Oscar

It had taken no small amount of work (and even more random philanthropy from NIGHT), but Oscar had finally obtained everything he needed to refine Money Shot into what would perhaps be its final and strongest form. And, as with every other time he needed something done with a weapon, Oscar found himself back in Macradon's shop. He stepped up to the counter with a grin and placed the two weapons needing to be combined on the counter. "You got me boss?" All costs paid to Banker here 20,000 Col, 15 Materials transferred to @Macradonas payment.

Combining [-1 Demonic Shard, -1 Rainbow Scale] Final Product: Item Name: Umbral Avarice Item ID: N/A Item Tier: 4 Item Type: Warhammer Item Rarity: Demonic Item Enhancements: Abs.Acc | FLN | FLN | ACC

1,000 Col per page/evaluation would quickly add up and is also a higher Col reward than one would earn from actually completing a page of roleplay. I don't think that, at a baseline, approvals should garner more income than the base thread reward. That said, the base thread reward is a wholly inconsequential amount and could do with being ramped up.

At long last, the exit was in sight. And, Oscar had an answer to why he was so angry. Like most people, he didn't like being fucked with and unlike most people, he was very, very much a creature of habit. He'd grown accustomed to the same routine, the same build, the same sequence of actions - right down to the same Sword Art. He had essentially woken up one morning with everything about his avatar having been shifted around willy-nilly. And, in the moment, he appreciated the ephemeral challenge of finding something that would work and tweaking that build to suit his needs - but he still prefe

A lot of those changes had not at all been for the better. This dungeon - or, indeed any grinding - was simply indicative of that. He stopped for a moment, taking stock of the loot that he had earned thus far. It was a very respectable amount and, as far as Unidentified Items went - the best he had ever done. But he couldn't help but notice that his own abilities had diminished. The haul would have been much better if he didn't have to wrangle cooldowns and the like. Cardinal had begun to limit him and the Players at large in ways it had never done before. It felt like a punishment for clearin

As he strode through the same dark corridors and passed through the same dark chambers, he had to question why he was so unhappy. This wasn't anything new to him. He was perhaps one of the few people he knew willing to venture forth by his lonesome and just brutalize mobs of an hour or two. Everyone else didn't have the time or the inclination or the stats for it. It was definitely something he enjoyed - especially since Tyson and his crew had gone to ground in the recent days. Dismantling that organization - or at least the goal of it - had quickly become a fantastic pastime of his. A one-man

Oscar had a tendency to become frustrated out of nowhere. He'd spent the entire foray into this dungeon keeping his cool and entertaining himself however he could when the truth was that he was absolutely miserable. This feeling lingered under the surface, buried under all of his fake excitement about having the absolute pleasure of being able to gather moss. For a brief moment, there was a flash of anger in his eyes. This was punctuated by him slamming his hammer into the ground - Odin's Wrath tearing apart the Revenants with a sudden and hitherto unseen brutality. All it took was a flash to

On his trek back to the exit, he entered yet another open chamber with yet another quartet of spectral knights. For the life of him, Oscar couldn't exactly remember passing through this room earlier. Did the paths shift as well? That certainly would be an element of danger that stats couldn't overcome. Imagine being reliant on consumable recovery items and becoming hopelessly lost. Though, one always had the option of teleporting. In Oscar's case, not teleporting was something of a point of pride. He'd gone this far without needing to bitch out like that and he had no intention of starting sim

Item Name: Dark Fortunes Item ID: Upgrade Roll - 195239, BD: 10 | CD: 12 | LD: 17 (Abs.Acc/Phase - Reroll activated) Enhancement Reroll - 195240, LD: 6 (Fallen Applied) Item Tier: 4 Item Rarity: Demonic Item Enhancements: Abs.Acc | Fallen | Acc | Para Description: A sleek dark hammer with a strip of gold inlaid in the handle. Promises great wealth, but at what cost?

I don't know how it would interact with potential Sword Art changes going forward, but I don't really think that it would hurt anything to fold in the Unique Sword Arts as well. It would be much easier for Staff to use an existing Unique Skill (after they're retooled because I think they all need it) as an example of the power ceiling. If we go forward with this change and the option remains to create a Custom Skill or a Custom Art, I don't think anyone would be entirely interested in the latter simply because it's hard to pack the utility and power of a Custom Skill into a Custom Art. Th

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It wasn't long before the group rounded the corner and saw Oscar's familiar waiting patiently for them outside of the chamber. When his master rounded the corner, the two-headed hound barked happily and began to wag his two tails rapidly. Oscar cycled through his menu and produced a large steak, which he promptly tossed the dog's way. The pair snatched the large slab of meat out of the air and began to tear into it as Oscar headed into the room and approached the chest. He let out a heavy sigh and gestured back at Shield and Freyd, waving them inside. "This can go really good or really ba

With that spectacular gathering failure under his belt, Oscar decided to start heading on back home. He'd managed to obtain a good amount of loot - perhaps the best he could have hoped for, all things considered. He'd ventured pretty deep into the Black Iron Dungeon. It would take a while for him to unstuck himself from within its "murderous" belly. Now that he thought about it, Oscar really couldn't remember the path he took to get this far. Regardless, it had to be somewhere back the way he came. So, turning on his heels, Oscar began the arduous trek to the exit. On his way, Oscar noticed a

Aw yeah, we back to the good part! Moss! Brown Moss. Green Moss. Purple Moss. Blooming Purple Moss. All the absolute best types of moss sprang to mind. Unfortunately, none of those types of moss would or could be found, much to Oscar's chagrin. All that was left was that a single, tiny, desiccated strip of moss tucked behind the open flame of a torch. With nothing else better to do, Oscar began the arduous task of peeling the crumbling plant from the walls in the hopes of a material. The problem was, it was so close to the torch that Oscar didn't exactly didn't have a solid angle of approach.

