Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 535
Chapter 535: Rainbow (2)
From rank one to rank nine, monsters of all sorts appeared on this island because of the so-called “rainy season” event, and the chief had spent practically an eternity here. Put another way, he had been able to farm as much as he wanted.
But he probably doesn’t have all high-ranking essences.
That was the type of game Dungeon and Stone was. The game only made it possible to farm high-ranking essences by growing slowly and steadily after first absorbing low-ranking essences.
He probably had an essence of every rank since this island didn’t have a temple to get rid of them.
The problem is, his rank 1 as his best essence is too much of an advantage.
From this point on, it all depended on the chief’s competency. If he had consumed many early-game essences without planning ahead and boosted his late game with a high-ranking essence, then he was just a mutt with a clear limit.
And his weaknesses will be clear as well.
Of course, there was the possibility that it was the opposite. If he had filled in his low-ranking slots with essences that had relatively low ranks but were still useful later in the game, just like my Giantization…
Hmm, I guess there isn’t that big of a difference.
It just made it more difficult for me to find his weakness. No matter how I thought about it, that was all. An invincible character didn’t exist in Dungeon and Stone.
Well, except my shield barbarian.
In any case, then what was the chief like?
I carefully observed his actions and effects. All I could be certain of at the moment was Tol-Lapupa’s Cosmic Protection.
And one movement-type skill.
The moment we crossed weapons and clashed, I saw what looked like the chief’s body splitting in two and moving independently.
It was like playing a game that suddenly lagged so the frames got messed up.
Dash!
However, since I was observing him with such intensity, I could use the information gained from my senses to quickly deduce what it was.
Steam seemed to come out of his steps.
Lightning covered his body.
Crackle!
And flashes of yellow light appeared whenever he landed.
It’s Storm Lord’s Steps.
A rank 2 skill, but still a skill that was hard to consider a pure movement-type. It was characterized by its user’s quick movements like with Blink, but it also had the effect of inflicting Paralysis in an area around the spot he landed.
Bzzzt!
Vwoong!
Also, it greatly increased the user’s speed.
“Ugh…!”
“S-stop him-Huh?”
It gave him moments of invulnerability as well.
Vwoosh!
One of the melee fighters nearby tried to swing their weapon in panic, but the weapon just moved through the chief’s body as he moved away.
Is he running toward Erwen?
Hah, what a disgusting little…
He really just wanted to keep us within the village without letting us go anywhere.
Of course, I wasn’t going to let him do as he pleased.
There are two conditions to dispel Storm Lord’s Steps’s invulnerability.
The first way was for him to make an attack. This was probably why the chief was ignoring the other adventurers and only charging toward Erwen.
Three seconds.
The second condition was that the invulnerability only lasted for three seconds.
Of course, three seconds was more than enough for him to stab a sword into Erwen’s neck and end it all.
Well, he won’t get to do that.
Even while the chief was glaring at Erwen as he charged, my heart was calm.
Erwen was now in her Focus state.
[While focused, all damage taken will be absorbed through the consumption of Soul Power.]
In that state, Erwen was invulnerable as well.
We’re the ones observing you right now.
However, there was probably a reason he showed off this skill now when he could’ve pulled it out as a trick at a more opportune moment later.
[You have cast Eye of the Storm. With the authority of Transcendence, the innate ability of the skill is unleashed.]
I chained Transcendence and Eye of the Storm together. Fortunately, this skill combination could counter his.
He’s only immune to damage, not immune to CC.
Also, Eye of the Storm didn’t do any damage, so it wouldn’t trigger his defensive passives either.
Bellow!
Great winds flowed toward me, and the chief, who had been charging toward Erwen, was pulled back and began flying toward me.
Crackle!
The three seconds seemed to have ended as a wave of electricity exploded out and around the chief. That also meant his damage invulnerability had ended as well.
Since I had used Transcendence anyway, I used it one more time and cast Swing too.
