Novels2Search

Chapter 22 (OLD)

Congratulations to host for defeating LVL 51 Mini-Boss: Desdemona- The Shadow Priestess

Experience awarded

LVL UP

LVL UP

LVL UP

Sentient Soul Detected

Greater Soul absorbed (x1)

Due to host reaching LVL 50 class upgrade is available.

Please choose one of the following classes;

Class upgrades available for the host: Corpse Architect Exotic One who is practiced in the art of corpse manipulation and bodily modifications. The Corpse Architect can design monstrous creatures to do their bidding. Grants +1 to INT, +3 to WILL, and +6 to CTRL per level. Lord Of Souls Exotic Someone who rules over the souls of his slain enemies and commands them as they see fit. They have begun the path of mastery in regards to soul magic. Grants +2 to INT. +2 to WIS, +1 WILL, and +5 to CTRL per level.

Golemancer Exotic The Golemancer is someone who profoundly understands the inner workings of golems and has created many of their loyal kind. Grants +5 to INT, +3 to WILL, and +2 to CTRL per level.

Woah. These all sound amazing. I wonder what they offer though.

I selected Corpse Architect and it told me that if I picked that upgrade I would instantly learn Flesh Rend and Blood Manipulation thus rounding out the trio of bodily manipulation skills. And all my new creations would get an x4 multiplier to all of their starting stats after I had made their bodies. Then I selected Lord Of Souls and I read that all minions would cost 50% less control from now on and I would get a permanent multiplier of two to my intelligence stat. Lastly, I checked on Golemancer and it was just as crazy as the other two. Golems would cost 25% less mana to cast and only require mana on summoning with a limit of 10 golems at a time. That was still incredible and meant I would have like a small army of Big Guys at my disposal. It also listed a multiplier of two to my wisdom stat. My mind was kind of lost at the moment. I asked the guys what I should pick but Milo and Xeaos said it wasn’t their place to offer advice to their lord. I looked to Vaeda and told him of the possibilities.

“Well Greg, while they all seem to offer great bonuses to you, I think the choice is obvious. Lord Of Souls is the way to go. It will immediately double your mana now and forever moving forward. And it will allow you to control twice as many minions as before. I know the other two seem tempting but I truly believe the correct choice to be Lord Of Souls.”

“We’re in agreement then. That’s the one I was leaning to the most and I think overall this will help me with the whole mage thing as well.”

I selected Lord Of Souls and locked in my choice, then my eyes rolled back into my head and I fell over. I watched everyone rush over to me as I passed out.

I woke up kicking myself and with a throbbing headache due to falling on the floor. I was informed I had only been out for an hour roughly. I had a blue screen in my face but I ignored it and distributed my nine stat points before I went ahead and looked at my status.

Name: Gregory Sol Age: 21 Sex: Male Race: Human Level: 52 Class: Lord Of Souls Buffs none Debuffs none Health: 100/100 Mana: 1420/1770 (350 in use) Health Regen: 16 Health Per Hour Mana Regen: 47 Mana Per Hour Soul Energy 5500 STR 11 INT 354 (x2 due to class) WIS 47 PERC 6 VIT 20 END 16 AGI 10 DEX 22 WILL 100 CTRL 255

Umm, wow that is a LOT of mana now. I don’t even know how big The Horde could be now. I’m getting closer and closer to my goal of having my own little army of undead. Once I do that I’ll take on the boss of this dungeon and beat it. Then I can get out and get back to my friends. Better see what the new blue screen is about anyway.

Due to Host absorbing their first Greater Soul, new Soul Chamber ability unlocked; Soul Realm.

Soul Realm: Host now access to another realm based in their soul. They are able to travel freely to this new realm. Only beings tied to the host may enter this realm.

Holy fuck. I get ANOTHER REALM IN MY SOUL NOW? And it seems like I could probably bring Xeaos, Milo and The Horde with me? Honestly, this seems a bit busted. But everything IS trying to kill me, so I’m not complaining.

Synchronicity detected between Host’s class and one of the Host’s skills. Skill; Soul Chamber and class; Lord Of Souls has changed one of your stats.

Stat WILL has now changed into stat SOUL.

SOUL: Improves both the mental and spiritual resistances of the host.

New stat will retain all previous points put into WILL and for the future, anything that would give the host a point in WILL will give a point into SOUL instead.

As soon as the soul stat unlocked I felt an immediate change in myself, it was like when I first unlocked mana. Before I was tangentially aware of souls and whatnot and could really only feel the power of souls when I was spending soul energy. Now I could feel and see my own soul. I seemed to have gained some sort of soul-sight. My soul was deep within me and it was strong and pure feeling. It wasn’t something I could really control or manipulate yet as I could with mana but maybe in the future that would change. It was like a blazing fire in my chest burning bright and true. I didn’t know how big my soul was until I saw two threads coming off my soul and flowing into Milo and Xeaos. When I looked at their souls I saw that they were the size of the flame coming off a lighter, compared to the blazing fireball that was my own. I guess my soul was pretty strong compared to theirs. I looked over to Vaeda and saw his soul was even smaller than that it was like a matchstick.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

After assuring the guys I was indeed fine, I told everyone to split up and search the place for anything of value. I had destroyed my fire crystal when I used it to blow up Desdemona. I had to pray to the gods that she also had one due to being a mage or I wasn’t going to be able to eat anything for a while. Don’t get me wrong I love that I’m getting skinnier due to the dungeon but I don’t want to pass out in the middle of a fight due to hunger. We all rummaged around and after searching and finding next to nothing Milo brought over a yellow-colored gem that was a little smaller than a billiard ball. He told me that it was a lightning crystal and it performed the same effect as the water and fire crystals but with lightning. Putting a little bit of mana in rewarded me with a little bit of electrical discharge. Then I started pumping mana into it, being careful not to overload it like I had done with the fire one and it shot out a lightning bolt in front of me towards the wall. The wall was left with some scorch marks all over the impact site and my already blackened bone arm now had scorch marks on the palm.

