Chapter 188: Bloody Colossus

It’s been a month. He should’ve been here by now. He’s planning something, but the sheer amount of time he’s spent suggests he’s growing complacent. The enemy does not wait for your convenience. Send the newly-minted assassins and scouts. I want him dead, or failing that, I want to know what he’s up to.

• Caddock, level 63 High Paladin

Sickle of Malignant Silence

+20 Strength

+14 resistance

+8 Kinesthetics

+12 Acuity

+35 Focus

Active: 1 Charge. Wearer may shush a target and apply a debuff that makes it more difficult to speak. Duration and potency scale with Focus.

+15% potency of debuff Abilities.

Debuffs inflicted by the user that have expired or been dispelled, will leave behind ‘seeds’. These seeds will regrow into new debuffs as soon as the their host loses focus on them.

Number of seeds and their duration scales with Focus. Debuffs from seeds do not spawn further seeds.

Debuffs applied by the wearer also apply Bleeding, paralysis, and psychic damage over time.

Bleed damage is increased. Scales with Focus

Debuffs applied by the wearer may spread to other enemies. Chance scales with Focus, opposed by enemy Focus.

The hairs on Will’s arm stood up as he inspected the Relic.

This thing is EVIL.

Will consulted his slotted items, looking for ones that he could overwrite.

Phantom Hand Slots: (Ring of Accuracy*) (Ring of Explosive Doughmaking) (Wand of the Undead Retainer) (Stormfists) -(Dimensional Coiled Serpent Amulet)-

Okay, so the Stormfists and the Ring of accuracy are wildly outdated and need upgrades, but…their upgrades are…these two.

Will turned his attention to the bow and the chestpiece.

Hammer of God

+24 Strength

+12 Resistance

+18 Kinesthetics

+22 Acuity

+8 focus

8 degrees of correction.

+25% to Lightning damage inflicted by user.

Lightning damage dealt by the user will chain to up to 3 other enemies, dealing 60% less damage with each jump

Upon striking their target, projectiles fired by this bow are converted to lightning bolts, with potency based on the arrow’s potential damage on impact.

Arrows gain a small amount of mass and speed over time.

 

Without missing a beat, Will replaced the Ring of Accuracy in his Phantom Hand, wincing at the familiar pain shooting through his hand.

And the armor…

Armor of the Bloody Colossus

+30 Strength

+35 Resistance

+16 Kinesthetics

+6 Acuity

+8 Focus

Whenever the user heals, they temporarily gain a tiny amount of size that persists as long as the armor is equipped. Other Equipment worn by the User scales to match. Vastly increased size may damage the User if their Resistance is not high enough.

New equipment scales to match as it is attempted to be worn.

User and their equipment return to normal size when the armor is unequipped.

User gains a bonus to attack/movement speed when damaged.

Thorns 60%

Lifesteal 6%

…yep. Every single one of these is mind-blowing.

Will’s current dilemma was that he had only so many slots available in the Phantom Hand, and two more astonishingly powerful items with their own soft-set effects just waiting to be slotted.

Some of the effects had been diminished. ‘small’ amount of size had become ‘tiny’. Will was confident that if he slotted it in Phantom hand, Tiny would become ‘small’ again, or even ‘Large’.

But do I really want to become a giant all the time?

It was good. There was no denying that, it just didn’t have the same ‘magic’ feeling that Will enjoyed.

Will wasn’t going to replace the Coiled Serpent amulet, nor would he replace the ring of explosive doughmaking, Which left the Stormfists and the wand of the undead retainer.

I still owe those fellows an upgrade, not a painless death.

Will knew his ghost butlers didn’t care one way or another if they ceased to exist, but he’d be damned if he repaid good work with callous replacement.

That meant only the stormfists were available to be overwritten.

Now, the armor was a direct upgrade over the stormfists. It increased movement speed and attack power throughout the fight and was similarly physical in nature. It fell into the same category of ‘move faster and smash things harder’.

But…Will liked the sickle more, and if the sickle wasn’t slotted, its effects would be more of a nuisance than deadly.

And Will wanted it to be deadly.

Not to mention…

Will glanced at his Aspect description, scanning down to the single line hanging out there by itself.

Grants a passive boost to any lifesteal effect wielded by the user.

With that effect, Will could probably create a couple more lifesteal/thorns Relics and have them ready to go before it was time to leave.

Although…I’ve never really had the opportunity to test the lifesteal boost effect. That could effect how I use it.

Will took off all his gear and started trying on different Lifesteal items, inspecting them both on and off his body.

Each item that already had lifesteal gained 2% more after he put them on.

