V – 00002.7 – Reaper Or Devil.
Finally the chains of infernal mana flew back into the glyphs that covered my skin. I watched them recede into my core with fascination as the seemingly solid material just dissolved into my glyphs only to reform within my core.
Once the flicker of fire entered my core the ember expanded into a ghostly version of the man I had just killed. He was wrapped in my infernal mana the chains restraining him like a prisoner.
The shades who had become a part of my core's landscape seemed to suddenly gain a focus; their aimless wandering around the deathly atmosphere changed.
They both began staring longingly and with a deathly stillness at the ghost wrapped in chains, and I could feel within them a deep hunger, a voracity for life to reclaim what they lost.
A haptic buzz interrupted my observations as the mass of notifications I’d been ignoring for a while now increased further, and I finally relented and opened my notifications.
[You have been awarded a Title: Reaper]
[You have collected an epic resource. Restrictions on the mutation table have been unlocked up to epic.]
[Mana Sense has levelled]
[Mana Control has levelled]
[Mana Control has levelled]
[Unarmed Combat has levelled]
[You have gained a skill through repetitive action.
[You have gained a skill through repetitive action.
[You have achieved a rare feat: Reapers Will]
[You have achieved a rare feat: Soul Eater]
[You have Achieved an uncommon feat: It Comes Naturally]
God, I really need to check these things more often and take some time to read through my whole character sheet eventually. Alright, let’s see the details on these.
[Title: Reaper: You have usurped the job of death and taken the spirit, core, and soul of a natural life form. Those who take on the role of reaper are often great empaths or terrible monsters. Only time will tell which you are.]
[Standard reward has been changed due to unique circumstances.]
[+ 2 death, + 1 spell, + 1 to death affinity rank.]
[Spell selection cannot be made at this time as you have no available options to draw from.]
Well, the spell thing sucks; I guess it’s the same thing that’s happened with my legacy perks. “Next,” I said, moving straight on to the achievements since the skills didn’t really ever do or tell me anything useful.
[Feat: Reapers Will: You have torn the spirit from a once-living being moments after their death with nothing but your raw willpower and expert control over the forces of death and turned them into a shade.]
[+ 3 Wisdom, + 2 Death, Restricted classes related to the death discipline have been unlocked]
[Feat: Soul Eater: You have torn the soul from a once-living being moments after their death with raw infernal magic and dragged it into your core despite not being of infernal origin.]
[+ 4 Infernal, Restricted Classes related to the infernal discipline have been unlocked]
[Feat: It Comes Naturally: You have taken the next step as a Chaos-Born and pulled the core from an Order-Born to be used as you see fit.]
[Enchantments that affect the base Chaos-Born are less effective on you.]
Name: Viktor Bloodstone
Title: [Dying Breed]
Level: 4
Age: 18
Species: Human [Legacy Beast]
Archetype: Occultist
Classes:
==== ATTRIBUTES ====
Strength: 11 (+3)
Agility: 11 (+3)
Dexterity: 10 (-1 + 3)
Vitality: 10 (-1 + 3)
Sense: 13 (+6)
Wisdom: 20 (+6)
Intelligence: 15 (+3)
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Death: 10 (+7)
Infernal 12 (+10)
Glamour: 8 (+3)
==== SKILLS ====
Animal Instinct – 2
Unarmed Combat – 5
Mana Sense – 5
Mana Control – 7
Stealth – 1
Tracking – 1
==== SPELLS ====
==== ABILITIES ====
Parasite – 1/7
Unbound 1/4
==== MUTATIONS ====
Selfish Gene – Unique
Trait Eater – Rare
Immutable – Uncommon
Mutagen – Uncommon
Crushing Maw – Common
Lupine Pulmonary Enhancement – Common
Bone Claws – Common
Adrenal Vault – Common
Dense Musculature – Common
Bone Fangs – Common
Stocks:
[Musculature: 324]
[Bone: 139]
[Blood: 78]
[Viscera: 135]
[Free Attribute points: 0]
[Skill Points: 3]
[Legacy Perk: 1]
[Spell Point: 1]
[Cores: 1]
[Souls: 1]
[Shades: 2]
I finished scrolling through my notifications and shuddered as my new stats sank in; a deep cold infected my bones before being pulled into my core, making the omnipresent death fog thicken and i felt it grow in within me quantity.
The increased death stat left my entire chest cold and numb; the runes in my body flashed for a moment as I felt new links growing into my infernal chains that surrounded my core, and through them I could feel the captive soul.
My mind felt more flexible, stronger as I thought it was easier to control where my mind wandered on a visceral and discernable level, and flexing my will even slightly had a significantly stronger effect on my mana than I used to be able to achieve with serious thought and effort.
“Holy fuck… or unholy fuck I suppose getting three points to a mental stat feels fucking amazing. Hey system or… Ikarus protocol: What is a Chaos-Born and an Order-Born?” I asked, uncertain of what exactly was meant by that.
[Chaos-Born: these are creatures who are born to a race that inherently prefers chaos, personal power, and solitude over order, strength in unity, and socializing.]
[Order-Born: these are creatures who are born to a race that inherently prefers order, strength in unity, and socializing over chaos, personal power, and solitude.]
[Chaos-Born are entitled to certain advantages. Order-Born are not, such as the mutations table. Order-Born are entitled to other advantages, most prominently the system trade function, the job system, and the ability to settle and control cities through the system.]
