Not wanting to waste any time Kal quickly got to work on his core space maintenance. For the most part, Kal concentrated on converting the final skill that was still only a thread woven into his core into a spherical enclosed one.

Even with everything he had learned over the last month stuck in the abyss Soul Forge was a mystery to him. He couldn’t make any sense of the constructs woven into its thread but luckily once he had created the sphere to house it the strange skill activated on its own and its constructs painlessly reorientated themselves inside of the sphere.

One day he would try and learn everything he could of the skill that had allowed him to begin his journey but sadly twenty-four hours wouldn’t be even close to enough time. What he hoped he had time for was to look at Wrath Incarnate.

Wrath Incarnate [Uncommon] [Soul Forged] [System Assisted]

A Slayer’s Wrath is as much a physical presence as it is a mental state.

Active Effect: Empower your form with your Unleashed Wrath and wade through the masses unimpeded. While in this state your inner self is let free, crushing all emotions it deems as weaknesses. In addition, all attributes are increased by 40% at the cost of Wrath until you deactivate this skill. If your Wrath is exhausted it will instead use three times more Stamina until you deactivate this skill.

Passive Effect: Your very presence is unnerving to all but the strongest of will and those you choose to leave unaffected. All living things can sense the Wrath deep within you and will fear you. The more affected by this aura the less Wrath is consumed while using this skill's active effect.

Warning due to manual manipulation of core and an abnormal resource, this skill is being used as a seal for the abnormal resource. If the abnormal resource’s value ever exceeds the maximum value of your Stamina resource this skill will break and all of the abnormal resource would be left uncontrolled.

It was the first skill he had actively made changes to and obviously was the one he had done the worst job changing. It had come with major benefits, the power of his fear aura alone was amazing but the efficiency it achieved when he was fighting enough enemies made what was probably supposed to be a short burst power boost into an insanely powerful strategy.

The downside however was the cap he was forced to abide by at all times. Luckily his stamina was his highest resource, much higher than his health which the skill was originally set to burn through once his wrath had run out. The problem though was that it wasn’t high enough. Kal had been forced several times to willingly take damage just so that he could waste wrath on healing to prevent himself from going over the cap.

It actually made killing hordes of weak demons almost as dangerous as fighting stronger individuals just because he needed to manage his wrath more carefully. If each swing from his mangled sword killed five or six level twenties his wrath grew dramatically at very little cost. The boon of the skill's passive effect became a double-edged sword in those situations as well it forced him to kill to make Wrath Incarnate more expensive but killing fed him more wrath than he could deal with at least earlier in fights.

Kal was just lucky he had other ways to spend it like Wrathful Regeneration, Flames of Wrath, and now Edge of Malice. What Kal wanted to do was find a way to either increase the cap or ignore it altogether, how exactly he wasn’t sure just yet.

The skill was honestly a mess, his earlier work on it would have appeared amateur even to someone who had never seen a skill orb before. The main problem was how he had actually integrated it all together into the containment sphere, he could still make out the constructs that actually made the skill function but it was a near thing. After nearly an hour of crafting a new sphere detangling the skills constructs and moving them over he was already sure that he wouldn’t have time to work on it much now.

He also still hadn’t fully brought it into line with his other skills, it was still attached directly to his core but a conduit of will. At the time he hadn’t known about linking constructs, not that he would have been skilled enough back then to pull it off anyway. But the connection was worrying, the skills connection to his core was far more complex than he expected it would be. It wasn’t like Soul Forge that simply clung to the surface of his core, connected but also easily picked out from the rest of the threads and strands that made up the sphere of his core.

Wrath Incarnate’s connection where it fused with his core was almost indistinguishable and the threads that Kal could properly trace into his core were so tightly woven together with his core threads that they may as well be one and the same.

That wasn’t good, if they were as fused together as they appeared it was unlikely Kal could separate them without building a new core at the same time, and that wasn’t something he would do unless absolutely necessary. He had no idea how much time he had lost the last time he broke his core, who knew if breaking again would be worse or not? Even worse was the fact if he broke his core again he would lose even more ground in his leveling. If only he could store up enough wrath in advance.

Kal’s eyes shot open and he smiled as an idea came to him. He might not have time to work on Wrath Incarnate itself but what he could do is prepare some insurance. He glanced at the timer and nodded to himself. The time it took him to prepare what he had in mind might also save him a lot of time in the future assuming it worked. What was stopping him from having two cores?

