Reining in his rampant senses, Sam tried to listen to what Torg was saying, but everything was too distracting. After a while, the effects started to ebb and Sam was able to return to normal conversation.
“That was… distracting,” he said without a trace of humor in his tone. Torg nodded, with a grin splitting his craggy face.
“That it is. I was going to say, you should probably wait until you’re off that to go and fight the centipedes, but you recovered quicker than I thought. Unfortunately, it's been over three hours and it's almost time for you to go.”
Sam let out a muffled noise of alarm and sprang up. With a wave backwards, he left the bunker, leaving a group of very amused troglodytes. Outside of the bunker, it was pitch black so Sam used his trick from before and summoned a light. The light of his mana illuminated his way and he was able to make off the end of the cave far off in the distance. His eyes didn't really need that much light anymore on account of his enhancements and this paltry illumination was good enough.
He gripped his mace with both hands and let the light travel up the weapon and to the end. It was difficult to do so, but seeing as it was not for the purposes of attacking something, it was a lot easier than it could have been. Now with a makeshift flashlight, Sam made his way across the cave. Far off in the distance, he could hear the unearthly screams of some beast dying, and he hoped that was a sign that the centipedes were far off and not nearby. It was impossible to judge the origins of sound in this place because of the echoes that the cave created. Instead, Sam relied on luck.
As he walked across the expanse, he could hear a faint scratching noise, almost as if some gigantic snake was unfurling its coils and straightening out. Two green lights flared in front of him and Sam raised his mace. The lights grew brighter, illuminating the rest of the body that they were attached to. The lights were actually beach ball sized eyes, affixed to a hundred foot long centipede. It was as thick as a man was tall and it petrified Sam with its gaze. He made himself move as a glob of venom streaked down from its mouth and watched as it melted away the rock. The feeling of petrification was not simply out of fear it seemed, as he received a System notification.
You have resisted a generic Fear effect.
Fear effects are the most common of the mental effects and cause the receiver to feel a vague sense of dread, or, if the effect is more overt, paralysis.
Sam ignored the notification for now and instead focused on defending himself from the centipede. Trying to defeat such a large creature in a contest of strength was a no go for now and instead he would have to rely on his abilities. Dashing forwards at his full and not inconsiderable top speed, Sam weaved around a lightning fast strike from the monster’s fangs and reached its body. With a thud of bone on chitin, the mace was propelled into the side of the centipede by his powerful muscles. It bounced off, barely leaving a dent.
The centipede made some strange noise that sounded like laughing. It was mocking Sam for his weakness and he cursed as the massive bulk of the monster whipped around, slamming him away. He caught himself nimbly, his enhanced agility paying dividends, barely getting out of the way of a follow up strike. He really needed to find something with more armor penetration to deal with this thing. It looked at him, and then opened a horrific maw filled with rows of serrated teeth. A gurgling noise emanated from the mouth and a spray of green liquid doused the stone. Sam was caught with a single drop of the substance, and it felt like a drop of lava had been placed on his skin. The skin around the drop blistered and bubbled and the place where it struck was completely eaten away to the bone. Looking down at the chunk of white on his arm made him faintly nauseous, almost distracting him from the fight. Luckily he was wiser now and he was able to pay attention to both things at once.
As the centipede bunched up and rocketed towards him, Sam leaped into the air with his mace held high. As the centipede dashed underneath him, Sam fell down, bringing the mace down in a crescent moon arc into its forehead. The weapon clanged against the armor and staggered the centipede slightly, giving Sam time to charge up a mana enhanced strike. The blue energy made its way down his mace and he urged it to go faster. It seemed to be intentionally taunting him as it moved at a glacial pace down the weapon. Just as he was about to cancel the attack, the mace was fully charged and he slammed it down again. This time, there was a noticeable difference. Chunks of chitin scattered out from the impact point and a noxious goo began to spill from the hole in the monster’s head. It roared and bucked its neck so hard that Sam was catapulted into the air, landing about 50 feet away from the creature. It shook its head in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but the attack had severely damaged the centipede. Sam waited for it to weaken, and then he would move in, but it didn't seem to be weakening at all. Instead, it began to move towards him, tottering on its many legs at first, but growing faster as it went along. Steam started to rise from the open wound on its head and to Sam’s amazement, it began to close over.
