The Boss is a creature that unfolds slowly from the edge of the cliff.
Its limbs slowly peel off the main body--just like the rest of the creatures on the Iron Monsters' Peak, the Boss's appendages are bladed. However, unlike the weaker monsters, it has multiple joints and, as one of the limbs peels off, its limbs creak one after another, giving a terrifying momentum to the blade, which carves a deep gash into the stone underneath it.
The Boss uses the blade now etched into the stone to drag the rest of its mass upward, with more bladed limbs hitting the rock, one after the other.
Iskara’s teeth clench at the sound. It cuts through her ears and into the back of her skull.
The thing’s proportions are wrong. Its torso is compact, almost small, but the limbs extend far beyond what bone and tendon should allow.
Clusters of sensory pits line its head and shoulders. They flare open and begin to vibrate. A high-pitched hum fills the air. It is just high enough that both Iskara and Jacob are in pain.
Her balance wobbles. The edges of her vision fuzz for a heartbeat. She knows without looking that Jacob feels it too.
The creature’s maw opens, a vertical slit that runs down the front of its torso. Black obsidian plates riddle its body.
A True Diamond creature, Iskara feels her breath hitch. This is too much.
Clearly, her first thought is that they're going to lose.
The second is that everything they have done until now will not matter if they die on this plateau. The monster’s sheer physical dominance hits her in the gut.
For a moment, she doubts Jacob again.
How can we win this? How can he do anything? I'm fast enough to perhaps avoid the strikes... but what is he going to do against that thing? Look at the speed it showed while finishing its climb. There's no way we can take on something like that.
A familiar hopelessness takes over. She feels small again. Not even when she was a child she ever felt like this--maybe her brother did, or at least she suspects as much. But not her, she never felt like this before. Yet, she feels like a child--a child terrified of what her parents are going to do once she's back home.
Her fingers twitch toward the pocket where the dark seed rests.
“I’ll take care of this,” Jacob shouts.
Iskara tears her eyes off the monster long enough to glare at him. “Have you lost your mind,” she snaps.
He does not answer.
Jacob dashes toward the creature in a blur. Heading straight for the creature's multi-jointed limbs.
Iskara's stomach lurches.
Maybe he plans on using the Grimoire to dodge?
Now that she knows that Jacob uses The Grimoire Extraordinaire, she also knows that the Leader of Champions can anticipate moves from his enemies thanks to his multi-faceted Rainbow Skill.
She watches on curiously.
Jacob moves sharply, dodging a supersonic slash that would have cut a building in half. Then, Iskara sees him immediately activate the Reverse Domain of Ruin and Bones. Then, he starts slashing with Diavolo Hypercut, applying a series of debuffs.
Yet, it looks like Jacob is fighting a fortress wall with anything but a blade.
The Boss is too sturdy. Jacob doesn't have enough Afflictions to bring it down.
She takes a deep inhale.
This is it. This is his limit. I'm sorry, Jacob.
Iskara is about to take the Dark Seed and destroy the obelisk when she notices something weird.
Why is he only using his bleeding Affliction?
* * *
Name: Jacob Cloud
Class: Architect of Ruin – Lv. 285
Core Skills:
Hellraiser Sword – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Offensive, Debuff, Control)
Baal's Cage – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Control)
The Devil’s Engine – Lv. 80 (Diamond - Constitution)
Curse of Fire – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Affliction)
Heavenly Balance – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Control)
Baptism of Blood and Fire – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Support)
Tribulation of the Damned – Lv. 100 (Platinum - Offensive)
First Step of Mephistus – Lv. 100 (Platinum - Movement)
Hellish Reversal – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Debuff)
Infernal Well - Lv. 100 (Platinum - Constitution)
Embrace of Darkness - Lv. 100 (Platinum - Control)
Diavolo Hypercut - Lv. 100 (Platinum - Offensive)
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Domain of Ruin and Bones – Lv. 100 (Diamond - Domain)
The Grimoire Extraordinaire (Rainbow – Support)
Class Skills:
Furnace Core (Passive) – Lv. 100
Cinder Rot (Active) – Lv. 100
Ash Fever (Active) – Lv. 100
Blight of Embers (Active) – Lv. 100
Smoldering Blood (Active) – Lv. 100
Armor of Cinders (Active) – Lv. 100
Architect’s Ruin (Passive) – Lv. 100
Attributes:
Strength (STR): 545
Dexterity (DEX): 852
Endurance (END): 443
Vitality (VIT): 852
Intelligence (INT): 2004
Spirit (SPI): 2004
Wisdom (WIS): 1509
Charisma (CHA): 18
Luck (LCK): 10
Unassigned Points: 0 Free Attributes
Other Skills:
Minor Cookery – Lv. 35 (Iron)
Greater Night Vision – Lv. 100 (Gold)
Light – Lv. 100 (Bronze)
Expert Pickaxe Mastery – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Greater Mineral Sense – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Vibrational Hyperawareness – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Platinum Grip – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Expert Endurance – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Expert Strength – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Greater Striking Rhythm – Lv. 100 (Platinum)
Everything has been pushed as far as it can go in this Trial, save for a couple of Skills. The Devil’s Engine sits there in the low 80s, frustrating him.
He turns to Iskara, knowing how much work she put over these days to make sure that they would both triump, and he knows he can’t let her down. He’s the Leader of Champions, he can’t allow himself to be a drag. Yet, the Boss monster attacks him at insane speed, even with the building power for The Devil’s Engine, he knows he can’t take it easy. He has to fully utilizes the Reverse Domain, pushing it to the max, but he feels a terrifying strain on his body from The Devil’s Engine. He knows he has to max it out to win this fight.
