FMH: Everything ~ Thirty-Three

- Luke -

He would never tell them this, but Luke had completely forgotten that his group was in this world with him. Right now, he had carte blanche to increase his strength and delve deeper into his world than he’d ever had the opportunity to reach before. The Murderhobo wasn't about to give this up. Now that his team had shown up, he felt a subtle, lingering dissatisfaction. Luke knew that at any time, they could say that they were strong enough to go back, and he would be forced to leave. That fear was slightly relieved when he saw that Andre had taken it upon himself to throw Taylor into a lotus.

That eased his nerves a little bit, even if he knew it was an unfair assessment of the Mage’s intentions. She had changed, drastically so, since they had been able to upgrade her Mana Channels. All of her decades of experience were able to be utilized properly, her thoughts in an order that prioritized their team’s cohesiveness instead of a fervent patriotic zeal that stripped away all varient avenues for growth or completing a mission.

Luke had even been slightly impressed when she started frying the Ascenders hidden in the army of the Dynasty of Dogs. The fact that she could so easily sniff out the powerful enemies was a trait he wanted, so that they could no longer escape him and “Ambush us when we pop out of a world!”

It was only when his friends nearby took a step back in shock that he realized he had bellowed the last part of his thoughts aloud. He didn't particularly care if they were nervous around him, Luke had work to do. Looking at the massive stretch of enemies that was waiting for him, he decided to try a ranged option one more time. After all, things changed all the time. Maybe this time, a ranged weapon would work. Throwing his bottle at the synthetic monsters, he waited patiently as it sailed through the air. He frowned slightly, noting that the throw had taken nearly a half second to reach the front ranks of the enemy, instead of its usual four-tenths of a second.

He wasn't sure if he was a little farther back than he normally was, but the end result was the same. A silver needle sniped the bottle out of the air, and both were destroyed or disrupted. For some reason, these creatures wouldn't react to a melee weapon caving in their faces, at least not until one of their comrades had taken the blow. But a flying bottle, rock, boulder, spear, or person?

Luke didn’t know why, but that seemed to infuriate them. All of the strange, towering monsters were jostling slightly, looking for any other target in the area. That was why he tried this method from so far back; it would guarantee that they were agitated. Then, if he walked into range, he would be met with a wall of silver death flying through the air at him.

Several minutes passed before the strange monsters settled into their normal hibernating patterns once more, and he charged in with Cookie at the ready. At this point, he had tried thrusts, uppercuts, and crushing blows from overhead, but nothing was quite as effective as a simple swing of the Greatmace. Combining that with Bum Thunder and Shockwave Cleave—boosted by an additional chunk of mana—meant that several hundred of the creatures would die and give him a few instants of lag time before he had to contend with the first needles. As per usual, the creatures had respawned before he was even able to land, thanks to the double-edged weapon that his Source-cerer’s Armory forced on him.

Damage dealt: 34,212 blunt. (6,831 weapons in range, average maximum damage 50 per weapon.)

Potentia gained: 2,743.

Damage taken: 445 damage from rebound.

Current health: 485/930.

The sheer number of weapons in the area boosted his attack so high that the backlash caused blood vessels to collapse, arteries to explode, and meat to be stripped off of tendons. His bones broke in dozens of places, and the cartilage was shattered… overall, it was a truly unpleasant experience. He had refilled all of his water skins on the way here, so he was able to yet again pop the top of one and pour as much as he could down his throat, then dump the rest over any open wounds. The flesh underneath hissed and popped then reformed into a slightly better version of itself. “Yeah, that sucks. Okay. Let's do it again.”

“Luke! A moment of your time, if you wouldn't mind?” Andre's voice from so near made Luke's head snap to the side, and he barely caught himself before he clobbered his friend. The Murderhobo let out a puff of breath, having known that their mere presence would cause constant interruptions in his work. He trudged over, dragging Cookie behind him and leaving a trail of tilled soil in her wake.

“What, Andre? I’m busy.” He waved a hand to indicate the monsters swarming in the distance, still firing silver needles at him. Something about that thought caught his attention; he wasn't entirely certain why he was calling them needles, as they were six feet long and nearly a half foot thick, but… “Maybe it's just the shape?”

Andre gave him a strange look, which Luke promptly decided to ignore. “Right. Anyway, I have an idea of growing vines and such that could destroy the creatures on that side, but it would help immensely if I could get a sample of their bodies for testing purposes.”

The Murderhobo simply stared at the oversized Druid, trying to think of the best way to explain to his friend how ridiculous the idea Andre had just presented to him was. “That's stupid, so much so that I can't even explain it properly. You want one of them? Go ahead and try.”

