Ronan's angel asked very strange questions.
It made no sense that his angel, who was linked to the only divine beast that had managed to survive more than three days in the last few centuries, didn't know what a divine beast was.
None.
"Ouch," he muttered in pain as he felt the blunt edge of the skeleton's wooden sword against his arm.
He had been distracted thinking about his lady.
His lady... for her he had to be stronger. He redoubled his attacks with the mace, intending to grind his adversary with a dozen quick and furious blows.
The skeleton merely parried almost all of them with its wooden shield and dodged the rest.
"It's a simple wooden shield. You, with a metal mace, are hitting with all your strength and you're not even able to break it. How bad," he muttered to himself.
Because yes: Ronan talked to himself. Normal, he had spent almost his entire life locked in a basement without company. Moreover, his invisible friend, the one who began whispering things to him after a few years, turned out to be real.
The skeleton counterattacked and hit Ronan in the stomach; he had tried in vain to deflect the sword with the mace. He didn't even touch it.
"Break!" he requested while doubling over in pain.
Okay, he had given the undead a training sword without the slightest edge, but still the impact hurt.
The skeleton, for its part, stood still, looking at the mage who had summoned it with the black flames burning in the empty sockets of its eyes.
"Ronan, you are too weak."
Of course, a lifetime locked up and chained. Okay, the chain was a couple of meters long, allowing him to move around the basement, but still. When they read his chart to his parents on that fateful day in childhood when the light ended, he already showed promise in intelligence and wisdom. His strength and constitution were more or less average, he was neither sickly nor frail.
Ronan Velbrun
Race: human
Age: 3 years
Level: 1
Constitution: 4
Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Agility: 2
Wisdom: 6
Health points: 4
Mana points: 6
Magical affinities: darkness (high affinity).
Skills: None.
Spells: None.
But the years of confinement wreaked havoc on his body. When he placed his hand on the stone slab at the academy, he was able to confirm that he had earned a state of weakness. (And he also read the hidden acolyte skill, something the professor was unable to see).
Ronan Velbrun
Race: human
Age: 17 years
Level: 2
Constitution: 4-2
Strength: 3
Intelligence: 11
Agility: 2
Wisdom: 10
Health points: 2
Mana points: 10
Magical affinities: darkness (high affinity).
States:
Bonuses: None.
Weaknesses:
Acute malnutrition. -50% constitution points.
Skills:
Low-level poison resistance. Passive. +2 points poison resistance.
High-level iron will. Passive. +3 Int, +1 Wis.
Initiated-level acolyte (hidden skill). Passive. The dark god speaks to you. +1 tier to dark curse spells.
High-level scholar. Passive. +3 Wis, +1 Int.
Spells:
Medium-level exhaust. Decreases the target's attack speed and strength for 5 minutes. This effect depends on the target's magical resistance. Without magical resistance, the reduction is 30%. Range: in a circular area with a 20-meter radius, a single target. Due to the effect of the Acolyte skill, Exhaust becomes high-level. 40% decrease for 5 minutes. Range: in a circular area with a 30-meter radius, to all targets within a second circular area with a one-meter radius. Cost: Medium-level: 2 MP. High-level: 3 MP.
High-level animate skeletons. Requirement for necromancy spells: high affinity for darkness. Summons up to a maximum of x skeletons of a creature whose bones or corpse are present and within an 80-meter radius of the animator. x = summoner's Int. Cost: 1 MP for every 2 skeletons.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Low-level summon skeletons (evolution of the animate skeletons spell). Requirement for necromancy spells: high affinity for darkness. Summons a skeleton of any creature the summoner has previously animated within a 10-meter radius of the summoner. The skeleton's level will depend on the summoned creature, the summoner's intelligence points, and the summoner's level. The skeleton's level can never exceed the summoner's. Cost: 3 MP.
High-level life suction. Sucks 1 HP from the target in contact for every 1 MP spent.
High-level life drain (evolution of the life suction spell). Drains 1 HP from the targets within a 10-meter range for each target and MP spent. The total mana cost will depend on the number of targets selected by the user within the range area.
Low-level dark flare. Generates a cone of flames that deals 2 points of damage to the targets it reaches. The cone's reach distance can be regulated, being inversely proportional to the cone's angle. For a 90º angle cone, the distance is 60 cm. The damage is amplified or reduced based on the target's vulnerability to the darkness element and/or its magical resistance.
Initiated-level void. Creates a tiny black hole that sucks in all nearby matter. Range: a circular area with a 5-meter radius. Cost: 10 mana points and meeting the requirements. Requirements: 1- Serve the dark god. 2- Blocked.
The truth is that confirming what he already suspected, in terms of his skills and spells, was very satisfying. You have to understand him: in his world you only felt things, but without going to read your chart on a stone slab, you weren't able to know if they were real. So, he had felt weak and starving, with less and less strength. He had also been advancing in his magic studies and learning new spells. That iron will skill was his own determination not to give up, not to break. Along with the life drain spell, it was what had kept him alive. When he was very young, he felt his life energy slipping away, that hunger and cold were too much. A rat hiding in a corner, seeing him like that, approached to tear off a piece of his flesh. But he didn't want to die, so desperation, hunger and his high affinity for dark magic caused the rat, when it sank its sharp teeth into his leg, to stay stuck there, unable to move, while it was its life energy that Ronan was sucking out. It didn't quench his hunger, as those first years his parents seemed to want to kill him since many days they forgot to throw him his crust of dry bread, but it helped him to stay there. And there were more rats. After years of using that spell... of course he leveled it up. It may have even evolved because there came a point when he didn't have to be in contact with the rats. In any case, it was shortly after surviving thanks to that rat when he first heard his invisible friend. What he thought he heard was a surprised whisper, something his friend was saying to himself, not quite understanding that it was a small child who had been able to reach him and get his attention. Later, that voice increased in decibels and praised him for his desire to stay alive. It also delighted in his suffering, anger and despair; but Ronan didn't know that.
