[Since the Fall: 7/14/809 - 10:22:05]
[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Pains (61) -> (62)]
…
Skill leveled Up: Growing Pains (82) -> (83)]
[Stat Gained: +1 Physical]
…
[Total Stats Gained: +12 Physical]
[Pandora’s Box:
1572/2000 Wrath
7/2000 Kindness
80/2000 Soul.]
He trained intensively for three days, then halfway through the fourth, he ate a larger piece of meat than he normally would have in order to give himself a massive burst of energy, putting a large strain on his soul until it faded around nightfall, where he rested deeply.
All but last night had been plagued by horrible nightmares, as he was digging up old wounds to fuel his rage. He wanted as much Wrath mana as he could get before the fight, but focusing on all the terrible parts of his situation to make himself angrier while also reliving the torture Iora subjected him to were not healthy coping mechanisms. He promised to work through his issues more thoroughly when he wasn’t perpetually in danger.
Waking up late after the hard workout the night before, he felt he was in his best condition, which he supposed he was. Checking his garden again, going through the motions helped him get his emotions under control for the day. He refused to allow all the Wrath mana into his [Pandora’s Box], keeping around forty of it circulating through his body to keep his anger high.
After days of nonstop fury, he felt like a bomb ready to go off. He kept his head on his shoulders, but there would be no more guilt in what he was about to do.
He’d decided before he began his training regime how far he was willing to go to gain poiwer. He had set himself boundaries when he had a clear head, so he knew he would be acting logically rather than a spur-of-the-moment impulse. The plan he came up with for the Lorpee’s was simple yet gruesome.
He needed power, that was a fact, and he could not take half measures. When he went to fight them this time, he would have to kill the stronger females as well. The boundary he had set was to not kill the children, and to at least try and spare some of the weaker Lorpee adults to take care of them if the chance arose, but to go all out if it didn’t look like he had the room to safely spare a few.
After taking care of his garden and eating breakfast, he felt prepared enough and had to decide what he was going to bring. While he wanted to bring his moms knife as a weapon, his Mental stat and bonuses were no longer outpacing his Physical ones quite as much, so he wouldn’t have the careful dexterity he’d had last time.
He also wanted to try and get the bonus to Physical from his new [Born for Slaughter] Achievement, which only activated when he was “primal fighting.” When reviewing his memories, he hadn’t felt it activate in the previous fight. While it was true he had only gained the Achievement at the end, it should have activated for at least a few seconds.
He wasn’t sure what the conditions were for activating, but he had some solid guesses. The System didn’t feel the need to clarify what it meant by “primal fighting,” so it was likely very literal. He had to fight like some sort of animal, without tools. He wasn’t sure if even his clothes would block it, clothes which were honestly no longer fitting him.
They were given to him when he was like, two and a half feet tall. He had grown about a foot and a half since then, standing at four feet tall. While there were seams built into it that could be released to make it larger, supposedly to make it last longer for growing children, all the seams had already snapped. He decided to go without a shirt this time, as the tight fitting fur it was made from was limiting his mobility. His pants were just as tight, and only fit around his shins now, but his legs were strong enough to not be hindered from the tightness, and the pants would just rip if his legs really wanted to go in a direction the pants were stopping them from going.
He also really didn’t want to go without pants.
He hoped the fact that they were made from animal fur would help with whatever constituted as primal fighting, but he didn’t actually think the clothing would matter, unless it was something enchanted.
What he thought was stopping him from earning the bonus last time was the use of his Projection. It was a durable avatar that would keep him safe, even if he lost. That was not how he imagined primal fights would go.
No, in order to get the bonus, he would need to bleed and risk his life in person. He would need to fight savagely, the way he had fought when facing Wrath in his soul for the right to his Skills. That was one of the reasons why he was filling himself up with Wrath mana now, so he could lose himself to animalistic rage.
He would bring nothing but the pants around his waist and his drive for survival.
