Chapter 821 - Nevermore: Checks & Balances (Patreon)

”Isn’t it entirely expected a few of his Creations will be entirely hidden even from you? You know how the system is with Bloodlines,” Nature’s Attendant spoke up within the divine watch party living room. ”If I am correct, little Dina must also have submitted some items that were restricted when she did the House of the Architect.”

”She did,” the Wyrmgod confirmed. ”However, it is rare that Nevermore herself shows interest in a Creation. Much less several Creations within a short time span. My attention wasn’t truly on the Chosen of the Lifesoul Daolord, as while his methods and Path are interesting, it isn’t one I find particularly appealing. However, it seems there is more to him than I initially believed.”

”All Bloodlines have secrets and are irregular by definition,” Vilastromoz shrugged, fine that the topic had switched away from Jake. ”For him to have his own special means is indeed only to be expected.”

The Viper wouldn’t say he was worried about how things would go in the House of the Architect for his Chosen. Both when it came to Jake doing well and regarding if he would reveal something, he probably shouldn’t. The Bound God of the World Wonder was a quasi-system entity, making her subject to its rules. Even if she wanted to share all of Jake’s secrets, she would be unable to.

It did annoy the Viper a bit that Nevermore knew more about Jake and his secrets than his Patron god, but there wasn’t really anything to do about it.

When it came to the overall evaluation Jake would get, the Viper also had great confidence. Even without factoring in Jake’s Bloodline, alchemists tended to do very well in this Challenge Dungeon. Statistics showed that of all the popular profession archetypes, alchemists were the overall top performers in this Challenge Dungeon simply due to how diverse of a craft it was. Poisons, potions, elixirs, pills, transmutation, magic circles, herbology, and many more disciplines were part of the art of alchemy. All very different, with the only truly common thing being their requirement for high-level mana control.

This also meant that his Order was one of the factions that had the best average performance. Alright, it also helped that the Order only tended to accept elites, but the fact it was an alchemy-focused faction was definitely the most important factor.

With all that in mind, Jake would likely get a decent evaluation even if he only had his alchemy to rely on. But Jake, of course, didn’t only have his alchemy. Throwing in the Bloodline meant that Jake had a great whiff of uniqueness in there, and the Viper was sure Jake would pull off something impressive, bringing him from a decent to a great evaluation.

However, it was far from assured Jake would get a top-tier Grand Achievement.

”Jake and even Dina would definitely have earned a top score if this was Nevermore back right after it got established,” Nature’s Attendant shared with a nostalgic smile. ”It sure was interesting back then before all the checks and balances.”

The Wyrmgod scoffed. ”Balance had to be achieved. With the further propagation of Bloodlines, something simply had to change. A Bloodline should not result in an automatic top-tier evaluation. At least Record inflation meant that the Leaderboards from back then are now useless.”

”I think we should give poor Jake a helping hand by allowing him full points even for stuff that is fully Bloodline-reliant. The guy is clearly starved of points,” Minaga said in a fake sad tone.

”I am sure he’ll be just fine,” Nature’s Attendant chuckled.

The Viper smiled at the conversation, remembering how Nevermore changed and adapted with time. It was true that Nevermore once had far fewer balancing factors and far more things to exploit. There was quite a period where the evaluations in all these Challenge Dungeons were made entirely based on the Records contributed. This, in nearly all cases, resulted in anything using a Bloodline leading to an automatic top score, as few things could be more unique than a unique Bloodline. Well, besides maybe a Transcendant skill, something that would also automatically qualify someone to get a top-tier evaluation back then.

Now, things had changed significantly. No longer was a Bloodline an unsurmountable advantage, even if they were still a big bonus. It also mattered how well one used one’s Bloodline now, and the overall quality of the items submitted using it.

Even so, the Viper was confident. As long as he remembered to submit a damn Grimoire, at least.

”Ah, by the way, that human from your Chosen’s Planet just got done with the Challenge Dungeon. The one who walks a Path of the Void under the influence of Oras,” the Wyrmgod shared with the room a bit – about three months - later as he looked at Vilastromoz.

”So?” the Viper questioned, finding himself a bit intrigued but not overly interested. He already had a good idea of how that man would do.

