Overchaos Chapter 7: Arrival (Patreon)
Content
~Ludo Wright~
Feat Achieved! Finish the quest: Retrieve the brooch
+1x Bronze Item Gacha Ticket
Feat Achieved! Become an Iron-Ranked adventurer
+1x Advantage Bronze Ability Gacha Ticket
I whistled a tune as I left the adventurer's guild. These notifications seemed like good yields in my eyes, but I had spent enough time being a normal adventurer.
I didn't know how much time I had, so I had to make use of my time efficiently.
But first, I had to roll these tickets to see if they were good enough to change my plans.
Rolling Bronze Item Gacha...
A common item!
[Bronze Heart Ticket]
|Rarity: Common|
Apparently, they sell even affection nowadays. Just think of the person you want to affect and rip the ticket, making them like you slightly more. Is it mind control? Nope, retroactive reality and probability bending. No unwanted side effects.
Useful?
Not useful right now, but I could think of uses for it, definitely.
Now then, abilities, I don't know what I want from this, but hopefully it will give me something that synergises with my current set.
Rolling Bronze Ability Gacha with advantage...
[Reactive Activation]
|Rarity: Uncommon|
Allows you to set conditions on your abilities to have them activate once the conditions are met, for example, a barrier being activated when a high-speed projectile is hurled toward you or heal activating when a foreign substance enters you.
or
[Diagnosis]
|Rarity: Common|
You can touch a target and receive a detailed diagnosis of their health condition
I decided to choose Reactive Activation. While medical knowledge and diagnosis in a medieval world sounded useful, I did not want to step on the toes of the clerics who would lose business. I would have picked it if I had healing or the medicine skill, but Reactive Activation was just more useful for my purposes.
Now then, with my tickets out of the way. I needed to get started on my plans for real.
Something I definitely had to intervene in was the Carne Village massacre. The reason Ainz came out of the Tomb early was because of the urging of Sebas seeing the villagers slaughtered. If he sees a person who cannot be scried protecting the villagers, that may make him paranoid enough to buy me a few more days of time.
But I needed some way to know when the massacre would happen without having to camp for days at the village. I already have a piece of dirt from the village, so I can locate it anytime, as long as I get something belonging to Gazef-
No.
That won't work, Gazef arrived way later than the massacre. Seems like I will have to camp out at the Great Forest of Tob for a few days. With my ability to sense Mana, I should be able to spot the soldiers coming before they reach the village. I can take some time to hunt monsters, maybe score another ability, but this comes with risks.
Any of the 3 leaders of the forest would be incredibly dangerous; all of them hovered around level 30, the realm of Heroes and stronger than Gazef Stronoff. A tough as bricks Troll with annoying regeneration, a Naga who can cast rank 2 magic or beyond and Hamsuke who is an extremely good all-rounder.
Against any of them, my chance of victory was not zero, but I would not put it above 30%. Samson was strong, but he could only protect my squishy body and fight the enemy with so much efficiency. Maybe I could take on the Troll guy, but the others were far more annoying to fight.
At least I could probably reason with the oversized battle hamster in order for her not to kill me.
But the biggest problem here was just how long I had to camp there, how far away was Nazaric anyway? It can't be more than a year or half a year since the characters look just about the same. I'll hedge my bets anyway, I am willing to spend 5 days there, just training and killing monsters.
Before I left for the forest, I took a monster extermination mission and asked for the rates I would get for slaying creatures in the forest. Apparently, people were having problems with it recently due to monsters becoming more aggressive.
And then I spent a decent chunk of my wealth, a whole gold coin, to buy potions, supplies, and anything I would need for extended periods of time camping. I did not bother buying armour as anything that could get through Samson could easily get through any armour set I could reasonably afford.
A tad expensive, yes, but nowhere near as expensive as my life.
After buying all of that, I finally departed for the great forest of Tob, not by carriage but with my very own body to test something.
I had come up with a new technique, "Weave Frame"
Basically, I used Shape Altering to get Samson to hide his features before I had my hair wrap my body fully underneath my clothes, covering every inch of skin(Over my underclothes, of course) and acting as a second set of even stronger muscles, even stronger than my own.
Samson could only exert a certain amount of strength, as exerting more strength than I could handle with the hair would harm me instead. But with this Weave Frame, I had a portion of Samson's stats added to my own, making me massively stronger and not only that, but I would be able to use it without suspicion that I had a hair monster in my body.
I just looked like I was wearing a ninja suit made of tightly wrapped black bandages over my body. But I made sure to buy a black steel knight helmet to wear over my head to make sure to hide my identity organically and to avoid people questioning why my bodysuit connected to my scalp.
