With unerring precision, Foebinder and its unnamed twin struck like serpents on the prowl. They plunged into the monster’s feathered flesh, heading for the space behind its ribs. When the living links reached the creature’s core, they forced their way through the surface and invaded the reaver’s inner world.
The interior of a monster’s core was a toxic environment that could sicken Edge, even as a mental projection. When he had Extracted skills from shadowreavers in the past, Skill-Eater had stepped in to protect him, preventing his consciousness from following the chains and exposing himself to lethal danger.
But he had experienced explosive growth since the early days of his adventure and had toured quite a few monstrous cores by this point. The big guy wasn’t awake to ask for advice, which he supposed he still trusted if it was related to the ravenous lord’s survival.
Regardless, he was confident that he could handle a short visit, and he needed to see what skills were on the menu so he could tell the black chains which powers he wanted them to steal.
With that goal in mind, he allowed his consciousness to conduct through the bond he shared with the chains of oblivion, slipping into the shadowreaver’s central chamber like a thief in the night. After a moment of disorientation, he found himself standing on the surface of another planet.
Every monster’s core featured an apocalyptic landscape—scenes from the dying world where such creatures had dwelt before arriving on Ord. He thought these representations might be some manner of ancestral memory, since, as far as Edge knew, other than the Ancients, every monster on Ord had been spawned when their progenitor evolved to a higher stage.
That didn’t explain where the first monster of each species had come from, but so far, he hadn’t discovered any clues that shed light on the subject. While these thoughts passed through his head, he took a quick look around, inspecting the terrain beneath his boots before turning his attention to the avatars living inside the reaver’s core.
He was surrounded by an endless plain of jagged black glass. Some shards were smaller than his fingernails, and others were as large as Trapper’s lodge. Their surfaces were spiderwebbed with stress fractures, like something had fused all the sand in a desert and then shattered it with a hammer the size of a mountain.
The fetid wind flowing across this panorama of devastation vibrated the crystalline surfaces, producing a haunting melody that drove home the understanding that Edge was viewing an alien world hailing from another dimension. The dying sun hung low along the horizon, flooding the land with an ominous radiance the color of congealed blood.
This time around, Edge could see the moon.
The satellite had been reduced to an emerald crescent, but not because the planet’s shadow was enveloping it. A gaping hole had been bored straight through the center—a cataclysmic event on such a massive scale that it belied comprehension. Some of the fragments had formed a cloud around the mangled moon, and the rest looked like they might crumble to dust at any moment.
He shook his head in astonishment, committed the details to memory, and then turned his attention to his immediate surroundings.
Motes of silver ash drifted through the air—chocked full of corrupted magicytes that were already making him ill after this brief exposure. The taint wasn’t as bad as it had been near the volcanoes, where he’d seen the immense demon-like creature, which he suspected was involved with the cataclysm in some way, given the overpowering malice he’d sensed and its prominence in so many monsters’ cores.
On that note, he could see the profiles of immense predators prowling the shattered plain, devouring each other to survive another day on a planet that had lost the ability to nurture life. If they had been on Ord, he would have judged them to be peak stage-three monsters—possibly even stage four or above. While all of this was interesting in a deeply unsettling kind of way, he didn’t have time to take in the view or ponder its significance.
After pushing past a bout of nausea, Edge shifted his focus to the skills living inside the shadowreaver’s core. He was eager to make his selection and hightail it out of here before the miasma sickened him further.
He didn’t have any free slots right now. If he wanted to claim any of these powers, he had to either Absorb one of the skills he already had or place his new acquisition into his Auxiliary Skill Slot. Although, if he went that route, the skill couldn’t be advanced or merged after.
He was willing to swap out one of his skills if he found something that was flat-out amazing. However, given how his ultimate ability, Skill Bond, worked, he wouldn’t just be giving up the power itself, but all the time and energy he’d invested into developing a relationship with its avatar—affinities that made his skills more powerful, more likely to merge successfully, and able to be used in ways that weren’t possible otherwise.
Thus, he was mostly interested in stealing the rarest, highest-ranked skills he could find and use the experience from Absorbing them to improve the powers in his collection. On that note, he wanted to claim the Rare skill Shadow Step, whose avatar took the form of a murky monster with wicked black claws.
To minimize the time he spent inside the reaver’s core, Edge asked the chains to grab it first while considering his other options, prompting a message from the System.
To extract a Rare skill, you must sacrifice 2 Mortium.
Would you like to proceed?
When he confirmed the AI’s query, he felt the System’s magic swirling around him. Ponderous energy that felt as inevitable as death itself infused the chains of oblivion. Sacrificing Mortium granted the living links a temporary boost, helping them capture the avatar and tear it free from the core.
