By the end of his morning routine Felix hadn't come up with any better ideas than just taking a strike in order to land one so he decided to give it a shot. He decided that if he was going to accept some hits, he was going to minimize their damage as much as possible. It had been a decent amount of time now and he was pretty sure the modifications to his skin were probably safe enough. He planned on waiting a few more days for the bones to display any side effects, even though they would greatly reduce the axe's strain on his body.
Before engaging the Devoured once again, Felix sat down and entered a meditation but kept his focus within his body. He slowly spread out the new cells he had been experimenting with across his entire body, making minor adjustments to accommodate hair follicles which he had ignored on his legs. He spread them out all at once and the entire process took a few hours which was much faster than he was expecting. The fact that his body was almost entirely symmetrical from the perspective of his skin alone helped tremendously.
When he was done, he stood up and ran his hands along his arms, face and stomach and found that his skin felt both softer to the touch and yet was less pliable overall. Also visually, the layer of troll tissue used for regeneration added a slight thickness to his skin making it look like he had gained a few pounds of fat. He didn't mind it at all though, instead of incredibly lean from all his working out in the tutorial, he looked like what he thought of as more normal. He made sure to test the skin in as many places as he could with small cuts before redressing and recovering his health back to full.
Once he was completely restored, Felix stood back up and walked towards his dueling partner once again. He spent the first few minutes adjusting to the fact that his skin was resisting him ever slightly more than before. It didn't result in anything more than a negligible amount of resistance to his strikes but that was accompanied by an odd sensation he was unfamiliar with. His excitement at finally felling his enemy was quickly drowned out by the novel sensations. Felix refocused himself and prepared.
The next time the Devoured lunged forward to strike, Felix wound up and swung the axe as hard as he could at the creature. It's strike scraped his rib area and tore through his robes but didn't score more than a scratch on his skin. The creature saw the axe coming and tried to launch itself back using it's front leg. The reach of the massive weapon however made it so that instead of dodging the strike, it lined itself up with the blade and got itself decapitated.
That was… not what I was expecting. I was aiming for it's torso then it stepped back and… damn.
Felix struck down and finished off the wriggling corpse as soon as he recovered from the massive swing. He was pretty sure it would have eventually died without a head, but he also didn't want to risk it. Inspecting his wound he was extremely satisfied with his skin and how it had held together. He made sure the wound was clean and had both it and his robes heal themselves completely before he dashed out into the kingdom to find another Devoured.
Though he was curious what the book wielding Devoured would do in a fight, Felix was feeling nostalgic over the enemy he had been fighting for the last few days so he hunted down one with a blade. This time, he settled on one with a longsword and a shield, drawing it over to the imaginary line they all seemed to be wary of. This fight was unfortunately far easier than Felix was hoping. They traded just a couple of blows before Felix struck forwards with more of a testing strike than anything. The creature lifted it's shield in response and the axe simply ripped right through it like it was paper. The Devoured that had planted itself behind didn't fare much better.
From that point onwards, Felix mostly avoided the Devoured with shields and sought out the ones that seemed to be better equipped. He fought ones with everything from great swords to daggers though never any with range. If any Devoured with a bow caught wind of him, he simply ran further than it could chase. He was trying to duel after all and archers were simply annoying. He did manage to figure out what most of the Devoured did though.
The ones with books were casters though they weren't very effective. Their spells failed more often than they actually worked making them more pitiful than anything. In a large scale battle where there were hundreds or even thousands of these casters, they could still be devastating as the spells that succeeded covered for the the ones that didn't in rotation. In a duel, they were a pitiful excuse for a fight and Felix simply put them out of their misery.
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Over time, Felix unintentionally ended up working his way all the way around the burnt area as he sought enemies of a higher level. The highest he managed to find was sitting at 538 but he was certain now that the Devoured's stats were not representative of their level. He suspected their level was a remnant of what they had been before they were Devoured but all he knew for sure was that he was not fighting creatures level 500 and up.
