Hell Difficulty Tutorial – Stubbing Book 3 (Chapters 208-295) in 7 days

Flashback - Tess Hansen

The tall blonde girl patiently listens to her mom, who is yelling. There are a few bruises on her face, but her mom dismisses them as she always does. Too focused on insulting the girl, as her shrieking grows louder and louder.

There’s no point in explaining, no point in making justifications, the girl knows. Her mom just wouldn’t understand.

“You will stay locked in your room until I say you may leave. And I swear to God, Tess, if you get in another fight at school, I don’t know what I will do!”

And with these words her mother leaves, slamming the door behind her.

She doesn’t wonder why her daughter fought.

Even before, when Tess tried to explain, her mother wouldn’t listen. She didn’t seriously believe that her pretty blonde daughter might be the victim of bullying at the hands of other girls in her class. Constantly picked on for her height, which left her towering over her seniors. For her, it was just kids being kids.

“Blondezilla,” Tess whispers and giggles. Her new nickname, a gift from one of the girls abusing her.

Already sure it will spread through her class by tomorrow, Tess lies on her bed and touches the bruise on her cheek. Even then, she can’t help her satisfied smile; the other girls ended up worse.

After checking the clock, Tess sits down on the soft, expensive-looking rug and leans against the floor-to-ceiling window of her apartment, pressing her face against the glass. As she usually does at this time, she notices a group of five young people, gathered in the park below.

Two girls are sitting on one of the benches while three boys loiter nearby. The girls are speaking with one of the boys while the others seem to be joking about something or other, gesturing wildly as they do. That small group of 5 meet there after school every day, no matter the weather. Even when the weather sours, they simply hide under the small gazebo nearby.

Tess has watched them time and again throughout her many groundings.

She’s seen them fight and make peace. She saw one of the boys crying as his friends provided comfort. She’s seen them having fun together time and again as they come and go from this small place they’ve made their own.

It always fascinated her. Just how might it feel to have people to rely on? How could they stay friends when they were screaming and fighting just a few days ago? What could the girl have said to leave the boys wracked with laughter for minutes at a time, at least until she took offense and started kicking them?

Why did they come out despite the heavy storm, drenched to the bone, giggling nonetheless as the weather left them sneezing under the gazebo, only to separate for a few days, likely sick with a cold?

She never experienced something like that.

The things she read about in books or saw in movies, the kind where groups of people went on adventures together. Fought together, mourned their dead companions, suffering to the point of total exhaustion all to finish some grand quest.

Persevering, even when everything seemed lost, as they pushed themselves to accomplish their goal.

They’d meet up afterward, sharing something no one could take away from them. A great adventure no one else could understand, an experience unique to those who had been there.

Just once in her life, she wanted to feel something real like that.

 

---

 

POV Nathaniel

The blue brothers try to run away from us.

The dumbasses try to teleport.

The assholes forget how easily they messed with my anchor.

The douchebags end up in a similar state to me.

Using kinetic energy, I get ahead of Group 4, and moments later reach the blue brothers strung out on the ground, their bodies torn, and bleeding as their bones peek through ragged holes in their flesh.

“Fuck, crazy human, you got us this time.”

“How the hell did you do something so nasty to our skill without us noticing?”

“Even we weren’t so evil when we messed with yours.”

There, I interrupt them, “You redirected it into the white sand.”

“As if we could! We just made it so your anchor would burst open, its endpoint just happened to leave you there.”

I watch them squirm for a moment. Nearly starved of the mana they’ve managed to collect over the past few hours, likely the work of some passive or other. I'm still curious about that, but they refuse to tell me.

One of them, Dravor or Drekar, looks at me, “At least say something, crazy human.”

“Something.”

“...”

“...”

I then move closer and squat on the ground next to them. “To be honest, I don't think we need you. The only thing keeping you alive is my promise to Tess, she thinks we can use you. But at some point, the amount of trouble you cause will outweigh your usefulness.”