Three hours passed as Kal concentrated on his insurance policy. His current core was good enough considering when he had made it, but it was a rush job and his skill at soul forging at the time wasn’t great so there was a lot of room for improvement.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The most obvious benefit of his new level of strength and understanding was the strength of his newly created core threads. Each was far stronger and more dense than anything he could have created back at level twenty-five, it was no contest. Next was the improvement of his Soul Forge skill along with his perception, and will greatly increased the union of each of his attributes and resources that made up the core. They were now woven much more tightly and evenly than before.

A sensation Kal hadn’t felt for a few days roused him from his work and he frowned, “Well that’s annoying,” the feeling that had disturbed him wasn’t normally annoying but right now its implications weren’t ideal. Something had entered his fear aura.

He normally couldn’t detect singular demons entering its area but if there were enough of them he could feel the slightest urge to use Wrath Incarnate. It wasn’t powerful by any means but it was enough to notice.

Kal had hoped it would be longer before any demons arrived to surround the haven but apparently, they had been on his trail before killing the butcher. Them being close wasn’t a bad thing really but it would make getting back to the surface awkward if he was forced to fight the whole way. For now, Kal ignored the feeling and got back to work, the next part wouldn’t take long and the usefulness of his idea relied upon his next forging.

He had left the second core a few threads away from completion so that it was still pliable enough to add the next portion of his plan. What he needed was a way to selectively channel wrath into the new core so he went through the motions of creating another containment construct but quickly realized that doing it that way would likely make it count as a skill. He couldn’t just set up a linking construct and will it to start working like a skill, or could he?

The will sphere around the symbol wasn’t a skill but it did act like one. It wasn’t in his core space but Kal didn’t think that would make a difference since both were affected by Soul Forge. Seeing no harm in trying Kal continued with the sphere and linking construct, it was only after he had finished the linking construct that he felt something change.

It was like the feeling of pressure he felt when he finished making the barrier around the symbol but more intense. Kal knew immediately that he was very close to some undisclosed limit, it was uncomfortable but bearable. What worried Kal though was what it would mean for the barrier, he inspected it but found no sign of anything wrong. The pressure didn’t seem to have any effect on the constructs themselves but the pressure was strong enough that Kal wasn’t sure if this was the right way to go about it.

As a test, he put another ten of his twenty remaining free points into will and as he expected the pressure lessened slightly. It wasn’t much but it was enough to tell him that Soul Maw would be an annoyance once again. If Kal did it this way he would eventually either have to let his barrier break or let his second core conduit break but that would be an easy decision to make. He could rebuild the latter with no risk but the former he didn’t even want to think about but even if the worst was to happen he still had Slayer’s Apathy to hopefully protect himself.

Kal finished off the sphere by adding a channel directly into the top of his second core and weaving together the final portions of the core. The moment the finished framework of the core was in place Kal received a notification.

Warning: You are attempting to form a second core within a shell already containing a core. If the second core is complete, shells below tier 5 will not survive the process unless the first core has been removed.

Anomalous Class Detected….

Normally such actions would be prevented but due to your Slayer of Fate [Epic] [Anomalous] class this action will not be overridden.

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Kal muttered before closing the notification. He would just have to be sure to break his first core before the second was finished, easy. It was interesting to read that tier-five beings could in theory have multiple cores active.

Error due to presence of a unique resource and the manual forging of a tier 1 core you must provide the necessary resources:

Wrath provided: 0/256760

Kal’s eyes widened at the number, “Fucking hell!” It was a lot higher than he thought it would be. Now his whole idea sounded so much better, having that much room to overflow his wrath into would be insanely useful and hitting that cap would take some time at least. Now he just needed to make sure his construct worked.

Kal checked his status before activating his new wrath dump construct.

Health:

2400

Stamina:

5240

Wrath:

700

Health:

2400

Stamina:

5240

Wrath:

340

Health:

2400

Stamina:

5240

Wrath:

0

Wrath provided: 700/256760

Kal blinked as he saw his wrath plummet much faster than he had expected. He was immediately suspicious despite not feeling anything so he went into his core space once again to check everything. Finding nothing concerning Kal simply looked at the work he had done within his core space.

When he had first entered his core space was basically an inferno of crimson flame infested by the mana of Dhinir and his core was a fractured mess. Now though it reminded Kal of the charts one of his teachers had shown him during his studies. It had illustrations of planets orbiting the sun and some notes on when they were visible with the right tools or a high enough perception.

His two cores orbited each other, one burning with crimson fire, the other a dark silhouette. His skills each orbited his active core like small planets each shining with different colors depending on the resources and attributes used in their making

The charts hadn’t interested Kal at the time but now he was starting to wish he paid more attention.1