NOVEL NEXT Chapter 25: The Creation of Explosive Stones
In the middle of the night, waking up well before the roosters, with heavy snow falling, a young boy stood on top of a 4-story building with a small pile of stones before him.
Cracking his fingers and swaying his hips, he murmured, "Alright, let's start the experiments."
He then reached out, taking something from the air. It was special paper and chakra ink.
'Akane said I'm already good enough to even sell the 'Explosive Tags' I make. I want to see if I can create something new on the spot using Fabrication...'
Mentally preparing himself by closing his eyes, he then opened them.
"Fuu..."
Using Psychokinesis, he made a stone float and took the amount of ink and a tag of special paper he believed necessary.
When the three floated simultaneously under his control, Tanaka closed his eyes as he used Fabrication.
In his mind, the process was being executed. An imaginary version of him made the inscriptions while infusing them with MP.
The process was extremely delicate, mainly because he didn't intend to make the paper itself appear but to make it look like a common spherical stone.
A second passed, then another, until 31 seconds had passed, and he opened his eyes.
"Fuu~"
Letting out a prolonged sigh, he saw the result of his creation.
[Explosive Stone - Rank C]
[Created by Tanaka Uzumaki, The Gamer.]
[A common stone infused with special paper and chakra ink.]
Damage: 500
Special Effect: Explodes on impact, causing area damage.
Durability: 1/1
Additional Effect: 20% chance to stun nearby enemies for 3 seconds.
"Yes!" He clenched his fist and celebrated.
The creation process took much longer compared to the usual method, which took a maximum of 3 seconds, but this time, it took a total of 31 seconds.
However, he had a cheat to speed up the process of creating Explosive Stones.
Storing the first stone he successfully made, Tanaka formed hand seals and soon created 34 shadow clones.
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6 minutes and 12 seconds later...
Tanaka looked at the 4 slots filled with a total of 394 Explosive Stones and smiled.
He ended up using all the special paper and chakra ink he had, but it didn't matter since he could always buy more, especially now that he had a small fortune.
Additionally, the Fabrication skill leveled up to level 12, and two new additional effects appeared:
[[Fabrication] (Active) LV12 EXP: 82.26% / 12MP]
[Effect: 100% success rate in creating something useful]
Additional Effects: Significant reduction in fabrication time.
Additional Effects: Increase in the quality of created items.
Additional Effects: Ability to fabricate more complex and detailed items.
Additional Effects: Greater efficiency in the use of materials, resulting in less waste.
Although the skill increase didn't significantly improve the quality of the Explosive Stones, he still managed to make some with higher damage, one of them being:
[Explosive Stone - Rank C+]
[Created by Tanaka Uzumaki, The Gamer.]
[A common stone infused with special paper and chakra ink.]
Damage: 1,500
Special Effect: Explodes on impact, causing area damage.
Durability: 1/1
Additional Effect: 40% chance to stun nearby enemies for 5 seconds.
'I should save this type,' Tanaka thought. Currently, he managed to create 13 with similar stats and stored them in the same ninja pouch, then returned it to his inventory.
Meanwhile, the number of zombies that had 'spawned' must have exceeded 200.
Seeing this, Tanaka thought for a moment. 'Should I start?'
However, something inside him told him to wait for more zombies to appear. Meanwhile, he could use this time to create more 'common' spherical stones.
Transmitting his thoughts to his clones, Tanaka began while the clones went to recharge their MP by stealing the life force of the zombies using the MP Threads.
Several minutes later...
Each of the 34 shadow clones spread across the map, waiting for his signal. And with each clone, there were a total of 30 spherical stones floating.
Tanaka, who also controlled 30 spherical stones, took one of the explosive types and fired it with his hand. The moment he did this, Tanaka jumped into the air.
"Boom!"
At the sound of the explosion, all his clones immediately began attacking the zombies on the map.
[You Gained 1,850 EXP!]
[You Gained 2,170 EXP!]
[You...]
[You...]
[You...]
[You...]
[You...]
[You...]
[You...]
The continuous sounds of attacks echoed here and there as the zombies were swiftly killed, causing the EXP notifications to constantly appear in Tanaka's vision.
[You leveled up!]
The countless EXP gain notifications only granted him 'just' one level.
Level: Lv 69 [65.85%]
Seeing how much he needed to level up to 70, he didn't think much while looking at the map.
On the map, there were 7 larger red dots than the smaller ones representing the common zombies that survived.
"As I thought, if I kill a bunch of them at once, all the minibosses and the boss will appear." He grinned wildly, with no sign of fear.
With his current strength, even if he faced all of them at once (which isn't quite the case since he has his shadow clones), Tanaka was confident enough to win without much effort.
However, being arrogant after just killing a horde of zombies could send him to hell. Even in novels, secondary characters were enlightened this way.
In Tanaka's case, it wasn't arrogance but confidence. There's a difference.
With his current strength, he had already finished this dungeon in less than a minute. That's where his confidence in defeating all the minibosses and the boss at the same time came from.
"Huh?"
A strange phenomenon. All the smoke that usually dispersed when the zombies died began to gather at a point in the sky.
"It can't be that..." Tanaka had a bad feeling: "Did this somehow trigger the boss to appear with the strength of 900 zombies?"
He didn't know what the outcome would be, but it didn't look like a joke.
And the accumulation of energy to create the boss formed a sphere three times larger than usual.
"Did I mess up?" He murmured.
At this moment, Akane's words echoed in his mind again...
Lately, Tanaka felt like he was making one mistake after another. It was as if he was stuck in a tide of bad luck, where everything he tried to do ended up going wrong.
'But if it's just three times stronger, it will just take a bit longer to kill...'
While he thought this, two minibosses had already fully emerged from the ground. They were the first to appear and didn't look much different.
<Miniboss>
LV37 <Zombie General>
HP: [20,200/20,200]
Raising an eyebrow, Tanaka, who saw this miniboss appear right next to him, made three stone spheres float and attacked with Precise Throw.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!!"
[Critical Hit!]
[You Gained 43,350 EXP!]
[You obtained <Soul Stone – Rank C> x2]
[You obtained <Recovery Potion – Rank D> x3]
[You obtained <Skill Book: Energy Drain - Rank B> x1]
[You obtained 150,000 ryō]
'As expected, even the rewards from him have improved.'
As he thought this, similar notifications appeared as one of his clones killed the other miniboss.
||- Note -||
- Chapter 33 is already released on Patreon!
- patreon.com/Tozoku