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Ch063-Enough Crawling, Fly!
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[Concealed Croc (Mage+Rogue) – 41]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
“Mage and rogue. And it’s got a perk to hide its HP and MP…” Sylver said, as the five archers behind him adjusted their aim and fired in perfect unison. The five arrows spread out a moment before impact, forming a neat line starting at the spot between the eyes and a couple of centimeters out in both directions.
Four of the fired arrows hit solid scale and either bounced away or shattered, with only one managing to hit the soft spot. The arrow disappeared into the monster’s head, and it dropped down from the ceiling like a wet cloth.
It laid on its back, stunned and motionless. Sylver stood where he was and just looked at it.
Sylver waited for a solid minute, before making an educated guess that the monster was waiting for him to come closer.
Spring appeared next to the croc, which made an honest effort to turn around so its soft belly wasn’t exposed. Instead, it was held in place by Springs’s foot, as the shade quickly pierced through the soft underbelly flesh, and twisted the blade before pulling it out.
[Concealed Croc (Mage+Rogue) Defeated!]
Sylver walked to the dead body and did his very best to hold the soul in place. But just like when he was an apprentice, he simply didn’t have enough power to overcome the reptile’s natural resistance. In relative terms, this overgrown lizard might as well have been a dragon, for all the difference it made.
Sylver walked around the spreading puddle of blood surrounding the body, and continued on his way.
*
*
*
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 45!
+5AP
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 46!
+5AP
“I think something just tried to move into the chimp’s area, and decided the living rot infected apes were a good snack. Or maybe some of the rats infected something, and it only now died from it. But given that these are all within seconds of one another, I think the former is more likely,” Sylver said, looking joyfully at his status screen as he added the 20 points into intelligence to get it to 150.
It sounded weird, even to him, but Sylver was starting to love how it felt to expand his mana channels so rapidly. Down to the point he was planning on making it a habit of only ever adding points in bulk from now on.
“At least now we know that your poison still works on monsters up to level 80,” Spring answered, as Sylver cracked his neck from the slight expansion to his mana channels.
“Give it enough time, it can take down a basilisk. But I think this is more of a case of luck. Whatever ate it just happened to be susceptible to it. Not to mention, we’ve been walking around for hours, who knows how long the poisons’ had to work?” Sylver said, as he stretched his body out, and sent bright yellow sparks out of every joint. He wiped away the jumping electricity as if it were dust.
“If I get my intelligence to 160, my body will be producing an even 5MP per second,” Sylver said, flexing his fingers as they glowed so brightly they lit up the whole passageway.
“You could, or you could follow the original plan and get it out of the way,” Spring said, as Sylver’s body shuddered slightly as the robe seemed to somehow turn even darker, as tiny wisps of black smoke escaped from the now nearly invisible mass of blackness.
“Good point. I’m also somewhat worried about what will happen if there’s too big of a difference between my constitution and intelligence. I can already feel a strain on my body when I try to put too much mana into my muscles, so it’s only a matter of time until I start accidentally going past the limit,” Sylver said, as the cloak on top of the robe settled down and contained the wriggling mass of blackness.
“Wouldn’t you need strength and dexterity to prevent that, not constitution?” Spring suggested, summoning archers to aim at the pair of glowing eyes ahead of them.
“I’m not sure to be honest. But I want to get all 3 to 100 before increasing my mana. Or to 50 at least, for strength and dexterity. Illusions work great for the moment, but if I get too slow to take advantage of the momentary lapse in concentration, they will become pointless. I can augment my strength, but dexterity controls my perception and reflexes, so it takes precedence,” Sylver explained, as he watched the archers fired their arrows, and a swordsman appeared near the fallen and stunned creature and stabbed it through the heart.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“But I’m fairly certain I’m going to stick to melee combat for the foreseeable future,” Sylver said, as he walked forward, the corpse dragged off to the side before it even started losing heat.
“Why? Because of your low range?”
“Essentially. There are things I can do outside of 10 meters, but until I can use tier 4 magic, a dagger, or a sword, or a hammer is still the better option.”
“And it’s fun,” Spring said with a neutral tone but an unmistakable smirk.
“Effective and fun, what more could I ask for?” Sylver responded in the same neutral tone, with a faint grin on his face.
“The biggest issue with close quarter combat is that enemies with ranged attacks will kill you before you can get close enough to do any damage,” Sylver continued.
“But because you have shades, zombies, and illusions, you can distract whoever you’re facing long enough to get close enough for the kill. And worst comes to worst, you’ve got the ‘once every 10 years scythe of life, death, and love,’” Spring said, miming with an overly dramatic motion of swinging something absurdly large.
Sylver opened his hand and the scythe in question appeared in it almost instantly. He threw it ahead of them and it dissipated into thin air before it even hit the ground.
“One of my tutors fought with a scythe. It is, by an extremely wide margin, one of the most annoying weapons to fight against. And he had this stupid fucking enchantment on it, he would throw it, and punch you in the face while you’re busy trying to predict its trajectory. Because if you weren’t watching it, it would just change direction and cut your head off. The man was an animal, I died at his hand more than almost any other person I have ever known,” Sylver explained with a slight grimace.
“By enchanted you mean like those darts and daggers you’ve been soaking in your mana?” Spring asked, pulling one of the daggers in question out of Sylver’s robe and tossing it ahead of them.
The simple-looking thin blade rocked on the floor, before sliding towards Sylver, the tip pointing slightly upwards, as the robe extended down to pick it up.
“That’s the end goal, but they still need time until they’re done. I could enchant them manually, but this needs to be as natural of a connection as possible. There will come a time I’ll forget about them, and they’ll start being an extension of my body, moving almost by themselves,” Sylver explained, not even bothering to stop as the archers aimed and fired, and the swordsman finished the concealed croc off.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
*
*
*
Sylver was agitated.
Not just because the near-death at the hands of an overgrown chimp was fresh in his mind, but also because he was lost.
Not actually lost, the bracelet acted as something of a point of reference, he always knew if he was getting closer or farther away from the entrance/exit.
But he was lost in the sense he still hadn’t found the other layer boss. The concealed crocs were still everywhere, so he couldn’t just blindly run wherever he wanted, but at the same time, they were now of a lower level than Sylver, and were useless when it came to experience. If it weren’t for the fact that they ignored illusions, feints, and Sylver couldn’t see them until they opened their eyes, he would have ignored them.
But as it stood, he had to walk slowly, with his and his shade’s eyes glued to the ceiling and hoping they didn’t miss one again. Because as stupid as these falling overgrown lizards were, Sylver was still mortal-ish, and regrowing a crushed upper body would be incredibly painful and would take too long.
When he finally found the accursed door, Sylver wasn’t in the right frame of mind to carefully inspect it for traps and triggers, and instead just kicked it open, shattering one of the two large wooden double doors.
The room inside was almost completely dark. The walls were lined with a wet-looking sludge that looked like mushy fungus. The floor was… There was no floor. It was all entirely water, save for a thin stone bridge starting at the entrance, and stretching all the way across the wide pool of water, to the other side.
