“You don’t even have a mouth.” Sean pointed out, as he carefully placed Gel’s body into the now-gaping holes in the defeated crab’s shell.
“If you disregard my lack of teeth, I’m basically all mouth.”
“Alright.” Sean conceded after a second of thought. “I’ll give you that one.”
“Think of me as your spiritual and literal digestive system.” Gel continued, oozing through the chitin to his prize. “I’m literally what’s keeping us going here, after all. Now, let me eat.”
Sean acquiesced, turning his attention instead to the wild mess of prompts awaiting him after the long battle. Standing up, he was about to go through them when Sean noticed the other crab he had left partially alive was still twitching under the corpse he had dropped on it.
Business first, pleasure after. Sean thought, clambering over the crab Gel was snacking on to get to its unfortunate friend.
A series of well-placed bashes with his newly thickened fists, and the final crab succumbed to its fate. A few more maggots had managed to stick around and took the opportunity to attack while his back was turned, only for Sean to dodge and kick out a third bat from the now nearly destroyed table. After that, it was a simple matter to give each of them the homerun treatment as well. He was a little surprised none of them tried to run. Then again, maggots were just maggots. Even large, corpse-devouring ones.
All told, his final total came out to about twelve of those grubby blood sacks. A count he mostly managed by counting the water balloon-like splatter marks. By the time he was finished and had checked to make sure nobody was coming back down the stairs after all that noise, Gel was ready to consume his next meal.
Interestingly, the prompt from the slime’s feeding appeared a bit shortened this time.
Gel has absorbed a Small Corpse Crab, earning 4 mana and 25 experience points. Due to your bond, you have been granted the same boon.
Four mana from just one of these things? Sean suddenly felt much better about his shattered right arm. It was a high cost to pay, but doing so had bought him several hours worth of life.
He was also loving the fact that they were able to ‘double dip’ on experience from each of their kills. Once Gel finished off the next one, Sean would be sitting at a whopping 100 total experience from the crabs alone!
I could get used to this. Sean thought, moving the slime to his next round of dented crab legs. It’s not like I have to eat them.
Then it hit him, and a pang of sadness ran through Sean at the realization that he might never eat again. It was a sobering thought. One Sean did not at all care for.
Nothing for it right now. He told himself, looking around the room again and trying to find some humor in the situation. Besides, not like there’s anything I’d want to eat in here.
There was also always the chance he could find a solution later. So instead of focusing on that particular downward spiral, Sean turned instead to the large number of notifications waiting for him after the battle.
There were a number of “you have slain” and “you have gained experience” prompts – so Sean just skimmed past all of those until he got to the one he was looking for. Fireworks sounded off in his mind as the bright gold prompt appeared front and center in his vision.
Congratulations, through spreading death to the lives of other creatures you have reached level 3! As a skeleton you gain 1 point of Might and Toughness with every level.
You have gained one manasphere node point!
Booya! Sean shouted internally, raising his gore-covered table leg high into the air in triumph.
He was about to share the good news with Gel, but the slime had disappeared almost entirely within the second crab’s shell. The sounds coming through their bond were somewhere between ‘raucous laughter’ and ‘ramen bar slurping’. Amused at his friend’s ever-enthusiastic appetite, Sean decided he had at least a minute or two to take a good look around the room before the slime was finished.
Now that he was actually inside the room and not distracted, Sean found there were actually three doors leading out of it. Two were made of iron bars and were more rusted grate than real doorway. One of which was the one they had entered through, complete with crab exoskeleton now jamming it open. The other was the one Mumbles had left through.
The final door was made of a smooth, grayish wood and lay in the far left corner from where he had entered. He had missed it earlier as the dust combined with its natural coloring rendered the wood nearly the same color as the surrounding stone. Sean noted its position for later and kept looking around.
Most of the tables in the room had been destroyed, either by himself or by the crabs – whose existence down here didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Sean. Why would Mumbles keep creatures nearby that were more than happy to take out his precious maggots? The wisdom of that decision was heavily questioned by the maggot-chunks strewn liberally around the room, and the fact that if Sean hadn’t killed the crabs they probably would have gotten the rest of the maggots anyway.
