102

Praise the sun.

Dexarnael .

Val is only level 8, I don't think them being incompetent is that crazy to believe. He just fights like he is 10 levels higher than he is, because he is pretty arrogant. Regarding the monster being tougher, we don't know what level the adventures with Ameliah were. If they were a party of high bronze, a level 18 non reaper would look pretty easy. Most of this fight was literally 1 high bronze (who is a support 1st and formost) and 1 mid bronze archer.

Luck

Nothing in this chapter really made sense: Character incompetence that they should have shed long ago, monster ten times as tough as blue wolf in the beginning for some reason. Mc contribution is also too high, even if defense counts.

8Psycho

We've seen the spell affect entities already in motion, such as the cave bats and the dissolver, so we know it's possible. Starting with a three pound ball to account for the low strenght synchrnization and assuing a throw speed of 30mph(about 1/3 the speed an average human can throw a baseball to account for the weight difference), accellerating such an entity to 450MPH would still cause it to strike with force comparible to getting hit with a 12guage shotgun. 6 times. Finnally; we just saw how dealing critical damage to a monster's vital organs will immediatly depleat it's remaining HP, so this method could potentially be used to kill a monster of higher level than the dissolver, provided we know it's relavent weak points.

Starless

He can still kill one solo. It would just have to be a mob he's almost a perfect counter to. Like a level 20-25 slime.

Rick Baker

100 strength is probably 2-4times a 10 strength person. It’s at least way less than 10. And it has been mentioned that velocity boosts your overall speed while not boosting extremities to dangerous speeds. So you might be able to throw something really hard with this method, but it’s far from certain. Especially the trick to boost the item after letting go will almost certainly not work, since all acceleration is already over and the ball is not alive. The boost applies to entities, which I understand as living creatures and monsters. Personally I think it’s a clever trick, but not feasible within the rules, but I could be wrong. It also depends on a high strength synchronization and boost tolerance, neither of which Rain has.

Chymor

When the chains were mentioned, he wasnt actually wearing chains - it was merely an implication that hed had chains on at some point.. Or thats how I read it anyways.

Required

Rain should carry a bandolier of Iron balls and use controlled bursts of +100 Strenght boost + velocity singularity to throw them with force comparable to a rocket.(Apply velocity singularity after it's thrown, but before the ball leaves his soul sphere, so the aura doesn't throw off his arm movement) A ten pound iron ball thrown in this way could realistically do thousands of damage.

Starless

Cast your mind back to lightbreaker, how can he use spells while wearing chains?

His Dad

Kinda feels like the story should be called "In Another World With my OP Blacksmith Friend" at this point. Loved the fight beeteedubs. Very chaotic and visceral like some people already said.

Starless

Rain and co are in a area that WAS essentially bottom tier. Top tier high level teams have been mentioned off hand once or twice but they're going to be something that stick to the higher level areas because that is where the xp and money is at.

tibbish

I'm a bit confused by why there aren't groups of high level individuals. It seems pretty much impossible to kill say a level 70 blue without a group of similarly leveled people all contributing. And so you would expect there to be group of people around Vatreece's level, a group around Fetch's level, etc. So why aren't there groups?

ParadoxFox

To quote a third video game, the dawn is breaking. Greet the new day.

Daolord Badlands

Or amelia once they get out of the city!