And on the other side, there was a large and inviting gold-trimmed chest. Sylver looked around the room, but stayed outside of it. Even with the door shattered, instantly repairing a piece of wood and making it near unbreakable wasn’t outside the realm of a dungeon’s ability.
Sylver waited for a few breaths, and even in his angered state couldn’t be persuaded to walk into the most obvious trap he had ever seen.
One of the wolf shades appeared nearby, and started to walk along the stone bridge.
As Sylver predicted, two concealed crocs jumped out of the water, on either side of the bridge, and landed directly onto the nameless wolf shade. Which had disappeared back into the shadows, the moment the water so much as moved, giving both concealed crocs a big mouthful of nothing.
They stood where they had landed, stunned for a few seconds, before they shot Sylver a glare and slithered back into the once again mirror-calm water.
Sylver took several steps back out of the doorway and took a small bowl from one of the shades’ bags.
Making a very small cut near his wrist, Sylver waited until the bowl was a little over three-quarters full, before sealing the wound with darkness.
Putting a finger in the bowl of blood, Sylver stirred it around with small sparks of yellow jumping about its surface. As he pulled his finger out, the blood turned a darker shade of red, flashing completely black for a few seconds before settling down into a bubbling boil. Sylver gave the magic some time to finish, while he made a shade swordsman remove some of his wrappings so Sylver could tear it into strips.
Putting 4 strips into the bubbling blood, Sylver used the end of a dagger to mix them up so they would get soaked up properly.
Four shade swordsmen took the slightly smoking wrappings out of the bowl and tied it around their heads.
Each one ran forward and across the bridge, in a single file line, and exactly 4 meters distance from one another. As expected, each shade got two concealed crocs jumping out of the water and biting into them. Sylver was amazed that one of them missed entirely, and toppled onto the bridge, before sliding back into the water.
But the other 7 didn’t have any issue and tore apart the swordsmen shades. Sylver watched as one of them swallowed the bright red wraps. The shade's shadows were gathered by Spring and brought back into Sylver’s shadow to be healed.
All that was left was to wait.
*
*
*
Sylver yawned as he continued reading his book, ignoring Springs repeated attempts to master partial materialization. He was making some progress, but they both knew this was simply something that he had to wait for. It wasn’t a matter of skill or ability, his soul was simply still not completely bonded to his semi-solid shadow construct.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver floated the ball of light he was using as a reading light across the bridge, and hovered it over the two corpses floating in the water. Their stomachs were inflated as if they were a balloon, and burst open just as Sylver finished making the mental comparison.
The explosion sent pieces of flesh flying everywhere. From the corpse, an oil-like liquid started to spread out and cover the water around it. It bubbled and moved unnaturally, as the corpse proceeded to sink.
The same exact thing happened to the second corpse, both sides of the water now covered in a murky looking dark red algae like substances, with pieces of slowly moving flesh floating everywhere.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver watched impassionately as more and more corpses floated up to the top of the water, before exploding and sinking back down below. There was now a thin layer of dark red mist floating up above the water's surface.
Surprisingly in sync, several humanoid-shaped lizards appeared near the entrance and threw the torn open corpses at Sylver, who sidestepped to the left and let them land into the corridor. He watched from behind the wooden door frame as more and more of these things came out of the water and threw the dead and decayed concealed croc bodies out of their room and into the corridor where Sylver was.
It was near impossible for Sylver to distinguish between one or the other, as every single one was a near-identical green hue, long and wide black eyes that protruded slightly out of their heads, and curved but sharp looking claws for hands. They had strangely duck-like webbed feet, but about twice as wide, and with significantly more muscle than Sylver would have expected. Every single one was completely nude, not that it made a difference considering how thick their armor-like scales appeared. They were all at least 2 and a half meters tall.
[Rasalka (Warrior+Rogue) – 54]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
The thing Sylver had used appraisal on, locked eyes with him and seemed to smile. It then made a series of gestures that Sylver could summarize as a vicious mockery of his cowardly character, and literal and metaphorical lack of manhood.
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you come out of that water and come fight me on land, fucker?” Sylver answered, as the group continued to throw the rotten and infected flesh of their brethren at him.
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
[Rasalka (Warrior+Rogue) Defeated!]
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
The remaining creatures all disappeared back into the water, before Sylver’s archers could finish reaching into their quills for more arrows.
“Why aren’t they coming out of the room to fight us?” Spring asked, kicking a scrap of intestine towards the pile the Rasalka’s had formed in the corridor.
“Perk related bonus? Or that they’re afraid I have an ambush set up here. I’m not sure, monsters have a weird territory system I’ve never really understood. But very convenient at times like this. Although usually by this point in time-”
The double doors slammed shut with such force that there was a strong gust of air that sent the pile of dead concealed crocs flying backward and splattering all over the dungeon wall.
“Dungeons are weird,” Sylver said, as his shades came out of his shadow and started piling the dead bodies and pieces of flesh against the sealed shut door.
Sylver waved his hand in a circular motion towards the pile, and leaned against the wall as it started to steam and fall in on itself.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“Not that it changes anything. The water’s already poisoned. If not for the chest at the end, I would have moved onto the next one, this room is done for,” Sylver said, as the corpses started to liquefy and were being held up by an invisible force against the door.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver heard a muffled screech on the other side of the wall and smiled to himself as the unknown enemies were defeated, one after the other.
“What do you think is in it? More garbage, or something good this time?” Sylver asked, as the shades continued to toss scraps of flesh into the ball of dark red bubbling liquid. It looked like a giant water droplet, held together purely by surface tension.
“I think something good. It's too obvious of a trap, so I’m willing to bet they need to have something worth the risk in there, for it to ever work. You can see souls, who is to say there isn’t a skill that lets you see the approximate value of something from a distance?” Spring asked. There was more screaming on the other side of the wall, followed by the sound of water splashing everywhere.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“Like a rogue specific appraisal effect… Yeah, I can see that being a thing. But is it worth the wait? These doors won’t be opening until everyone is dead, or-”
The doors slammed open and the screaming intensified to the point there were multiple echoes moving through the tunnels and coming back. The screaming intensified even more, when the giant bubble full of poisonous liquid burst and poured into the room. The doors slammed shut again.
“If you can do this, why not go all the way down? Clear layer bosses and get all the way up to level 100?” Spring asked, trying to peek through the crack between the two doors and not being able to see anything.
“First of all, monsters above a certain point have potent enough wild magic to neutralize the living rot poison. Secondly, ambushes, I could get killed on the way there. Thirdly, not all monsters are going to stay inside their rooms while I get to relax outside. And lastly, I still need practice and training in using this body, and there’s only so much I can achieve by sparring against you and Fen. But if the next boss is susceptible to poison, I’ll still use it. No point throwing an advantage away,” Sylver answered, counting out the reasons on his hand, as the screaming turned into a screech, loud enough to get the double doors to gently vibrate.
