I somehow wasn’t tired as I opened the door to my house. The adrenaline from the fight still lingered in my veins, keeping my muscles light, though the fleeting boost to my strength was already slipping away. As I stepped into the kitchen, I saw Aria sitting in my chair, her face tight with worry, her usual excitable expression replaced by a sombre one.
“There you are,” she said, standing up immediately. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been gone?”
“I know,” I muttered, guilt settling in further as I glanced at the clock on the wall. 4:00. “It shouldn’t of taken that long... I didn’t expect a Goblin General to show up either. It trapped me with an arena skill. I couldn’t get out.”
She blinked at me in surprise. “A Goblin General? In a level 20 dungeon? How the hell did you survive that?” Her voice was sharp, but beneath it, I could sense the underlying concern.
“I shouldn’t of.” I shrugged, trying to downplay the danger. “But it’s fine, I won in the end. Got some pretty good loot too.”
Aria narrowed her eyes at me, clearly not impressed by my attempt to brush it off. “You were gone for six hours, Charlotte. I thought something had happened. You should’ve at least sent a message.”
I winced. I hadn’t even thought about that. “I’m sorry. I was caught up in the dungeon. I tried to send a message and all. Turns out you can’t in the middle of a dungeon.”
She sighed heavily, the tension in her shoulders loosening just slightly. “Fine. Just... don’t do it again, okay?”
I nodded, grateful for her understanding, even if it was laced with exasperation. “I won’t.”
Aria’s expression finally softened, and she gestured toward the table. “Anyway, I made tea. You need to tell me everything, and then we need to prepare for the duel.”
Ah, the duel. I had almost forgotten about it in the chaos of the dungeon. The adrenaline surged through me once more, but this time, it was a different kind of excitement—a mixture of nerves and anticipation.
“Right,” I said, sitting down across from her. “I should probably tell you about the fight first.”
As I explained the battle, detailing how I had used my hair to crush and bind the goblins, Aria listened closely. Her eyes between pride and worry at the parts where I had nearly been overwhelmed.
“You’re getting stronger, but you’re also taking bigger risks,” she noted after I finished. “That General could’ve easily killed you.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But I’m learning. I pushed myself, and I think I unlocked some new synergies with my abilities. I didn’t know my hair could cocoon me like that or trap something as large as that General.”
Aria raised an eyebrow. “That’s good, but you need to be careful. These dungeons are only going to get harder.”
“I know. The stronger we get, the stronger they get. I do want to check my screens again, as the pulsing notifications in the corner of my vison are getting annoying” I replied opening the notifictions.
New titles unlocked! - Death-Defier.
Forcefully create an Ability while under immense pressure, such as your imminent death.
Rewards 1000 experience and Hair Cocoon (Ability). Will not be able to level or advance for 24hrs.
New perk unlocked!- Hair Cocoon!
Once every 3 days create a cocoon of hair around you. Strength of cocoon depends on Strength stat and closeness to death. All abilities and techniques are cancelled when this perk is activated. Will not be able to move while this perk is active. Once cocoon is completed, you will be able to use perks and abilities again.
Wow. Seems the System didn’t really like what I had done. It still gave me a perk and a title for… whatever it was I had done though. It was a powerful perk with some large drawbacks. The cooldown on it was insane although it did make sense.
I then looked at my full screens and saw that I really couldn’t level or advance. Damn.
Name:
Charlotte Brenner
Age:
18
Titles:
Death Defier.
Place of origin:
Corundrary
Combined tiers
2
Highest focus tier
1
Class:
Basic Tressmancer
Lvl
20
Ascent
Ascent of the Enveloping Locks
Realm
beginner - expert.
Skills
1
EXP
4000
Perks
Hair growth (Class Perk)
You can choose to lengthen or shorten your hair by ten centimetres a day. You can choose to focus this instead on making your hair strands thicker or creating more strands of hair on your head. (cooldown 24 hours)
Clean hair (class perk)
Your hair no longer gets dirty, grease, dirt mud etc just falls right off it.
Trichokenisis (ascent perk)
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
You can control your hair to a basic degree.
Strong hair (ascent perk)
Your hair gets stronger with each cultivation tier, it is now much harder to damage and can hold up against attacks much easier
New perk unlocked!- Hair Cocoon!
