Seth stood outside of the mouth of the cave, breathing in the fresh air of the night. After using Plunder the two mutilated corpses, the scent of blood was so thick that he had to take a break outside before taking care of the bodies.

He let out a satisfied sigh, his breath pluming through the air as a telltale sign of a cold night. Seth of course couldn’t really feel the frosty temperature though, as his body had overcome such discomforts. He watched the steam dissipate, thinking about how different his body had become in the last year.

At this point, Seth wasn’t even sure if the flesh he wore now was the same from back then. Between the installation of his Foundation, the augmentation of his constitution, and the anomaly that started it all, Seth’s entire being had changed on a fundamental level. Part of him wondered if he was still the same Seth that used to sit through history class, fantasizing about nothing at all. For all he knew, that Seth could be dead. He could just be a formation of energy that held some old memories of a long forgotten mortal.

Isn’t there something else you should be worried about?

A stray thought ran through his mind, stilling his thoughts. He turned back to the mouth of the cave, letting the scene of gore truly settle in. Minutes past, yet Seth continued to wait. His eyes squinted, then widened, then closed for short bursts. He rubbed them and blinked repeatedly to focus his vision.

Still nothing, huh?

He couldn’t help but feel as if something should be happening. He had thought the wave of guilt would hit him immediately after killing the first girl. Then, thinking that it was just a matter of adrenaline, Seth had rushed into killing the next girl, under the impression that the second kill would definitely speed up the process. But even now, almost ten minutes after the double homicide, Seth still felt perfectly calm.

He rose his arms up high, gazing at how the dim moonlight glistened off the dried blood covering his fingers and wrist.

These things are even better than I thought.

The black void covering his fingernails slowly morphed into a set of ink black claws tipped with white. His stump changed as well, turning into a paper-thin blade that stretched six inches from his wrist. It seemed his idea of a new weapon had turned out to be incredibly effective, leaving his most wild expectations in the dust.

The explosive impact of his augmented body mixed with the new damage output of his fingers seemed to create a powerful piercing effect that eclipsed Unstoppable Edge. Unfortunately this same power didn’t work for his wrist for some reason, once again showing the disadvantages of his missing limb. The lacking amount of Presence of Doom also played a role in the disadvantage. If he still had the full whirlpool of his black hand, then Seth could’ve made blades in all kinds of different places, increasing his lethality tenfold. It wasn’t all bad though, as the amount he did have allowed for him to include a couple tactical blades in places that were hidden from view.

Seth absently brought up his Attribute menu, checking to see if the fight had finally caused any of his abilities to spill over into the next class.

Level: Tier Three (Progress: Late)

Intellect: Class B

Constitution: Class A

Might: Class A

Intuition: Class B

Resolve: Class A

It looked like his constitution had crossed into the next class, most likely due to the savage cleave he had been forced to eat from the first girl’s broadsword. He hadn’t expected her to regain her bearings so quick after a direct hit from Black Mass, but the girl clearly could take a hit.

The rest of the encounter couldn’t really be called a fight since the girl had been hobbled from the start, but the crazy resilience of the armored girl’s skin had made the fight drag out for almost too long. Seth could tell by the lack of infused energy that the skin was a product of an Umbral Blessing. Instead of aiding her, this fact drove the nails into her coffin as Seth’s distaste for such abilities shined through, causing him to take on a more ruthless stratagem.

Finally letting the matter lie, Seth cast once more glance around to assure the area was clear before heading back into the cave.

It was time to see if Anima Thief worked on shapers.

********

Seth crouched over the remains of the armored girl. He had decided not to strip her of her gear, as the armor had been mostly torn to shreds after his attacks. He had initially followed the girls from the time they had reached the border of the wood line, as he had actually just stumbled across them on his way back to the cave.

He should’ve noticed their tracks earlier, but Seth had been thinking about his preparation for the next dimension so much that he didn’t notice them until True Sight caught onto one of their search abilities. Luckily, Specter State had been active and the search ability seemed to be of low rank, so his presence had not been discovered.

Specter State:

-When activated, Specter State erases detection from all senses, including lower rank detection

abilities. (Only applies to abilities lower ranked than the lowest attribute of the user)

After that, it was only a matter of time before the two split up and Seth exposed their vulnerable state.