Questions for later. Sean thought with a shrug, still hoping to find a new weapon as he moved around the room.
There were none, which was about what he had expected. It was also overwhelmingly obvious that there had been a fight here. If and when Mumbles came back, there was little doubt in Sean’s mind that the big man would be sounding the alarm. If that happened, whoever came down to investigate with him may very well be more than the pair of them could handle.
Especially since Mumbles didn’t even seem to notice those crabs. Sean mused. The big man had moved right next to those murderous things as if they weren’t even there, despite how easily they might have killed him.
Maybe they were his ‘pets’, too? Hmm.
Shrugging once more, Sean figured it was still probably worth their time to absorb the rest of the maggots for the mana and experience. Wanting to speed things up, he began gathering the biggest chunks he could find into a pile next to where Gel was currently feasting. Always making sure to keep a careful eye on the grated door leading to the staircase Mumbles had left through.
Sean was about to use the time he still had to go over his new options on the manasphere – but then he paused.
Inside his queue of waiting prompts - which looked almost like tabs on a web browser at the corner of his vision - were two with colors he didn’t recognize. Sean quickly selected the first.
Immediately the sound of raucous warcries accompanied by the resounding thuds of thick, blunt weaponry smashing into all manner of creatures filled his mind as a metallic prompt with a transparent background depicting a variety of maces and clubs filled the center of his vision.
Congratulations, you have earned the title: ‘Shellcracker’! Foolish are those who think a sharpened edge is the fastest way to eliminate an enemy. True bruisers know that when a problem really needs dealt with, the only response is to smash!
This title grants a rare, but substantial increase to damage when using a blunt weapon.
Oooh, a… title? Sean was excited, but he was also a little confused.
Titles in the games he had played usually came after completing a specific action. They were also generally hard to earn, but Sean couldn’t think of anything he had done that would be particularly hard to do. If you didn’t count splitting apart a giant crab’s shell with nothing more than a table leg. Apparently, the universe thought that counted, and Sean wasn’t going to complain about it.
Still, had he known titles existed, he would have hoped for something a bit more magnanimous than: ‘Shellcracker’ as his first one. There was also the obvious question:
A “rare” increase in damage? How often is “rare”? Every other swing? Every ten? Sean tried to examine the prompt for more information, but for the first time none came up. Hu-uh. Guess I’ll just have to figure that one out trial-and-error style.
Sean shrugged, looking for a readout of what he had done to earn the title – but there wasn’t one. Not that it bothered him much, he had a title! Obviously, that meant he needed more of them. The gamer inside him was absolutely elated at this new discovery, and the hidden part of him that loved hunting for achievements was even more thrilled.
Even if the boost from this first title sounded a bit lackluster at first, he wondered if they would stack up in the future. And even if they didn’t, who didn’t love “substantial” extra damage that they didn’t have to spend mana for? Sean couldn’t wait to get another one – even if he had no idea how to do that yet.
Seeing as how he still had another prompt to get to however, Sean eagerly turned to that one. He wasn’t disappointed. A dark forest of trees covered the next prompt, while the roars of a hundred different beasts sounded off in a triumphant cacophony.
Congratulations, you have earned the title: ‘Savage’! Soft are those who rely upon weapons to handle their enemies, and they are softer still when those weapons are ripped from quivering fingers! Savages eschew such fragile trappings, choosing instead to rely solely upon the monster within!
This title grants a rare, but substantial increase to damage when attacking with one’s claws, bones, spines, teeth, and other natural weapons.
Oh-ho-hooohhh hell yeah! Sean crowed. This title was amazing! A substantial increase whenever he dealt any damage with his bones? He was quite literally all bones! So this one title would give a random boost to all of his damage, no matter what part of him he was fighting with! Hands, feet, elbows, skull, heck – even his teeth!
Score one for the skeleton! Sean crowed again, greatly enjoying the fact that his new body came with yet another bonus.
For a brief moment, as he reveled in how inhumanely awesome he was, Sean wondered what it said about him that he was readily identifying as an undead now. Such distracting thoughts were quickly interrupted by a familiar voice in his mind.