“Sounds like their boss is up,” Spring said, as he disappeared into Sylver’s shadow.
“Sounds like it,” Sylver said.
Sylver remained where he was, hidden up on the ceiling and covered with a layer of illusions, and watched as an enlarged version of the previously seen Rasalka walked up to the threshold of the room and looked around.
[Rasalka Ruler (Rogue+Mage) – 63]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
Its eyes locked onto Sylver immediately, and it pointed at him with a shaking claw.
Underneath his mask, Sylver smirked at the creature. What could it possibly-
His robe reacted too slowly, his soul sense didn’t feel it until it was too late, and Spring didn’t understand what was going on at all.
Sylver suddenly found himself winded and flying at an insane speed, hitting the water twice, like a skipping stone, before hitting the wall. His senses recovered almost immediately, as he attempted to climb up the wall, but found the slimy surface enchanted exactly against what he was attempting to do.
Sylver turned around and took in his surroundings. In front of the now-closed and sealed shut double wooden doors stood the Rasalka Ruler, his subjects standing nearby and all in various stages of dying from infection.
He noticed that the ruler was breathing far too heavily and mentally crossed his fingers that whatever that burst of speed skill was, it wasn’t one it could use in succession.
Sylver’s robe helped him climb onto one of the floating ballooned up corpses, and with a gentle kick of his foot, he stopped it from bursting open. Four Rsalka’s jumped into the water and disappeared, while the rest of the group remained where they were, guarding their ruler.
They’re guarding him, meaning he’s weak right now… Sylver thought, as he gave Spring his instructions, and left them to the shade to carry out.
Sylver waved a hand over his mask and forced an hour’s worth of air underneath it, and sealed it shut over his face. Before the Rasalka’s could even finish swimming to him, Sylver stomped on the croc’s body he was standing on, and disappeared into a cloud of bright red mist.
*
The Rasalka Ruler tried to say something, to warn them about what Sylver was doing, but instead suddenly found himself dodging out of the way of a black and yellow sword, in the hands of a matching black and yellow swordsman. Chaos erupted on the small island near the entrance, as more of these things appeared and attacked and killed anything that wasn’t paying enough attention.
*
Hanging onto a single dagger, Sylver watched the fight happening down below. Spring was doing exceptionally well, moving the archers away when the Rasalka’s got too close, constantly having the melee units switch between Reg’s dagger-wielding assassins and Dai and Sho’s swordsmen, keeping all the Rasalka’s in a state of confusion.
Sylver swung to the left as a beam of compressed water passed through the area he was but a moment ago. He moved a dagger down to his foot and kicked it into the wall, hugging the wall to maintain his balance. Scraping away the sludge-like mold didn’t work, and it was resistant enough against fire that Sylver’s brief attempts did nothing against it.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 47!
+5AP
Smiling to himself as he dodged further left, and used the excess mana he gained from several shades getting killed to charge his darts and shoot them downwards at the four Rasalka’s beneath him.
Or three, now that he looked, one was floating on its back and twitching, nearing the final stages of living rot infection. One of the remaining three made a gesture at Sylver that he very accurately interpreted as ‘come down and fight like a man.’
Sylver dodged right and stood on his other dagger, a little better at balancing now that the robe had a second spot to hold onto.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
A certain part of Sylver was reprimanding himself for not taking this chance to train a bit more, while he only had 3 weakened monsters to fight. But the other part saw the danger of getting dragged underwater and getting cut to shreds by their teeth, claws, or pressurized jets they kept shooting at him.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver dodged to the side again, and healed up a few shades Spring had sent his way, and sent them back. Sylver decided this would be a good learning experience for Spring, and embedded four more daggers into the wall, to give himself more room to move around.
*
*
*
Sylver jumped down and put the two twitching Rasalka’s out of their misery.
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Rasalka (Warrior+Mage) Defeated!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 49!
+5AP
[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 49%!]
Spring was…
Not doing too well...
Rook would have been done an hour ago, but Spring was still busy dealing with what Sylver had decided were the ‘royal guard.’
But then again, Rook was one of the greatest tacticians at the time of his death, it wasn’t really a fair comparison. All Spring had to go off was the small information packet Sylver had given him, and whatever strategy abilities he had when he died.
Which, considering he fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book, meant that he was mostly working off Sylver’s information packet.
Sylver walked on top of the multiple bodies that had floated up to the top of the water, and made his way over to the narrow stone bridge. With all the blood and oily rot, Sylver nearly slipped, before applying mana to the soles of his feet to get enough traction to stay stable.
He walked over to the large golden chest, and shot it with a charged dart.
To Sylver’s surprise, nothing happened.
As the battle raged on behind him, Sylver borrowed a shade from Spring and had the swordsman open the chest for him. When nothing exploded, or riddled the shade with poisoned darts, Sylver let it return to Spring.
The first object inside was a sealed shut book, with a simple drawing of a mortar and pestle on the cover. ‘Games at dinner’, the title read. Sylver put it inside of his robe, for the time being, planning to read it when he had the time. Alchemical techniques were very rarely of any use to Sylver, but you could never guess where inspiration would come from.
[Ring Of The Bolo - ??? - Excellent Quality]
[+300 HP]
[+10% HP Regeneration]
Sylver picked up the ring to get a closer look at it, and could already feel the positive energy burning through his negative energy-infused mana. He wrapped the ring up next to Sophia’s ring and put it back into his robe.
[Sword Of The Drowned - ??? - Rare Quality]
[+200 Stamina (When underwater)]
[+Temporary Trait [WaterBreath]
[-333 HP]
That’s actually pretty good, other than the fact that I can already breathe underwater, and that it would take more HP than I have if I tried to use it. But it is surprisingly neutral, if I had the HP I could actually use this.
Apart from the fact that it was useless to him, it was a very nice sword. The handle was made from some sort of green metal, that felt oddly soft to the touch. Similarly, the blade itself didn’t feel like it was regular steel either, it was too bendy for that. Sylver wrapped it back up in the piece of leather it was sitting in previously, and put it on his back, held in place by the robe.
The last item in the chest surprised Sylver. It was the first time he found something he could actually use.
[Bracelet Of The Aurai - ??? - Epic Quality]
[-110MP Per Use]
[Create A Small Platform Underneath Yourself While Mid-Air]
[Duration: 100s Per Use]
Sylver was just about to put the bracelet on, when he moved to the right, and a pressurized stream of water cut the chest into two. He grabbed the bracelet and put it on, feeling the thing suck his mana out and store it.
Sylver’s hand felt numb for a moment, before he leaned backward, avoiding another stream of high-pressure water.
Getting back up, Sylver saw two ‘royal guards’ guarding the Rasalka Ruler, and one preparing another pressurized water attack to hit him with. Going by how haggard the Ruler looked, Sylver guessed that he used the same skill he had when he had thrown Sylver into the room. Hopefully, he wasn’t going to be able to use it again.
