Chapter 11: Falsities.
Trent saw something in the distance. It looked like a world border in some sort of game, a translucent wall that extended as far as he could see. When he got to the wall, he put his hand against it and tried to enter. But he couldn’t go through. It felt like an untextured, glasslike plane.
He examined it for a little bit, then used Identify on the strange obstacle.
Abyssal Division
A wall that separates different regions of the Abyss. Can only be passed by sovereign souls.
You cannot go through because you are not the original ‘Trent’. You were continually erased and remade by the god of the Abyss.
Despair washed over him. What...? Erased? Every time? Every religious experience? How...How was he supposed to get here in time? There was no way. He was doomed from the start. He sank to his knees.
If he was not a ‘sovereign soul’, what did that mean? Was he just another demon under the absolute control of the Abyss, just with a little more intelligence? Then... what was the point. He felt hazy, like the world was fading and suffocating him at the same time. Why... all of this then? Was he even at all like the original ‘Trent’? Was that why he felt nothing after being trapped here so long?
Then, what was ‘him’? Was he just a machine, convinced that he had sentience? Did he want to be Trent, or did he want to be himself. Or... what was the point. All of this, for nothing. Either way, he was trapped here.
But... he had the void within him. He had Voiding. Wait, maybe Voiding could break through the wall? He tried to use the Skill. There was resistance, like he couldn’t focus himself enough to activate it. That didn’t make any sense, right? There hadn’t been a religious experience since he had last used it. When had he last used it?
With a force of will, he brought Voiding to the fore. It activated, but it was...off. Like a mimicry. He refused to believe that he was this pathetic. There was no reason he should have gotten weaker anytime recently. He forced out the void hiding deep inside his consciousness into his body, then out in an aura.
He felt a sense of satisfaction even as reality frayed, and the world dissolved into mist. That was all him. That was his power.
He first felt pain. He was bloody, beaten, and charred all over. The two Lost Velders that were responsible had retreated as Voiding blasted out of him, but were closing back in.
Trent scrambled to dig up rocks from the ground. If he still had his clothes he could have put emergency ammo in his pockets, but the creation of DESTROY had spelled the final goodbye for them. He slowed both the enemies with his aura, but his head still felt fuzzy from whatever had happened. Had he fallen asleep? Was that a nightmare?
He was really lucky that most demons seemed to lack the sense to go for the head. The normally harmless Velders had beaten him to a pulp in the few seconds before he woke up. He was lucky the only the two of them had wandered his way. He quickly got away from them and dug up a few rocks. He couldn’t rush, as his stats had gotten high enough to crush his ammo into useless powder if he panicked.
It only took a few rocks to kill each of them, even these level 20+ ones and while struggling with the fugue state he was still in. But that was only the beginning of his problems. At first he thought that he might have relied too much on the gods healing and now all the exhaustion was crashing down on him, but that wouldn’t totally account for that awful nightmare.
Voiding was the thing that woke him up. Not even being beaten up by the zombies had done it. That was a clear sign that there was foul play afoot. And checking closely, he could sense subtle strings of mana trying to worm their way into him but being destroyed by his Skill.
That was worrying. They didn’t even give him a chance to see the new enemy, it just trapped him in a traumatic dream based on some of his worst fears. Still, he followed the strings of mana to a random-seeming spot a little bit up the slope. As he got close it started to shift away, so he snapped out of his curiosity and just blasted it with intercontinental ballistic rocks.
The creature’s invisibility dropped when it died. The thing looked like a vaguely humanoid squid with—mostly destroyed—crystalline armor. Which, combining a flexible and slimy creature with a hard and brittle exoskeleton? That didn’t seem like too good of an idea. But the point was, it looked like a Lovecraftian horror. But humanoid, and not notably racist.
*Defeated Yellow Knight (Lv. 27). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 15 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.*
Level up! You have reached level 12. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity.
Not only was it not yellow, but the armor didn’t even look like knight armor.
The fuzzy pressure faded with the death of the eldritch demon, and he heaved a sigh of relief. That was annoying. Although, it was much more pleasant than being trapped in that nightmare. Or should he call it a knightmare.
...
I’ll see myself out.
He remembered the whole start of the situation quite quickly when there weren’t mind-rape tendrils pushing against his head. He had fought a bunch more Abyssal grunts since getting his new Skill. It really was an amazing Skill when used right. He didn’t have to set up a trail anymore, just dig up ~500 rocks let loose.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
He had leveled up to eleven from all of the kills and was getting rather worried about the lack of a new monster even after the old ones started getting up to level 25. Little did he know he was actually just walking past invisible Yellow Knights that were too far away to detect him.
Anyway, he once again put his free point in Agility and opened his status.
Name: Trent
Species: Human
Titles: Rune Manipulator, Prodigy, Runeforger
Lv: 12
Affinity: Abyss
Sub-affinity: Opposition
Stats:
Physical:
Vitality: 14
Endurance: 25
Strength: 25
Agility: 14
Mind: 14
Perception: 36
Magical:
Capacity: 0
Regen: 0
Power: 0
Control: 0
Connection: 0
Perception: 0
Free points: 0
Skills: Voiding, Power Throw, DESTROY, Flurry Throw, Identify
All good and in order! Wow, those stats were getting high. I wonder...
