(Zack)

"Zack," Nik says, and I look over to the Dark Knight, who's standing just inside the entryway to my home. I heard him coming. "I know you want to go out hunting some more, but would you mind coming to the Dark Temple? I've already received permission for Gold to enter."

"What for?" I ask.

It's been four days since my encounter with the Snow Master, and I've gained eight Levels since, making it to Tier II Dark One Level 2. Looks like it adds on another VIT and a WIS to my Level-up Bonus. I'm going to try to reach Tier III before challenging the Snow Master again.

While I'd only be gaining eight or sixteen to each of the affected six Stats per Level of Dark One, I'd also gain five to all of them, due to my Level-Up bonus of one to all, combined with Adventurer's now-three to all, being at Tier III.

Nik's taking me out of my training, so I'm hope it's good, especially since, if my assumption is correct, tomorrow's Christmas. Though it does seem that the 'distances' between events aren't always the same, and nor are the lengths of the years.

They know when the new year begins solely because the walls of the Cities turn crimson for six days, and the year begins on the fourth day, halfway through. No one knows why the walls turn crimson, other than that they do.

And that a lot of people disappear outside of the Cities, never found again – not even as Fallen Adventurers – while the walls are crimson. If someone's male or a child, they're more likely to vanish.

In other words, there's something that goes on outside of the Cities during New Year's, and the walls turning crimson are likely to keep it from entering the Cities – or at least, from going near them. Whatever this is, it's obviously a monster of some sort.

Well, several, since it happens everywhere.

It's also said that the period of time between the Santa Boss and the new year's beginning can result in amazing loot, and I really want to go after it, but caution also somewhat wins out on me, so unless I'm a lot stronger, I doubt I'll be leaving the City during that time.

I'd rather not vanish, thank you.

Oh, right. Nik asked me something, and I asked him why, and then got side-tracked with my thoughts.

"Sorry?" I look at Nik, who looks amused and is standing right in front of me, now.

"What are you thinking about?"

"If I leave the city during the Days of the Crimson Walls," I say. "Then it'll probably just be to right outside it."

He laughs, ruffling my hair. I pull away and shake my head, fixing my hair.

"So why do you want me to come to the Dark Temple?"

"I'd like to teach you some new moves," he answers.

"Really?" I scramble off the bench and look at him. "Dark One moves?"

"Actually," he laughs. "You could have learned them before, though being a Dark One will improve this."

"Cool!" I say. "Let's go!"

I look over at Gold, who's staring at the playing cards with a fierce intensity.

"Two?" He asks.

"What are you two doing?" Nik asks.

"Playing a game of cards," I say. "Can I see the card?"

Gold shows it to me.

"That's a three," I tell him. "See? It has three images – one, two, three. We can play a new game after I finish training, okay?"

Gold nods, then puts the deck back together and hands it to me. I return it to the wooden box I bought it in, then return it to my Inventory, and I explain the game to Nik, who listens intently. He's never heard of the game, and considering how old he is, I think that should count as heresy.

It's a common game played by children back in reality. They have playing cards here. How in the fuck do they not know this game?

I calm down a bit by the time we reach the Dark Temple, and Nik takes me to the training yard he's teaching me in, not a trace of snow around. We worked on melting it all the other day, so that we could train in it again.

I remove my coat, tunic, and boots, and set them on one of the benches, picking up one of the wooden training swords as Nik sets up a few training dummies. Gold sits on the bench beside my clothes, picking at them and folding them up as Nik walks over to me.

"Okay," he draws his sword. "The first Skill I'm teaching you is Dark Strike."

"Dark Strike?" I ask. "Imbue the blade with the power of darkness, and all that?"

"Sort of," he answers. "The Skill requires you to focus on an unyielding, penetrating darkness, and to channel that into your attack. Dark Knights generally have to do a fair bit of Dark Meditation first, so they can draw upon their inner darkness for the attack. While you haven't learned Dark Meditation, you can draw upon it, I'm assuming?"

"Yes," I answer, then take a fighting stance.

It takes me several minutes of attempting to channel my inner darkness and the power of an unyielding, penetrating darkness into my strikes at the dummies, but eventually, the wooden blade becomes shrouded in darkness, a message appearing in my vision. I finish my swing, slicing into the wooden dummy, then pull my blade back, watching as the dummy heals itself.

