I'll be a bit sad if we don't get some Color magic of our own, it sounds interesting. Then again, we already have a bunch of magic systems we haven't had the time to explore yet...
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
It was revealed through dialogue outside an update a while back!
I'm surprised that's your takeaway after reading the update, the System seems quite weak, I don't think Hunger can even get a +Progression out of it. Besides, it's nice that Hunger's mythic fluff is differentiated from Seram's more conventionally crunchy LitRPG experience.
Rihaku
The Internet
Isn't it too weak for Hunger to bother spending effort on!
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
He's a pretty shit person but I can easily empathize with him. Being an actual person means if circumstances changed he could have become better.
Your mileage may vary on how deserving he was of that chance (both before and after meeting us) but I can't help but feel some level of sadness that he ended up the way he did regardless.
It'd be a better world if he was a better person so I wish for one where things went in that direction.
Last edited:
Enohthree
Hypersane
Not only is that not true in many video games, but we straight up Aerithed her. Even games where companions can't be permakilled in battle often have cutscene death.
We couldn't Cut Through back then, we were like two fights into the quest. We killed her with a regular (if sneaky) spine stab and a single ruin effect, no Cursebearer related thing involved at all.
That might have been impossible previously. Maybe important companions would just get knocked out on reaching zero HP earlier, a-la Oblivion.
Duquette7
I am Fire, and I am Rain
I don't feel bad for Ber, dirty cheater that he is, I feel bad for System/Chan!
Just listen to her screams! She gave him everything she had, and then was cast aside, broken, unwanted, defiled.
There, there, System/Chan, Hunger will save you!
25 Arete Panoply System/Chan get! An entire magic system specialized for progression, enhanced by Accretion, Arete, and our nature as a Progression style Curse Bearer.
I'm in love....
Rihaku
The Internet
Or maybe they were previously too stupid to die!
Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
Huh so it was. I joined the quest during mid temple and I think I can be forgiven for using reader mode to catch up.
Wow, Bearic's tunnel vision is so bad that his entire party died while he was locked in his DPS rotation and he didn't notice, despite their names on the side of the screen. Patterns aren't everything; if you can't even improvise on that level, you have no business on a battlefield.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Y'know, he only dies after he splits from the systems fundamental 'fairness' by using the armament fish as a passive power source.
Wonder if it wasn't more powerful then he gave it credit for and he misunderstood that he wasn't the supporting character to backstabbed's protagonist but the main character himself.
Possibly even brought Hunger unto himself by breaking that fundamental rule. Death by irony is wonderful if a bit cliche.
Too small minded, too narrow, too foolish.
Wonder if it wasn't more powerful then he gave it credit for and he misunderstood that he wasn't the supporting character to backstabbed's protagonist but the main character himself.
Possibly even brought Hunger unto himself by breaking that fundamental rule. Death by irony is wonderful if a bit cliche.
Too small minded, too narrow, too foolish.
Last edited:
Well, we see that the System strains and breaks under the might of the Blue, so his switch wasn't unwarranted.
We already have the Bluest magic of them all, though.
Regular stab with a Forebear's Blade, however broken. That might have been enough.
Rihaku
The Internet
Wouldn't you go live in a Fish for pseudo-ultimate power if you could? It's practically axiomatic! Fishes are nearly power incarnate...
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
Honestly, I do have a vague memory of reading a xianxia about a dude cultivating in a fish, in a secret dungeon. He later ate the fish for more power? I don't know why he was in the fish, I think he was hiding from generic antagonists. I can barely recall, because it wasn't good. It almost certainly wasn't the Bible.
- Location
- USA
I just like litrpg, not getting the same system as Seram was a big disappointment!
Kind of insulted at Ber calling Hunger an it, but it's not like there's any point resenting him after this chapter anymore.
Enohthree
Hypersane
Sure there is!
Consider for a moment that the thrashing the fish was doing could have been caused or exacerbated by the fact that he was riding parasite in it's heart, leaching away power in a way it couldn't shake off.
If that's the case then the blood of billions was on his hands, slain for exp.
