CH 9

Zky7-9 minutes 24.09.2022

Huge thanks to void aaa and Gengster for becoming patrons!

[Resolution and Awakening!]

‘Underground Tomb of the Shinigami’. According to the strategy guide site, it was an underground dungeon located at a corner of Beginning Grassland, and the level of monsters that spawned in it was considerably higher than the ones on the grassland.

I went in it to defeat Living Weapons, but I was met with two big problems.

“Gugaaaaaaaa!”

“Uwaa?! Zombies are springing up from beneath the ground?! Come back, Pontaro!”

I hurriedly called back Pontaro whom I’d shot at a distant enemy!

In this underground dungeon, undead monsters launched surprise attacks from beneath the ground, so I might get attacked while Pontaro was away! Since Pontaro was my only attack means, I had a hard time dealing with them!

And to make it worse,

“Gugaaaaaaaa! Dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

“Eeek?!”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

‘Guts’ activates! You survive with 1 HP from a fatal wound!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

If I took so much as a scratch from the zombies, my HP would instantly drop from max to 1!

If I didn’t have ‘Guts’, I would have died with one hit! I hurriedly made some distance and shot Pontaro straight into the head of the zombie who had almost got me!

“Gugi?! Gug…!”

“Wait, it’s still alive…?!”

…I’d put all my stat points into Luck, but that didn’t mean my attacks would always trigger critical hits nor would they always activate my damage-increasing skills.

And when my rotten luck reared its ugly head, neither of them activated. Pontaro’s Strength was added to the attack power of the arrow he possessed, yes, but it was not strong enough to take down higher-level monsters without the effect of my skills. In the first place, my own attack power was abysmal, after all.

That was to say, my overall stats were too low! I was still able to make do at Beginning Grassland, but here the difficulty level of playing with pure Luck build rose exponentially!

“Gugga…!”

“Kiiiiiiiiill…!”

“Guggaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Uwa, the zombies had gathered?!

“Shit, let’s go, Pontaro! We’re getting out of here!”

Having judged that I would die at the rate things were going, I hurriedly ran to the exit!

…Just for a reminder, I was also sorely lacking in Agility. Even though I was just being pursued by zombies—which should be the slowest monsters in this dungeon—I almost, I mean almostfailed to make it out alive.

◆◆◇◆

“Haa~~~~~~, that was hell…!”

I sat down near the entrance of the underground tomb and heaved out a deep sigh.

On the vast grassland, I could easily shoot down one monster after another from a distance, but the underground tomb had narrow passages, and zombies would dig out from beneath the ground to launch surprise attacks; it made me constantly at risk of getting surrounded. And when that happened, I had to quickly end my Luck-based-one-hit-kill farming session.

“…In the end, I couldn’t find even one Living Weapon, and I only got to hunt several zombies. But well, thanks to that, I was able to level up twice…”

I looked at the 20 stats points I’d got and wondered whether I should divide them into Strength and Agility.

If I did that, I likely would be able to avoid falling into the same situation as before. I mean, if I could keep running while simultaneously shooting arrows with slightly higher attack power, I should be safer in fights.

Well, doing so would contaminate my pure Luck build, but even so, I’d be able to prove how great the combination of Summoner and the bow was. Additionally, it would end this situation where I could only farm at Beginner Grassland.

“Ugugugugugugugu…!”

I held my head in my hands as I looked at my status screen, and after a few seconds of agonizing—I made up my mind and yelled!

“Uoriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Men are all about guts! Once you’ve started something, you’ve gotta see it to the eeeeeeeeeeeend!”

I put all the points into Luck, sticking to my resolve as a man!

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew! That feels good~!

“Okay, I’ll stick with this play style no matter what! …Still, this doesn’t solve my problems. Just how should I tackle the underground tomb, I wonder…?”

Hmm~, I stared at the status screen while tilting my head.

That was when I suddenly remembered. Come to think of it, I got some things that aren’t materials from the few zombies I defeated.

Well, I couldn’t exactly check them inside the dungeon. When I searched through the item screen, I found accessories named ‘Cursed Ring’ and ‘Evil God Contract Necklace’, so I materialized them.

“Wow, what ominous designs! They look like what delinquents would wear!

Their names are eerie too, I wonder what are their effects… wait, the hell is thiiiiiiiiiiiiis?!”

Both of them had insane effects!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Accessory ‘Cursed Ring’, Drop rate: Low

・Set the wearer’s max HP to 1.

Accessory ‘Evil God Contract Necklace’, Drop rate: Extremely low

・Triples Luck when the wearer’s HP is 1.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“T-there’s no way anyone would wear either of these! The ring that sets your max HP to 1 needs no explanation, but the necklace only raises Luck?! When you only have 1 HP left, what you need is either Agility or Strength, goddammit!”

Ha~ how unlucky. If I was to get a rare drop anyway, it would have been better if I had gotten rare materials, instead. Just why did I get this trash?

If I wasn’t wrong, you could only wear three accessory items. Since they were valuable slots, I heard that most players always went with the safe option to equip accessories that increased their stats.

Which led me back to my point. Unless they were a total psycho, no one would wear such insane accessories… no, wait?!

“…I’d be dead in one hit either way, right? Then, having only 1 HP isn’t a problem for me. And if my Luck gets tripled, the activation rate of ‘Guts’ will increase dramatically anyway. Aren’t these made just for me?!”

And that’s not all. With increased Luck, my damage-increasing Skills would also be more likely to activate, which in turn would lead to an increase in my destructive power!

“U… Uoooooooooooooooooooooo! Did I just figure out a way to beat the system?! I can see it, I can see myself beating the underground tomb dungeon with pure Luck build!!!”

Once you decided something, you gotta act on it right away! I immediately wore the two accessories!

Woah, my max HP became 1, but my Luck now exceeded 600! Every other stat was 0, though!!!

“Alright! Just wait, you damned zombies! And you too, damned Living Weapons! I’m gonna slaughter you all!”

It sure feels good when your worries are resolved! Exultant, I started a counterattack on the underground tomb!