"Archers are done," his dad calls out after the guns quiet down. Degritone begins the process of killing the two archers, starting with the left one. During this time, he looks at his status and goes over his skills to pass the time inside Flash Space. He notices he's leveled up.

Doing some mental math that takes up the rest of his first Flash Space entrance, he works out that the optimal ratio of stats to keep Vitality and its multiplier equal are to but 3 into Vitality for every 2 put into the multiplier, due to his 50% multiplier increase, and puts 6 of his free stats into Vitality and the other 4 into Health Regeneration Vitality Multiplier.

He also notices that he has no idea what Accelerated Condensing actually means. "What the heck is condensing?" he asks no one. "I'll probably find out, since all the other Rising Star skills are for mechanics I know of, so blah." After a couple loops, he begins playing his belly like bongos, and thinks, This is pretty boring. Sure, it's optimal, but I don't get to really do anything.

Sure, I kill stuff and kill it safely, but I was expecting the system to bring exciting battles, where I'd get to use my greatsword to great, heh, effect. Instead, I'm a boring old mage with a single trick up his sleeve. A very effective one, sure, "but what happens when I meet someone who's immune to force damage?"

He doesn't think to himself for 4 loops. "I mean, yeah, if I meet one, I'll get to actually use my other skills, but it'll probably just be me using Pestilence instead of Famine. But if they're also immune to necrotic damage - it does necrotic damage, right? - then I'll get to use my sword. And even then, Soul Grasp will just mean I keep them pinned to the ground as I murdalize them."

He bops his head to a hidden beat. "I guess this is more of an assassin build than a mage build, but that makes me hate it even more. I'm not going to play sub-optimally just because, but I'm not going to build optimally for what I've signed up for and attempt to get myself back into juggernaut, rather than stay at assassin."

Another Omen of Famine and entrance of Flash Space later and he says, "Sure, assassins can be fun, but only for like a single game of URF. Unless you count AP Maokai and Blitzcrank as assassins. Which you really shouldn't, but I could see your argument. And mages aren't super fun unless it's like DnD and you have twenty billion options and you just try to optimize it down so you only really use 3 to 6 of them."

He tilts his head to the side. "Which I guess it kinda is like that with the system, but I'd much rather be a juggernaut in this, as it's still going to always be my preferred mode of play, even if I do deviate from time to time. Like playing old AD Malz for a game or three or experimenting with some dumb build before inevitably going back to Yorick."

He takes a long, deep, sad sigh as he thinks about playing pre-rework Yorick and looks slightly down. "I really miss playing Yorick," he says sadly. "Really wish this was as fun as that. Or even a small portion as much. Hopefully, I'll find something fun enough. Or they'll get the internet back up and running and maybe I can force old Yorick back into existence for when I wanna sit down and have fun, rather than worry about reality for a while?" He shrugs.

The rest of his task is completed in sad silence and he whistles to his clone, who brings the tank back. A few more loud seconds and another 18 Omens of Famine later, and the entire goblin party is wiped out. "So, what now?" his dad, who is now level 5, asks as he walks around the wall, cheers flitting into existence behind it. Degritone casts Omen of Death on himself before Flashing back to the pillar.

Degriclone sighs as he watches his real self rapidly disappear into the woods before turning toward Degritone's dad. "Now, Kelk and I teach everyone about Flash."

"What's with him?" His dad asks, nodding toward where Degritone disappeared to.

"We're just mad we sucked all the potential fun out of the situation, and that," long pause, "the optimal decision is to do the same," pause, "the same for everyone here."

After he arrives at the node, Degritone immediately gets to work taking it out. After entering Flash Space after his first cast of Omen of Famine, he says, "Ok, so double twice would be 28. Again for 112, then 448. If it happens to spawn something that high, this entire part of the world is just going to die. Unless it's sapient and willing to talk, but blah."