Seb

This was kind of the level of difficulty expected for this combat, given that his assumptions about exponential monster scaling was true. This leads us to consider whether this was supposed to be a clue on whether exponential monster scaling is how it is going to turn out in practise, and I hope it is not on that 1.5^level as the main component to monster scaling. The reason for this is 2 fold: 1) Most of the ways to increase power by a multiplier, in the way that could give exponential growth, are both limited in options and only apply to some aspect, such as damage (dps), health, resistances, sustainability, speed/reaction speed and ect. Even mages have to keep up on all parameters, because mageburn mean they have to have some level of survivability compariable to their damage output, and they still need to have a good enough speed to not get bumrushed and killed. Remember that exponential increases means that just being a few applications behind is equivalent to being several large factors worse. This just does not seem feasable with even Rains build, so he would be effectively useless on his own later on unless the tier 4 skills are extremely powerful. 2) The build meta surrounding exponetial effects from skills means that if one build is slightly stronger than another, say by being able to chose a power multiplier skill 20% more often, then it would be exponentially stronger than other builds (or exponentially weaker if one chose 20% less power multiplier skills), which means if person A with base build was able to kill a blue of slightly lower level while in a full group over most of the scale, then person B with the stronger build would eventually be able to solo blues of decently higher level than themself, since they would effectively be at a 20% higher level, while person C with the slightly poorer build would end up being useless for killing anything even close to their own level (a gold rank only compariable of dealing with mid strength silver opponents). Those 2 points also means that build should follow very strict and optimized paths, or they would easily fall be extremely bad, which in turn means that you almost never want to take any side-steps for any kind of utility. It would also mean that power multipliers in the form of good support, which would effectively add their power multipliers on top of other peoples, would effectively cause such a disparity in climbing ability (even if they effectively where only adding 50% of their leveling power to other people, that would still be compariable to having 50% levels added on top, which for exponential increases means practically every encounter remotely close to their level would be trivial). Under such circumstances, it would be very hard to not have support/synergy builds be extremely common, for the simple reason that they would be the key to climbing arbitarly high up in levels.

Ninetails

Well I realy liked the chapter, this is clearly the toughest opponent Rain ever had. He's probably going to have a lot of thought on the fight when he reads all his backlog because he wasn't perfect but still. This does put a damper on him killing a lvl 20+ blue by himself though. When that does happen though then boy oh boy Thanks for the chapter ! :)

CentaureHeart

Has to be a blue higher lvl than yours to raise your cap and then you still have to level up + level any additional skills you choose.

tibbish

Loved the chapter. This fight was a complete mess and that felt real. I mean multiple participants with highly different powerset of different powerlevel ? A recipe for disaster is what it is. Until now Rain has either had “easy” fight ( Staying away from stuff dying to its aura ) or was protected by someone. I’m not saying that he didn’t improve until now, was worthless or had everything handed down to him. Fuck no. But I believe it was the first hard and gruesome fight where he was an important player. I look forward to its improvements and reflections after this.

Gabriel

Got a bit of a late start to this one. I don't like the new chapter placeholder style but if it helps with bots and monetization then go for it. It would be nice if it was not necessary but I will adapt and I want you to get your fair due for a story I enjoy. The Reaper being a level 15 was a let down I really wanted Rain to level after that epic fight. Do people get a raised level cap from any monster higher than they are or are Blue essence monsters special in that way? Val was capped at 8 and if he got higher than 1% contribution for the blast he gave before he was taken out hard then he could almost double his level. I really liked the fight itself. I wish the chapter was longer than 18 pages but I understand keeping the fight and aftermath chapters separate. Still it is not even 3 pages a day. The fight was a good mix of tactics and inexperience showing a good blend of competency and chaos. I especially enjoyed the use of the metal to break up the magic in the acid before removing it with purify. Overall a clever and enjoyable chapter. I will be eagerly awaiting the next chapter. Goodnight.

Michael Hughes

punching ball at its finest :D

Thenais

For me its not that I expected him to smash this opponent. I've said over and over again that single strong opponents are a weakness for Rain and that he is really only suited for swarms of weaker monsters which for others are a weakness. Many have disagreed with me over this and claimed the exact opposite: that he was in fact far too OP already in story!! To me its how he comported himself in combat + his mistakes. I don't expect hyper competency here, even with his increased learning speed that is impossible, but against opponents who are stronger than you there really isn't any room for error and far too many errors were made here. He really should've died here to be honest. The smart and correct actions here IMO to do would've been to run away 1st thing and get help rather than stick around and try to fight it yes even if that meant Val dying. Val has been playing footsie with death far to often anyways already for him to keep getting away with it and quite frankly I think he is more than a bit of a jerk.

tibbish

Glad to see Rain still is Rain, but is growing steadily. He ain't OP, and he isn't regressing. He is slowly finding his way in a cruel world. Keep it up man!

