*Ding*
You have slain [Brown Wolf – Level 6]
Monica looked at the beast that had come lunging for her from the soft underbrush of the forest.
Thanks to the Quest, they had followed the arrow that had appeared in a window in front of Monica, but soon, the direction had started pointing away from the dirt road and straight into the thick of the forest. That had not only slowed them down but also meant that everyone had to stay on guard.
Thankfully, when the Brown Wolf had attacked Monica, she had simply raised one of her Twin Phoenix Bracers and let the animal bite on the hard gold of it. The wolf’s teeth had not even scraped the material when Monica grabbed the throat of the monster and set it on fire.
Sadly, the monster had been weak and had granted Monica no Skill Level, no Class Level, nor any interesting reward.
*Ding*
Auto-loot is on.
You obtain:
Wolf’s Meat x1
Wolf’s Fur x1
Wolf’s Tendons x2
Silver Coins x2
She let the animal go, falling to the ground with a thud, and sighed at the tree on the side, looking up.
"Ted, come on. Come down."
Ted sat on the tree's branch and looked down at Monica, standing with the dead Wolf at her feet.
"Dude, how do you know there's not more around?" he cried.
"Don't make me burn down the tree and waste Mana," Monica sighed. "Come on, come down. And where did you throw the spear? Come down, pick it up, and I'll hold the next Wolf down so you can kill it. Didn’t you say you wanted to get stronger?"
“I play music!” Ted complained. “I don’t kill wolves!”
Monica rubbed her face and turned toward the others.
“Dotty, you’re up next, then,” she sighed. “Tertius, you close the file. Ivor, don’t use fire while we’re in the forest. Lucca, Rochus, you two make sure Heidi doesn’t die to a wolf.”
Heidi had not enjoyed the trek into the deep foliage and Monica’s lackadaisical attitude about their safety. However, she was too afraid to voice her concerns, and, to be fair, the woman had charged the two men to be by her side at all times to make sure she wouldn’t die from a wolf’s sneak attack.
Monica crouched beside the dead wolf before it could disappear between noxious fumes, examining its fur with one of her Steel Talons. The Beast had been weak, yes, but something about the way it moved had caught her attention. She could feel traces of corruption lingering in its flesh, even after death.
“Ted..." She glanced at the nervous bard-to-be. "Try not to scream if you see another wolf. You'll bring the whole pack down on us."
"I don't scream," Ted protested weakly, climbing down the tree. "I just... express surprise. Vocally. And with great enthusiasm."
They soon resumed their walk, with Dotty now walking beside Monica.
Ted had Inspected the sword that Dotty had gotten from Sandoval, a Rare sword. Heidi, with her usual grace, had said that giving such a precious artifact to a child was a waste of money.
Twilight's Edge (Rare)
Durability: 35/40
Enhancement Slots Available: 2/3
A blade forged in the remnants of a dying star.
Enchantment #1: Antimagic Edge - Twilight’s Edge can destroy spells by cutting at their core.
Special Ability: Twilight Blade - Twilight’s Edge massively increases the efficacy of Antimagic Enchantments.
Apparently, if what Ted said was to be believed—which Monica did believe—it was an extremely rare enchantment to possess. The young man had also reluctantly said that the Class he himself was supposed to gain had been one to do with Antimagic.
Thinking about it, Monica stopped the group and turned toward Ted.
“Ted, you said your father had set up a Class for you but that you never got around to fulfill its requirements, right?”
“Yeah,” Ted shrugged. “It was an Uncommon Class that would evolve to Rare once I got to Level 100. It’s a pretty big deal, dude. My dad worked hard for it.”
“Do you still know its requirements?” Monica asked.
“Yeah, dude,” Ted frowned. “Why?”
“You said the Class had to do with Antimagic, and Dotty here has a sword that is full-on Antimagic. Just tell me the requirements so we can teach her the Class.”
At that request, everyone went silent.
Ted just stared back at Monica with wide eyes.
Tertius suddenly cleared his voice, trying to clear the awkwardness.
“Milady, Class requirements are extremely secretive. If what Ted said is true, the Class would be worth several thousand in Gold, if not more. Antimagic Classes, no matter how weak initially, can become the greatest nightmare of a caster or any Class relying on magic. They’re hard to level up and find, but once they get going, they’re quite terrifying.”
“Ted,” Monica said, looking away from Tertius. “I—”
“It’s fine,” Ted suddenly said. “You saved my life, you gave me the Loot Chest, and I got my mother’s dream Class by doing nothing. This is the least I can do. Plus, I’ve always believed it’s better to share this kind of knowledge. It doesn’t make sense to hoard it. So, listen up.”
Everyone now perked their ears.
“There are four requirements: you need to have a fighting Class already. My father planned for me to accept the best Class at my disposal before fulfilling the requirements. This will give specific variations of the Class. Second, you need an Antimagic weapon with an Antimagic Enchantment, which Dotty already has. Third, you must fight a Caster with a Class rarer than your current Class. Fourth, you need to kill the Caster with a blow that destroys a spell of theirs and takes their life.”