Lying his black wrist onto the corpse’s chest, Seth called forward his ability. Similarly to all of the monsters before, the body began to crumble into dust as a murky black cloud of oil rose from the corpse. Soon enough, the entire anima had been extracted from the body, leaving a vague black humanoid to hover in silence.

Seth watched with interest as the cloud continued to congeal, more so than any other anima he had extracted before. It seemed like the anima of a tier four shaper was nearly solid, almost to the point that Seth had thought he had rose the dead for a moment.

But after a short inspection, the anima proved just as ethereal as the rest, as Seth was able to wave a stick through its body without issue. Raising his wrist once again, he reached for the idle anima despite being slightly put off by its passive state. Almost all the monster animas had reacted near instantaneously to his extraction, striking out at him and such. It wasn’t especially bad that the anima wasn’t attacking him, and Seth wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he continued to reach for the ink black figure.

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Upon contact with the anima, Seth was baffled as the shadowy girl finally moved, flinching back from his touch.

Huh?

He was about to reach for her again, but suddenly the girl’s eyelids peeled back to show a pair of glassy black orbs. After sighting him, the anima’s face transformed into a mask of naked fear, and a bloodcurdling shriek was let loose from the dead girl’s spirit.

Seth took an unconscious step away from the girl, covering his ears to block out the disturbing noise. As the scream continued, he regained enough of his wits to lunge toward the wailing anima, eager to stop the grating sound.

Unfortunately, the girl circumvented his attempts once again. Twisting her body to get away from his wrist, Mika’s anima let loose one last shriek before evaporating into a flash of golden light.

Seth was alone once again.

“What the hell was that about?” He asked in genuine confusion.

********

After a second attempt at extracting an anima from the other sister, Seth was disappointed to find that both girl’s animas were unable to be stolen. Just as the armored one, the shorter sister’s anima had shied away from his hand and summarily disappeared in a flash of light after no more than a few seconds.

Is it because of my Anima Thief ability? He wondered with a hint of desperation.

He left the cave as it was, only to return a few minutes later with a new corpse of a local tier two monster. Seth tossed the body next to the dust piles, then proceeded to activate his ability.

Just like hundreds of times before, the monster’s corpse turned to dust as a cloud of darkness entered Seth’s wrist without a fuss.

His eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he tried running through the possible reasons Anima Thief hadn’t worked on the girls’ bodies.

I haven’t had any issue retrieving tier four animas before this. Maybe it’s a shaper specific phenomenon? He brainstormed.

No matter what solution he could think of, his attention kept shifting back to the light that appeared when the darkened figures evaporated. It was the first time he had seen such a reaction, although he couldn’t divine what had caused the change.

As he thought about what the light could have been, Seth began physically looting the left over equipment set before him. He had already pocketed the larger girl’s broadsword and the smaller girl’s staff, but he hadn’t searched their actually bodies for leftover items.

Minutes later, he stepped back to inspect the meager gains covered in the dust that was formerly known as Mika and Jas. After a moment, he decided to take out whatever he had gotten from Plunder as well, leaving a much more sizable pile of loot on the stone floor of the cave.

After a few minutes of using Identify, Seth had sorted the items into those that he wanted to keep, and those that would just be taking up space. It seemed that most of the items were a variety of women’s clothing and equipment that Seth couldn’t even use if he wanted to, so those were an easy pass.

What caught his attention was some of the other items that had been extracted from the girls.

- (7x) Recovery Potion (Class C)

- (12x) Liquid Ambrosia

- (2x) Communication Suture

- Adamantine Broadsword

-Adamantine Staff

- (2x) Bejeweled Charm Bracelet

- De-Limiter (Class B ) (Orientation: Energy Output) (Uses: 2/3)

- Treated Blood Fletcher Core (Class B )

-Travel Cache (Class C)

-Enchanted Bandolier

-Transcript of the Slumbering Bear (Upgradeable)

It seemed headhunting was quite the profitable business.

Two kills had resulted in more loot than he had gained from the entirety of The Incubator thus far. He had acquired a full refreshment of recovery potions and the delicious vial rations that was common amongst the higher class. Even better, he had gotten an assortment of expensive looking weapons, jewelry, and some high classed items that he still had yet to fully identify.