[The area of effect has increased by threefold.]
The hammer grew like the monkey king’s staff and smashed into the chief’s body.
However, the chief’s body ignored the laws of physics. Rather than be flung away, the chief became stuck to the end of my hammer due to the winds still blowing in my direction.
It’s been a while since I’ve used this combo.
I smoothly turned the trajectory of my hammer.
As if riding an amusement park ride, I carried the chief on the hammer and swung him one rotation high up in the air…
Boom!
Then, I slammed him into the ground on the opposite side.
After being grabbed, he had been pulled even further from Erwen than where he’d started.
The chief coughed up blood after being pushed into the ground.
Still, with his incredible regeneration, he would probably recover soon enough, but the shock must’ve been massive, considering how he stumbled a little as he stood.
“Right. You did have that.”
“Oh, did you hear it from someone? I don’t think I’ve ever told you about it.”
The chief didn’t answer, instead only looking past me at Erwen.
I tutted. It seemed he still couldn’t smother his ambition.
“Wake up,” I said firmly. “You’ll never be able to reach her.”
“Unless I deal with you first?”
“That’s righ—!”
The chief’s body disappeared before my very eyes.
When I was able to spot the chief again with my lacking Agility, the chief had already readied his sword while standing at my flank.
Clang!
I barely managed to raise my shield and block his sword strike.
As someone who had fought with their shield every day, I could immediately tell by the impact. Whereas before, the damage was more like a chip or a small dent, a significant amount of damage had been done to my shield.
I think it’s nearly been pierced through.
Of course, I didn’t question this situation.
Rather than the chief using a different skill, I had just gotten weaker.
[One minute before Transcendence can be activated again.]
The bladed-weapon resistance my passive Evolving Shell gave me was 50 percent.
I needed to also use Iron Fortress to increase it to 75 percent. Using Transcendence on top of that to increase passive effects by 1.5 times would practically make me immune to bladed weapons.
Unfortunately for me, however, there was a limit to bladed-weapons resistance.
The maximum amount of resistance any character could have to bladed weapons was 85%, meaning for the next minute, my resistance of 85% was decreased to 75%.
To put it another way, the 15% damage I was taking has increased to 25%.
By simple mathematics, the damage was only increased by 10% of the total, but the relative damage I was experiencing was nearly double.
Bang!
As I continued to block the flurry of slashes the chief made against me, reinforcements backed me up.
“I’ll help you now.”
“Ah! Ah! I will too…!”
“…Me too! Me too!”
Amelia, Missha, and Ainar-our clan’s melee warriors.
“Be careful. Don’t underestimate him.” I was a little worried, but I didn’t back down and fought together with them.
There were a few things I could learn by getting hit as well.
[Amelia Rainwales has cast Power of the Abyss.]
[Missha Karlstein has cast Glacial Soul.]
[Ainar Fenelin has cast Wildness Control.]
I took on the role of the main tank, and the three melee warriors used me as a wall and swung their weapons in a tight formation.
During this process, we discovered another essence of the chief.
Rumble!
Black and gray fog was emitted around the chief as lightning streaked through them.
Thunder Cloud.
It dealt lightning damage in an area around the caster, and depending on how many targets were hit, the skill’s cooldown was decreased. A rank 2 skill.
“…U-ugh!”
Still, since it was just us four who got hit by the lightning, the cooldown didn’t decrease that much.
His Storm Lord’s Steps cooldown probably ended, though.
“Get away as far as you can!”
The moment I came to that conclusion, I ordered the other three to move back as quickly as possible.
Dash!
As expected, the chief dashed forward and his body became invulnerable once more as lightning danced around him.
The target of the damned chief had changed this time.
“Ainar!”
With how close he was to her, it was already too late for me to try and use my grab to stop him.
[Ainar Fenelin has cast Curl Up.]
[For three minutes, all resistances are increased by 20X.]
