Miracle of miracles, the trench was finally done. Gloe was on the stone supply team now, moving large shaped rocks from the stonecutters to the teams building the walls. Actually, in point of fact, Gloe was the stone supply team. There were no other members anymore.
Becoming more powerful by killing monsters and people was just common sense in this world, but Gloe was now almost certain it was also a completely natural phenomena that the gods simply imposed structure on. After all he had come to this world with minimal formatting, and it had still proven extremely efficacious for him.
After killing all those demonlings during the last battle Gloe had experienced the largest power increase in his life to date. It had been so significant a jump that he had been able to more readily perceive the changes, and distinguished at least three distinct elements. It had taken some time to figure out, but strangely enough his new assignment had actually helped.
The stonecutters finished a load of material, so Gloe took his place. Carefully he situated the chains running from the cart across his chest. Then he began to pull. He was much stronger now. Much. The cart began rolling despite the enormous load of rock it held.
For lack of a better term killing things improved one’s stats. All of them. Every natural capacity, ability or aptitude was improved. Gloe had done testing as discretely as possible, and he seemed to be, again, for lack of a better term, simply better at everything. Not just faster and stronger. His senses were sharpened, he was smarter, drawing came more naturally, he could compose decent music and had learned how to juggle.
He suspected this was the natural course of things. From what he had heard abominations tended to only have one ability, and they didn’t develop more over time. The successful ones (generally those who had signed on with the nobility and had a useful ability) tended to be characterized as extremely competent and well-rounded. Middle-of-the-roaders, all-rounders. Some of that was probably because it wasn’t wise to outshine the nobles around them. Still, it was interesting.
By contrast the stories of chosen and sojourners made it seem as if they acquired new, discreet and distinctive abilities as they leveled. Their existing abilities improved certainly, but they tended to have, again for lack of a better term, builds. They were specialists, and oftentimes min-maxers. They tended to go for mutually supporting skills and superlatives. Even those who were more balanced seemed to be utilizing a class system of sorts. They were fire wizards, or swordsmen, or speed demons. Something specific, with obvious strengths and weaknesses.
In the bazar they had offered very similar options. Perhaps that was part of what the gods did. Formatted the natural order for sojourners and chosen. Why he wasn’t really sure. There were too many possibilities. It felt like he was on the right track though, and given how much smarter and more intuitive he’d become he didn’t want to discount the idea. Something to continue to mull over.
The chains across his chest began to twist, so he wiggled then straight again. There was the second thing. Given the weight he was pulling the chains should have cut right into his body, his own strength slicing him in half. His body had become incredibly tough, proportional to all his other upgrades. Still, given the increased force he could put into activities now he should have constantly been dealing with cuts and bruises, to say nothing of real injuries when he made a mistake or did something beyond the pale (like right now.)
Fortunately the chains weren’t exactly even touching him. He’d decided to call the energy that was accrued through leveling-up ‘life energy.’ He took it from fallen enemies, and it suffused into him, making various improvements. As he’d learned from killing the C-Types, if you killed enemies who had gathered a good deal of ‘life energy’ you got more yourself, so although getting some was great presumably it put a target on your back. The additional side effect helped compensate for that.
‘Life energy’ generated a sort of protective field that wrapped around your body. It basically was HP with a degree of DR. It didn’t keep you from touching things, but it reduced incoming damage by a flat amount, then absorbed and negated as much remaining as it could. Doing so began to deplete the field. Gloe had discovered he could manipulate it to a degree. He was completely unable to bare or otherwise leave undefended any portion of his body, but if he generated excess field he could focus it to provide directional protection against attacks, or even temporarily infuse it into objects he was touching (directly or indirectly.)
Given its properties he could have called it ‘spiritual energy’ or ‘ki,’ but he didn’t want to go full fucking weeb, so he designated it ‘shroud’ instead. The ramifications of shroud were numerous. First and foremost, its damage reduction was extremely effective on incoming non-magical damage. He just no longer had to really worry about accidents or a sudden attack from someone or something completely random. He thought he remembered them saying something similar in the welcome speech they’d given when he’d first arrived at the bazaar. Something about not even non-magical guns being able to hurt you once you’d leveled up enough.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Of course there was a way around this. He’d breathed magic into a bone shank and tried to dig through his shroud that way. It hadn’t gotten through, but it had made much more progress. He couldn’t attack his shroud with imbued shroud energy, but he could attack other things and it improved the damage he did substantially. Presumably, even in the absence of magical weapons, shroud-imbued attacks could chip away at a target’s shroud.
