100\% Drop Rate: My Special Ability is Perfect Replication

For the third time in the last few hours, Faust to the digital world of the Origin trials.

The cool, sterile air of the Interview set room drifted away as the smoke-scented air tickled his nose. But there was a sharp, airy chill of the growing wind. The smell of rain.

He looked up at the night sky distastefully. "You’re really going to make us fight in the rain."

"It seems," Nirvana said beside him. She waved, looking much more alive and relaxed. "Hiii. How was your interview? The host of mine was an actual Lich. It was so cool."

"Oh, nice. My host was a dwarf giant with a unicorn horn."

"Why was mine just a guy," Zen complained. "Like a normal guy. He was a bit snobbish, but on a scale from Greg to Thalia, he was a Faust."

"Oh stuff it," Thalia said. "Me and Greg had to share a talking crystal orb with a bad British accent."

Greg groaned. "He really didn’t have to do that accent.... How was yours, Spider?"

Spider shrugged. "Meh. It was okay."

Before anyone could say more, the system dinged.

[Attention, Players! The fifth wave starts soon. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!]

"Ugh, let me use my All-Attribute potions," Nirvana muttered quickly.

Spider went to Nirvana and Thalia passing these strange blobs of flesh that had nails and teeth.

Faust grimaced at it and Nirvana noticed. "It’s like a body optimiser thing. It increases our attributes and helps us get better at using our bodies."

So that’s part of Spider’s system.

While they prepared Faust and Thalia had to talk about the Memory they went into, the trials and items they got.

Thalia lived the lives of hundreds of people killed by Vi’s puppets, and then she had to forgive Vi at the end. Truly forgive her.

Faust was surprised she had been able to forgive in the end. Thalia seemed so rigid and concerned with justice. Maybe he had underestimated her.

"It was hard," Thalia said, "I was them. I had their memories and pain, but I lived knowing I was just a character in Vi’s story. It was gruelling, seeing her justify our deaths and bemoan her life. But, yeah, I was able to see the real problem in the end."

There was a dark look in her eyes that no one pushed on. Her reward from the trial was a skill that removed the targeting of revenge-based skills and curses.

Greg’s trial had him disarming an army of Puppet Knights by arranging a spell circle based on a shot of him watching Vi do it once.

"Thankfully I was paying attention," Greg said with a pale face, "But I had to do it quickly and with only a general shape in my mind, or they swarmed me and ripped me apart."

He also got a skill that worked for disrupting the Puppets.

Zen had to keep watch of a tree and pick the right fruit from it. There were two types of almost completely identical fruits. One was poisonous, the other gave him the ability to see magic circles inscribed into buildings.

For countless loops, he took the fruits and entered a jagged castle, navigating it to find the throne room. Using the ability to see magic circles, to see what traps and spells were being activated. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He didn’t even have any words for it. "I got off a little easy. And I got this cute bonsai tree."

It was a tiny tree in a dark green pot with two fruits growing from them.

"Which one is the poison?" Faust asked.

Zen looked at the two fruits, forehead furrowing in deep thought. "I’m very sure that maybe it is that one. Probably."

Faust facepalmed.

Nirvana’s trial was drinking a pool of poison to pass through a room of ghostly vines covered in thorns that killed with a single cut. The poison made her immune to the vines, but also made her painfully weak.

Her gift for passing this trial was a bottle of potion that poisons by putting the drinker in a near death state, where they still had control of their body.

All the memories in the end were connected to Vi in one way. Vicius Valerius. Someone assigned the role of Villain by the system.

The way Faust arranged the memories in his mind went like this.

Thalia’s Memory were random assortments from Vi’s life.

Greg’s Memory was from when Vi was learning to use her Puppets and crafted the Knights.

Faust’s Memory was what led to Vi’s banishment.

Zen and Nirvana’s Memory happened when Vi was out in the world, banished. When she found a peculiar castle.

"Okay, I’d say we’re very ready," Faust said, nodding. "We know Vi’s biggest traps and deadliest skills. I’m sure some of the memories will repeat, so other people will get the same items and skills as us. But they have one answer to one of the puzzles of this wave. We have five."

100% Drop Rate might have created a scenario the system didn’t expect. It came from the Pillar and like his Schema was too powerful.

"Vi will be the final boss. We kill her and we win. We complete the hidden quest," Faust concluded.

Thalia faced him. "We kill her?"

"What other choice do we have?" Faust sighed as the opposition he expected from her came. "She’s a puppet in this show, but so are we? How can we help her?"

She was silent for a moment, then she nodded steadily. "Nothing. We can do nothing."

Faust frowned at the quick victory. It felt wrong for Thalia to just give up like that. He felt fear turn in his chest. Was he wrong?

No he wasn’t. Killing Vi was what the quest was about after all.

He sighed and turned to the horizon feeling it before it came. The rush of energy and shift in the air .

Lightning flashed in the dark skies. Thunder roared in the silence. The sound of rain came suddenly long before Faust felt the first cold drop against his face.

"This is going to suck," he whispered to himself.

The gate opened with a terrible boom that echoed across the world. The myriad colors of the portal to another world reflected off the rain drops hypnotically.

A soft sigh echoed far inside the gate, trapped within a heavy black, jagged castle on a hill. A voice, hoarse and ancient, like it was the first time it had been used in years, spoke.

"How long have I waited? Finally, we may end this story."