[For three minutes, Natural Regeneration is increased by 20X.]
Yeah, she had this.
[For three minutes, all resistances are increased by 20X.]
The shining sword struck Ainar’s body and made a deep enough wound to expose her bones. However, as long as she didn’t die in one hit, there wouldn’t be any problems.
[For three minutes, Natural Regeneration is increased by 20X.]
Curl Up’s true power lay in its regeneration boost.
Still, I guess one person is out on our side already…
Even though we had been fighting for only a few seconds, Ainar was already out of commission.
Still, we had gained a lot as well.
I got the general gist of his concept.
The chief was a lightning warrior.
The Storm Lord’s Steps wasn’t much indication by itself, but I was now sure after seeing the Thunder Cloud he just used. Even though Thunder Cloud could be used as a regular skill, the passive he was using with it wasn’t.
Lightning Affinity.
It was a passive skill that gave a stack every time he used a lighting-type skill, and boosted all lightning-type skills depending on the stacks he had.
In any case, it was important to figure this out.
If the chief was a lightning warrior, then I could take a guess as to what that shining sword was.
It’s probably Supercharge.
Just like Power of the Abyss, it was a transformation ability that was categorized as a weapon enchantment-type skill. Its characteristic was that it synergized with lightning-type synergies while also dealing physical damage.
Just like following a trail of crumbs, this also granted me a new piece of information.
If he has Supercharge, he’ll probably have that passive as well…
This was practically the same as me learning four of his essences.
How does he have four essences at rank 2 and above?
Did he figure out a way to erase his other essences?
His average rank was higher than I expected.
However, if I were to give him an overall score, I’d say this.
“Five points.”
Ten points was the maximum, of course.
Even though he had taken the concept of crafting lightning, the synergies between his essences didn’t look all that good.
Yeah, does he know how many skills you could cheat with by chaining Thunder Cloud into them?
Still, thanks to his high-ranking essences, his raw value was pretty high. Even so, honestly hoped that the rest of his essences were high-ranking as well.
A character without a good balance had a lot of weaknesses.
Alright, then I’ll stop there for today…
One.
The moment I reached the last second I had been counting down in my heart.
Fwoooong!
The entire world was bathed in bright light as something pierced through the air.
At that moment, Versyl, who had been standing to the side, shouted out for everyone to hear. “…I-It’s done! The gate is open!”
It was time to get out of this damned village.
***
A burning village, a shattered gate, and a field in front of the village, which had emptied now that the adventurers had run out in droves. There, as the chief looked on, a village warrior came up behind him.
“(Chief, the fire in the village has been all taken care of.)”
The warriors began to discuss the damage done to the village and the number of casualties they had, but the chief didn’t react.
It was natural. It didn’t matter that a few of these monsters died here. At that moment, the chief only had one thing that required his undivided attention.
“I don’t know how he noticed.”
Bjorn Yandel. The most famous adventurer of this age and the chieftain of the barbarians, one of the six great races.
And a baron of the kingdom.
“…Just a little bit more time and we would’ve been fine.”
Just as a mountain was slowly cut away by the wind, the chief’s emotions which had been dulled through the ages started to show through as a little pulse.
It was a feeling of regret.
However, he easily let go of the human emotion, his first in a very long while.
“(Chief, we will form a party to chase after them.)”
“(It’s fine.)”
“(…Pardon? But—)”
“(Recovering the village is of higher priority. And is that…still fine?)”
“(Yes. It is safe, just as you confirmed earlier.)”
Yeah, then everything was fine. Nothing had changed.
Things had just gotten a little tricky, that was all.
The chief closed his eyes and recalled the barbarian he had fought intensely but a moment ago.
“Bjorn Yandel…” He was a beastly man in many ways. In some sense, even more so than the monsters of this village. “He’ll be stronger when we meet again.”
As the chief mumbled that, a faint emotion showed its presence in his eyes.
It was joy.