C73: Sorting Things Out
Im actually going to take a week long break to catch up on some chapters since ive been barely keeping up with my publishing schedule. Dont want to decrease quality of my own work just cause im dumb and lazy. it would be even worse if I lost motivation for this book. As such, ill properly return on June 2nd, aka the next week tuesday. Until then. Ill also try to expand my website listing, already have it here and spacebattle forum but there are a few other sites I could have my work listed on.
5/25/2026
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A strange silence passes through the Underground Corpse Pile. Only the odd dripping of blood or moaning of the countless casualties of this place make any sort of echo here. A single hunter lies upon the steps separating the lower and upper sections of this place, yet even these steps are only a foot high in total.
The resting hunters body is soaked in blood yet only the strange ebb of his lips could even showcase that he was alive. His heart stilled in the limitless sensations he has been recently exposed to. Not of growth, not of wonder and joy, yet the eternal pit of darkness that would swallow all such things.
I slowly open my eyes yet as messages flow before my eyes of the gift bestowed on me. I am instead reminded of how incapable I really am. As such, he calls upon an anthem of the broken, yet willful. A tune to reinforce the spirit. A song to rise weary woes and aching muscles. This calls for a fucking Bop.
This has been exactly what i've been doing since I woke up. Before focusing on any possible growth before me. I must ensure that I don't fall into madness like this again. It's shameful, it's downright moronic to allow some idiot I killed to possess me like that.
"And the consequence of resurrection
Barely feel alive
At least I've got disparity
Preparing me to die"
I go through the first verse and chorus before reaching the start of the second chorus. I lift my head, still a bit groggy as I allow myself to be hyped up. I clench my fist as I can feel the music and imagery of the original song flow through my head. I gather my spirits for the final verse I choose to sing.
"Kill me, I'd like to see you try. You take my life, I fail to die, the fires fade, now close your eyes, And sing my undead lullaby. The night will fall and swallow light, To fill my dark hollow inside, And yet my death is all but nigh, Sing my undead lullaby"
"I sing my undead lullaby, So far from life, yet cannot die
This is my undead lullaby"
"Hooo, I feel better" I say to myself as im about to properly read through all the system messages when something near me speaks up.
"I remember now. You were there on the beach with me and Gehrman. Laurence was there too. We fought…that thing. Me and Laurence were injured, Gehrman too so he pulled us back while you and your companion fought on. The church took out cannons but they rusted under the touch of water. My spartans held back against mutated monsters and other beasts that surged forward. We won, and this is our reward."
Ludwig speaks up and I actually jump for a second as I'm letting my brain cooldown from all my skills still and while I detected a living presence, I thought it was just another of the eyeless flayed here who got too close, yet no, it was Ludwig.
"Even back then, you would randomly mumble tunes to yourself, an orchestral jester in the making. This is not a life that should have gone to you." Ludwig laments my fate for me. "You could have made a living for yourself outside all this if Gehrman never adopted you" He ends and I partially refute him as I say in return.
"Yet in doing so, I now have a chance to end this all permanently. No more hunts, no more hunters, no more beasts. The blood shall fall to the ground and rest forever more."
Ludwig closes his eyes as if imagining the scene, his grotesque horse head shifts a bit as the closest thing to a smile.
"Then I have but one last request for you. Please end my life with my guiding moonlight, it rests before you. I leave it all to….Riiih" He soon loses his mind again as he begins making horse noises.
I take up the Holy Moonlight greatsword. It's a typical longsword with what looks like cloth wrapped around the great majority of the blade. I tug at the cloth but it does not come off. I next follow the flow of the weapon through my craftsman inspiration. The cloth glows and the blade widens.
The longsword shifts into an wondrous green greatsword with etching line after line of wondrous art and sigils that depicts an unknown arcane history that pre-exists Yharnam itself. Ludwig found the blade within a crypt during his youth, he had brandished this blade and created the newfound legend that even I knew. It glows a mystic green, especially around the tip and the center of the blade where the cloth previously ended.