"All done with the main course... do we still have any dessert left?" Gel asked hopefully, apparently not at all full yet despite having consumed two entire crabs far larger than he was.
"Sure do." Sean thought back, retrieving his slime companion and moving him to the maggot pile he'd made. "Here, just be quick if you can. We need to be long gone before that Mumbles guy comes back."
"I'm on it. Just two questions. One: Who is 'Mumbles'? And two: Why aren't we eating him?"
Once deposited on the pile, the now definitely larger-than-before slime began flowing over the entire heap. Bloody pink and soggy black maggot lumps dissolved rapidly underneath him as Gel feasted gleefully. Several prompts flashed in Sean's mind, but he closed them almost reflexively.
"He's the guy that was in here earlier talking to these things like they were his pets. I decided to call him Mumbles."
"That huge guy who is obviously one of the necromancer's men?"
"Yep. I don't know how strong he is, but considering all we did is take out his precious little nightmares and now I’m level 3… I'd rather not stick around to find out."
"So, just to make sure I'm tracking here. A potentially powerful magic user left this room for reasons we don’t know, may return any minute, and the delicious things we just butchered for food were his beloved pets?"
"... yes."
There was silence for a moment as Gel finished consuming the rest of the maggots.
"I still vote we eat him." The slime said confidently as Sean scooped him up and put Gel back in his ribcage. “I’ll bet we could do it.”
Sean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Orbs. Whatever it was he had left. "I’m sure we could, but let’s wait until we have a few more levels first, then we can eat him."
"Promise?" Gel asked, suddenly earnest.
Sean headed towards the thick wooden door he'd spied earlier, unsure when they would ever even have that chance. At the very least, he hoped it wouldn’t be before they could handle the man.
"Sure."
Gel swirled around in Sean's body in what the skeleton was starting to recognize as the slime's own personal 'happy dance'. Sean couldn't help but grin in response. Or attempted to grin, anyway. He still wasn’t entirely sure what it looked like when he tried to smile.
A still-human part of Sean’s mind pointed out that he had technically just agreed to kill and feed another living person to what was technically a monster. A more practical part of him countered that, as a necromancer's minion actively feeding corpses into a literal 'Flesh Pit', 'Mumbles' was almost certainly evil. How morally objectionable could killing someone like that really be?
Who knew how many deaths Mumbles was responsible for. Maybe by taking the big man out Sean and Gel would be avenging the deaths of everyone who had died here. Looking at it that way, he might even be morally obligated to take the guy out. He was definitely obligated to kill Bancroft. Slaying villains wouldn't make him a monster – it might even make him a hero.
A darker corner of Sean's mind, far removed from the other two, responded to that last thought with a single whisper. One that silenced the rest of the arguments forming in his head. He was a monster now. The undead were never heroes. They were reviled in almost every story ever told on Earth. While this necromancer and his minion may end up being the first humans Sean ever killed directly, if he expected to survive in this new world as a mere fledgling skeleton…
… the two would not be the last sentient lives he took. That was an immutable fact. One Sean could feel the truth of deep inside the marrow of his bones. He would just have to get used to the notion. Because if he didn't, then he would be the one getting killed.
"The uh, handle is on the right there." Gel offered in a helpful and slightly concerned tone. “In case that's what you were standing around looking for.”
"Huh? Oh, right. Sorry." Sean came back to the world and realized he was standing only a foot away from the wooden door. He must have been staring right at it without realizing, just lost in his own little world.
That’s a dangerous place to be right now, Sean. Get it together. He scolded himself, before reaching for the handle with his right arm.
Nothing moved.
Frowning, Sean looked down at his right hand and only then remembered it was broken. Lifting it for inspection, Sean realized that whatever pain he'd felt before was just… gone. His arm was still mangled, and was actually broken in several places now that he got a good look at it. Sean wasn’t sure when that had happened, but it now wouldn't move at all below the elbow.
Thankfully, despite the heavy injury there was still no pain.
Which, given that I can’t fix it right now… is probably about as good as I could hope for. Sean mused.
