The first mini-boss fell rather quickly under Ronan’s constant assault. The sheer firepower he could output with his spells and conjured weapons was too much for the mutated whale. The other mini-boss lasted longer not because it was stronger than its dead companion, but simply because the rest of the monsters emerging had started to be elites and Ronan was forced to divert his attention, lest they tear his mode of transport apart.

  He rushed back to the ship, jumping from one floating corpse to another. It was a little gruesome but he started to simply ignore the fact that his footholds were the dead bodies of giant monsters. Along the way he killed a few more of the annoying pests, either by carving them apart with a conjured sword or launching enough mana bolts to tear them to shreds. He refrained from using rainbow bombs as they would take too long to channel to be worth it when he wasn’t facing one of the mini-bosses.

  His level had stopped increasing a while back. After killing a few of the mini-bosses he outleveled most of the monsters in the horde by about fifty or so. He still earned plenty of credits and loot for taking them down, however, which he wasn’t disappointed with in the slightest.

  Ronan took one more leap and landed on the deck of the ship. Most of the monsters that had been attacking it were dead as he killed them on the way back, but there were still a few pests. Striking them down from his position on the deck was difficult, but he had a solid workaround.

  By using Mark of the Eternal Seeker, he could guarantee that his ranged attacks would hit no matter where he threw them from. After about five more minutes of effort he was able to kill every single monster around the ship by working his way through them. Unfortunately being limited to five marks at a time had slowed his progress, but he enjoyed the refinement of his ranged capabilities.

  Over time he improved the design of his throwing knives and other projectiles. With Mark of the Eternal Seeker he had no need to care about aerodynamics or balance, as the weapons would always find their target no matter which direction he threw them or how badly they flew. While the speed of the weapons was affected by the design, it wasn’t as though he was ruining it. It just meant that rather than being forced into the standard throwing knife design he could be a little more creative.

  There was one knife design that had been banned as a war crime due to the savage wounds it caused, with a strange three-spined spiral for a blade. He replicated that and the rate at which he tore through the monsters had increased.

  As well as refining his knife design, Ronan also focused on improving all aspects of his conjured weapons. For some odd reason he noticed that they were slightly less sturdy than in his last iteration but dealt a lot more damage. It has to be the crafting skill. The influence of Crude Crafter if I’m guessing correctly. He pondered the implications of the newly discovered synergy between crafting and his sorcery.

  If anything, that's a benefit for a conjured weapon. They were always temporary, and now they just do more damage and burn out a bit quicker. The mana cost to make a new one is pretty minimal so I can’t say I’m mad about it. Perhaps if I improve my crafting skills I might even see more benefits to my conjured weapons.

  There wasn’t a lot of time to think about it, as the second of the twin mini-bosses suddenly emitted a large fluctuation of mana. Ronan turned his focus back to the creature and saw a glowing ball of mana floating between two of its antennae. A magical attack of some kind. He glanced at his own mana and smirked when he looked back at the mini-boss.

  It shrieked and the ball of mana exploded. A beam of pressurised water tore through the air, splitting the waves beneath it. If left unchecked it would punch a hole in the hull of the ship. That was an outcome Ronan could not allow.

  He used dispel.

  As suddenly as it had come into existence, the jet of water vanished into thin air. The mini-boss took a moment to register what had happened. Then it roared, a guttural sound that shook the ocean around it. Ronan winced as his eardrums trembled. Damn noisy motherfucker. Have some respect.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  He marked the mini-boss and let a storm of knives and mana bolts fly at it over the course of around ten seconds. All of them struck the same point on its face, causing it to shriek again. Ronan almost stumbled and fell off the corpse he had landed on, but kept his balance, his scowl growing deeper. He hated noisy monsters the most. They reminded him of the arrogant goblins that had tormented him when he was first integrated into the system. The mini-boss was whittled down by his ranged weapons long before he reached it, making the killing blow something of an anti-climax.

  You have killed [Mutated Dolphin Lv.149]!

  …

  You have leveled up to Lv.151!

  He skimmed through most of the notifications. There were hundreds of them by that point, having accumulated during the battle. A look around the ocean informed him that basically everything was dead. A few stragglers had escaped his lethal barrages, but he finished them off with precisely aimed mana bolts. None of those kills gave him much worth mentioning besides a few more credits, though.

  In the chaos of the battle he had missed that he’d earned the second class evolution. However, upon checking it was just another bog-standard evolution, without even an increase in rarity, just giving him some minor buffs and slightly more luck per level. Interestingly it did start giving him a small amount of charisma, too, which gave rise to some curious thoughts about how the different stats functioned.

  Gambler of Fate (Celestial)

  Your existence is an aberration. To achieve the luck and fortune you have at such a stage of life is unfathomable, yet somehow you join the ranks of the fated few. To gamble with the fates themselves is a terrifying proposition, but when your very existence is on the line, the rewards are oh so sweet. How much do you want to bet that this class will prove your undoing?

  You cannot assign free stat points to any stat besides luck

  Luck efficacy and potency +2100%

  All rewards from consumables, as well as all loot drops, are exceptionally more likely to be of a higher quality and quantity than usual

  Negative consequences of any kind, arising from bad decisions or wagers by the one who has this class, are exceptionally more devastating and difficult to overcome

  +75 Charisma, +1100 Luck on level up

  Unlock requirements:

  Challenger possesses the class [Gambler of Fate (Celestial)]

  It reminded him once again that he hadn’t done much in the way of gambling, but to be honest there hadn’t been a need for it with how easy the fights were. Despite that being a huge jump from stage 3, it was a breeze once he killed the first mini-boss and leapt up about seventy levels in a single moment.

  Even after dismissing the kill notifications and the class evolution, there were still a dozen more messages from the system. A skim through informed him that most were about his masteries going up in tier. He was about to check which ones when a deafening bellow startled him from his concentration.

  The ocean was churning, the waves that had been softly buffeting the ship now crashing against it with the force of a thousand hammers. The metal hull groaned as it was struck from every angle, but the ship held strong. In the ocean ahead of the ship, to Ronan’s right, the water started to sink towards the depths as though there was a black hole sucking it down.

  A thick black tentacle burst out of the abyss, reaching almost a hundred metres into the sky before it curled over. More tentacles followed, bursting out of the ocean until there were dozens filling the area ahead of the ship. Then a colossal body that resembled a squid followed. That was simply the beginning, though, as it was attached to a large crustacean-like body. The abomination had two pairs of chelae near the front of its torso and six pairs of legs that emerged from the shell and carried it out of the water. As if all of that wasn’t hideous enough, instead of a crustacean’s head, a black and white maw that resembled an orca was the final part of the creature to emerge from the depths. It let out a low whine before almost half of the tentacles shot towards Ronan while a brilliant white glow of mana coated all four of its claws.

  [Karadaxos - BOSS][Mutated Abyssal Orkrakstacean Lv.275]

  For a moment Ronan didn’t even focus on the tentacles that were bearing down on him or the spell the boss monster was channeling. All he could focus on was its ridiculous name and its utterly absurd level. I don’t think anyone in the fucking multiverse apart from me would even have a chance against this thing! Is someone rigging this damned tutorial against me, or does it get harder based on the person challenging it? Ronan was confused and angry. He was also excited about what would be the hardest battle of his life—lives. In the end there was nothing he could do but take on the big bastard. So he marked it, conjured a sword, and started letting shit fly.