Owen felt the air shimmer ever so slightly and managed to duck his head just in time to dodge Lucas's slash. He then proceeded to dodge every attack Lucas could make as the two danced around the small cleared out area they were using for sparring. Something about fighting helped him think and there was a lot he needed to think about. In a couple hours they were all going to meet up and figure out how the five of them were going to proceed. In the meantime any important information they figure out was going to be shared and given out to all of those that wanted to work for the guild itself.
Owen had been thinking a lot about how much he had changed recently with the system and wasn't sure whether the changes were purely good. He felt more disassociated from others, which he didn't think was necessarily good. Normal people just didn't mean as much to him anymore, though he couldn't honestly say they had meant a great deal to him before. It was just hard to think of the path of progression needing and including every individual person they were helping at the moment.
The other changes seemed to be slightly more positive in a more specific case. His stats had helped him pass some barrier of training that he had never gotten before. As he continued to evade the attacks thrown at him it made him think. Each time he dodged he was more than likely using a combination of stats that helped him in real time figure out where the best place to dodge to would be and yet he couldn't repeat it if he himself were fully thinking out his movements.
Earlier into the sparring he had tried to actively dodge some of the varying attacks and all it got him was a couple cuts. It didn't make full sense to him yet, since he wasn't sure it was anything like a sixth sense, but he did feel certain it was some combination of stats at play.
He tried to feel each moment as his body seemed to react without any input to dodge an oncoming thrust from Lucas's spear. Originally Owen had thought he might be special and that dodging was just a skill he had developed, but after he and Lucas had traded off and Owen getting frustrated at not being able to land a hit he was even more certain that it was his stats coming into play.
They continued to move back and forth and Owen brought out his spear and they began trading blows. Each of them tried taking advantage of the others weaknesses as each of there moves had started to become more thought out, but the dance continued until finally Lucas raised a hand to call for a pause. As soon as Owen stopped his attack, Lucas collapsed to the ground breathing hard as sweat poured down his forehead.
"Holy Fuck you are hard to hit." Lucas groaned and Owen smiled. "Trust me if I knew why I was as good at it, I would've tried to incorporate it into my fighting already." Lucas nodded before he got a weird look on his face. "What exactly is your form of fighting? You haven't seemed to have pick anything specific. At first I thought you were going for an assassin type, but you have slowly moved away from that to more of a frontlines presence, but you still have several skills that help with assassin style burst damage."
Owen smiled as Lucas realized his mistake, but he interrupted him before he could apologize. "Yeah, I had several skills that helped out with it, but right now I need new skills and I am not yet sure which ones will actually suit the way I enjoy fighting." Owen sat down on the ground next to Lucas and shared his water as he continued. "Peggy has always been backlines and Myra has been frontlines with me usually. But I haven't found my role yet, you and your skills are similar to the role I had had, save for the burst damage, but If we are going to fight together we need balance."
Lucas nodded, "Do you have any interest in being a tank?" Owen shook his head. "It has been something I have been thinking about while we were fighting. I'm not sure what fighting style would work best for me, but I'm working on it." Lucas nodded before standing up to stretch. "Well, I am going to head back, I need to buy some of these information packets so I have something to talk about at the meeting. Make Peggy take me seriously for once." Owen smiled back at that and waved Lucas away.
He waited several minutes before preparing himself. He had a new energy at hand and he had decided that its power it was he would base his fighting style off of, even if it took forever to get down. In preparation, he had already cleared an ever larger area outside of the city for him to practice in and there were some straggler monster out there from the gates that broke outside of the city.
He spent an hour making his way back to Peggy and Myra's apartment, before prepping everything he thought he would need, which included an info packet on secondary classes, before setting out to an area just outside the city. He wasn't taking anyone with him this time, so he moved quickly and within an hour made it to his clearing. He could already feel his energy soaring as he saw some of the monsters noticing him as they began to move his direction. He paid them no mind for now and began doing something he wasn't sure would be possible.
He had seen Myra do it several times and wanted to see if he could figure it out. Taking out his spear, he tried to create a razor sharp edge out of mana and transpose it onto his spear. It took several tries, but eventually he got it too stick. Removing is influence on the mana, the edge disappeared, but this time, he began to imbue the spear with mana again and tried to form an edge out of mana again. Another hour was used up, before he managed to get it to work.
He had to thank his mana manipulator skill as it was doing most of the heavy lifting, but he hoped it would become at least a little bit more natural. Once he managed to get the edge to form faster, he began fighting some of the weaking monsters, transforming the spear into a glaive in a moments notice with the new mana edge. Feeling satisfied, he was now about to do something many times more dangerous.
He felt around for the chaos energy before trying to create an edge out of the energy. Sadly for him, the energy didn't want to comply. He time he tried to give it form, it recoiled and broke apart or would quickly change shape into something else. Not having a skill for it made it even harder. Eventually he had to give up as he knew the practice it was going to require was more than the time he could afford for the rest of today. But he did still have some small tests he wanted to try out before heading back.
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He carefully guided some chaos energy into a rough form that continuously changed, but instead of trying to control the flow of energy he let it he, only holding it in the air before him. It seemed to fluctuate at times as if it were a solid changing shape and other times it looked as if the energy was made of liquid. He quickly separated the clump of chaos he was holding into two separate pieces and watched its ever changing form shift and transform. Something he should have probably expected, but somehow didn't was that as soon as he had split it into clumps the energy acted differently than the original and as he split it into more sections saw each pieces acting almost on it's own.