Despite its size, the Boss's attacks at insane speed. Bladed limbs scythe through the air.
The Devil’s Engine grinds inside his body. The strain is terrifying.
Jacob pulls up the part of the Grimoire that he has been dreading. The Devil's Engine's flaws.
[Flaw #1 Soul-Gate Friction.]
[Description: When you absorb power from new Afflictions, the mana pulse stutters at the base of your neck. This “friction” creates about a 0.5-second delay in activation and causes you to waste a lot of power, while the veins there endure a painful backlash.]
[The Fix: You must route the excess heat through the Vesper Veins—a set of hair-thin channels located behind your collarbone. If you don’t open and stabilize those channels, the stutter will never fully clear.]
[Flaw #2: The Over-Saturation Collapse]
[Description: The Devil’s Engine produces more “Affliction Pressure” than your limbs can naturally vent. This leads to “Mana-Bloat” in your forearms, damaging the delicate structures there and making your strikes unstable.]
[The Fix: You need to tap into the Siren Pulse Veins in your inner elbows. These veins act as emergency release valves. By gently feathering the mana flow through them, you can vent excess pressure before it accumulates and collapses your output.]
[Flaw #3: The Core-Tremor Instability]
[Description: At 100% output, the Engine vibrates against your Intercostal Ashen Veins, the Draining Veins, and the Median Shadow Vein, threatening to crack your internal channels. This happens because “back-wash” from your leg movement Skills interferes with your heart’s rhythm and bounces force back into your core.]
[The Fix: You must bridge your the Median Heart Vein to the Atlas Root Veins in your lower lumbar.]
Jacob grits his teeth and ducks under a scything limb.
He has tried to fix each flaw. The problem is that they do not live in separate boxes. If he routes heat through the Vesper Veins without venting Over-Saturation, those veins burn out. If he grounds the tremors without cleaning the backwash, his spine protests. The system insists on all-or-nothing.
He feels the faint rumbling of The Devil's Engine in his body, the real power laying dormant beneath the Diamond Rank limitation imposed on it.
They must be fixed all at once, he thinks. There's no other way if I want to level up The Devil's Engine up to Level 100.
* * *
From Liuthkrav’s spot above the battlefield, things are not going well.
Calling Iskara into the Trial was a smart move. It allowed Jacob to shred through waves that might have reached the obelisk. Jacob leveraged her power to keep the structure safe and to lighten his own load.
Yet, there was a cost.
By sharing the work, Jacob arrived at the Boss with his Skills not fully maxed. He spread his experience, his Affliction stacks, across too many tools. His strongest engine still sits short of its peak.
Liuthkrav watches Jacob keep applying Bleed on the Boss. Small, neat cuts. Over and over. It looks almost pointless given the higher-tier Skills he has.
“It is strange,” Liuthkrav mutters to himself. “He still spends actions on Bleed when there are many more efficient Skills in his list.”
“For someone with the Grimoire in his hands,” Liuthkrav keeps talking to himself, “it is expected to see most Skills maxed in a short span. He has done that with many. Not with the most critical one.”
The Devil’s Engine still rests in the low-80s.
“Too low,” Liuthkrav mutters to himself. “There is no way he maxes it here by ordinary means.”
It is more than a number. It is a problem because of what comes next. Jacob will not be able to reap the maximum benefit from absorbing the Star Metal drops if the Engine is not at its cap.
By using the Crucible to integrate three drops of Star Metal at once, Jacob could trigger a resonance.
That resonance would create enough power to immediately unlock the True Diamond versions of The Devil's Engine. It is the shortcut that compensates for his awful base talent.
“But,” Liuthkrav thinks, “to do that, the Skill must be sitting at its cap. If the Devil’s Engine still sits in the low-80s by the time the Boss is dead, the chance of resonance is effectively zero.”
And that would waste all the time they've spent in this Trial. And with the tournament for the first-year students coming up, there’s nothing he can do. Jacob's Devil’s Engine is currently capped by his terrible natural talent. The resonance created by the Star Metal in the Crucible acts as a workaround to accelerate his growth, which would otherwise take a year to achieve.
The power spike from this resonance is the missing piece in Jacob’s strategy to defeat Nimirea. It would allow him to reach a power level capable of standing toe to toe with her by the time of the tournament.
Liuthkrav looks at Jacob as the boy still keeps using only the most basic Affliction provided by his Hellraiser Sword.
Bleed. Why Bleed? The Mithril Golem wonders. It makes no sense.
Yet, Jacob Cloud rarely does things without a reason.
* * *
Jacob smiles.
He thinks back to his master.
He said that he got three gifts from King Baalrek. But actually, there’s a fourth one. It’s not just one gift. It’s just that it was never useful until now.
He hears Baalrek’s voice as clearly as if the Infernal King stood beside him.
“My life,” King Baalrek had said, “is worth a lot now to the flow of karma. So before I go, let me impart you not just the Skill, the weapon, and one of my spells.”
The old Infernal had smiled then, bitter and amused. “It is ironic that I will leave you a second grimoire. My own.”
A black book suddenly appears in front of him as he dodges. An artifact of unspeakable power. So strong he could use it as a shield against this Boss's attacks.
But, out of respect for King Baalrek's memory and Primordial Spells, he does not.
The black grimoire opens on a specific page and Jacob speaks an ancient tongue, belonging to beings much older than Infernals.
It's the language of Devils.
He stops for a second, looking at the bleeding Boss, calling forth one of his Skills.
[Baptism of Blood and Fire.]
