Dyani looked up in wonder at the waste collection chamber. It was shaped like an enormous egg, with an arched ceiling and bowl shaped floor. Dozens of openings ringed the upper wall, spilling out sewage gathered from all around the city like the least pleasant waterfalls imaginable. The sewage pooled below, and would long since have flooded even this enormous chamber if not for the thick, twisting roots that trailed from the ceiling.
They drank greedily from the gathered nutrients, slurping it down so quickly that the liquid formed a whirlpool, like a bathtub with its plug pulled.
Nature mana thrummed peacefully in the air, pressing against Dyani’s skin, but it wasn’t the most prevalent affinity. Decay mana churned through everything like a turbulent sea. Its constant movement and the feeling of rot it carried was enough to send bile up Dyani’s throat and into her mouth, which was impressive against someone with the iron stomach of a sewer inspector.
She forced the bile down, but couldn’t keep the queasy feeling out of her stomach. Her veil broke against the mana assault, but that was the least of her problems.
Her eyes were fixed on the top of the tangled roots, rested two dangers, one familiar and one new.
As if she didn’t have enough on her mind, her interface chose this moment to come back online.
Interface restart complete.
Identify has evolved into Archive.
Identify:
* Store and retrieve data on creatures, objects, substances, or locations.
Archive:
* Store and retrieve data on creatures, objects, substances, or locations.
* Rapidly absorb data from mundane and magical sources.
* Search stored data by word, concept, or association.
* Increased data capacity (Scales with the Mind attribute).
* Limited ability to extrapolate new data using stored data.
At any other moment, Dyani would be thrilled that her Identify function hadn’t been broken, and even more excited about its expanded capabilities.
Still, she might as well try it out before she got herself killed.
She attempted to identify the unfamiliar object first.
Partial Match Found: Mana Node (Source: Archived Data) (61% Match)
Extrapolate Description from Available Data?
That was new. Not only did it offer to extrapolate a description, her interface had referenced archived data. She’d never identified something like this, so her interface must be accessing information from when her father had used it. Dyani had assumed that any stored information had been wiped when he died, and felt a touch of comfort at another piece of Rotomin’s legacy.
She agreed to the prompt and waited a moment before her interface delivered an actual description.
* Untethered Proto-Mana Node
* Level: 3
* Affinity: Decay
* Description: A mana node in the final stages of manifestation. As an untethered mana node, the majority of mana it releases will form into monsters with decay affinity or related affinities such as poison, death, life, shadow, and undeath. Any remaining mana will integrate with the ambient mana or infuse nearby, compatible materials. When this proto-node transitions into a true mana node, its mana output will increase significantly.
It was much as she’d feared. The ever increasing number of monsters forming beneath the city wasn’t due to the stable mana node bound to the Mountain Oak increasing in level, or anything so pleasant.
She was staring at the culprit, a sphere of black and sickly green mana.
If her interface’s new information extrapolating abilities were to be believed, things would only get worse when the node fully formed. It took a guild of hundreds of Slayers to put down the monsters that formed from the various mana nodes outside the city.
Those monsters managed their fair share of killing and destruction, even in sparsely populated areas. How many would die when an untethered mana node a level above the stable node at the center of the city started spewing out monsters like a polluted volcano?
Perversely, Dyani was reminded of the conversation she’d overheard nearly a year ago, the very same one that had inspired her to descend to the sewer to find monsters to fight for experience.
Two women had been gossiping about someone being attacked through their toilet, while they were doing their business.
She’d found it funny at the time, but now, not so much.
It was doubtful that the monsters would bother with such circuitous routes when the node completed itself. There would likely be enough of them to move manhole covers or simply dig through earth and stone with claw, tooth, magic, or acid.
The node chose this moment to punctuate her dread. A nearby patch of mana twisted and coalesced into a complex, organic shape. This was her first time witnessing the birth of a monster. It felt very much like the formation of a skill core, but more organized. While most of the moving energy was simply ambient mana, she did sense an instigating force within the mass, like the grit at the center of a pearl.
She lost contact with whatever the instigating emerging was once the monster finished forming. The Turret Shroom barely had time to catch itself on a nearby root before the other danger that Dyani had been trying not to think about snatched it up in one of its many mouths and pulled it down its throat with a set of rotary teeth.
