Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 54: Luck

Zac woke up woozy and disoriented, and his innards felt like they were on fire. A sheen of sour perspiration covered his whole body and he was weakly shaking.

If he didn’t know better he’d think that he had caught a bad case of the flu. However, he felt that he should be immune to things like the flu or a common cold since his constitution improved.

His next guess was poison, and it felt far more likely. He was somehow poisoned during his fight, and it started taking effect on him after he left and settled down. His first guess would be the cauldron. He just barely touched it when he put it in his pouch, but he did breathe its fumes for a good while.

And it felt far more likely that a creepy imp was concocting poisons down in a subterranean cave rather than a healing potion. If so he felt that he scored an amazing weapon by chance. If just the run-off fumes were this poisonous, he didn’t even dare imagine what the liquid inside would do.

It didn’t help him with his current predicament of course. The most advanced healing tinctures in his possession were some aspirin and aloe cream meant for sunburn, neither likely to be effective against demon poison. He did have the mysterious azure water from the pond, but he didn’t dare drink it in case it only made things worse. He could only hope to slowly flush it out by drinking lots of normal water.

He had no real appetite at the moment but forced himself to drink a large amount of water. He tried eating some rations as well, but his stomach started churning threateningly at the mere smell of food. He arduously moved some distance in the tunnel as well, as a pool of his puke had turned the area quite putrid.

Zac took out a Nexus Crystal and started absorbing it after he found a new resting place. Being full of cosmic energy couldn’t hurt in case something happened. He actually felt that his body was getting slightly better as he was absorbing the energy, but it could be his mind playing tricks on him.

After a few hours he had absorbed all the energy he could. If he continued it would turn from restoration to cultivation, and he didn’t want to gain any experience before he made sense of his situation.

The poison had interrupted his train of thought, but he was still met with the same problem, his capped Strength. If he returned to the mountain it would only take a day or so of furious monkey slaying to reach level 35, something he was loath to do before he knew his options.

He decided to slow down leveling speed for now, and even stop pondering on the Dao. He even took off his gathering array amulet and put it into his bag in order to not even passively move toward the next level.

He’d focus on his axe technique instead as that was the only safe option left. Lost over what to do he opened up his status screen again, staring at the free attribute point. He knew he likely would have to gain a level to see what would happen, risking throwing away his Strength points. But for now, he wanted to look for another method at least for a while.

His conviction of focusing on only one stat had taken a hit from reaching the Strength cap. For now it was only Strength, but Endurance would be there sooner or later as well if he threw all his points into it now that he couldn’t put anything into Strength.

His eyes lingered on the other attributes, hesitating over what to do. Finally, his eyes landed on Luck.

It was an attribute he had completely put aside since the beginning, as he didn’t want to hinge his survival on something as unreliable as luck. But by now he was a walking juggernaut. The last fight was risky, but he had completely overpowered the Herald. The Monkey King wasn’t his match either and only survived due to his reinforcements.

By now he could put some points into luck, as his basic survivability was taken care of. He might not be exactly sure how it would help him, as he couldn’t quantify it. But since he desperately needed a solution to both his Strength-predicament and finding the general, getting some more Luck couldn’t hurt.

Satisfied with his plan he placed his remaining free point into Luck, but once again was stopped from actually allocating it.

“God damn it…” he muttered under his breath. “System, could you explain what’s going on?” he entreated while looking up.

It was the first time in a month he had tried to communicate with the System, but he was still ignored like the last times. Maybe the System lost interest in the world soon after the integration and left everything on auto-pilot before leaving.

He felt that the situation with Luck wasn’t the same as with Strength. He only had 67 points in Luck at the moment, a far cry from the 175 point cap. All his luck came from titles, and he never allocated any points into it so far, and Zac realized that might be the only way to increase his luck.

Luck had a major difference from the other attributes. All the other stats could be improved even before the integration into the multi-verse. Strength and Endurance were the most obvious, but even things like Intelligence could be slightly improved with active training and a good diet. But there was no way to train up your luck.

