[Curse of Pain] activated.
Those words echoed through my mind right as the [Dominate] spell completed and took hold. I didn’t have even a second to consider them before the full force of the [Saber Wolf] crashed against my consciousness. The strain was lessened thanks to my mental skills like [Concentration], but even then, the feral thoughts of an animal were strangely foreign and difficult to pin down. Each struggle of my mind against his sent a shiver, an echo, a ripple of pain through his senses. This wasn’t so bad on its own, it would’ve been beneficial even, but those sparks of pain resonated through the curse and came back to me.
Every sliver of pain that came my way from the wolf felt double what the curse gave to him. The pain racked my body, grinding me to a halt in the thick undergrowth of the forest. Then, like a bomb going off in my mind, it burst outwards to the [Saber Wolf] ten-fold. A message pressed through the system and hovered in my vision despite having disabled notifications.
Curse of Pain - Passive Skill
Granted to those with immense pain or suffering, your abilities bring pain to yourself and those around you. Whether you like it or not, your power is heightened through pain.
The wolf howled in agony, a halting warbling sound. I didn’t have to understand him to know he was begging for mercy. Let him beg. I spat blood into the dirt.
My eyes were shut tight, trying to block out the deep stabbing pain that accompanied every breath. The self imposed blindness prevented me from seeing just who finished off the beast, but several tense moments went by and the pain faded away. Over the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, I could just barely hear someone calling my name. One of my names.
“-ent! Vincent! Are you okay?” Leigh panted for breath, standing right in front of me, back turned to our freshly fallen foes.
“Yeah, I’m fine” I managed to grumble, swaying unsteadily on my feet. I allowed the slew of notifications from the fight to catch up with me, and beckoned Cain over to support me so I didn’t fall.
Congratulations!
Your party has slain a [Saber Wolf - lvl 29]
Your party has slain a [Saber Wolf - lvl 32]
Your party has slain a [Saber Wolf - lvl 41]
I guess Leigh and Cinder killed the lvl 26 without any outside help. That’s good, she needed to be able to defend herself. Or learn to not get into trouble in the first place.
Congratulations!
[Void Mage] has leveled up to 24.
[Void Mage] has leveled up to 25.
Class threshold reached, please reach safety to initiate class upgrade protocol.
I let loose a gentle sigh of relief, and felt my exhausted body grow just a tad stronger with the new levels. The stats themselves were less important to me right now than checking for skill level ups. I did make sure to dump my free points from being a [Half-Elf] into my Willpower stat to increase mana regeneration, but the rest of the stats will do what the class intends them to.
Congratulations!
[Blessing of Mana] has leveled up to 40.
[Curse of Pain] has leveled up to 40.
[Combat Footwork] has leveled up to 15.
[Keen Senses] has leveled up to 23.
[Concentration] has leveled up to 40.
I also received notifications for every skill associated with [Half-Elf Child] leveling up to my new maximum except for [Cutie Patootie].
[Soul Healing] has leveled up to 40.
[Void Affinity] has leveled up to 25
[Chant Omission] has leveled up to 15.
[Memory Therapy] has leveled up to 40.
[Efficient Minions] has leveled up to 39.
[Abyss Affinity] has leveled up to 35.
[Clarity] has leveled up to 40.
The slurry of dings and notifications was nearly deafening, but the impact of true combat on leveling rates was nothing to take lightly. My head was still throbbing, but through the haze I reached out for Sigil.
‘Did anyone else level up?’
I wasn’t sure if Sigil could see his fellow minion’s statuses directly, but as a spirit his ability to sense mana should’ve allow him to read ambient levels.
‘The dog and I have both leveled once. Your little bird is ready for his species advancement. He distracted my opponent for a brief moment, and I believe the level disparity worked in his favor’ Sigil hummed softly back to me, putting my mind further at ease.
“We can afford to rest here for a moment then” I sighed audibly, letting Leigh know that things were okay. I sunk to the ground, leaning myself heavily against Cain. His shadowy almost-fur was surprisingly soft, even if it was completely devoid of body heat. My eyes felt heavy, and the adrenaline high of battle was quickly diluting. This body was not yet accustomed to the rush, perhaps I took things a bit too far.
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*******************
I didn’t know how long I dozed off for, but when I finally blinked my eyes open, the sun was much further in the sky, some time after noon. Leigh was sitting nearby, idly poking at a smoldering fire that Cinder was sitting atop very proudly. She looked worried.
“Leigh…” I grumbled, my voice sounded course and more distant than I expected.
She jumped slightly as the silence suddenly broke. “Oh, you’re awake. Good” Leigh sighed and handed me my own water skin, recently refilled. At least she didn’t waste the whole day.
“Why are you here Leigh?” I gulped down several mouthfuls of water to help my voice return to normal. My entire body felt strangely dehydrated.