Though I do see that it fades a bit when out of moonlight yet not completely to the point of looking like a regular sword. It boasts impressive stats even compared to the base state of saw cleaver and other weapons. Especially since it has an innate arcane damage and scaling. 16 strength, 12 dexterity and 14 arcane to even wield the blade yet I believe that few, even Ludwig himself knew much about it.
The actual scaling itself looks mediocre but my expert craftsman senses are telling me that it will become stronger the more it would be upgraded. I cast my gaze upon the twitching beast below me and my hand trembles.
I am thankful to this man. I am thankful for the grace he granted me. I am thankful to the sanity he has restored to me when I lost myself in the witch's memories. I should hate him for creating such beasts like the ones in the tower, like those who dared harm my sister.
Yet I can't, I recognize the humanity he had left. The humanity that saved me, the humanity that wished to do better even as the greed and darkness of others overshadowed his good.
I would repay it.
Sticking out my arm over the horse's head. I use the transformed holy moonlight greatsword to slit my wrist.
A stream of blood flows from my arm and since I had previously had the vileblood hunter physique, the vileblood title is set permanently on so I don't have to equip it this time around as the stream comes in contact with Ludwig's mouth. His tongue laps at my dripping blood as a bloody glow encompasses the decapitated head.
The head soon disappears as the Pet subsystem confirms Ludwigs …indoctrination.
"Okay, what else have you got for me? I'll read it now"
[Prey Slaugthered]
[Ludwig the Beastly Sword Saint, a boss with multiple epic modifiers provides a large amount of Blood Echoes and Insight.]
[Gained Insight (in total): +49 (discovery instance of 22 and slaying instance of 27)]
[Harvest has leveled up. Level 5->level 7]
[Total Gained Blood Echoes (Curse +1%, Heir +30%, Moon +10%, Harvest lvl 7 +7%, Level 50 boss, +5 epic modifiers, Soul shattering-100x): ….The system is unable to provide the required more than 92 trillion Blood echoes.][1]
I slap my knee from my new seated position as I curse yet im also shocked by the amount. "Fuck you mean 92 trillion echoes?"
[920 billion is the final value of slaying NG+50 ludwig the accursed. Simply following the soul shattering formula prevents the system from bestowing required echoes.]
"…." 'what. The. fuck' my brain freezes as I never realized that just the boss himself would be worth that much. With just soul shattering at that to completely make it crazy.
[A new subsystem has been provided as compensation for unprovided echoes. Skill refinery system has been uploaded to Host. The System shall provide 3 Billion to the Host and the rest shall be offshored to the subsystem.] The system explains as it chooses to pay its debt in a different way that is actually beneficial to me. It sold me its child.
[Hello Master, The skill Refinery subsystem has the function of upgrading skills of the host in exchange for skill points. Skill points can be exchanged at a rate of 50 blood echoes (BE) for one skill point or sp for short. By this rate 142 Trillion echoes of debt is converted into 2.840 Trillion skill points. ] The new subsystem obediently explains it's own purpose as well as my 'starter bonus' for this new feature, or rather the debt it owes me.
The Main System then pitches. [316, 934, 365 blood echoes have been provided to you, the host]
"Wow" I can't help but give my best Owen Wilson phrase.
I feel the echoes flow into me soon after. Combined with my other leftover echoes, I have more than half a billion just from these two combined pools of echoes. Of course this also counts the chalice dungeons and other enemies I fought along the way to get here.
[Moving on….Secondary main Quest part 2 has been completed: Slay the Cursed Church paladin, Ludwig. Completed, +50k blood echoes has been bestowed. As a result of the extra challenge. +10 greater skill shards has been bestowed into the inventory.]
I feel another set of echoes flow into me yet this was far more meagre compared to the previous millions I just got. I'm actually a bit more excited about the skill shards, yet I then remember I have the refinery now. This would likely be something that I will spend a lot of time on to maximize my skills the most. Of course until it gets cheaper to just use straight echoes to level up my skills with Doll.
Looking at my status, I see that to level up even once costs me a bit more than 10 million echoes. For now, I light the lamp here and return to the dream where I chat with the Doll a fair bit and tell her of my recent fight. She soon hits me with another surprise once I finish my tale.
