspect by 50X. Aspect gives a flat boost. Would that work?

Will put on all of his set items to get the full bonus and tried on a 2% ring of lifesteal.

2 (100)% lifesteal.

…huh. I guess 100% is as high as it’ll go. Wow.

Will took his set back off.

That’s awesome, but I can’t count on the set bonus being active for the duration of the fight. I’m probably going to swap away from the Coiled Serpent Amulet at some point, and I can’t gain a full set bonus without it while wearing the bloody colossus armor, since it takes up the torso slot.

…I need to make a handful of items to work with the colossus armor and the Aspect boost to Lifesteal.

It sounds like the max size before it begins to harm the user is determined by Resistance, and my lifesteal boost is affected by Resistance as well.

Not to mention, the premise of the armor is to take a lot of small wounds and heal from them, gaining size and the bigger I get, the more surface area of me there is to wound.

If my Resistance isn’t top notch, someone’s gonna just put an empowered Ability through my giant target of a skull.

So to support the colossus armor, I need relics that grant Resistance, a bit of lifesteal, and thorns, to bump those up as close to 100% as they’ll go.

As far as Will was aware, there was no going higher than 100% in thorns and lifesteal. The only reason Frederick Wyrd was able to blow people up was the synergy between his voodoo damage link Ability, and the pacifist rod that damaged him for dealing damage to others. Those two things created a loop that would eventually explode someone, lifesteal and thorns were just the icing on that bloody cake.

It wasn’t infinite either, it was a simple test of who had higher self-heal and durability, and the damage overflowed to the loser, who then exploded.

Will didn’t have the damage link Abilities, so nobody would be exploding, they could stop taking damage from him as soon as they stopped attacking him. Will wasn’t going to give them that option, though.

That was the simple beauty of the combo. Will would literally become a bigger and bigger threat the longer the fight went, and he would use the increased size and speed to apply greater pressure on his enemy, forcing them to attack him.

…Which would increase his size and speed.

Hmm…movement speed Relics would be handy.

When people thought of massive giant monsters, the words that came to mind were slow, lumbering, towering.

Will wanted the Build to defy expectations…simple as it was.

Okay, Resistance, Lifesteal, Speed, Thorns, Will thought, scanning through his piles.

They were starting to get a bit depleted, but he could manage to get at least a little bit of lifesteal on each item.

Will made himself a full set, minus the gloves, and the left-hand ring.

The amulet and ring carried the most Lifesteal while the Thorns was spread out among the items. The boots had a strong 65% speed bonus after Will combined all of them, and Will wasn’t able to wear a pair of gloves, unfortunately.

They hadn’t lucked into another bangle or one-handed glove, and Will wasn’t about to bake his dimensional bangle into something that fit a one-off Build.

Oh, and I need a good helmet! Will thought, scanning the Relics. He was eventually going to become huge while wearing the soft-set, and that would make his head a enormous target.

Will picked through the helmet pile, picturing himself as a giant. He didn’t want a tiara made to boost magical powers, or something to look cool and breezy while boosting acuity like a headband. He wanted heavy steel between his face and missiles.

There. Will spotted a black bucket helmet he had tossed aside a long while ago because he didn’t like it.

 grabbed the bucket helmet and dropped it over his head.

The helmet was distinctly uncomfortable to Will, suffocating his superhuman senses inside a sheet of steel wrapped around his head. His vision…wasn’t really affected, because he was blind, but his hearing was suddenly thrown off, with sound being caught and diffused by the helmet around his skull.

It was stuffy and irritating, and Will hated it.

It’s perfect.

The front of the helmet was a full fame-plate with small holes for breathing and vision, but even those holes had a thin wire mesh over them to catch particulates. Will could feel the helmet fusing to his Torso piece, making it so another person couldn’t easily dislodge it.

Helm of The Stubborn Bridge Guard.

+4 Strength

+12 resistance

+5 Focus

Pain and blood loss from wounds is delayed. If the wound is healed before this time elapses, no pain is felt. Scales with Resistance.

..Oh, gods, I hate it.

Will was categorically against self-harm and Builds that simply tanked damage because they could – No offense Reggie. I know it’s your job – And this thing was practically screaming ‘hey! Go get yourself hurt!’

Which made it perfect.

Damnit.

Will Baked it, adding two dozen Relics to it’s potency.

Once he was done, Will scanned through the basic Relics he’d made to prop up the bloody colossus armor.

Ring of Retribution

+4 Strength

40 Resistance

+12 Kinesthetics

+10 Acuity

+6 Focus

15% Lifesteal

8% Thorns

Amulet of Retribution

+5 Strength

+35 Resistance

+10 Kinesthetics

+10 Acuity

+12 Focus

21% Lifesteal

10% Thorns

Helm of the Black Knight

+18 Strength

+55 resistance

+8 Kinesthetics

+6 Acuity

+16 Focus

12% Lifesteal

10% Thorns

Pain and blood loss from wounds is delayed. If the wound is healed before this time elapses, no pain is felt. Scales with Resistance.

