Chapter 208: Chapter 208: Novice Player’s Armor Break, Toughness, Agility, and Life
The Level 3 Sanctuary, Frosty Noble Sanctuary, had been completely wiped out. Qi Suian, meanwhile, found a spot to study the Level 3 Fireseed: Frosty Noble.
As for Cummings, he announced his departure. He also asked where Qi Suian would be, saying he would come looking for him in a couple of days.
Qi Suian instantly understood his intentions. He was just coming to give him a gift, nothing more.
He was right. Just sucking up to someone was unrealistic; you had to make yourself an attractive ally.
Just like that, the tables had turned. Qi Suian had become the idol this group of mutants was fawning over.
So, Qi Suian told him he’d be staying in the area for a while and wouldn’t be leaving, so Cummings could come find him for a chat anytime.
’His main strategy was to be a non-stick pan: make vague promises, take zero responsibility, and pull out decisively the moment trouble started.’
’If it came down to it, he’d just fall back on the ultimate disclaimer: accepting a gift doesn’t equal agreement.’
’As for whether this was immoral, Qi Suian figured he didn’t need morals. He just needed to stay alive.’
After that, Cummings left. Qi Suian’s research on the Level 3 Fireseed: Frosty Noble, however, was progressing rather slowly.
At Level 3, it seemed to have undergone some sort of qualitative change, which increased the difficulty by a huge margin.
For Qi Suian, however, this was a good thing.
’The higher the difficulty, the greater the value.’
’And the information it contains will be more complete and refined.’
"If I could get my hands on a fragment of the Fireseed Source, I might be able to reach the top in a single bound," Qi Suian muttered.
If the intelligence Cummings provided about the Fireseed Source was true, then it had been split into twelve pieces long ago.
Unless he could fight his way through all twelve Triumphant Edens, he could forget about collecting them all.
Qi Suian entertained the thought for a moment, but one look at his own scrawny limbs was enough to make him shelve the idea for now.
’I can’t even take down a Level 3 Sanctuary right now. Attacking the source, the Triumphant Edens? That’s just asking to die.’
’When the power gap is that big, even plot armor can’t save you.’
[Tai Sui Divine Armor Value has reached 50. Three module slots remain empty. For the next evolution, an armor value of 53 is required.]
The AI’s notification interrupted Qi Suian’s research on the Level 3 Fireseed: Frosty Noble.
’The armor requirement per evolution went from two points to three. I’m screwed...’ Qi Suian had been mentally prepared for this, but seeing it in writing still gave him a headache.
The Gold-devouring Beast had upgraded its appetite once again.
’Then again, it’s pretty normal. It went from one point per evolution to two, so going up to three now is perfectly reasonable.’
As for when the next increase would happen, Qi Suian had no idea.
’Whatever. I’ll think about something happier.’
’I saved up three module slots just so I could install this three-piece set.’
Qi Suian took out a shortsword, a piece of cloth armor, and a pair of cloth shoes.
To avoid breaking up the set, Qi Suian hadn’t even dared to look at his module slots, afraid he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to install something else.
The most obvious example would be modules similar to the Black Dark Energy Crystal or a Pure White Aurora Crystal, which could be used to help the high-radiation-resistance metal coating absorb and convert radiation.
After all, with modules like that, he could ignore the radiation in the restricted zones and do whatever he wanted to the Wasteland King.
Fortunately, he had the Level 3 Fireseed: Frosty Noble to distract him. Otherwise, he really might not have been able to hold back.
Three pieces of equipment from the same game world were installed as modules, resulting in three SSS-rank modules.
[SSS: Novice Player’s Armor Break]
[SSS: Novice Player’s Resilience]
[SSS: Novice Player’s Agility]
When combined, the three-piece set granted an additional new effect called Novice Player’s Life.
[SSS: Novice Player’s Life (Set Bonus Module)]
Armor Break allowed every attack from the Tai Sui God to weaken the enemy’s armor or other related defensive stats.
At first glance, it seemed inferior to the true damage from the Glutton’s Ravenous Feast, but it was actually completely different.
After all, true damage already ignores defense, so whether it had armor break or not seemed irrelevant.
The Glutton’s Ravenous Feast transmitted force into the target’s body to cause internal injuries, whereas Armor Break was different—it dealt mandatory damage.
If they have armor, it breaks it. If they don’t, it breaks them.
Even if the target wasn’t killed on the spot, they would still suffer a forced-damage effect. That was the crucial part.
Furthermore, because it reduced current armor by a fixed 1%, it meant that with a high enough attack speed, an opponent’s armor could be reduced to almost nothing.
However, the calculation was based on current armor, which meant hitting the opponent a hundred times wouldn’t reduce their armor to zero.
For example, the first strike would reduce 100 armor to 99. The second strike wouldn’t reduce it by another 1 point, but by 1% of 99—a reduction of 0.99 armor.
It was like Zeno’s paradox of the tortoise; you could never technically reduce the enemy’s armor to zero. However, there wasn’t much difference between an armor value of zero-point-many-zeros and an actual zero.
Either way, it wouldn’t offer much protection.
It had its drawbacks, though. This kind of forced damage to armor and weapons could be restored through external means, like reforging.
Similarly, if inflicted on a person, the damage could be healed by treatment or by their own powerful regenerative abilities.
Its true power lay in granting Qi Suian the ability to inflict a mandatory 1 point of health damage.
The true damage from the Glutton’s Ravenous Feast could ignore defense, but it couldn’t bypass a massive difference in power to inflict guaranteed damage.