“HOLY FUCK THAT WAS SICK. DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT?” I screamed at everyone.

“Uhh yes. My Lord maybe it would be wise not to use that indoors? It could prove detrimental towards the rest of that if we were hit by that.” said Milo nervously.

“Agreed, Greg be more careful where you point that,” said Vaeda.

I got an idea after seeing how this bigger crystal worked. I could probably use it to start fires from now on if I was careful enough. I told the other to give me some space and I walked over and leaned against a corner and began working on my idea. The thought I had was to fuse the crystal into the palm of my bone arm allowing me to shoot lightning bolts out of my hand without the need for a skill. I started by using Bone Bending to dig out a small grove in my palm to make room for the crystal. It took a significant amount of mana due to the fact that I had made the arm so solid and now I was attempting to sculpt it. Minutes turned to hours as I carefully moved the bone around. After I had made a rough slightly bigger crystal shape, I put the gem into the socket. Next came the step of filling in the bone into all the crevices where the crystal wasn’t. Luckily this didn’t take too long and after a while, I was done. I had covered most of the gem in bone leaving a small circular opening for the lightning bolt to escape outwards. Thankfully bones don’t conduct electricity so I wasn’t afraid of activating the gem just to electrocute myself. The final step was using Mana Manipulation to guide the threads of mana that were in my arm to also connect to the gem itself.

I got up and flexed the arm and hand and found no complications or obstructions with movement. Then I began to slowly channel mana into the gem and saw it light up and electricity was gathering in my palm. I pointed it outward and sent a pulse of mana through the crystal aiming my hand at the ground this time and it shot a small bolt right into the floor next to me. This alerted everyone else and when they came over to check on me I had to once again assure them I was fine and then Vaeda demanded I explain what I had been doing. I showed them my handiwork and let’s just say they were impressed. Milo thought it was ingenious, Xeaos thought it would prove formidable in battle and Vaeda was impressed that I had created something like that on my first try and creating a semi-magical object.

My arm looks so fucking cool now. It’s blackened and covered in burn marks due to the explosion and now it has this sick ass yellow crystal in the palm. I must say I’m a bit impressed with myself.

I told everyone they were free to explore but I wanted to rest for the night. When I awoke the next day we walked outside of the mausoleum and began to head in the only direction we hadn’t yet explored. As we walked through the mage territory, as we were fond of calling it now, I used Control Undead on the six mages we encountered. We continued on for a while not running into any enemies when we stumbled upon what looked to be a huge field of graves. I looked around and saw all the souls of the undead that were here. I counted over 75 undead in this huge field. I saw that comparing their souls to mine wasn’t even close. If mine was a raging fireball and the others were small flames, then the mindless undead were nothing but a flicker, I don’t even know if you’d consider them souls to be honest. I stopped looking at their souls and noticed these undead were a new type as well. They had all their skin and were hairless. They were extremely pale and had long fangs protruding from their faces as they marched around in squads of five. That’s when it hit me; these were probably vampires.

“Hey are those things vampires?” I whispered to my group as we moved behind some trees.

“Yes, Greg, from what I can tell from scouting them from above they are indeed Vampires. They look to be of the thrall variety though which means they are little more than instinctual creatures. We have to be careful you don’t get nicked on a bush or something. If they get a whiff of fresh blood we’ll be swarmed in minutes and you’ll be eaten alive” Vaeda warned.

Well, fuck me that’s scary as all hell.

“Okay, usual plan guys. Milo and Xeaos get ready to ambush the group Vaeda lures over here. I’m going to attempt to use Control Undead on at least one of them so we can learn something about their relative level and everything. We’re going to try to be a little stealthy with this to avoid gaining the attention of the whole horde over there. Alright, move out.”

Vaeda managed to lure over a group of five vampires. As soon as they walked through our little clearing we ambushed them. I immediately cast Control Undead on the nearest one while Xeaos and Milo attempted to quickly dispose of the rest. Milo started the fight by ambushing one of them with a Pierce straight through its brain. The group turned to Milo and while they were distracted Xeaos charged forward with a Shield Bash knocking one of them to the floor. Milo finished that one with another Pierce to its body as Xeaos made quick work of the other two by bisecting them. By the time they were done, I had taken control of the vampire.

Host successfully controlled undead.

Vampire Thrall: The lowest caste of vampires, they are little more than beasts driven by instinct. Be warned they are extremely fast and strong despite their appearances. They crave the blood of the living. LVL 25 Cost 25 CTRL & 50 Mana

Host’s minion has defeated an enemy in combat (x4)

Experience awarded.

Minor soul absorbed (x4)

After dismissing the notifications we turned around and tried to find a new base of operations. There were a couple of experiments I wanted to try running now that we had found vampires. We walked for about thirty minutes until we found a circling of houses. We made our residence in one and I told the others I was tired and would not want to be disturbed.