"Heck, even a level 28 would be devastating. If it has something to deal over 6k damage with armor piercing, I'd die in one shot and not be able to use Flash Space + RCD and Rejuve to tank it. Heck, even just requiring Rejuve too much would mean I'm incapable, as my mana doesn't regen fast enough for too much of that." The next two loops are completed without complications and the node has large cracks running through it, some allowing light all the way through it.

On the third and final entrance to Flash Space, he says, "I should really get some handheld games - and an interdimensional space to store it so it doesn't break during fights - so I can play them while in here. Doing nothing for so long is not good for my mind. Or, at the very, very least, get a music player. Being in perfect silence at all, let alone for so long, is not fun."

Once he casts the fourth and final Omen of Famine to break 10k damage, the node shatters. Before the arrows that have now successfully been fired by many of the surrounding goblins can reach him, he enters Flash Space again and wills himself to the tree line, facing the node.

He watches as what little structure remains of the node collapses under its own weight before a bright light appears from the base of the pillar, and all the chunks and dust of the node swirl around for a while before reconfiguring into an obsidian colored, circular frame, with a gentle blue colored, swirling light in its center.

Monster Node broken!

Degritone has broken a Monster Node!

The Monster Node has been turned into a dungeon.

The location of this dungeon will be marked on everyone's maps.

Monster spawns near the location of this dungeon have been disabled.

Monster spawns far away from this dungeon have been increased in difficulty by an amount proportional to the distance.

Difficulty increase for your area: none.

Congratulations! You have broken a Monster Node!

Relatively few are able to say they were part of a team that destroyed a Monster Node.

For being the one to deal the most damage to the Node, you gain a temporary Skill.

Imbue Experience lvX

This monumental undertaking has earned you a Title Path!

Node Breaker

Additionally, you gain 10000 class experience

He raises his eyebrows at the ten thousand class experience, but widens his eyes and flails his hands a bit at the one hundred thousand class experience in Imbue Experience. "It would be nice to take it all myself, but I know I shouldn't..." He shrugs slightly and nods his head to the side.

Looking at Node Breaker, the 100 Health, Stamina, and Mana per level, Degritone says, "Tempting, but I," he never finishes that thought. As he goes to assign his new free stats, he gets hit in the chest with an armor piercing arrow, but he ignores it and flashes home and all the way to the front room, where they left the calculator and finds that 100000 divided by 18 is 5555.5 repeating.

"So, half- wait..." He squints. The image of his clone using Imbue Experience enters his head and repeats itself a few times. Before he can act on anything, though, muscle cousin walks inside, sees him, and pauses. Before she can react, he says, "Is my clone in the middle of teaching anyone, or is he still convincing everyone that they need to get Flash?"

"The latter, why?" She responds after a few seconds.

"I just got a new skill that I really need to have it test. They at the carport?" He doesn't wait for a response before Flashing his way there. He finds his aunt and clone standing in front of the garage door while everyone else talks about the "fight" and the announcement they just got. He walks up to his clone and casts Omen of Death on himself so that his clone appears in the same position it was before.

Degriclone turns toward Degritone and tries to use Imbue Experience to give him 5556 experience. He checks and he has gained it, now sitting at level 10, 2506/5500 experience. He checks Imbue Experience and finds its remaining experience is 94444. He shakes his head toward his clone, then whistles to get everyone's attention. After finishing up whatever sentence they were on, everyone looks at him.

"I got a temporary skill that gives everyone," pause, "that lets me give people a limited amount of experience. I can grant 8 of you fifty-five, fifty-six experience, and the other nine of you fifty-five, fifty-five experience." He pauses. "Who has... Meh, I'll let you guys decide who gets that one extra point."

After muscle cousin arrives with a bag of water bottles, they split into pairs - and one triple - and do rock-paper-scissors. He and his clone hand out the 5556 experience to the winners, then the 5555 to those who lost, bringing everyone up to level 7, then Degritone checks his skill list, not finding Imbue Experience there. Nodding, he, his clone, and his aunt proceed to teach everyone Flash.

