You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle up your core. Your new cycle is: 21.
You have 5 attribute points awaiting allocation.
Before he pondered how he wanted to spend his points, he decided to take rank-three Harden for a quick test drive. First, he activated the skill and had the scales cover his right fist, watching the interlocking diamond plates spread across his skin as his mana assumed physical form.
When his hand was coated in a gleaming layer of gemstones, Edge flared Harden as intensely as he could while studying how it changed the defensive power. In exchange for doubling the cost of keeping the skill running, the scales grew about 50% thicker, becoming a bit denser in the process.
Once he had a good feel for the difference, he drew back his arm and then punched the wall as hard as he could, laughing as chips of stone went flying from the force of his fist and at the crater he left behind. I just pulverized solid stone, and it didn’t hurt at all.
Mel didn’t say anything as she watched Edge take a few more swings before deactivating Harden. She just looked at him with an expression that said, “life isn’t fair,” before turning back to her display. He chuckled while pulling up his menu too.
After a moment of consideration, he went ahead and put his points into Disruption, since his physical defenses and skill output were sufficient for now. I’ll put one more point into Disruption next cycle to pick up an extra point from my trait, then work on my physical attributes for a while. I’m in good shape to tackle stage-two opponents, but I can’t keep up with the Power and Speed of stage-three enemies just yet.
As the potentia upgraded his core, a hush came over the world. The silence between sounds and the space between spaces grew more distinct as the interference patterns in the flows of magic created by countless skills parted, flowing around him instead of through him.
“I fucking love the sensations that come with getting more Disruption. They always show me something interesting.”
“Same here.” Melenia smiled. “That where I spent my points too. After getting hit by that sleep skill, it’s clear that I need to up my mana resistance before facing more of the powerful beasts living in this biome.”
Now that the battle was over and the duo had consolidated their gains, all that was left was to loot the mycanoids. The hunters didn’t have time for a lengthy harvesting session, but the mineral plates coating the rockies were incredibly tough and seemed like they would be easy to separate from their stalks.
He pulled out the knife Trapper had given him, used it to cut the larger plates out of the mycelium, then stored them in his vault. He didn’t bother with all the little ones, and they were ready to head out a few minutes later.
Edge and Mel made good time past that point. They were able to avoid most of the mycanoids they encountered while crossing from one enclosure to the next, although they stopped to kill any solitary mushrooms they spotted. They needed the experience, and it didn’t delay them for long.
He was glad that he had stolen the Claws’ supplies before being teleported below ground and used them to supplement Foebinder’s efforts. The guardswoman used both the living links and a rope, climbing twisting vertical ascents while avoiding the dangerous fungi growing on the walls.
Eventually, they came across a more substantial obstacle—a wide chasm that was so deep he couldn’t hear a stone strike the bottom after tossing it in. Edge made the difficult crossing first by using a combination of Leap and Manifest Chain, then used Foebinder to carry a rope over the pit. The black chain looped around a rocky protrusion, forming a bridge for Mel to cross while she gripped the rope for balance.
By the time they were ready to call it a day, they had left the rockies’ territory and arrived at the border of another sub-biome they would explore when they woke up.
Mel had a magitech device that would sound an alarm if anything drew near, so they were able to sleep without setting up a watch. She insisted on placing her bedroll next to his, pressing up against him as they closed their eyes. When Edge awoke, her arm was curled around his chest and her nose was nuzzled into the hollow of his neck.
The situation was decidedly pleasant, so he just lay there for a while, enjoying the warmth of Mel’s presence until she woke up on her own half an hour later. We both need some human contact after everything we’ve been through.
They ate a breakfast consisting of some dried fruit and the salamanders Edge had frozen with Elemental Blade, which were surprisingly tasty once the meat was grilled a golden brown. After they cleaned themselves off, he put their gear into his vault, and the duo continued their journey through the Deep-Gill Grottos, following the markings on the walls.
They soon learned that this sub-biome was the territory of the mycanoids he had named slicers—the pale, thin species that could turn their arms into dozens of bladelike growths that were incredibly malleable. Their weapons reminded him of the black monsters he had fought in the Savage Garden. It explained why Foebinder wanted to eat their skills, which were similar to one of the components Edge had merged and then mutated to create the Unique power.