Decision made, he moved towards the exit. It was beginning to ge a bit cramped when moving through the tunnel now, and he knew that he would need to either find a safe place outside before he got too big, or widen the exit by digging it and risk either breaking the concealment shielding or giving larger beasts the chance to wander in.
Carefully checking if there was any large predators close using [Tremor Sense], he confirmed that there were none, and hurried out into the open.
He felt more exposed than he ever wanted to, having grown used to the safety behind walls. He pushed through, trying to stealthily run to the Lorpee cavern. For the first time in months, he felt the wind whipping around him as he sprinted down the dark pathway. It was actually difficult to see with the lighting, so he ended up having to activate the infrared portion of his [Darkvision].
‘Wait, is my Darkvision different when I’m a spirit?’ He skipped over reading it when he was going over his Racial bonuses in his ghost form, as it had the same name he’d seen in his human form, but now he was regretting it slightly. It seemed there was a difference.
Midway through the journey, he saw through his [Tremor Sense] as a giant centipede redirected where it was walking from to intercept him. His heart jumped straight into his throat, as it was four times his size, but he didn’t panic. His anger was helping him keep the fear from paralyzing him, and he actually felt a surge of Wrath mana enter flood through the connection.
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He didn’t know what level it was, but the same was true for the centipede. It wasn’t traveling much faster than him, so their Physical stats had to be similar, but fuck was it big, and he really didn’t want to waste energy crippling it and running away as he was about to enter another fight in a few minutes.
Instead of running from it, he stopped abruptly and looked straight at it. Even if he wasn’t in sight of it, it clearly had a way to “see” him. The moment he did, the centipede itself paused, facing him through dozens of stone walls. It moved to the left, and he tracked it with his head, then it moved to the right, only for him to repeat the action.
He treated it like an animal, and tried to paint himself as a target that was “not worth the risk” to kill. Surviving in the wild was risk versus reward betting, with your life as the chips.
It hesitated for another second, before turning another direction and walking away from him at a more reasonable pace.
The thought occurred to him that nothing in this place had a physical stat as low as he did, and that the centipede probably specialized into durability instead of speed, rather than them being physically similar like he’d thought for a moment. He could have injured it to slow it down before running away, but actively needed to remind himself of a simple fact: everything was higher leveled than him, and he needed to focus on things that were much, much smaller in order to stand a real chance.
He shivered, and continued sprinting down the hallways, luckily making it to the wall that led into the Lorpee’s. He stopped in front of it, breathing deeply. He heard the squeaks from inside grow louder at his approach, before tapering off and silence reigning from the cave. They knew he was here, they were just waiting for him to come through the wall.
He was also conscious of how their Vibration affinity would not only affect him now, but harder than it would other creatures.
Not wasting anymore time, he dug his fingers into the stone, and ripped away massive handfuls. He swung his open palms through it all, digging into the already thin wall until it lost most of its structural integrity, then put his full body into a final punch to knock it down, kicking up a cloud of dust.
He saw through his tremor sense, how all of them stood atop the vines, watching the dust settle. He didn't give it the chance to, launching through the cloud that failed to impede his sight.
He leapt up with all his power at the first Lorpee resting on one of the branches, punching out. It practically exploded in gore, but the others did not hesitate, immediately swooping down.
His Presence roared out of him, communicating to the Lorpee’s that it would be a true fight to the death this time. They attempted the same tactics as before, whittling him down before letting the boss finish him, but he was almost twice as strong compared to last time.
His punches no longer missed their mark, instead catching every single one. By the time he landed back on the ground from the initial leap, six were dead. The boss didn’t wait this time to show himself, instead letting out a piercing screech that ruptured his eardrums, and the Lorpee’s all fled backwards.
He completely lost his balance, but managed to stay upright and seem unbothered as he landed, turning the stumble into a careful crouch. Last time, they’d stopped using the Vibrational attacks when they realized it did nothing to him, so he was banking on them avoiding the wastage of mana for as long as he could trick them.