”A 25% Grand Achievement earned,” the Wyrmgod said, finally getting the attention of many of those in the room. 25% was incredibly rare, after all, and unless Bloodlines or Transcendent Skills got involved in breaking a scenario, they were considered borderline impossible. The fact that the man following Oras had neither made this outcome an event worth noticing, even for the gods present.

Vilastromoz wasn’t overly surprised, though. He had seen what the man had created, and out of everyone there, he was one of the people most knowledgeable about Oras. He knew the Void God wouldn’t ever bother with anyone who didn’t surpass comprehension in at least some areas.

”How?” the Blightfather, who had been silent for a long time, asked. ”From what I gathered, he had a mechanical profession. The variety of methods and Creations he can submit should be limited, and he didn’t even spend overly long in there.”

”You know that is not a question I can answer,” the Wyrmgod shook his head with a sigh. ”All I do know is that underestimating the mind of a man who walks side by side with Oras and keeps his sanity isn’t wise.”

A notion none of the gods present would ever disagree with. The Void Gods were incredibly well-respected entities, after all. They were gods that existed outside of the physical realm while rarely interfering directly with reality. Not because they couldn’t, even if they were severely restricted outside of the void. However, even if they rarely interfered, one could never truly make them enemies… for doing so would mean the void would become a place even a Primordial should reconsider visiting.

Then there was also the fact they were just so alien that not even the Viper was sure what their deal was most of the time.

”So, will your Chosen also walk out with a 25% Grand Achievement?” Minaga asked the Viper. ”If he does, things could get very interesting on those Leaderboards. Not to say it won’t get interesting even if he gets lower, but, you know, it will leave a lot up to the final Challenge Dungeon. Not that I think he will do badly there at all… in fact, I am very much looking forward to the experience.”

The Viper listened to Minaga’s long rant as he just answered the initial question as honestly as possible.

”How would I know how Jake will do? I haven’t seen any of the Challenge Dungeon as the screen only flickers on for the minutes he walks around the atrium.”

”Oh… yeah, fair enough.”

--

Jake had no idea his small marble had left a Bound God who had existed since the second era pondering in genuine puzzlement. Much less the happenings in the streaming room. Not that he had any time to think about such things, even if he had known. He was a busy man, after all, and was working hard on his current poison project. A project that had experienced what Jake believed could aptly be described as the concept known as feature creep.

The original plan had expanded several times as Jake got more and more small ideas to improve things. At first, Jake had wanted to make either a really strong Hemotoxin or a really strong Necrotic Poison. Mind you, Jake had at least been clear from the start he wanted a poison that targeted life-affinity lifeforms. A poison tailor-made for those would be better than trying to mix in stuff to also target something like elementals, so that’s why he went with a more focused one.

Also, the vast majority of foes Jake hunted were flesh and blood lifeforms. Beasts of different sorts, primarily, and while he did throw in the occasional plant, elemental, or mechanical creature, his Blood of the Malefic Viper usually did the job fine against those. Plus, as a hunter, Jake could choose his own prey, so if he only had poison good against flesh and blood, he could just only target flesh and blood prey. And currently, the only things Jake was itching to put arrows in were quite susceptible to both bleeding and necrosis.

At least Jake was fairly confident Ell’Hakan wouldn’t enjoy having his body rot and bleed from the inside.

His original plan to make either a strong Hemotoxin or Necrotic Poison quickly morphed into Jake asking himself a very simple question: why not both? Well, the answer was that different poisons very rarely mixed well, resulting in the final product turning out worse than if you had just focused fully on either. Alas, this was a problem Jake knew could be overcome as merging poisons was something Jake had read a lot about and knew as possible from prior projects. He just needed a way to make his two best types of poison compatible.

Now, Jake did also consider merging in a few concepts from his Sleeping Night poison but ended up quickly scratching that idea as he felt like trying to mix in Neurotoxins would just make the entire project way too damn complicated. Plus, if he struggled to merge two poisons in a satisfactory way, how was trying to merge three going to make things any better?

To clarify, the Sleeping Night Toxin had contained elements of hemo- and necrotic toxins, but he hadn’t outright merged two fully-created poisons together to make it. That poison had also been far more subtle due to the ethtoxin infused to calm the two other kinds of toxins down until it was time to go wild. Finally, even in Sleeping Night, the two toxins didn’t exactly mix well together. It was just that their violent clash would only happen once awakened, and as it would take place within the target’s body, it wasn’t really a problem.

