Ten more guards were charging towards him, ignoring the escaping slaves. The horse-like beasts that they rode slavered as they ran. Jonathan knew that he would not be able to defeat them all, but he had a different idea. Pointing his hand towards the horses, he expelled a hundred points of mana outwards, sending a massive burst of blue flame towards the beast. If these creatures were anything like the horse back on Earth, this would be effective. Predictably, the monsters balked, and reared, throwing their riders off their backs. With the riders dismounted and dazed, it was child’s play for Jonathan to kill them all. With that, the battle was over, and essence entered him, enough to push him up another level. In addition, he had gained a new skill.
You have gained a new skill!
Unravel:Epic
Force your mana into the spellwork of another mage to unbind their spell. If your attack is successful, their skill will detonate.
It was a simple anti-magic ability, albeit one with an offensive aspect. Judging by how paltry the mage’s defenses had been, Jonathan guessed that they had simply leveled their Intelligence and Wisdom, rather than actually learning more about the mana that they wielded. However, there had been a strange energy imbued within the attacks of the mage, an energy that reminded him of metal. They had not been made out of pure mana, rather out of some sort of aspected energy.
Jonathan sighed, and moved from carriage to carriage, breaking the bars on them and letting the slaves escape. As they ran off into the ash, he made his way towards the mage’s carriage. Opening the door, he stepped inside, spotting his goods at the far end of the room. In addition, there was a good portion of money secreted around the room, that added up to a little bit over a hundred Leviathan Marks. Jonathan still had no idea what the currency was worth, but any was better than none. As soon as he put his armor back on and donned his gauntlets, he felt more comfortable. His armor was shredded and torn, but his gauntlets were untarnished. The armor would have to be replaced eventually, but he was hopeful that the gauntlets would last for a while. It seemed that within the same Tier of power, there were different qualities of items.
Jonathan quickly packed up his belongings and left the carriage, glad to see that all of the slaves had escaped. He had no wish to follow them. They would have to protect themselves on their own. He knew that he was being cruel and callous, but he had already saved them from their predicament, and he had more pressing matters to attend to, the most important of which was allocating all of the free points that he had accumulated. He quickly opened up his status sheet, having not done so in quite some time.
Jonathan Harlowe
Tier 1
Human(Basic)
Outsider:Tier 1
Level 25
(60 free points)
Strength
99
Dexterity
82
Constitution
88
Resilience
88
Intelligence
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
89
Wisdom
86
Divinity
2
Health:880/880
Stamina:990/990
Mana:890/890
* Titles
Chosen of Sarnakthros:Unique
Nascent Divinity:Celestial
Righteous Killer:Rare
Underdog:Rare
* Skills
Smite:Legendary
Unravel:Epic
Mana Drill:Rare
Focused Scry:Rare
Runes of Power:Rare
Redirect:Uncommon
Identify:Common
* Pathway Skills
Martial Arts:Student 4
Mana Manipulation:Student 4
Runecrafting:Student 3
Truesight:Student 1
* Quests
Hellbreaker:Impossible
Jonathan was almost at one hundred points in Strength, and before doing anything else, he was resolved to increase it to that level. He did not know why, but he had a strange, unexplainable urge to reach one hundred points in the stat. He quickly invested four points into it, in batches of two, and raised it to 105. A burning feeling started deep within his muscles, and it quickly ramped up in intensity, becoming a fiery agony deep within his body. Soon it grew beyond what he had the capability to bear, and he began to scream. His muscles melted within him, and reformed out of the ashes, stronger than ever before. The whole process had only lasted half a minute, but it had been a tortuous half minute that had felt like an eternity. A notification appeared, and Jonathan quickly opened it, his eyes watering from the pain.
You have passed the First Threshold of Strength!
Strength is a concept that is known to all. It is physical might, and the ability to make the world bend to your desires. However, there are many forms of strength, not least of which is mental strength. For passing through the threshold, you have shown that you possess that latter strength in abundance.
Jonathan felt far stronger than he had before, although the change was not reflected on his stat sheet. A few seconds later, a message appeared.
Thresholds are qualitative increases in one’s statistical strength, prompted by reaching 100 in a stat, and every order of magnitude after that. Passing a threshold in a stat makes that stat 1.5 times more efficient than before.
No wonder he felt so powerful. As he perused his stat sheet, he realized that there had been one change. His stamina had increased to 1545, a marked increase. Jonathan still had the necessary stat points to reach the threshold in some of his other stats, but he put it aside for now. He had no wish to go through that pain again so soon, even with all of the power that it brought. He would have to do it soon enough anyway, as he leveled. Instead, he added ten lots of two points to Strength, bringing it up to 135. He immediately felt more powerful, and he punched the wall next to him, driving his fist deep into the wood. A smile rose unbidden to his face, and he laughed. He decided to save the remainder of the points for when he had crossed the next few thresholds in his other stats. It was just more efficient that way. However, the pulsing pain in his hand from where he had struck the wall reminded him that his Resilience was lagging behind his Strength. He added 9 points into it, taking out six points from his pool. The throbbing decreased, and he sighed in relief. That was a good thing to know for later. He could not let his physical stats drift too far from one another, or else he would weaken himself.
Jonathan closed his interface and left the cart, wanting to get as far away from this place as he could. If these slavers had been part of a network, then they would be coming, looking for answers. Jonathan was ridiculously overpowered for his level, but he wasn't invincible. Far from it however. If a large enough, or strong enough, army came looking for his head, there was little he could do about it. A twinge of sadness entered his mind as he saw the corpses of the slaves that he had failed to save. Each of them felt like a personal failure to him, even though he had tried to rescue them. Still, the majority of them had escaped, although he had no idea where they would go. He justified his abandonment of them by telling himself that it would be far more dangerous for them to have traveled with him. He wouldn’t have been able to slow down his leveling speed to protect them, meaning that they would lively have died to the monsters. No, he had made the right decision. It did not meant that it made his feel especially good about it.