He wasn’t about to kid himself. Sean had some medical training, but that had been ‘first responder’-type training. Training to save lives on deployments by keeping people alive around until the real medics could get involved. Training he had only ever gone back over during the annual refreshers the military gave out. It had been years since then, and while Sean could certainly help keep someone from bleeding out given the right materials – he didn’t even have blood now.
If he looked around, there was a chance he could make a splint out of what he had in the room… but doing that with one arm would take a lot more time than Sean was comfortable with spending on the project. He also doubted it would help. It was better to just face facts, and the fact was his right arm was useless for now.
Sean had never been the sort of person to dwell on things he couldn't fix, so he moved his attention from the issue. Besides, there actually was one thing he could do right now that might help.
"Hold on a second.” Sean told Gel. “I’m just going to pick my new node before we go."
"Ooh, good idea. I like it. See if you can get some pincers like those crabs – that'd be awesome! Can you imagine being a skeleton with giant pincers? Think of how much food you could get us! You'd never have to worry about fighting our enemies with broken furniture again!"
Sean bent down to glare at his chest-bound companion, wondering if the slime had somehow seen his node options earlier. Gel’s eyes – a perfect copy of Sean's old pair – stared right back at him without a hint of apology.
"What?" The forever-unabashed slime asked. "I know it worked out this time, but there won't always be a table around for you to maul our foes with. We need to plan for the future."
Not resisting the urge to roll his orbs this time, Sean pulled up the manasphere map to spend his new point. To his pleasant surprise though, he actually had two points. He had leveled up again!
Congratulations, through spreading death to the lives of other creatures you have reached level 4! As a skeleton you gain 1 point of Might and Toughness with every level.
Must have been from Gel eating everything. Sean guessed, quickly pulling up his other prompts and confirming his latest advancement. If we’re able to keep up this pace, we might actually stand a chance out here.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Returning to the manasphere map with double the spending money this time, Sean perused his options. All of the previous nodes he had seen before were still there, though there were now several new options. Most branched out from the central node Sean thought of as representing himself, with a few stemming from his last selection.
Eager to see what he might have available this time, Sean examined the three new nodes connected to ‘Thick Bones’. The first was a jet black ball of darkness, while the next was a bright ocean mist roiling inside a sphere of midnight, and the last an equal mix of bubbling pitch and deep crystal purple.
Reinforced Bones
Description: Substantially increases the durability and thickness of your skeletal structure.
Effect: Toughness attribute increased by 1. Lowered chance of bones breaking due to excessive force.
Mana Aspect: Death
Bone Shield
Description: Gain the ‘Bone Shield’ ability.
Effect: Bone Shield allows the user to create a shield made of solid bone. Durability is equal to mana spent. Hardness is equal to the user’s toughness.
Mana Aspect: Death, Order
Retribution
Description: Gain the ‘Retribution’ ability.
Effect: Choose a single target. For the next minute, any damage the user suffers is shared by the target for one minute.
Mana Aspect: Death, Astral
The first option was an obvious progression of what he’d chosen earlier. Sean had been half-hoping to see something like “Thicker Bones” as the progression of “Thick Bones”, and was a little disappointed there wasn’t one.
Maybe there’ll be one later. Then I can pick up “Thickest Bones” and be a real juggernaut. Sean thought with amusement, before adding in a self-satisfied mental tone. Bitch.
The secondary effect of that option, a lowered chance of broken bones, was a little too suspiciously relevant to be coincidence, at least in his opinion. Sean wondered if the manasphere was taking more into account than just his levels and abilities when revealing new nodes to him. Zooming out from his current options still showed an endless expanse of potential connections, so it was hard to say this early on. Even so, given how enormous of a detriment his current broken arm was, Sean could easily see himself picking this option later.
As it was though, “Reinforced Bones” was too little, too late. Sean moved on to the next one.
‘Bone Shield’ was intriguing. The ability would give him another layer of defense against any more hits to his precious and dwindling health pool.
Not to mention that with Gel’s ability to siphon mana from our kills, I can probably generate a new one after almost every fight. Sean couldn’t deny the utility of that, and mentally marked ‘Bone Shield’ as a solid contender.
