DIE TRYING [A Roguelite Extraction LitRPG]

Skyviper Archer (Common) - Damage dealt by ranged weapons such as crossbows, slings, and bows are empowered with corrosive properties when used in a jumping attack.

That was what the boon description said.

Ranged weapons such as. The keywords there were 'such as'

That meant the list of ranged weapons were technically suggested weapons to start with. This implied there were plenty of other options out there if he was crazy enough to test it out. Which he was.

Wade used his shoulder to keep the chair braced against the skeleton. Its bony fingers slapped angrily against the metal struts, reaching to claw at his face. The thing's jaw kept trying to bite the air, begging him to get just a little closer for a nibble.

He shifted his weight very carefully, pressing harder with his right shoulder and head to maintain the pin while his left hand slowly let go. His left leg shot a bolt of pain again from a bad motion on his part, but he powered through it. Not the time to act like a seventy-year-old cripple.

The skeleton continued thrashing against the stool.

Moving slowly, and ready to grab the stool the moment he felt he'd lose a good grip, his fingers brushed against dry linen fibers of the cot, debris, cold rock and - there. Bone. The skeleton's severed off hip. Wade started laughing under his breath.

A jolt from the skeleton made him instantly abandon the hipbone and ram the skeleton further into the wall with both hands. He felt jumpy, a little insane, bouts of manic laughing coming intermittently from the stress and absurdity of the situation.

Right now, he had to be extremely careful and avoid panic. So long as he kept everything under control, he wouldn't lose.

Once more he let go with his left hand, and started to explore under him blindly, keeping his head, shoulder and right hand pressed hard against the stool at all times.

His fingers tapped around until he felt the leather of the belt. And shortly after, he could feel it: The dagger. Just flat wood, worn smooth. Wade's hand closed around the hilt. He pulled it free, bringing it back to where he could see it.

The blade was short, maybe four inches long, with a simple crossguard and a utilitarian grip. No rust, and it looked like it could shank someone well enough. Not exactly something he'd pay money at a pawn shop for, but Wade didn't need it to be strong - he just needed it to be considered a ranged weapon. And a dagger could be thrown at something, which should be a ranged weapon, right?

He wasn't going to just chuck the blade, only to be forced to put his hand anywhere near the skeleton in order to recover the dagger. Or have it fly off somewhere he couldn't recover. There was a safer method.

He felt with the tip of the dagger down until he could sense the severed spine. The earlier fight with the skeletons had taught him one thing: Damage could still be dealt against the enemy by stabbing discarded bone parts. Just at a diminishing rate until it eventually did next to nothing.

He had no idea if this was something unique to the undead, or going to be something he could constantly abuse in the future with some voodoo-doll bullshit, but right now he was going to squeeze for everything he could get away with.

Time for that useless skill to pay rent.

Corrosive - Damage over time. Effective against any target with a physical body.

Effective against any target it said. He didn't need raw damage, he just needed the status effect. And if damage could be dealt to a separate part, did that mean the status effect could spread to the entire unit or just the spine?

Jumping attack - Any attack initiated while user is vaulting or suspended in the air.

Attack initiated while user is vaulting or in the air. Didn't say jack squat about the user being on the ground when the attack actually did land. And a vault meant he could still hold his hands somewhere on the world, just so long as his feet were off the ground. If he let go of the dagger in the microsecond he was technically vaulting, he'd be back on the ground before the skeleton could shove its way free.

Wade lifted the dagger up with two fingers on the hilt, still holding the blade over where the hip would be.

He did a micro-hop in place, letting the dagger fall straight down at the same moment. It landed, and clinked off the hip, falling into the cot. No damage.

The spine of the skeleton's bones was too strong to take damage. And he couldn't just throw the dagger down with more force - what if it bounced away out of reach? There had to be another option.

Wade's head went into overdrive. Identify, he thought to himself specifically while looking down at the hip.

Level 37 Undead Nathir Slave - 87%

Then if identify considered all of this as part of the skeleton unit itself… just how far like a video game could he take these rules?

Wade lifted the dagger again, and aimed it further above the hipbone. Then repeated the micro-hop and let the dagger fall straight down.