Absolutely. Cutting Through like Callidus is the exception, not the rule.
It's reflective of how thoroughly reliance on the System had warped his perceptions that he didn't even see someone who failed to fit into its context as human. Then again, Hunger did the same thing to the Accursed (at first), and again to Exposition Cat.
Ber's mistake (if we generously limit ourselves to one) was in treating the System like it was the Imperial Praxis. The last word in omniversal law, a bedrock truth, a pattern that he could cling to like a liferaft in an ocean of chaos. He wanted the proverbial dream of fairness, Bearic even talks about it in similar terms:
Too bad he's a self-confessed cheater whose 'Prestige Classing' turned out to be the leveling equivalent of stealing gas. The Praxis doesn't come with guard rails, there are no nice and neat guidelines you can stick to. As this update proves: Who Dares, Wins. Ber reminds me of a less sympathetic version of the Crappy Renaissance Man option from Unnamed Quest's chargen. I agree that he seemed like he was somewhere on the spectrum.
I'd say it's a small world, but it's really not. What are the odds that Hunger would stumble on his 'nemesis' here? Better than they look at face value, with his Rank and so many other cooks competing to stir the pot of probability, but still low.
It amazes me that someone as weak as Seralize with so little in the way of self-preservation instincts could survive as a Voyaging adventurer, much less bear (heh) the hope of a noble house on her shoulders. What was she even after other than gold and glory, goals as nebulous as power? You can't be an Amaryllis expy while dumping Int/Wis, it doesn't work that way!
Will we get some Rank from defeating the Fish? On the one hand we didn't have too much difficulty dealing with it, but on the other hand OaF says 'Does not raise the difficulty of improving Rank', so would that mean we defeated the Armament-Fish as a Rank 8.475 guy for the purposes of Rank gain?
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Yeah, for all the talk about sociopathy and failure in pattern recognition, this bewilders and infuriates me the most.
He
Decided
Toliveinafuckingfishforpowersarglblah-
Like, who even does that? No self-respecting litrpg protagonist, that's for sure.
Everyone knows that cheating is just expending less effort to achieve greater results, and this towering genius decided that becoming some sort of fish helminth would help him to git gud.
The fucking scrublord.
Even editing a save file to boost your stats is more effort than that.
I am beyond offended.
#NotAGamer
Reaction: 1000 words
"purposeless squalor" huh? Was the fish just chilling at the bottom of the ocean then? Or maybe it was floating around, pretending to be a continent.
Imagine if you lived on Australia all your life, and everyone knew if you dug down deep enough you'd hit this blue bedrock no one could dig through.
As for squalor, do Armament fish poop? I really hope not. Don't drink from any yellow rivers...
It's a very human thing here.
The joy of power, and the lingering remnants of shame from a lifetime being taught prosocial behaviors. A low self esteem, likely a product of a life time spent being the socially outcast autistic nerd, redeemed when he discovers his weird way of seeing and thinking about the world is rewarded with vast power.
It reads a bit like some stories I'll read online. You go to school and get picked on and known as a loser, a failure, then your weird way of thinking about the world gets you a tech job making six figures and suddenly everything is different, but the scars of being an outcast are still there. "Better in ability if not in worth".
And of course, everyone wants control over their environment. Everyone wants to be able to feel safe, but for autistics it often goes deeper, with a need for a predictable routine that can be pathological. If you constantly obsess over analyzing and predicting the world, then a life where nothing ever changes is the only time and place you can relax. So it's easy to see how Bearic would find Hunger's ability to just smash through and ignore his system deeply upsetting. All those promises of power and safety broken. If the system hadn't promised him that it would always be right perhaps he'd be fine, but it did.
It's very humanizing, though not enough for me to want to bring him back or anything.
The apocryphal picked Bearic because he and his party resemble Hunger. It turns out this resemblance is closer than we first thought. Bearic's system, and the behavior it causes, is basically the same as Hunger. We only really have one actual strategy, and that is powering up. Pick some totally reckless option, frantically mine arete until it's merely somewhat reckless, then get stupidly lucky.