As good as the first two were, it was the third option that really caught Sean’s attention. ‘Retribution’ sounded like a way to get what most RPG’s called ‘Thorns’, only in a way that didn’t actually suck. The ability gave him a way to instantly damage his target every single time Sean took a hit! It didn’t even seem to have a limit – “any damage the user suffers” sounded like it would keep damaging the same target even if he had to fight a whole crowd. Even one-on-one, getting smacked with the damage of your own attack was likely to be one hell of a deterrent.
Talk about incentivizing the right behavior. Sean thought. If they had something like this back on Earth, MMA fights would be insane. Imagine getting knocked out by your own freaking punch.
Cool as the ability was, though… Sean had just one major problem with it.
Normally in builds like that – at least in video games – the goal was to combine retributive damage abilities either with a way to regenerate more health than your opponent had, or to have so much health or armor that taking damage didn’t really matter to you. Basically, you had to outlast all of your opponents. So that they literally beat themselves to death on your proverbial or literal face.
Which sounded great for an undead like himself, only Sean had… neither of those things available to him right now. He couldn’t regenerate health, and an abundance of health or damage reduction was only a distant dream. Sad as it was for him to admit, that meant Retribution would have to be backburnered for now. He actually wondered why anyone would choose it, even his fellow brainless skeletons.
Curious to see if there was more to it, Sean examined the node for more details in the same way he did other words of interest on his status page. He couldn’t have said what he was looking for, but if he had to call it anything it would be a reason that would justify Retribution as anything other than an obvious waste of time for anyone at his level.
To his delight, more info presented itself almost immediately – and Sean was not disappointed.
(Ability) Retribution: Cost: 2 mana. Once used, any damage the user suffers is also suffered by the target for the next minute (damage reduced by target’s adaptation attribute). This means the target will suffer the exact same force as the user in each instance, as if they were hit by the original attack themselves. Damage reduction affecting the user does not lessen damage dealt to the target.
Sean’s jaw dropped open in shock as he reread the last line.
Damage reduction affecting the user does not lessen damage dealt to the target.
Haha– holy shit! Now that is what I’m talking about! Sean almost danced a jig in sheer excitement.
Ever since his toughness had gone up, Sean had noticed he was resisting a fair amount whenever he took damage, solely due to being a thicc boney boi. If it weren’t for their ability to pierce it, those maggots might not even have been able to hurt him. Even with that, if he had had this ability active? The stupid things might have killed themselves!
Or taken out the crab for me. Sean realized. This would be the perfect ability to use on a big threat or a boss with a bunch of minions.
The obvious thought occurred to him a half second after that one. Retribution was the perfect ability to take down a necromancer – assuming Sean could land it.
And assuming I survive long enough for it to kill him. Sean had severe doubts it would be that easy to off Bancroft. In fact, if he were a betting man, the necromancer probably had a way to counter that very thing. Still, even if he does… this is still awesome.
There was another problem now, though. One that hadn’t been apparent at first: Retribution’s mana cost. Two points per use wasn’t playing around at his level. Sean wasn’t exactly rolling in mana. A single use of this ability would cost him literally half of his total mana. Mana that he currently still needed not to just fall apart and die.
Sure, he could get some back from Gel when they killed something. But using that much mana on a single ability just wasn’t sustainable. Especially when he already ran out of mana nearly every battle just using Slash – and that only cost him one point.
Come to think of it… Sean checked the staircase.
His pulse sense didn’t detect anyone coming, and he hadn’t heard anyone coming. Given how far it had worked earlier, Sean estimated that his sense would probably give him at least a twenty second warning before anyone came down. Assuming he didn’t just hear them coming.
Which meant it was time to ask a question that had been lingering in the back of his mind for a while now.
“Hey, Gel?”
“What’s up?”
“Possibly weird question for you, but I’ve been noticing that every time I get hit I sort of… lose myself for a bit. Like the world falls away. It’s disorienting. I can remember this massive surge of anger, and then… ” Sean raised his good arm up, and then brought it back down to simulate a wave collapsing on the beach. “Then it’s like I just get… washed away.”