As with every single round of combat thus far in this dungeon, Oscar followed Odin's Wrath with Double or Nothing and completely eviscerated the creatures before him. After collecting his loot, he straightened his back and looked around. Holding his hammer between his arm and torso, he began to make a mental count - using his fingers to keep mark. "Huh. That was five different enemy types so far? Not bad, not bad," he mused to himself. He'd long since abandoned any hope that anything short of a boss - even normal mobs at a higher level - would be even remotely threatening. Most he could hope f

Oscar heard the metallic thud of armored footfalls from deeper in the dungeon. Intrigued, Oscar followed the sound. Eventually, he entered a wide chamber in which a quartet of shadowy specters resided. They looked not entirely unlike the Black Iron Knights that Oscar was so familiar with. If not for the tendrils of shadowy energy wisping from their forms, Oscar wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. They had stopped their march for now, standing shoulder to shoulder, their bodies facing Oscar's direction. As he moved closer, two red orbs flashed to life deep within their slotted helms. Th

And thus was Oscar condemned to his mossy hell. Instead of having something interesting happen, he was presented with yet another patch of moss. Ignorant of the alternatives, Oscar was happy to placate himself by peeling the moss from the wall with a smile on his face. If he'd known that he could have potentially had an epic duel with a dungeon boss or had his health drop below 50% for the first time since he'd first gotten started, he would have cursed the System for giving him mere moss. But, such is life. It can travel along many different paths, intersecting in various points, but ultimate

As Oscar wiled away the time between combat by peeling ever-increasing quantities of moss from the walls, behind the scenes the System was calculating what calamity Oscar would play party to. Intense quantum mathematics were conducted by the currently-most sophisticated AI in existence. If Cardinal was an engine, it would be red-lining as it factored in variables that humans couldn't even fathom. And then, finally, it came up with its answer. The tragedy that was soon to befall Oscar was: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No trap, no chest, no uber-powerful enemy encounter. Just more of t

With nothing else better to do for the foreseeable future, Oscar was back on that moss. It was best to seize the opportunity to improve his Gathering skill while he could, because he was for damn certain that he wasn't going to go out and forage with nothing else to do. It simply wasn't a good use of his time and he didn't have the patience for it. Nevertheless, he was in the moment while he was in the moment. And in this moment, he was successful in getting two materials for the price of one. He celebrated internally and kept it moving. Somehow he felt that if he kept himself in one place for

Now, it was time to cap it all off with a Wallbreaker. Oscar swung his axe like a golf club with such force that it slammed the four remaining Shrikes against the wall. The impact utterly depleted their respective health bars, leaving nothing but shimmering interactable points on the ground where they had fallen and shattered. The sound of stone grinding filled the air and the sudden change in pressure caused the lingering dust to flow freely out of the room. As it all settled, Oscar collected his loot and stepped back out into the corridor, ready to tackle his next challenge. Or something. Mo

Odin's Wrath was now available. Which meant it was time to really get some work done. Oscar raised his hammer high above his head and then sent the massive hunk of metal careening down to the ground. An eruption of stone and dust filled the room with smog, the shrapnel from the blow perforating two of the Shrikes to death and heavily harming two more. With vision thus hindered, the Shrikes couldn't easily find their mark. He felt the batting of wind as the birds flapped past the nape of his already-bloodied neck, their beaks finding no purchase as they snapped through empty air. The maneuver b

Even though he waited a turn, Oscar found himself still in need of some more stopping power. The options were to wait another turn for something a little stronger or to lay down what damage he could. Oscar chose the latter. Since he wasn't going to kill anything this round no matter what he did, Oscar decided to lean in harder on the more injured Shrikes instead of spreading the wealth, so to speak. His hammer tore through the air, whipping up a tempestuous gale as he swung into the swarm once, then twice. Having abandoned any goals of evasion, he was able to to strike with much more precision

Seeing as he couldn't really make much forward progress with all of his stronger Sword Arts on cooldown, Oscar decided to simply take a break. The incessant chirping of the birds was beginning to grate his nerves and, if he didn't deal with that, it would likely cause his focus to slip. So rather than wait for things to get too pent up, Oscar elected to deal with it here and now. He closed his eyes, taking several steadying breaths. For a brief moment, a light green aura affixed itself around Oscar's form. As he opened his eyes again - the sounds of the birds having been completely blocked out

Although Oscar was pretty evasive when he wanted to be, the bulk of his attention was diverted away from trying to dodge the birds and more into trying to hit them. It seemed like every couple of seconds, he was having to yank a stuck bird out of the back of his neck and yeet it away from him, which then made the monumental task of trying to avoid their stabby beaks all the more challenging. Finally, he just accepted that there was no way that he could track every individual bird in this small swarm flitting about him like a storm of feathers and hate. Instead, he would lean 100% into the offe