Once every 3 days create a cocoon of hair around you. Strength of cocoon depends on Strength stat and closeness to death. Anything touching the cocoon will get absorbed into it. Painfully. All abilities and techniques are cancelled when this perk is active. Will not be able to move while this perk is active. Once cocoon is completed, you will be able to use perks and abilities again.
Abilities
Silken snare (class ability)
Your hair wraps around part of an opponent, distracting them and annoying them
Strength Sapping Hair. (Class Ability)
Activating this ability will sap the strength from anyone your hair is touching and add it to yours. (Up to 80%) The effectiveness of this ability depends on the amount of hair touching them, the difference in power between you and your foe and the length of time this ability has been active. Once cancelled or broken the effects of this perk will fade slowly at a rate of 5% of the maximum strength able to be stolen per minute. For example, if someone had 15% strength stolen it would take 3 minutes for it to be returned. If however, someone had been having their strength stolen is over the cap of 80% the length of time taken for the strength to return is doubled, with it taking 32 minutes for their full strength to be returned.
Cultivation Techniques
1st Basic Technique
Hair strengthen - the more Qi put into the hair the stronger it gets.
2nd Base technique
Tress Bind - your hair wraps around something, restraining their movement and if willed starts to squeeze them to death.
1st Advanced technique
Hair Noose - Your hair wraps around your targets neck, tightening and is twice as effective at cutting off airflow. If hair is already wrapped around targets neck from another technique or ability, the bonus to airflow cutoff is still applied and the hair tightens even more.
2nd Advanced technique
Hair Stretch - The limit for the elasticity of your hair is now up to 800% when this technique is used. Your hairs speed increases by up to 75% when Qi is put into this technique. Without using this ability your hairs elasticity remains at the standard 200% for all hair related abilities/techniques.
Skills
Stronger body
Makes your body stronger
Stats
Strength
86(45+41)
Dexterity
37
Endurance
76(46+30)
Vitality
35
Intelligence
35
Wisdom
37
Attunements
Firsts Attunement gained!
All hair elated powers are 35% stronger
Nealy all of my stolen strength had disappeared, although I was still at nearly double my base strength. My screens were getting really long now. I blinked as I saw the amount of Exp I had gotten in the end. That was a lot.
I knew that I had to prepare for the duel now and, after showing Aria what I had gained, I headed up the stairs to clean my bloody armour and take a shower.
Somehow, cleaning the green goblin blood off my armour took even longer than I had thought. You never heard of this kind of stuff when you were growing up and hearing about those legendary dungeon divers. Their armour was always sparkling.
I finished scrubbing and headed downstairs after pulling my armour back on. We called a taxi and once it had landed, we got inside and told the driver where we were going. “The Arena?” he said “you look like one of them girls who is fighting tonight.” I responded, my tone slightly confused, “I mean I am fighting, but its supposed to be a private match.”
“Hey, what’s your name?” He asked me. “Charlotte, Charlotte Brenner.” He nods “Yep, I heard your name earlier. You are fighting tonight, but I don’t think it’s a private match because they aren’t announced.” Uh-oh. This was sure to be interesting. Aria took my hand, squeezing it softly as she saw how worried I was. The rest of the Taxi ride continued in silence, the vehicle landing softly on the concrete parking space outside the Arena. I thanked the driver and stepped out. Aria beside me.
We walked through the arena, and I checked in for the fight, putting Aria down as my trainer. This is because the trainers of the fighters were allowed to see the fight in a special room reserved for them.
I walked through and entered the Arena locker room even though I hadn’t brought much with me. I put my handbag in one of the lockers, my hands shaking slightly as I locked the door. This was supposed to be a private match. ‘What happened?’ The question burned inside me as I checked the time. 6:50.
I walked out onto the Arena and watched as the previous match concluded, one guy sporting some nasty bruises on his face and the other hobbling along as they exited the arena. It was my turn now.
I walked out into the massive Arena. I knew that Aria had booked the time for me while I was out fighting the dungeon, perhaps that was when the mix-up had happened. Oh well, this could turn out embarrassing for me or for her. Who new. We were fighting in the lvl 50 to 60 category of power. This was because each level of your Ascent counted as 10 levels, bringing me up to a total of a level 50 power.