There was a pause as Sean struggled to remember what exactly happened next, but for some reason his memory was failing him. He could clearly remember each time it had happened – the rats, the maggot, and then the crab – but afterwards… Afterwards it was like there wasn’t even a memory left. Only vague impressions, like a charcoal rubbing of something that should have been there – but wasn’t. It was chilling, in a way.
Not because of what he couldn’t remember, either.
Because of what he could.
Sean pressed on.
“Aannnd then I wake up. Usually after whatever it is has been torn to pieces, and you’re usually yelling at me to let you eat it.” Sean tried to inject some humor into the situation, hoping it would cover how unsettled he was over the whole thing.
Either Gel picked up on that, or it was harder to hide deep emotions when you were literally thinking at someone. When the slime responded, his tone was uncharacteristically soft.
“There’s a simple answer here, but I’m not sure you want it.”
“Hit me.” Sean said, his tone firm. “Whatever it is, I need to know.”
“It’s an ingrained command. A leftover part of the spell used to summon you. Think of it like a shortcut, a way around having to give every one of your minions a list of commands whenever they’re first summoned. Instead of having to give a speech each time, you just write part of the speech into the spell and the spell does it for you.”
Alarm bells began going off all over Sean’s mind. He bent over to stare down at the slime, and if Sean still had eyebrows, they would be in his hairline right now. A million questions ran through his mind, but his incredulity pushed forth a single word before the tide of confusion got away from him.
“What?!”
“Woah, there. Calm, big guy. Calm.”
“Calm? You’re telling me some murderous, asshole necromancer left literal commands inside of me, and I’m supposed to be calm about that?!”
Irritatingly enough, Sean’s body reacted to the rising anger he felt and a shiver passed through him that did exactly what Gel had asked him to do. Sean calmed down, his emotions swiftly kneecapped before they could run away from him. To his credit, Gel kept speaking before Sean could express his frustration with the slime – or his own undead body.
“It’s pretty common, and the commands are usually pretty simple. ‘Defend yourself if attacked’, Don’t go in my room’, that sort of thing. He can’t mess with your mind. Not that you still have one, but you get my point.
“Oh.” Sean’s already deflated anger fell even further. “That’s… reasonable, I guess. I still don’t like it, but–”
“I mean, he can mess with your mind.” Gel amended brightly. “Technically, anything he orders you to do – you have to do it. But he lost that right when he abandoned you like he did to me, so he would have to re-establish that connection first. Which he won’t get to do before we murder him.”
Sean could think of a dozen things he didn’t care for in what the slime had just said, but the most pertinent question he had out of all of that was clear.
“How would he do that? And for that matter, how do you even know about all of this?”
“I know because I have several dozen memories of the guy arguing with his servants about how summoning spells work.” Gel said, with a touch of defensiveness in the slime’s tone at his authority on the subject being questioned. “All of them from right before he killed whoever was listening, so you know those memories were fresh!”
“Okay, and that’s a little bit morbid, but it doesn’t answer the more important question: what does Bancroft need to do to get control back? Because I do not want him in my brain!”
There may have been just a hint of his earlier rage at the end of that, but Sean felt that was entirely justified.
“Relax, I ate your brain. Bancroft can’t have what’s already gone.” Gel said, cracking a joke that Sean wasn’t entirely ready to laugh at right now. A fact which must have been communicated by the fact that he kept staring at the slime, demanding an answer.
“Alright fine, I don’t know! Okay? I don’t know how he would do it, Bancroft only said it was possible. But I do know that if we kill him first, then it won’t be possible. Which we’re already going to do, so… relax! We’ve got this.” Gel’s tone was confident towards the end, but it was clear that Sean had gotten under the slime’s metaphorical skin somehow.
A heavy thud from above interrupted their conversation, and Sean strained his non-existent ears to hear if anyone was coming down. When nobody did, Sean rubbed his empty sockets with the back of his remaining good hand. His motivation to kill Bancroft had just skyrocketed, but this new revelation hadn’t ultimately changed what Sean had been planning to do for the near future. They still needed to survive, and now that Gel had explained what was going on, Sean could at least try to plan around it.
