King of the Mountain

Chapter 52: I Abuse The Great Game System (POWER UP)

I arrive in a room with a bed, a table full of food, and what looks to be a workbench or station for repairing or creating items, and four doors along one wall. Another message pops up.

Welcome to The Great Game Competition training area. You will have two weeks to train up your skills, abilities and levels. Please note that while you cannot die during training you will experience pain and only be given the rewards if you finish the training cycle. Choose carefully.

This must be the rest and refit area. I look closer at the four doors and read the signs posted above each.

Challenge of Fire: This challenge will increase your affinity with the fire element and provide experience based upon your selected challenge level.

Easy – 10% Affinity Increase – No Experience Bonus Recommended Level 75 50% Survival

Average – 15% Affinity Increase – 2 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 100 25% Survival

Hard – 20% Affinity Increase – 3 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 125 10% Survival

Extreme – 25% Affinity Increase - 4 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 150 1% Survival

Challenge of Water: This challenge will increase your affinity with the water element and provide experience based upon your selected challenge level.

Easy – 10% Affinity Increase – No Experience Bonus Recommended Level 75 50% Survival

Average – 15% Affinity Increase – 2 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 100 25% Survival

Hard – 20% Affinity Increase – 3 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 125 10% Survival

Extreme – 25% Affinity Increase - 4 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 150 1% Survival

Challenge of Air: This challenge will increase your affinity with the element of air and provide experience based upon your selected challenge level.

Easy – 10% Affinity Increase – No Experience Bonus Recommended Level 75 50% Survival

Average – 15% Affinity Increase – 2 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 100 25% Survival

Hard – 20% Affinity Increase – 3 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 125 10% Survival

Extreme – 25% Affinity Increase - 4 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 150 1% Survival

Challenge of Earth: This challenge will increase your affinity with the earth element and provide experience based upon your selected challenge level.

Easy – 10% Affinity Increase – No Experience Bonus Recommended Level 75 50% Survival

Average – 15% Affinity Increase – 2 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 100 25% Survival

Hard – 20% Affinity Increase – 3 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 125 10% Survival

Extreme – 25% Affinity Increase - 4 times Experience Bonus Recommended Level 150 1% Survival

Alright it is official. Even by Great Game standards I am an OP/Broken character. I mean these are the levels they expect from first time Planetary Leaders. I am already level 176 with so many titles that I could probably fight with a level 225 person easily. I also already have 100% in all of my affinities. This is just ridiculous. Ooh and with what I am thinking it will become even worse.

When I earned an increase in my affinities before, the Great Game instead gave me Unique Skills because I already had 100% affinities. This means that I can earn 4 times normal experience and receive a Unique Skill each time I complete the Extreme Challenge. I wonder how many times I can do each one?

Help, how many times can a participant complete each Challenge?

There is no limit placed on the number of times you can try or complete each challenge.

This is fantastic. I am so going to abuse the heck out of this loophole. I can just cycle through each of the challenges and go as many times as I can in two weeks. If I can do one a day that is 14 Unique Skills! Who knows how much experience at 4 times the regular amount in a level 150 challenge. This stupid system and game is not going to know what hit it when I am done. I better check one more thing. Help, are companions and familiars allowed to participate?

Companions and Familiars are NOT allowed during challenges, but may be used during the competition.

Oh well even if they can’t level up like me, they are already each at a level equivalent to an Average Planetary Leader or more. Well sooner started sooner done. I walk to the first door, the Challenge of the Fire awaits. As soon as I enter a Great Game message appears.

Please select your level of difficulty for the Challenge of Fire

1. Easy

2. Average

3. Hard

4. Extreme

I select extreme with a grin and enter to see just what the Great Game think will be extreme for a new Planetary Leader. The terrain around me shimmers and then turns into a lava field. There is a volcano in the distance and craters, lava streams, and not much else scattered around reaching up to it. No good places to really hide so I do my normal and use Earth magic to start burrowing into the ground. As I start making my shelter another notice arrives.

You must either survive for 24 hours or defeat all 100 level 150 lava lizards in order to pass the Challenge of Fire

Ok, probably most people would start moving and try to hide and survive the 24 hours. I am going in the other direction. I will finish this shelter as a fall back position, but then I am going hunting. I mean if I can finish it early then that means I can take the challenge more times and maximize the rewards. As soon as the shelter is ready I move about 50 meters away and start constructing a tower. I figure one of my 50 meter towers will allow me to scan the surrounding and then glide to wherever I need to be. After about 20 minutes and using a lot of my mana I stop and climb the tower. I find it strange that I have not been attacked yet, but on the other hand I do not know what a Lava Lizard is or looks like so they could have surrounded right now.

As I scan the surrounding territory from the top of the tower I easily spot a large animal in the distance. It does not look like a lizard though. More like a large red cow. As it gets near one of the lava streams I see ripples in the lava. Dang it I know what happens next. I have watched too many nature documentaries not to recognize this set up. Yep, there it is. A large crocodile creature leaps out of the lava stream and ambushes the red cow thing.