"Im sorry I could not be of more help in aiding you against these mental demons before. I have realized another aspect of the memories of echoes, I could separate a portion of memories in hopes that it may reinforce your own will. Would you like to try?" The Doll narrates her newest discovery to me.
I can't help but kiss her in response as she is always dependable when I need her most. It may cost alot to do anything around here even with my cheats to increase my money flow but everything else keeps rising in price.
Firstly, I buy the regeneration skill from the store system which alone cost me 100m blood echoes. The skill provides me a 1% healing per 30 seconds which is hella long but it's still much stronger than the gemstones on my weapons. I have no complaints, though I do crush the skill shards in hopes of leveling it up but i can't even get one level which sucks.
I then place my hand onto Dolls as she kisses my calluses before I feel my echoes flow into her. I told her beforehand that she could take 60 million for starters. Though to be careful, we separated these into sets of 100k each minor session. I use this memory strengthening method to upgrade Hunters Instinct as that skill could completely block any memory intrusions should I crush any souls while still inside a beast's body from now on.
[Hunter's instinct has leveled up. Level 2-> level 10. Skill evolution possible. Initiate evolution?] In the end, Doll ended up reaching the final level of the skill with just 30 million echoes which is nice since I saved quite a bit from my initial investment. I used the remaining 30m for my crafting skill.
"Yes" I evolved the skill and the results are very satisfactory. It was just what I needed.
[Hunters Instinct has evolved into Seeker's Instinct]. I realized that it followed my racial or class status because previously it gave me the mental state of a proper hunter, or rather what I considered the ideal hunter.
Yet now it's giving me the ideal mental state of my own race, the Seeker. That means when I use this skill; I'm slightly more emotional but that is only so that I can synergize with the elements better. That means that since I have anger issues, I have a much stronger affinity for Fire elements.
With my new mental skill set up. I choose to use up the leftover 30m echoes into my crafting skill as that could help me enhance my weapons further without blood rocks.
I first used 500k to max out Expert Craftsman which transformed into Unparalleled Creator. Woodworking/Carpentry, smithing, alchemy, Tailoring, Baking/Cooking. All these are factors that went into my skill which is probably why I was referred to as a creator rather than a craftsman. Though looking at the description, I do realize that it also includes my magical manipulation skills too from Cosmology though without subsuming cosmology itself. I guess it's a hybrid skill in that regard.
The prefix for this version was [Focused], combined with the earlier [master] prefix for expert craftsman, the end result means that my own focus is enhanced while crafting which only boosts the power of Master.
Then it was 1.5m to evolve that into a Magical creator with the prefix of [Divine] which replaced [Master], I guess it's a higher level of creation. I realize that I can remake my weapons to incorporate multiple elements into itself as compared to a simple infusion comparable to using fire/bolt paper. This time it's a proper infusion where I can bestow my own magical abilities into the weapon and make it permanent. The base damage like blunt, thrust or slash gets a tiny nerf but in return gets a massive boost.
An easier way to understand would be to make my saw cleaver into something similar to the moonlight greatsword where it has slash and arcane damage unlike my possible new creation which could have both bolt and fire damage along with slash and the serrated nature which is strong against beasts.
I really like the results thus far as it's very overpowered, yet I wonder what the result would be if I continued forward with this.
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[1] In preparation for the showcased value. I had calculated the various growths of echoes between new game cycles for ludwig. The first ng+ is a 4.2 (blah blah blah)x increase. After that is a few 1.1x increases until ng+5-7 where the growth is much bigger as each level essentially provides 70-80k each ng+ cycle. That is already more than 1.3x per cycle if the games values were to actually continue then the final value of ng+50 ludwig would be 1 T or more.
To prevent that, I stuck to 1.2x for each level since +7 which was 362k. I actually had 1T for base value at ng+50 but i took one out to have it not be too absurd but then I remembered the soul shattering. So im changing it up a bit. that is how we ended up with 92T for the early total. I then went ahead an calculated the actual total that goes into the skill furnace (after taking out a small portion to give to mc so we had a nice clean number for the conversion.