The arena truly was massive, being easily 400 metres long and 200 metres wide. The crowds were silent as I walked out with my hair swirling behind me. Clearly, they didn’t know what to make of me, they hadn’t seen my powerset yet. Thousands of peoples were looking down at me, trying to figure me out. The one upside of this being a public match is that there would be scouts in the crowd, there to recruit for large guilds. If I did well maybe one or two of them would take notice.
I watched as my opponent walked out to meet me in the middle of the field, carrying a massive spear and tower shield. She was coated in armour, her hair pulled up into a high ponytail.
“Charlotte,” she said, my ex-girlfriends voice nervous. “Lilah,” I responded worry laced tightly into my tone.
We nodded at each other as a loud voice boomed out from all around us. “Get ready” I looked up, seeing my face shown on the big screens all around us. They switched to Lilah’s face and I knew that they would show our fight.
“Begin” came the voice and I activated all 3 of my passive techniques and abilities. [Hair Strengthen], [Hair Stretch] and [Strength Sapping Hair] flowed through my hair, making it an incredibly dangerous weapon. She grinned and charged, lowering her spear to try and skewer me. I activated [Tress bind] and my hair wrapped around the spear, slowing it until it hit my chest plate with a small ding sound. The force of her blow still pushed me back a few feet. I knew I was now on the back foot now and needed to fix that.
I used my hair to spiral further up her spear until I reached her gauntleted hand, my hair wrapping around it and sapping some of her strength before she broke my hairs grip on her spear and hand. She grimaced as she noticed the chunk of strength I had stolen. She shoved her shield out and hit me square in the chest, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I coughed and looked up at her, starting to get angry.
I activated [Hair Noose], sending hair straight for her neck. She blocked with her shield, but my hair was now much too long to be fully blocked, it skated to the side distracting her as it blasted towards her neck. While she was distracted by that I activated [Hair snare] hoping to knock her off balance.
The distraction worked and she dropped her shield, as she scrambled to get balanced again. My hair had snaked around her ankle and was pulling at her. She couldn’t afford much attention to be on that though as my hair had successfully wrapped around her neck with hair snare. She dropped her shield and scrabbled at her neck with her one free hand, the metal of her gauntlet failing to make purchase. I was gaining strength with every moment as she was losing it.
She gathered herself and had clearly activated some kind of ability as she forced all of her weight backwards, managing to pull my hair out from around her neck. Unfortunately for her though, my hair was still wrapped around her ankle. She stumbled before managing to break free of it. Unfortunately for her, I had thrown her shield far away with my hair. She wasn’t getting it back anytime soon. I summoned my sword, getting serious now.
The Greatsword that I had looted from the Goblin General materialised in my hand, weighed perfectly for my hand and its length was also perfect for my build. Her eyes widened in shock at the new development. She grimaced and swung her spear at me, intent on piercing my chest.
It connected, failing to pierce but knocking the wind out of my lungs again. I sent my hair out at the same time that she hit me, yanking her spear to the side and out of her hand. She stumbled and I capitalised on it, sending out a [Hair Noose] wrapping around her neck and a [Tress Bind] sealing her arms to her sides. She struggled, but with every passing second, she was losing strength, and I was gaining it. Coupled with what I had already stolen from her, she struggled collapsing to the ground, unable to do anything as I stopped the air going to her lungs.
Her eyes fluttered closed, fading into unconsciousness. The crowd cheered as the Announcer shouted out my name. “Charlotte Brenner has won her first fight! Lilah Valen is down and out, and she has won! A truly incredible performance from the new fighter. I know that the must be scouts here that are impressed at her performance…” I tuned him out, turning around after releasing Lilah and I left the Arena, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I reached the exit and saw Aria standing there, smiling. I ran up to her and hugged her, my best friend in all the worlds arms around behind me and hugging me back.
I pulled back after a few seconds and she smiled at me before congratulating me on my victory: “Congratulations, Charlotte, I’m so happy for you!” I grinned, having beaten my ex-girlfriend and gaining public recognition. My powerset was unique, and I was sure that I would hear from a few scouts in the next few weeks. They would send their instructions or offers or whatever it was via email. I thanked her and we headed home from the Arena, feeling very different than when we had entered it. I wanted to sleep after my long day and I did so.