POV: Cass
Looking around at my now silent surroundings I'm standing at the epicenter of a mass slaughter, my mass slaughter. The things people do for a level. I chuckle aloud at that thought. I'm initially tempted to gut and skin one of the Reliags and try eating it, but I decide against it. I'm not out of food yet and having more stats in case something goes wrong with eating them can't be bad. With the decision made I leave heading further northwest. I travel for hours but just as night falls, I feel the energy signature of something more powerful than your stock standard animals. Another type of beast? I move to get a visual on my target before packing it in for the night.
When I arrive, I find that I'm staring at ... another Reliag? I didn't expect to find another group of them, maybe this is one that got lost? Though, it is carrying a rabbit with it. I opt to follow it turning on my night vision as I do. I get a feeling of deja vu as I start feeling others closing in on another central location, another pack of Reliags. I'm not sure why I'm so surprised by there being another group of them, I just had it in my head that they would all be living together, not in multiple different camps. What do I know though, this is a new world not a carbon copy of my favorite litrpg books. This is a good reminder not to take anything for granted and assume I already know how things work just because the human race had made up stories about things like this happening.
After discovering the location of the nest, I back off and find somewhere to camp for the night, I have a long day of monster hunting to do tomorrow.
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I breathed out a long sigh of pure bliss as I stepped into the cold clear water of a river. It had been so long since I was able to clean myself this thoroughly. None of the books I read had ever prepared me for the absolute mountain of grime that wandering the wilderness and fighting for weeks covered in blood produced. I picked up handfuls of sand and started scrubbing everything, I could see the water running by me turning a mix between crimson and black as I scoured the layers of dry and fresh blood from my body. After cleaning everything for the fourth time I finally felt like a human again and let myself relax into the water for a few minutes. Soon I looked to the bank where I had thrown my clothes, though they couldn't be called that anymore. They were partially shredded rags soaked in so much blood that I can't even tell what colors they used to be anymore.
Unfortunately for me I was a dumbass and didn't bring extra clothes, so I moved over and pulled them in with me. It took me probably half an hour of cleaning before I was left with something at least resembling clothes for me to wear. At this point I was honestly considering just leaving them off, it wasn't like there was anyone else out here. I knew I needed at least something to cover my bottom half though for when I returned to the zones. In the end I decided to wear just my boxers with no shirt, that way what was left of my pants and shirt would be intact for when I met with anyone. After pulling on my boxers, socks, and shoes I took the time to cut my hair with my Energy Blade. I'm sure it looked horrible after I was done, but it had gotten too long and was starting to hang into my eyes.
Clothed and preparing to set up camp for the night I looked over to a rock, one might see it sitting there and walk past it without a thought, but the rock was like a pulsing torch in the dark to my energy senses. The rock was something I found in the heart of the Reliag alpha's nest. Over the last few weeks, I found and killed over 20 Reliag nests. 15 nests of the first kind I came across 16 including it, all in a loose circle around a central area that contained 5 more powerful nests with more and higher leveled Reliag. By that time I had gained 7 more levels and was able to easily cut through the masses of low level Reliag by stuffing my Energy Blade with buckets of energy in quick bursts, extending the blade and cutting through a dozen Reliag with each swing.
Any of the higher leveled Reliag just received energy daggers to the chest until they stopped moving. While I took some opportunities to hone my skills in melee combat, I mostly just rushed through the nests slaughtering everything quickly for energy and moved on. In between those fights I worked on creating a shield of some sort out of my energy. It took me several hours of practice before I could even create it reliably. What I ended up doing was pulling my energy into my left forearm and then before pushing it to my hand like I did for my Energy Daggers, I pulled it out at my forearm and let it pool before shaping it with my will. Using my energy in a new way and outside of a skill was quite a bit more difficult, needing the same level of concentration that it took to use my abilities before I received my class and skills. After fully forming it into the shape I wanted I was able to keep that form in my mind as I summoned and dismissed the energy. It was slow to form at first, my energy would quickly move to my forearm and then pool on top of it with decent speed, but it took several seconds for the pooled energy to form the proper shape.
By now with weeks of practice it was a simple thought away, my energy or my will knowing exactly how to form it in a split second. While I never actually received a skill for my effort, I didn't need one. With practice it came as easily now as my other skills did, it was less of a mental button to push and more of a movement of my body or muscle memory. After realizing that I took the time to go over my other skills, breaking them down and trying to understand what was actually happening. What movements did my energy make, what shape did it form, where did it leave my body. My energy blade was the easiest as I had created it myself just like the shield, but it did change slightly when it became a skill. After getting used to it again I decided to stop pushing the mental button of my skill and instead form it myself.
It was an interesting process but after spending any spare time and extra energy on summoning and dismissing my energy creations I found that using my focus and will directly on the constructs not only improved them slightly but actually felt better or easier to use. It felt like I was moving my arm instead of telling my brain to move my arm, it wasn't too different, just more natural. After I got my shield and sword down, I moved to my cowl. I tried to examine burst and my night vision skills but those were quite a bit more complicated. For those skills and to a certain extent my cowl it wasn't just a process of moving the energy and willing it into shape. The energy did something once it was there and I couldn't quite figure out how the energy allowed for me to move or for my eyes to see the dark or even the part of my cowl that hid me in the dark. So, while the full effects of those skills were out of my control, I concentrated on learning the flow of my energy when I activated them.