With that over, everyone splits into three groups. One group of 6 that are the watch and patrol for tonight, one group of 11 that are going to sleep, and Degritone and his clone. His mom, part of the sleepers, comes up to him and asks, "Are you sure you can't stay?"

"Well, I can stay, but I have a few things I need to do. I need to get strong enough I believe I can take on the monster that will be coming after our village," pause, "take out some more monster nodes, both to keep the area safe from monster spawns but also to get the rewards for destroying them, and also clear a few dungeons. If it," pause, "works," pause, "like that book I told you about that those few DnD sessions were based on, I should be able to train pretty hard in dungeons. And you should, too."

With that, he flashes to the dungeon entrance and says, "Speaking of Randidly, I hope something similar to Aether deprivation sickness doesn't exist, or I'm going to have a bad time when I exit." He then ignores the goblins that are about to shoot him and enters the dungeon.

You have entered a level 7 dungeon.

Before his eyes, he sees a pristine, near-Roman coliseum, half surrounded by dilapidated town, half surrounded by dense forest, the latter of which, he finds himself inside. He nods and thinks, Ok, now, I'm going to need Rejuve high enough that it gives 5 Stamina per second to be able to have RCD be permanent, assuming I do nothing else, and also get Flash up to over 10 feet, which is, what, 120 inches, so level 119? Already pretty close on that one.

Also need to spend my free stats. He snaps his hand while throwing it down and having a pained face. "I should have brought my calculator and some extra batteries for it so I can do math quicker." He shrugs. Oh well. So, Rejuve's Stamina regen is basically skill level plus magic, then divided by 5000, times strength, right? So... X would be skill level, and we want it to equal 5, to 5 times 5000, divided by 75, minus 135... 25000... 250 and 75 is... 75 times 4 is 300, right? 50 is... And so he slowly arrives at the fact that he needs Rejuvenate's level to be 199 before it's able to regenerate 5 Stamina per second.

Then he remembers that Rejuvenate is a Magic skill, and as such, increases Magic, then revises it to 172. The fastest way to reduce that would be to increase Strength, but no way am I doing that. Also, I just realized, but the math for resources and regens basically becomes stat plus physical/magic, then times the multiplier, so it would actually be better to make the multiplier to be equal to the combined total of the stat and p/m. Vitality-holy cow my Vitality is 129 now.

Anyway, Vitality plus Physical is... 262, so I need my regen multiplier to total that, including the 50% increase, so 2/3 of 262 is... 524/3... He continues to do math on various skills and stats, eventually deciding to put 12 into max health multiplier, for safety, and the rest of his free stats in health regeneration multiplier, all while his clone clears out the surrounding area of monsters.

Degritone then thinks over what skills can be trained all at once, and concludes that he'll train Greatsword Mastery, Rejuvenate, Haste, Empower, and Flash all at the same time, choosing to leave out Great Cleave because most of its damage comes from Greatsword Mastery, anyway, and its stamina cost would not be worth it in a long training session.

Also Mana Sword, but that's a byproduct of training Greatsword Mastery. He then realizes he wasted a ton of time doing that math because training Mana Sword will mess with the numbers, so he decides to just pay attention to how much stamina it provides as he trains.

A little under 4 hours and 57 minutes later, Rejuvenate's stamina regeneration surpasses 5 per second at 136. Haste barely budged from its spot at 100, going to 102, but Empower made it to 55, Greatsword Mastery made it to a whopping 820, Mana Sword made it to 320, and Flash made it to a grand 1618. During this time, Degriclone manages to take out 12 level 5 enemies with little effort.

"Empower boosts my effective physical so much more than Haste. Though, Haste is way, way better at boosting my Agility, and I think that's the point. Plus, Empower is a one-use thing, while Haste is effectively a permanent thing," he says to himself, then squints. "Wait... 60 would be one per second... my S regen is definitely bigger than whatever 25 times 60 is. I can just permanently have Haste on." So he turns Haste back on. "Now, onto paths and then figure out what to grind for next."