Edge stepped back into his own body as the animate loops tossed the struggling skill into his mouth. The ends turned to face him before slinking through his wrists and returning to the stretch of alien shore beyond the black door, where a slumbering Skill-Eater was imprisoned.
The moment Shadow Step touched his tongue, a delicious tide of sensation broke over his palate. The rarer and higher ranked a given skill was, the harder it was to Extract and subdue, and the more exquisite the flavor.
Every avatar was different. Some fought back, while others accepted their fate. Some were intangible, while others were intensely physical. A few could even hurt Edge while trapped between his jaws, requiring special techniques to overcome and digest.
Shadow Step was ethereal and could slide between his teeth without being chomped. Instead, he trapped it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, pressing them together until the avatar stopped squirming. When he broke its resistance, the skill turned into warm goo that was ready to be digested.
He swallowed, receiving another burst of flavor as the pureed power glided across his palate. As always, the taste was more than a mere sensation on his tongue. Images and impressions were part of the package.
Shadow Step tasted like darkness and gloom, with just a hint of bitterness like unsweetened chocolate. It conveyed the feeling of squeezing through tight spaces and flowing across the world like mist. Of unseen corners and half-formed features lurking in the dark.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He felt Skill-Eater crack one eye open during the process—hunger conducting through their bond at the prospect of devouring the Rare skill. To his relief, his core didn’t say anything or try to influence him in any way he could perceive, and the ravenous lord drifted back to sleep when the power slid down his throat and entered his central chamber.
You have extracted the skill: Shadow Step (Rare, Rank 3).
It will take 2 days to digest it.
Edge already had Shadow Play, which was an improved version of Shadow Step in most ways. Thus, he didn’t need to wait for the avatar to digest and was ready to Absorb it now. He was about to assign its experience to Warlord’s Mantle, since taking the aura to rank three was the next goal on his list. But acting on instinct, he decided to award it to Play instead.
The ethereal monster was pulled through the bulbous black grill of his reactor—consumed by the endless realm of flame that lay beyond. When the avatar was reduced to ash, a portion of its experience came floating back out to suffuse Shadow Play. It made him wonder where the rest of it went before adding the question to his growing list of mysteries and returning his attention to the matter at hand.
This wasn’t Edge’s first time Extracting a component of a merged skill, but it was his first time trying it with a Rare. He was pleasantly surprised when the process yielded Play significantly more experience than a random power would have. It wasn’t as efficient as Absorbing a duplicate, but it was a considerable bonus that took the Rare power most of the way to rank two by itself.
Through the link that was formed whenever a new skill was socketed into a slot, he could sense a hollow space inside each avatar that contained the experience it needed to reach the next rank—a process he visualized as a cup filling up with water.
When he focused, he could feel how close a given skill was to advancing, and after that last Absorption, Shadow Play’s cup was filled nearly to the brim, as was Warlord’s Mantle.
One more Extraction each should do the trick. If I’m lucky, the reaver will live long enough to steal two more skills, and I can upgrade both powers now. Of course, there was no guarantee that was going to happen.
Through trial and error, Edge had learned that Extraction inflicted severe damage to his victim’s core, which wasn’t a problem in and of itself, since he generally intended to kill them anyway. However, when a creature was already close to death, his ultimate could finish them off before he had a chance to pilfer multiple powers.
Fortunately, the shadowreaver was a tough bastard. It still had plenty of life in its hateful gaze when he held out both arms and used the second of Extraction’s three charges, which took a little less than a day to refresh after evolving to stage two.
Grinning in anticipation of the double upgrade to come, he stole another Rare and then a high-ranked Uncommon before slaying the reaver with a thrust of his iceblade.
When he added the Rare’s experience to Mantle and the Uncommon’s to Play, the goofy shadow man started shining with an intense silver light, which was trippy as hell since the avatar was made of living shade and Edge’s brain couldn’t process something being darkness and light at the same time. Warlord’s Mantle was glowing too, but it could wait a little longer since a rank-three advancement was automatic and didn’t require any input on his part.
After summoning his Guide to peruse the list of upgrades, he almost leapt out of his skin when he noticed Shadow Play was standing directly behind him. Is he… reading over my shoulder?
This was a new behavior, highlighting just how intelligent some of his avatars had become after evolving to stage two, developing a skill village, and acquiring Skill Bond. Why not? He shrugged. If the Play has any input, I’m happy to listen, although I’m still picking the upgrade I want.
The skill Shadow Play has advanced to Rank 2.
Its mana efficiency has been enhanced.
Please choose between one of the following options:
- Mitigate a modest portion of the magic damage you receive in shadow form and reduce the cost of phasing through physical attacks.