If this was true then getting the titles gave an even greater advantage than he thought, as they improved an attribute that should be static. He still didn’t understand how the Luck stat worked, but it might help him win a battle against someone equally strong but less lucky.

He suddenly wished that Charisma existed as an attribute as well, as getting that stat to over 60 points might have turned him into a handsome hero instead of his current look of a bald creeper.

With a sigh he allocated the last free point into Vitality, hoping it would speed up his recovery a bit. There was one last thing left that he needed to check out. He brought up his skill window to take a look.

Normal Skills

Eye of Discernment - Proficiency: -. A glimpse into the unknown. Upgradeable

Class Skill

Axe Mastery - Proficiency: Early. The seed of Dao is planted. Upgradeable

Chop - Proficiency: Middle. There is greatness in simplicity.

[Chop] had improved as he suspected. In his fight with the Herald, he’d actually shot out the edge like a projectile, something he hadn’t been able to do before. The desperation in the fight helped him breakthrough from Early to Middle stage of the skill.

He truly hoped he didn’t need to be on the verge of death to improve his skills in the future, but it seemed that pushing oneself to the limits was effective in improving not only levels and titles, but even skills as well.

As he was done with everything he could do for now, he closed his windows and helplessly closed his eyes.

It took a whole day before he could move about again, and another until he felt strong enough that he dared resume exploring.

He set course for the area where he had heard sounds of mining a few days earlier. As he approached he heard some shuffling ahead. He hid in an unlit side-tunnel, getting ready for a battle in case the imps discovered him.

To his surprise, the two imps weren’t alone but accompanied by three demons. They did not seem like miners, as they all were holding weapons and carefully looked around. They all seemed to be warrior classes as none of them held staffs or tomes or the like, and Zac’s eyes lit up when he saw one of the demons actually held an axe of exactly the same make as his own.

He originally planned on avoiding the fight as he didn’t want to rack up a body count, but now he charged at them as soon as they were within a few meters. With a [Chop] two of the demons instantly died, not even having a chance to react. Zac grabbed the remaining one with his free hand and threw the terrified demon down on the ground. With a mighty swing, he ended him as well, leaving only the imps standing. The imps barely managed to start summoning their fireballs before one was decapitated and the other was kicked into the wall, the force breaking most of its bones and killing it.

Zac looted the corpses then threw them into his pouch. He didn’t love the idea of carrying around a bunch of corpses, but he also didn’t want to just leave them lying there to be discovered. As if answering his prayer a salamander lumbered into view a few minutes later, and Zac tried throwing one of the demons at it.

It quickly snapped up the body and with a few disgusting chews had eaten him whole, the saliva creating a sickening sizzling sound as it acidic nature quickly melted parts of the body before even swallowing it.

Zac continued to throw bodies at it, and it actually managed to eat the whole party except one of the demons. But it grabbed him with its mouth, and after a glance at Zac turned around and returned to wherever it came from. It looked like the salamanders truly weren’t a part of the demon’s forces.

Zac continued forward, now holding an axe in each hand. He was delighted to see that the [Axe Mastery] skill still worked while dual-wielding the axes. But after trying it out for a bit he felt it was very hard and unwieldy to use. He preferred using only one axe, and having a free hand seemed more convenient for him. Even using a dagger in his off-hand felt more natural.

He reluctantly put back his second axe in his pouch and continued on. He might just be lacking experience, and he would have a lot of time to train his axe-work if he couldn’t level up for a while. As he walked through the shimmering tunnels he finally started hearing the droning sounds of tools hitting the hard walls.

Zac knew by now the effort it took to mine the Nexus Crystals. It had taken him quite some effort to dig out only one crystal from a wall, and that was with maxed out Strength. It seemed as though the dense cosmic energy empowered the rock that encased the crystals, making it far harder than it normally was. It was no wonder that new demons kept streaming down into the tunnels from the demon town.