Horatio Hornet

Lots of people seem unsatisfied because Rain just didn't smash through the challenge in front of him like the vast majority of royalroad protagonists would have, which is expected. I, for one, loved the chapter. Rain is still *far* from a combat veteran, and it shows. His build is far from perfect for combat, as we've been told over and over, and it shows. Those facts, demonstrated here, pave the way for future improvement on his part, and I for one can't wait to see it.

Konrad

If you can't say anything positive or constructive, get lost. Nobody said you have to keep supporting SS. It's his story and we show our interest or lack thereof by either supporting him withdrawing said support. Also I don't I don't get where you are getting regress from, considering that this is the hardest thing Rain has ever fought before and Val is the same foolish friend that he was a couple weeks ago in the story. Keep on trucking SS!!!

Horatio Hornet

Hated this chapter. Val still special, our hero doesn’t get stronger, no worse: he’s weaker. Seems to be some bent that growth needs blood. For Rain that’s blood of innocence. Sorry but this is no longer a story I want to read or follow! Author had the perfect opportunity to progress and chose to regress instead. Only Wuxia BS...like the ‘nod’ to Val teaching Rain the staff...what chapter was that? Anyone? Detail added after the fact to support notion Val isn’t complete dead weight.

Dal Frakked

It did seem weird to me that Velocity didn't at least cause the monster to stumble but maybe its reaction times were so high it could compensate. Who knows. And yeah until he gets to lvl25+ his mana regen is going to cripple anything he can do in combat massively. Once he gets his legendary rank up + can run multiple auras at once his combat ability starts to get good and should eventually skyrocket really. But for now he is very weak against strong monsters. Really the mageburn alone is enough to sabotage his combat ability if you think about it too. Even when he gets his multi aura skill he is going to have to run a resistance aura along with the appropriate offensive aura in order to really use it in combat. Otherwise he'll just end up injuring himself and his allies terribly. Hopefully he'll be able to use 3 or more auras at once (so Winter + off. aura + res. aura) eventually to improve his combat damage sustainability a whole bunch. Otherwise he is going to have to get VERRRYY good at using Winter + Velocity to run away/dodge while getting his mana back to attack!

tibbish

Great chapter. I really liked the realistic and visceral feel of the whole thing. A few random thoughts: Velocity sadly seems to be relatively useless as a tool to mess up an oponents movement. That was a monster 3 levels lower than Rain and it still had almost zero trouble with getting hit with a massive speed boost. Unless that thing just has abnormally high Arcane Resistance the Velocity aura is almost purely useable as a buff to friendlies. Which is something that Rain has explored almost not at all yet, so there should still be plenty of potential to be discoverable there. Rain needs to spend some time memorizing settings for Immolate and Refrigerate that are efficient. The big Refrigerate that he used after the big Immolate only did 30% less damage or so but was more than twice as mana efficient. If he had been able to instinctively use the same setting for his Immolate in his panic reaction he would have had almost 2000 mana more for the rest of the fight. Which would have mattered a lot more than the extra damage he did. Basically using Extend Aura to boost his damage in a combat situation should be a big nogo for him in the future. As soon as he gets the time to analize his combat logs of that battle anyway. It would have to be some pretty weird circumstances where the extra damage is worth the horrendous inefficiency that comes with it.

ManKyYen

I have no idea what you are even talking about here. Rain has been constantly thinking during that whole battle. And thinking well, too. To an unrealistic degree even. A real person in that situation would be completely unable to do any analytical thinking at all due to the sheer adrenaline flooding their system. The only thing that has really been shown here is that Rain badly needs to do some intensive combat training. He needs to get to a point where he doesn't have to think about his skill use anymore and instead just switches between his auras reflexively. Reflexes vastly outspeed any action based on thoughts.