Sylver waved a hand in front of himself, as more and more Sylver’s appeared all over the small chest island. In perfect sync they started to slowly walk forward, some walking on water, or more accurately on floating corpses, others walking on the stone bridge, if partially, and a few walking on thin air.
The Rasalka at the very front shot its beam of water sideways. The water passed harmlessly through all of the illusions, although it didn’t manage to get all of them. The Rasalka readied another attack, before looking downwards and shooting the beam directly through the corpses floating near the stone bridge.
It saw the illusions flicker for a split second, as it readied another attack. A black and yellow wolf came out from the water and the corpses, and lunged at the Rasalka with razor sharp-looking teeth. The Rasalka used its breath attack prematurely, shooting through the shade and getting blinded by the momentary explosion of blackness.
It slashed with its claws at the oncoming attacker, splitting him into two pieces. Sylver’s dart flew directly into the creature's eye, and his dagger followed closely after and slashed downwards at the exposed soft stomach.
As the shade created cloud disappeared, in front of Sylver there was a Rasalka that desperately attempted to close the wound that wouldn’t close, and was actively turning black, and on either side of him was a Rasalka corpse, split into two by the Rasalka’s own claws.
Sylver pushed the creature’s head to the floor, as he rapidly drained every drop of health and mana out of it. The torn skin on his shoulder grew back in a single breath.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 51%!]
Sylver looked at the three remaining monsters, the guards barely standing on their feet from how woozy they were from the poison, and their ruler leaning on the double doors behind them to stop himself from falling over.
Sylver considered fighting them head-on, but had a better idea. He maintained eye contact with all three monsters, as he walked backward. He made it all the way back to the other side of the room, with the torn into two chest, and stood there.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 50!
+5AP
[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]
The guard on the left dropped dead, its body falling into the tainted pool of water.
“What’s the matter? Not sure where the real one is?” Sylver asked, the illusion standing in the middle dissipating, as the real Sylver appeared a few steps to the left.
“If you send your guard to fight, maybe he’ll get lucky, who knows?” Sylver goaded, as the one on the left disappeared and one on the right appeared instead.
“If it makes any difference, you lost the moment-”
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Rasalka Ruler (Rogue+Mage) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating a layer boss, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Due to defeating a layer boss solo, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 51!
+5AP
[Necromancer] has reached level 52!
+5AP
[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]
Sylver waited a few seconds, just to be safe, but didn’t really think the ruler was faking it.
He healed up Spring as he walked across the bridge.
“You lost the moment you picked a fight with me. Or I picked a fight with you, since I came here and all,” Sylver said to the dead body, as the double doors opened up and pushed all the cut-up guards and Rasalka corpses into the water.
Sylver had his shades drag one of the bodies out of the water and into the corridor outside. He ignored the hidden door that had opened on the other side of the room, behind the cut-up chest, and used a scalpel to carve a small framework into the Rasalka’s soft belly.
Holding his hand over the bleeding wound, the corpse lit up for a moment, along with all the other corpses floating around in the water.
The signal turned all the living rot inert and completely harmless. Thankfully blood magic didn’t care a whole lot about the dungeon’s natural mana disruption.
Sylver eyed his intelligence with a sultry gaze, before he sighed deeply and put all 30 points into his constitution. Sylver felt a little less tired, and a tiny bit more awake, but it was hard to tell if that was from his HP going up to 600, or that he was just glad to finally be done with this place.
He’d had enough of the dungeon for one day, one very long day, and was looking forward to taking a nice hot shower. And possibly seeing Leke and testing to see if the extra 150 stamina did what he thought it did.
Sylver looked through his choice of perks for getting [Necromancer] to 50, and stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked through the other perks to make sure there wasn’t something better and discarded all 15 without a second’s thought. None of them came remotely close to this one.
Sylver accepted the perk, and looked down at his hands. He knew there was a ton of information the perk was leaving out, but Sylver knew this magic like it was the back of his hand. It was one of the few things only someone like him was capable of, there were barely a handful of people with a high enough dark affinity and skill to achieve this.
Sylver just wasn't expecting to get it so early on. Or at all for that matter, this was nearly 4th tier magic, and yet this thing was giving it to him for free. Granted, it had a few small drawbacks, but it was still free. There wasn’t even a mana requirement. Which made Sylver feel like a hypocrite for complaining about how powerful all the other classes were, but he wasn’t going to throw such an amazing thing away just because he could no longer complain about things being unfair.
Sylver’s hands didn’t so much as shake, as the magic around his skin flared to life and turned as black as Sylver’s eyes. His cloak, his hair, the sword on his back, his blood-soaked boots, his skin, nails, everything that was him turned a complete and solid black. As if a black cloud in the shape of a grinning man suddenly found itself in the middle of a gale, Sylver’s body dispersed into a stream of darkness, floating around in thin air, and twisting in on itself several times, before shooting down the corridor and flying in a drunken spiral.
Sylver’s body materialized in mid-air, turning back into a cloud before gravity could so much as introduce itself. He knew exactly what this was. This was a bribe from the system. But it would go against everything he stood for, if he rejected it. Sylver was weak, if an advantage presented itself, no matter his feelings on it, he would take it.
Sylver threw a dagger ahead of him, turned into a smoke-like cloud, flew ahead of the dagger, materialized, caught it, and turned back into a cloud, laughing with indescribable joy, as he continued to move towards the dungeon’s exit. It wasn’t exactly teleportation, but it was close enough as far as Sylver was concerned.
If the system wanted to reward him for playing along, he was all for it.
Although he was still going to break it open one day, to see what made it tick.
*
*
*
[Perk: Shadow’s Soma]
-Become a cloud of darkness.
*HP, MP, Stamina regeneration decreased by 100% while in use.
*Weakness to Positive Energy increased by 100% while in use.
*Weakness to Positive Magic increased by 50% while in use.
Total Level: 56
[Koschei-4]
[Necromancer-52]
CON: 60
DEX: 10
STR: 1
INT: 150
WIS: 100
AP: 0
Health: 600/600
Stamina: 300/300
MP: 366/2250
Health Regen: 5.99/M
Stamina Regen: 4.5/M
MP Regen: 281.25/M
[Skills:]
Appraisal (V) [3%]
Draining Touch (II) [51%]
Optical Illusion (II) [57%]
Auditory Illusion (I) [49%]
Raise Shade (III) [1%]
Raise Zombie (III) [19%]
Physical Endurance (II) [1%]
Magic Nullification (I) [7%]
Flesh Weaving (I) [8%]
[Perks:]
Golden Egg
Dead’s Dogma
Eyes Of The Royal Tiger
Tools Of The Shade
Dying Breath
Hare’s Great Escape
Kindred Spirit Mitigation
Unholy Blessing
Shadow’s Soma
[Traits:]
Living Undead
Deathless
Mana Perception
Mana Manipulation
Undead Domination
Deathly Aura
Faceless
-
-
Ch063-Enough Crawling, Fly!