Partial Match Found: False Hydra (87% Match)
Extrapolate Description from Available Data?
* Evolved False Hydra (Unknown Rarity):
* Level: 4
* Creature Type: Monster, Serpent, Hybrid
* Affinities: Hunger, Poison
* Description: Despite the name, this species has no relation to the traditional hydra. False Hydras are even more aggressive than the average monster, with an instinctive drive to kill and consume other members of their species, in order to increase their number of heads, levels, and attributes. Their primary forms of attack are sets of rotary teeth designed to rapidly consume prey and venom with anesthetic and sleep-inducing properties.
* Unlike ordinary False Hydras, this specimen has evolved the ability to consume and incorporate creatures beyond members of its species.
* This monster is linked to a nearby mana node as a guardian. Killing this monster is highly likely to destabilize and possibly destroy this mana node.
The majority of the heads were false hydras, joined by a large number of Fungal Rats, a few Turret Shroom stalks, a single golden Tanglepillar, and a few other monsters she couldn’t make out at this distance.
As she watched, the serpent head that had consumed the unlucky newborn Turret Shroom split down the side. It released a brand new acid-spitting mushroom on an extended neck to join the rest of the hideous bouquet.
Dyani whispered a thankful prayer to the goddess that none of the heads were human, quickly followed by a prayer for strength, one for courage, and another for aid. She hadn’t been to a temple since her awakening, and rarely thought about religion. She wasn’t even sure if she really believed in the goddess, but now wasn’t the time to be picky about potential sources of help.
While she was tempted to attack the Evolved False Hydra head on. From what she understood from her father’s old stories and her interface’s descriptions, if it died, the node would go along with it.
But Dyani still remembered her first attempt to fight a False Hydra. She’d been forced to flee from the group of single headed serpents, which had joined together and nearly killed Pikawon. And while she was grateful for the circumstances that had led her to make a new friend, she wasn’t so foolish to repeat them, at least without appropriate preparation.
Even though this monster was far more powerful than anything she’d faced before, there were a few factors in Dyani’s favor. The Evolved False Hydra had far more limited mobility than she did. Its long, sinuous body was twisted through a number of large, hanging roots. It was the perfect position to snatch up newly manifested monsters, but not for combat with someone at a distance.
Dyani couldn’t fly, but she could use successive Mana Jumps to navigate through the air. Doing so constantly would be expensive in terms of mana, but she didn’t need to kill this thing quickly. It was too big to leave through one of the many openings that Dyani had used, so she could retreat and return as needed.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
So long as Dyani regained mana faster than the Evolved False Hydra regained health, she should be able to whittle it down.
Dyani was tempted to pull the Mercurial Halberd from her dimensional backpack. She really did love her new weapon, but it wasn’t the tool for the job.
She was getting increasingly skilled with wielding it while jumping around in narrow spaces, but had no experience using it while bouncing around in open air. It would take all of her attention just to use Mana Jump as a form of budget flight.
She needed another option.
Dyani opened her status.
* Name: Dyani Farlight
* Level: 2.2
* Experience: 49%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 0
* Mana Regeneration: 1
* Magic Power: 0
* Strength: 0
* Speed: 0
* Endurance: 0
* Vitality: 1
* Mind: 1
* Toughness: 0
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. You gain two skill slots per level, instead of one. You cannot absorb skills.
2. You have increased sensitivity to and intuitive understanding of skill structures. You may alter and reshape your internal spiritual structure more easily and with reduced risk.
* Talent Skills:
* None
* Skill Slots:
* Mana Jump (Exceptionally Rare)
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Propels the user in a desired direction.
* Crystallize Distilled Mana (Exceptionally Rare)
* Type: Conjuration
* Affinity: None
* Range: Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Distills and condenses the user’s mana into single affinity mana crystals, based on its predominant affinity. Available mana affinities include: Pure, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Shadow, Life, Death, Force, Metal, and Mind.
* Thermostat (Exceptionally Rare)
* Type: Passive, Defense
* Affinity: Heat
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Mana
* Effect: Consumes mana as needed to keep the user within a safe temperature range.