Adamantine Broadsword:

-Grants significantly enhanced durability, advanced energy conductivity

Adamantine Staff:

-Grants significantly enhanced durability, advanced energy conductivity

Communication Suture:

-A basic means of communication that is connected to any linked sutures.

Bejeweled Charm Bracelet:

-A plain bracelet comprised of various gemstones.

Enchanted Bandolier:

-Grants enhanced durability to the contents held.

The spread of basic items didn’t seem too interesting, but Seth was more than happy with the collection. He strapped the bandolier across his chest, as even though the pockets of his Mercenary Slacks provided the aspect Quick Access, there was still a limit to the size of items he could fit inside of their small entrances. Secondly, he threw the bracelet and sutures into his cache, as he had no immediate use for either.

As he inspected the broadsword and staff, Seth had a sudden idea and swiftly struck at the items with his Anar claws. Instead of slicing clean through the light red metal, his claws rebounded with a large clang. Despite the painful reverberation that echoed through his fingers, Seth grinned as he realized the worth of the equipment.

Unstoppable Edge:

-The weapon’s blade cannot be stopped by any material or ability lower than one tier above the user. (Current Limit: Tier Four)

Unstoppable Edge was designed to cleave through any material that was anything less than one tier above his own ability. That meant that the adamantine the staff and broadsword were made of was at least a tier five material.

“These have to be worth a pretty penny.” He said with a heavy glint of greed in his eye.

Stashing the weapons into his cache, Seth finally moved on to the most interesting items.

De-Limiter (Class B):

- Allows the user to temporarily overcome tier limitations. (Orientation: Energy Output (Tier Five)) (Uses: 2/3)

Treated Blood Fletcher Core (Class B):

- A highly volatile monster core that contains hints of the Concept of Explosion

Travel Cache (Class C):

- A portable cache that contains fifty slots

Transcript of the Slumbering Bear (Upgradeable)

- A shaper transcript tailored to certain concept and Umbral affinities.

Seth almost drooled over the treasures. Killing the two shapers would have been worthwhile enough with just the De-Limiter, but with the Travel Cache and the monster core, Seth was truly pleased. He stored the glowing monster core into his cache before checking out the other two items. The De-Limiter looked like some sort of EpiPen while the Travel Cache was a simple metal canister. He slipped the syringe-like item into one of his armor pockets, and was about to holster the canister into his bandolier when a notification caused flashing at the edge of his vision.

Geez, I’m really getting behind on all these. He thought absently.

It was true, Seth hadn’t looked at the rest of the notifications that had come from the end of the group challenge, much less any of the ones that might have sprung up within the last couple of weeks. It seemed his mind had been more preoccupied than he had previously thought.

Main Menu:

Status-

Abilities-

Index-

Quests-

Notifications-

Concept System-

“Oh shoot.” Seth gasped.

On his way to the Notifications tab, a new entry on the menu caught his attention. It seemed he had forgotten about more than just his notifications, as a completely unexplored tab labeled Concept System now sat at the bottom of his Nuture ability.

Instead of going straight for his notifications, Seth opened up the mysterious new screen.

Concept System: Identity

Ego: (Undecided)

Id: (Undecided)

Superego: Concept of Resonance (Moon: Early)

He gaped at the screen, completely thrown by the descriptions. Seth didn’t know much about concept systems or what they entailed, but he was certain about one thing after checking the new tab:

He had the capacity to learn three different concepts.

A large part of Seth was ecstatic at the news, as he knew how useful the concept he had already was, so the idea of two other ones equal in strength pleased him greatly.

Unfortunately, there was a small part of Seth that still wished to be like the main characters in the old light novels he used to read, always pushing forward into uncharted territories. But the newfound limit to his capabilities was a factor that somewhat quashed his dreams of becoming a standalone hero with limitless potential.

“Sorry Jinwoo, looks like I won’t be catching up to you anytime soon.” He sighed.

He cast a glance down the winding cavern, thinking about the jump point that was only a few hundred feet away. But just as the thought to advance occurred to him, he dismissed the idea.

There is still business to settle here.

After sweeping his attention over the entrance once more, Seth swigged one of the expensive ration vials briefly before striding back out to the small field.

“Even if I don’t have infinite levels to gain…” He muttered.

“There are other ways to attain power.”