After his dream, Dren didn’t feel like sitting and grinding his new profession. Instead, he wanted to move around and fight. So with Ren at his side, he headed back into the dungeon to blow up some annoying bats. This time not skimping on the projectiles he blasted apart pack after pack. Not letting them even leave their roost before slaughtering them. In truth, the fights should have been way harder. If it wasn’t for them both having such high stealth capabilities they wouldn’t be able to ambush the monsters so easily. Even the act of silently throwing his daggers was enough to alert them. But in a way that was helpful. Between the high perception of the bats and the experience bonus for being in a dungeon, his stealth had leveled up twice already against the bats.
Even with the skill increase a second pack had managed to get airborne. Luckily he wasn’t alone and Ren managed to shred the squishy bat monster with a slash of her silken threads the moment it avoided his explosive attack. At level fifteen she had gotten a new ability, Steel Silk. With it she was able to produce a new type of silk that as the name implied looked made of metal. Considering how strong her silk had been before it seemed almost useless to Dren. But when he questioned Ren she put on a mime show that he eventually realized was the goblin beserker breaking free of her bindings. Even the gardeners had cut free of her threads a few times in the first fights.
Yet he recalled her stopping one of their powerful slashes with a single strand towards the end. In the middle of the fight, he hadn’t considered it at all. But that shouldn’t have been possible, not with her original threads. But the perks didn’t stop there it seemed she was able to use the threads in her smithing. Somehow reinforcing her creations with the metallic silk.
This use made him wonder if the skill had come because of her smithing skill. Or was this always an option? How the system picked what skills they gained still seemed strange to him.
Either way slaughtering the annoying bats was going quite well for them. So much so that the last pack had actually netted him level ten in his Profane Blade class. With it came another new skill.
“Manifest Blade: A skill created by the Profane Order in their attempts to recreate the Divine Blade. Unable to produce true Divine power it falls far short of their goal. Yet, it was not without use. Forged with equal parts of all three mortal energies its power was still impressive enough to be of use, with a large enough sacrifice. Power and Duration of the construct is based on the amount of energies sacrificed.”
Scratching his head he considered the new ability. It was true in the past he had constantly destroyed his weapons or been disarmed. But nowadays he had plenty of backups, that was the whole point of Ren learning weaponsmithing for him. Still, maybe it would be really useful somehow?
Pouring ten points of each of his resources into the skill a shimmering dagger of swirling energy appeared in his hand. Then instantly vanished. Frowning he tried a hundred of each resource. It once again appeared in his hand and stayed long enough for him to identify it.
Manifested Blade:
Damage: 30
Duration: 9 seconds.
Dren frowned. That wasn’t very impressive and the duration was pathetic. “But it gets stronger with the more I power it with right?” Dren considered that and then created another dagger with two hundred of each resource. Inspecting it, all the stats were double previously. “So thirty damage per one hundred resources and roughly ten seconds duration.” He muttered while eyeing the second dagger before it vanished. Creating another with just one hundred but this time focusing on a different design. The first two had been identical to the starting dagger. This time he imagined his armor piercing dagger and got one shaped the same. But when he examined it there was no difference in its attributes.
“Blegh. I can’t tell if this skill is really good or really bad. Without enchants they are kinda worse than a regular weapon. But at the same time, I can instantly make this one. Plus like all the other skills from the Profane Blade class so far they do have a way to scale. Even my newest daggers barely do more base damage than the starter one really. Just they can hold much better enchants. If I use enough resources I can craft a truly deadly blade for a short time. But then I’d have to drain out a ton of my resources. Including health.” Dren created a few more blades using various amounts of resources. It was a rather simple linear progression based on what he fueled it with. All of his skills were like tiny voids in his mind he could pour energy into in order to get the outcome he wanted.
It was mostly done on a subconscious level and the skills themselves drew out the required resources. Only with his Aura ability and this one did he feed it specific amounts at will instead. It was while testing this new skill that it something tugged at his mind. Powering a skill felt a whole lot like when he was filling mana veins during enchanting. No, not like it. But it was absolutely the same. He only really noticed it because this skill took a conscious effort to power instead of it just taking it from him.
Out of curiosity, he willed only mana to flow into the skill to see what happened. Yet oddly enough when he tried to feed mana into it. The energy started to enter but then stopped. All the mana he fed into it just sorta splashed around it and faded away. He tried with stamina alone and again got the same results. He could start to feed it in but it just stopped accepting it after a point or so, the energy splashing around his mind to vanish.
Yet, despite failing he felt like it might be possible. It had started to go in but it was like pushing a thread into a pipe. It went smoothly until it hit a blockage and then bundled up. If he could just keep it going forward, maybe he could force it in. It kinda felt like the resistance he got when refining an item. Where he needed to force the mana into the veins in a way that made them straighten. He did this by clamping down on the mana to keep it almost rigid before pushing it through the item's veins. Making them realign as he desired, for a neater path.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Grasping another bit of mana he clamped his will down on it and fed it into the skill. It again hit the resistance shortly after entering but instead of just splashing around when it met resistance. He kept it together before willing it forward. For long seconds it didn’t budge, then he felt the tiniest bit of give and… collapsed to the ground in sheer agony. Ren standing patiently beside her master as he stared off into space with a look of utter concentration jumped in shock. A moment later she was crouched down beside him trying what she could to help. Mostly patting his head with a worried expression.