Now that he knew what to look for (metaphorically speaking) he had noticed that all of the chosen guards and sojourners stationed here had shroud. A few had less than him, but most had more. The other guards didn’t seem to have much at all, if any. Someone without shroud (or a bunch of magical items) would have an extremely hard time in a fight against someone with shroud. Certainly it could be worn down by purely physical or energy-based attacks, but it would have taken a while. Gloe could stick his hand into a fire now without getting burned immediately.
Shroud regenerated fairly quickly too. A life-energy-filled body seemed to generate it much in the same way a normal body generated the energy to live. So a good night’s sleep restored quite a bit. Gloe wasn’t certain yet how (if at all) his regenerative ability affected shroud recovery. He hadn’t been able to deplete it fast enough to experiment.
Reaching the wall Gloe parked the cart and hooked the chains running from the load to the much larger chain hanging from the wall. After ensuring it was secure in the pulley, he began to hoist the load. Regardless of his strength the mass differential should have completely prevented this, but that was yet another way he’d found to utilize shroud. By extending it into the ground below him he could temporarily disperse or divert force. In this case the force that should have hoisted him off the ground was spread across everything he had imbued, allowing him to cheat mass and stand pat. He’d been practicing using it as much as possible, as he assumed it would help him weather blows that would otherwise send him flying. (It also kept him from gouging holes in the ground every time he jumped, pushed or pulled something heavy. He’d done that at first, and the guards hadn’t been too happy.)
Once the load of stone was at wall level he carefully secured the chain to a massive anchor. Then, rather than doing the boring thing and walking around to the ladder, he ran up the chain. He was able to choose the fun route due to the third aspect of leveling up- improved abilities.
As his overall physical and mental capabilities had increased they had overshadowed his primary and secondary capabilities to some extent. Eating emotions, recouping energy and regenerating were useful, but given that he was faster, stronger and more coordinated he could generally expect fights to be over quicker, so they were less necessary. Similarly he now ‘naturally’ or at least passively/continually had agility that exceeded that of a squirrel, so lizard squirrel boots didn’t do much for him.
Or wouldn’t have, if his abilities hadn’t leveled up as well. The range of his ability to devour emotions and pain had increased substantially, as had the amount he could pull simultaneously. This sped up his regeneration, to the point where it was beginning to become tactically useful beyond just keeping him from collapsing from pain etc.
In a similar vein his essence-breathing skill had improved. He could breathe in more at once, making it easier to comprehend new magics. He could also breathe out more at once, making the creation process faster. More importantly, he had better control, allowing him to ‘fit’ more magic in an object and begin to fine-tune the characteristics of the magic to some extent.
The improvised shoes he was wearing were not, strictly speaking, lizard squirrel boots. That had always been short-hand of course, but now it applied even less. Technically they were ‘lizzard squirrel vertical ascent/descent essence’ boots. He didn’t need the agility or speed of a squirrel (or squirrel-esque creature,) he just wanted to be able to run up walls, trees, chains…etc.
Once up on the wall he imbued it with shroud and pulled the load of stone onto the wall and secured it. The first time he tried it without shroud he’d just pulled himself onto the load. The first time he’d tried it with shroud he’d underestimated and ripped a big crater out of the top of the wall.
Techniques were not part of leveling up, at least not for him. Perhaps the sojourners’ experience was different, but as he become more powerful he didn’t automatically understand how to properly utilize his improved capabilities. He’d learned that increasing his raw stats also opened the door to new moves and tricks. It was just a question of experimenting and training.
That’s why he was attacking his tasks so aggressively. The guards thought he was showboating in an attempt to intimidate them, but that wasn’t the case at all. If he had been he wouldn’t have carefully concealed his damage and combat experiments. He didn’t want to reveal too many of his new capabilities if he could help it. Even with his improved learning aptitudes though, knowing theoretically how something worked was no substitute for a good deal of practice.
Working allowed him to get that practice in. Mostly on basic movements, but for that reason they provided a solid foundation. If he had his fundamentals down he could afford to practice combat techniques in an actual battle. Moving smoothly would combine with his regeneration to give him an excellent chance of being able to escape if a situation got too ugly. Just as importantly, it would allow him to engage in a place of his choosing. He had the sense there were observing eyes focused on him of late. If he was right he didn’t want to give them much to work with, so he would wait for the next attack. Until then he’d be content to train peacefully.