-
-
[Concealed Croc (Mage+Rogue) – 41]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
“Mage and rogue. And it’s got a perk to hide its HP and MP…” Sylver said, as the five archers behind him adjusted their aim and fired in perfect unison. The five arrows spread out a moment before impact, forming a neat line starting at the spot between the eyes and a couple of centimeters out in both directions.
Four of the fired arrows hit solid scale and either bounced away or shattered, with only one managing to hit the soft spot. The arrow disappeared into the monster’s head, and it dropped down from the ceiling like a wet cloth.
It laid on its back, stunned and motionless. Sylver stood where he was and just looked at it.
Sylver waited for a solid minute, before making an educated guess that the monster was waiting for him to come closer.
Spring appeared next to the croc, which made an honest effort to turn around so its soft belly wasn’t exposed. Instead, it was held in place by Springs’s foot, as the shade quickly pierced through the soft underbelly flesh, and twisted the blade before pulling it out.
[Concealed Croc (Mage+Rogue) Defeated!]
Sylver walked to the dead body and did his very best to hold the soul in place. But just like when he was an apprentice, he simply didn’t have enough power to overcome the reptile’s natural resistance. In relative terms, this overgrown lizard might as well have been a dragon, for all the difference it made.
Sylver walked around the spreading puddle of blood surrounding the body, and continued on his way.
*
*
*
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 45!
+5AP
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 46!
+5AP
“I think something just tried to move into the chimp’s area, and decided the living rot infected apes were a good snack. Or maybe some of the rats infected something, and it only now died from it. But given that these are all within seconds of one another, I think the former is more likely,” Sylver said, looking joyfully at his status screen as he added the 20 points into intelligence to get it to 150.
It sounded weird, even to him, but Sylver was starting to love how it felt to expand his mana channels so rapidly. Down to the point he was planning on making it a habit of only ever adding points in bulk from now on.
“At least now we know that your poison still works on monsters up to level 80,” Spring answered, as Sylver cracked his neck from the slight expansion to his mana channels.
“Give it enough time, it can take down a basilisk. But I think this is more of a case of luck. Whatever ate it just happened to be susceptible to it. Not to mention, we’ve been walking around for hours, who knows how long the poisons’ had to work?” Sylver said, as he stretched his body out, and sent bright yellow sparks out of every joint. He wiped away the jumping electricity as if it were dust.
“If I get my intelligence to 160, my body will be producing an even 5MP per second,” Sylver said, flexing his fingers as they glowed so brightly they lit up the whole passageway.
“You could, or you could follow the original plan and get it out of the way,” Spring said, as Sylver’s body shuddered slightly as the robe seemed to somehow turn even darker, as tiny wisps of black smoke escaped from the now nearly invisible mass of blackness.
“Good point. I’m also somewhat worried about what will happen if there’s too big of a difference between my constitution and intelligence. I can already feel a strain on my body when I try to put too much mana into my muscles, so it’s only a matter of time until I start accidentally going past the limit,” Sylver said, as the cloak on top of the robe settled down and contained the wriggling mass of blackness.
“Wouldn’t you need strength and dexterity to prevent that, not constitution?” Spring suggested, summoning archers to aim at the pair of glowing eyes ahead of them.
“I’m not sure to be honest. But I want to get all 3 to 100 before increasing my mana. Or to 50 at least, for strength and dexterity. Illusions work great for the moment, but if I get too slow to take advantage of the momentary lapse in concentration, they will become pointless. I can augment my strength, but dexterity controls my perception and reflexes, so it takes precedence,” Sylver explained, as he watched the archers fired their arrows, and a swordsman appeared near the fallen and stunned creature and stabbed it through the heart.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“But I’m fairly certain I’m going to stick to melee combat for the foreseeable future,” Sylver said, as he walked forward, the corpse dragged off to the side before it even started losing heat.
“Why? Because of your low range?”
“Essentially. There are things I can do outside of 10 meters, but until I can use tier 4 magic, a dagger, or a sword, or a hammer is still the better option.”
“And it’s fun,” Spring said with a neutral tone but an unmistakable smirk.
“Effective and fun, what more could I ask for?” Sylver responded in the same neutral tone, with a faint grin on his face.
“The biggest issue with close quarter combat is that enemies with ranged attacks will kill you before you can get close enough to do any damage,” Sylver continued.
“But because you have shades, zombies, and illusions, you can distract whoever you’re facing long enough to get close enough for the kill. And worst comes to worst, you’ve got the ‘once every 10 years scythe of life, death, and love,’” Spring said, miming with an overly dramatic motion of swinging something absurdly large.
Sylver opened his hand and the scythe in question appeared in it almost instantly. He threw it ahead of them and it dissipated into thin air before it even hit the ground.
“One of my tutors fought with a scythe. It is, by an extremely wide margin, one of the most annoying weapons to fight against. And he had this stupid fucking enchantment on it, he would throw it, and punch you in the face while you’re busy trying to predict its trajectory. Because if you weren’t watching it, it would just change direction and cut your head off. The man was an animal, I died at his hand more than almost any other person I have ever known,” Sylver explained with a slight grimace.
“By enchanted you mean like those darts and daggers you’ve been soaking in your mana?” Spring asked, pulling one of the daggers in question out of Sylver’s robe and tossing it ahead of them.
The simple-looking thin blade rocked on the floor, before sliding towards Sylver, the tip pointing slightly upwards, as the robe extended down to pick it up.
“That’s the end goal, but they still need time until they’re done. I could enchant them manually, but this needs to be as natural of a connection as possible. There will come a time I’ll forget about them, and they’ll start being an extension of my body, moving almost by themselves,” Sylver explained, not even bothering to stop as the archers aimed and fired, and the swordsman finished the concealed croc off.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
*
*
*
Sylver was agitated.
Not just because the near-death at the hands of an overgrown chimp was fresh in his mind, but also because he was lost.
Not actually lost, the bracelet acted as something of a point of reference, he always knew if he was getting closer or farther away from the entrance/exit.
But he was lost in the sense he still hadn’t found the other layer boss. The concealed crocs were still everywhere, so he couldn’t just blindly run wherever he wanted, but at the same time, they were now of a lower level than Sylver, and were useless when it came to experience. If it weren’t for the fact that they ignored illusions, feints, and Sylver couldn’t see them until they opened their eyes, he would have ignored them.
But as it stood, he had to walk slowly, with his and his shade’s eyes glued to the ceiling and hoping they didn’t miss one again. Because as stupid as these falling overgrown lizards were, Sylver was still mortal-ish, and regrowing a crushed upper body would be incredibly painful and would take too long.
When he finally found the accursed door, Sylver wasn’t in the right frame of mind to carefully inspect it for traps and triggers, and instead just kicked it open, shattering one of the two large wooden double doors.
The room inside was almost completely dark. The walls were lined with a wet-looking sludge that looked like mushy fungus. The floor was… There was no floor. It was all entirely water, save for a thin stone bridge starting at the entrance, and stretching all the way across the wide pool of water, to the other side.
And on the other side, there was a large and inviting gold-trimmed chest. Sylver looked around the room, but stayed outside of it. Even with the door shattered, instantly repairing a piece of wood and making it near unbreakable wasn’t outside the realm of a dungeon’s ability.
Sylver waited for a few breaths, and even in his angered state couldn’t be persuaded to walk into the most obvious trap he had ever seen.
One of the wolf shades appeared nearby, and started to walk along the stone bridge.
As Sylver predicted, two concealed crocs jumped out of the water, on either side of the bridge, and landed directly onto the nameless wolf shade. Which had disappeared back into the shadows, the moment the water so much as moved, giving both concealed crocs a big mouthful of nothing.
They stood where they had landed, stunned for a few seconds, before they shot Sylver a glare and slithered back into the once again mirror-calm water.
Sylver took several steps back out of the doorway and took a small bowl from one of the shades’ bags.
Making a very small cut near his wrist, Sylver waited until the bowl was a little over three-quarters full, before sealing the wound with darkness.
Putting a finger in the bowl of blood, Sylver stirred it around with small sparks of yellow jumping about its surface. As he pulled his finger out, the blood turned a darker shade of red, flashing completely black for a few seconds before settling down into a bubbling boil. Sylver gave the magic some time to finish, while he made a shade swordsman remove some of his wrappings so Sylver could tear it into strips.
Putting 4 strips into the bubbling blood, Sylver used the end of a dagger to mix them up so they would get soaked up properly.
Four shade swordsmen took the slightly smoking wrappings out of the bowl and tied it around their heads.
Each one ran forward and across the bridge, in a single file line, and exactly 4 meters distance from one another. As expected, each shade got two concealed crocs jumping out of the water and biting into them. Sylver was amazed that one of them missed entirely, and toppled onto the bridge, before sliding back into the water.
But the other 7 didn’t have any issue and tore apart the swordsmen shades. Sylver watched as one of them swallowed the bright red wraps. The shade's shadows were gathered by Spring and brought back into Sylver’s shadow to be healed.
All that was left was to wait.
*
*
*
Sylver yawned as he continued reading his book, ignoring Springs repeated attempts to master partial materialization. He was making some progress, but they both knew this was simply something that he had to wait for. It wasn’t a matter of skill or ability, his soul was simply still not completely bonded to his semi-solid shadow construct.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver floated the ball of light he was using as a reading light across the bridge, and hovered it over the two corpses floating in the water. Their stomachs were inflated as if they were a balloon, and burst open just as Sylver finished making the mental comparison.
The explosion sent pieces of flesh flying everywhere. From the corpse, an oil-like liquid started to spread out and cover the water around it. It bubbled and moved unnaturally, as the corpse proceeded to sink.
The same exact thing happened to the second corpse, both sides of the water now covered in a murky looking dark red algae like substances, with pieces of slowly moving flesh floating everywhere.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver watched impassionately as more and more corpses floated up to the top of the water, before exploding and sinking back down below. There was now a thin layer of dark red mist floating up above the water's surface.
Surprisingly in sync, several humanoid-shaped lizards appeared near the entrance and threw the torn open corpses at Sylver, who sidestepped to the left and let them land into the corridor. He watched from behind the wooden door frame as more and more of these things came out of the water and threw the dead and decayed concealed croc bodies out of their room and into the corridor where Sylver was.
It was near impossible for Sylver to distinguish between one or the other, as every single one was a near-identical green hue, long and wide black eyes that protruded slightly out of their heads, and curved but sharp looking claws for hands. They had strangely duck-like webbed feet, but about twice as wide, and with significantly more muscle than Sylver would have expected. Every single one was completely nude, not that it made a difference considering how thick their armor-like scales appeared. They were all at least 2 and a half meters tall.
[Rasalka (Warrior+Rogue) – 54]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
The thing Sylver had used appraisal on, locked eyes with him and seemed to smile. It then made a series of gestures that Sylver could summarize as a vicious mockery of his cowardly character, and literal and metaphorical lack of manhood.
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you come out of that water and come fight me on land, fucker?” Sylver answered, as the group continued to throw the rotten and infected flesh of their brethren at him.
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
[Rasalka (Warrior+Rogue) Defeated!]
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
The remaining creatures all disappeared back into the water, before Sylver’s archers could finish reaching into their quills for more arrows.
“Why aren’t they coming out of the room to fight us?” Spring asked, kicking a scrap of intestine towards the pile the Rasalka’s had formed in the corridor.
“Perk related bonus? Or that they’re afraid I have an ambush set up here. I’m not sure, monsters have a weird territory system I’ve never really understood. But very convenient at times like this. Although usually by this point in time-”
The double doors slammed shut with such force that there was a strong gust of air that sent the pile of dead concealed crocs flying backward and splattering all over the dungeon wall.
“Dungeons are weird,” Sylver said, as his shades came out of his shadow and started piling the dead bodies and pieces of flesh against the sealed shut door.
Sylver waved his hand in a circular motion towards the pile, and leaned against the wall as it started to steam and fall in on itself.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“Not that it changes anything. The water’s already poisoned. If not for the chest at the end, I would have moved onto the next one, this room is done for,” Sylver said, as the corpses started to liquefy and were being held up by an invisible force against the door.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver heard a muffled screech on the other side of the wall and smiled to himself as the unknown enemies were defeated, one after the other.
“What do you think is in it? More garbage, or something good this time?” Sylver asked, as the shades continued to toss scraps of flesh into the ball of dark red bubbling liquid. It looked like a giant water droplet, held together purely by surface tension.
“I think something good. It's too obvious of a trap, so I’m willing to bet they need to have something worth the risk in there, for it to ever work. You can see souls, who is to say there isn’t a skill that lets you see the approximate value of something from a distance?” Spring asked. There was more screaming on the other side of the wall, followed by the sound of water splashing everywhere.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
“Like a rogue specific appraisal effect… Yeah, I can see that being a thing. But is it worth the wait? These doors won’t be opening until everyone is dead, or-”
The doors slammed open and the screaming intensified to the point there were multiple echoes moving through the tunnels and coming back. The screaming intensified even more, when the giant bubble full of poisonous liquid burst and poured into the room. The doors slammed shut again.
“If you can do this, why not go all the way down? Clear layer bosses and get all the way up to level 100?” Spring asked, trying to peek through the crack between the two doors and not being able to see anything.
“First of all, monsters above a certain point have potent enough wild magic to neutralize the living rot poison. Secondly, ambushes, I could get killed on the way there. Thirdly, not all monsters are going to stay inside their rooms while I get to relax outside. And lastly, I still need practice and training in using this body, and there’s only so much I can achieve by sparring against you and Fen. But if the next boss is susceptible to poison, I’ll still use it. No point throwing an advantage away,” Sylver answered, counting out the reasons on his hand, as the screaming turned into a screech, loud enough to get the double doors to gently vibrate.