After a moment, Sean spoke up again.
“Okay, so… Bancroft left me with an insane self-defense mechanism that I can’t control, that activates whenever I get hurt. He also potentially has a way to take over my mind if we don’t kill him first. Wonderful.” Sean felt like he was going to regret asking this, but he had to know – he did his best to keep his exasperation out of his tone, but it came through anyway. “Did he leave any more of these ‘ingrained commands’ that I should know about before we move on?”
“Couldn’t tell you.” Gel said. “Not without knowing the specific spell, and I don’t know any spells. I don’t even technically know magic, just a bunch of random magical theory that I’ve pieced together from the memories of murdered peasants. So, if you look at it that way, it’s amazing we know this much!”
“Fair enough.” Sean dropped the subject, deciding to just shelve this entire conversation under ‘things I can’t do a single skeletal shit about’ and get back to what he had been doing.
Pulling his manasphere options up again, Sean mentally wrote ‘Retribution’ off of his current shopping list. The mana cost was too high, and the ability itself did nothing to protect him from getting hit in the first place – which was now an even greater concern than before. There was a very real chance that this ‘fugue state’, or whatever it was that he kept dropping into, would get him killed against a stronger opponent in the future. So while there had been mana nodes on the map before, they didn’t address the whole ‘need to not go full rabid in combat’ situation.
Turning his attention towards the nodes stretching out from his central ‘self’, Sean examined his other new options. There were four in total, two pairs of lines stretching off in separate directions much further away than any of the other nodes. Both pairs weren’t exactly woven together, but the nodes at the ends of each were close enough that they appeared to be orbiting one another.
Reading the descriptions, the reason why became immediately obvious.
Crack
Description: Gain the ‘Crack’ ability.
Effect: Add bonus damage to an attack based on your physical attributes, with a chance to break armor based on the advancement of your “Shellcracker” title.
Mana Aspect: Order
A Crushing Good Time
Description: Learn to deliver crushing force with blunt weapons.
Effect: Damage dealt with maces, clubs, and other blunt weapons now bypasses some of a target’s armor.
Mana Aspect: Order
They were based on his titles! The first two, each a swirling orb of purple mist, must have been unlocked when he had earned ‘Shellcracker’. He just hadn’t noticed at the time because he was busy fighting off everything else in the room.
Sean made a quick mental note to check the manasphere map anytime he gained a new title. After all, who knew what nodes he might find from in the future? Movin on to the next two nodes, each a brilliant verdant green, he read over the options his ‘Savage’ title had earned him.
Pounce
Description: Gain the ‘Pounce’ ability.
Effect: Leap at a target with mana-enhanced agility. Pounce may be used at any time, but the maximum distance is increased when targeting a living creature.
Mana Aspect: Nature
Wild Savage
Description: Learn to unleash the monster within.
Effect: Increased chance to inflict deleterious status effects when dealing physical damage with natural attacks, particularly 'bleeding' effects.
Mana Aspect: Nature
Definitely more animalistic. Sean mused, looking over his new options. ‘Wild Savage’ looks particularly useful, though I can see ‘Pounce’ being clutch in the right situation.
All of his new title-based options were interesting, but Sean wasn’t on the market for new ways to hurt things right now. Pounce was the only ‘utility’ option, and he could easily see how a skeleton suddenly closing the gap across a room might be the edge he needed. Mobs that jumped on you in videogames were always the most startling – and tended to kill a lot of new players, regardless of the game itself.
Might be handy as a way to leap over obstacles, too. If there are enough enemies around… Sean couldn’t say he hated the idea of leaping around a battlefield to take down every enemy in sight. “Pounce” wasn’t the most glamorous name, but… Every good build needs a movement option.
His mind paused for a moment as he chewed on the idea of using ‘build’ as a way to describe his attributes and abilities. Sean had always been the practical sort though, and the term still fit.
Maybe doing that back on Earth would have gotten me to the gym more often.
Sean had a brief internal chuckle at the idea of gyms advertising “strength boosts” to their customers, then stopped when he realized that’s basically what they were already doing.
