Skill: Slip Step
Quickly evade with superhuman movements befitting an assassin.
Category: Martial Arts – Type: Active – Tier 10 Max
Effects: Your movements are agile and precise. Apply quick bursts of speed in any direction by expending energy to enhance your steps. The rate of acceleration is proportional to the tier of this skill and the stamina used. The effect is enhanced proportional to speed and focus. Cooldown time is proportional to time and magnitude used.
Cost: 5 SP/s to 500SP/s
Due to Heavy accelerate evolving into a skill completely unrelated to movement, Allen had lost his primary means of going fast. Thankfully, there was still another quick movement skill available to him, though it couldn’t really keep up with Heavy Accelerate. It was basically b-hop on steroids, and it ended up working quite well with his other movement skill. The increases to his movement speed stacked while both skills were active. The only part he hadn’t tested yet was the fall damage nullification, which was extremely suspicious and probably didn’t work the way he expected.
Skill: Feather Walk
Enhanced with magic, you are unheard and unfelt until it’s too late.
Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Active – Tier 10 Max
Effects: Reduces the sound and vibrations caused by all movement by 50%. Reduces the weight of your steps by 50%. Increases your movement speed by 50%. Eliminates any damage you take from falling if you land on your feet at an additional cost.
Cost: 5 MP/s while in use; >50 MP for additional effect.
Allen had still been angry at the System for blue balling his speed, that is, until he had seen what Accelerated Chaos was really capable of. His main attack, Chaotic Destruction, could fully overcharge in a few seconds, but coupled with Accelerated Chaos, the skill just became to much for his body to handle. Anything more than half a second of overcharge would destroy his arm further than Amelia could heal in a reasonable amount of time, and that was after his boosting skills like Chaotic Synergy.
Skill: Accelerated Chaos
Accelerate your magic into a chaotic maelstrom.
Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Meta – Tier 10 Max
Effects: Instantaneously increase the charging, casting, and propagation speed of your skills at the cost of stability and synergy; magnitude of 250%. Accelerated skills will become chaotic and difficult to control. Miasma can also be accelerated, giving it increased chaotic power at the cost of synergy.
Cost: 150 MP/s
Getting Slip Step to tier ten had only cost him eight skill points, leaving him with twenty-eight left over. At the moment, he was saving up his points for whenever he got around to his new Mentalist job, which didn’t even have any skills yet.
The other five, Nora included, were engaging about eight Mountain Trolls, all around level two-hundred. There was a constant stream of the Trolls coming out of the gates on the far side of pit while the stands full of homunculi cheered in unison. They were appearing at a rate just barely slower than the team of six could kill them, which was a good sign. Allen had decided to wait near the edges while the others corralled them together for him to take care of all at once. Hopefully that would be enough to convince Reggie to move onto the next monster.
Of course, other than Camila, none of them really had the attack power to take down the trolls quickly enough, but that wasn’t their job. Camila was focused on blitzing the monsters and drawing their attention, but after everyone’s recent level up, she couldn’t deal even a quarter as much damage as Allen could with Assassinate.
His idle thoughts were put on hold as an opening presented itself. Allen kicked off the ground and launched himself into a barely controlled sprint at the nearest Troll. Despite the loose, gravelly sand, his steps were solid and propelled him towards the backs of the eight monsters with considerable speed.
The Mountain Trolls roared and swung their massive weapons around like toys. Camila jumped up at the nearest one, nearly three times her height and swung her sword at its face. The monster attempted to raise an arm to defend itself, but the winding magical shackles Christopher had put on them prevented its arm from moving. Camila’s sword got a few centimeters through the Troll’s tough eyelid before she was forced to jump away from its gnashing brown teeth.
By then, Allen had already landed on she shoulders of his first target. Using Damage Control, he directed the force out in a cone shape for maximum efficiency. His dagger sunk into the back of the monster’s skull and instantly blew its brains out through its mouth and eye sockets. Assassinate and a few other skills activated, crippling and paralyzing the Troll, but not enough to kill it outright with how well the things regenerated.