Ok, it looks like the Lava Lizards are actually reptiles that live in the lava and ambush prey. This means that at some point to make this difficult the Great Game will have them exit the lava and search for prey, which is supposed to be me. Let’s change things up from the usual and go hunting. As I change forms and glide down I aim to land near a lava river close by. As soon as I hit the ground I see ripples form in the lava. They must be attracted by vibration in the ground.

A large crocodilian lunges out of the lava river and aims straight at me. I blink above the lunging reptile and pull out a large ice enchanted military spike and slam it into the back of its head. The force knocks it down and cracks it scales. I do not let up and keep slamming its head as it is dazed. In less than 5 seconds it stops moving at all. Well that was easier than I thought. 99 Lava lizards to go. 5 hours later I am starting to get a little ticked off. The hunting was going great until I hit number 88. That was about an hour ago. Since I killed number 88 I haven’t been able to find a single lizard. I want to finish this thing as quick as possible. I have no way of really checking inside the lava, I mean I guess I could just throw big stones in and see if I hit something, but there are so many lava streams that would take forever. I might as well just wait out the 24 hours.

What else could I do. They have obviously smartened up and won’t come out until the Great Game forces them too. If only I could get rid of the lava. Wait a second, I don’t have to get rid of the lava I just need to move it. I have Earth magic, I will just redirect the flow. I head close to the volcano where the major streams of lava are coming out and then dig a massive trench off to the side. Now I connect the trench to the lava flow and voila, the lava starts to flow in the new direction. I switch to draconian mode and fly up clumsily. No need for gracefulness right now. I watch the lava streams as they start lessen. There, a cluster of ripples in a pool of lava that is getting lower and lower. I glide over and shoot an ice blast at the protruding backs of the Lava Lizards. Wow, that ticked them off. They hate the cold even more than me.

Six Lava Lizards come barreling out of the lava pool and start to attack. With blink it is not even a challenge. They have no where to hide anymore and I just blink from head to head and smashy smash them to bits. The only trouble I had was when I was attacked from behind. While I had been focused on the six I had originally lured out, the other missing six showed up behind me and almost bit me in half. They did manage to connect with a tail swipe, but compared to that stupid giant tree I had fought a few days ago it was just a love tap. One quick heal pill and a continuation of smashing heads and I was done. 100 Lava Lizards.

Congratulations on finishing the Extreme Fire Challenge. Rewards are being calculated. You receive an increase of 25% to your fire affinity. Since you already have 100% fire affinity your reward has been changed to 1 Unique skill. Experience will be rewarded after a 12 hour continuous rest period. Due to setting a new speed record the Great Game awards 5% fire resistance.

Alright, that took me about 8 hours. However, now that I know what to do I can probably get it done in 4-5 hours. However, I was awarded fire resistance. I should not be able to get resistance stats myself until after level 200. I wonder if I can abuse that also? If I do each run just a few minutes faster can I keep getting the 5% resistance for each new record? Only one way to find out. First I need to get back and do some quick math in the rest and recuperation room. I exit the door and start crunching numbers.

Ok, 50% resistance would mean I need 10 runs through each challenge, each one faster than the last. I f the others are similar to the Fire Challenge than I can get the first one in less than 10 hours and just go a little quicker each time. Let’s say 30 minutes faster each time to leave some wiggle room. That means I will have to spend about 60 hours total in each dungeon for a total of 240 hours. 2 weeks is 336 hours total. That means if work 15 hours and then rest 8 hours so I don’t trip the experience gain I can finish in 360 hours and have 26 hours for rest and recuperation at the end. Alright, that is the new plan time to get started.

13 days of almost continuous dungeon diving. I am so mentally exhausted. I feel fine physically, my stats and 8 hour breaks saw to that but I am so tired of doing the same thing over and over. I finished fire in high spirits, the Earth challenge was even easier. I mean giant worms attracted to sound, come on I have seen every tremors movie at least twice. It was a cinch to attract with noise get them to swallow explosive, blow up and repeat just like in the movies. I finished that one relatively quickly which made me think that I would finish everything earlier. The Water challenge was giant frogs with gross slimy sticky tongues.

I have dissected dozens of frogs if not hundreds over my years as a science teacher. This was the first time I had to dissect one from the inside though. It started as a mistake on my part. I wasn’t paying enough attention and got wrapped in a tongue and swallowed. I cut my way out from the inside and figured out I was able to kill the dumb thing twice as fast cutting on the soft inner parts. So that became the new hunting method. Get swallowed, then cut my way out. I think I might have started losing my mind a little after about the 1,000 time I went down a giant frog’s throat. It was mentally draining and disgusting and took just a little longer than the Fire challenge. However, the Air challenge almost ruined my plans.

I HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO FLY BETTER.

