Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 55

When he woke back up, the massive migraine made him want to knock himself back out. But he didn’t know how to do it without touching his sensitive head, so he laid down for a few hours, eyes closed while trying to endure his throbbing headache.

The gloves essence was still wrapped around his mind, not invading it, but reinforcing and repairing it. He wasn’t sure how he felt about something so potentially dangerous being inside his mind, but the mere thought of tearing it out sent a shiver down his spine. He was completely unwilling to make his headache any worse.

After several hours, the throbbing pain started to lessen, allowing him to focus his attention outward, if only slightly.

The first thing he heard was the raspy breathing. Initially, he thought that it was his own, but the breaths were far too deep. His were still shallow, whatever energy that thing had sucked out of his body hadn’t seemed to return.

Now fully alert with the knowledge that he wasn’t the only one still alive, he tried to sit up.

Fighting through the horrendous pain that seemed to stab into his head, Dante slowly forced himself off the ground until he was sitting up.

Laying down on the floor across from him was a something that looked almost human, but was fiendish. Like the monsters that Arron and Jared were fighting it had pale skin and no hair, but based on the raspy wheezing sound it was making, he never would have thought it to be human.

The thing was conscious, and glaring at him with hate-filled eyes. Still, it couldn’t do anything. It seemed to barely be alive with seven of his swords sticking out of its body at jagged angles. The sight made him happy. Thrilled even. He had said that he would make whatever this thing was pay dearly, and it was time to collect.

He struggled to do it, but after a few seconds, he was able to use his Create Blade skill to make a new dagger. Then he slowly dragged himself across the floor, eliminating any distance that was between him and the dungeon boss.

The thing began to struggle on the ground, trying to get away from him, but it was utterly defenseless. “Stop…” Its voice was so weak and raspy that it came out in a harsh whisper. It seemed that whatever power that allowed it to break down and reform was now gone.

He paid the monster no attention, and finally making it over to its entrapped body, he corrupted the dagger and began slicing into the dungeon boss carefully. Killing it, but slowly.

He made a few shocking discoveries while he worked. The first, and most significant discovery, was the two Classification symbols on the dungeon boss’ wrist. It was human. At least before it found the dungeon. Using his prior knowledge, he could now be quite certain at how predatory dungeons were made in contrast to regular dungeons. It was, however, impossible for him to absorb those Classifications, no matter how much blood he covered his glove in.

The second discovery he made was his distaste for needlessly inflicting harm on others… even if it deserved it. At first, cutting the dungeon boss was almost calming. It felt good to take out his feelings on someone else, all of his pent-up emotions and frustrations finally finding some release. But after a few cuts, the quiet, raspy screams that were coming from the dungeon boss were making him queasy.

Steeling his resolve, Dante plunged the dagger into the dungeon boss’s heart. He wanted to inflict some permanent harm upon it, but it seemed impossible given the nature of dungeons.

Its expression went slack, but before the boss died it almost looked grateful. Thankful that the suffering had finally ended.

The dungeon boss’s body broke apart, turning into dust before being absorbed by the dungeon floor.

The only thing that was left in its place was the swords that had impaled the boss and two crystals. One blue, and the other purple. Confused, yet elated, he reached over to pick the two up. Then immediately checked his Monster Crystal tab.

Skill Infused: None

Passive Skill Infused: None

Passive Skill Infused: None

Attribute Crystal Infused: None

Attribute Crystal Infused: None

Monster Crystals that can be Infused:

Passive Skill: Oppressive Will

Force your will outwards to oppress those around you.

Strength dependent on the difference in Wisdom between user and targets.

Cost: 5 Mana per second

Range: dependent on total Wisdom

Attribute Crystal: Wisdom

Gives +7 to the Wisdom attribute.

He was having a hard time controlling his breathing, which was a problem. The shallow breaths he was taking no longer seemed to be enough to sustain himself. He pushed off the floor with his arms, rolling onto his back to try and take larger breaths.

He couldn’t get over the shock of receiving two crystals. It now made complete sense why Jared and Arron were so quick to come to blows at the slight chance of fighting the dungeon boss. But he couldn’t understand why he would get two.

After thinking it over for a moment, there only seemed to be two possibilities. The first possibility was that predatory dungeons innately gave two monster crystals. The second was that he was given one crystal for each Classification that the dungeon boss had. Either way, he wouldn’t complain.

Looking back at the crystal’s effects themselves, he scrutinized the passive skill. It seemed… vague. No real effect was detailed in the skill. It might have been something similar to the power the boss used against him, or it could have done something else altogether. But the lack of information was troubling. Skill descriptions always seemed to be vague, every skill he had seemed to have some unforeseen issues. The fact that this one was even more vague didn’t sit well with him.

Not only that, but if he broke it he could likely specialize one of his Classifications. But it was at least worth testing before he made any rash decisions. He already knew from some information he gathered at the academy that he could easily remove the crystals if he wanted to.

The other crystal was far more straightforward. As far as he was concerned, the Wisdom attribute gain was by far the best attribute crystal he could get, and it fit the new skill he got perfectly.

But there was a seemingly indestructible obstacle in his path. He didn’t see how he was supposed to press the crystal into his wrist with his glove in the way. Having nothing to lose, Dante grabbed the purple crystal and pushed it against his glove, right where the symbol of the dragon wrapped around the bottom of his wrist.

It was strange, as the crystal was pressed into it, the threads of the glove itself opened up and pulled the crystal in. There was a sharp pain like his wrist was being slit, but it wasn’t too bad.

As soon as the crystal got deep enough inside of his skin, the gloves threads went back to their previous positions as though nothing had happened at all.

The process seemed simple enough, even though he still didn’t know how to remove the crystals, and he immediately repeated the process with the other. When that was done, he reopened the Monster Crystal tab in his Status.

Skill Infused: Oppressive Will

Passive Skill Infused: None

Passive Skill Infused: None

Attribute Crystal Infused: Wisdom +7

Attribute Crystal Infused: None

After making sure that his monster crystals were used correctly, he checked his Wisdom attribute. He now had a total of 41 Wisdom, giving him 4.1 Mana per second.

That done, he closed his Status and began testing out his new passive skill.

It was a strange sensation. All of his other skills seemed like a part of him. Something innate that he just knew how to activate, but the new skill was entirely different. No matter how much he tried to focus, he couldn’t find a way to activate the passive skill at all.

He thought it over for a moment. Then, on a whim, he began feeding world essence into the purple crystal that was lodged underneath his glove.

It worked, he could feel the mana draining out of him, and then he felt his will spreading out around forty feet in every direction, getting weaker the further it spread. Testing done, he stopped channeling the mana and deactivated it, still having no idea what the skill really did.

Getting stuck in the predatory dungeon had somehow gone from being a miserable situation to a massive overall benefit.

Dante laid there for a moment, in a completely empty cavern that was barely lit by a mana manipulated light. The mixture of the migraine and his exhaustion, which seemed eerily similar to the effects of his Rebirth of the Revenant passive, gave him the desire to just sit and wait for the pain to abate. But that wasn’t really an option. Someone would eventually find him if he waited. Even if he were hidden from Trackers, Jared and Arron’s corpses wouldn’t be when they were found missing.

Breaking up the swords that were scattered through the cavern, Dante began to slowly crawl through the corpse-filled dungeon. Spending the slow journey pondering the implications of the dungeon boss’s words, and what an archaic might be.