Allen jumped over to his next target, doing the same before the first had even crumpled to the ground. On the fourth split-second overcharged Chaotic Destruction, Allen felt his wrist shatter and his shoulder pop out of its socket. Accelerated Chaos canceled out any benefit he had gotten to his Chaos magic synergy, and it caused his attacks to blow back on him even more than before, but the extra damage he could do was worth it so long as Amelia was on standby.
Allen quickly switched his dagger back to his right hand and jumped to the next troll. A dagger through the back of the head downed the fifth one, but by then two of the other three had taken notice.
Allen landed on a pane of Christopher’s solid miasma and lunged for the last monster he could still use Assassinate on. At the same time, Camila, Ty and Nora went to finish off the ones that had been taken out. A lance of miasma struck one of the remaining trolls in the shoulder, preventing in from swinging its axe at Allen as he jumped between barrier pads. His target tried to turn around, but the huge troll was too slow, and Allen changed the angle of his footing on the barrier and darted around behind it, landing on yet another barrier.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
How exactly Christopher was able to keep up with his movements, all in the span of a couple seconds, was a question Allen had for later. He jumped up again, barely managing to bring his dagger to slice at the back of the monster’s neck. Expanded Awareness and Killer Instinct sent a jagged pain through his mind, but Allen was able to reverse his grip, avoid a few stone tosses from another troll, and activate Damage Control to compress the force of his slash into a thin blade. His body contorted in mid air while his dagger cleanly lopped off the sixth troll’s head in a spray of thick yellow blood. Four stones whizzed past him as he spun in the air and kicked off another barrier before landing on the floor.
“Axe one first!” Allen shouted over the roars of the two remaining trolls.
The other one, carrying a rusty chain with a spike on the end, was immediately strangled by Christopher’s magical shackles. The monster screamed and thrashed in rage, but it only managed to get itself more tangled up in the spell.
Allen wasted no time throwing himself at the seventh troll. Without Assassinate, it would take more than three hits to disable it, and he had to do it fast. They regenerated much quicker when still conscious.
The monster howled and roared, but Allen’s mobility coupled Christopher’s barrier magic was just not on a level that the slow and clumsy Troll could contend with. Throwing needles to the eyes all but ended it, allowing Allen to deliver a fully overcharged and accelerated Chaotic Destruction into the monster’s weak spot: the base of the backside of its skull.
The blow snapped the Mountain Troll’s head forward where it stayed, dangling limply as sticky blood gushed from every hole on its face. In exchange, Allen’s right arm was utterly demolished and thrown into a state of fiery agony that even Dead Calm had difficulty with. Still, he landed gracefully on the sand from three meters up in the air, his knees barely buckling at all.
He looked to his side as the seventh troll fell bonelessly to the ground behind him. Ty and Camila barreled into the eighth troll while it continued to struggle with its arcane bindings. Camila didn’t have the same DPS as he did, but even something like the trolls could only last so long against a constant pummeling from a mini-fridge-sized hammer while pinned underneath Ty’s massively boosted weight.
Amelia jogged up to Allen’s side and wordlessly started healing the remnants of his arm. She could now heal lost fingers and similar wounds, but a whole arm was still too much for a Basic Healer job. Thankfully Allen’s arm wasn’t missing, just liquified on the inside and smashed into a gory mess at the end.
Another troll’s roar echoed from the gate on the other side of the pit while Christopher bombarded the seventh troll’s twitching body with bursts of pure energy. Allen glanced over the few dozen pasted troll corpses as yet another one lumbered out from the dark corridor behind the gate.
“This is getting kind of stale, Regis!” Christopher shouted with his voice amplified somehow.
A poof of black smoke signaled the Automaton’s appearance on the platform above the opposing gate. “That is Lord Regis to you, my friend,” he said, sweeping into a bow. “And yes, you may take a break, I’ll be waiting anxiously for your return!”
Amelia snorted to herself as she finished patching up Allen’s less damaged left arm.
With a flourish of his robes, Regis pointed a finger at the last Mountain Troll before it could get too far. “You!” he said with a booming voice causing the troll to slide to a stop and look over its shoulder hesitantly. “Your time to shine will have to come another day, I’m afraid.”
The troll hung its shoulders and let its huge cleaver fall into the sand.
“Get a move on,” Regis continued, hands on his hips. “Back in you go!”
