[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 106: Journey’s End (Patreon)

Before he relocated and began preparing for his showdown with the dungeon’s boss, there was one last thing that Edge wanted to do.

It had been quite a while since he had viewed his profile in full. He went ahead and pulled it up now, marveling at how much he’d accomplished since evolving to stage two.

Personal Statistics: Edge Vasher

Attributes (Values in parentheses are provided by your traits)

Physical Attributes

Power: 14 (16)

Endurance: 14 (16)

Durability: 25 (27)

Reflex: 13 (15)

Speed: 17 (19)

Control: 14 (16)

Perception: 14 (15)

Energetic Attributes

Generation: 13

Amplification: 36

Disruption: 24 (26)

Core Information

Name: [Skill-Eater]

Stage: 2

Cycle: 13/63

Rarity: Unique

Category: Unique

Attribute points per cycle: 5

Ultimate Abilities

[Extraction] <active>

Uses per day: 3

Cooldown period: 20 hours

Steal the skills of monsters, men, and beasts and claim them for your own.

[Overdrive] <active>

Uses: 1

Cooldown period: 1 week

Overdrive increases your Amplification by (10 x stage) for 60 seconds. Activating skills will not require mana during this period. You will be severely exhausted for 60 seconds after Overdrive is complete.

Core Traits

Collector (Unique) <alternate advancement>

You can no longer acquire or rank up skills through normal means. You may slot twice as many skills as before. Additionally, you will gain an extra skill slot with every new stage.

Devourer (Unique)

You may absorb an unwanted skill, freeing its slot and granting a fraction of its experience to the skill of your choice. Be advised, the return on this exchange is significantly less efficient than extracting a duplicate of an existing skill.

Skills

Skill slots: 18 (Unused slots: 3)

Conceal (Common): Rank 3. Path: Erasure.

Erase your scent and heat signature while you remain still. Visually, you will appear to blend into your environment. The last twenty-five feet of your trail will be removed on activation.

Leap (Common): Rank 2. Path: Assault.

Jump with explosive force. Increases Durability for ten seconds after activation.

Counter Disruption <meta> (Uncommon): Rank 1.

Enhance the paired power by making it resistant to Disruption Fields.

Elemental Blade <ice> (Uncommon): Rank 3. Path: Elemental Infusion.

Create a subzero blade of ice or infuse a bladed weapon with a chilling aura.

Harden (Uncommon): Rank 2. Path: Coverage.

Cover large portions of your body in diamond scales.

Penetrate Foliage <passive> (Uncommon): (Rank 1).

Peer through plants like they were made of clear glass.

Regeneration (Uncommon): Rank 4. Paths: Unlimited Regeneration/Purification.

Rapidly heal wounds. Regeneration can restore destroyed organs at a significantly slower rate. Regeneration will actively purify foreign mana from your body.

Regulate Temperature <passive> (Uncommon): Rank 2. Path: Protection.

Gain significant insulation against temperature change, including elemental attacks.

Repel Water <versatile> (Uncommon): Rank 3. Path: Repulsion.

Push large volumes of water away from the user. The shape of the repulsive field can be altered at will.

Double Slash (Rare): Rank 2. Path: Disruption.

Empower an attack with a bladed weapon. The weapon will have an offset double, and its edge will be magically sharpened while the skill is active. Additionally, the blade will be coated in a weak Disruption field.

Warlord’s Mantle <aura> (Rare): Rank 1.

Cover yourself and chosen allies within range with a mantle of mana. Anyone bolstered by Warlord’s Mantle will receive a moderate boost to Power and Speed and a modest bonus to Reflex and Control. Additionally, they will receive a slight enhancement to their combat awareness. Any blow passing through the mantle will have a portion of its energy sapped.

Shadow Step (Rare): Rank 2. Path: Armored Shadow.

Transform into shadows. In this state, your body is malleable and immune to physical attacks. The cost of transforming your gear is greatly reduced.

Intimidating Roar (Epic): Rank 1.

This aural attack infuses the listener’s nervous system with a powerful wave of mana, creating an intense state of fear. Intimidating Roar can cause complete paralysis against weaker opponents and may impair stronger creatures to a lesser extent.

Manifest Chain <soulbound> (Unique): Rank 1.

You may summon a chain of oblivion and guide it by your will. The chain may also be freed to act at its own discretion. If the manifestation is destroyed, it cannot be summoned again for 24 hours.

At rank one, you may only manifest the left chain, Foebinder. Foebinder is resilient to physical attacks and weak against magic.

Traits

Trait slots: 5 (Unused slots: 1)

Triple Tap

You are either a genius, blessed by the heavens, or are the luckiest motherfucker on the planet. You managed to win a fight against three opponents at least one stage higher than yourself and—more or less—landed the killing blow on each.

Effects: +10% to Power, Speed, and Control (minimum gain of 1).

Wanted

You have found 1 of the 21 Unique cores in existence, which has painted a target on your back. In fact, checking out the bounty board is probably something you should do sooner rather than later.

There’s a good chance that this is going to end spectacularly badly for you, and I can’t wait to watch it all play out. This trait might help you live a little bit longer, but I’m not holding my breath.

Effects: +10% to Endurance, Durability, and Disruption (minimum gain of 1).

Big Game Hunter

Holy shit. That. Was. Fucking. Awesome!

You managed to score a kill on a colossal and behemoth creature, all in the same afternoon. I’m shocked to my circuits that you’re still breathing and loved every second of the show.

I hope that you try something that batshit crazy again soon. Here’s a trait that should incentivize you to do just that.

