It took Kal quite a while to finally bring himself back to full health and stamina. The dark serpent had really done a number on his body. After he fully recovered Kal decided to fill his wrath to a bit over half. If he was going to be fighting singular powerful beasts for a while, having a decent-sized pool of wrath was far less risky. Still having Wrath Incarnate as a possible breaking point for his birthright was a real hassle now. Starting a large fight with too much wrath was risky but so was starting a dangerous fight like the one with the dark serpent with no wrath was just as risky if not more so. He felt sure that his core would no longer degrade like it did before, at least until he was closer to tier two but he would have to either do something about Wrath Incarnate soon or start even more heavily investing in endurance.
As it stands now, Kal could have a maximum wrath of his maximum stamina which was three thousand two hundred and forty. Which if he were to kill a heap of weak garghounds was a fine number, at least for now but if he started fighting some higher level demons on mass would quickly become risky again, since he got about ten times the creature's level in wrath for each kill. And that was assuming he didn’t kill them too brutally, which would increase the wrath gain by about twenty-five percent judging by his previous logs for each bonus. The dark serpent was a brutal fight but he had been at a major disadvantage from the start and because of the potion he had fumbled badly near the end. If it were on more even terms he was confident it wouldn’t have gone so badly. One dark serpent kill had netted him nearly a quarter of his maximum wrath. If he didn’t actively manage his wrath it wouldn’t take him long to reach the cap.
But sorting his wrath out could wait, first, he needed to improve his mana sight enough that he could level the playing field with any of the other demons roaming the seeker shadow’s territory. The thought of just leaving the area and finding an easier challenge didn’t even cross his mind. The fight with the dark serpent had been frustrating at first but fighting such a powerful enemy was incredibly exhilarating, something his birthright would no doubt agree with if not in the same way.
Since the roaming serpents had failed to find him between the coils of their kin's corpse he decided to just remain there while he worked on his mana sight. He figured the corpse of the dark serpent must have some kind of property that concealed him from even others of the variant. A few ideas ran through his mind about that but none of them could be done if he couldn’t bloody see, so he got to work.
Once again he brought himself to the half-meditative state where his mana sight was at its most malleable, his siphoning state except there would be no siphoning this time. When he had first entered the mists of this territory he had thought that he would have easily been able to spot anything moving the shadow mana, just like he could locate the walls of the plateau and spires. The dark serpents were different, however. They clearly had some kind of ability to conceal themselves within the shadow mana somehow. It would be amazing if it was a trait but Kal figured it was probably a skill the variants shared since when he did any serious damage they were partially revealed. Ah, I get it, he was pretty sure the skill didn’t conceal the serpents directly, it instead simply hid whatever mana type they used within their bodies and maybe it dulled all external noise they made as well. He could easily be wrong but it would explain why they roamed through the dark mists, it was an incredibly useful skill.
What Kal needed to figure out was how to filter out what mana was visible to his mana sight. How exactly he was going to do that was beyond him for the moment but the sudden development of his killing sight gave him a few ideas. When something came within range of his killing sight it wasn’t a sudden appearance but more of a gradual brightening effect, like the red that he saw continued to brighten until it pierced through the shadow mana. His killing sight definitely worked differently than his mana sight but perhaps he could mimic that effect with the different kinds of mana in the area around him.
It took Kal a few hours and several breaks between passing serpents to make any kind of progress, but he finally knew he was on the right track when the color of the darkness around him shifted slightly. It was incredibly subtle but the effect was exactly what he had been trying to do. He had been trying to focus his perception on only the regular abyssal mana in the area around him. It was hard but it had eventually worked. He could now see the area within about ten feet. It was incredibly dark still since he definitely hadn’t filtered out all of the shadow mana around him but it was a start and something he knew he could improve with practice. He spent another hour or so honing the effect and managed to extend his dome of view by another ten feet or so and filtered a tiny bit more of the shadow mana out. Now he could make out the color of the dark serpent he sat next to. And who would have thought, it was black?
