Kal carefully inspected the strange symbol on the back of his neck. He could see that it was still slowly degrading but luckily it seemed to be slowing even further. Kal wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not since even after half an hour of doing his best to discern the symbol’s actual purpose he hadn’t figured out anything.

It was just way too complex. Each portion of the symbol contained hundreds of constructs that were all connected in various ways and he could figure out what a single one of them did. Now that the shadow wasn’t trying to manipulate him there was no sign of the tendrils of shadow mana.

Annoyed, Kal decided to keep an eye on the symbol for now. Maybe after receiving his next skill guidance, he might be able to figure something out.

Temporary Haven Granted.

For the duration of the temporary haven, no abyss spawn may enter the territory of the Seeker Shadow. All that is already present will be evicted outside of the territory. If at any time you exit the Seeker Shadow’s territory the temporary haven will end.

Time until haven is destroyed: 00:23:58:37

Kal let out a sigh, “A full day is more than I expected to get,” he was glad. He needed the break but he wasn’t a fan of the wording of the reward. Did the haven getting destroyed mean it was actually destroyed, or was it just deactivated? He wasn’t planning on sitting around and finding out either way.

Another problem with the reward was that it seemed to imply that the demons would be aware of the haven. So it was pretty likely that he would be surrounded by the time the haven collapsed or blew up.

He had time before he needed to worry too much about that. Before he dove into improving his skills and getting guidance from the system Kal decided to check over the corpse of the shadow. He had seen it produce weapons he thought were made of shadow mana but there was always the chance it had an item that did it for it.

On its body, it had nothing but its black cloak. Kal used Identify expecting it to return nothing but he couldn’t help but grin when he read the description.

Lesser Cloak of Shadows [Rare]

Normally worn by the assassins of the Great Seeker, this cloak when activated can make the user’s form merge with nearby shadow mana for a short duration. Additionally, while the hood is drawn the wearer’s face is concealed by a construct of shadow mana. +20 Perception, +10 Agility, Wisdom

Kal immediately threw on the cloak and discarded his makeshift dark serpent skin one. He immediately felt the increase in attributes. Fighting the shadow had already proven its worth. Kal was about to sit down and start his soul forging but then he remembered the ring on the shadow’s hand.

He had dismissed the ring immediately after he had torn the shadow’s arm off deeming it irrelevant while using Wrath Incarnate. It took him a moment to find the arm, he had thrown it nearly thirty feet away after he tore it off.

The arm was pretty mangled but the hand was still intact, so Kal pulled the ring off and inspected it. The ring looked like it was made out of some kind of black stone, and was marbled with various colors, mainly red and violet.

Ring of Desperate Flight [Epic]

The wearer of this ring will be transported to a predetermined location if at any time their health would drop below 1 point. +20 Strength, +20 Agility, +20 Endurance.

Kal’s eyes widened as he read the description. This ring was an amazing boon. Getting removed from combat when at such low health could easily save his life, which he guessed was the point. Even its attribute bonuses were amazing. Any extra points in agility were a big deal and would help balance him out immensely.

He slid the ring on and tried to figure out how to make a transport location but no display or notification appeared when he tried to use it like his status.

“Hmmm, maybe this isn’t so great,” If he couldn’t mark the location himself it probably meant that the location had already been chosen. Which was bad for obvious reasons. The last thing he wanted was to nearly die and be teleported to a new bunch of demons, all ready to deal that last point of damage.

But then again he couldn’t just pass up those extra attributes. A total of sixty free points was basically a free level, and he needed the agility. For now, he would wear the ring, and make sure he wasn’t put in a situation where he needed to use that escape function.

With that done Kal wanted to find out how big the haven was. He doubted it was the entire territory affected by the shadow mana mists but it was worth finding out. It took him less time than he had expected to find the haven’s edge, it was actually only around twenty feet past the edge of the columns where he had found the seeker's shadow.

He hadn’t seen it at first but when he got within ten feet of the edge a translucent blue wall appeared in front of him. He had no way to see how thick it was but it probably didn’t matter if the system was involved. Kal didn’t risk touching it just in case it counted as leaving the haven early.

“Well, at least it isn’t very obvious,” Having to get close to know the haven was there was definitely better than it being anything like the conduits. The other elites would probably know that the shadow had died but it at least meant all the nearby demons would have to get close to tell.

Kal returned to the center of the haven and sat in the space where the conduit met the ground. First, he distributed his free points from the two levels he gained from killing the shadow,

Kalum Lesta

Status

Class:

Slayer of Fate [Epic] [Anomalous]

Level:

43

Race:

Human?

