Ready to leave this place behind him forever, Edge returned to the altar room. Before he climbed back to the surface, he needed to retrieve his pack and anything else of value.

The once solemn chamber looked more like a slaughterhouse floor than a place of worship. He cast his gaze around the room, frowning at what he saw.

He had originally been planning to loot the convicts’ gear. But the reaver had torn it to shreds, along with all of their clothing. All that was left was their lanterns and an extra knife. He shrugged and put them inside his pack, glad to have a few more hours of light when he needed it.

He went back to the alcove to search for the pedestal, but not a trace of the reliquary remained. Good enough, Skill-Eater was the real prize anyway. Edge took one last look at the reaver’s body before heading out the door.

While many monsters had valuable parts, the shadowreaver didn’t have anything to harvest other than its feathers. There was no way that he was touching them again. Not only would plucking them be overwhelmingly disgusting, the smell would make him easy to track from miles away, drawing predators to his location.

Wait. The talons and claws. I might be able to cut them free. He went back in and took out his knife. He wasn’t sure if this was going to work, but it was worth a try.

Edge set the blade behind one of the reaver’s reverse claws, since they were bigger than the rest, right where it attached to its hand. He pressed down as hard as he could, but the blade refused to slice its skin.

This is way tougher than its throat. It feels more like armor than flesh. He leaned in, putting the weight of his body behind it while working the blade back and forth. Eventually, something started to give. The knife cut through with a groan of tortured metal, and he was able to pull the claw free.

He tried again with the other hand, which wound up being even harder than the first. Just when the big claw came loose, his knife snapped in half and the blade went skittering along the floor. That was when Edge noticed that the stench was getting worse. Heard the scratching of talons against stone. Oh shit. It’s time to go.

Pushing his luck would be suicidally stupid and he had already burned through a lifetime’s worth since entering the ravine. He strapped both claws to his pack and began making his way out of the ruins, prioritizing speed over stealth this time.

His recent encounter had the unfortunate side effect of turbocharging his imagination. Electric adrenaline surged into his veins as his heart began to race. It left him jumping at every shifting shadow. Diving for cover each time that he heard something echoing in the distance.

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But to his immense relief, Edge didn’t run into anything more menacing than his own shadow on his way out of the temple complex.

By the time that he passed through the entrance, he couldn’t hear or smell anything. If there were more monsters out there, they didn’t seem to be headed his way. While he didn’t lower his guard, the observation let him breathe a bit easier.

Edge left the ruins with a spring in his step, trailing gory footprints in his wake. Now that he wasn’t distracted, he could truly appreciate the changes he had undergone from cycling-up his core and earning his first trait.

He reveled in the way that his body responded to his commands. The added power and precision every time that he transferred his weight. He was stronger than before, a truth that was evident in every move that he made. Faster, nimbler, and able to withstand more punishment.

Although it wasn’t listed on his profile, all puppets started with a baseline of ten in their physical attributes. It meant that someone who had invested ten points into power was about twice as strong as a brand-new tourist, not ten times as mighty. But even a ten or twenty percent improvement was incredible compared to how he’d felt only hours before.

Edge could feel his gains in his bones. In the way that his muscles played over his joints every time that he took a step. It was flat-out amazing, and it made him hungry for more. If gaining nine attribute points felt this good, he couldn’t wait to see what ninety would do.

On top of everything else, his core was able to make its own mana, bolstered by his investment into generation. He could feel the magicytes flowing into his reservoir and then his reactor, creating more magic for regeneration to use.

Now that he had a core, he didn’t need to rely on his menus anymore. He could gauge his reserves any time in an instant. It would let him use his skills in the middle of battle without anything to distract him.

While new Edge was far more potent than the prior version of himself, he couldn’t afford to grow careless. Any of the monsters now stalking the plains could make a light snack of him, not to mention predatory beasts and bad weather.

I’ll have to watch out for more prisoners too. It seemed that the wardens weren’t keeping them off the plains anymore in the aftermath of the disaster.

Right now, he was still stage-zero. He had stepped into the big league after binding Skill-Eater, but the peak of power was still just a distant smudge on the horizon. On the other hand, Edge had reason to believe he wouldn’t be standing at the bottom for long.

The skills he had stolen were already helping him close the difference, even at rank-one. It was unheard of for someone at stage-zero to have two uncommon skills, let alone a rare, and he could slot twice as many as anyone else.

Skill-Eater would give him even more of a boost once he [Extracted] enough skills to fill all six slots, cycled-up a few more times, and evolved his core to stage-one. At which point, he would gain five more slots and an extra attribute point per cycle.

But eating more skills would have to wait until his core finished digesting the rare skill it had stolen from the monster. Right now, Edge would be happy to settle for a regular meal to fill his belly.

By now, he was crossing the middle of the ravine, heading for the incline leading to the Ivory Plains. The knowledge that there were more monsters up there made the entire journey feel fraught with peril, which was probably an accurate read of the situation now that he thought about it.

Not long after, Edge found himself looking up at a slice of blue sky. He’d reached the bottom of the ramp, just one short climb away from the surface.