Ike jolted awake. The sun hung low in the sky. Wisp sat nearby, her back to him, chewing on something. She glanced over her shoulder, wiping blood off her face. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” Ike muttered. He sat upright, feeling a bit lost. He blinked a few times and rubbed his face. It felt sticky for some reason, though he couldn’t say why. His stomach hurt, but not as bad as it had before his body had shut down for recovery. He lifted his shirt, looking beneath it.

A dark red scar marred the center of his stomach. A paler one streaked to the side of his abdomen. He patted his belly gently. It didn’t hurt too badly. Just a dull pain.

He took a deep breath, then startled and dove into his core, checking his mana.

It swirled around, about half-full. Better than where it had been sinking down to before he’d set the mana field on fire. He ran his hair back and looked down at the field.

Scorched puppets wore the remnants of uniforms and the scorched scraps of wigs. Their porcelain bodies stood in lines, as if nothing had happened at all. The ground was blackened. No goo remained. The earth cracked like a dried mud flat. In the middle, the remains of the two Rank 2 mages laid on the ground.

“Pity about the mana field,” Wisp commented.

“It wasn’t doing much for me anymore. Better to destroy it than leave it for the city lord,” Ike replied. Though it does mean I need to get out of the Abyss as soon as possible. I can’t sustain this Rank without converting to lunam long-term.

“Yeah,” Wisp agreed. She swallowed, then climbed to a crawl pose. She hopped down to the ground. “Let’s go look at those skills!”

Ike glanced at her, then snorted. Yeah. Guess Wisp doesn’t care too much about the mana field. As a monster, she can process primordial energy directly, so she doesn’t need to care about it.

Primordial energy… compared to adjusting to lunam, or worrying about mana or solam, wouldn’t it be best to directly access the universal energy all monsters can access?

“But before that…” Ike muttered aloud. He climbed to the edge of Wisp’s net and dropped down to the burned earth, following Wisp toward the bodies.

She looked at him as he approached. “Got a blade?”

“We have to cut them open?” Ike asked.

“Yeah. Just like monsters. If they have orbs, those things could be anywhere… well, with humans, they’re mostly in the belly.” She pointed at the first corpse’s stomach, about where Ike’s core was.

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“That makes sense. Skills are stored in the core,” Ike commented. He hesitated a moment, then shrugged. He cut open monsters. What was the difference? These men were dead. They weren’t using their skills anymore.

He sliced open the first man’s belly. One small orb rolled out.

“Score!” Wisp cheered.

Ike turned to the second man. A quick cut, and an orb emerged from him as well. Kneeling, he scooped up both orbs and sent a pulse of mana into each.

Fire. The sensation of breathing.

He turned to the second. Ice. A chill over his flesh.

He nodded to himself. It makes sense. Fire orb, ice orb.

“I helped. I get one,” Wisp asserted.

Ike looked at her, then shrugged. It’s fair to say that I wouldn’t have won that fight without her help. “Sure. Which one do you want?”

“Fire!”

Ike looked at Wisp. “Won’t you burn your own thread?”

Wisp tsked. She waggled her finger at him. “Having a fire skill is the first step to having fireproof thread. You should know that, Mr. Lightning Skin.”

“Lightning Clad,” Ike corrected her, but nodded anyways. It made sense. If he could change skills to make new skills, so could other people. Combining new skills to make a new skill… I haven’t tried that yet. Only morphing Lighting Dash into other lightning-based skills.

“Even if that fails… no one expects the fire-breathing spider,” Wisp finished. She snatched the fire orb and scuttled away. She crouched in the corner like a feral child, peering closely at the orb.

Ike watched her go, then chuckled. He shook his head. One orb remained. He spun it around in his palm, considering it. Fire was somewhat redundant for him. Lightning could set things on fire just fine and provided heat in a pinch. Ice, on the other hand, fixed a lot of problems in his current build. Lightning Clad only provided defense if his opponent used metal and he could shock them. If they used beast blades, like himself, or elemental blades or magic, it had absolutely no defensive power. Ice provided physical armor, regardless of what kind of attack the enemy launched. It also provided blades in a pinch. And if it was a ranged ice attack, he wouldn’t say no to that, either. Most of his attacks so far were close-range, putting aside the infinitely long-range and simultaneously melee-range Lightning Calling.

He sent another pulse into the orb. Cold, on my skin. So this is probably an ice armor. I wonder if I’ll be able to combine it with Lightning Clad? Call it… ice and lightning… uhm… Storm Clad?

Ike snorted under his breath. He waved his hand at himself. Let’s not get ahead of myself. But… well… I do like the sound of that.

He clenched his hand around the orb. Absorb!

Icy chill flowed into him. It poured up his arm and into his core. To his surprise, a good quantity of mana flowed with the skill, as cold as the skill itself. It layered on top of his existing mana like oil on water. Ike poked at it, curious. It stirred, the same as his ordinary mana, but didn’t mingle with it. Is this lunam? It’s cold, and it isn’t mana. Is this all it takes to absorb lunam? Just kill a man and absorb his… skills…

Hmm, okay, yep. No, I see how this is usually considered difficult. Haha. There’s probably another way to acquire lunam-absorbing skills, but uh… well, you know. More than one way to skin a cat, but usually, it’s gotta be dead first.

Aside from the chill in his core, there was little difficulty in absorbing the skill. A tingle as the cool energy flowed through his veins, but that was it. Ike frowned. No, but wait. Didn’t they say you couldn’t use mana and lunam at the same time? But there’s lunam in my core. Maybe it’s easy to absorb, but hard to use.

He shrugged to himself. I’ll figure it out later. For now, let’s try out this new skill.