* Empty
She had a free skill slot to create a new skill where Stamina Burn had resided before she’d shattered it by fueling it with health instead of stamina to heal the worst of Pikawon’s poison.
Dyani retreated down the corridor, away from the node guardian to explore her options. She retrieved all the skills she had stored in her backpack.
* Exclusive Mana Sight (Unknown Rarity) (Skill Shard)
* Type: Perception
* Affinity: Light
* Range: Self
* Cost: None
* Effect: Allows the user to see mana. Different mana affinities are displayed as different colors.
* Warning: Mana perception replaces ordinary sight while this skill is in use.
* Mana Bolt (Common)
* Type: Attack, Ranged
* Affinity: Pure
* Range: Medium
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Shoots a projectile of compressed mana.
* Punch (Common)
* Type: Attack, Melee
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Increases the power of an ordinary punch.
* Haste (Common)
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Moderate Stamina
* Effect: Increases the user’s physical speed.
* Parry (Common)
* Type: Defense, Melee
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Deflects a limited amount of physical force from intercepted attacks.
* Crystallize Mana (Common)
* Type: Conjuration
* Affinity: None
* Range: Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Condenses the user’s mana into mana crystals.
* Skill Shard: Lukewarm Chill Flesh (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Manipulation
* Affinity: Heat
* Range: Touch
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Chills targeted meat to the ambient temperature. This is a skill shard of an unknown skill.
* Warning: Has no effect on targets below room temperature.
* Feverish (Unknown Rarity) (Skill Shard)
* Type: Defense
* Affinity: Heat
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Mana
* Effect: Increases the user’s temperature. Mana efficiency is very high. This is a skill shard of Cold Resistance.
* Warning: Skill provides no protections against overheating. In addition, due to the high mana efficiency, any temperature increases are very rapid and potentially fatal.
* Jump (Common) (Skill Shard)
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Increases the power of an ordinary jump.
She also had a few copies of Mana Jump, Thermostat, and various forms of Crystallize Mana, but she didn’t bother identifying them, as she was already intimately familiar with what they did, since she’d been the one to create them.
Even in such a tense situation, with an enormous monster in front of her and the city guards that were almost certainly still patrolling down here, the staggering amount of wealth and power laying innocuously before her brought a smile to her face.
With so many sources to draw from, she was certain she could make the perfect skill, the perfect weapon, to kill the dread beast and save Root Perch.
If she failed, she’d at least go out in a way that would make her parents proud.
***
Dyani Farlight: I love you, mom. If anything happens to me, you don’t need to be sad.
Nymin froze in midair, stopping so quickly that if she had a physical body, she would’ve given herself whiplash. A half-laugh, half-cry escaped her lips.
Pikawon was ahead of her. He had been following the Dyani’s scent trail, a difficult task down here but the only one they’d been able to think of after he’d revealed that Dyani had his anti-tracking talisman.
He stopped at a more normal speed and spun to face her, head darting around to find the source of her outcry. Nymin couldn’t manage words yet so she shook her head, doing her best to tell him there was nothing dangerous nearby.
“What is it?” Pikawon hissed, still looking around. Nymin swallowed the lump in her throat, then messaged Dyani back.
Nymin Farlight: Where are you?
Nymin Farlight: What’s happening?
Nymin Farlight: Don’t do anything reckless.
“Dyani just messaged me,” Nymin said, eyes fixed on the area right below her own messages, where a response from Dyani would appear in a few seconds. Nothing came through.
“She says not to be sad if something happens.”
“Eighth saint pick her bones,” Pikawon cursed, “We need to get to her…fast.” He resumed tracking her trail, sniffing for her scent like a vacuum elemental.
Nymin agreed whole-heartedly about finding her daughter, but Pikawon’s shift from general anxiety to obvious panic worried her more than the message.
If the guards caught Dyani, she’d be alive, without any injuries that couldn’t be healed. Nymin didn’t want that, but that had been a concern this whole time. Pikawon was acting like something had fundamentally changed.
“Why are you so worried? What changed”
Pikawon looked back with a grim expression.
“If she was caught, she’d tell you to save yourself, but she didn’t. She’s about to do something stupid, dangerous, and incredibly her.”