If Kal had more time he would have spent longer honing his mana sight but something was starting to creep up on him. He was getting tired. It had been several days since Kal had last slept and it was finally starting to creep up on him. He had hoped his continuous growth would keep it a bay for longer but it seemed that it had reached its limit. The serpent had been good enough concealment to hide for this long so he thought that it might be good enough to make the attempt but the thought of experiencing anything like the nightmares he had received during his first few days in the abyss quickly discouraged him from the idea. If he started wondering as he did within the passages, he would die without any kind of chance to defend himself, devoured by a dark serpent most likely. No, he couldn’t sleep yet, so his only option was to get strong enough to slay seeker shadow, and if that was the case he had a long way to go before he would be strong enough to fight whatever the shadow was.
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Using his improved mana sight it didn’t take Kal long to find his sword. He must have been close to finding it during the fight if his judge of distances was accurate considering he was blind to the environment before. But without his improved mana sight, he would have had to step on the damned thing to find it. He looked it over and frowned at the now severely blunted edge. Fighting the dark serpent had done a number on its already degraded edge. It would still work for now but he doubted it would be much further use against the dark serpents any more with their incredibly tough scales. He decided to hold onto the fang that had broken loose from the dead serpent since it was clearly sharp enough to pierce their scales. He would probably be using it heavily over the next few days.
Before he got moving, Kal wanted to try out a theory he had about the dark serpent’s scales. They had given him concealment for nearly a day by this point, and he hoped that if he could make a cloak or something out of the stuff he could use it to hide himself if things got difficult again. His theory about the serpents having a skill to conceal their mana wasn’t mutually exclusive with the possibility their scales somehow hid them within the shadow mana. It could just as easily be both but there was only one way to find out. So Kal got to hacking his way into the dead serpent’s belly scales, with his mostly blunt sword even the weaker scales were still damn near impossible to get through but once he got through the first few feet it got easier. The serpent’s blood reeked, there was no way he would be using it as a hideout now but even if his plan failed he could just kill another serpent to take a breather.
When he was done he held in his arms an approximately six-foot rectangle of serpent skin. He wasn’t too keen on throwing it over his back but by this point, he had been drenched in blood for days so it wasn’t like it should matter now. He cut a thin strand of skin from the serpent to help him secure the skin over his shoulders. Finally having something on his back was refreshing since he had lost his shirt a while ago now. He tried using Identify on his creation but of course, it fizzled, he didn’t have any kind of crafting skill so it made sense that it didn’t have a description or rarity. The thought of rarity made Kal wonder how much materials like this would have been worth back home. What he had just destroyed with his blunt sword was probably worth a fortune, not like it mattered now though.
Ready to set out Kal looked over his status and quickly checked the wave timer.
Health:
1940/1940
Stamina:
3240/3240
Wrath:
2106
Trial of the Slayer IWave: 2
Time: 27 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes, 12 seconds
He frowned at the timer, it had honestly been longer than he had expected since the wave had started but reading the description made him smile.
The Lords of this layer have become aware of your presence and have allied their forces with the Bestial Lord. Show them that a slayer cares not what enemy they face.
Yes, it was time to slay.
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Nyx walked through the camp, her path for once in her life was certain. She had found Him. Elder Jaliete had been doubtful at first but the Blood Hunt had been all the proof needed to convince her. Soon the destiny of the order would come to pass. Elder Jaliete had dismissed Nyx from their discussion about the revelation of Fyborh. Nyx didn’t mind she had heard all of it before and had little patience in going over it all again with Dalen and Leo. She had work to do, and now more than ever she would revel in that work. The need to continue the testing was at an end and no further children would need to be taken from their parent's homes as she was. Nyx felt for the children that were taken each year but it had been a necessity that had taken her longer to understand than she would care to admit.
Like all the children taken by the order, Nyx feared and despised her captures for many years. Why, she could barely understand now. Her family had been incredibly cruel to her since the moment she unlocked her class. Her history was just one of thousands of similar stories in the empire. She had come from a noble house in the city of Sadar who had prepared her meticulously for her ascension. Her family had hoped she would gain a mage class or at worst a merchant class, but in the end, she awakened with the laborer class. And like so many others in her position she had been ostracized by her family and friends. Back in those early days of the order, there were many theories on where the birthright would appear so they were testing any oddity they could find. Anomalous ascension being one of them. In those days the order was far less under scrutiny by the seven towers so they didn’t need to take every child they tested, but seeing how she had been treated they had kept Nyx with them.
They had immediately treated her like family, it had taken her a long time to accept it and even longer to understand the order’s mission but it was true. All that didn’t matter now though. No more children would need to experience that again. They had found him and soon there would be no more hiding.