The sulking troll plodded back into the gate and out of everyone’s mind. Regis left everyone with a cheeky wink before disappearing again.
Your group has defeated 52x Mountain Troll – Level 200 - 215
Your contribution: 92% Damage
For fighting 52 enemies in a team of 6, you receive a 8% XP bonus!
For fighting an enemy above your means, you receive a 50% XP bonus!
Awarded: 65985 XP
Congratulations, you are now level 144…146
Requirements met: 44398 XP
Awarded: 10 Stat points – 2 Skill points
The messages showing up signaled the end of the battle. Allen felt Dead Calm start to drain away, more quickly in the beginning, like always.
“Two levels is a lot less than eighty-eight,” Allen mused, “but that’s how it goes. It explains why very few make it to level six-hundred.”
The group casually walked out of the Endless Gauntlet, something they would never be allowed to do without “knowing a guy,” so to speak. Allen wasn’t exhausted like he had been last time, but he was still tired, and the experience had clearly dried out. He used the last few moments of enhanced clarity from Dead Calm to wonder about what he would spend his time on before Andy got back to them.
“Everybody else except for Nora and Camila only got one level,” he thought, glancing around at the group. Shoam obviously hadn’t done anything but read his book the whole time, which was a solid deal for him. “On the subject of Nora… We should probably have a chat.”
“Will we even be able to get the level three-hundred on this dungeon?” Camila asked once they had reached their camp outside the colosseum. “’cause it’s only three-hundred itself.
“We’ll go to a different one once you reach two-hundred,” Shoam muttered, not looking up from his book. It was some soppy elven romance novel.
Camila and a few others just grunted in response as they flopped onto their mats.
Allen caught Nora by the shoulder before she could sit down. “How about you come with me for a minute?” he asked, trying not to sound creepy or threatening. It was sort of an awkward thing to say considering he was being fully sincere and didn’t have plans to assassinate her.
“Oh… okay,” Nora said, brushing her black hair to the side. Her eyes had widened slightly, and Allen wasn’t sure if it was a spike of fear or held-back excitement.
The two quietly walked away from the little camp, only drawing passing glances from the others. Allen only cleared his throat when he had gotten almost a hundred meters away. At that point only Shoam would be able to hear hear them, and easily too, but that was fine.
Allen pulled a water flask out of his inventory and took a long sip. “So, what makes you want to be my apprentice?” he asked as he leaned back on a tree and fixed Nora with a neutral stare. He knew his normal look was already unnerving enough, though maybe not in his younger body.
Name: Nora
Human – Rogue – Level 137
The girl shifted in place for a moment and Allen raised an eyebrow. At some point she had gotten herself a cup of tea and took her time with drinking it so she could stall.
“Um, well… You were the one who killed Salvatoro and saved the Gotou Empire from the violent coup four years ago! You freed me and my family from a life of suffering and slavery!” she said, suddenly finding her enthusiasm. “I remember watching from the fortress, that night when that traitor’s army came to raze the capital, only to be utterly decimated by a silent figure in white. Why wouldn’t I want to train under the legendary White Wraith himself.”
“Wow, okay then,” Allen thought and sighed, remembering the devastation that the civil war had caused. “I get it,” he began, waving his hands. “But first of all, you know they only call me that in the East where you’re from. I haven’t been around that area enough to spread my real title, and if I’m going to mentor you, then you should know.”
Nora clenched her teeth with an expression of equal parts excitement and embarrassment.
Allen sighed. “This should be enough to tell if she’s serious,” he figured. “Specter. That’s my ‘official’ callsign as a Spade. I’ll be the one to give you yours if I decide you’re ready.
The girl’s eyes had gone wide at some point. There was a moment of shifty silence before she spoke. “The White Wraith and S-Specter are the same person!? You’re one of the most infamous assassins in history!”
Allen sighed again, “Why do you sound enthused about that?” he asked himself. “That comes with being a ruthless and unpredictable killer,” Allen added, trying to steer her back on track.
Nora narrowed her eyes for a moment. “I… didn’t think you would be around my age,” she said and sipped her tea in thought.
“Oh? How old are you?” Allen asked, suppressing a grin.
“Seventeen.”
“Ah, well I’m twenty-eight,” he replied, causing Nora to choke on her drink.