While there was no way that he was going to pass up this opportunity to rank up Manifest Chain, he chose his targets with care. These shrooms were the most dangerous of the lot, and he’d seen the carnage their blades could wreak while watching slicers battle the other mushrooms warring for dominance throughout the biome.
Eventually, they came across a tunnel that was blocked by slicers, which meant it was finally time to take some of the creepy fuckers down and claim the skills that had kept him salivating all day.
The duo came to a stop and observed the beasts from a distance. These mushrooms were already in their humanoid form, and the hunters didn’t want to fight more than one at a time unless they were left with no other choice.
Edge and Mel put their heads together, coming up with a plan to separate the mycanoids without alerting the rest to their presence before eliminating them one by one. First, they needed to learn more about how the mushrooms tracked their prey. The warriors devised a series of tests to gauge the strength of their opponents’ senses that could be administered without revealing themselves to the pack.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He started with sight. Although the slicers didn’t have eyes, he wanted to make sure they couldn’t see via some manner of skill instead. He began by flinging his chakram in a high arc, using the glove to pull it back before it hit anything. A few of the shrooms stopped and looked around but quickly moved on, leading him to believe they were blind after all.
Using a combination of his chakram, chirpers, and stones, the duo deduced that the shrooms were blind, had no sense of smell, and boasted incredibly sharp vibrational senses. They could detect objects moving through air if they passed nearby but mostly hunted by feeling the vibrations traveling through the ground.
After Melenia and Edge gauged the beast’s capabilities, they started splitting them up, hoping that once the creatures were spread out, they could kill them before they regrouped. The hunters flung rocks at the far end of the tunnel, pulling all the shrooms in that area away, then he used a chirper to draw the closest slicer their way while they hid behind a boulder.
Despite their abundance of caution, they almost got caught. The mycanoid’s blades lashed out fast as thought, tearing the magitech device to bits with no appreciable effort. Then the beast came to a stop while slowly turning to face them. Oh shit. I think it can feel our biorhythms conducting through our boots.
He had watched the slicers long enough to recognize when one was about to attack. Rather than risk having Mel get caught in the crossfire, Edge Leapt toward the deadly fungus while manifesting his iceblade in one hand and Foebinder in the other. A score of razored tendrils came streaking toward him as the ends of the slicer’s arms split to form dozens of individual weapons, spreading out to attack him from all sides.
Foebinder began capturing them within its coils as he flew, reducing the number of blades he had to deal with. Rather than trying to track them all, he blew through a decent chunk of his reserves by Hardening his entire body at once with the point of his iceblade leading the way.
Edge took aim and Double Slashed as the array of bladed limbs struck him as one, cutting through his scales to carve into the flesh below. It hurt like hell, but fortunately the weapons were designed to rend tissue rather than penetrate armor. He shut out the pain as his iceblade bit deep, sinking into the slicer’s stalk and ravaging the tissue below. I would have taken a lot more damage if it wasn’t for Leap’s Durability bonus.
When he realized the slicer was fortifying its malleable blade limbs with Disruption, he switched Counter Disruption back to Harden so he didn’t have to worry about them dispelling his diamond scales. That being said, he couldn’t afford to protect his entire body at once, and even with Foebinder’s assistance, there were too many blades coming his way to predict where each would land.
It meant Edge had to work fast and kill the beast before it landed a direct hit. Regeneration could handle most wounds, but organs took a while to repair, and a blow to his brain or heart could kill him. I have one charge left on my Heart-Guard, but getting my lungs or guts shredded would still be bad news. While he fought, he kept Leaping to keep its defensive bonus active, doing his best to overwhelm his foe.
Mel couldn’t afford to engage an enemy that could attack from multiple angles at once, but she did what she could to take some pressure off him, flinging rocks to distract the beast while watching to make sure the others weren’t headed his way. The slicer sent a few attacks in her direction, but it kept most of its focus on the man furiously Slashing with his subzero sword.
While the guardswoman cut stray strands of mycelium out of the air with her axe, Edge went in for the kill. The screech of blade against scale filled his ears as he raised the rune-covered sword and plunged it into the core of the mycanoid’s stalk, aiming for the same spot that had killed the other beasts.