By his estimations and quick mental math, he figured they had at most half of their previous stats from before they had been devoured. Some of their stats had suffered more than others and some of them were more like a third or less. He also figured their endurance now had to be higher than it was previously. Even if he was level 500, he didn't think his skin would be as resilient as theirs was. It was possible it would be with some modifications but Felix had trouble imagining that now.
Another large contributing factor was that not only could he predict their actions, but he realized he could dictate their actions to a certain degree. The Devoured seemed to be in a state of constant reaction to the world around them without actually thinking though any of their actions. If he stepped a certain way or swung his axe from a particular direction, all of them reacted entirely predictably. Once he noticed the pattern, the fights became much easier and much less fun.
He even started fighting a couple of them at once. It took him half a day or so to get the hang of it, but eventually he could simply make them take certain actions that would doom themselves. He got up to fighting 3 Devoured at once before he got bored of them and decided to investigate the razed area he had been abusing for the last few days. He didn't see any Devoured in the area but he stealthed as best he could anyways because he figured it was safer that way.
Though he had ended up traveling all the way around the edge of the area, he didn't really appreciate how gigantic it was because he wasn't really paying attention to it. Now, traveling from the west edge towards the center, he kept wondering how much further he had to go. Checking his map, the radius of the burnt area reached almost a third of the way to the castle at the center of the kingdom.
Eventually though he reached the edge of the kingdom which was surrounded by a vertical cliff face made of the same stone that was being mined on the other end. The cliff face itself was also blackened lending more credence to the theory that an explosion had occurred. At the center of the burnt area was a large hole in the cliff face that was almost perfectly circular with oddly smooth edges to it, like the stone itself had been melted.
Felix couldn't see very far into the cave as he was relying on as little light as possible to avoid drawing attention to himself. Given the cave's location at the direct center of the blast radius, Felix figured it might have some clues inside. He made sure to prepare himself multiple spells to launch himself out of the cave just in case then carefully crept inside. His attention was split between making sure he was as stealthy as possible and paying attention to every sense he had.
The cave itself wasn't very deep, opening up into a large circular cavern about half a kilometer in. Before he saw it, Felix heard it, a deep rumbling breath followed by a gust of wind from an exhale. Felix immediately dropped his light spell and stopped moving but realized he was probably safe when the breathing rhythmically repeated itself a half dozen times.
Reconjuring his light, Felix directed it towards the center of the cavern and caught a glimpse of a massive scaly hide. He couldn't see enough of it to identify it yet but as he carefully revealed more of it, he realized it appeared to be a massive black dragon. It had two thick back legs with a long tail stretching out behind it. It's front legs stretched outwards with small wings extending out from the joints. Lastly, it's head was attached to it's body by a massive serpentine like neck covered in dull spikes that formed a dark mane. Felix didn't risk shining his light at it's head for fear it would rouse. The fact that it was sleeping at all was odd as Felix was certain none of the Devoured he had encountered had done so. They also didn't breathe, making this either the only exception he had encountered or it wasn't Devoured at all.
That thing has to be guarding one of the seals.
Felix wasn't ecstatic about having to fight the creature but he didn't really see any other option. He could try and steal the seal, if only he knew where it was. For all he knew, the creature was sitting on it, or even worse, had swallowed it. If he was going to have to fight it, Felix decided to prepare himself as best he could. He carefully backed all the way out of the cave and walked a few kilometers away from the entrance before finding himself a small nook where he could sleep. While he didn't think he technically needed to sleep ever, he could still fall asleep so he figured it had to have some effect.
He woke up and spent a few hours practicing forming mobility spells and force blasts to make sure he would be ready when he needed them. Finally, he spread the adjustments he had made to his bones throughout his skeleton, carefully testing the bones in his ears and jaw to make sure he didn't deafen himself. He ran through his stretches, workout and the dragon dance mostly to make sure his bones were functioning properly. They didn't result in anything feeling dramatically different though so steeled his resolve and skulked back towards and into the cave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .