The cyclone tore into the monster's eyes, causing it to shriek in a demonic fashion. Purple blood sprayed out from its wound as the water continued to devastate its face, digging deeper and deeper into its carapace.

I took advantage of the spider's temporarily stunned state to continue healing my wounds with dark form. My skill was making good progress and had already healed my broken bones, leaving just the muscle and fat that had to be repaired.

Revan ran over to me to see if I was alright. I calmed him down by sending my confident emotions across our bond, something I had been getting better at lately.

Cerion, on the other hand, preferred to continue his offensive instead. He activated several more skills while charging at the brood mother. I only recognised the water prison he had used against the tier 2 spiders and his movement skill: [Raindrop step].

Unfortunately, the monster recovered from its shock before he could land his follow-up attack. From what I could see, it only had one eye that wasn't mangled left, which it was using desperately to keep track of Cerion. It was clearly enraged, because it started sending haymakers every which way.

With my flesh knitting together, I felt that now was my time to shine. Cerion had dealt enough damage so far, shouldn't he have left something for me to do? I was truly starting to feel useless at this point. I had to do something...

Making a split-second decision, I redirected the mana that I was focussing on healing my muscle into my surroundings, creating more expelled overloaded mana. I would still heal while doing this, just not as quickly. To compensate for my now lacking mobility, I jumped on top of Revan and ordered him to charge to the spider's side while it was focussing on Cerion.

The brood mother was sending out a flurry of attacks with its scythe-like limbs at Cerion, who was having a hard time dodging and blocking. I could already see several wounds on his body, which meant that I would have to be quick if I wanted to succeed.

Revan got closer and closer to the spot I had designated, a defenceless segment of the brood mother's bulbous body. Right before we got there, however, the monster took note of our presence again. Instead of redirecting one of its limbs at us, it opened its maw and sent a giant stream of green spittle at us.

The shot was aimed perfectly, forcing me to jump off of Revan to dodge. I landed and rolled, standing up to sprint to my goal. When I looked over my shoulder at Revan, I could see him open his maw. A moment later, I felt a large part of my accumulated overloaded mana flow to him. He was charging up his breath attack.

He managed to release his twisting torrent of overloaded mana just in time to meet the stream of acid in the air. The two attacks clashed, creating a large shockwave that knocked me down again. Sadly, Revan's attack ran out of mana. The stream pushed through Revan's own, hitting him square-on.

Revan's body was covered in acid, which was far too strong for his tier 2 bones. They started sizzling and collapsing under their own weight as their internal integrity was lowered by the acid.

A moment later, I felt Revan be destroyed and unsummoned across our bond, returning to the void within the talisman.

I would have to finish this on my own.

I charged up more overloaded mana and expelled it into my surroundings, forming it into my previous maelstrom. This time, I was going to try to move and keep up my barrier at the same time, hopefully cutting into the brood mother's own body.

The monster noticed that I was heading straight for one of its defenceless spots and sent all it had at me. More acid flew at me, and more physical strikes landed on my shield, breaking it down slowly, but it was already too late.

I had reached my target. With my sharp wind blades spinning around me, I ran straight into its carapace, which started to fracture under the continuous attacks.

While the brood mother tried to destroy my defence with more hammer-like impacts from its front legs, it didn't succeed.

Cerion certainly wouldn't let her. He Drew onto whatever mana he had left to unleash all of his skills at the brood mother at once, drawing its attention away from me again.

This allowed me to continue my assault. A few seconds later, I succeeded in breaking it's outer carapace, which revealed its weak fleshy insides to me.

I tore into its body, cutting everything apart as I pushed deeper and deeper into the spider, in search of its heart. I heard Cerion giving it hell outside, causing it to shriek with each explosion.

The problem with locating its heart was that I could only see dark mana. The core of a creature was usually located right next to the heart of the aforementioned creature. That meant that by locating the magical core, you could also find its heart. With this also came a problem. I couldn't find the core. While the brood mother seemed to lean towards dark affinity, I hadn't seen it absorb any dark mana. It was more likely that its affinity leaned closer to the death element or another, more obscure element.

As a result, I was running around blindly, grinding into its body with no sense of direction. Thankfully, I got lucky.

After some searching, I started noticing its flesh becoming tougher. I zoned in on the tougher zones and cleaved into them. Sure enough, my gruesome spelunking had resulted in me finding a large pulsating organ. I cut a small hole into the heart, which gushed out blood. Activating one of my skills, I layered a [Curse mark(guide)] into the deepest part of the wound. I wouldn't be able to destroy it with my sword, but by charging up my overloaded mana into an [Overloaded orb], and sending it straight into the hole I had created, I would be able to solve this problem rather easily. The small marble of unstable mana passed through easily and entered the centre of the heart. I apparated away before I could be caught in the blast, appearing near Cerion.

I could tell he wasn't doing well. His body was littered with cuts, bruises and deep gashes from his fight. I activated some overloaded mana and took on a defensive position. The monster would be dead right about....now, anyway.

I heard a large, muffled blast go off. The brood mother gave one final, guttural shriek, before it collapsed onto the ground lifelessly.

I had to support Cerion to keep him standing as the adrenaline left him, but I could see the victorious smile on his face.

"We did it! We killed it!"

I gave him a tired smile.

"Fucking finally."

We were about to celebrate, when we heard scratches from the brood mother's corpse. We saw the head of the spider move weirdly, before it broke as a single human hand poked through a hole. A young, human woman crawled out like a chicken hatching from an egg.

When she saw us, she spoke up almost immediately.

"Oh, thank you! My heroes, you saved me from..."

Her sentence was cut off as her head was separated from her neck by my [Overloaded sword].

Cerion stared at me in horror.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"That was just another impersonation, Cerion. Don't be fooled."

"We can't know that! For all we know, you just killed an innocent victim!"

Thankfully, I didn't have to respond, because we were interrupted by a notification.

Ding! Combat finished. Congratulations on reaching [Overloading Death Knight] level 18!

Reach level 50 to advance to tier 3.

Stat points allocated. 5 free stat points per level up awarded.

As we received the notification, the body of the young woman desintigrated, leaving only a single skull behind. I looked at Cerion smugly.

"See? I told you she was an enemy."

"Just... ask me what I think next time, okay?"

From his serious tone, I could tell he was being serious. I couldn't quite understand why he had such a big problem with the death of a single monster. Maybe he was complaining about me not being a team player? I should probably have discussed the situation with him before attacking, then. Yeah, that must be why he looked distraught.

Seeing his point, I nodded.

A few minutes later, Cerion and I were seated on some rocks in the cave, patching up our wounds. A few more curious spiders had shown up while we were resting, but I took care of them easily.

"So...how exactly did the big spider die? None of the attacks I was throwing at it seemed to cause much damage."

"I tunnelled into it using my maelstrom and found its heart, which I then blew to kingdom come."

"Damn. You sure like dramatics huh?" Cerion quipped.

"Don't judge my style, man. It worked, didn't it?"

"From the look of things, it did! I was nearly out of mana, too. A few more seconds and I would've been out..."

"That's the risk we took when we decided to fight a tier 3 monster. Maybe even peak tier 3. It didn't have many skills, but the attacks it did use were more than our match."

"That, or the brood mother powered up from skulls, like those other spiders."

"Maybe. Anyway, give me some peace and quiet while I check out my notifications, will you? Unlike you, I don't need to recover any mana." I added snarkily.

"Wow...ruuuude." he said in an overdramatic tone.

What a comedian.

Despite the difficulty of the battle, I had only gained six levels. It was disappointing. Still, I supposed my previous tier 1 levelling speed was quite unusual. It made sense that things slowed down a bit. This gave me more time to raise the progression of my skills, at least. I had to remember to see the positive side, after all. Speaking of skills, the next notification was about one.

[Dark Blade Maelstrom](0%)

Tier 2 skill.

Encircle oneself with blades created out of expelled overloaded mana. The speed, sharpness and durability of the blades depend on the skill [Overload Aura].

Skill is dependent on the parent skill [Overload aura].

Use this skill in battle to increase progression.

[Dark Blade Maelstrom]? Wasn't the system becoming a little too childish with its naming sense now? Well, the skill itself seemed good, at least...

I tried out my new skill, expecting it to be no different from my previous maelstrom, but I was pleasantly surprised, instead.

The new skill took far less mana to form a blade than my freeform aura had, and the winds from before actually became blades now. Where before the cutting winds were transparent and somewhat inconsistent, now blades of the same shape were formed each time, each as sharp as my tier 2 bastard sword.

The blades also stuck around for longer because they dispelled less mana per second. Effectively, they didn't burn themselves out as quickly as my winds had, making the skill far more useful overall.

Satisfied with the fruit of my efforts, I turned to my stats. I had gained another 6 levels from the fight, which meant that I had also gained enough stat points to raise my wisdom to 170. Without hesitation, I allocated the points, using the remainder to invest a little into intelligence.

Name: Arthur Titles [Dark prodigy] Class: [Overloading Death Knight] LVL 18 Strength 176 Constitution 172 Dexterity 172 Intelligence 33 Wisdom 170 Affinity 331 Free stat points 0

Skills:

Passive: [Dark radiance core](11%), [Dark sight](27%), [Berserker Swordsmanship](28%),

[Growing lifespan](N/A), [Mental resistance](N/A), [Dark Form](8%), [Overload Aura](12%)

Active: [Shadow apparation](89%), [Flexible senses](N/A), [Curse mark(guide)](14%), [Overloaded orb](19%), [Overloaded sword](7%), [Dark Blade Maelstrom](0%)

My improved physical stats were also starting to shape up. They were still a long way from the next milestone at 300 stats, but if my calculations were correct they would all reach that point naturally by the time I was level 50, without needing to spend a single free stat point. That left my free points to be used for wisdom and a bit of intelligence, which I would need to keep up with my physical stats. Already, my intelligence stat was about 10 points below the recommended 25%. I didn't really feel sluggish or anything, but maybe I would've had an easier time keeping up with the brood mother if I had had higher intelligence. Well, for now, everything was fine.

A moment after investing my points, I decided to open a system notification I had put off for a while. Now that I finally had the time to think, this was a good opportunity to look at my options.

[Mental resistance](N/A)

Tier 1 skill.

Your mind becomes better protected.

Increase wisdom to the next milestone to increase skill tier.

Tier 2 upgrades

[Mental fortress]

Your mind becomes your fortress. Outside influences will have to lay siege on it to affect you.

[Mental library]

Your mind becomes your library. Store your memories here so that you can face them on your own terms. Stored memories can not be affected by others.

[Mental palace]

Your mind becomes your palace. Retreat into your mind to experience time at your own will, healing mental wounds in the process.

How did [Mental resistance] of all skills turn into one of my hardest skill choices yet?