I’m not wearing any kit, so…

It looked like he got a flat bonus to the lifesteal of any item he wore.

Does it scale with Resistance? Will wondered, putting on his Dimensional bangle that boosted Phantom hand. He still had the ring of explosive doughmaking slotted, so his Resistance jumped up above 300.

Stolen novel; please report.

Will checked the items again. That flat bonus had increased to 3%.

So, 1% extra lifesteal on each Item with lifesteal for every 100 Resistance. That’s not that bad.

Despite being a small boost, If Will wore 4 lifesteal items, that was a free 12% extra lifesteal, which was nothing to scoff at. Any lifesteal build would be more than happy to add that extra little bit to close the gap and try to reach 100%.

Will glanced over at his Set items, and a thought occurred to him.

…Full set bonus increases the effects of Aspect by 50X. Aspect gives a flat boost. Would that work?

Will put on all of his set items to get the full bonus and tried on a 2% ring of lifesteal.

2 (100)% lifesteal.

…huh. I guess 100% is as high as it’ll go. Wow.

Will took his set back off.

That’s awesome, but I can’t count on the set bonus being active for the duration of the fight. I’m probably going to swap away from the Coiled Serpent Amulet at some point, and I can’t gain a full set bonus without it while wearing the bloody colossus armor, since it takes up the torso slot.

…I need to make a handful of items to work with the colossus armor and the Aspect boost to Lifesteal.

It sounds like the max size before it begins to harm the user is determined by Resistance, and my lifesteal boost is affected by Resistance as well.

Not to mention, the premise of the armor is to take a lot of small wounds and heal from them, gaining size and the bigger I get, the more surface area of me there is to wound.

If my Resistance isn’t top notch, someone’s gonna just put an empowered Ability through my giant target of a skull.

So to support the colossus armor, I need relics that grant Resistance, a bit of lifesteal, and thorns, to bump those up as close to 100% as they’ll go.

As far as Will was aware, there was no going higher than 100% in thorns and lifesteal. The only reason Frederick Wyrd was able to blow people up was the synergy between his voodoo damage link Ability, and the pacifist rod that damaged him for dealing damage to others. Those two things created a loop that would eventually explode someone, lifesteal and thorns were just the icing on that bloody cake.

It wasn’t infinite either, it was a simple test of who had higher self-heal and durability, and the damage overflowed to the loser, who then exploded.

Will didn’t have the damage link Abilities, so nobody would be exploding, they could stop taking damage from him as soon as they stopped attacking him. Will wasn’t going to give them that option, though.

That was the simple beauty of the combo. Will would literally become a bigger and bigger threat the longer the fight went, and he would use the increased size and speed to apply greater pressure on his enemy, forcing them to attack him.

…Which would increase his size and speed.

Hmm…movement speed Relics would be handy.

When people thought of massive giant monsters, the words that came to mind were slow, lumbering, towering.

Will wanted the Build to defy expectations…simple as it was.

Okay, Resistance, Lifesteal, Speed, Thorns, Will thought, scanning through his piles.

They were starting to get a bit depleted, but he could manage to get at least a little bit of lifesteal on each item.

Will made himself a full set, minus the gloves, and the left-hand ring.

The amulet and ring carried the most Lifesteal while the Thorns was spread out among the items. The boots had a strong 65% speed bonus after Will combined all of them, and Will wasn’t able to wear a pair of gloves, unfortunately.

They hadn’t lucked into another bangle or one-handed glove, and Will wasn’t about to bake his dimensional bangle into something that fit a one-off Build.

Oh, and I need a good helmet! Will thought, scanning the Relics. He was eventually going to become huge while wearing the soft-set, and that would make his head a enormous target.

Will picked through the helmet pile, picturing himself as a giant. He didn’t want a tiara made to boost magical powers, or something to look cool and breezy while boosting acuity like a headband. He wanted heavy steel between his face and missiles.

There. Will spotted a black bucket helmet he had tossed aside a long while ago because he didn’t like it.

grabbed the bucket helmet and dropped it over his head.

The helmet was distinctly uncomfortable to Will, suffocating his superhuman senses inside a sheet of steel wrapped around his head. His vision…wasn’t really affected, because he was blind, but his hearing was suddenly thrown off, with sound being caught and diffused by the helmet around his skull.

It was stuffy and irritating, and Will hated it.

It’s perfect.

The front of the helmet was a full fame-plate with small holes for breathing and vision, but even those holes had a thin wire mesh over them to catch particulates. Will could feel the helmet fusing to his Torso piece, making it so another person couldn’t easily dislodge it.

Helm of The Stubborn Bridge Guard.

+4 Strength