Kal was about to move onto his first experimental manifestation guide construct when Slayer’s Apathy ended on its own, his wrath reaching zero after thirteen minutes. It wasn’t pleasant. The worries that fled the moment he activated the skill flooded back into his thoughts like a stampede, making him completely lose concentration on his soul forging.
Flashes of the red lights fleeing and the endless churning gore flooded his mind, making him gasp and slam his hands against his temples, No! Stop! Kal!
In a daze, Kal brought his sight inwards to look at the symbol and sure enough, it once again glowed as parts of it began to deteriorate once more, flakes of fractured constructs drifting off and into his body and mind.
Screams and the shearing of metal and flesh began to fill his ears as more and more of the flakes began to break free. Not knowing what else to do Kal rallied what he could muster and clamped down hard on the symbol. It didn’t slow the deterioration at all but it did contain the fragments, preventing them from affecting him.
The memories were still fresh in his mind, but the intensity had quickly dropped off. Kal yelled in the sky, “Why Fyborh?! What have you done to me?! First Dhinir and now you have played a part in manipulating me!”
Kal seethed, he wanted nothing more than to burn these memories in the fires of his wrath. He wanted to use Slayer’s Apathy. He even tried but of course, it didn’t work with his wrath at zero. Minutes passed as Kal raged and sobbed as his suddenly raw emotions continued to overwhelm him.
It was over an hour later when Kal finally started to feel like himself again, his mind returning to more constructive thoughts, “What the fuck was that?” he croaked.
Slayer’s Apathy had done what he had expected but it clearly had more side effects than he had originally thought. He could remember it all clearly, the sense of calm, no not calm, apathy. Now it felt terrifying but at the time everything felt easier. He even had a solid idea for conjuring weapons, his thoughts were completely unhindered by fear. There was no hesitation, no doubt.
But throughout it all there was an undercurrent of malice. At the time it meant nothing to him, it was just a part of him. But now it deeply disturbed him, Wrath Incarnate was savagery and bloodlust but Slayer’s Apathy was something else.
Efficient was the first thing that came to mind, but that was saying it far too lightly. Insidiously efficient was far closer. What was even more worrying was the fact that he couldn’t end it like he could with Wrath Incarnate, or well, perhaps it was more that he didn’t want to. While it was active he felt free of all burdens, all weaknesses. Unlike Wrath Incarnate the feeling of losing control wasn’t present at all, it was the opposite. He was in complete control.
Even now Kal had the urge to activate the skill, he felt slow now, hindered by unnecessary thoughts. Kal was both glad it was beyond reach right now but also furious that he couldn’t just let it all end.
The thought shocked him out of that line of thinking, “No Kal, that’s not you. You’re not a psycho, just stop thinking about it.”
Slayer’s Apathy was clearly potent, and its ability to mute his current psychological issues may be useful if he was forced to experience another round of nightmares. Even though Kal tried to ignore them he knew that those dreams would continue to wear on his mind until he got to the bottom of it all.
Kal looked at the symbol again to find that it had stopped deteriorating again, and the fragments were still contained in the will he had surrounded it with. What he had done was not permanent and the moment he stopped concentrating on it, it would likely fall apart and release the fragments.
Whether they were some kind of long-acting illusion or they were protecting him from something Kal had no idea, but he knew letting it all fall apart wasn’t in his best interest. He threw together a containment construct made solely of will, similar to his Slayer’s Apathy but without using his wrath as a resource.
Doing it this way Kal expected it to last a while but it would also likely not be permanent. He was actually surprised that his will could be formed this way without the use of a skill. Using his vital and physical energies worked as expected but he was pretty sure none of his other attribute threads would work like this.
After he was done he was left with a sphere of will. Just like his skill spheres just not within his core space. He could feel a sense of strain as it slowly rotated, that was interesting. The strain wasn’t severe but he could tell that he probably wouldn’t be able to create a second sphere and maintain the first, at least if it was of similar size. If it was smaller he might be able to get away with it.
When Kal let go of his quick fix will clamp he felt a portion of the strain lessen, Yet another thing, I’m going to have to look into.
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Luckily his containment sphere seemed to work, the fragments simply floated to touch the walls of the sphere, not passing through. It certainly wasn’t perfect, and was sure that if he was sufficiently wounded or weakened it would probably collapse. For now, it would have to do.
With one situation dealt with, at least for now. Kal checked the haven timer and frowned. He had wasted two hours dealing with that. Leaving him with only four to get his conjuration skill finished. It was far less time than he would have liked considering he wanted to leave the haven before the timer ran, just in case it was wiped away like the original dome was at the start of the wave.