Dispersing the chaos, he tired the same with mana and was unsurprised to see the opposite. Any fluctuations of energy stayed the same across all pieces. Shifting back to chaos energy he kept a ball of mana nearby, as he wasn't about to force them together again. He saw a blue fish type monster slowly making it's way towards him. He sent out the ball of mana and it crashed into it's chest pushing it back hard. It didn't look like it had dealt that much damage, but that wasn't what he had thrown it for anyways, less than a second after the mana ball made contact, a blob of chaos crashed into the same spot.
Owen was disappointed as nothing seemed to change, but then the fish monsters eyes seemed to grow wide before it's flesh began sloughing off of it's body extremely quickly. There was a smaller body inside of the fish and a quick identify let him know what was going on.
*Flesh walker Level 16. This monster type finds the corpses of dead monsters and creates a shell around it's own body out of the monsters corpse. It will imitate the monster to the best of it's ability until it finds a stronger corpse body.*
He watched a little bit longer as the monster tried to flee from something, but the corpse began to turn to ash and Owen just barely saw the skin of the flesh walker seem to melt in real time. Using his mana manipulator skill, he could feel the mana pouring out of it at a rapid rate and one look without the skill almost made him flinch. he had gotten the notification of the kill, but knowing the experience would be almost nothing he ignored it and moved to get a better look at what was left of the monster.
Its flesh seemed to have been melted in some spots while other sections looked like they had grown tumors. He was curious as to why it didn't blow up, which is what he had expected, not some almost acidic melting of its body. He tried on a few more of the monsters he saw as he moved further away from his clearing. Each time the reaction from the monsters was quite the same. They seemed like they had a moment of realizing they were in trouble, before losing all of the mana in there system while it looked like their body either dissolved or grew massive tumors.
He continued his massacre of the flesh walkers as he moved into what looked like the territory they had claimed. It didn't take him long to find the boss and without paying it much attention, he threw a ball of chaos and mana, timing them to collide together in front of the monster. It ended up taking a couple times to get the timing right, but eventually when he did the huge explosion he had been waiting for happened. The entire environment seemed to be sucked of its mana all at once before the chaos energy couldn't keep hold of it anymore, sending waves of chaos energy and mana rippling out as the two energy broke Owen's control over them.
The boss monster died almost immediately, but the most interesting part of the interaction was the ground around where the boss had been hit. All of the plant life had experience mutations of some sort as he looked at a rose that looked like it had had a multi colored paint brush dragged across it. Other plant life died and lest the ground looking like he was dumping toxic chemicals. Satisfied with his experience for now, he moved back towards the city, reading the class info he bought on the way back.
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It didn't take him long to reach the office room they had planned on meeting and Owen couldn't help but grin as he remembered the old presentations he used to need to give in school. The vibe in the room was very much the same and he couldn't help but feel slightly nervous, despite knowing that in the meeting, the only people present were friends, the sergeant major that he hadn't had a chance to meet with yet, and Mark Adams.
Not the group he had thought he was meeting with, but with the information as important as it was, Peggy saw it worth the effort of inviting those who would be able to spread the information more easily. They were still not fully sure of how many people were still left in the city that weren't currently helping out their guild. The city had had a population of just over 30,000 people and yet they had barely managed to gather more than half of that. Search parties were still moving wreckage and collecting supplies, but they had become more and more certain that they might already have everyone who was left.
Those who had originally been the leaders of the town, like the chief or the major and some of the other officials hadn't made an appearance, leaving the information network down and out of commission. While they still had access to the internet, news was becoming more and more sparse as more areas seemed to lose their connection, making it harder and harder to maintain communication across long distance. Owen hadn't really understood most of the problems that Peggy brought up, but he did know it was serious, so he had made sure to show up on time and greet the sergeant major properly before taking his own seat waiting for it to begin.
They didn't have to wait long as Peggy stood up as the last person, Lucas, joined. "Thank you for joining us, we're currently unsure of how easily some of this information can be obtained, but as it cost us challenging a tier 3 gate and it leaving one of our members out of commission for a while, it wasn't cheap. Hopefully, this helps add some weight to the information we have been able to gather with the guild system." Both guests nodded and Owen, Myra, and Lucas stayed silent. Briar had temporarily change its form and was resting on Owen's wrist as a bracelet, so as to not make their guests uncomfortable, but they also chose not to interrupt.
They then each took turns talking about the information they had learned about guilds and their functions according to the system. Owen wasn't sure any of it would effect him in the long run, but he was still impressed with how thorough everyone was being. Their guest even spent time taking proper notes.
The information was simple in essence and only needed as much describing, because neither of their guests had been familiar with the concepts before, they often thought of the different trade's guilds and had to be shown the difference. In essence the guild was a communication network that connected directly with the system. As you upgraded your guild, more features would be unlocked. The upgrade they were currently looking at was to unlock the system store which would have anything from food too materials and even weapons and gear.
Upgrading your guild further would make the collection of system currency even easier, making it possible for those who didn't want to fight or clear quests, be able to earn currency to use the system store. The information packets however were easily the most important early purchases as they contained information about everything that wasn't straight forward, like classes, tempers, soul upgrades and body infusions. Each was a treasure trove of knowledge not yet tapped, but then it was Owen's turn to describe the information he had gathered.
Taking a big sip of water he prepare to speak for what he knew would feel like way too long.