I have never felt so disgusted and humiliated about myself as I do after the Air challenge. On the surface this should have been the easiest challenge for me. When I first entered the Air challenge I received the what was now standard message of survive for 24 hours or kill 100 level 150 monsters. The terrain around me was extremely mountainous. Cliffs, valleys, and very few if any flat resting spots. I set a quick camp as usual and started looking for the monsters. It did not take long for me to spot my new foe. It was Giant Eagles.

Scattered all over the cliffs were very large nests. I obviously made the connection that these must hold the monsters I was looking for. So I switched to draconian form and clumsily started flapping my way towards the first nest. This is where I ran into my first problem. As soon as I was more than about ten meters up I was either spotted by a sentry or the Great Game was mad at me or something. Every eagle within about a kilometer started leaving their nests and diving at me. If I had been on the ground, I could have done so many things to make these guys regret their decision, however I was not on the ground and I am a bad flyer. I freely admit that I panicked.

Looking back at the situation there are several things I could have done. I could have blinked or teleported out of the way. I could have dived myself and met them on the ground. Heck I could have even taken out a gun and started shooting, but what I did was perhaps the worst choice of all. I decided I needed to have protection from the birds that were rapidly closing on me and pulled a tower shield out of my inventory. Please remember that I am already bad at flying. As soon as I pulled the shield out my poor flying skills became more of falling skills. I was trying to fly, position a shield, and keep track of my opponents all at the same time. It did not work.

I am pretty sure my high luck is the only thing that kept me alive in the first round of the air challenge. I somehow managed to get the shield between the closest eagle and my currently falling/gliding self and it absorbed a great deal of the damage. If it had not been for that I probably would have failed on my first try. Because that eagle did not slow down at all. The stupid thing pulled a kamikaze on me. It hit me for about 1,000 damage even with my shield absorbing a lot of the blow. This was a thirty foot wingspan probably 7-8 foot tall giant eagle that never slowed down. So I got my first kill by just letting it crash into me.

Of course physics took over at that point and a heavily damaged me started heading to the ground very rapidly. If I had been even a slightly better flyer I would have died. Since I was not very good, I was closer to the ground than I could have been. When I hit it wiped another 1500 or so damage from me. 80% of my health was gone in less than 10 seconds. I instinctively turtled up and started using Earth magic to create a hole to hide in and a dome to protect me. That is all that saved my life. Two other eagles were close enough they went into the kamikaze dive and the others returned to their nests. I had just enough time build enough of a shelter that when those two eagles hit it caused me some minor damage from some of the rocks of my hastily built shelter falling on me, but the dome barely held. If one more eagle had dived or if I had not practiced with my Earth magic to build almost instinctively I would have failed that first time in the challenge. As it was I popped a health pill and just laid there recovering.

This was just another reminder that I needed to be careful and not get to full of myself. Even though I regenerate quickly and my health is full, psychologically I was not ready to continue yet. After another 30 minutes of rest and contemplation I crawled out of my protective dome. I needed to come up with a better strategy. Next plan is to climb up to the nests carefully making hand holds as I go. This seemed to work well until I hit that 10 meter point again. As soon as I reached that level I could no longer manipulate the stone of the mountain. It was resisting my efforts. There must be a restriction on it placed by the Great Game. This was the first time that Earth magic had ever failed me. I quickly climbed back down as I did not want to meet these things hanging onto the cliff while I came up with plan C.

If I can get these things to attack when I am on the ground, all I would have to do is blink out of the way and they would kamikaze themselves to death. How can I get them to come to me? Suddenly it dawned on me. I was making this so much harder than it had to be. I had become so used to physically fighting the other monsters I just assumed I needed to do the same thing here. How dumb can I be? Nests are made of flammable material. All I needed to do was light the stupid things on fire and the eagles would be forced out of them. They would most likely be mad and seek revenge and then I would just need to wait and blink out of the way.

It was a great plan, a wonderful plan, but I had forgotten one thing. I sent a fireball towards the nearest nest and sure enough two eagles came out of it and proceeded to look very angry and head in my direction. Wait for it, wait for it, there it is the kamikaze run now blink away. I said blink away. Oh crap run away. I had forgotten to test blink and teleport. I should have realized that if the Great Game had placed a restriction on the stone then there might be other restrictions in place also. Luckily my stats were high enough that I could dodge and run far enough away from the eagle’s impact point that I was only hit with debris. It still hurt and did damage, but nothing like a full impact would have caused.

I settled in for another round of planning. What was I on, Plan D? It doesn’t matter. Ok the basics of the last plan are solid, I just need a better way of escaping. Got it, create a shelter next to me and dive into it before the eagles hit. That was what I proceeded to do. I had finally hit upon a plan that worked. Once I finished my 10 rounds of the Air challenge I collapsed onto the bed in the rest and recovery room. I did it I finished my goal and completed 10 rounds of each extreme challenge. I have around 30 hours left until the challenge and training phase is over. Time for some real rest and I can pick my rewards tomorrow.