[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 93: New Auras (Patreon)

As the shadows lengthened and color bled from the world, Edge made his way back to his cave, stopping every few minutes to Conceal his tracks.

Today’s hunt had gone well. In addition to killing four monsters, stealing three skills, and earning three Mortium, he had picked up some valuable information along the way.

Two of his victims were survivors from the gorilla general’s army—one stage-one ape and one stage two. The monkeys were ideal prey. In part because their offensive skills were physical in nature, and they couldn’t supplement them with Disruption. Harden and Shadow Step had countered every move the monstrous primates made.

But mostly because they were the dumbest creatures he’d encountered within the dungeon. The Domination skill the elite ape used to control its thralls had damaged their brains, and Edge was happy to take advantage of their impairment.

Next on the menu was one of the grubs that he had fought in the maze, followed by a feathered flying serpent. He hadn’t deliberately tangled with the snake, but it could hunt the mist and had relentlessly pursued him once it caught wind of his presence.

Thankfully, the serpent couldn’t escape Foebinder’s coils after the chain caught it, and he’d killed it without being bitten in the bargain. He didn’t get a chance to examine its skills, since he had already used all three charges of Extraction, but he hoped to find another snake later and see what powers it was packing.

After some consideration, Edge had put all the skill experience into Double Slash. It was difficult to advance Rare skills in general, but reaching rank two by Absorbing high-rank Uncommons was good enough to get the job done.

He had considered advancing Repel Water first but decided that it could wait another day or two, in case he found a chance to steal a duplicate and maximize the efficiency of the process. The cup representing Double Slash’s experience was gradually approaching the halfway point, and he hoped to upgrade it before tackling the dungeon’s elites.

On the information side of the equation, he had learned two interesting tidbits.

His first discovery wasn’t too surprising. The convicts in the jungle were still hunting when the mist was out, although they didn’t travel far from their camps. Instead, they set out some bait, which often took the form of one of their weakest members. The Claws waited until a monster came to them, then took it out in a flash.

Thankfully, it was a time-consuming process, which meant that the fog was still impeding their progress. It also let Edge get his first look at their skills in action. While the jailbirds didn’t work together nearly as well as an established hunting crew, they were incredible fighters, and their powers were terrifying to behold.

The second piece of intel was that the bone slime could navigate the mist. He had suspected this was the case, considering the elite’s dominance over the zone, but its strategy for countering the fog had revealed that the monster was even more dangerous than he’d thought.

Instead of using its own skills, the giant blob traveled with two monkey skeletons protruding from the top, like soldiers standing through the hatch of a tank. The reanimated apes used Penetrate Mist while watching in opposite directions, relaying their findings to the monster below.

It was freaky as hell and cemented his desire to stay as far away from the slime as possible. Edge had also figured out that it was continually moving from corrupted resource to corrupted resource, claiming far more than any other monster he’d seen. The terrifying creature was happy to kill anything it encountered along the way, adding their remains to the portable army it stored within its gel.

It made him wonder if he could figure out a way to use this behavior to his advantage, and he decided to keep a close eye out for corrupted resources while he was exploring the dungeon.

When Edge ducked into his cave, he sat against the stone wall and opened his menus, checking out his gains for the day.

You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle-up your core. Your new cycle is: 1.

You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle-up your core. Your new cycle is: 2.

You have 10 attribute points awaiting allocation.

Fucking fantastic. That experience multiplier is a godsend, and five points per cycle is huge. After some consideration, he decided to put all ten points into Durability. The reason why was simple. The convicts and the monsters living in the swamp were on another level compared to the creatures he’d battled outside the dungeon.

Most of them were strong enough to quite literally tear him apart. If Edge fucked up and took a direct hit, he would be dead before Regeneration had a chance to patch him up. His Disruption could use a boost too, and he planned to put his next two cycles into the attribute, at which point his odds of dying to a random attack would be dramatically reduced.

He applied his points in batches, since boosting too much Toughness at once made his insides squirm so much that it kind of creeped him out. When the last surge of potentia finished working its magic, he rose to his feet, feeling far more resilient than before.

When he took out Trapper’s knife and ran it across his arm, it only left a scratch behind. Before, it would have cut him all the way down to the bone. He even got a bonus point from his Wanted trait, for taking the attribute’s base value past 20.

Edge ate a meager dinner, frowning at the state of his provisions, then decided to go to bed a few minutes early. I’ll have to do some hunting tomorrow. Maybe I can fish in the river and find some edible plants.

***

He woke up in the middle of the night when a strange sensation came over him. He could hear Chibime muttering inside his head, accompanied by a tug that he interpreted as a request to return to his core.

He hadn’t realized that his Epic skill could communicate with him in this manner, although it was far fainter than the impressions he received from Skill-Eater or the black chains. Little bastard has me on speed dial, he grumbled while rubbing the sleep from his eyes, although he was pleased by this development.

When Edge entered his central chamber, Chibime walked over and tugged on his legging, leading him over to where the frozen auras had been sitting against the wall. The skills weren’t frozen anymore. In fact, they were only seconds away from completing their digestion.

Their surfaces were covered in a latticework of cracks as the egglike shells began to crumble. He hopped from one foot to the other, smiling as a surge of excitement brought him back to full alertness. He was eager to add two Rare skills to his collection, and his very first auras to boot.

A few anticipation-charged seconds later, the layers of mana encasing the powers shattered into fading fragments. As Edge waited to see what would emerge, his Guide appeared, bearing a message from the System.

You have extracted the skill: Ghost Armor <aura> (Rare, Rank 1).

Digestion is complete.

Would you like to slot in Ghost Armor now?

You have extracted the skill: Vigor <aura> (Rare, Rank 2).

Digestion is complete.

When extracting a skill higher than Rank 1, a portion of its experience will be retained if you choose to keep it.

Would you like to slot in Vigor now?

“Yes, and yes.” While the auras floated over to empty pillars and locked into their sockets, he took a good look at their avatars.

Ghost Armor was a suit of ethereal plate mail, shining silver like the light of the moon. As Edge watched with a grin on his face, the contours of the skill shifted—from armor designed for a six-limbed monkey to something a human could wear.

Vigor took the form of electric cherry warpaint, like someone had tattooed lines of neon across the body of an invisible ape. While they floated across the chamber, the glowing lines ran like wax before snapping into a configuration that mirrored the contours of his own body instead.

The moment that the skills snapped into their sockets, their bonds were complete, granting him a brief vision of what each power could do. While Chibime danced in a circle around him, Edge considered Ghost Armor, adding these details to what he had learned after getting his first taste.

The silver armor served as a buffer, sapping a portion of the kinetic energy from any attack that tried to pass through. It also was infused with his Disruption, eating away at the energy of any skill it touched, although the effect wasn’t nearly as poweful as a Disruption pulse.

Activating the aura required a considerable amount of mana. It wasn’t too costly to leave running, although it would drain a little more with every hit it absorbed. Wearing Ghost Armor would lower the odds of Edge taking a blow that would incapacitate or kill him outright, adding another layer of armor on the outside of his gear.

The next thing he learned was that the more people who were affected by Ghost Armor, the more efficient it became. Each additional person increased the drain, but shielding twenty people would only be five times more costly than protecting Edge alone.

He would have to run some tests to discover more of the details, but he could already tell that Ghost Armor was an amazing addition to his collection. When he switched the skill off, he would reclaim a portion of the mana that hadn’t been used, which was a nice bonus on top of everything else.

The second aura was something else entirely.

Vigor functioned more like Edge’s traits, generating a field of mana that enhanced the natural properties his body. The skill provided a decent boost to his Power and Speed and enhanced his combat awareness. It was cheap to activate and expensive to keep running, but the drain shouldn’t be too bad once he picked up more Generation.

Unlike Ghost Armor, Vigor burned through his reserves at a constant rate, so it made sense to activate it just before a battle began. This aura didn’t have an efficiency bonus for buffing a group, which meant that he would have to keep a close eye on his reservoir if he used it on multiple people at once.

After introducing himself to his new skills and returning to his body, Edge ignited his core and gave each aura a try.

Ghost Armor covered his body in a transparent shell that didn’t weigh anything and felt cool against his skin like he was standing in the mist. It didn’t impede his vision at all, but it emitted a faint glow, which he would have to keep in mind while using it in dark places.

Vigor was quite a bit brighter and would give his position away if activated it too early. The aura made up for it by being intimidating as hell. Edge grinned as mana came flowing out of his reactor, then spread itself across his body. Glowing ruby lines painted themselves along the contours of his muscles, enhancing their performance.

He would have to run some tests to get a precise measurement, but he could already tell that the aura provided a considerable boost. However, he didn’t notice any improvements to his senses. He shrugged. Since it’s a combat-awareness bonus, I probably need to be in battle before that part kicks in.

That left him with just one last experiment to run before he went back to sleep, using both auras at once as a skill combo. When he activated Ghost Armor while leaving Vigor running, the combo drained his mana at an incredible rate before he switched them off. It’s not practical to use both auras at once.

Edge decided to use a Skill-Merger Token on them like he’d planned, but not quite yet. He wanted to take Vigor to rank two first.

So far, merging skills when one was stage one and the other was stage two had resulted in a new power that was stage one, but kept the upgrade from its stage-two component. He was worried that if he merged skills that were advanced any further, they would start at stage two and deprive him of the opportunity to get that upgrade, limiting the potential of the skill.

As he pondered the matter, Edge lay down and closed his eyes. While visions of powers danced through his head, unconsciousness rose to embrace him.