[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 92: Jungle Phase (Patreon)

Edge awoke the next morning with a smile on his face, ready to face the day and the challenges it would bring.

Although he was trapped inside the Savage Garden—locked in a race against a superior force with the future of his home hanging in the balance—he felt genuinely optimistic for the first time since his ordeal began.

The deck was still stacked against him, but he didn’t let the danger discourage him. Not when he’d managed to scale the biggest obstacle that was standing in his way. Edge was stronger than ever after evolving to stage two, and this was only the beginning. He was ready to embrace the kodoku jar known as the Savage Garden—climb a mountain of corpses, crack open the lid, and emerge into the light of day.

He started stretching while planning his next move. Every hour was a precious resource, and he didn’t intend to waste a single second. While he put his body through its paces, occasionally stopping to let Regeneration heal his muscle fibers, he hammered out his strategy and prioritized his objectives.

First and foremost, Edge needed to do everything in his power to delay the convicts’ conquest of the dungeon. He knew from listening to their conversations that the moment the third elite fell and the boss’s door unsealed, their crews would reconvene and head out in full force.

Although they were gaining experience from killing monsters and gathering every valuable resource they found along the way, those goals were secondary to claiming the manufactory and joining the jailbirds who were planning to assault Puppet Town.

Edge had some ideas as to how he might stymie their progress, but he needed to cycle up his core before he could put them into action. For the next few days, he had to hope that the magical fog and the bone slime would keep his enemies busy long enough to implement the next stage of his plans.

He doubted that the mist would appear every day, but every hour it lingered was an hour that he could use to grow stronger, while the prisoners would be forced to shelter in place. If they figured out how to navigate the fog or killed the bone slime too soon, it would accelerate their timetable, and everything would come to a head faster than he could handle. It was his biggest concern, but he had to accept that the matter was beyond his control for now.

While he had to defeat the dungeon’s boss before the Claws beat him to it, he wasn’t too worried about completing the quest right now. Although Puppet Town needed that manufactory, keeping the convicts in the dungeon instead of advancing on the Ivory Plains was more important to the settlement’s survival in the short-term. Hopefully, by the time that Edge made it out of here, he would have thinned their numbers and grown strong enough to help turn the tide of the war.

For now, his strategy was divided into three stages, which were named by how much of the Savage Garden he could access. Additionally, his daily goals would vary depending on whether the fog was blanketing the dungeon.

His main priority during the jungle stage was to cycle up as quickly as he could. When the fog was thick, he would risk crossing into the jungle to hunt and spy on the convicts. Right now, fighting the inhabitants of the swamp was too risky. Edge needed to grow powerful enough to face them before he lost his chance.

On the days when the air was clear, he would have to stay deep within the swamp. He would continue scouting the marshland for powers that he wanted to steal, finish mapping the terrain, and keep any eye out for natural resources, sealed chests, or monsters that seemed particularly vulnerable to his skillset. But he mostly planned to use that time to train intensively with his weapons and skills, preparing himself for the battles to come.

The first stage would last until the jailbirds entered the swamp in force. He would have to watch out for One-Eye no matter what, but past that point, he would cease operating in the jungle and move his base of operations to the dungeon’s fourth and final zone, which meant that he needed to figure out how to cross the open water before that happened.

With any luck, by that point, Edge would be strong enough to start culling the monsters in the swamp. Otherwise, he was going to have to take some serious risks to catch up, which would probably get him killed. He was working on some ideas on how to tackle the region’s aquatic and amphibious monsters, which he would refine over the next few days.

He planned to start attacking the convicts’ camps during the swamp stage, waging a form of guerrilla warfare from within the mist. On the days that the air was clear, he would explore the dungeon’s fourth zone—the islands and ruins he’d seen from the boundary of the marsh.

Once the jailbirds reached the islands, all his efforts would go toward defeating the boss. He would still grow as much as he could, but he had to try his luck before they reached its chamber.

The wildcards were the two remaining elites. Edge needed to kill the one that he hadn’t encountered yet if at all possible. He wanted to claim that reward and deny the jailbirds, not to mention steal what were certain to be some prime skills in the process.