ManKyYen

That was a great fight, holy shit. Really felt that dawn

Compendium

Have to say its rather dissappointing that apparently Rain's ability to think in combat has now been nerfed. I thought the whole point of him being stuck in his current situation was to allow him to grow as a individual and he has been fighting stuff for a while now but he is apparently still 'forgetting' to use his skills in combat now?? He has already been nerfed in multiple ways: 1- he can't level without killing a high lvl blue, 2- his damage out put is high but only for brief seconds because the mana consumption is too high for him, 3- the mage burn can kill or injure him and his allies badly. Nerfing his ability to think and remember things, both things that he has generally been good at to say the least, is going too far IMO (edit) at this point in the story. Earlier in the story his actions here would've made sense but he is no longer a complete noob to magic or combat. He did so disastrously bad here that if Rain was a IRL person he'd probably give up combat for good and just be a supporter. Which is fine really. Many aren't cut out for that sort of thing.

tibbish

It took Rain months to build up the durability on his armor, and it's all gone just like that. Brutal. It's also pretty clear that he won't beat a 25 blue unless Velika does all the work.

Pyrefiend

To quote a second video game, "The Morning Sun Has Vanquished The Horrible Night."

Imp

\[T]/

GrayReader

That's when he'll be shouting it at the top of his lungs instead of just saying it.

giant_snark

At this pace ETA is 3 more months

Sanairb

This chapter was a great battle, it was thrilling the whole time! Rain needs a break and badly praise the sun for finally allowing it!

Dizzregard Home

Also, apparently it wasn't even a blue. It's going to be a tough task getting over level 25 if he'll have to beat monsters twice that strong without getting carried... I suppose this fight was without any prep, without a trained team and while already exhausted, but still.

m2wester

Praise the Sun!!!

Grevis165

I'm just waiting for his high clarity and transmigration to become a one way ticket to understand Magistraal Artifacts and stuff.

I feel like that "Praise the Sun" bit would be an appropriate phrase to say when he gets heat ward and the power that lets him use two auras at once. heat shield plus immolate at full nova power would be something. I know it's a dark souls reference but it just strikes me as appropriate.

Daolord Badlands

Praise the sun

Arnon Parenti

Really great sense of tension and pacing throughout the fight

The Human

Why didn't you mention it does 1500 damage.... Fucking Val gives Rain about 20 seconds to figure that out and then just tries to face tank a shot.

Alexander Dupree

Well, that explains a few things, and raises several questions. There was a lot of "why did that happen" in the heat of combat, but I assume we'll eventually get an explanation for most of it. And we also see why the Reaper is such a threat. Either it has a massive resistance to fire or over 50,000 health, along with high-speed, high magic power, high attack damage, high intelligence, and high general resistance. I expected it to be an assassin-type from the description, with high attack and low defense, but it defies archetype, with no obvious weaknesses. If these things were spawning regularly, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the city has already been wiped out.

Empty Shelf

Very good

His Dad

71% Contribution - 0 Experience Earned - Absolutely brutal.

Heraclitus

I just caught up and I’d like to say I love your view of the system and I love your attention to detail when it comes to mechanics and math. It is one thing to have these elements of a LitRPG presented to you and it is another to discover the workings of the system alongside your main character. I am so looking forward to when he can run two auras at once and am anticipating combos like Cold Ward and Refrigerate turning his team into a walking winter storm. I’m looking forward to velocity and force ward martial arts as well. Arcane ward plus the different imperial auras should help boost people past their limits without as much blowback as well. And now with rankshift happening I’m looking forward to him becoming a more prominent leader. I hope he really pushes upon all the factions present the ideal of “we are Fel Sedanis”. Also I’m wondering if he will come across a metamagic for auras to redirect the angle of influence such that he can eventually be using his auras as a cone attack. I don’t think it would support him as the main character but it would be neat to have as another aura user maybe?

SunderGoldmane

I read it. No regrets. Sort of funny. Maybe Rain should've mentioned that they did a lot of dmg.

jiecut

The Lee is a large rock leaning on the shield. It was leftover from the battle outside the shield between the Citizens and the Adamant Empire.

