[NR] Fully Dead Stuff - Chapter 576 (Patreon)

Jason crosses his arms, “I prefer the giant beasts.”

Rosha raises an eyebrow, “Why? For some reason, I doubt you can take one of them down yet, no matter their level.”

The man nods, “The beasts don’t actually have that high of a level, only a couple hundred. In theory, the kingdom could easily put up a quest and get one of them killed.

“Except, this isn’t NeoRealm, not properly. This is the Deep Wilds and the System rules with a looser grip. Mainly, that means HP is less literal. So yeah, for most locals that wouldn’t make sense, but you’re all travellers and from how I understand it, wherever you’re from doesn’t even reveal your HP.

“Those giant beasts? They have giant HP pools and running out of HP doesn’t always kill them. Really annoying that. And how do we know? Because of course, the kingdom did set up a quest to handle things at the start. Except with HP pools that feels like it should be on something a hundred or more levels higher and the chance that the killing them doesn’t always kill them? Well, some parties took advantage of it to wrack up rewards.”

Courtney facepalms, “It was travellers, wasn’t it?”

The man laughs, “You know your own kind well!”

Courtney snorts, “It doesn’t take much knowledge to know that treasure seeking immortals would try and farm this kind of thing. Though that isn’t why it was stopped, was it? You could easily change the quests to require the beasts to have actually died for a reward.”

The man nods, “Yep, the System is pretty lenient when it comes to updating quests because of language missteps. It won’t let you make those changes retroactive, mind you, but making it so that going forward the new wording applies? Simple and the System will even alert others to this change as long as it doesn’t detect any intent to use this change to pass on a message.

No, the reason we dropped it is because killing the beasts only brought out even greater beasts! Not quite Kaiju, as I’ve heard your people refer to the truly grand beings that exceed the System even while within NeoRealm. Still, they’re pretty freaking big! Oh, and their size seems to almost act as a multiplier to their HP pool. So yeah, we stopped having outside forces kill them.”

Rosha tilts her head to the side, “Then why do you still try to kill them? Couldn’t you just defend until they leave? Also, I’m pretty sure you said something about no one having killed them at some point.”

The man shrugs, “None of us have killed one. Though we totally would if we could. The kingdom brought in an Oracle Magi for consolation and found that what was attracting the grander beasts was the powerful fighters. If us plebs kill one, it is basically just the weak being culled.

“When a powerful being is instead the one to make the kill, it signals a challenge and a feast. Despite a normal adventurer being much too small to even count as a bite of food, higher levels equals denser power. Like the difference between a feather pillow and a block of lead. It seems the beasts might depend on denser sources of power to advance after a certain point.”

Jason raises an eyebrow, “And that’s why you’re in here sulking instead of going out and killing the beasts?”

The man shrugs, “Of course there has to be a last line of defense. Not that I could defeat one on my own. Anyway, back to the original topic, why don’t you want us to finally be rid of these giant beasts?”

Jason rolls his eyes, “Because I know what to expect from them. Who knows what might arrive next? The Deep Wilds aren’t going to let go of land so easily. Maybe the next threat is a swarm of insects so small regular people can’t see them or a civilization of some sort out to enslave us the old-fashioned way. Nah man, I’d much rather a giant beast knocks on the walls every once in a while. At least they come from one direction and they aren’t all that clever. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the perfect enemy for a settlement like this.”

The man frowns, “You. You might have a point there. It makes me want to not re-up my service out here in two years. An extra decade is hardly anything for someone like me, but would force me to stick around for the mess.”

Jason shrugs, “Who knows, maybe the next opponents will be even easier for you to handle.”

The man snorts, “And there’s someone that still knows my name. Neither of us believe that manure you just tried to spread on me like it was a fine butter over warm bread. The Deep Wilds is the trickiest non-sentient mass of land in existence and maybe even beyond if you’re to believe what some maxers have said they’ve seen when plumbing its depths. Any new challenge will be equally tough for us, even if that is in a different way than expected.”

Jason, “Eh, I expect that since you had to face gigantic beasts, the next challenge will take all those built up defenses and turn them against you. So, I don’t know, maybe treants or some such? You did build the walls out of wood, after all. Be kind of funny in a cosmic irony sort of way. True trickster god territory to turn your greatest defense against you.”

The man squints at Jason, “Now you’re just trying to jinx us. Besides, that wouldn’t work. Don’t think we didn’t prepare for something like that! After all, what if a giant treant or similar appeared? No, each of the logs has been treated with a special poison that completely kills the wood.

“While the fact that treants and similar have the ability to warp wood, a lesser known addendum to that is it doesn’t work on fully dead stuff. They aren’t using the classic magic spell, warp wood, or any of the variants used to mold the stuff. The wood is being grown instead of altered purely through magical means. It’s why they have a much easier time popping out spikes and such.”

Jason shrugs, “Fair enough. I guess something like that would be planned against. If only because I have to assume other kingdoms have failed because of exactly that kind of nonsense.”