Regardless of who killed them, the moment that both elites were dead, his kodoku jar training session would come to an end, and he would sprint straight for boss’s chamber. He would camp outside the entrance, then head inside the moment that the Claws drew near. Fortunately, he could use his questing menu to make sure the slime was still alive and could monitor the status of the other elite the same way once he found it.

By now, the sky had grown light enough to make his way through the dungeon. When Edge stepped out of his cave and surveyed his surroundings, he was pleased to see that the mist was rolling in. Good. I can hunt in the jungle today. While he waited for the fog to flow past his position, he moved on to cataloging the tools at his disposal and reviewing the advantages he’d acquired from evolving to stage two.

He had seven more skill sockets at his disposal, and he needed to pick powers that would shore up his weak points and synergize with the skills he already had. Depending on whether he decided to use a merger token, one or two of his slots were going to be filled with the Rare auras that he had stolen from the monkey, which should help him handle the monsters lurking in the jungle.

On that note, he needed to let them finish digesting. He stepped into his core, marveling at the changes, then walked into his skill village and asked Chibime to stop freezing the auras. The little guy gestured while chittering back at him, then flung Regulate Temperature over the eggs like a blanket to speed up the process

If he understood what the Epic skill was trying to tell him, it was going take a few hours for the frozen skills to thaw. After offering the avatar his profuse thanks and bidding good morning to his other powers, Edge left his core and got ready to head out.

The fog had advanced enough to obscure his presence, so he began making his way through the mist, on guard against One-Eye and any monsters that could see through the haze. On that note, he decided to play it safe and prioritize stealth, only using Manifest Chain to travel when he needed to cross rough terrain.

It reinforced his desire to turn Repel Water into a form of transportation, since he wouldn’t be nearly as visible while skimming across the surface. Ranking it up is my primary objective as far as skill-stealing is concerned.

After Repel Water hit rank three, he would love to take Conceal to rank four and increase its versatility, although that was only going to be realistic if he found more copies. Other than that, his top priorities were advancing Double Slash, Elemental Blade, and Shadow Step. He would also do his best to rank up Manifest Chain, although he still wasn’t clear on the specifics of the process.

As Edge pondered the matter, he crossed the swamp under cover of the mist, heading for the jungle another half mile ahead. Once he arrived, he began his hunt by surveying the border running between the zones, keeping an eye out for jailbirds while looking for a monster to kill.

While every monster was dangerous, the convicts were an even greater threat. All of them were at least early stage two, and while they weren’t used to working as a team, they had ample experience battling other core-wielders. Right now, they were spread across the middle of the jungle, slaughtering every creature they came across.

He let out a sigh of relief when he located the final crew. Now that he knew where the Claws were camped, he moved on to the river-wrapped section of the jungle where he had killed the water strider.

When he got there, Edge used his chain to ascend to the canopy, pulled out his spyglass, and took a long look around. He already missed Penetrate Foliage and decided to pick up another copy at his earliest opportunity. I’ll put it in a permanent skill slot this time, since I have enough room. It will be useful even after I leave the dungeon.

At least the jungle was open enough that the vegetation didn’t stop him from observing the monsters living in the zone. While some of them specialized in stealth, most of the nightmarish predators were easy to spot from an elevated vantage. Hell, most of them smelled bad enough that he could probably find them with his eyes closed.

As Edge assessed every creature he could see, he did his best to determine how their skillset matched up against his own, while evaluating their attributes and cataloging their natural weapons. The last step before he was ready to make his move was to prioritize the monsters by difficulty and if they had a skill that he wanted to steal.

Since he only had three uses of Extraction each day, and each fight was a deathmatch with no clear line of retreat or hope of rescue, he needed to plan out his engagements as strategically as possible, using all the tricks that Trapper and the other hunters had taught him.

Half an hour later, he was ready to go.

Edge picked out his first target, made sure that nothing hostile was lurking nearby, then used Foebinder to cross the river. He felt Skill-Eater stir in its sleep, dreaming of the banquet to come. I hope that you’ve worked up an appetite since our conversation, because now it’s time to feast.