MitchyGoodness

I think he has been level 18 since chapter 1, just still growing into it. This story is about an adventure doing well despite levels rather than because of them?

Rain ever gonna level up again? Poor guy's been stuck under the legal drinking level for ages. 😅

Samuel McCarren

I still don't understand what is Lee. Like I missed few chapters.

reji

Considering the nature of what's happening, Rain is going to be dealing with a lot of people. Lots of new faces. The author can either A: Toss the characters in story after Rain has met them and we pick up what's going on from context clues (like Wolf transforming). B: Dedicate chapters to new characters being introduced. I enjoy the story, but I don't think any of us want it to slow down for the sake of one-off characters. I think they're getting exactly as much introduction as they deserve. I don't want to see a dozen first impressions from Rain. He's exhausted and overwhelmed defending the city, what exactly are we going to get from his first impression? It would detract from the demonstrated hectic and desperate nature of the situation to show rain exhaustedly going, "Okay, hi, here's your mana, next!"

Ziggy

Im actually getting burned out for the fact that you constantly introduced new characters off screen. Lately its been happening a lot these past couple of chapters. Its getting hard to visualize all of the new characters and their personas when they already had dealings with Rain offscreen. Its not fun picking out pieces of the puzzle and we never get to see Rain's first impression of the people he meets.

VALORANT

When you say shorter... what’s the bench mark? Last few have been long. So Longer than these? Or Shorter than before but twice as often?

Dal Frakked

It was a mistake to split the chapter...the cliff after the fact. Kudos for doing it first of the month- you kept us all ‘this’ month; but next month?

Dal Frakked

Naw he gets away from this but loses his V card and goes by Al for the rest of the story.

Alexander Dupree

Hell yeah, Val is going to die ;)

自由

Same!!!!

Spicyice101

Ooof this is awesome. Man I want to read this next chapter so bad.

Alexander Dupree

I've always been a fan of gunslingers with peg-legs

Macronomicon

For the record (in regard to your poll) i voted longer chapter, but 2 chaptersa week, wednessay and sunday is a nice comprimise. Waiting a week for a chaper is just long ;) But great story. Keep it up!

Khress

That placeholder is gonna fuck up your rating stats. You'll see a big drop at chapter 102 and in 1 year you won't remember why

Boutross

Lol, you are way too much of a tease! Teasing us with a new chapter, but it's only a placeholder!!!! I'm a little confused though. Why do you need to have a placeholder Patreon post? EDIT: Oh nevermind. I just realized that you meant that you changed up the cliffhanger for the previous chapter. I was too eager to read the chapter, that I couldn't wait long enough to read your post carefully.

Xamuel Jones

let the lemmings die ! any mmo player can attest they are always the first to die anyway.

Thenais

Formerly part of 101?

Imp

I really hope Val dies ones of these times, his BS is really getting annoying.

Regnal

There is being a daredevil and then there is being stupid and suicidal while you leave your friends to try and bail you out or clean up your mess. Val is the latter not the former.

tibbish

I did not read SenescentSoul's note. The cliff is strong with this one.

Kiwilord

I'm not going to read this but god damn do I want to. Also yes. No burning out! If you need a day or three, take it.

Ziggy

Dunno why everyone hates Val so much, I like him. Ya he’s a daredevil, but I gather from the golds/platinums that you don’t get to that level unless your willing to take BIG risks and put your life on the line very often. While I’m not saying Val has the perfect personality to get himself to that level. He is too reckless, but he does have the perfect personality to complement the habitually risk averse Rain. If Val wasn’t around I’d see rain never making it past his current cap. Too much risk and too much to do to help the unascended.

Orion Dye

Is it too much to ask that Val loses a leg? Just one, I'm not too cruel. He doesn't need both of them, and it would teach the overconfident little jackass a lesson.

Empty Shelf

Thank you!

Andrew

About a week, maybe more

Ezio Azrael

You should try using Jira or Confluence sometime. You'll never complain about getting too many e-mails again! (because it will desensitize you)

SenescentSoul

But wait for how long tho, das the real factor that decides if we shall wait or not .-.