“Is it just that you can't get close enough, or that you can’t stay close enough?” Andre called out questioningly. “I might have a solution for that as well.”

He dangled his words in a tantalizing manner, which made Luke grind his teeth. Why did people never just say what they wanted to say? Did he truly need to engage in a back-and-forth simpering competition with his cohort and drag information out of them? “Look. They cannot cross that dividing line while they are alive, or they just detonate. If I could get close enough to keep on hitting them, I would. I can't grab one and drag it across, as again, it explodes.”

“Listen, I have a solution to your problem, or at least I think I do. Based on what you have told me in the past about your ‘Skills’, that is.” Andre let a half-cocked grin show on his face but seemed to realize that Luke was getting annoyed with the conversation dragging on. “Let me ask you something… are you using Shockwave Cleave every time you hit?”

“Yes.” Andre seemed to be waiting for more of an answer, but if he wanted more, Luke firmly believed that he should have asked for more.

The Druid smiled knowingly, pulling out a book of all things. Luke resisted the urge to punch it in the spine, as it wasn't flying or diving at them. “I think you have a few synergistic effects on your Skills! Look at this. Based on what you told me about your weapon abilities-”

“Skills.”

“Yes, those.” Andre waved him off without taking his eyes off the numbers in front of him. “Based on what you told me about them, you shouldn’t be having this kind of insane backlash. Your weapon Skill, it adds on the weapons and armor of creatures near you, correct?”

“Yes.” Again, there was a slight pause as if Andre were waiting for more information.

“Good, good. However, it should not be doing… that.” Now he waved at the trail of destruction that had been appearing each time Luke slammed into the earth after getting backhanded by his own attack. “Look here… that Skill should only be registering weapons and armor that are within one meter of your attack. It’s registering instead a massive swath of creatures. My hypothesis, if you would care to test it, is that when you activate your Shockwave Cleave, the Skill is counting all targets that'll be impacted by the shockwaves as valid targets and factoring in their weapons!”

Luke took a moment to digest that, looking down at the weapon in his hand then into the distance. “Huh.”

“All you need to do in order to test this is attack without adding on that particular Skill. If this succeeds, you should be able to stand in front of them and consistently kill the monsters as they reappear, instead of getting blasted away time after time.” Andre took a deep breath, and Luke just knew the Druid was going to be talking for quite a long while to explain his proof and theorizing, but he had better things to do.

“Bum Thunder.” The casual activation of his Skill seemed to take the Druid by surprise, but Luke was already ten meters away. Then he was running and soon swinging Cookie at the once-again dormant synthetic beings.

*Dong.*

Damage dealt: 434 blunt.

Potentia gained: 5.

The creature rang like a bell as it shattered into broken rubble–specifically, a dinner bell. As soon as his blow had landed, Luke had half a dozen needles bouncing off his armor. That half a dozen turned into several hundred over the course of two to three seconds, but he stayed still in the deluge in order to verify the results.

A smile cracked his set-in-stone face as a long needle came for his left eye, only to hit his armor and fall to the ground. “I only killed one of them instead of approximately four hundred, but now I'm not taking damage. Let's see which way is more efficient.”

With his armor constantly being regenerated, thanks to the mana density of the area, he was able to completely weather the attacks of the void-tipped needles, even as multiple of them hit his armor at once. Dropping Cookie to the side, he equipped a long spear in either weapon slot, then started stabbing forward with alternating strikes. Left, right, left. Every attack was aimed at the exact same spot, and each attack killed a creature. Even so, by the time he had pulled the weapon back and shoved the other forward once again, a new monster had appeared in the place of the fallen one. This close to the combat, he was able to discern for certain that they were not moving to fill the gap; they were simply reappearing out of thin air.

“Three hundred and ninety-nine, four hundred.” He paused at that point, trying to tally up how much time had passed. “I get four attacks a second, so it's a little bit less than two minutes to get to four hundred kills. Yes. This is more efficient.”

There was no need to explain the situation to Andre, Luke was certain he had figured it out by now. He stayed right where he was, continually attacking until the pile of needles around him reached his shoulders, which impeded his ability to attack. Then he moved a few feet to the right, and the attacks continued as a new pile started to form around him.

“I guess just join us whenever you get tired!” Zed called over to him with slight exasperation in his voice.

“Heh.” Luke chuckled a single time, not slowing down his attacks in the slightest. “Joke’s on you. I'm always fresh, thanks to all this mana.”