Unrelated tangent handled, Sean got back to the task at hand. He stared at the options available to him, already feeling like he had made his decision.
What I really need now is survival. More damage won’t do me any good if I’m killed for good the next time.
His inability to regain health was a constant thorn in his mood. Back on Earth Sean would have at least had a chance to recover from an injury. It may have taken some time, but with modern medicine it almost didn’t matter what happened to him. As long as it didn’t kill him outright or paralyze him, science had either found a way or was working on it.
Here, though?
Sean stared down at his shattered and unresponsive right arm. With that one injury – that one mistake – he was now a one-handed skeleton for the foreseeable future. If there was any hope of them surviving however-many more rooms were left in this place…
We’re going to need more defense.
Sean made his choice.
You have gained the ability ‘Bone Shield’!
A moment passed, but nothing happened.
Sean waited for another beat, but again he didn’t feel any different. Confused, he pulled up his status. Sure enough, his new ability was right where it was supposed to be. Apparently acquiring it hadn’t changed him in any noticeable way. Given that the ability’s effectiveness was based on his own toughness, Sean decided to spend his remaining point on the manasphere before trying it out.
You have gained the ability ‘Reinforced Bones’!
This time, Sean didn’t have to wait long for the change to take effect. A solid layer of reinforced white bone washed over Sean’s entire frame. Just as it had with the first transformation, the wave of hardened osseous matter wrapped around him and cleaned all of the excess filth from his form as it went. It hardened considerably over the next several seconds, making him look – and feel – considerably more sturdy than before. His weight increased again, and a few experimental swings of his left arm definitely suggested the limb had a bit more heft to it.
Interestingly, the ‘Reinforced Bones’ node didn’t just solidify him as ‘Thick Bones’ had. Sean also gained a new layer of protective bone that spread across his shoulders. It was hard to tell from where he could see, but his shoulders felt more connected to both his spinal column and his skull now. He would have to get a mirror sometime and check out his new look.
What I wouldn’t give for a mirror. Sean thought, before he felt his jaw twist into whatever expression was his new grin now.
The larger skeleton flexed the phalanges that made up his few remaining fingers into a triumphant fist. Slowly. Steadily. Sean was getting stronger. It might be literally inch by bony inch, but he could feel the power he was gaining.
And it felt good.
“Ready to go kill more stuff?” Gel asked, as if the slime could sense the rising exuberance inside him. "Because I vote we go through the door now and kill some more stuff.”
"Huh? Oh, yeah." Sean responded, before shaking his head and adding with a bit more emphasis. “Hell yeah.”
He rotated his left arm out to get a feel for the slightly increased reach he now had, before bringing it back in to test the range of motion.
"Feels heavier." Sean commented.
"You look heavier. I didn't know skeletons got heavy. Did you eat something when I wasn't looking?” The slime whirled around in his stomach to inspect Sean’s working arm. “I don’t mind if you did, I just need to know if you’re going to share."
“No, I was just–”
“Because sharing is the foundation of friendship.”
“At this point, what else could I possibly share with you?” Sean joked at the slime. “You already literally ate my brains.”
“Hmm… good point. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
Rolling his orbs for what he was pretty sure was the umpteenth time today, Sean returned his attention to their surroundings. Focusing his mind on the part of his hearing that seemed tied to his pulse sense, he listened for the tell-tale heartbeats that would signal the presence of living creatures on the other side.
Hearing none, he decided to forgo spending mana on actually making a bone shield for now. Reasoning that if they weren’t in immediate danger of attack, the smart play was to hoard what mana he could for now. He also realized, admittedly far too late, that it had been a bonehead move to have Gel consume all of the maggots before spending his node points. If they had waited to eat, he could have made a bone shield and capped his mana pool at the same time.
Sean didn’t beat himself up over that, however. He just resolved not to play fast and loose with easy sources of mana in the future unless he had already spent whatever he could.
With nothing else keeping them here, Sean reached for the door with his left hand and opened it.
Annnnnd…. Immediately wished he hadn't.
"Woah." Gel said, clearly impressed. "What do you think it ate to get that big?"
“Uh… you…”
“And where can we get some?”