~Selena Williams~
Selena Williams walked through the crowded streets with a wide smile on her face. Arthur had finally agreed to meet with Toshiro Tatsumi. Just ten minutes ago in fact, and the only thing stopping her from taking him there immediately was the fact that she no longer had a car.
Real smart move, that one. Real fucking smart, she berated herself. Get rid of the only mode of transport I have besides my legs. What the hell was I thinking.
In her defence, however, she had been otherwise preoccupied at the time with trying to locate the source of the immense ether discharge. Which I still haven't managed to do. And she hadn’t actually expected Arthur to be at home, only hoped for it. She wouldn’t be facing any issues right now otherwise. If Selena had been alone, she was confident in her ability to make it back home on foot. With Arthur in tow, not so much.
Right now, however, none of that mattered. She had a job to do, and she’d see it done properly. Still, there was no need to rush as she still had plenty of time.
But still, I don't get why he wanted two hours to prepare himself for a simple meeting. Is he that vain or something.
It seemed that there were a lot of strange quirks to Arthur their investigation hadn’t revealed. Maybe he was gay too, though she was pretty certain that was just her stereotyping.
~Arthur Ward~
Mask of Mirrors (RARE)- A mask that uses Ether of the echo affinity to camouflage your presence by echoing the profiles of those around you.
Primary mode: Make yourself nondescript and unnoticeable in a crowd. It will be nigh impossible for one to focus on you if they have less than 300 willpower and you will be easily forgotten if the observer has less than 300 intelligence. The mask is still effective when values exceed these ranges and when alone but no longer as an absolute.
Emblem mode: The mask can be stored as an emblem upon the body [VISIBLE/INVISIBLE]. In this mode, the mask prevents observation skills up to the RARE tier from working on the host.
Arthur read through the mask's description for the third time. It was currently in emblem form, a tiny red marking on his inner wrist that looked more like a scar than a tattoo. As a golden ticket holder to the Serako assembly, he'd been allowed to keep it along with his level 2 system unlock.
Now that he was able to use identify on it, he couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed. Sure it was great as an item overall, but he'd expected more from the first Rare item he'd observed.
Hell, I've already surpassed the 300 intelligence boundary. Doesn't that make the mask a little weak? Or maybe I shouldn't be using my own inflated stats as the baseline of comparison?
Arthur shook his head. In the end, it didn't really matter. The mask was just an added boon to what he'd truly wanted from the assembly. Level 2 access had been his original goal. Anything else was extra. Still, 96 hours was a hell of a long time to wait.
Still, today was the gift that just kept giving. After all, he'd just received his latest monster core from Selena. And if my suspicions are right, this'll probably be the most useful one I've ever got my hands on. Augmented regeneration core practically screams healing and that's currently my most advanced affinity. Maybe I can look forward to a new skill.
Looking down at the green core on his table, Arthur tried to think of the best way to go about his elixir creation. His last attempt had been on the precipice of disaster and he didn’t want a repeat of that experience.
Still, despite his close call with the Draconic core, Arthur couldn't keep his excitement under control. If he didn't manage to release it soon, he’d do something really, really stupid like try and eat the damn thing whole as if it was a piece of candy or a massive jawbreaker, except he’d probably break the entirety of his idiotic face if he went down that route.
Arthur didn’t really want to see if his body could handle something like that. He’d survived one stupid experiment too many lately and his luck wouldn’t last forever. He’d much rather go with his tried and tested method of using his blood to concoct an elixir, something he still didn’t understand. Luckily, he was soon about to meet a family of blood mages that could probably enlighten him on the matter. Or maybe they’d try to suck his blood like some b-rated vampires from a nineties movie, but Arthur highly doubted that such cliches actually existed in reality.
Right?
But still, this core is friggin amazing. Last time, it had taken all his considerable willpower to walk away from it without claiming it as his own, and now fate had delivered it into his hands without him having to raise a finger. Well, at least he hadn’t had to yet.
