Uriel confirmed that she was a demon, so then why…why hasn’t her body disappeared like how Ilinore’s did? I pondered.
Rubbing my finger along my chin, deep in thought, I came to a conclusion.
“Wait a second, Ilinore said she was projecting herself to the lower floors. So if this was Eshner’s real body, it makes sense that she’d remain after dying.” My eyes sharpened at the bloodied corpse. “So that’s why she looked so scared at the end there…she died for real.”
My fists tightened at my sides.
“Sigh~ No point in getting mad about that now, I want to see if this will work.” I placed my hand over the body and spoke firmly, “Devour.”
{User has successfully consumed a high-grade enemy, one of the Demon of the Tower}
{Unique reward has been unlocked:} - {Ability: Beasts Gluttony} - {By consuming slain enemies, the user will be able to replenish a portion of their health}
My eyes hovered over the text with awe and suddenly I recalled where I had seen that before. The horrific scene of Eshner tearing through that dead adventure left a pit in my stomach and I nearly felt like hurling.
“Uriel, will this skill work with my arsenal ability?”
{Yes, user will be able to replenish health through the use of Arsenal}
A sigh of relief left my mouth as I closed the window and turned to the next one.
The skill menu suddenly opened and with it, a massive burst of new skills entered into the mix. Locked skills from monsters I had never seen before and some new skills from ones that had been sitting in my skill menu for ages all linked together in a messy web.
“What are all of these skills from monsters I’ve never killed? They’re all locked though, so why bother showing them to me at all?”
{Beast skills have all been added to Arsenal, existing beast-related skills have all increased in proficiency}
“If this is the kind of reward I get from killing a demon, I wonder what would have happened if we did kill Ilinore back then?” I muttered.
The shadow Howler came to mind and suddenly its entire skill tree was displayed out in front of me. Most of it had already been unlocked and levelled up quite a bit but to my surprise, even more skills had been added to its skill tree.
“These are unlocked though…is it because I already had the Shadow Howler to begin with?”
My head was spinning, the more I read, the more questions I seemed to have.
“Rei! Are you alright?”
Liv ran over to me and came to a swift halt right in front of my face, she grabbed my shoulders and patted me down. Her eyes frantically scanned all over my body and led to continuous gasps for every wound she found.
“I’m okay–trust me. I’m not dead yet.”
“Don’t joke like that! You went ahead and fought that thing by yourself, are you crazy?!” Liv yelled.
Her furious screams were silenced when my hand illuminated the ominous glow of mist in my palm. I held it up and the drops began to sprout out of the swirling mass of purple mist.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
A large pelt made of white and black stripes floated out into the air, I caught it and watched as more items were released.
{High-Quality Fangs from Beast Demon Eshner}
{High-Quality Claws from Beast Demon Eshner}
{High-Quality Pelt of the Beast Demon Eshner’s Fur}
{Monster Core of Beast Demon Eshner}
“So even demons can drop monster cores…I somehow thought she’d be different.” I muttered.
“What was that just now, with your hand? Did all those monster drops just fly out of your body?” Liv’s eyes widened into disbelief.
She grabbed my hand and held it closer to her face to examine it, this was followed by a series of tugs and poking.
“It’s my skill! It’s something new that I got, I promise there isn’t anything else…”
{User has surpassed Level 20}
{System Upgrade has been awarded, will you accept?}
Woah! Uriel’s ready to upgrade just like before, does this mean he’ll be on downtime like before? I guess it won’t be so bad now that I’m more confident in activating my skills with thought alone.
I nodded my head in agreement and the message screen vanished.
I best keep this to myself…I don’t want Liv to get angry at me again.
I tried opening my stats but as I feared, Uriel was completely unresponsive. Not that it mattered, with Titan’s Helm around I wasn’t worried about a thing. Liv helped pick up the items I acquired and we walked over to the main group.
It was twice that I had been saved by one of the larger guilds in Istoria, I felt uneasy being in that situation again. Unlike before, their group seemed quite rowdy.
The knights and mages recovered from their fights with loud cheers and before I knew it, a huge commotion had erupted through their victory over surviving. It felt less like we were in the Tower and more as if they were in some tavern celebrating.
The cheers and high-strung mood quickly fell to a tense silence as a pair of footsteps cut through their celebrations. The presence of one individual managed to silence the entire guild attack force, it was a power I had only seen once before.
So that’s their guild leader, Titan Helms master…Adder.
I didn’t know much of him, nothing but his name. From what I had heard, he was pretty private and never engaged in any interviews.
He walked towards me, his eyes locked on me with a cold stare but I didn’t let it phase me. We came face to face and he was slightly shorter than me but our eyes were no more than a breath away.
I felt Liv’s nervous amber stare laser-focused at the side of my head, I’m sure her heart was racing as fast as mine was. After a brief moment of hesitant grinning, Liv finally stepped forward and extended a hand to me as an introduction.
“Guild master, this is–”
“This is who made you worry so much?” He interrupted her with a strict tone. “I didn’t really care too much what happened to you but clearing this irregular event was our job…”
A powerful aura of rage surrounded his body. His eyes focused on mine,
“If you ever get in our way again, I’ll end you there and then.”
Before I had a chance to speak, he turned away and walked off. The room let out a collective breath as the tension finally seemed to have left the room. Liv’s eyes were honed in on her feet and both hands were gripped at the fabric along her waist.
For him to have made her that nervous…is that guy really that strong?
I forced a smile, “He seems like a strict boss.”
“He’s just upset about not being able to complete the mission with those crazy strong monsters. It was pretty surprising, I’m glad you beat it though. You’ve gotten stronger, Rei.”
“Thanks.”
My cheeks burnt as she spoke. Suddenly it was my eyes that dropped to my feet, the more she spoke the harder it was for me to look at her and not get embarrassed.
Liv’s shoulders began to fidget, she dragged the tip of her shoe along the ground in a playful manner. “So why were you here in the first place, I thought I saw you registered with a party before?”
“I was in the middle of my Class Up ceremony when those two monsters appeared…wait, the ceremony! I completely forgot about it, there’s no way I can complete it now!” I grabbed the sides of my head out of frustration.
“Don’t worry about that, Mr.Alos.” A feathery voice spoke out.
Mei walked towards us with a clipboard in hand. She finished writing something and held it close to our faces. Both Liv and I leaned forward, my eyes read over the angelic handwriting and a strong ache in my chest had lifted along with my worries.
“I…I passed?!!”