Whee! Thud.
So he could jump around 20 meters in the air. Hmm. That’s probably due to the fact that gravity slows him down the same amount, so jump height doesn’t scale linearly. Interesting, but pointless.
Now, one to find more enemies. With Voiding constantly prepared to obliterate any sneaking tentacles.
It turned out that the new enemies were exp bags. They were hard to find—being invisible until they got hit—but once he detected some tendrils trying to get in his head, he just threw some rocks and cashed in on that sweet, sweet experience.
*Defeated Yellow Knight (Lv. 29). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 15 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.*
Level up! You have reached level 12. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity.
At this rate, he would get a THIRD Skill pick soon. Of course, that didn’t mean he was neglecting his other methods of gaining power. He had even been experimenting with Skill creation some more. It seemed that DESTROY was quite a fluke, as without the adrenaline and focus he couldn’t create a decent Skill form fast enough before it fell apart.
He had also inadvertently upgraded Voiding while he worked on a countermeasure for Yellow Knights. It definitely accomplished that goal and provided some comfort and security.
Skill Name: Voiding
Nullify and void the very foundation of existence. Decreases the strength, quantity, and connection of all mana in the target area. The more active the mana, the more it is affected. Can be used in a spherical area around the caster to decrease the power of all external spells, magical abilities, and magical Skills that pass through or are cast from the zone. The user may also decrease relative momentum of objects and beings in the zone. Can also be used on contact with a being or object to focus the nullifying power on the target. On an object, this has a greater effect on inactive mana and can weaken or destroy enchantments and can instantly eliminate a chunk of momentum. On a being, this increases the power of the effect and allows it to affect internal spells, magical abilities, and magical Skills as well as hinder the ability to gain momentum at all. The user's body is suffused with the suppressive weight of their will. All mana attempting to directly affect them has reduced effect, especially hostile and mind-affecting mana.
The upgrade was a huge relief for Trent. It was quite unsettling to constantly be in fear of getting mind-fucked. He tested the effectiveness by dropping any active suppression, and the feeling barely affected him, let alone disabling him or dragging him into a nightmare.
After the whole upset from being hit by the illusion, he had decided to rethink a few things. He, for the first time since heading up the slope, turned back and headed down the slope to give himself some more time to practice and lower his stress levels a bit.
Once he got to the place where enemies were back to level 12, he even went to sleep for a bit. The religious experiences removed the need, but the lack of shut eye might have had adverse effects. There wasn’t any obvious benefit when he woke up, but he felt a little better and more relaxed. Probably mostly placebo though.
This backtracking also confirmed that the enemies were stronger the higher you got, and it wasn’t due to anything like them spawning at higher levels the longer he spent here. Which was nice to confirm, because he didn’t want to be on a time limit. That would have been really unpleasant.
It did take ages to go all the way back and then forward to the Yellow Knight area. Not as much time as he spent fighting his way there in the first place, but still a while. The time he spent trekking back and forth wasn’t wasted at all though. He had managed to create another Skill, this time using peace and control instead of frantic desperation.
Skill Name: Create
Mold and solidify the power of your will into physical objects. Must have each creatable object saved within the Skill. Current saved molds: Throwing ammo.
He was just slightly bummed out by the fact that the name wasn’t in all caps. He was much prouder of this Skill than DESTROY, after all. Many would look at the single available creation and deride the Skill, but that wasn’t how he saw it. His Skill functioned by literally molding his power into a shape and then forcing into a physical state.
What he had managed was actually an accomplishment, he managed to make a set output Skill modular without losing efficiency. He just didn’t have any other modules yet, but he would in the future. And for now, he finally had decent ammo!
The created orb would slowly dissolve and fade away, but the strain of flying through the air at Mach speeds didn’t speed up the process much at all. Compared to that, the basic rocks from the homogenous ground would dissolve into a ball of fire in an instant. This gave him actual long-range ammo, which was VERY useful.
The other benefit was quite simple: Hardness. The rock may have barely been harder than his bones—he didn’t check, that was a guess—that still made it far, far harder than his current projectiles. And guess what, hitting a demon in the face with a marble hurt a lot more than a cotton ball.
He wasn’t able to make the density much better than the normal ones, but having harder projectiles that could be created faster and easier than digging out rocks was a HUGE improvement. It probably doubled his combat power. It also gave him a security net if he was caught by surprise. All that at the cost of a little more focus.
The strategy of backtracking to force himself to train more seemed to have worked wonderfully. It was really quite boring though. And it gave him a sense of frustrated impotence at not moving forward. But he knew that progressing his skills and Skills was just as important as gaining new ones through levels.
So far, all but one of the enemy types had almost killed him once each. If he slacked in his progress or rushed ahead, he might not survive next time. The danger came not from the things he feared, but the things he didn’t know to fear. Well, if he stopped fearing something and it surprised him with a new trick that he didn’t know about, that would be the worst. There was some proverb about that, he was sure.
He started on towards the next monster. He would try to level up before then, but he needed to make some progress before he went too crazy. Onwards, to the peril of the unknown!