When his Tremor Sense was working again, he scanned the area for any threats, seeing none. Behind him, multiple monsters were carefully approaching the body of the Smiler. They saw each other, but didn’t attack, trying to figure out who among them was the injured link.
At least, that's what he thought was happening. They might simply be looking to eat the body left behind. Still, that explosion was fierce enough to attract creatures from all over.
He was closer to the surface than before so he thought they would be weaker than usual, and he ultimately wasn’t in a bad shape. It was the mental shock that kept him running now, avoiding any monsters he saw. He didn’t want to fight before he’d processed the previous one.
* * *
Finally coming upon a suitable place to rest, Dei quickly tore out the stone blocking him, digging his way deeper and making an area to lie down in while blocking up the entrance with extra rocks.
He was tired, but he wasn’t going to sleep. He’d rested a lot already, and the adrenaline from the fight kept him up.
Now that he thought about it, he realized that he was falling asleep way too fast before, when he knew he was being tracked. His frayed nerves should have kept him awake, but he found himself slipping in and out of dreams, much to the Smilers benefit.
He’d won though. He was lured into a trap by an enemy far stronger than him, outwitted it, and won. He let out a relieved laugh as the weight of how close he’d come to death hit him.
He rested, slumped against the stone behind him, mind blank, for thirty minutes before drawing himself together, and preparing to move forward.
First, he had to communicate with his two companions.
Clever was devastated and felt terrible that he’d almost killed Dei, but Dei told him that he almost fell for the spell, and that Clever shouldn’t feel bad about it. It worked out in the end, and it was Clevers blast that ended up turning the tables.
Still, Dei sensed Clevers jumbled emotions, and knew the little korgonda wouldn’t forget about the close call any time soon.
It was also nice to have confirmation that Clever could regain his heat by reversing time on himself, but Clever was in no state of mind to celebrate the new powerful tool in their repertoire. It would be an incredible backup plan, because Clever could reverse time at least once without straining himself.
Dei knew that Clever would be upset for a long while as the guilt weighed on him, and there was nothing he could do to prevent that. He just hoped that the korgonda would use it as motivation to push himself harder, rather than collapsing and giving up. He had faith in his companion, Clever only needed time to process everything.
Next, he opened a line of communication to Fang, thanking her profusely for breaking him out of the first spell when he was hit, just long enough to let him open the second latch of Nullify.
She said they were equal, because she too performed shamefully. Immediately after she stopped the Smiler from taking over Dei, she was taken over herself, trapped in a realm of her own fantasies and either unable or unwilling to break herself out.
Overall, it could have gone better, but they were all alive, and that's what mattered.
Communication complete, Dei took the time to finally go over his notifications. The Smiler was, easily, the strongest monster he’d ever fought. Not just the highest level, but the most powerful.
[EXP gained for killing the Prime Smiler (Level 352). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]
[Class Leveled Up: Prodigal Detector (Level 73) -> (Level 87)]
[Total Stats Gained: +7 Mental, +7 Magical]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Wrath: Mid-Uncommon 70%] has strengthened into [Wrath: High-Uncommon: 9%]]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Fortitude: High-Common: 88% has strengthened into [Fortitude: Mid-Uncommon 35%]]
[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Pains (110) -> (116)]
[Total Stats Gained: +2 Physical]
[Skill Leveled Up: Solidity (66) -> (80)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Homeostasis (46) -> (58)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (67) -> (76)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Vigilance (68) -> (82)]
[Skill Leveled Up: In Tune (14) -> (29)]
[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (62) -> (70)]
The risk was great, but so too were the rewards. He was closing in on the level 100 evolution for a lot of his Skills, as well as his Class. He realized he hadn’t looked over his entire Interface in a long time, and brought it up now.
[Name: Dei Grrata
Race: Human (Gem Dweller Variant)
Class: Prodigal Detector (Level 87)
Profession: Pondering Sage (Level 6)
Achievements: Void Walker, Soulspeak, Beyond Understanding, No Rulers Above All, Bearing the Burden, Slayer of Mountains, Cruelty of the Slaughter (II)
Contracts: Soul of the (IIIIIIII)
HP: 118/118
MP: 118/118
SP: 118/118
Stats:
Physical: 59
Mental: 54
Spiritual: 44
Magical: 55
Affinities:
Kindness: Mid-Rare: 79%
Wrath: High-Uncommon: 9%
Soul: Low-Uncommon: 58%
Fortitude: Mid-Uncommon 35%
Inner Skills:
Kindness: Pandora’s Box (Contained) (100) (3320/4000), Call for Help (53), Good Samaritan (1), Meaningful (36)
Wrath: Pandora’s Box (Unleashed) (2), Growing Pains (116)
Soul: Astral Projection (10), Connection (1)
Fortitude: Solidity (80)
Health: Homeostasis (46)
Mana: Meditation (67)
Confluence: Identify of the Stout Protector (58)
Outer Skills:
How About a Demonstration?, Fine-Tooth Comb (48), Vigilance (68), In Tune (14), Commune with the Universe (2), High Mind (62)]
[Pandora’s Box:
1739/4000 Wrath
628/4000 Kindness
833/4000 Soul
120/4000 Fortitude
0/4000 [NULL] ]
He found that he kept looking at the Achievement list. When he was first reborn, Achievements rained down like water, and he thought they would have continued to come to him. Now? He hadn’t gotten one in a long time. It seemed that Achievements were only given out to objectively impressive things, outliers to the population.
Being reborn made him a massive outlier, resulting in a lot of Achievements. Now, he was only living his life as a local, he would need to do more impressive things.
The catch in this was that doing “more impressive” things would likely lead to his death, such as fighting far more powerful monsters. Not even killing the Prime Smiler gave an Achievement, and he’d come very close to death.
Now that he was a bit older, his “Born for Slaughter” Achievement was locked out too, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others along the Slaughterer path. If there was an achievement for killing monsters before one year old, he could bet there were some for killing them before three years old, like a “Children of the Slaughter” Achievement. If he was going to grow at a more rapid pace now, that kind of Achievement would be easier to earn.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Now calm enough to keep going, Dei got ready to actually head towards checkpoint three. The silver lining of this was that he figured out a safer way to travel through the cave system to make himself less of a target by never staying in one place at a time. If Dei continuously took short naps, it would be harder for monsters who tracked him using physical senses to pinpoint him.
* * *
Far more careful, slowly making his way back, Dei realized that he now had a tool to help protect Fang. If Fang could control the Null mana in its body to protect itself, same as Dei, then she would be able to shield herself from outside influence. The Null mana would stop her own spells too, but if she learned to navigate her spells around the null mana, Fang would be guarded by what was effectively a small fortress, shooting her spells through tiny gaps in the walls. He would still do his presence training, just in case the Null mana didn’t work, but was determined to try it out when he got the chance.
* * *
For days they backtracked, going deeper into the earth and closing back in on where they were before. Dei saw a lot of very interesting structures, but he didn’t have time to explore. Fendrascora was still trapped, still in trouble, and he needed to help her before all else.
Clever continued to train with his Time affinity, more fervently than ever. The training was supposedly quite mentally intensive, and Dei noticed that Clevers thoughts were becoming clearer, more focused. He thought in words more often than concepts now, which helped Dei to understand him, and Clever to understand what he was doing. Dei was trying to find a way to give the packet of knowledge on language that Iora planted into his head to Clever, but it was not easy. His [Meaningful] Skill could contain all the information if he put enough Kindness mana into it, but Clever could only process small pieces of that before the message was broken down by the natural mana of their surroundings. Instead, Dei was teaching Clever everything he knew about language slowly, and Clevers mind pushed itself to both piece through Dei’s lessons, and navigate the timestream to figure out his future seeing Skill.
Dei was proud of him, and Dei himself continued to push his physical abilities to the limit, While he couldn’t practice most of his Skills properly, he could strain his muscles and push his body further. Since he’s started using Sectioning to make more Null mana, Dei found that he wasn’t regenerating as quickly nor was his Physical stat going up, but he was becoming stronger anyway. He thought his muscles were growing naturally, a hidden benefit of his Pandora’s Box evolution.
He also tried pushing himself through sleep deprivation more, finding that his Homeostasis was starting to adjust to the exhaustion. There might come a time when he would have to go weeks without sleeping, so it would be useful to train that early on. The Skill didn’t decrease his exhaustion, it just let him push through it easier.
* * *
Two days later at a much more sedated, yet still intensive, pace, Dei was finally back to checkpoint three.
Now that he was sleeping for two or three hours, moving for eight, then napping again, he was getting a better read on what kinds of creatures were up at different times, and why. The village he was born in was filled with glowing crystals that dimmed during the nighttime hours. There were many variants of this, as he’d seen around the cave systems.
There were many random crystals interspersed in the cave systems that provided lighting. Clever also said that a few of them, rarely, gave off aura’s of weak magical power. He always wanted Dei to pick those for him to eat, and Dei complied. Dei tried Identifying them multiple times, but none had a Soul Signature, so it failed. Fang tried as well, finding the same problem as Dei, and Clever’s scanning abilities relied on an organism's heat, which had nothing to do with the crystals.
* * *
When Dei finally pushed his [Growing Pains] Skill to get another batch of one hundred Null mana, he proposed his idea to Fang, who was willing to experiment. The very first issue they ran into, though, was that Fang could not even remotely manipulate the Null mana.
Dei described his own process of doing so, by holding it in his body. He said it was much easier to manipulate mana when it was in his body, but Fang was utterly baffled, saying that it took the same amount of effort to move mana outside its body as it was in its body, up to a certain distance. Its control slowly tapered off, but it was certainly not such a steep drop in control.
That's when Dei discovered a second benefit to his specializing constitution
While it wasn’t yet specialized, it was slowly working its way there. He’d thought that his lacking magical senses were because they hadn’t developed yet, and they probably were, but he was already halfway benefitting from specializing his constitution. He now had a greater control and awareness of his body, including magic. He couldn't sense environmental changes, but his body? That was his domain, giving him a glimpse into the fully permanent change that would take place if he continued down his current path, and it looked promising.
Fang said that the Null mana resisted every attempt at moving it, but Dei didn’t have that at all. Realistically, it should have bent to Fang just as easily as it bent to Dei because the Null mana wasn’t imbued with meaning, but if it had, then the Smiler should have been able manipulate the Null mana as well. Luckily, it couldn’t, but they’d now run into the issue that Fang had no control over it.
Fang proposed that she didn’t have a “right” to the mana that Dei did. Dei faced similar problems with outside mana before, mana that wasn’t created with his affinities. He’d assumed it was because each point of mana was imbued with a meaning, but that might not be the case. The only other instance of mana bending to his will, despite him not being the source of it, was when Fang stole Spirit mana from the Wraith, delivering it to Dei. Thinking back, wasn’t that Spirit mana imbued with meanings, such as the Wraiths knowledge, since it was Spirit mana? But he’d had no trouble in pulling that into his box.
Fang was right, this wasn’t a meaning issue, each point of mana belonged to someone, and only that person could control that mana, unless they lost control of it to someone else.
Instead, he proposed a new idea. Fang had given him a burst of Spirit mana that he was able to manipulate before, turning it into Soul mana before using it in a projection. She’d done this by sending it down the connection they shared, so Dei thought the reverse of the process would be possible as well.
If her roots connected to him, he might be able to send her Null mana, which she would have the ability to control.
A little too enthusiastically, she accepted the idea of digging into him again, and he felt the roots try and pierce his skin. He held up slightly better this time, but not that much better, and the handle of his blade soon sent waves of pain up his arm.
“Slow down!” he sent to her, but received only a ravenous feeling of hunger in return. When she connected to his blood stream, he felt a pull, and immediately felt a spike of insatiable rage pour into him. Imbuing a message with every bit of anger, he commanded Fang.
“STOP”
The roots ceased immediately, and he felt Fangs mind reel back, before going quiet a moment.
“I am… sorry” it apologized shamefully, but Dei didn’t respond, collecting himself. His Pandora’s Box worked overtime to pull all the Wrath mana in, stopping it from clouding his judgement. Now that Fang apologized, the Wrath mana pouring into him began to slow down, but it was difficult to stop, so he simply let his mind calm, occasionally sending Fang a message imbued with the emotions he was currently feeling, keeping her in line and ensuring that she would hesitate to do something like that again. He didn’t want her thinking he was vulnerable for even a second, he was instead trying to not start pouring convection mana into her in an insatiable rage.
It was odd, how quickly the situation had turned. They were conversing well enough, when they’d both suddenly been consumed by waves of emotion.
While he hadn’t uncovered it, Dei could tell that he had a “Rule of Wrath” involving betrayal.
When he was calm enough, he sent an accusatory message to Fang “What the fuck was that!? You were absolutely about to try and drain my blood!”
“I am sorry! It is in my nature. I have not drank blood in so long… it was too much, I could hardly stop myself.”
“You drank blood just a few days ago! Do you have so little self control? Are you that fucking primitive?!”
She sent back a mental scoff “Just a few days ago. Normally, Flesh Traps eat every day! We can go dormant to store blood, but I have not gone dormant. I remain active with you, frequently talking, and become hungry between fights. I should have asked for more blood, not less! I am not fed enough!”
Initially, it was apologetic, but quickly devolved into accusing him as well. He was about to send another angry message, when he took a deep breath, calming himself.
It was true that Flesh Traps needed blood to survive, but she had given him no warning!
Still, he needed to be more mindful of other peoples needs. She was doubtlessly holding back her craving for blood because she could sense he was uncomfortable with it. It was partially on him for being inconsiderate, and partially on her for not telling him.
When he was calm enough, he sent a mental message. “It is true that I did not think of your needs, but you did not communicate them either. If you had told me when you were becoming hungry, I would have fed you blood. Would something like this happen if you’d not gone so long without it?”
“No, I would have easily been able to control myself! But instead, you pushed me this far.”
He could tell now that her shame had transformed into anger, and she hated that he’d accused her so aggressively. It was a mistake on his part made in anger to belittle her. While his Pandora’s Box helped him get control over his supernatural anger, it didn’t control the mundane emotion. That was up to him.
“I know, but you still needed to tell me before. If I’d known it was this bad, it wouldn’t have gotten so far. Just tell me things sooner, and we can work together to fix them. I’m sorry for insulting you.”
She mentally harrumphed, but said “Fine. I am sorry as well for losing myself and not telling you.”
“You’re forgiven. We can delay training for a bit, and you can drink some of my blood, slowly. Let my body heal back as you drink, so I’m not passing out from blood loss.”
She sent back a quiet agreement, and an awkward tension still persisted between them. They were both apologetic and a little angry at the other, but it wasn’t extreme, and would fade with time.
His regenerating Skills would help recover his blood, and it might potentially prove useful in the future. His [Homeostasis] Skill would slowly adjust to such a condition, meaning that he would recover from blood loss faster next time.
In the meantime, he needed to find an actual animal to kill. He had a vegetable ration in his bag, but if he was going to be losing a lot of blood, he thought it might not be enough, and would need some protein. The ration might have protein built into it, but he didn’t want to wait until he was dizzy to find out.
Scanning the environment, he tried finding something that would work well as a meal.