Managing to open one eye while the other twitched wildly Dren groaned. “Ow.” Ren patted his head more. “Ow.” Was all he could say in response. Since the integration, he had suffered a number of painful things. But this was a whole new level. “Never again.” He managed to groan out as slowly the pain faded from soul rending to just mind shattering.
*****
Dren decided that messing with how his skills worked wasn’t something he would do again. Even if the very knowledge that he could do something like messing with a skill was interesting in its own way. It just wasn’t interesting enough to risk that pain a second time. Yet the very idea seemed to linger in the back of his mind taunting him. It whispered that he was so close to discovering something important. Something that could make him stronger.
“No, Levels will make me stronger right now. Not doing stupid things that hurt.” He said out loud to shake off the lingering temptation. Ren looked at him oddly. Clearing his throat he turned his attention deeper into the dungeon. “Let's clear the rest of these stupid bats and then I want to do some enchanting. We probably should clear this dungeon as soon as possible and hit the next. Hopefully, we can get some more prime kills. Or at the very least boost our dungeon bonuses.”
Ren gave no response but simply waited patiently, ready to follow his lead. “Righto onward.” Activating stealth with explosive daggers in hand he crept forward, eager to slaughter more bats.
*****
Leveling was getting really slow. They had finished clearing out the rest of the bats before finding the last monster type. A Hive Gremlin. The grey skinned humanoid creature looked almost like a goblin. Only one with a horrible hunchback and a face that was about sixty percent mouth filled with jagged teeth. Tiny beady eyes and no ears. They carried no weapons and wore no clothes, luckily they were rather genderless. Moving around in groups of three they slouched around areas slightly wider in the tunnel. Unfortunately unlike the bats that clustered tightly together. These wandered far enough away from one another to not easily be blasted apart as a group. Yet, too close to pull one at a time.
While they didn’t look all that dangerous, neither had the bats. Still, they had to fight them eventually. While the plan was to retreat to rest and level up his enchanting some. It would be silly to not at least kill the first pack and discover what they could do. Right? In rapid succession, he tossed out three daggers. One to land at the feet of each of the monsters. The moment they struck, chains erupted from the hilt to wrap around the monster. With sudden speed, the chains retracted dragging each of the monsters closer to their knife before they detonated.
Ready to charge in and mop up the wounded monsters Dren found himself rushing in on three angry gremlins that seemed mostly unharmed. As surprised as he was by this, what happened next was even more shocking. It seemed the Hive in their names didn’t refer to them being a hive species. No, it revolved around them having a hive. Bugs emerged from those hunchbacks in swarms. Hundreds of flying biting and stinging insects emerged to swarm towards him. Dren barely paid them any mind as he rushed toward the closest gremlin. He had a ton of toughness, what was some tiny little bug going to do? They weren’t giant, but simply tiny common insects.
When the swarm washed over him he winced as stinging pain spread over all his exposed skin. Despite their tiny size, the bugs could still actually inflict damage on him. It was minuscule to the point of being laughable. But that was only as an individual. With hundreds of them nipping away at him, his health he started slowly losing points. The loss started to ramp up as the swarm continued to grow thicker. Insects now crawling all over him and even working their way into his clothing.
Using his boots' teleport ability he vanished and appeared next to the closest grinning gremlin. It squawked in shock before trying to bite him. Avoiding the thing's sudden bite was easy enough and Dren slammed his blade into a crimson line glowing on the thing's neck and his dagger bit into the flesh. With far more effort than he expected, he drove it in, the blade having difficulty cutting through the monster's flesh. Cursing the monster's insane toughness even as more bugs swarming out of its back washed over him. The swarm he had teleported away from already merging with them.
More flying insects rushed towards him from the other gremlins as they too charged in. Around him the swarm grew so thick he was basically blind. Still, it wasn’t hard to find the gremlins to target. They were gnashing their teeth against his body as they clung to him. It seemed they had almost no strength to balance out their insane toughness. As they gnawed on him, they seemed unable to even scratch his armor. Let alone his body. But his health had started rapidly draining as the swarm just continued growing thicker. Using his Profane Drain he offset the loss but only by a meager amount as he repeatedly stabbed the monsters.
Silken threads lashed through the swarm killing a few insects. It made the swarm thin out, but not from killing near enough. Part of the swarm diverted towards Ren and his companion was quickly in the same situation. Minus the gremlins hanging onto his body.
Aggravated he released a burst of his aura fed with health to cause damage. Around him dead insects rained down, but not all of them. In fact, the amount killed was surprisingly few. Enough to further thin them around him but already more were rushing out of the monster's backs. Was there a limit to how many targets he could affect? Or was the amount of damage dealt by it spread over enemies until it was exhausted? Or did these tiny insects not only have the strength to deal damage to him but also enough toughness to just tank his aura’s damage?
Annoyed he opened his mouth and flooded his mask with mana. Interestingly enough where his Aura seemed to have trouble killing the insects. The flames he breathed out did not. They popped and crackled in a wild storm of noise as he swept his breath through them. With enough room to see he wasted no time before resuming his frenzied stabbing of the monsters trying to gnaw him to death. Soon enough all three were dead, but to his annoyance, the swarm didn’t vanish with their deaths. Many more fire breaths later and he was mostly bug free. Though he still kept finding them wiggling under his clothes trying to devour him.
“Ugh, I hate bugs.” Dren growled and Ren nearby wilted. “Spiders don’t count. Well, they probably do. But Aranea doesn’t count.” She gave him an unsure look and he sighed. “Enchanting time. I think it is about time we tried flame enhanced explosive daggers.”