To start this new and exciting project, Jake had first needed to make two powerful poisons to merge. One Hemotoxin and one Necrotic Poison, both firmly in the rare rarity, to then hopefully merge them even an even better rare rarity poison.

Once more, it had to be reiterated that poison rarities were quite a bit different from many other types. A bit like potions. The rarity was a lot more ”set” than in other things, and even just making rare poisons in C-grade was considered pretty damn good. In fact, Jake had been told by Villy that should he manage to create an epic rarity poison and upgrade the skill to epic while still in C-grade, it would be very impressive.

Shit, it wasn’t uncommon for some alchemists to never even reach rare rarity with their poison crafting while in C-grade.

One of the reasons why the rarities for these crafting skills were a bit different was because they were never downgraded. Every evolution from now on – B, A, and S-grade – would result in every single skill getting evaluated and potentially downgraded. The only ones immune to this were Jake’s unique skills and his crafting skills. Elixir making, potion brewing, and poison concocting to be more accurate. So, if one wanted to look at Jake’s rare poison skill in a more arrogant and definitely not accurate light, one could imagine it was actually meant to be three rarities higher as it would dodge three downgrades, making it already a legendary skill.

Yeah, alright, that wasn’t how it worked, but Jake liked to imagine it was. Anyway, this peculiar nature of the crafting skills also resulted in the spectrum within each rarity being far, far wider. Jake could make a rare rarity poison that was dozens of times more powerful than another and still stay within the same rarity, while if he did that with most other projects, the sheer power difference would result in a rarity difference also showing up. It did feel a bit weird that Jake could toss a dozen legendary rarity ingredients together and end up with a rare poison, but what can you do.

All of this is to say that despite Jake only aiming to craft another rare rarity poison, it didn’t make the final result any less impressive. He didn’t even consider making an epic rarity poison, as he knew it wasn’t going to happen. In fact, he had a way higher chance of making one of ancient rarity due to Malefic Viper’s Poison proccing. Something he seriously doubted would happen due to how damn low its proc rate was. 

Jake even regretted using that Venom from the horrible statue Felix made, but then again, it would probably have counted as a crafting ingredient and not something Jake could use during the Challenge Dungeon.

Back on the topic of this poison in question, Jake had rapidly made progress over the last many months, and when he transitioned into only focusing on this specific one, things only picked up further.

Before he began, Jake had been quite a bit better at making Hemotoxins compared to Necrotic Poison, but he quickly shored that up and got them to just about the same level. That was necessary if he wanted to merge them and create something new. Something Jake had come across that had a damn impressive and highly innovative name:

Hemonecrotic Poison.

Alright, it was just a combination of the words hemotoxin and necrotic. But the poison itself was actually pretty damn good.

One of Necrotic Poison’s biggest weaknesses was how effective it was. It sounded counterproductive, but it tended to simply rot away the area it affected too quickly and ran itself dry of energy. This even happened with the higher-quality Necrotic Poisons that released necrotic light into their surroundings. The result was that anyone who was inflicted could more accurately target the poison with their vital energies or even just cut off the affected area.

Some enemies Jake had faced on the different Nevermore floors even ”sealed” off the area he had affected and let it rot away until the necrotic energy ran out to then swoop in and cut off the very small affected area. This could result in a potent Necrotic Poison doing nothing more than rotting away a thumb-sized hole around where his arrow had struck, doing far less damage than he would have liked.

In many ways, Necrotic Poison was the most straightforward kind of poison there was, with no real hidden tricks. Just a shitload of death-affinity energy trying to make stuff die. It was both its biggest strength and biggest weakness.

However, what if the Necrotic Poison, with its incredibly potent death-affinity energy, was allowed to spread throughout the body? If it rapidly began to affect several places in the body at once instead of just one localized area?

To then make matters worse, this necrotic energy would be merged with a Hemotoxin – one of the notoriously most difficult poisons to get rid of as it bonded to the blood and vital energy of the infected person. It was a real double-whammy of damage that would create a high-damage, high-resistance poison. The kind Jake could confidently build up throughout a long fight.

The kind of poison he would happily use on his prey.

Jake was excited about finally getting it done, and as he researched, what he had hoped would happen even ended up happening. He found something else that seemed interesting to craft… he found what could very well become his tenth and final Creation.