With this getup, I was at least level 15, actually definitely more. I could punch through stone, but it also had the effect of exhausting me. I ran faster than a horse and could carry over a ton on my back. It only took me two hours to reach Carne Village between sprinting and taking a break before sprinting again.
But I decided not to make my presence known just in case, and directly went to the Great Forest of Tob. I set my camp up on the edge of the forest overlooking Carne Village, even without Weave Frame, I could run there in less than 10 minutes. And I was positioned well enough to be able to sense any intruders or soldiers that would ride in.
When I was sure of my position, I erected my camp behind a few trees to obscure it from view. A large and durable tent, a campfire, a grill, a lot of bags, etc. Once I put everything inside except for the bags I would use to carry loot and the books I brought with me, both to study and to use as a reference, I set up my alert system.
I slotted in Reactive Activation and set a line of commands that would make sure I wouldn't miss the soldiers. I set the condition that Prophetic Compass would activate the moment it sensed a mana signature nearing Enri's house that was at least twice as large as the largest signature in the village. I was allowed to do this since Sensor let me use Prophetic Compass to track energy signatures too.
The only problem was that I needed Prophetic Compass in an active ability slot for this condition to be able to trigger. But I had a way to remedy that too, since I was only a single ability from unlocking my second slot.
Explanation: Ability Slots
Active Ability Slots can be increased by either reaching a milestone in the number of abilities you have(5) or through quest rewards.
So I had to start hunting more monsters, my goal was to hunt direwolves, treants and such.
Alright, time to get dirty!
𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵´ཀ`𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵𓏵
~Ludo~
"Ugh... I feel like I got ran over by a truck..."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Having a second, stronger set of muscles flinging around your body can be tiring, who could've thought?"
"I'm in no mood for your correct insight, Samson, I feel like a living bruise..."
Running and less strenuous activities were fine with Weave Frame, but the problem came when I had to do numerous fast and complicated manoeuvres during a fight, that's when it really started wearing out my body. Halfway through, I had to disable Weave Wrap and just had Samson take care of the butchering for me.
The results were at least promising though I could easily kill Ogres and Direwolves with my new mastery over Unarmed Combat, which made me move like a seasoned fighter. But when it came to Trolls, Samson had to help and bite off their skulls; their fat flesh was just not conductive to blunt strikes.
Now it was the morning of the second day, closing in on noon, and I had managed to get the feats I was looking for.
Feat Achieved! Kill 10 D Class Monsters(Trolls)
+1x Silver Advantage Ability Gacha Ticket
You gotta love the grind. You gotta appreciate the grind. No matter how much it hurts you, you just have to. Because grind gives you tickets. And you need tickets to survive. And you need to survive to live.
"Kid, are you gonna spend all day looking at the sky or use thoat damn ticket of yours?"
"Oh, right."
I think I'm getting delirious from exhaustion. Eh, no matter.
Now then, I need a full showstopper for this ticket.
Please give me something good!
Rolling Silver Ability Gacha...
[Cat Form]
|Rarity: Uncommon|
You are able to turn into a cat or a cat hybrid at will. Gaining enhanced agility, senses, reflexes, claws, and sharp teeth as well as any other characteristics the average Cat would possess.
or
[Golden Fist]
|Rarity: Uncommon|
Allows you to cover your fists in a deadly golden light that amplifies the power of your attacks and punishes evil. It also deals severe damage against the unholy and spirit beings.
Oh wow. Isn't this conflicting?
Cat Form is out, I'm pretty sure I could do that with enough experience in Shape Altering. Golden Fist on the other hand seems like the perfect piece in my build, other than the fact that I would be using a holy ability against angels. On the other hand it is a massive fuck you to almost all of Nazarick, and it will be tremendously useful when taking down the Bone Dragons and the undead.
So I obviously locked it in, and with it came...
You have acquired 5 abilities! +1 Ability Slot
Finally.
I laid down on my camp floor and took a deep breath in relief. I managed to get my second ability slot before Nazarick arrived through nothing but grinding. It finally allowed me to relax a little knowing I was at a decent pace.
But then. A notification popped up.
Feat Achieved! The Great Tomb of Nazarick has arrived. Good luck.
+1x Gold Trait Gacha Ticket
Nevermind what I just said.
Fuck.
A/N: We have stopped grinding and entered the real game. Ludo needed to intervene but didn't know when to, so he just decided to stay there until he had to. I was initially going to bullshit it with compass before I realised it wouldn't work, so I came up with this instead.
Nazarick is finally here. This is where Overlord Episode 1 starts, and so does Ludo's stress. Yep, our boy got less than a month of truce. He will have to put in the work. At least the Gacha has some pity. What do you guys think about the arrival and how to treat Nazarick?