Ronan had evolved a lot during those two months at the academy. For starters, he had postponed his plan to fill his parents' house with undead in order to take care of his lady. It was a plan he had cherished during long periods when he didn't know if it was day or night, when they would stare at him and comment on how it was possible that he hadn't died yet. When they wondered if they should go in to try to cover that trickle of water dripping down a wall. When they scolded him for staring at them and ended up leaving him a bowl with some crust and a bit of meat that was supposed to last him for days.
However, how was he going to take care of his angel if an insolent and conceited student like that Darius had almost killed him with a punch?
He had to get some mastery that would increase his strength and constitution. So there he was, in the gym, training with a skeleton he had summoned.
The truth is that the first day he did it, it caused a bit of a stir. There were other students using the gym and, upon seeing him, they ran scared to call a professor. The professor came, stared and waited for Ronan to order his skeleton to stand still. He asked him what he was doing.
"Training to improve my body."
"You could learn defensive spells."
"Those spells will serve me better if I strengthen my body."
The professor said nothing more, just nodded thoughtfully and left. Word spread that during mealtimes and in the afternoons, Ronan occupied one of the gym's courts and no student tried to tell him there was a sign-up sheet to reserve it. No, not to Ronan, whose affinity for darkness was so intense that a dark aura could almost be seen surrounding him. Not to Ronan, who if you told him you had reserved that court, he might curse you or plot some evil against you. Undoubtedly, with that affinity, he was capable of the most merciless, mean-spirited and imaginative revenges.
So the students fought over the other courts while leaving Ronan alone.
And Ronan, at that moment, had sat on the floor, taken a sip of water and kept turning over in his mind the matter of his lady. Could it be... Could it be that she was testing him, to see if he knew that one of the passive properties of divine beasts was precisely to enliven the element of related dungeons?
Maybe.
He wasn't going to draw conclusions without having more data.
And training was very hard, because he had no idea how to fight hand-to-hand. The combat professor had flatly refused to give him private lessons or invite him to her select group on Wednesday afternoons. Even though he, when he had asked her, had told her that he needed to become stronger. Not the reason, but that it was of vital importance.
Catrina had been very rude, she had all but kicked him out unceremoniously, saying that he neither had the stats for it nor the courage to fight hand-to-hand. If she said that because of the exam in the dungeon, that was unfair. He didn't do more so as not to take the kills and experience that rightfully belonged to his lady. The thing is, faced with the professor's blunt refusal, he had to leave and start training on his own.
He was filled with rage remembering it. His joy at having left the basement, at mingling with other human beings, at seeing the Sun, the world and even butterflies flying through the gardens, had not dissipated. No one seemed to treat him well: the students avoided him, even she did. The birds and butterflies shunned him. But he was outdoors, he felt the warmth of midday, he could sit on a bench or on the grass. And look, if all the little animals shunned him, so did the insects. He was at peace. Besides, if he felt lonely, he could always summon one of the skeleton rats he had learned to play with as a child to not feel loneliness so acutely. The rage at the professor's unfair treatment dissipated with the memory of the first time his tutor—the one his parents sometimes sent him, when they saw that he was still alive, to study—saw him talking to a skeleton rat. Ronan would give them names and treat them as if they understood him and had their own personality. The tutor rubbed his eyes twice, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He asked him where he had learned that spell, the boy told him that his invisible friend had taught it to him. The tutor left and didn't return for days. When he did, he brought him a gift of a bunch of magic books and told him to never tell anyone about that friend.
Yes, it was a good memory, one of the few happy ones he had. He stood up. He remembered that his angel had been waiting for him at the entrance to class and had taken his arm. His heart raced, even more so remembering that he had almost confessed to protect him. His lady cared about him. He mattered to his lady.
"Continue," he ordered the creature with renewed energy.
Immediately, it advanced towards Ronan, shield and sword ready.
While he continued to take hits and tried in vain to strike the skeleton, Ronan recalled the scene with the headmaster and the crown's representative. They had also called him in. First, a few days after the entrance exam, to recruit him. Ronan of course refused. He didn't want to help his parents at all. Well, the idea of signing the agreement to break it and have their lands taken away tempted him; but he preferred to take revenge in a more direct way. Something like having the king do it wouldn't satisfy his long years of cherishing ways to make them scream. The second time was recently, precisely to ask him if he had had anything to do with what happened during the practical exam. He answered that he would like to have that power. They made him put his hand on the stone slab again, to check if he had any spell or skill related to the darkness of dungeons.
He didn't have it.
Reluctantly, they let him go, but not before cautioning that they'd be watching him closely. The crown's representative, since he had turned down the job, looked at him with disdain.
Ronan didn't care. He was happy when his angel sought him out or approached him. He loved being free, feeling the warmth of the Sun, having a whole library of books at his disposal.
He kept fighting with all his might. Surely he would soon feel healthier and stronger.
Ronan Velbrun
Race: human
Age: 17 years
Level: 2
Constitution: 4-1
Strength: 3
Intelligence: 11
Agility: 2
Wisdom: 10
Health points: 2
Mana points: 10
Magical affinities: darkness (high affinity).
States:
Bonuses: None.
Weaknesses:
Moderate malnutrition. -20% constitution points.