Jack stared down at his panel, going over his, until recently, mostly stagnant character sheet. He was higher level than the others by a relatively wide margin, due both to the free levels granted by his race and the Ravenous Mark talent. The experience boosting upgrade had never appeared for the others, and the advantages had continued to push him into the lead.

Well, that and his habit of using his undead flesh as a wedge to break open monster formations and as a shield to guard his friends. Risk and reward were inseparable in this place.

Several times now, he’d thought about how the near absence of pain had made him, if not careless, then certainly almost fearless. It explained a lot about why pain existed in creatures on Earth.

Without the suffering associated with being wounded, Jack had no compunction about sacrificing his body and using the fully upgraded Devouring Shadows to regenerate the damage.

It just happened that his line of thought was less abstract musing and more immediate concern.

He looked down at his mangled hand, missing the pinky and ring finger, the rest of the fingers and his thumb mangled and crunched by the cave hound’s bite.

After the maiming, he’d dropped his sword and focused on tearing the big beast apart with the writhing black limbs. The missing fingers had already started to slowly grow back, but using the ability this way took a massive amount of healing compared to easing the soreness and bruising that missing Health represented.

It also hurt like hell.

Far more than actually being injured.

His blade safely stowed back in its sheath, he sniffed the air like a hound, moving through the cave slowly, cloaked in a shroud of shadowy coils. Finally, he scented another of the beasts and changed course to move toward the monster.

He figured he’d have function back in the hand after killing another cave hound, as long as he didn’t take too much damage during the fight.

The cave hounds were in the mid-thirties, and he was seeing slow but steady growth, approaching tier four. He had already staked out his abilities from the options available, and was currently focused on making the next tier rank so he could grab the Shadowcraft Prodigy talent that had been teasing him since his race change.

He mused about how he had moved away from arguably his strongest combat skill from Earth, but the shadows offered too many benefits to ignore. His Heavy Blades had continued to level, but the options available to nightbringer were largely martial arts that synergized with a magical swordsman style. Right now, his priority was getting his Night and Shadowcraft to tier four, and using Galvanize Undead and the shadow tentacles was the way to do it.

The cave hound was stalking him, to the left. It smelled like sour water, animal musk, and blood, and he could see it clearly in the not-light of his night vision.

As the creature closed on him, absolutely silent even as it moved across the stone floor, crouched low to the ground like a hunting panther, he twisted the forest of shadow limbs surrounding him into four coiled limbs, as thick as his leg and almost twice as long as he was tall.

The skill had grown from “interesting support skill” to “terrifying shadow abomination” as his control and power had evolved.

The hound pounced.

The left-hand pair of shadow limbs flowered out at the end into a twisted anemone of darkness and snatched the beast, a hairless canine creature the size of a draft horse, slamming it into the ground. The right-hand pair irised open in a similar display, like a flower unfurling into a blossom of razored darkness, then plunged into the creature in a series of rapid-fire Shadow Hydras.

He had to give it to the cave hounds. They were tough.

The beast clawed and snapped at the shadow limbs, but they were incredibly resistant to physical damage. He figured it was a decent trade for the unreal stamina cost of manifesting them and wielding them in daylight.

He privately anticipated their first fight with a paladin of the Day would probably reveal some glaring weaknesses in his build, but he already planned to keep advancing his swordsmanship. Whether it would be enough was a problem for Future Jack.

The black barbed tentacles dug their way into the cave hound. In a way, it was horrifying. Certainly, months ago, Jack would have been mortified to watch the coiling shadow limbs’ thorns slowly rip the cave hound apart.

But today, he felt only a grim satisfaction as the monster’s health slowly slipped away.

He flexed his hand, sparing a moment to look down and see the flow of ichor through his gauntlet stop. He wiggled the fingers again, watching the bone visibly grow, muscle, tendon, and white skin following in its wake.

Finally, the experience notification rolled across his panel.

He dropped the beast’s desiccated body and sniffed the air, scenting for another.

Maggie: Yeh arright, Jack?

Jack: Good to go.

Maggie: How’s yer progress?

Jack: Coming up on 37.

Maggie: Be safe.

Jack: Will do.

