Void Crowne - Book 1 - Chapter 76 (Patreon)

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Table of Contents

Click on the following link for the 1535 word Chapter 76:

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Aidan

I leave the wall and head to my office before sitting down in my chair and beginning to prepare the next Assault. And I don’t skimp at all when it comes to sending Skill Infused monsters.

First off, I infuse my Unique Skill, Throne of Retribution, into the broodmother. Because it fits her perfectly.

The skill doesn’t just affect whoever has the skill, but also whoever has any of the blood from the one who has the skill. Which means that the skill’s effects should be passed down to all of the broodmother’s blightlings.

And no matter how effective the passed down effects of the skill are, having an army of blightlings that have permanent damage reflection will be a terrifying force for anyone to face.

Just imagining having to fight an army of bugs that can not only infect you and turn you into one of the enemies, but also reflect a percentage of all the damage you deal to them is absolutely horrifying.

The only slight issue with this plan is that the Skill Infusion perk increases the price of the monster by 20%. And 20% of the Blighted Broodmother’s War Point cost of 25,000 War Points would be an additional 5,000 War Points. Making the overall cost of that one boss monster 30,000 War Points.

As for the rest of the monsters I send? None of them have much use for the Throne of Retribution Unique Skill.

That said, they could use some of my other skills…

Two of my skills in particular could be useful for the rest of the monsters in my Assault.

{Class Skill} [Devour(UNIQUE) – Allows the Void Devourer to slowly digest the source mana in anything he eats.] {Class Skill}

{Class Skill} [Hunger of the Void(Legendary) – The Void Devourer passively devours the lifeforce and mana of all creatures who die around it. Healing and restoring the Void Devourer’s mana for every kill they make.] {Class Skill}

One of them would let the monsters in my Assault grow stronger as they eat their enemies and can even eat the enemies they themselves didn’t kill, while the other would let them heal and recover mana for every kill they make.

Fortunately, using the Skill Infusion perk on the regular monsters won’t actually change much in terms of the price. They’re just far too cheap for a 20% increase in War Points cost to really do much.

It’ll only increase the price of the zombies by five points per zombie, the mimics by twenty points per mimic, and the elite void golems and arachnids by fifty points per monster. Which is nowhere near as much as the five thousand War Point cost increase for the boss monster.

Anyway, I carefully consider my monsters for a while before eventually deciding to give Devour to the zombies, since they like to eat their enemies anyway and aren’t all that strong in the first place. And being able to heal and recover mana won’t help them much when they’re killed rather quickly.

Meanwhile I give Hunger of the Void to the Elite Void Golems. Since they are often frontliners from what I’ve seen in my recordings. Not to mention that the mana recovery should work quite well for them.

As for the Elite Arachnid Guards? They’re assassin types who go in, make a kill, and escape. And the recordings I’ve seen of them fighting have shown that most of the ones that do die are killed in a single battle.

If they’re caught and interrupted so that they can’t hide again, they tend to be killed. If they aren’t caught and hide, they don’t generally get hurt at all. So the healing part of the skill won’t do much for them.

The mana restoration could help a bit, though. But they tend to focus more on physical attacks anyway.

I think Might of the Devourer would probably fit them better.

{Class Skill} [Might of the Devourer(Legendary) – Allows the Void Devourer to increase their Physical and Magic stats by 100% over the course of one minute. However, Physical and Magic stats will be decreased by 25% for one hour after the duration runs out. The skill will also be put on cooldown for three hours.] {Class Skill}

The skill I got at level forty for my Class works pretty well for assassin types. They can use the skill, rush to make a kill on an important enemy, then hide again until the stat reduction runs out.

They might even be able to take out multiple important enemies.

It just depends on how strong they are.

As for the mimics…

I purse my lips while looking over my current list of skills.

Actually, Might of the Devourer probably works for the mimics too. Considering that they generally don’t even last a minute.

Most of the mimics are used to whittle down the invaders of the dungeon, decreasing their numbers. But the mimics themselves pretty much always die within a minute or so of their cover being blown.

Which means the cooldown and drawbacks of Might of the Devourer won’t really matter to the mimic.

With that in mind, I set up an Assault with all of those specifics in mind. Sending five arachnids, eight elite void golems, the blighted broodmother, five mimics – which seems to be the general sweet spot, since there tends to be around eight to ten loot boxes in each dungeon – and fifty zombies. All in a mineshaft setting dungeon.

As for the War Point price? It’s pretty expensive, but, at the same time, not a problem.

My Auction House is growing by the day, with more and more people coming by the sell and buy stuff. Which is flooding me with plenty of War Points to replace these with.

I also have a lot of people, including non-voidlings, moving into the city. Simply because of the Auction House and the walls.

They are very nice walls, after all. Even nicer now that they’ve been upgraded again for free.

Anyway, before confirming the Assault, I go ahead and select one more option for it.

The random monster.

It looks like the perk costs a set price of one hundred War Points no matter what the price of the monster selected at random normally is. So it could give me a monster that is worth a lot less than that price, making me lose out on War Points, or it could give me the opposite. It could even send a boss monster, breaking the usual system of only being able to send one monster.

After selecting it, I hit confirm, because apparently it doesn’t tell me what random monster is selected until I’ve already confirmed.

Only to get a message from the System that is rather disappointing as a result.

◊◊◊◊◊

Launch Assault Menu

Your assault has been confirmed and sent.

Your Random Monster has been selected as the following: Lava Slime – War Points Value – 25 War Points.

Should your dungeon remain uncleared for three days, it will break, and the monsters inside will be let out to attack the nearest System City.

Please open the new icon in the corner of your vision labeled with a camera to view footage of your assault once the dungeon breaks or is cleared to review your chosen assault force and dungeon.

Close Menu

◊◊◊◊◊

Well, that’s a little disappointing. But it’s not much of a loss. Just seventy-five War Points.

So there isn’t really much reason to not do the Random Monster every time I send an Assault.

It doesn’t lose me much, and if I win the gamble, I could get a really powerful monster for a very cheap price.

With that thought in mind, I go ahead and set up another Assault with the exact same layout as the first one. Then I hit confirm and send it.

◊◊◊◊◊

Launch Assault Menu

Your assault has been confirmed and sent.

Your Random Monster has been selected as the following: Zombie Knight – War Points Value – 100 War Points.

Should your dungeon remain uncleared for three days, it will break, and the monsters inside will be let out to attack the nearest System City.

Please open the new icon in the corner of your vision labeled with a camera to view footage of your assault once the dungeon breaks or is cleared to review your chosen assault force and dungeon.

Close Menu

◊◊◊◊◊

That one had a better result than the first one, at least. Since it gave me a monster worth the exact price of War Points the Random Monster cost me.

Anyway, none of the top users from Furtruna are likely currently sending Assaults thanks to the World Council. So I might as well use this time to make more voidlings.

Maybe I can experiment with some broodmothers. I haven’t had much success with the racial skills given to the voidlings I create thus far. All of them have ben relatively useless skills, with only a couple exceptions.

Like my general and its healing skill.

With that thought in mind, I head over to the work-in-progress lab that Rex is making for me to begin experimenting.