Grabbing a few small rocks, I throw them at the two thylarin, each one bouncing off their heads.

I reach to grab more stones and continue to throw them as I speak, “You’re trying to betray us, you waste our healer's mana, you could be plotting to ask the Champion to turn against us. Maybe you are even hiding… Well, you probably are hiding some things from us. And now you’re wasting energy on pathetic escape attempts.”

The stones keep hitting them with stunning accuracy, and neither of them tries to defend themselves.

“I have yet to see anything useful from you, and even though our group is keeping our side of the deal, you two keep fucking around.”

I add a bit of mana to the mix, surrounding the stones with it, resonating it, and as the stones hit the two brothers, they begin to leave wounds, drawing red blood, which flows freely across their blue skin.

It would be easy to add more mana and boost the stones with kinetic energy. Which the two, at some point, wouldn’t survive.

“What do you want, crazy human?”

I stop my pastime and stand up. “I’m going to ask some questions, you will answer them, to the best of your knowledge.”

They exchange looks, and then one of them nods, “We can do that. Ask, crazy human.”

“Tell me more about crowns.” I point at the one over my head.

I can see they want to start laughing but they hold their tongues, clearly thinking better of it.

“[Crowns] are classified as a variation of equipment type of skill, crazy human. There are [Crown], [Mantle], and [Ring]. They are the most well-known, but there are more. We’ve heard rumors about [Sword] and some sort of [Armor], but we haven’t exactly seen them with our own eyes.”

“Well, we have seen [Crown] and [Mantle] but none of the others.”

“What’s the difference between [Mana Crown] and [Mana Mantle]?”

“We don't know, crazy human, and I’m not lying. As far as we know, [Crown] skills serve as a kind of battery while assisting with fine control over the stored aspect.”

“I’ve heard about attribute crowns, and there seem to be others like [Lightning Crown]. What are the differences?” I ask.

“Not much, attribute crowns allow you to store strength, dexterity, vitality, or mana. [Lightning Crown] allows you to store lightning. Attribute crowns are among the rarer types, and to get them you usually need a lot of things to come together. The requirements are generally pretty high.”

His brother continues, “Generally focused around certain skills, no one knows exactly which, and a high allocation of stats into mana. They also seem to be more common among those who chose Mana Amplification as their attribute upgrade.”

I interrupt, “They are rare for people with Regeneration and Potency?”

“Yes, crazy human, the system strengthens, it doesn’t cover its weaknesses.”

“As my brother said. If you go for a lot of mana, the system gives you options for more mana. But if you go for regeneration, the system won’t give you a [Mana Crown] just to cover for your weakness.”

“But it can happen, brother!”

“Yes, anything can happen, but it’s rare.”

“What about [Mantle]?” I ask.

Another voice interrupts, “There you are.” Tess joins us, followed by the rest of Group 4 and the other groups not far behind.

“I'm gathering information.”

“I see.” She nods, looking at the thylarin brothers, she doesn’t say anything.

Yet her eyes paint a clear message.

“We had to try,” one of the brothers says, smiling.

“And we didn’t even try to hurt anyone, lightning human, we just ran away. Your friend probably told you, but we have our Pride to consider, so it’s a bit difficult to be in a situation like this…”

“Tell me about [Mantle],” I interrupt, feeling more presences on the approach.

“It's just a theory, but we think it forms a localized energy field that can mask the associated aspect and create phase interference to disrupt an aspect when it makes contact with the surface.”

“So [Mana Mantle] would help with masking your mana and disrupting external mana sources that come into contact with it?”

“That’s just our theory, based on some unreliable rumors we've heard. Crazy human, you really love to simplify things.”

I throw a few more stones at them in response, and then we wait for the rest of the groups to catch up.

 

---

 

We move ahead a few minutes later, after taking a moment to plan and for Lily to restore the bodies of our thylarin prisoners. This time though I notice she’s missing a finger.