Augmented Regeneration Core (Rare)- Taken from a beast that had great regenerative abilities, this core now possesses a portion of that strength. A great treat for any growing monster.
The green orb synergised so well with his healing affinity and absurd vitality that he almost salivated at the prospect of receiving another healing skill after consuming it. It was practically guaranteed judging by its description.
Arthur took a deep breath, calming himself down. Don't count your chickens before they’re hatched. And I need to be careful with my skills. I only have two slots remaining under my healing affinity.
Sure, he could probably work towards changing and streamlining it before reaching level hundred and unlocking his class but was that an extra burden he was willing to bare. One hundred percent. A monster skill from a rare core's better than anything I'll be able to come up with myself. And Erico explicitly said non-humanoids generally possessed stronger, if fewer skills than their two-legged enemies.
It had something to do with them being more in tune with their souls and Ether as a whole. Today he was going to meet perhaps the most dangerous individual of his life and he’d need to bring his A-game out. Arthur wasn't naive enough to think the government was done with him yet either. They had their fingers all over this charade and he needed to be ready for the other shoe to drop.
Arthur had no idea what abilities a blood mage might have, and he had no intention of finding out by using his own body to receive their spells after angering the father-son pair. He’d need to be at his best, and that was why he’d requested that Selena give him two hours to prepare himself for the meeting.
She’d been bemused at his strange request but appeared oddly relieved that he’d asked for a delay for some reason. Perhaps she, too, didn’t really want to meet her boss. It had already been twenty minutes since the woman had left to who knows where, and Arthur was running out of time to absorb the core.
He sighed warily.
Arthur would just have to get this done the traditional way. He pulled out his trusty metal bowl and smiled at its minimalist design. It had been through so much and yet remained the same even after being used for his weird creations.
With it, he had made most of his elixirs and it had been the vessel that contained those powerful energies during the process. On a whim, Arthur decided to identify it. The results were not at all what he’d expected.
What the fuck! I knew IKEA had some good products, but this… this is fucking insane.
His thoughts trailed off as he read the bowl’s strange description.
Steel Bowl Of IKEA (Growth, Uncommon) Level 17/30- A bowl created with incredible devotion and exquisite skill, it has thrown off the limitations of its creation and gained the ability to grow and evolve. Having been the vessel of many elixir creations, all ingredients placed within it will have a greater chance of successfully merging.
“What the actual hell!”
This time Arthur vocalised his thoughts, in shock at the item in front of him. Arthur wasn’t too sure about the incredible devotion and exquisite skill part the item’s description contained. He was certain it was just a standard steel bowl, mass-produced by machines, but then again, it was IKEA.
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His mother had always been going on about how magical their products were when she was alive. Maybe they really were just that good. Arthur shook his head in confused exasperation. Whilst the bowl was an unexpected and great boon, he couldn't keep getting distracted.
He had a job to do.
Deciding to go about the process the same way he had last time, he prepared himself to use his newly created skill, shadow bomb. Its description simply stated it was incomplete, but it certainly made the magic more manageable. This time he’d be a lot more careful. Drawing out a much more conservative 250 ether instead of the previous 400 he had used from his reserves, he quickly checked them to see how he was currently holding up. He didn’t want to run out of juice before meeting Toshiro Tatsumi.
Ether: 2650/3230
He still had more than 2000 ether left in the tank, hopefully enough if things went sideways. Besides, most of his combat prowess currently didn’t depend on it.
Arthur was more than a little surprised at how easy it was getting to handle the strange magical energy compared to the first few times he had used it. Heck, maybe now he could attempt to dual-cast the same skill when using small amounts of ether.
Acting on a whim, he tried to direct his energy into two separate locations and was immediately rewarded with a splitting headache that felt like someone had decided to take a hammer to his head. He quickly stopped. Nope, not even close. He was still a long, long way away from becoming a true badass sorcerer, it seemed.