His plan was simple: Whatever the skeleton was made of, the leather belt wasn't. And the dagger couldn't possibly miss a completely stationary target like that. It landed, sinking slightly into the old leather before tilting back down onto the ground.

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The skeleton's health bar flashed red that same instant, although the percentage health remained the same. The damage his dagger had done had been so tiny, it wasn't even seen, if it had even dealt damage to the skeleton itself.

But it had done some damage to something that was part of the skeleton.

A small red outlined box appeared next to the health bar, with a skull symbol inside. Wade held his breath.

He stared that icon dead on. Identify.

Corrosive - Taking damage over time.

It worked. Sweet RNG above, it had worked.

The health bar flashed red again. No noticeable damage on the overall percentage. Two seconds passed now. And again the health bar flashed.

Three seconds.

Four seconds. A flash for each second.

Had he messed this up? The belt idea was stretching the limits here, he kn-

Level 37 Undead Nathir Slave - 85%

He saw the percentage go down and started bobbing his head in a stifled scream of victory. The thrashing skeleton wasn't making much sound at all, and neither would he. Wade waited another four seconds, saw no difference, but at the five second mark it tick once more down to eighty four percent.

"I'm a goddamn genius." He whispered to himself. "I'm a goddamn genius, and this world isn't going to eat me. Get bent, Play."

He knew his phone probably had a message from that so-called god, but Wade had bigger fish to fry.

Sure it was pitiful damage. It took four to five seconds for a single percentage to go down. That meant he was doing roughly 0.25% overall health damage per second. Except it was damage done without any risk back. Four seconds for one percent health. Four hundred seconds for a complete 100% health drain. Roughly six or seven minutes. But that was from full health. The skeleton was already under 85% to start with.

The skeleton thrashed further, but Wade had already won. You got less than five minutes to live now you stupid halloween spirit knockoff.

Stuck between the wall, stool and no legs to help itself, it was powerless. It could bite the air all it wanted, Wade wasn't going to play fair.

He waited, counting down how many seconds the debuff applied itself for. At ten seconds, he noticed the red debuff icon by the health bar vanished. And so did the periodic damage. He repeated the experiment, noticing the icon and damage resumed. He was more curious why the ability did so little damage.

The skull had been hard to destroy, so there was a case for absurd damage resistance. Or he didn't have the stats to make it do significant damage. Maybe lacking support skills and gear for it? The boon was shit. But he'd make it work.

Second thing he tested was if the debuff could be stacked up. He yanked his dagger up, then let it drop several times over in rapid succession all with the tiny micro-hops. So long as he was off the ground when he 'launched' the attack, the debuff seemed to take root. It took a few attempts to really get the count correct and then retest to verify. By then a little more than a minute had passed by.

Level 37 Undead Nathir Slave - 63%

No, the debuff didn't stack as he'd tested, damage was still constantly going down at the same rate no matter how many times the dagger stabbed into the belt. The red debuff icon didn't vanish when it was supposed to, so consecutive attacks must be refreshing the duration instead.

All that was left was to reapply the debuff every ten seconds, and then wait a few more minutes. Wade had zero issues with that. Retail had trained him to be extremely patient in just about any situation. Conserving sanity was a metric he had to juggle out there.

Level 37 Undead Nathir Slave - 40%

He gleefully continued the cycle: Micro-hop in place, drop the dagger at the same moment onto the leather belt, recover the dagger, wait a few seconds until the debuff cleared, and repeat. Again. And again.

Thirty percent.

The skeleton thrashed harder and harder, as if sensing its impending doom.

Twenty percent.

This was literally, the most stupid, idiotic way to kill something, but Wade had long ago sold all his dignity just to make rent, so he had no qualms in the slightest about winning with every underhanded trick in the book. And he'd take every shortcut, cheat and hack to make it.

Ten percent.

No matter how hard the skeleton pried against the stool, slapped at it, him, the wall, or tried to gnaw at the metal - it wasn't powerful enough to shove off Wade as he continued the most insane manner of execution.

Level 37 Undead Nathir Slave - 1%

One moment the skeleton was thrashing without issue. The next moment, it simply stopped and went completely limp.

Baby's first kill complete! One storefront coin added to inventory. You feel more confident in your ability to survive.

Deal with the Devil complete!

Level up!

Level up!