The rocky tunnel is still giant, and at this point, I think it might be actively expanding. Even so, it’s still tilted downward, so we head deeper underground, surrounded by the pitch-black darkness lit only by our skills and items, our steps and voices sounding awkward in this dark, quiet place.

Tunnels, why do we always find ourselves in tunnels?

The ant tunnels, the tunnels under the old capital, the tunnels on the 3rd floor, and that’s without getting into the bunkers. Nearly everything cool so far has been buried underground.

And this time, there might even be a good reason.

After walking a few miles deeper, I start thinking that this Champion was either trapped here by an Absolute, who spent a few minutes doing this, or by a group of high-level people who had to have spent weeks or months preparing this place.

The sand is still a mystery, and I’m of the opinion that an Absolute made it, Though I could imagine a highly motivated Champion being capable of the feat.

And I already have a few ideas on how to make use of it. Which I’m stealing from the others speaking through our link.

(Or maybe Nat could melt the white sand with thermal energy. It doesn’t seem to trigger the effect, and if he turns that sand into a glass or something else, it could be usable,) Min-Jae blabbers excitedly.

It’s well along the lines of something I already thought of. Yup. I did. Long ago, even before we learned about the Mana Desert.

Min-Jae continues, (I would love to use it for my projectiles. Maybe we could try to use one of the plates on Deathtrap, bend it, and store sand inside of it before sealing it up, air tight. We could come up with ideas to use it later or just use it as bombs against people, opening and throwing it into strong monsters.)

Dennis giggles, (Or you could go nude and focus on physical stats while covering your body with armor infused with white sand.)

(Wouldn’t that hurt you as well?) Aaron asks.

(Maybe?)

(I want to make a golem out of it with the Golem heart,) Sophie suggests, gesturing at the piece of clay comprising the damaged arcane item she currently holds.

(Fuck, that would be scary,) Dennis comments, mirroring my thoughts.

(There is still the question of whether or not we even can bring it out of the desert,) Tess muses, throwing a damper on our excitement as she points ahead, continuing out loud, “ We have a few dozen dead coming up, people from Deathtrap.”

One of the thylarin brothers laughs out loud, his eyes shining in the light of my orbs. Once again a little bit of mana has managed to collect inside of their bodies.

“They hoped to find treasures, items belonging to the Champion sealed here with him, perhaps they were seeking an array that would take out of this place, maybe they thought they saw an opportunity to free the Champion and win his favor,” Dravos says, his smile never leaving his face.

Drekar continues where his brother left off, but he isn’t smiling, “But they will find nothing. This isn’t a normal prison. This place only serves one purpose. To keep the Champion here and kill him should he try to leave.”

“I may not have told you, humans,” Dravos says, casually stretching with a glow in his eyes, “but if so much as a single speck of white sand touches the Champion, the entire Mana Desert will rush in to kill him. Isn't that something?”

This looks like more of a punishment than anything else. To even think of locking the Champion in this place. Leaving him to starve, unable to use his powers. Just how would it feel for someone like a Champion? Anyone who reaches that rank is a powerful person who must have spent years and years developing themselves.

Yet there he is. Crippled, stripped of his mana, and surrounded by layers and layers of defenses designed specifically to kill him.

So would you stay in and endure, with the futile hope that someone would find a way to help you escape? Or would you try to free yourself at the risk of ending it all?

Well, it’s an interesting thought if nothing else.

It’s also good that I’ve managed to trap a single grain of white sand inside of my body, constantly charged and moving, damaging anything in its path, piercing my flesh while my passive heals me and my kinetic energy moves in a constant struggle to keep it contained.

All in an attempt to examine it further.

Just that single grain of sand is enough to cause no end of trouble. Even two would be too much to contain, requiring all of my attention.

But at the same time, it’s good to have it here.

If the Champion tries anything funny, I can at least make sure he goes down with us.