“Sounds like their boss is up,” Spring said, as he disappeared into Sylver’s shadow.
“Sounds like it,” Sylver said.
Sylver remained where he was, hidden up on the ceiling and covered with a layer of illusions, and watched as an enlarged version of the previously seen Rasalka walked up to the threshold of the room and looked around.
[Rasalka Ruler (Rogue+Mage) – 63]
[HP-???]
[MP-???]
Its eyes locked onto Sylver immediately, and it pointed at him with a shaking claw.
Underneath his mask, Sylver smirked at the creature. What could it possibly-
His robe reacted too slowly, his soul sense didn’t feel it until it was too late, and Spring didn’t understand what was going on at all.
Sylver suddenly found himself winded and flying at an insane speed, hitting the water twice, like a skipping stone, before hitting the wall. His senses recovered almost immediately, as he attempted to climb up the wall, but found the slimy surface enchanted exactly against what he was attempting to do.
Sylver turned around and took in his surroundings. In front of the now-closed and sealed shut double wooden doors stood the Rasalka Ruler, his subjects standing nearby and all in various stages of dying from infection.
He noticed that the ruler was breathing far too heavily and mentally crossed his fingers that whatever that burst of speed skill was, it wasn’t one it could use in succession.
Sylver’s robe helped him climb onto one of the floating ballooned up corpses, and with a gentle kick of his foot, he stopped it from bursting open. Four Rsalka’s jumped into the water and disappeared, while the rest of the group remained where they were, guarding their ruler.
They’re guarding him, meaning he’s weak right now… Sylver thought, as he gave Spring his instructions, and left them to the shade to carry out.
Sylver waved a hand over his mask and forced an hour’s worth of air underneath it, and sealed it shut over his face. Before the Rasalka’s could even finish swimming to him, Sylver stomped on the croc’s body he was standing on, and disappeared into a cloud of bright red mist.
*
The Rasalka Ruler tried to say something, to warn them about what Sylver was doing, but instead suddenly found himself dodging out of the way of a black and yellow sword, in the hands of a matching black and yellow swordsman. Chaos erupted on the small island near the entrance, as more of these things appeared and attacked and killed anything that wasn’t paying enough attention.
*
Hanging onto a single dagger, Sylver watched the fight happening down below. Spring was doing exceptionally well, moving the archers away when the Rasalka’s got too close, constantly having the melee units switch between Reg’s dagger-wielding assassins and Dai and Sho’s swordsmen, keeping all the Rasalka’s in a state of confusion.
Sylver swung to the left as a beam of compressed water passed through the area he was but a moment ago. He moved a dagger down to his foot and kicked it into the wall, hugging the wall to maintain his balance. Scraping away the sludge-like mold didn’t work, and it was resistant enough against fire that Sylver’s brief attempts did nothing against it.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 47!
+5AP
Smiling to himself as he dodged further left, and used the excess mana he gained from several shades getting killed to charge his darts and shoot them downwards at the four Rasalka’s beneath him.
Or three, now that he looked, one was floating on its back and twitching, nearing the final stages of living rot infection. One of the remaining three made a gesture at Sylver that he very accurately interpreted as ‘come down and fight like a man.’
Sylver dodged right and stood on his other dagger, a little better at balancing now that the robe had a second spot to hold onto.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
A certain part of Sylver was reprimanding himself for not taking this chance to train a bit more, while he only had 3 weakened monsters to fight. But the other part saw the danger of getting dragged underwater and getting cut to shreds by their teeth, claws, or pressurized jets they kept shooting at him.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[??? (???) Defeated!]
Sylver dodged to the side again, and healed up a few shades Spring had sent his way, and sent them back. Sylver decided this would be a good learning experience for Spring, and embedded four more daggers into the wall, to give himself more room to move around.
*
*
*
Sylver jumped down and put the two twitching Rasalka’s out of their misery.
[Rasalka (Warrior) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Rasalka (Warrior+Mage) Defeated!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 49!
+5AP
[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 49%!]
Spring was…
Not doing too well...
Rook would have been done an hour ago, but Spring was still busy dealing with what Sylver had decided were the ‘royal guard.’
But then again, Rook was one of the greatest tacticians at the time of his death, it wasn’t really a fair comparison. All Spring had to go off was the small information packet Sylver had given him, and whatever strategy abilities he had when he died.
Which, considering he fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book, meant that he was mostly working off Sylver’s information packet.
Sylver walked on top of the multiple bodies that had floated up to the top of the water, and made his way over to the narrow stone bridge. With all the blood and oily rot, Sylver nearly slipped, before applying mana to the soles of his feet to get enough traction to stay stable.
He walked over to the large golden chest, and shot it with a charged dart.
To Sylver’s surprise, nothing happened.
As the battle raged on behind him, Sylver borrowed a shade from Spring and had the swordsman open the chest for him. When nothing exploded, or riddled the shade with poisoned darts, Sylver let it return to Spring.
The first object inside was a sealed shut book, with a simple drawing of a mortar and pestle on the cover. ‘Games at dinner’, the title read. Sylver put it inside of his robe, for the time being, planning to read it when he had the time. Alchemical techniques were very rarely of any use to Sylver, but you could never guess where inspiration would come from.
[Ring Of The Bolo - ??? - Excellent Quality]
[+300 HP]
[+10% HP Regeneration]
Sylver picked up the ring to get a closer look at it, and could already feel the positive energy burning through his negative energy-infused mana. He wrapped the ring up next to Sophia’s ring and put it back into his robe.
[Sword Of The Drowned - ??? - Rare Quality]
[+200 Stamina (When underwater)]
[+Temporary Trait [WaterBreath]
[-333 HP]
That’s actually pretty good, other than the fact that I can already breathe underwater, and that it would take more HP than I have if I tried to use it. But it is surprisingly neutral, if I had the HP I could actually use this.
Apart from the fact that it was useless to him, it was a very nice sword. The handle was made from some sort of green metal, that felt oddly soft to the touch. Similarly, the blade itself didn’t feel like it was regular steel either, it was too bendy for that. Sylver wrapped it back up in the piece of leather it was sitting in previously, and put it on his back, held in place by the robe.
The last item in the chest surprised Sylver. It was the first time he found something he could actually use.
[Bracelet Of The Aurai - ??? - Epic Quality]
[-110MP Per Use]
[Create A Small Platform Underneath Yourself While Mid-Air]
[Duration: 100s Per Use]
Sylver was just about to put the bracelet on, when he moved to the right, and a pressurized stream of water cut the chest into two. He grabbed the bracelet and put it on, feeling the thing suck his mana out and store it.
Sylver’s hand felt numb for a moment, before he leaned backward, avoiding another stream of high-pressure water.
Getting back up, Sylver saw two ‘royal guards’ guarding the Rasalka Ruler, and one preparing another pressurized water attack to hit him with. Going by how haggard the Ruler looked, Sylver guessed that he used the same skill he had when he had thrown Sylver into the room. Hopefully, he wasn’t going to be able to use it again.