Looking back up at what he would call the Alpha Lorpee, it glared back at him. It, too, had a Visible Presence for him to sense. It was weird, knowing that he emitted something similar and how others perceived it. He couldn’t glean much from the presence, merely that the Lorpee felt very authoritative, benevolent, and protective.
Dei encroached upon its domain, he felt the Lorpee’s hatred for him, that he would tear down all the effort it had placed into creating safety for its people.
Dei sensed the pride of a king from the opposing Lorpee.
His [Growing Pains] Skill managed to reheal his ear drums right as the Lorpee descended onto him, faster than any others.
He readied to strike out at it, but never got the chance. It danced around in the air, instead firing bullets of water at him that he blocked with his forearms. They pierced his skin, but not much deeper. Death from a thousand cuts.
The Storm Lorpee made rapid maneuvers in an attempt to break the line of sight he had on it, constantly making passes at him and firing more bullets. [Fine-Tooth Comb] kept his eyes on it, tracking it no matter where it went. Even when it managed to get behind him, the ability tracked sound enough to tell him exactly where it was.
[Vigilance], [High Mind], and [Fine-Tooth Comb] combined to just barely keep his eyes on it, stopping it from hitting any vital organs. When he had a better idea of its attack patterns, he tried chasing it around the jungle, jumping from tree to tree in order to get any cheap shots he could in, for naught. He had to give up after half a minute, as it was becoming too difficult to block the barrage and chase at the same time.
Minutes went by as it slowly whittled away at him, [Growin Pains] continuously healing him where it could. He had to be patient. He would only have one shot. This Lorpee was cautious, and the same trick would not work a second time.
It wanted to take him out, its pride as the king of its people made it see itself as a protector. The moment it thought it could lose though, survival instincts would take over, and it would call for backup.
He did still make swipes at it when it got too close, but the few times he managed to graze it, his fists slid off a water armor it coated itself in. The water it produced and shot at him didn’t fall to the ground once its momentum was lost either, instead floating around him as droplets in the air.
Six careful minutes later, the droplets began to spin. While they didn’t converge on him, leaving collateral in the trees and vines around them, he was still caught in the vortex. At first, they did little other than run off his skin, but he could sense the buildup. If he waited too long, it would begin to tear him apart.
The Lorpee became confident, seeing clearly that he was coated in his own blood. The entire fight, it had made roundabout passes at him, firing droplets at speeds that made it near impossible to dodge from its underbelly as it remained out of reach.
Seven minutes into the fight, right as the tornado of water was building in strength, it made a single mistake: rather than taking a curving flight path at him, it decided to make a straight divebomb, firing a charge-up attack composed of hundreds of the smaller drops of water into a single spot in an attempt to get at his eyes. Each drop individually did less damage than a single of the larger ones, but they drilled through his skin, causing him to clench his teeth hard enough to hear cracks. He did not falter though, never forgetting his plan.
Seeing his chance, Dei immediately pumped three hundred Wrath mana into his [Identify], and a visible red needle-sized blast flew straight from his forehead.
Too fast for the Lorpee to dodge, it pierced deep into his soul and out the other side, hitting the stone ceiling above in an explosion of mana that drowned out all other types. The Skill was not meant to be an attacking skill, so the most it could do was stun it for a few seconds, but that was enough. The Lorpee did not pull away from its divebomb, flying straight into Dei’s open palm.
It tried coating itself in water again to slip out, but Dei flexed all the muscles in his arm to close his hand, and crushed the Lorpee in just half a second.
The water from the tornado instantly dropped to the ground, evaporating rapidly as it did so. The cave went from a whistling roar of wind to an eerie stillness in seconds, all the Lorpee’s looking down on him in shock.
He let his Presence blast out one more time, making his intentions clear that the fight was not yet over, and they quickly responded. Even if it was jarring to lose their protector, they knew he was currently at the weakest they were going to get him.
They needed to attack now, in overwhelming numbers. Hundreds of Lorpee fell from the vines, diving straight down at him. Females and males both began blindly attacking him. He sensed the weaker members staying in the vines above with the children, and knew he could cut loose. He let out a growl and faced the army head on.