All of the present deflated except for Monica.
For that to be an Uncommon Class, it surely had some very hard-to-fulfill requirements. Only someone born with great resources in their family could hope to, first of all, get the right weapon, get an enchantment on it, and then find a Caster they could kill like that.
However, the redhead just looked at Dotty with a wide smile.
“Well,” Monica said, summoning a wisp of Obsidian Flames into her hand, “we have everything, don’t we?”
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
* * *
Dotty looked very nervously at Monica.
They had been arguing whether killing her, an Avatar who couldn’t die, would actually count toward acquiring the Class. But Monica, after the first few minutes, had them spotted in a small clearing and told Dotty to simply try it out. There was no real downside to death for Monica—not one she had found out about yet, at least.
Therefore, the redhead now stood a few feet from Dotty and held a ball of Golden Flames a few inches from her neck that she had gotten out of the Nightshade Battle Wear, exposing her milky white skin for her to strike it down.
Before today, Dotty had never noticed how delicate Monica’s skin looked. Even though she was older than her, the Phoenix Healer’s skin looked like porcelain compared to Dotty’s, which resembled flawed copper.
“Come on, we don’t have all day,” Monica said.
"I don't know about this," Dotty said, gripping Twilight's Edge with both hands. The sword felt heavy despite its slender build. "What if something goes wrong?"
"Nothing will go wrong," Monica assured her. "I'm immortal, remember? Just aim for my neck while I maintain this flame. The sword's Antimagic properties should disrupt the Golden Flame and fulfill the Class requirement."
Tertius shifted uncomfortably behind them. "Milady, perhaps we should—"
"Tertius," Monica cut him off without looking away from Dotty, "I appreciate the concern, but this is a perfect opportunity. Come on, Dotty.”
"Just... swing it?" Dotty asked, raising the blade uncertainly.
"Like you mean it," Monica nodded. "Imagine I'm a real enemy. You won't hurt me permanently, but you need to strike with all you’ve got if you don’t want me to survive it.”
Dotty took a deep breath and adjusted her stance the way her father had taught her. The sword gleamed with an otherworldly sheen in the forest's dim light.
"Here goes nothing," she muttered, then lunged forward with all her strength.
The extremely powerful Rare blade passed through Monica's neck in a clean arc, disrupting the Golden Flame as it went.
For a moment, everything went still.
Dotty's eyes widened as a notification appeared before her.
*Ding*
[Class Requirements Met: Spellbreaker (Uncommon)]
Would you like to accept this Class?
YES|NO
Dotty accepted it without further hesitation.
*Ding*
Spellbreaker has absorbed your previous Class.
*Ding*
You have acquired the Class – Hunter of Magic (Uncommon)
A hunter who specializes in neutralizing magical threats. Your attacks and your traps can disrupt spells and magical effects, making you the natural enemy of spellcasters.
+4 STR, +2 END, +4 DEX, +2 WIS and 2 Free Attributes per Level
"It worked!" Dotty exclaimed, then turned to where Monica's body had fallen. "Oh gods—"
* * *
Ted had placed Monica’s head back to the neck after it had rolled away so grisly that Tertius had emptied the contents of his stomach on the ground several times.
After half an hour, the woman came back to life after her wounds melded together, thanks to sparks of the Golden Flame.
Dotty had gotten 3 Skills. The first was Track Mana, which helped her sense magical trails and residues of mana. If she had not had a Hunter Class, she would have probably gotten a more warrior-like variation of Spellbreaker. Track Mana was a Skill that a hunter of casters would get, and the Skill would probably become quite terrifying as it leveled up. It would literally be the nightmare of casters to be tracked down by someone with Antimagic.
The second Skill was Antimagic Aura. It was a passive that increased both Dotty's defense against spells and the power of her Antimagic enchantments.
The third and last Skill Dotty had gotten was the most interesting. It was an active Skill called Magic Rend.
*Ding*
You learned the Class Skill - Magic Rend
Magic Rend (Class Skill, Offensive Skill, Hunter of Magic)
Harness your mana to pierce through magic, material, and immaterial. This Skill can be used to rend apart any construct, flesh, spirit, and spell that has been powered or empowered by mana. The Skill's effectiveness increases with how much mana is stored within or used upon the target.
Usage: Concentrate on your weapon and channel mana onto it. The more mana you expend, the easier the blade will slash through magical matter.
"That is very, very lucky," Ted said after Dotty had shared the description with him.
Everyone looked at Ted, even Tertius, confused.
"What is that good about the Skill?" Tertius asked.
"This is not a strictly Antimagic Skill," Ted said. "If she had gotten Spellbreaker, the Skill would have most likely been Antimagic Blow. But Antimagic Blow works on spells. Dotty's Skill's description talks about ‘matter.’ That means that if she met a warrior who used mana to empower himself, she'd be able to cut them much more easily than anyone else. More importantly, do you know what constructs use mana to be empowered or, better wording, enchanted?" Ted stressed the last word.
Tertius' eyes went wide.