Pants of Retribution

+12 Strength

+30 Resistance

+15 Kinesthetics

+8 Acuity

+5 Focus

8% Lifesteal

12% Thorns

Boots of Speed

+6 Strength

+15 Resistance

+12 Kinesthetics

+5 Acuity

+5 Focus

4% Lifesteal

8% Thorns

+65% Attack/Movement speed

For the boots, Will had sacrificed outrageous stat bonuses to stack on more speed-boosting effects, to make them really speed up the entire Build.

And yeah, 65%? That’s a lot.

Alright, let’s get this over with, Will thought, taking off his set and donning the new soft-set one piece at a time until he was completely covered head-to-toe with the new Build, his Set safely tucked under his bed where everyone would assume he’d be an idiot to store it.

Eh…

Will just had a paranoid feeling that if he stored it in his Phantom Hand, Caddock would find a way to disconnect his Dimensional Storage and cause him to lose everything all at once.

It wasn’t rational, but there it was.

He didn’t have a hand item, so Will put on the Dimensional bangle, then he checked his stats with the new soft-set on.

William Oh

World Traveller Level 52

53 + 126 Strength

159 + 363 Resistance

156 + 91 Kinesthetics

204 + 67 Acuity

104 + 101 Focus

Charges: 180/205

Free Points: 0

Non-stat Item Abilities: Explosive doughmaking*, 100% Thorns, 95% Lifesteal, Growth on heal, Atk/Move speed on damage, +65% Atk/Move speed, Pain/Blood Delay,

Phantom Hand Slots: (Hammer of God) -(Ring of Explosive Doughmaking)- (Wand of the Undead Retainer) (Sickle of Malignant Silence) (Dimensional Coiled Serpent Amulet)

Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Immortal Serpent***, Phantom Hand(x6), Map

Secondary Abilities: Sourdough** Uru Drake’s Eye

Tertiary Abilities: Phantom Eye

Primary Ability upgrade Available!

Secondary Ability Upgrade Available!

Aw man, didn’t quite hit 100% Lifesteal. Will did a little mental math.

He was currently hitting 65% with the relics he was wearing, and gaining another 30%, with six items being boosted by 5% each due to Will having over 500 Resistance. So either he had to find a way to gain another 5% lifesteal or raise his Resistance by about 80.

Well…I haven’t made a weapon for this soft-set yet. Should be easy enough to get 100% lifesteal once I do that.

But for now…time to show off my fancy new heavy armor.

Will left his ash-covered workplace and strode into the main area of the caravan.

Will caught Anna’s attention and gestured to himself.

“Whaddya think?”

The Tangled baker girl lit up.

“It’s so crazy looking! I love it!”

“You look like a training dummy,” Travis said from the other side of the caravan.

“Oh right,” Will said, taking Travis’s new ring out of his storage and tossing it to him. “We’re square.”

“Whaddya me-HOLY SHIT!” Travis yanked off his current ring like it was burning him and replaced it with the one Will had made for him.

Will left them behind and trundled over to where Loth was breeding different strains of insect, always trying to push the boundaries of what was possible with her minions. Will was deliberately playing up the slowness and weight, despite the boots boosting his speed.

He didn’t want anyone to know how fast the set actually made him.

“New Build. Whaddya think?” Will said, holding his arms out.

Will wasn’t an expert in kobold expressions, so he could’ve been mistaken, but Loth looked…embarrassed for him?

“It’s…a bit of a mish-mash isn’t it?”

“What does style matter?” Will demanded, slightly hurt. “It’s about the numbers.”

“Well, I can’t see the numbers, so when you walk up to me, creaking like a tin golem wearing five different styles of heavy armor with light shoes and no gloves, and ask ‘what do you think?’ my only option is to comment on the aesthetics.”

Will cocked his head contemplatively, but the bucket over his head prevented it from being revealed to Loth..

“I think Brianna might be a bad judge of what looks cool,” Will mused.

“True.” Loth said, nodding. “She thinks you are cool, and as a bad judge of style, assumes whatever you do is cool.”

“Huh. Hadn’t thought about it that wa-

SQUELCH!

Will was interrupted as something wet exploded on the other side of the caravan, near the wall overlooking the wilderness beyond.

“Abyss was that?” Will asked, glancing over. He couldn’t hear worth a damn with this damned bucket over his head, so he summoned a Phantom eye and sent it that way.

Loth glanced up at Will, her brow furrowing.

“Did you grow a bit just now or are you just happy to see me?” She asked, measuring Will against her snout.

“…We’re under attack,” Will said, his Phantom eye locating the group of stunned men in Graneshian garb gawking at a pile of meat near the center of their group.