She took a shuddering breath and turned to look me in the eye. There’s a calm resolution in her eyes I didn’t recognize. Maybe she’s finally growing a back bone.
“I’m here because I want to be, Vincent. You don’t get to decide for me.”
I started to retort, but her withering look told me that’s a bad idea, and she just continued. “I spent our whole lives thinking you were a genius, but gods above you can be so dense some times.” Leigh sighed and reached forward into the fire with Cinder. Her fingers closed around a lump of charcoal, and she held it like a glittering gem, just staring into the embers for a moment..
“My mom’s dead, my dad is gone, and I’m supposed to just watch as the only friend my age gets up and leaves? Even worse, leaves me with his parents and their pity, while I watch the entire village whisper about how I’ve been left behind? Not a chance.”
Leigh dropped the coal back into the fire and closed her eyes. I could tell she’s grappling with something, but I truly thought she would be better off without me, so I’m clearly not the best judge of her emotional state.
“I’m scared of you, Vincent. You’re terrifying” Leigh paused and lets those ominous words hang between us for a while.
“You know things you have no way to know, you have powers you shouldn’t have. You’ve saved my life. Twice! Yet you spend more time with dead animals than you do with me. No matter what I do, I can’t figure you out.” Leigh’s voice started to waver, the heavy emotion in her words causing a minor voice crack and I could see her fighting back tears.
“I talked to your dad, he told me about the bandits you fought together, how you reacted so heavily at first and then seemed to pretend it never happened the next day. You didn’t even tell me about it…” She trailed off.
“If I leave you on your own, you’ll end up casting the wrong spell in front of the wrong person and then you’ll either be dead or hunted from here to the eastern coasts.” Her final words were softer, almost whispered.
“Don’t leave me. Please.”
I didn’t want to interrupt her, but we sat in silence for what felt like ages so eventually I ask. “Are you done?”. She nodded silently.
“I know. I know all of it.” I groaned, stretching my weary arms over my head.
“You’re right, in a sense, but we’ve been over this. There are things I can’t tell you, things I won’t tell you” I took a deep breath and stalled for a moment to figure out how best to say what I needed to.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Leigh. I genuinely thought you’d be better off. You can come with me if you want, but don’t ask me to change who I am. I need to figure out who that is before I start trying to change..” I sighed and my gaze fell to Cain. I recalled how disgusted Leigh was when they first met, and how much that had hurt.
My magic was gross to many people, it could be intimidating and off putting, I knew that. I wouldn’t give up one friend for another though.
My attention returned to the fallen [Saber Wolf] corpses.
“You can come along if you want to, but if it ever gets too much you have to promise me you’ll go back home.”
“I want to stay.”
“Good. I have a lot of work to do and a second pair of eyes might keep me from making dumb mistakes. We’re both craftsmen after all.”
*******************
I spent the next several hours breaking down the corpses of the [Saber Wolf] pack we defeated and despite her clear revulsion at the practice, Leigh didn’t complain about the mess. She even offered me a knife to use after seeing me struggle to do it with a few spells clearly not designed for cutting. It’s messy work, but very quickly I had the beasts separated into distinct piles.
Congratulations!
[Wayfaring] has leveled up to 11.
Bones and spikes, hides and flesh, and offal. My fledgling skills at butchery had not done well in preserving the quality of anything except the bones.
Zombies draw attention, and the rotting smell that would inevitably pervade them all makes staying hidden difficult. That doesn’t mean the flesh had no uses though. Leigh and I would be able to sell the hides to a leather tanner in Alberack, even in it’s somewhat pitiful state.
The meat was mostly useless to me, but the residual mana from a leveled monster made it somewhat nourishing to spirits. Sigil and Cinder did ‘consume’ it, though Cinder’s method of consumption is just burning the meat into a lump of unrecognizable carbon. Sigil actively ate it though, and Cain did as well, even though he gained nothing from it. His budding intelligence clearly told him something was going on, but the poor fool can’t figure it out.
The offal was just carrion, bits of organ and intestine that I truly had no use for. If we were closer to a city it might be worth hauling it to an alchemist for the minuscule value they’d likely pay, but I had no desire to preserve the quickly decaying organ meat that long.
The bones were my true prize. Slender, strong beyond their means, faintly twinged brown beneath their unbleached surface, fresh and full of possibility. There were too many of them to carve an individual matrix on each skeleton, I simply didn’t have time to recreate Cain’s original creation multiple times and still keep pace to Alberack. I’d run out of food before I finished, and casting [Create Water] or similar spells to make my provisions last longer would slow down my work. I couldn’t fall into that spiral.
No, unfortunately these beasts would be mass produced, but that didn’t necessarily mean inferior. I had a plan on how to make them work together with Cain, but the ritual would require a very complicated spellform. Not that difficulty ever dissuades me, but that means my impromptu company would have to stay here longer than I would like. Unless of course I could somehow convince Leigh to participate. Her assistance would certainly help move things along.