"Not to mention," Tertius added, "that a lot of Classes later on use mana, virtually all of them."
"This was a lucky draw," Ted said with a smile. "This is one of the strongest Skills I've heard of. It's probably not that good right now, and it probably will consume a lot of mana. But this is extremely powerful. I think that's why your Class gives you Wisdom. You need the mana reserves to activate Magic Rend. You have gotten a very interesting variation of the Class. In fact, you can probably sell the details of this Class for more than the original Spellbreaker would have sold for."
"Well, well, well," Monica smiled. "It turned out I was right. While you guys were talking and chitchatting, us girls here produced the results." She smirked, content with herself.
However, before they could continue their talk, Monica swirled back, hearing a loud growling coming from the forest. She looked at a massive wolf that made the previous Brown Wolf she had killed look like a little kid.
The wolf was covered from head to toe in crystals that looked like quartz, with white fur beneath. Not even the eyes of the monster were spared from the crystal. That multiplied the images of the wolf's red irises in dozens of reflections, making one wonder how the wolf could even see like that. But the monster could see. Oh, it could clearly see because it looked right at Monica. And Monica felt malice behind the creature's stance, behind every coiled muscle of it.
She looked at the tag above the wolf.
[Crystal Wolf – Level 14]
It wasn't that high leveled, but it was clearly cut from a different cloth than the Cultists and every other foe she had faced until now.
Monica shouted, "Everybody, stay back!" and stepped forward, rolling her shoulders back and willing the Nightshade Battle Wear to cover her neck once again and to fully cover the exposed parts of her skin with the shadowy veil.
This was the first creature she faced infused with Corruption. The first creature which had been warped into existence by none other than the Old Gods.
Monica saw the wolf about to pounce, and her body moved without her even thinking. She covered her entire arm in Obsidian Flame, and the wolf, caught by surprise, could only stand on its back legs as it tried swiping at her.
Monica, having geared almost all her attributes toward Dexterity and having a Rare Class, which granted more attributes than the common person, bopped below the crystalline claws of the monster, sharper than her own Steel Talons. She swung Obsidian Flame and Steel Talons, impacting the crystal underbelly of the wolf. But neither her blow nor her weapon, not even her divine ability, punctured through the wolf's crystalline defenses.
Monica snarled sharply, rolling to the side of the wolf as the creature went back on all fours. She tilted her head, looking at where she'd struck. There was not even a mark from her Steel Talons. And not even her Obsidian Flame had left anything more than a small series of scratches on the monster.
She looked at the Steel Talons on her hand and willed them back into her inventory, preferring the mobility of her fingers to the weapon, which clearly couldn't put a hole in the monster. She flexed her knees and started undulating from one leg to the other as the monster lunged for her.
She activated Phoenix Feathers, feeling the boost in strength, speed, and Attributes deep into her core. Two blazing, immaterial red feathers appeared on her golden bracers.
Meanwhile, the bystanders looked at Monica, scared to death. They didn't have her same composure. Ivor and his goons almost ran away, scared to death of the Crystal Wolf, which had resisted a direct blow from the Avatar of the Twin Phoenix as if it had been nothing.
"Should we go?" Ivor asked, panicked. "She didn't even scratch it. What can we do? We should really go. We're going to die. We're all gonna die."
Tertius found it hard to disagree with such a cowardly statement. But even he didn't want to surrender his life without a good reason.
Dotty didn't even know what she was looking at, her only experiences with battle being hunting rabbits in the forest.
Two people, however, were still looking pretty relaxed during this ordeal.
The first was Lucca, one of the two goons that had been under Ivor. Lucca's family had been in the military. He had not made the cut to stay in Valoria. That's why he had tried striking his luck elsewhere, looking for a remote place where he could matter in some way. He had been stuck with Ivor, which hadn't been an ideal result, but it also hadn't been bad for him. It was better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a dragon.
Lucca, unlike most of those present, knew a lot about fighting, having sparred for a long time with his older brothers and sisters before gaining his Class. So even though it looked like the wolf could kill Monica at any point during their exchange, he felt the same sensation he had when seeing a master of arms spar with a novice who thought the world was at their feet.
But it was Ted who explained it to the others.
"She can't hurt the wolf for now, but the wolf has no chance."
"What do you mean?" Ivor said, pulling at his hair. "Do you have eyes? Look at that beast!"
"Dude, you should take a better look," Ted said, pointing at the battle.
Ivor turned to look at Monica. Monica didn't even flinch as she used her left bracer to calmly let the massive wolf, almost as tall as her, bite into it. And as soon as the monster did, she started raining uppercuts with her right hand despite the wolf thrashing around. It was as if she could hop at the same place at the same speed the wolf would thrash left and right. And finally, even from that distance, they heard a resounding loud crack.
The wolf whimpered and released its toothy hold on Monica. The Phoenix Healer looked at the crystals that had started crumbling below the monster's chin and smiled like a maniac.
"Okay. The crystals can break," she said, her teeth looking even sharper now than the beast's, and raised a hand covered in Obsidian Flame. "Let's see if they can burn."