Even though he was rushed for time. Kal did what he could to ensure he was in a steady state before starting his next round of soul forging. It was clear that the things we had seen were leaving their mark but Kal couldn’t let it detract from his growth. Staying alive was his priority, and to do that he needed a new weapon.
Kal’s ideas when it came to making his own custom conjure weapons skill were pretty simple. He would butcher the crap out of skills he already had and use the parts he could to hopefully get the effect he wanted. He had already done the basics while under the effect of Slayer’s Apathy so he went straight on the important parts.
First up was a guide construct, along the lines of what he learned from Slayer’s Apathy though instead of actively measuring the input from his eyes or his own brain, the knots were instead measurements based on the blunt sword Kal still carried. He changed a few things, mainly the sharpness of its edge. It was difficult to imprint the sharpness into a knot but he thought what he had achieved was at least a good starting point.
Next up was the part Kal was worried about. Actually getting his wrath to act as if it was solid. He figured his best bet would be to use an imprinting construct just like the one found in Slayer’s Apathy but instead make it behave like steel instead of a semi-physical barrier.
This took some trial and error. Kal didn’t need to activate the skill to feel what he had managed to imprint into the construct, and each time he did he felt something off about the way the construct felt. It felt unstable somehow. When he concentrated on the construct he could feel the instruction he wanted but it just felt wrong.
He must be missing something. The other imprinting construct had been made solely of will but was that because it had to be will or was it because it was imprinting will? Like all questions like this, it was probably a bit of both. Kal doubted weaving wrath threads through it was the answer, that would likely just increase the instability of the construct, Slayer’s Apathy converted it to will immediately and it was still massively affected by the use of wrath.
No, it had to be something else, but what? Vitality was out, he didn’t want it to come to life in his hands, even though he doubted that would actually work. Kal almost smacked himself when he thought of the answer, “Oh, of course, its endurance.”
It only made perfect sense. Will was mental resistance and strength. Endurance was the durability of his actual body, meaning if he reinforced it with endurance hopefully some of that stability and resilience carried over to whatever was imprinted. It was his best idea so he went with it.
Getting the proportions right was surprisingly annoying, it appeared that too much endurance was actually worse for the stability. He only found this out once he had moved on to the merging of the outputs of two constructs into a framework construct. Like the knots of the guides and the sense of the imprinting construct Kal could get a feel for what the framework would produce, and it was a mess.
He knew immediately, even without any kind of visual feedback that it wouldn’t form any kind of shape at all. He would be just dumping wrath into the skill with no effect. It took Kal over an hour to figure out the problem, it was the amount of endurance he used.
After some tinkering, he found that adding too much endurance drastically reduced the malleability of the wrath once it was imprinted. After seeing that, he realized he had been going about it the wrong way but he had spent too much time to completely rebuild the whole skill. He only had about an hour left before he needed to leave the haven.
But he still had time to make something useful, if not exactly what he wanted. Since adding too much endurance made it much more difficult to form a full-sized weapon. Kal decided to just try and conjure a blade's edge instead of an entire sword. He was sure it wouldn’t be efficient but it would work, well he hoped so. He tinkered with the endurance levels and the guide’s knots to be more in line with what he wanted, basically removing most of the knots except for the edge measurements.
Now that all that was done he moved on to the final construct. Kal originally wanted to use a copy of the projector construct from Slayer’s Apathy but with the changes he had to make he didn’t think it would work. So for now he went with the Flames of Wrath method. Make a long channel to the palm of his hand and imprint the end of the channel to produce the effect.
Kal quickly glanced over his work and reinforced a few spots considering he was working directly with his wrath this time. Once that was done he siphoned for a few moments to give him enough to test his new skill.
When he was ready he stood up retrieved his banged-up giant belt knife and activated his new skill.
A pulse of dense wrath ran from the palm of his hand and rushed across the surface of the sword. It moved sluggishly, clearly too dense for the quick movement required of it to ensure it took its correct position. It took longer than he would have liked but the edge of wrath finally shined along the blade’s edge.
It made the sword look quite intimidating as the fiery wrath pulsed up and down its edge constantly. Kal tested the blade on the back of his forearm, he grimaced and then smiled as he was left with a nice-sized slice. It wasn’t as sharp as when he first got the sword but it was a definite improvement.
Kal turned towards the closest edge of the seeker shadow’s territory and set off as he read the description of his new skill.
Edge of Malice [Common] [Soul Forged]
Condense your hatred along the edge of your weapon so that you may slay those you would stand before you. Durability of the conjured edge scales with Will and Endurance.