Achievement unlocked; Reward granted
ACHIEVEMENT - Cat killing mouse
You’ve done the impossible - killing a creature at least 40 levels above you in a fair battle. Your reward shall be proportional to it.
For your spectacular achievement, a unique reward has been granted.
Fragment of the colossan Body Tempering [Ancient]
I would expect a scroll or something like that, but as soon as I read the last line of the text, something starts hurling into my head. It’s the knowledge of colossan body tempering.
When it stops and my head becomes clear again, I can finally go through what I got.
So basically, those huge bastards had some technique of strengthening their bones, flesh and skin by using magic circles which affected their surroundings. Unfortunately, I got imprinted in my mind only one and half of the three magic circles they used. I got the one for strengthening bones, which should affect the gravity around me several times, micro-cracking my bones to make them regrow stronger and more durable.
There is also a fragment of knowledge about their strength training, which includes training weapon techniques with additional weight on the weapon plus something else, which is not included in the infopack I got… it’s called a fragment for some reason, I guess.
Still, I got full fucking mid sized magic circle imprinted in my head, which is crazy. I just hope I’ll be able to activate it.
***
While I’ve been dealing with all the System messages, my body regenerates a bit more. Still painful to move, but I can’t lay here all day. Especially when I notice the dungeon slowly, but steadily fading away - small pieces of walls disappearing, replaced by pitch black with gray… grain? Or is it mist?
Whatever it is, I bet it would be noxious for me to stay here longer.
Getting up from the ground is the hardest and most painful part, after that it gets easier. I pick up my sword and start turning towards the teleport when I stop myself.
I picked up the sword… with one hand? And I am holding it straight in front of me with ease - like nothing?
If I don’t count this last fight, I’ve always had to hold the sword with both hands, otherwise it was too heavy for me, so it’s quite surprising that I can wield it now with only one ha-
“Ohh! That are the levels! Right, I got eighteen levels, that should boost my stats a little.”
It makes sense now. With those levels, I can easily wield it with one hand and not be limited by my missing hand. That’s quite a relief - I won’t have to change my fighting style much. But I still need to find an item or someone able to regenerate or regrow my hand… I don't like the idea of some parts of my body being missing.
I drag myself towards the exit - the door with the Sea of Stars, as I named it. This time, it stayed the whole time there, allowing me to step in and once again feel the sensation of floating in there. Then suddenly, instead of the scenery changing, throwing me out of the Sea, something starts to pull me back. I start to speed up, but something else grabs me out of the pull, and I am thrown back into the normal world.
When I say thrown, I mean it literally.
My body doesn't take it well - it hurts and I am the one who has to endure it, how unfair.
Yet, in bad, there is always something good about it… at least they say. For me it’s the sky. I lie right where I’ve been thrown, enjoying the gentle cooling touch of the soft grass beneath me and watching the beautiful clouds floating on the blue sky.
Despite the pain and the sudden circumstances under what I’ve been thrown there, I find myself quite relaxed, just absorbing the beauty of nature.
I take a few minutes to just admire the view and feeling of the grass and light breeze, then I get back to thinking about more important problems.
It was weird and it gave shivers down my spine - I could have been dead. Which would be okay if I died in a fight, because that would be only my own fault for being too weak and picking the wrong fight. But this way, it would be pitiful and I don’t like that… Fortunately it didn’t happen, because I can’t see a way of surviving in space, which I suppose the Sea of Stars is.
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I pick up myself from the ground again and try to get some grasp of my surroundings. I am not back on the clearing with the door. Instead, I’m standing on a hill, having a clear view into the distance.
The forest with the door, wolves, elves and the scary… So the said forest is far away now. Its huge trees look unnatural compared to the neighborhood's nature. From what I can see, there are mostly hilly grasslands, with occasional grouping of trees (the normal ones).
The plains stretch as far as the eye can see, only in one direction, exactly on the opposite side than the big forest is, skyscraper tops are peeking above the horizon - there is a city.
I could probably go back to the forest and kill the Lunar Deer, but honestly? I wanna see the town. I assume it will be affected by the time fuck the same way as my house was. So there is basically a whole apocalyptic town waiting just for me.
It’s decided - I’m heading to the city!
***
My pace is slow, my body hurts and it’s far away, but those are just minor problems. I enjoy the walk as the sun is shining at me and the summer breeze is pretty cooling… and the view? Fantastic! All the colourful flowers lining the islands of bushes, the long grass giving a home to all kinds of bugs, who make a wide variety of sounds. I am only glad that I don’t see them, because by the sounds and occasional movements of the grass, they are as overgrown as the fireflies.
