Wolf

Twelve hours later, on the forty-fifth floor

I jump down from a pillar of ice whilst grabbing a sword from my inventory before landing directly on the head of the enormous scorpion and driving the blade straight through its brain. The monster’s hiss cuts off immediately as it falls to the ground, helped along by my weight. Meanwhile, Sapphire – who had been pinning down the scorpion’s stinger – lets go of the stinger and lets out a satisfied screech.

As soon as the chime rings in my head indicating the mini boss’s death, a notification appears on my interface.

System Notification

Congratulations!

You are now level 500!

I swipe my hand through the notification before jumping down from the scorpion’s massive body, only to freeze in surprise as soon as my feet touch the ground below.

System Notification

Congratulations!

You have now unlocked your soul-bound ability’s fourth effect!

Oh?

That was unexpected. Although I guess it does make sense that I would unlock another one at level 500. It certainly feels like a major milestone after all.

Seconds later, the notification disappears and is replaced with the description of my soul-bound ability.

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Ice Reaper

First effect:

This ability allows the user to create and manipulate the ice element within a certain radius determined by the level of the ability.

The amount of ice element that can be created and manipulated is also limited by both the level of the user and the user’s own stamina.

Second effect:

This ability allows the user to use the ice element within a certain radius to heal themselves.

The amount the user can heal, as well as the pace at which they can heal, are both determined and limited by the level of the user, their own stamina, and the amount of ice element in the area.

Third effect:

This ability raises the user’s physical abilities and natural recovery when surrounded by the ice element.

The amount that the user’s physical abilities and natural recovery is raised is determined by the amount of ice element in the area, ranging from a 5% increase to a 25% increase.

Fourth effect:

This ability allows the user to drain the health and stamina of anything nearby the user that has health or stamina at a speed dependent on the difference between the user’s level and the object or creature of which the user is draining’s level.

While this power is being used, the overall temperature of whatever is being drained decreases as a small fraction of ice element is automatically materialized within their body to replace the lost stamina or health.

Note: The ice element is immediately used up due to being inside of the body of something that is not immune to it, therefore decreasing their temperature.

Fifth effect:

Locked

Close

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

My mouth drops open slightly at the new effect before closing again.

That’s pretty good.

I lower my head and begin to scratch my chin as I contemplate how the effect might be used. As I’m doing this, the corpse of the enormous scorpion vanishes in an explosion of lights and a large chest with the picture of a scorpion engraved on the front replaces it.

Actually, this effect could be lifesaving…

Not only is it a way to recover my stamina, but it can be used as an attack, whether that be through the decrease in the enemy’s temperature, or the life and stamina drain. This could be extremely useful against monsters or other players that are immune to my attacks for some reason. Like the Administrators and their broken privilege to seal skills.

Or just straight up immunity skills, and racial abilities.

My thoughts pause for a second as I feel Sapphire climbing up my shoulder again before I turn to look at the large pillar of ice near the chest.

After putting in some research on the topic of skills, I learned that skills use perfect manipulation of whatever element or elements the skills need to do whatever the skill intends. They are kind of like cheats to shortcut your way to doing something perfectly.

And with better manipulation, the element in question’s speed will dramatically increase as well.

So, with that in mind, I ended up buying several skills that use the ice element.

After all, not only do they make great reference material in training my manipulation, but they are able to be used in environments like this. Although they still drain a massive amount of stamina to use…

My eyebrows raise at this thought before a smile creeps across my face.

Which makes my new effect rather perfect right now.

I turn away from the pillar to look at the chest. Then, without any fanfare, I walk up to it and open it.

My smile lessens a little as I see the description of a crafting material floating above the chest before I lightly shake my head, reach out to grab it as soon as it appears, and begin walking towards the fifth tunnel, only to start floating within seconds.

I really wish those crafters still alive within the dungeon would catch up so that I can hire them… although it probably isn’t worth it at this level, and with these crafting materials. It might just be better to sell them to the crafters instead. Or trade them.

But all of those options require a crafter’s presence.

The sight of a large scorpion gladiator walking out of the room at the back of the fifth tunnel distracts me from my thoughts. Or to be more accurate, the sight of the room the gladiator is walking out of distracts me.

“Okay, seriously,” I mutter, my brows furrowing in confusion as I float through the tunnel in between the two system guardians, “why do a bunch of scorpions need a bar?”

I shake my head slightly as the guardian places me on the ground in front of the door. It’s probably for the best that I don’t question this.

Besides. Scorpions can have bars if they want. Not my place to judge.

My mouth drops open again as I open the door and immediately spot the scorpion bartender, who is currently making a cocktail with its long tail.

I stand frozen at the entrance for a few seconds before closing my mouth again and stepping towards the bar for the first time on this theme.

For some reason, there is a bar on every single floor of the theme. But so far, I have just been ignoring them.

Now though, I’m actually a little curious as to whether the bartender can talk or something. Not to mention how good the drinks are.

Actually, that reminds me. Does alcohol even affect me anymore?

I mean, it’s not like I was a big drinker before the Initialization. In fact, I almost never drank at all.

But it’s still a valid question.

The scorpion looks at me from the strange counter that it’s standing on before pointing its tail at an array of drinks behind it. The counter is on level with the bar itself, with the scorpion being only a couple of feet tall, and a meter to a meter-and-a-half long. Meanwhile, the drinks are all labeled with various different names, most of which I don’t recognize but somehow know what they are saying anyways.

I guess the System translates written languages as well.

After identifying the various drinks, I realize that I don’t know much about alcohol in the first place. So I point at a random one.

The scorpion nods its head and stretches its tail out towards the drink before making a glass float over towards me.

If it can make them float, then why isn’t it doing it to the bottle as well…?

Also, does it’s lack of speaking mean that it can’t speak?

Unable to hear my thoughts – and likely not to care about them even if it could – the scorpion proceeds to pour my randomly chosen drink into the glass and places the rest of the bottle back onto the shelf behind it.

Deciding to just go with the flow and not question any of the bizarre stuff going on in here, I reach for the drink and take a sip.

My eyebrows raise slightly in surprise as I pull the drink away from my face and look at it.

“That’s pretty good…” I mutter before smiling and taking another sip.

It has a strange mixture of sour and sweet in its taste, with a strong sense of berries mixed in the flavor.

A loud noise catches my attention before I turn to find two large desert scorpion gladiators fighting for some reason. Then, the bartender suddenly hisses very loudly in front of me and stretches its tail far longer than what should be possible and quickly stabs both of the gladiators with its stinger before retracting its tail back to its body. Meanwhile, after being stabbed, the two gladiators begin to disperse into piles of purplish-brown liquid before vanishing into the usual sparks of light.

I stare at the now-empty table for a few seconds before shrugging and turning back to the bar to continue enjoying my drink.