Poor Bearic. His system is a cheap knock-off of Progression, a power with a limit. And as for his luck, even when he thought he was getting lucky it was just the apocryphal setting him up for future suffering.
And then there's Seralize. Just like Aobaru and saving the Journeying Realm, she's set up to save Esterarc. Another cheap knockoff. We can only hope Aobaru doesn't meet a similar end.
So his magic was born from the Fish. Magic certainly seems to get around here; our cloak is a fragment of the tower, and his system was born in the fish.
Remember how our cloak ate hungerly at the tower? And now here's Bearic, and his magic system is drinking greedily from it's own point of origin too. All these powers hungering to be re-united with their source. Perhaps killing the fish will give us an upgraded version of Bearic's magic, same as the tower upgraded the cloak?
Interesting what this says about Foremost magic, and Armament magic. Color and system, defining the world. Perhaps a hint of how Versch sees the world? I also think it's interesting that it picked up on our name. Names, as always, seem tied to some deeper magic.
Ber was a big name? I can see that, I suppose. But it's my understanding that he's not much stronger than a foot solder in the Realm of Myth. Or maybe a captain?
You want to get strong, you have to go to the high level areas.
He still thinks too small. What meaning does entropy have to someone who can create universes out of nothing? Or imagine someone who has transcended linear time, to such a person entropy would go in whatever direction they pleased.
Speaking of limits, he hasn't even seen the best the voyaging realm has to offer. I still wish he could have teleported over to find us in the Realm of Myth. Or if he found us after we voyaged to whatever craziness lies even deeper in the Voyaging realm. Imagine if he thinks he's hacked his way to ultimate power, that he's transcended the system and every limit, only to show up and find an entire nation of people who could kill him in the blink of an eye.
RIP bearic.
I can see why the Apocryphal picked Bearic, because again he exemplifies Hunger's fears. What if the Accursed lied? What if Progression isn't actually infinite, what if he never becomes strong enough? What if Hunger spends a million years powering up, desperately seeking enough power to avenge his companions (like Bearic) and resurrect them (like Bearic) only to find that it's not enough? What if Hunger meets a similar end, effortlessly crushed by some vastly greater being?
Imagine Hunger spending countless lifetimes, only to meet the Hidden Ones and be slaughtered with nothing more than a faint look of recognition.
SINCE WHEN DID WE HAVE GOLDEN EYE!!!!1 AND HOW!
Rihaku I need answers.
Maybe this is just what happens if you spend time in the Realm of Myth? All the solders had gold eyes, and it did get mentioned that Hunger felt like his rank was growing more solid, so perhaps this is something that happens to everyone that spends time here?
[153, 204, 255] wins again.
...
Did Bearic cause the fish's rampage? Or were his actions to insignificant for the fish to notice? We got offered "A Fish Out of Legend" first, and giving Bearic an apocryphal powerup was a later vote, so I'm guessing not. Maybe he heard about the rampaging fish, came to check it out, and then buried himself inside it? It's certainly making lots of noise.
"purposeless squalor" huh? Was the fish just chilling at the bottom of the ocean then? Or maybe it was floating around, pretending to be a continent.
Imagine if you lived on Australia all your life, and everyone knew if you dug down deep enough you'd hit this blue bedrock no one could dig through.
As for squalor, do Armament fish poop? I really hope not. Don't drink from any yellow rivers...
It's a very human thing here.
The joy of power, and the lingering remnants of shame from a lifetime being taught prosocial behaviors. A low self esteem, likely a product of a life time spent being the socially outcast autistic nerd, redeemed when he discovers his weird way of seeing and thinking about the world is rewarded with vast power.
It reads a bit like some stories I'll read online. You go to school and get picked on and known as a loser, a failure, then your weird way of thinking about the world gets you a tech job making six figures and suddenly everything is different, but the scars of being an outcast are still there. "Better in ability if not in worth".