“Brrrr.”
I don’t like bugs - they are disgusting.
No but like for real, who would like them? Person like that must be mentally ill or something. It’s not normal to like bugs.
Other than bugs, in the small groups of trees which are here and there, there are living deers, rabbits and a lot more animals for sure, I just haven't seen them yet.
I haven’t seen them just like the Reapshades level, which is kind of frustrating. There has to be some cap on how much above your own level you are able to see the levels of others.
The Lunar Deer was level 36 when I was somewhere around level 5, which means I’m able to see levels of creatures at least 31 levels above me. If we use this knowledge, while also knowing I was level 14 while defeating the Reapshade which was at least 40 levels above me, it means that the question marks start somewhere between 32 - 40 levels above you.
Thinking about this also brings me to another weird thing - the leveling. Why did I get only three levels from the necro and eighteen whole fucking levels from Reapshade?
The only possibility is some type of level multiplier, which could give you more levels based on how much stronger the enemy is, but that’s just a wild guess.
***
The night sky is even more breathtaking than the sunbathed grasslands. The clear, cloudless weather only amplifies the effect. No lighted up sky from the huge cities - I can see a fucking ring of the galaxy! I’ve never seen our Milky Way this clearly, a huge loss. I don’t have enough words to describe the true beauty of this view. It’s phenomenal.
The night life on the changed earth seemingly did not undergo the change; judging from the peaceful walk I’ve been enjoying for the past hours.
I like walking. It brings me peace and time to think.
And I’ve been thinking a lot.
Mostly about this world and my life.
In my what I would call past life, I had no goal at all - I was just surviving, but now I feel alive and I'm a little lost about this. What should I do now? Before it was all about going to work, saving money, paying off my mortgage and driving a better car. That was my whole life.
I think I just shouldn’t overcomplicate it and go after what makes me happy - I don’t need to have a house now, or need to learn how to invest. I can just walk around and fight whatever moves and is strong enough to put up a good fight. So my conclusion is pretty simple…
…I want to be the strongest.
It is as simple as that; the ultimate goal. What more could I possibly want.
***
Nothing attacks me as I walk and I am truly glad for it, since I am still not in a fighting condition. I slowly heal as I walk, my broken bones grow together and the bruises steadily disappearing.
This time I ponder about something else - my new so-called trait, the Lunatic's Exaltation.
If I didn’t see and feel its effects, I would say it’s too weird to be working and useful. Now I can’t say that since I’ve defeated Reapshade only thanks to it. When I’ve been in this state, my whole world shrunk into the one moment, the one fight and nothing else existed for me. It was awesome. I just released all the frustration, anger and disappointment, not holding myself back anymore. Besides, why should I hold my weirdness hidden all the time? There’s no one to judge me and if so, I can just punch him really hard, something I couldn’t do in the past.
But I’m free now though. I can thrive in life-death situations as much as I want without being chained by the fear of judgement.
***
I’ve managed to inspect one more thing before dawn - my new affinity.
To be honest I’m not really sure if I can call it affinity, although the System calls it that way. Under word affinity, I would imagine something like a fire, water, earth, death, life etc. but the “null”?
I guess it should represent nullifying the magic, but having affinity to anti-magic sounds a bit weird… but it seems it works for the System, so who am I to judge though.
It’s quite funny, because if I think about someone with fire affinity, for example, he will probably become a fire mage… Does it make me an anti-magic mage?
There are probably people with affinities like fire, who aren’t mages. They can be fighters, just like me and not some, on magic relying, pussies.
I’ve been testing the null power along the way, lighting up my sword with light gray energy.
I found out I can light it up just mildly, or I can light up my surroundings with immense white light.
After this finding, I passed out.
I’m not quite alright yet, and infusing things with my-
So infusing things with my magic drains my stamina the same way as Kairisurge does. The only difference is the null power drains mental stamina, rather than the physical one.
That’s how I found myself yet again lying on the ground, slightly protected by the long grass. It was already after dawn.
The only thing I haven’t been able to solve is how I can use the magic other way, than just infusing it.
Well, I can’t.
I had an idea about throwing the null energy at someone the same way I would with a fireball, but unfortunately it’s not possible… at least not yet. Yes, I know it would be too overpowered if I could just throw it at a mage and get rid of his magic. However, I’ll still have to learn it.
“Hmm… Can I infuse rocks?”