Using the 250 ether for its originally intended purpose, Arthur directed it through his shadow bomb skill, smiling at the ease with which he did so. Fuck, the system's still carrying my shadow affinity. And here I thought I was actually getting better. Clenching his fist, it only took seven seconds for the spell to be ready for usage. This part wasn't going to be any easier the second time around, though.
Clenching his teeth, Arthur braced himself for the pain as he unleashed his self-made spell. When it came, however, it felt more like a cut from a bad fall than the meat-blender experience it had been last time. Not one to complain about the pleasant surprise, Arthur quickly placed his hand over the bowl and waited the two minutes it took for it to fill up.
The steady drip of blood had actually slowed down towards the end as his natural recovery rate combated the shallow injury. Seeing how fast the wound was healing, Arthur decided to let nature work its course instead of wasting ether on Regeneration to deal with it. A bit of pain never harmed anyone.
Grabbing the green orb, Arthur slowly lowered it into the bowl, anticipation warring with his cautious approach. Like every other elixir he had made using similar ingredients, the monster core began to rapidly dissolve, quickly changing the colour of the solution into a dark green forestry shade.
I really need to find out what my blood is.
When the process seemed to be finished, Arthur identified his creation.
Augmented Healing Elixir (Rare)- An elixir created in the hopes that through its consumption, one can gain a portion of the strength that produced the core that went into its creation. Chances of success 89%.
Arthur crossed his fingers when he saw the chances of a successful absorption. Whilst 89% was indeed a very high probability, there was still an 11% chance that all his hopes would be dashed and the elixir wasted.
Praying for the best, Arthur drank the green concoction. He waited for a few seconds, before feeling the familiar rush of power he had felt every previous time he’d done the same save the one elite variant he’d consumed recently. It felt exactly like how he’d imagined drinking from the fabled fountain of youth would be like.
Almost like he’d drank pure vitality condensed into a liquid form. It gave him the false impression that he was immortal, unkillable. An undying being that would persist throughout all time and even beyond its ending. Those delusions of grandeur quickly vanished when the rush of power ebbed into a tiny trickle, before finally coming to a stop altogether.
Whilst his high vitality had perhaps expanded his lifespan, he was by no means immortal. If it even worked that way in the first place. Perhaps one day, he truly would be. Opening his eyes- Arthur hadn't even realised he’d closed them in the first place- he saw that he had a system notification clamouring for his attention.
With both excitement and trepidation waring inside of him, Arthur began to read.
You have acquired the skill Bestial Recovery (RARE) [Healing Affinity]
Bestial Recovery (RARE) level 1- At the cost of 75 ether per minute, increase your natural health regeneration to 1000% of the normal value
Secondary effect- Can target one individual at a time. At the cost of 1000 Ether, increase target's natural health regeneration to 300% of the standard value for 3 hours.
Arthur read the skill a second time and then a third to make sure his brain wasn’t fucking with him still, sure that he was seeing things. What the hell was wrong with this completely absurd ability. It was almost a cheat. No, it was a cheat. With it, he could recover his entire health pool in just an hour instead of ten and that was with the skill at level 1.
Sure it would cost just over 4000 ether to do so, more than everything he had at this point, to use the skill for that long, but as he gained more intelligence and his ether reserves grew, such an extreme cost would become a minor expenditure. He was also sure that the skill would become more cost-effective to use as it grew in levels and gained more efficiency. Rare skills had a cap at level 30. How high would the percentage multiplier reach by then?
In essence, with this ability under his belt, Arthur would become practically indestructible against foes his own level. Well, that only went for normal foes. He had no doubt that there were people out there in the multiverse that had similar if not greater advantages than him.
Heck, there were probably entire species out there that were born stronger at level 1 than he was currently at level 60. Arthur knew that whilst he was beyond the average Joe, there would always be someone stronger than him. Or maybe I'm selling myself short here.