He padded off further into the cave, seeking another victim.

-----

“Holy fucking shit, Jackson!” Layla’s shout caused the others’ heads to snap around.

They watched as the nightbringer emerged from the darkness into the dim glow of the pale cave lights they set out during their rest.

“Yeah, I’m a mess,” he rasped, his voice a gnarled specter of its usual southern drawl.

Black blood dripped from his mouth, and down his face.

The nightbringer’s skull was showing through a gaping rent that went from just below his nose, across his eye, and deep into the hairline, the bone even whiter than his skin, though the area was smeared with the black ichor that passed for his blood.

His left arm hung loosely, the shoulder dislocated and torn. The rest of the arm was a mangled mess, with clearly broken bones throughout. His chest plate had multiple inch-wide holes in the pattern of a giant canine bite pattern.

Nevertheless, other than a slight limp caused by a broken leg, he walked with purpose, showing little signs of pain on what remained of his face.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU?!” Erin yelled at him.

“Four words. Tier four elite hound. And adds,” he grunted, sitting down.

Erin moved toward him, then stopped a few feet away.

“What… what can we do?” she reached out.

He gave her a ghastly smile and chuckled, another bubble of black ichor dripping from his lips.

“Yeh’ve got ichor in yer lungs, laddie,” Maggie knelt down near him.

“Yeah. I think I’ll take that mana potion, Rory,” he coughed, another spatter of inky fluid hitting his hand as he covered his mouth.

The salesman stood for a moment, horrified at the shredded nightbringer’s grisly appearance, then started and withdrew the potion. Jack tilted it back all at once, sighing appreciatively.

“Phantom Regeneration,” he invoked.

The others watched as Jack’s skin lost its ghostly white coloration, slowly fading into a shadowy translucency. First, his muscles became visible beneath the skin, tenebrous and infused with ichor. Then the musculature took on the appearance of obsidian glass, revealing the white bone beneath and the nightbringer’s stygian organs.

His dark heart was visible in dramatic relief, black mana drumming and pulsing throughout.

“That is… wild,” Layla breathed.

“Gift from Big O. Tier four regeneration ability. Costs mana to keep it up, but it heals wounds and Health,” he replied. “And it hurts a lot less than using the shadow’s health drain.”

“How much more mana will you need?” Erin asked.

“Since there’s never any daylight down here, my mana regen is pretty spectacular, but it uses more than I can keep up with. A couple hours to be fully healed, maybe?” he sighed, then grunted as the dislocated shoulder audibly popped back into its socket.

“How’s it compare with Galvanize, laddie?” Maggie asked, her interest clearly piqued.

“Way more efficient, but a lot slower,” he responded.

“Aye, many regeneration abilities are sim’lar,” she nodded.

Erin poured water from her skin onto Jack’s face, rinsing away the black ichor. She leaned in and watched, fascinated, as his skin visibly closed across the fractured skull. There was another snap as the bones of Jack’s face pieced themselves back together by millimeters.

He winced.

“You deserve every bit of ouch you get,” she growled at him.

“What even happened, Jack?” Rory sat down against the wall, across from the two.

“Was hunting monsters. Big monster found me. Brought some buddies,” he shrugged.

“How close?” Erin grimaced.

“Close,” he winced again.

“No more John Wayne bullshit, understand?” she poked him.

“No promises,” he grunted as her finger pushed against his mangled breastplate.

“So, big question, how’s the ‘gainz’?” Layla asked.

“Level 40. Kinda disappointed though,” he replied.

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been angling for a prodigy talent in my tentacles, and it turns out, you can only have one. Already got Night Prodigy way back when,” he explained.

Maggie looked up from his slowly regenerating hand.

“There’s a shrine what let’s you swap out one ability. It’s in Ulvrlynd,” she smiled. “But it’s a one-time thing, ever.”

“Well, after we get the map, I know where we’re going,” he grinned back, then hissed as his fractured humerus snapped back into place.

“I wanna feel sorry for you, but I don’t,” Erin growled.

“Yeah, don’t. It was worth it,” he sighed and laid back, allowing the skill to slowly erase the evidence of his one Leroy moment per dungeon.