Sylver waved a hand in front of himself, as more and more Sylver’s appeared all over the small chest island. In perfect sync they started to slowly walk forward, some walking on water, or more accurately on floating corpses, others walking on the stone bridge, if partially, and a few walking on thin air.
The Rasalka at the very front shot its beam of water sideways. The water passed harmlessly through all of the illusions, although it didn’t manage to get all of them. The Rasalka readied another attack, before looking downwards and shooting the beam directly through the corpses floating near the stone bridge.
It saw the illusions flicker for a split second, as it readied another attack. A black and yellow wolf came out from the water and the corpses, and lunged at the Rasalka with razor sharp-looking teeth. The Rasalka used its breath attack prematurely, shooting through the shade and getting blinded by the momentary explosion of blackness.
It slashed with its claws at the oncoming attacker, splitting him into two pieces. Sylver’s dart flew directly into the creature's eye, and his dagger followed closely after and slashed downwards at the exposed soft stomach.
As the shade created cloud disappeared, in front of Sylver there was a Rasalka that desperately attempted to close the wound that wouldn’t close, and was actively turning black, and on either side of him was a Rasalka corpse, split into two by the Rasalka’s own claws.
Sylver pushed the creature’s head to the floor, as he rapidly drained every drop of health and mana out of it. The torn skin on his shoulder grew back in a single breath.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 51%!]
Sylver looked at the three remaining monsters, the guards barely standing on their feet from how woozy they were from the poison, and their ruler leaning on the double doors behind them to stop himself from falling over.
Sylver considered fighting them head-on, but had a better idea. He maintained eye contact with all three monsters, as he walked backward. He made it all the way back to the other side of the room, with the torn into two chest, and stood there.
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 50!
+5AP
[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]
The guard on the left dropped dead, its body falling into the tainted pool of water.
“What’s the matter? Not sure where the real one is?” Sylver asked, the illusion standing in the middle dissipating, as the real Sylver appeared a few steps to the left.
“If you send your guard to fight, maybe he’ll get lucky, who knows?” Sylver goaded, as the one on the left disappeared and one on the right appeared instead.
“If it makes any difference, you lost the moment-”
[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Rasalka Ruler (Rogue+Mage) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating a layer boss, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Due to defeating a layer boss solo, additional experience will be awarded!]
[Necromancer] has reached level 51!
+5AP
[Necromancer] has reached level 52!
+5AP
[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]
Sylver waited a few seconds, just to be safe, but didn’t really think the ruler was faking it.
He healed up Spring as he walked across the bridge.
“You lost the moment you picked a fight with me. Or I picked a fight with you, since I came here and all,” Sylver said to the dead body, as the double doors opened up and pushed all the cut-up guards and Rasalka corpses into the water.
Sylver had his shades drag one of the bodies out of the water and into the corridor outside. He ignored the hidden door that had opened on the other side of the room, behind the cut-up chest, and used a scalpel to carve a small framework into the Rasalka’s soft belly.
Holding his hand over the bleeding wound, the corpse lit up for a moment, along with all the other corpses floating around in the water.
The signal turned all the living rot inert and completely harmless. Thankfully blood magic didn’t care a whole lot about the dungeon’s natural mana disruption.
Sylver eyed his intelligence with a sultry gaze, before he sighed deeply and put all 30 points into his constitution. Sylver felt a little less tired, and a tiny bit more awake, but it was hard to tell if that was from his HP going up to 600, or that he was just glad to finally be done with this place.
He’d had enough of the dungeon for one day, one very long day, and was looking forward to taking a nice hot shower. And possibly seeing Leke and testing to see if the extra 150 stamina did what he thought it did.
Sylver looked through his choice of perks for getting [Necromancer] to 50, and stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked through the other perks to make sure there wasn’t something better and discarded all 15 without a second’s thought. None of them came remotely close to this one.
Sylver accepted the perk, and looked down at his hands. He knew there was a ton of information the perk was leaving out, but Sylver knew this magic like it was the back of his hand. It was one of the few things only someone like him was capable of, there were barely a handful of people with a high enough dark affinity and skill to achieve this.
Sylver just wasn't expecting to get it so early on. Or at all for that matter, this was nearly 4th tier magic, and yet this thing was giving it to him for free. Granted, it had a few small drawbacks, but it was still free. There wasn’t even a mana requirement. Which made Sylver feel like a hypocrite for complaining about how powerful all the other classes were, but he wasn’t going to throw such an amazing thing away just because he could no longer complain about things being unfair.
Sylver’s hands didn’t so much as shake, as the magic around his skin flared to life and turned as black as Sylver’s eyes. His cloak, his hair, the sword on his back, his blood-soaked boots, his skin, nails, everything that was him turned a complete and solid black. As if a black cloud in the shape of a grinning man suddenly found itself in the middle of a gale, Sylver’s body dispersed into a stream of darkness, floating around in thin air, and twisting in on itself several times, before shooting down the corridor and flying in a drunken spiral.
Sylver’s body materialized in mid-air, turning back into a cloud before gravity could so much as introduce itself. He knew exactly what this was. This was a bribe from the system. But it would go against everything he stood for, if he rejected it. Sylver was weak, if an advantage presented itself, no matter his feelings on it, he would take it.
Sylver threw a dagger ahead of him, turned into a smoke-like cloud, flew ahead of the dagger, materialized, caught it, and turned back into a cloud, laughing with indescribable joy, as he continued to move towards the dungeon’s exit. It wasn’t exactly teleportation, but it was close enough as far as Sylver was concerned.
If the system wanted to reward him for playing along, he was all for it.
Although he was still going to break it open one day, to see what made it tick.
*
*
*
[Perk: Shadow’s Soma]
-Become a cloud of darkness.
*HP, MP, Stamina regeneration decreased by 100% while in use.
*Weakness to Positive Energy increased by 100% while in use.
*Weakness to Positive Magic increased by 50% while in use.
Total Level: 56
[Koschei-4]
[Necromancer-52]
CON: 60
DEX: 10
STR: 1
INT: 150
WIS: 100
AP: 0
Health: 600/600
Stamina: 300/300
MP: 366/2250
Health Regen: 5.99/M
Stamina Regen: 4.5/M
MP Regen: 281.25/M
[Skills:]
Appraisal (V) [3%]
Draining Touch (II) [51%]
Optical Illusion (II) [57%]
Auditory Illusion (I) [49%]
Raise Shade (III) [1%]
Raise Zombie (III) [19%]
Physical Endurance (II) [1%]
Magic Nullification (I) [7%]
Flesh Weaving (I) [8%]
[Perks:]
Golden Egg
Dead’s Dogma
Eyes Of The Royal Tiger
Tools Of The Shade
Dying Breath
Hare’s Great Escape
Kindred Spirit Mitigation
Unholy Blessing
Shadow’s Soma
[Traits:]
Living Undead
Deathless
Mana Perception
Mana Manipulation
Undead Domination
Deathly Aura
Faceless