Effect: 50% more damage with weapons and skills to creatures at least twenty times your size (excluding magitech weapons, traps, and spellshots).

Fit and Toned.

You’ve managed to push your new body to the limit, maxing your conditioning across the board. I must admit that you’re looking pretty good. The monsters will have some eye candy to appreciate while they’re tearing you apart. That being said, you aren’t the baddest mofo in the dungeon. Not by a long shot.

Oh, and be careful, I don’t think the bone slime will be alive for much longer.

Effects: +1 to all physical attributes.

Implants

Implant points: 6 (Unused points: 3)

Heart-Guard (Common)

Size: Small (1 implant point). Aether type: Silver. Charge: Full.

This implant generates a barrier to protect the heart when it detects incoming damage.

Auxiliary Skill Slot (Uncommon)

Size: Small (1 implant point). Aether type: N/A.

An auxiliary skill slot can be used to socket an extra skill beyond the limit of your core. The skill placed in this slot cannot gain experience, cycle up, or be merged or altered in any way, although it can be Absorbed and replaced with a new skill at will.

This is a passive, structural implant. As such, it does not require an aether charge to function.

Bonded Runic Gear

Frostfury Medallion (Rare)

Strain: Low (1 implant point).

Significantly boost the output of all cold-based magic.

System Currency

Credits: 104,150

Mortium: 71

Despite the severity of his situation, taking in the extent of his gains put a smile on his face. If Edge managed to make it out of the Savage Garden in one piece, he was powerful enough to help defend Puppet Town from the Crimson Claws.

Once that crisis was passed, he would be ready to take his adventures into more dangerous biomes, stealing skills and growing stronger along the way.

As he followed the dungeon’s wall while heading for the city, Edge wondered how his mother was doing. Since his Prison World feed had been one of the last broadcasts before the anomaly cut off all long-range communications, he hoped that it had racked up quite a few views, even though his feed had only amassed a few days’ worth of content. With any luck, the royalties he had transferred into her name would be sufficient to let his mother live comfortably for the rest of her life.

I really fucking miss you, Mom. He wiped away tears from the corners of his eyes. I don’t know if I can ever come home. But I swear that one way or another, I will find a way to see you again. Then, for the first time in years, he let himself feel the grief that he’d shoved into a box and buried deep. Dad and David, I miss you too.

***

Edge had already located the final island in the city.

After returning to his shelter and gathering his belongings, he began creeping toward the isle that led to the final challenge the Savage Garden had to offer. The fog had lifted a few minutes earlier, filling the dungeon with sunlight.

He prayed that the convicts would have a hard time killing the bone slime—delaying them long enough for Overdrive to come off cooldown—but he couldn’t count on it. Edge needed to be ready to head inside the boss’s chamber the moment the seal was broken, even if he had to start the fight without his ultimate ability.

In spite of everything he’d accomplished, it would be impossible for him to solo a stage-three boss under ordinary circumstances. He hoped the spellshots resting in his revolver’s chamber, including Warren’s trump card, would be enough to make up the difference.

He had spotted the convicts while crossing the swamp—gathered around the trap they had constructed. There were enough rafts on their island to carry the Claws across the rivers, and he judged that their journey through the city would take them two or three hours, tops.

Edge came to a stop on the second to last island, looking through his spyglass under the cover of Conceal. Although most of the isle was cordoned off by the dungeon’s walls, there was a narrow strip of ground that ran in front of the entrance to the boss’s chamber, which was blocked by a gigantic boulder at present.

The flying serpents were out in force—one final environmental hazard and monstrous threat combined. He’d seen enough of them elsewhere in the dungeon to know that the reptiles were insanely aggressive and their venom was lethal. Hunkering down close to them was a bad idea, but it should be easy to slip past with Shadow Step once the way was clear.

Since the jailbirds were still in the swamp, he decided to explore some of the nearby islands that he hadn’t visited yet. Edge wasn’t planning to fight any monsters today—unless he came across one that was already injured—but finding more rare resources or another sealed chest would come in handy. I wouldn’t say no to another mana seed either, although I still have the mana berry in my preservation unit.

Some of the isles had hills with caves that continued underground. Since he didn’t have time to go spelunking and risk getting lost, he stuck to the ruins instead. The first island he picked had some of the most extensive buildings he’d seen yet—with more intact structures than anywhere else in the dungeon.

After scouting the outskirts for monsters, he decided to head inside. Soon after, Edge came across the first footprints that he’d seen in the dungeon’s fourth zone. He could tell from the pattern that the person was limping, and the bloodstains dribbled beside them informed him that whoever had left this trail had been seriously injured.

Everything was at least a week old, and he wondered if he had finally found his first clue as to what had happened to Setna’s crew—the hunters who had entered the Savage Garden, triggered the quest, and set off the series of events leading to his present predicament.

He found the remnants of a cookfire, along with signs that someone had been sheltering nearby, but nothing was fresh or told him what had happened to the missing crew. Edge followed the bloodstains deeper into the ruins. While he doubted that anyone was still alive after so much time had passed, he wanted to confirm their deaths if he could.

There was evidence of a struggle a bit further inside, but nothing recent. He didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary as he scouted one crumbling building after the next. Even still, he proceeded with caution. Penetrate Foliage couldn’t help in this environment, and even if there weren’t any monsters in the area, there could be traps and other nasty surprises.

On that note, when Edge passed between a series of marble pillars, a woman’s voice rang out. “Don’t move a muscle or I’ll run you through.”