- Increase the dampening of your sound, scent, and heat signature in shadow form.
- Significantly reduce your weight in shadow form and allow your malleable body to flow through smaller spaces.
Warning: If no option is selected, your skill will remain unchanged and gain a slight bonus to mana efficiency.
Since there wasn’t any reason to rush, Edge took his time and carefully considered each option, voicing his thoughts out loud so the avatar could offer its input. It was hard to tell how much his skills understood. However, matters related to their own powers and upgrades usually came through clearly.
After using a Triple-Merger Token to create Shadow Play by combining Shadow Step, Leap, and Conceal, the skill had become fairly complex.
Whenever he used it, he shifted into shadow form, rendering him immune to physical attacks while simultaneously erasing part of his trail and making him hard to sense through non-magical means. He could also Leap as much as he wanted without paying an additional cost, although transforming and having objects pass through his body drained a fair chunk of mana.
In short, Shadow Play was a defensive, mobility, and stealth skill rolled into one. Edge needed to decide which aspect was most important before he committed to an upgrade that would alter the course of Play’s development.
Being immune to physical attacks was amazing, although phasing through solid matter was expensive and he had to watch out for spells and mana-infused weapons, which could still hurt him in shadow form. And unless he paired Play with Counter Disruption, his enemies could forcibly cancel the skill with a Disruption surge, leaving him vulnerable at a critical moment.
Thus, while the defensive component was extremely useful in some situations, it wasn’t how he planned to use Shadow Play most of the time.
Reducing the damage he took from magic was tempting, but he could achieve a more reliable layer of protection by using Harden and boosting his Disruption without having to micromanage the finicky drawbacks. Besides, I can always steal a mana-protection skill later and combo it with Play to achieve the same effect.
Being able to reposition while Concealed was a godsend, and deleting the traces he left as he moved through the world came in handy from time to time. However, leaving Shadow Play running for long stretches would slow his Generation to a trickle. It would also be easy to pick up another stealth skill whenever he wanted—something specialized that was equally powerful at a fraction of the cost.
The boost to his Speed from Mantle and Fear was fantastic, and he loved how Foebinder let him swing from branch to branch. However, Edge still wasn’t satisfied with his current mobility, which could be the difference between life and death both on and off the battlefield.
Shadow Step had made his body light as a feather, but that aspect hadn’t carried over to Shadow Play. Being able to squeeze through small spaces and jump incredible distance would let him reach places he never could have otherwise, which would make it easier to hide from enemies in a pinch and explore inhospitable terrain that few hunters could navigate.
Play’s avatar seemed to be thinking along similar lines, and it preferred the third option too. Now that they had mulled the matter over, all that was left to voice his decision to the System. “I’ll take the third upgrade on the list, please.”
When he spoke the words, Play’s avatar transformed. It was still a shadowy hunter most of the time, but it occasionally shifted into a cloud of black mist, zipping around his village like ink over oil.
The transformative energy faded away, and his Guide reappeared to make the upgrade official.
Shadow Play (Rare): Rank 2.
Transform into shadows. In this state, your body is malleable and immune to physical attacks. The cost of transforming your gear is greatly reduced.
While in shadow form, you may jump with explosive force without consuming additional mana. Your body will become considerably lighter and can easily slip through narrow spaces. Additionally, you will emit no scent or heat signatures, and your mana signature will be muted. Visually, you will appear to be a faint shadow that blends in well with most environments.
On activation, the last 25 feet of your trail will be removed, and your Durability will increase for 10 seconds.
“Looking good.” Edge spent a few minutes praising the shadowy hunter and then turned his attention to Warlord’s Mantle. The patient avatar had been watching with interest while he was busy with Play. However, the skill was just as excited to rank up and began its transformation the moment he came to a stop beside it.
When the light stopped shining, the electric ruby cloak was more elegant than ever. The mantle was equal measures dapper and imposing, and the neon orange highlights had become so detailed that it was easy to get lost in the filigree.
When Mantle’s advancement was complete, his Guide shifted to display a new message.
The skill Warlord’s Mantle has advanced to Rank 3.
Its mana efficiency has been enhanced.
Upon reaching Rank 3, you may control the volume of mana the skill consumes, adjusting its output at will.
Awesome. Edge wrapped the avatar around his shoulders, showing it off to the rest of his skills as he took a lap around his core with Shadow Play and Rue following in his wake. It always gave him a massive rush when he advanced one of his powers, and it made being ambushed by a bloodthirsty monster a pleasant surprise in addition to a horrific ordeal.
Next on the list is Elemental Blade. I can’t wait to find out what options are on the table when it reaches rank four.