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Health:

2230

Stamina:

4760

Wrath:

0

Attributes

Strength:

436

Agility:

231

Endurance:

476

Vitality:

223

Intellect:

193

Perception:

259

Will:

538

Wisdom:

224

Available:

Titles

Ascendant, Core Bane, Core Smith, Defier of Dhinir, Planeswalker, Planar Appetite, Slayer of the Strong, Endurance Elite, Strength Elite, Will Elite, Demon Slayer, Paragon of Man

Skills

Soul Forge [Rare], Wrathful Regeneration [Common], Wrath Incarnate [Uncommon], Abyssal Consumption [Rare], Flames of Wrath[Uncommon] [Soul Forged], Slayer’s Intent [Rare] [Soul Forged]

Race

Birthright: Confined

After adding the increases of his new items, levels, and finally, his title percentage bonuses his attributes were growing incredibly fast. At this point, he could overpower the dark serpents easily even without using Wrath Incarnate and that was their primary attribute as far as he could tell.

Right now only someone heavily focused on a single attribute had a chance of beating him in that specific attribute. Agility was likely always going to be a saw spot for Kal but it was still likely better than most things at his level. The shadow was incredibly fast but it clearly lacked vitality and endurance. The moment he got a hold of the demon it had no chance of surviving.

It made Kal wonder what the shadow’s rarity was. It was still an abyss spawn so it would have a rarity like any other monster would. He suspected it was at least uncommon and probably rare. It didn’t have nearly enough attributes to be an epic rarity.

Either way, Kal was happy with his progress. As he tried to relax, preparing himself to start soul forging. Flashes of his nightmares and visions continued to plague his mind. His emotions were still all over the place, he had to know if what he saw was true. Crimson lights fled into the distance as he hunted and all the while flashes of a gore-filled sky assaulted him. It was only after he had spent nearly an hour just sitting them trying his hardest to relax that his mind finally calmed.

He had been tempted to activate Wrath Incarnate just to escape the visions, or at least the emotions they invoked. But finally, it had passed, for now, so he could start his long-awaited skill upgrades.

First up was Wrathful Regeneration. It was the first skill he had gotten since ascending and by far the least efficient when it came to wrath spent. Obviously, it made up for that with how incredibly useful and life-saving it was but even if he could make it a single point of wrath cheaper it would be drastically more effective.

Kal dove down into his core space and inspected his core. As always it glowed with its crimson light as it continued to contain his birthright. Kal located the thread representing Wrathful Regeneration and pulled it out so he could look at it without all the other threads of his core obscuring it.

The thread was relatively simple compared to Wrath Incarnate and Soul Forge. Since it was a thread it almost had to be simple, there simply wasn’t enough room to have something overly complex within it. But simple in this regard meant it was filled to the brim with dozens of constructs. Inside there were just three main constructs in the series.

First was the construct of all skills that used a resource seemed to have, the linking construct. Next was a construct of mostly will and a seed of vital energy, Kal gathered that this one was what converted the wrath into vital energy to be used to repair his body. That seemed strange to Kal since when he had used the skill in the past he had never noticed an actual increase in vital energy. That led him to the third and final construct. This one was a puzzle, it seemed to be mostly made up of will but to his surprise was also heavily reinforced by intellect and wisdom.

The possibility that Kal could actually damage the skill while attempting to upgrade was an all-to-real risk. If he messed it up somehow there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it out of the haven let alone to the end of the wave. Wrathful Regeneration was just too important to rush into upgrading it, so Kal took his time carefully inspecting each strand in the final construct. The will part of the construct appeared to be more of a filler than anything Kal suspected, so he concentrated on the intellect and wisdom portions.

After spending another hour carefully inspecting the final construct Kal noticed something interesting and incredibly useful. When he concentrated on the intellect strands he noticed that he got a strong sense of a small portion of its intended purpose. It was almost like touch reading, or perhaps counting knots on a rope.

Each knot was a specific instruction. One for example seemed to be something about how acidic his stomach acid was supposed to be and the next was the proper width of the walls of his heart. The knots continued to describe an insane amount of detail that Kal was honestly surprised was needed for the skill. They had to be a kind of schematic for how his body was supposed to be made up, one of them even specified two arms.

Kal was glad he had spent the effort inspecting the third construct, who knows what could have happened if he had ruined the intellect portion of the construct and tried to heal himself with no parameters? Would he have grown an extra arm or would he just keep growing flesh and turn into some kind of giant blob?

But the thought did cross Kal’s mind about how he could possibly improve his body. Was it possible that he could change the arms knot and give himself an extra arm? Or maybe an extra heart surely having a spare would be a good thing. Then he remembered his race entry on his status.

Race:

Human?

“Hmm, maybe not then,” Kal didn’t plan on changing the answer to that particular question. Back to inspecting the skill Kal moved on to the wisdom portion of the construct. This part was easier than the intellect side, from what he could it was similar to the intellect side but a whole lot more general. From what he could tell it was kind of like a backup guide to the healing process in case of exotic damage or something similar.

With that part out of the way, Kal figured the best way to improve it would be to make more of the conversion constructs so that he could spread the same amount of wrath across multiple lines. Hopefully, that would mean less wrath would be wasted each second. As for upgrading the guide construct, Kal didn’t dare. He would spend as long as it took to carefully duplicate it if he had to but first, he wanted to get it all into a sphere and see if it was even necessary to mess with that part.