But Arthur didn't despair. He had no intention of becoming the strongest individual in existence, only strong enough to achieve his goals. And if becoming the most powerful being in existence was what it took to do that, then that was what he would do.
He sincerely doubted he’d have to do all that though. After all, the system had brought him back easily enough, and from what he knew about it, its entire purpose was only for safety reasons, not resurrection. Still, Arthur was naturally beginning to worry that he wasn't progressing fast enough. He had been revived a matter of seconds after his life ended, much like defibrillation, whereas Rize had been dead for the past six and a half months now.
Arthur tried to temper his idealistic hopes but wasn't altogether successful.
Worrying about things he couldn't control, while completely normal, would get him absolutely nowhere, however. Instead of wallowing in regret and remorse, he had a cause to be happy. Arthur had just learned his most broken skill yet, and he hadn't even checked just how many stats he had gained from the monster core. Its secondary effect was nothing to scoff at either, but he saw little use in it right now.
The core was from a monster that had great regenerative capabilities, and that told Arthur that he would most likely be gaining stats in vitality from the core, and if he was lucky, maybe some in constitution as well. Checking his status, Arthur was not disappointed.
He was well beyond being shocked every time he checked it after absorbing a monster core at this point, but the amount of health he now had scared even him.
Would he even age anymore? Does it work like that?
Arthur Ward
Level 60
Unallocated Stat points: 168
Strength- 120(100)
Vitality- 400*
Endurance- 460
Constitution- 260(200)
Agility- 118
Intelligence- 323
Willpower- 190
Charisma- 95
Health- 7995/8000 (880(400)/hour)
Ether- 2652/3230 (323/hour)
Stamina- 4600/4600 (460/hour)
He had gained 240 stat points in vitality making it his second-highest stat now. Still don't know how exactly health works. My total shot up by over four thousand instead of steadily increasing like my ether does after I increase intelligence. As he had hoped for, he had also gained points in constitution, 60 to be exact. It made him wonder just how powerful the monster was that managed to form such a potent core.
He estimated that it was past the century mark and he wondered just who it was that had managed to bring such a powerful beast down. He suspected it was the ever-elusive son of Toshiro for some reason, although nothing told him why he thought that was the case. Maybe it was because everything Arthur had heard about the reckless young man pointed to this being exactly something he’d do.
Though killing a beast like that should be easy for the CEO of Zaibatsu Corporations. The guy’s probably got a fucking tank in his garage.
Arthur had no idea how powerful the man was exactly, but he suspected that he had already unlocked his class from power levelling, without taking into consideration the chances of unlocking a greater one by taking it slow. Most rich folks were going down that very path, after all. Or maybe it was because the man had known that he’d be offered an elite class straight off the bat. Arthur was sure that being a blood mage came with all sorts of insane advantages much like his own special affinity that allowed him to gain three more stat points per level than regular people.
Looking at his watch, Arthur sighed. He still had around an hour to kill before Selena would return. Perhaps asking for double that time was too much.
Oh well, a little preparation time never hurt anyone.
For once, Arthur could actually take things slowly, instead of rushing into things headfirst like he always seemed to do nowadays. Since the system had arrived on Earth around two weeks ago, he hadn't taken a single break, and looking into the near future showed that he probably wouldn't be for a long, long time. Still, Arthur wasn't complaining.
He woke every day having things he needed to do and went to sleep at night feeling a sense of accomplishment. But as he took a look at himself in the mirror, Arthur realised that perhaps he should really consider taking a day to rest.
His hair was dishevelled, and it was probably time to cut it again before it got too messy. His usually pale skin seemed to be almost bloodless with how white he had now become. It emphasised the dark black of his hair as well as the bags that were slowly but surely forming under his eyes.
His t-shirt arm sleeve was completely ripped and the rest of it was riddled with holes and covered in blood.
How the fuck did I see Selena looking like this and why didn't she say anything. She must think I’m some sort of murder hobo or something.
He really needed to take a shower. It was time to do some cleaning up.