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The centipede lurched forwards at the last second, catching Sam off guard. He let out a muffled shout as the monster bit down on him, swallowing him whole. The burning sensation of acid began to eat away at his skin and he had to bite his tongue to stop from screaming out loud, which would have opened his mouth, letting the acid in. Instead, Sam tried to position himself to be facing away from the creature’s gullet, where the majority of the acid seemed to be coming from. He maneuvered his mace as well to point downwards and he shrugged before triggering its ability. It had worked on the bear in the wilderness, so it would probably work here. Hoping that it had been a day since he had used it last, he set the mace off.
A flash of red light behind him signaled that it had begun and an irresistible force sent him flying forwards towards the centipede’s mouth. A wave of blue followed him up from below as the mace’s attack pulped the internal organs of the centipede.
He landed hard on the ground, groaning as the acid wounds started to sting anew in contact with the air. Instead of lying there, he had to get up and move as a bathtub’s worth of acid came crashing down next to him. It sank into the ground and splattered everywhere, making it looked like a bomb had gone off on the cave floor. Behind him, the centipede was rolling around on the ground, letting out deafening screeches. The entire middle of its body had split open and its viscera lay on the cave floor, steaming in the dank air. Sam was glad that he had left his light on, otherwise this fight would have been even more horrific than it had actually been. As he turned and prepared to walk towards the exit, a hissing noise came from behind him and the force of an explosion slammed him into the wall head first.
Waking up some time later, Sam massaged his aching skull, feeling a drop of blood coming from it. On the ground, the remains of the centipede lay all over the cave floor, some of the pieces hundreds of feet from the main part of the body. The creature had detonated somehow in response to its immediate demise and if Sam had been any closer, he probably would have died. As it was, if he was still a normal human he would definitely be dead. A wave of essence cascaded into him, bumping him up another level. He couldn’t be bothered reading the battle report so he instead decided to check his stats. He had gained the normal bonuses to his three class specific stats and had three left over. Deciding to put two into Strength to bring it to a round 50, and the last one into Dexterity, he finalized his choices. As soon as he did so, his muscles began to grow warm. Looking down at himself in confusion, Sam saw that his arms were glowing with a red heat. Alarmed, he started to wave them around to cool them off, but then he saw that the rest of his body was suffering from the same thing.
As the time passed, the heat became painful and then excruciating. Sam fell over and started to writhe on the ground, feeling his muscles liquefy under the intense heat. His limbs flopped over and his body began to spread out like a puddle in a sack of skin. By that point his nerves had been seared away and he could no longer feel any pain, a blessed relief. Then his body started to coagulate, coming back together slowly. The pain returned with a vengeance, lighting his now restored nerves on fire.
Sam blacked out after a few seconds of this and woke up in a pool of some sort of blackish substance. It smelt like the accumulated trash of an entire generation, condensed into a single stain of viscous filth. He scrambled away from it and then saw that his clothes were soaked in the stuff, Groaning, Sam resigned himself to his fate. Before he could start to wonder what exactly had just happened to him, a System notification popped up.
You have passed the First Threshold of Strength.
Every order of magnitude that you place into a stat, starting at 50, will count as a threshold. Upon crossing the threshold, you gain a permanent and compound 50 percent multiplier to the effectiveness of your stat. This will not be displayed on your status sheet, but it will be very noticeable. The first threshold that you pass will expel the impurities that are present in your body. Strength is what allows a warrior to continue fighting against all odds, what allows them to raise their weapons in defiance of the tolls that their exertion has taken upon them. It is what allows men to raise cities, armies, and entire countries. Use your strength well, for it can be both a boon and a curse.