It might sound strange—how can something ignore defense but not inflict guaranteed damage? But it was normal. It was a special ability, and its activation requirements weren’t particularly demanding.
Take the Blood Moon, for example. The so-called ’true damage’ would, at best, have only scraped its hide. But with Armor Break, he could have actually wounded its flesh.
There might have been some overlap, but "complementary" was a more fitting description.
As for Resilience, it was a bit more straightforward. Each time the Tai Sui God was attacked, it would gain an additional 1% to 10% armor value for 10 seconds.
There was no stacking limit, but the problem was that the armor gained from each attack was calculated independently, and new stacks didn’t refresh the duration of previous ones.
This meant that after the initial ten seconds, a stack of bonus armor would expire every second.
More importantly, triggering the stacks required taking a certain threshold of damage, and he couldn’t just inflict it on himself to farm the buff.
’Qi Suian had initially thought he could just game the system. ’It’s just stacking from damage, right? I can just hit myself. If I’m fast enough, I can get the 10% bonus armor with every hit and stack up a massive amount.’ ’
But that didn’t work. It had to be an enemy. The system’s logic prevented him from exploiting any bugs.
Furthermore, when he was protected by the Dragon and Tiger Primordial Divine Force, any attacks that landed on the force itself wouldn’t trigger the stacks either.
However, if he used a shield or other defensive module to absorb the damage, that *would* increase his bonus armor.
’It made sense when he thought about it. The Dragon and Tiger Primordial Divine Force wasn’t a shield or a defensive module, so of course it wouldn’t trigger the effect.’
Resilience itself was a defensive module, just a rather unique one.
Finally, there was Agility, which was brutally simple. For every meter traveled, it granted 1 point of agility—which included attack speed, movement speed, processing speed, and so on. The bonus would stack up to a cap, which was calculated as 1% of the Tai Sui God’s total combined speed, multiplied by its number of evolutions.
The duration was infinite, but the buff would disappear if he didn’t move for more than ten seconds.
And to maintain it, he had to move at least one meter within that ten-second window; just taking a single step wouldn’t count.
Of course, if that one step covered a meter, Agility would count it.
Finally, there was Life, the set bonus effect for combining all three modules.
It didn’t grant any stat boosts, only a single effect: as long as a fragment of the Tai Sui God remained that was at least 1/10,000th of its total volume, it could be fully restored using materials.
However, this effect could only activate once. Upon restoration, its evolution count and all modules would be completely wiped, forcing it to start over from scratch.
This was essentially an extra life for the Tai Sui God.
It was precisely because of this set bonus that Qi Suian didn’t just uninstall the Novice Player’s Resilience module.
At his current stage, it was completely useless.
But it would be useful later on. After all, in more powerful Doomsday Worlds, there’d be no shortage of enemies with high attack power and speed. As long as an opponent landed a combo and the Tai Sui God survived the initial low-armor onslaught, they would then be facing a terrifyingly tanky Tai Sui God.
Of course, with a shield module, he wouldn’t even have to worry about his base armor. The enemy would hit the shield, and the Tai Sui God would gain bonus armor.
And the ten-second duration? It seemed short now, but in the future, once he was powerful enough, ten seconds would be more than enough time to pummel an enemy and their entire family tree into meat paste, and maybe even sit down for a celebratory dinner afterward.
The true strength of the Resilience module lay in its lack of a stacking limit and its percentage-based armor increase.
Right now, the Tai Sui God’s armor was low—at only 50 points, a 10% bonus was just 5 points. But its armor wouldn’t stay low forever. Once its base armor was high, the bonus would become very substantial.
"They’re all scaling modules. First, I’ll go for a run and max out the Agility buff," Qi Suian muttered. "Oh, right. Will the duration of the other buffs increase with the Tai Sui God’s evolutions?"
"Or will it be the percentage that increases?"
[For Armor Break, the percentage increases. For Resilience, the duration increases. For Agility, the required travel time and distance are reduced. However, the rate of increase may be disappointing, as the modules themselves are already overly powerful.]
[All three modules have effects with no upper limit. Therefore, if you wish to see significant growth, the Tai Sui God will likely need to evolve in increments of a hundred.]
"Got it. So they scale, but so slowly it’s almost unacceptable," Qi Suian said, understanding perfectly.
’He wasn’t that surprised, though. A percentage-based effect with no cap was obviously not meant for the early game.’
’Uninstall them? Impossible.’
Even if he couldn’t unleash the full power of these three modules, the set bonus alone was enough to justify keeping all three.
He could accept the Tai Sui God starting over from scratch, but he couldn’t bear to lose gear with so much potential.
’After I max out the Agility buff, I’ll get back to researching the fireseed.’
’Then I’ll toss this Level 3 Fireseed: Frosty Noble into the Melting Furnace as fuel. That should guarantee at least one more evolution for the Tai Sui God.’
As for his next module, he would of course choose one that helped the high-radiation-resistance metal coating absorb and convert radiation.
The coating itself provided the Tai Sui God with resistance; the module he wanted to add would be for absorbing that damage.
With enough of these modules, the Tai Sui God would eventually become immune to all types of attacks and even convert that damage into energy to heal itself.
Otherwise, why else would Qi Suian dedicate two module slots to every type of environmental damage?
More importantly, every module that resisted or absorbed a type of harsh environmental damage also enhanced the Nirvana Insect Cocoon, a module used for temporarily boosting resistances, and they could enhance his other modules as well.
The more he had, the stronger the Nirvana Insect Cocoon’s effect became, and it could enhance his other modules as well.
So it was definitely not a waste.
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