And of course, everyone wants control over their environment. Everyone wants to be able to feel safe, but for autistics it often goes deeper, with a need for a predictable routine that can be pathological. If you constantly obsess over analyzing and predicting the world, then a life where nothing ever changes is the only time and place you can relax. So it's easy to see how Bearic would find Hunger's ability to just smash through and ignore his system deeply upsetting. All those promises of power and safety broken. If the system hadn't promised him that it would always be right perhaps he'd be fine, but it did.
It's very humanizing, though not enough for me to want to bring him back or anything.
The apocryphal picked Bearic because he and his party resemble Hunger. It turns out this resemblance is closer than we first thought. Bearic's system, and the behavior it causes, is basically the same as Hunger. We only really have one actual strategy, and that is powering up. Pick some totally reckless option, frantically mine arete until it's merely somewhat reckless, then get stupidly lucky.
Poor Bearic. His system is a cheap knock-off of Progression, a power with a limit. And as for his luck, even when he thought he was getting lucky it was just the apocryphal setting him up for future suffering.
And then there's Seralize. Just like Aobaru and saving the Journeying Realm, she's set up to save Esterarc. Another cheap knockoff. We can only hope Aobaru doesn't meet a similar end.
So his magic was born from the Fish. Magic certainly seems to get around here; our cloak is a fragment of the tower, and his system was born in the fish.
Remember how our cloak ate hungerly at the tower? And now here's Bearic, and his magic system is drinking greedily from it's own point of origin too. All these powers hungering to be re-united with their source. Perhaps killing the fish will give us an upgraded version of Bearic's magic, same as the tower upgraded the cloak?
Interesting what this says about Foremost magic, and Armament magic. Color and system, defining the world. Perhaps a hint of how Versch sees the world? I also think it's interesting that it picked up on our name. Names, as always, seem tied to some deeper magic.
Ber was a big name? I can see that, I suppose. But it's my understanding that he's not much stronger than a foot solder in the Realm of Myth. Or maybe a captain?
You want to get strong, you have to go to the high level areas.
He still thinks too small. What meaning does entropy have to someone who can create universes out of nothing? Or imagine someone who has transcended linear time, to such a person entropy would go in whatever direction they pleased.
Speaking of limits, he hasn't even seen the best the voyaging realm has to offer. I still wish he could have teleported over to find us in the Realm of Myth. Or if he found us after we voyaged to whatever craziness lies even deeper in the Voyaging realm. Imagine if he thinks he's hacked his way to ultimate power, that he's transcended the system and every limit, only to show up and find an entire nation of people who could kill him in the blink of an eye.
RIP bearic.
I can see why the Apocryphal picked Bearic, because again he exemplifies Hunger's fears. What if the Accursed lied? What if Progression isn't actually infinite, what if he never becomes strong enough? What if Hunger spends a million years powering up, desperately seeking enough power to avenge his companions (like Bearic) and resurrect them (like Bearic) only to find that it's not enough? What if Hunger meets a similar end, effortlessly crushed by some vastly greater being?
Imagine Hunger spending countless lifetimes, only to meet the Hidden Ones and be slaughtered with nothing more than a faint look of recognition.
SINCE WHEN DID WE HAVE GOLDEN EYE!!!!1 AND HOW!
Rihaku I need answers.
Maybe this is just what happens if you spend time in the Realm of Myth? All the solders had gold eyes, and it did get mentioned that Hunger felt like his rank was growing more solid, so perhaps this is something that happens to everyone that spends time here?
[153, 204, 255] wins again.
...
Did Bearic cause the fish's rampage? Or were his actions to insignificant for the fish to notice? We got offered "A Fish Out of Legend" first, and giving Bearic an apocryphal powerup was a later vote, so I'm guessing not. Maybe he heard about the rampaging fish, came to check it out, and then buried himself inside it? It's certainly making lots of noise.
Hunger's eye color changed after picking up the Forebear's Blade IIRC. Sadly the theories about the Forebear being part-orc didn't pan out.
The implication's that he was someone in the gaming scene before he boarded the isekai train.
It's been that way ever since Hunger Abducted the Blade.