As the mushroom’s tissue froze, its blades began losing their mobility. Before long, Foebinder was able to wrap the shroom up tight, while Melenia advanced and sheared its arms free from the stalk. “Nice work, Mel. You’re a real badass with that axe.”
“Right back at you. You’ve come a long way since our first sparring session.” They bumped fists, then started racing down the tunnel. Foebinder dragged the slicer behind him as the duo opened some distance between themselves and the rest of the pack before dealing with the wounded beast.
Once he was sure they were in the clear, Edge activated Extraction and found himself standing in the mycanoid’s inner world a few seconds later. It featured a portion of the Deep-Gill Grottos that linked up with some geothermal vents. The air was sweltering, and he could see the telltale glow of lava shining up from cracks in the ground.
Before he could decide which skills he wanted to steal, the chains of oblivion took off in a flash, converging on an avatar that looked like the shroom’s blade limbs before driving it into a corner and pouncing. They devoured the unlucky skill within a handful of heartbeats, leaving nothing behind. And that didn’t even count as an Extraction. Awesome.
After consuming the skill the Gardener had gifted him, Manifest Chain’s cup was over half full. Now, it was only a trickle away from filling the vessel to the brim. The living links only needed to eat one more avatar before they advanced to rank two—a prospect that had him vibrating with excitement.
There wasn’t anything in here that he wanted to add to his skillset, and Edge was running low on slots anyway, so he stole a high-rank Uncommon instead. He was making good progress on upgrading Double Slash, but he decided on a whim to take a brief detour and put the experience he Absorbed into Sense Treasure instead. Since the version he’d stolen had been half-full already, the infusion was enough to finish the job.
When he stepped out of the beast’s core and into his own, Sense Treasure’s avatar was already shining. Well, it was always shining since the skill took the form of a floating ball of light, but the color was different, and he knew the power was ready to advance.
Sure enough, Edge’s Guide appeared and turned into a screen, displaying his list of options.
The skill Sense Natural Treasures has advanced to Rank 2.
Its mana efficiency has been enhanced.
Please choose between one of the following options:
- Increase the skill’s sensory range when peering through solid stone.
- Larger resource deposits will now give off a stronger signal and can be sensed from further away.
- Increase the skill’s sensitivity to extremely rare resources, making them salient even in small amounts.
Warning: If no option is selected, your skill will remain unchanged and gain a slight bonus to mana efficiency.
Edge liked all three options in theory. Each of them would increase the volume of treasure he acquired over time. But since he didn’t plan to specialize in mining and excavation, it made sense to go with an upgrade that would be useful while exploring and adventuring, instead of staying in the same place for days at a time while unearthing extensive veins.
Thus, he went with option three, figuring that it would help him find useful crafting materials, even if the deposits weren’t particularly large. When Sense Treasure’s upgrade was complete, the ball of light was bigger and brighter than before, and it bobbed in the air with a gusto.
From the vision that accompanied the upgrade, he learned that the sensory skill would now display the Grade of the resources it detected. The rarer the resource, the more intensely it would shine within his skill-enhanced sight, making it easy to spot even tiny amounts of extremely precious materials. Satisfied that Sense Treasure was living up to its name, Edge popped back into his body, checked in with Mel, then moved onto battling the next slicer.
Skill-Eater awoke when it realized what he was up to, sending a surge of gluttony rushing through him that was so intense it was hard to focus on the battle. In his haste, he burned through most of his mana to disable the beast, quivering with the anticipation of claiming its powers.
When the black chains were done consuming the slicer’s weapon manipulation power, Skill-Eater chimed in. It told Edge that Absorbing one of the beast’s skills would provide enough experience to rank up Counter Disruption. Since he was using the skill to battle the slicers anyway and upgrading it would make a big difference, he took his core’s advice. He stole the skill in question, then leapt into his inner world to watch Manifest Chain and Counter Disruption advance.
Once he was standing in his central chamber, he rubbed his hands together while dancing from one foot to another in pure, unadulterated excitement. Edge had no idea what was about to happen, but he had no doubt whatsoever that it was going to be awesome.