Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

15 He's Not a Madman

"Damn, I lost all that Quintessence!" Sam was lamenting the fact that he never made it to his Death Mark, which held eleven units of loose Quintessence. By dying a second time before collecting the contents of his Death Mark, he lost it all along with the few souls he still had inside of it. It was now replaced by his second Death Mark at Kalika's hands, which held nothing since he brashly went back to fight her immediately instead of collecting his Death Mark near that chasm he had fallen into the first time.

Sam decided to put all that behind him and invade again, only this time he didn't get to invade Kalika like he did the previous two times. He got another tester with a female avatar named CrushKills. Sam had run throughout the forest looking for her. Like with Kalika, this was the first time Sam had seen this tester's username. She was outfitted in the default Knight's set which was all dark metal that had a burnt and ashen appearance to it from the breastplate to the boots. It was small to match her frame. She didn't wear the Knight's helmet, instead opting to let her long blonde hair fall down her back in a long braid.

She seemed surprised when he finally caught up to her, her green eyes wide open and trained on his ghostlike form. Sam was surprised to find her in her human form. Her flawless skin seemed to take on some sort of glow. She was a gorgeous character to look at, but was not a challenge in the least. Sam easily parried one of her blows and was able to repeatedly Backstab her time and time again in a vicious chain that she was unable to escape from. Even her high defense and protective armor couldn't protect her.

Sam was easily awarded one thousand souls, a loose unit of Quintessence, and a Bloody Tearstone. He was however disappointed that he had no direct way to challenge IMMORtAL_Kalika again. He lost his desire to invade other planes and opted to instead finish his single player campaign, at least for now.

He left the Beacon Fire near where he met King Herke and went through the Forest, killing first rosemen then some Forest Barkers. After defeating several of each enemy type and getting a drop (randomly generated item) from one of the rosemen called a Thorn Saber, he checked his inventory and equipment again for anything that might give him an advantage during his next invasion.

"That Thorn Saber might just be what I need and maybe I can use it with the muletta I got earlier." He pondered.

On his way to read and equip the Thorn Saber, he stumbled across something funny about his other weapons. Specifically, the Rapier. It now had a seemingly unique statistic that wasn't present before, or at least he hadn't noticed it before.

Rapier

Thrusting Sword

ATK 105

Weapon Damage 65

S ATK D = 8

D ATK C = 32

M ATK F = 0

F ATK F = 0

F RAT 0

L RAT 0

D RAT 0

P RAT 0

B RAT 4

Weight: 2.2lbs

S. ABS: 14,475

"S. ABS? What the hell does that even mean? Sword abs?"

That fourteen thousand four-hundred seventy-five wasn't there before, in any case. He was curious now, but he also didn't want to bother with the manual right now so he contacted someone better.