“Interesting, so humans are Chaos-Born? That’s… unexpected."
[Humans are not Chaos-Born; the human race is Order-Born.]
“Interesting. Why did my achievement refer to me as Chaos-Born?” I asked, only to be ignored.
“Well, fuck me then. I guess the system thinks I’ve taken up too much of its time, or maybe it’s just not designed to answer a dumbass who doesn’t know why he isn’t considered a human.”
“Let’s be honest here, Viktor. What’s more likely, that sparing a few seconds is too much for a seemingly omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god-like entity, or that you’re such a fucking dumbass it either cannot be bothered with you or it was never designed to have to interact with something that can talk yet somehow possesses the intellect of a unicellular organism?"
“Wow, fuck you too.” I said, walking deeper into the forest, planning to get started on hunting breakfast while I attempted to drown out the sound of cackling in my head. Depressingly enough, it seemed having an insane wisdom stat did nothing for the voices.
Stalking through the forest, I could already feel the effects of my tracking skill working together with animal instincts; little traces and signs of life that my senses were drawn to now came with a certain knowledge of how that kind of track was made.
A broken branch wasn’t just a broken branch. I could now guess the size of the creature that stepped on it by the damage and shape of the cracks. Disturbed dirt suddenly told me whether or not something I was following had hooves, pads, or claws.
Eventually I got onto the trail of a large hoven creature. I stalked its trail for an hour, silent, and careful not to leave a trail of my own. I found it, then, a massive stag. It had long, white fur that suggested albinism, with massive horns jutting from its head, seven sharpened tips on each side.
Fuck me, that thing's the size of a truck, I thought as I looked at it, squinting my eyes slightly to block the glare of the rising sun.
I crouched lower and began silently circling around my prey, checking that the area was clear aside from me and the stag, eager to not get caught by the dick again by a massive predator.
Circling the creature again, once I was satisfied we were alone, I positioned myself behind it before breaking out of my cover into a sprint and leaping towards the ginormous stag. I flew off the ground into a massive jump as I stretched my hands out. I watched its ear twitch, and its head shot up, but far too late, by the time it kicked its legs against the ground to run, I had landed on its back and started savaging its ribs with my claws.
The creature bucked and kicked hard, jolting me up into the air, leaving me clinging to the creature, my claws the only thing that kept me attached, then the rest of my body came down out of the air right as it bucked again.
Its ass slammed into me with the force of a hammer, and knocked the wind out of my lungs, as well as throwing me off it and across the forest floor.
Gravity seemed to take a personal and sick pleasure in my misery as it found me in the air, a place my race was clearly not allowed to be, and immediately rectified that by slamming me into the floor. I felt the joints in my body creak and groan as I forced myself upright only to be met with a fresh horror waiting to inflict itself on my body.
The stag's horns were glowing. I watched the air fog as it huffed at me, and then fourteen thin beams of bright, shining white streaked towards me like arrows. “What the fuck!” I screamed as I brought my arms up in front of me and pulled on my core harder than I ever had before, making my tattoos flare into existence as black smoke was ejected out of them in massive quantities, forming a barrier of swirling darkness that shifted between smoke and liquid between me and the shining bright lasers.
I felt the beams hit the smoke shield, and my entire body recoiled as it took the hit, and I began sliding back in the dirt, the ground giving way under the force as I felt my core rapidly depleting mana being siphoned from me faster than I knew was possible. Eventually, the smoke that protected me grew thin enough that one of the beams punched through it and pierced my shoulder, bringing with it a searing, hot pain then another and another went through and hit my leg and grazed my side.
The rest of the beams thankfully didn’t manage to penetrate before they let up, and I pulled the dregs of remaining death mana back into my core. “Holy shit, we shouldn't have survived that Vik.” I huffed out unthinkingly as the smoke screen retreated, giving me a vision of my prey, which was breathing heavily but, based on the building glow in its horns, was about to see if I could survive that twice.
And looking into its eyes, I was pretty sure we both knew I most certainly could fucking not. I squeezed my adrenal vault hard and felt fire rush into my veins as the world slowed dramatically, the light that was slowly building before was barely crawling up the creature's horns to my altered perception.
I exploded forwards, twisted my body as I lunged, and delivered a brutal punch to the stag hitting the creature in the snout, making its entire head twist and snap sideways with a blow that almost slammed its head into the ground.
I launched into a vicious flurry of attacks, punching left and right and following my attacks with elbows and backhands as I returned my hands to my body. My body groaned under the strain I was subjecting it to as I refused to relent my furious assault, the caliber of which would have made PETA proud.
I reached out and grabbed its glowing antlers, ignoring the burning sensation that filled my palms as I did, and pulled, twisting my entire body and flexing every muscle I had hard as I drove all my weight into the beast and twisted it sideways, pulling it off balance and slamming its head into the ground; its body followed moments after hitting the ground with a thud.
I released its horns as it started to thrash against me and pulled on my core again, filling the tattoos on my claws with freezing cold black ice. I struck down using my hand like a spear to the monster's throat.
My claws ripped through its hide and the muscle that surrounded its neck as deathly frost froze the blood in its veins, turning the small amount that managed to escape into red crystal as I claimed its life.
I heaved a heavy breath as I felt the essence of death begin to creep up its form, and barely a moment later, the freezing aspect of death I had covered my claws with cracked and disintegrated as my core lost the ability to sustain it any more.