After practicing my skills and taking care of all the other Reliag nests, I approached the final nest in the center of their territory; once close enough I sensed two bright energy signatures. One was the rock, the other was the alpha Reliag. The massive nest wasn't a problem for me, I had gained another 3 levels after killing the inner ring of nests with their higher tiers of monsters. What I did give my full attention was the alpha who only after every other Reliag was dead did it crawl out of its hole to fight me. I had discovered about a week ago that the reason all the other nests gathered so much food was all for this big bastard. The reason for that was something else I figured out after running out of food. Eating animals with energy in them gives you a small amount of energy towards leveling up and the higher their level the more energy you get. My only guess as to why that is would be because of the energy that seeps into our bodies as we level and grow stronger. How else would anything be able to move at the speeds we do or take the damage we can if not for our stats, which is really just energy that has been integrated into our bodies by the system? While most of the energy a being has goes to whomever killed it, there still remains some remnants of energy in its body, though I imagine after a certain amount of time that would decrease.
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All that to say the alpha had been sucking up all the energy it could find and was the highest level being I had ever seen. It was huge too, easily the size of a bus although half of that length was taken up by its tail. The fight ended up being ... easier than I thought it would be. It was big, yeah, and strong, but it just wasn't fast enough to do any damage to me and while my shield couldn't have taken any of its hits, I didn't need it to. Simply dodging was enough and the fight was over quickly as it overextended itself and left an opening for me to cut straight through its neck with a super charged and lengthened energy blade. That single attack alone took half of my energy to cut all the way through, but being halfway to empty was fine when the fight was already over.
With a little curiosity and a big dose of litrpg knowledge I ventured into the cave that the alpha crawled out of and walked to the energy signature still shining to my senses. Going in I figured it was going to be one of three things. Either it was going to be the alpha's second or queen or whatever, the alpha's baby, or an energy source. After tracking the signature to its location, I initially thought I was wrong. It took me longer than I would like to admit to realize that the signature was coming from a simple rock on the floor. I took it with me along with the Alpha carcass for dinner.
Sighing at the memories I looked away from what I could only assume was some kind of energy source and to what would be my meals for the next few days. Setting up camp was a simple routine for me at this point. Cutting wood, pilling up rocks, cleaning my kill, refilling my water, and finally cooking up the big lizard. Being level 21, it took me only a second to use friction to start my fire. The first time I set up a fire I put too much effort into twisting the stick and just broke it. Oh the woes of being too strong, how terrible. I chuckle to myself as I start turning the meat over the fire. With my food done I sit back and check my status as I enjoy my dinner.
Name: Cassius Heart
Titles: Primus
Class: Void Tainted Spell Blade (Lvl 21)
Unallocated Stats: 0
Strength: [33] +20% effectiveness
Vitality: [33] +20% effectiveness
Endurance: [33] +20% effectiveness
Dexterity: [84] +20% effectiveness
Agility: [92] +20% effectiveness
Intelligence: [117] +20% effectiveness
Wisdom: [98] +20% effectiveness
Skills:
Energy Blade
Energy Control
Burst
Void Tainted Sight
Void Tainted Cowl
I had grown so much out here over 3 short weeks, and while my leveling speed was slowing down significantly, that just meant I needed to find something more challenging. Until I found something like that though, I would explore further. I needed to find another city, as many as I could; my family was out there, and I needed to find them. Finishing my food with that thought I stood and picked up the rock bringing it with me into the tree for the night.
The next day I indulged by taking another bath before eating a nice breakfast of Reliag alpha steak and then began traveling, following the river north. It was simple enough for me to carry the Reliag carcass, though a bit unwieldy. The next day passed without anything interesting happening, I moved at a good clip, but nowhere near my fastest, as doing that with my food on my back was difficult if only because of the carcass's mass and momentum shifting separately to my body. It was at the end of the night just before I was about to stop that I felt something at the edges of my energy sense. While I had felt multiple things along the way, like earth animals that I could feel had started leveling to others that hadn't, this gave me a different feeling.
Deciding to check it out I set down my cargo and quietly ventured towards the energy signatures. The odd thing about it was that to my sense it felt like there was a giant area of energy with condensed locations, like there was energy all around, but concentrated into a lot of singular points in that area. I had never felt anything like it before now, and as I got closer, I could feel the area extending down into the ground the energy getting denser the lower it went. It took me only a few seconds to cover the full range of my sense, which had started slowly expanding the more I used it. My range was now a little over 300 feet, and I didn't even have the time to get to full speed before I had arrived.
The sight that greeted me was unimpressive; a simple rise in terrain with a small tunnel at the bottom. It wasn't worthy of the definition of hill, but that didn't matter, what I was after was underneath. Not seeing anything inside or within half my range I decided to venture inside the tunnel. Entering I had just enough room that I only needed to slouch a little and bend my head down. Fortunately, it opened up slowly as I pushed forward, not by much but enough that I even had a little room above my head standing straight. This was nothing like a drilled hole or even a mineshaft as far as I knew, me not having visited any before, it looked like a natural break in the ground.
Not more than 20 seconds after I entered, I was able to get a visual on one of the dense points I had sensed. It looked like some kind of metal ore, maybe iron, though it's not like I've ever even seen iron ore before. It was my best guess with it being a dull metallic silver as opposed to shiny like I imagine silver would be. I wasn't sure if iron could be found this close to the surface or if the rules of Earth on these things even mattered anymore. Either way I was standing in some sort of metal deposit, a metal that was apparently full of energy, or sucking it in, or maybe even creating energy on its own. That was another point to me not knowing if this was iron or even an earth metal at all.
As my mind caught up from my wondering over why this was here or what it was, my eyes shot open as I realized that I had probably hit the jackpot. Not only had I found a deposit of likely valuable resources, but they were full of energy. My mind bounced from theories on crafting weapons and armor from this to using it as a leveling resource to some sort of currency and a million other possibilities. That's when I felt one of the deposits ... move? "Ah shit" As those words left my mouth a loud roar like rocks breaking over rocks resounded through the tunnel.