Nik told me that no one really knows who did the magics in the dummies used here. Only the Dark Temples have the self-repairing ones, and no one's figured out how to replicate them. No alchemy or woodcarving tricks work, nor any enchanting tricks, either.

I switch to a resting position, the tip of my sword barely touching the ground as I rock on the balls of my feet, still ready to strike if needed or ordered to, and read the notice.

New Skill! Dark Strike Active Imbue the power of your attacks with your inner darkness, ignoring a portion of your enemy's armor and temporarily reducing all regenerative effects in them. Effect lasts either until you strike, or five seconds. Armor Ignore: 5% per Level of this Skill Regeneration Reduction: 5% per Level of this Skill Cost: 15 Mana (reduces by 1 per Level of this Skill)

The Skill's Mana Cost reduces? This is my first Skill with a reducing cost. Looking at it, it's a Tier 3 Skill. Pretty strong, and if what Nik said about the attack itself being stronger is true, then it's likely that the strength of one's merging with the Dark portion of their Sacred Crystal affects how strong the attack is.

Well, okay, Dark Vengeance also reduces in Mana Cost per Level of the Skill. But that one also uses a percentage of my Maximum Mana. And it also risks me dying. So I don't count it.

"Try it a few more times," Nik tells me, get the hang of it, so I spend the next five minutes using it, then return to a resting position. "Ready for the next move?"

"Yes."

I'm sweating lightly, but my breathing's still even, so I'm sure I can handle this.

"It's the Strike of Darkness," he tells me, and I look at him, raising an eyebrow. "It's the improved version of Dark Strike. It's a lot more powerful, but costs more Mana as well."

"Naturally," I say. "What do I have to do for this one?"

"Same as you did before," he tells me. "Only intensify your thoughts of the unyielding, piercing darkness, and don't trigger Dark Strike."

I nod, then get to work. It takes me a few minutes before I succeed, the darkness around the blade even stronger this time. Before, it was more like a light coating, a shroud of shifting shadows maybe a quarter of an inch thick. This time, however, it's more like a thick shroud an inch thick.

The New Skill message confirms to me that I received it.

New Skill! Strike of Darkness Active Imbue the power of your attacks with your inner darkness, ignoring a portion of your enemy's armor and temporarily reducing all regenerative effects in them. Armor Ignore: 10% per Level of this Skill Regeneration Reduction: 10% per Level of this Skill Cost: 50 Mana (reduces by 2 per Level of this Skill) Duration: 1 strike or 2 seconds per Level of this Skill

"Oh, cool," I say. "You didn't tell me that it can also last longer than Dark Strike."

"Indeed," he smiles. "I had a feeling you'd like that."

While at Level 1, it lasts for less time, but the same amount of strikes, it lasts for more strikes at Level 2, but for less time. However, once Strike of Darkness reaches Level 3, its duration also exceeds Dark Strike's.

And that's before factoring in that it ignores more armor and reduces their regenerations. It says 'all', too – does that include from Skills and potions?

"Yes," Nik answers when I ask that. "It means all."

"Can you combine them?"

"No," he answers. "However, you can combine them with Rage, Dark Vengeance, Blood Frenzy, Aura of Darkness, and the like."

Aura of Darkness… I haven't learned that one yet, just Aura of Heat and Aura of Blood. Despite the Skills not mentioning it, they apparently increase the power of all Skills using their affiliation by five percent per Level of the Aura Skill. So a Level 10 Aura of Darkness would increase the power of Strike of Darkness by fifty percent.

Nik helps me learn Aura of Darkness. Unlike the other two Aura Skills I know, it doesn't have an effect on my surroundings, just creates a thin, shadowy layer around me, but my Dark Strike and Strike of Darkness both damage the training dummy even more.

Grinning, I wound myself as I allow my rage to increase, and Nik sighs, taking several steps back.

"Aura of Blood Aura of Darkness! Strike of Darkness! Dark Vengeance!"

I strike at the dummy, wondering why Nik is moving so far back.

My wooden training sword cuts through the wooden dummy's head, though it's not with ease, feeling a lot of resistance.

The head flies off, rolling to the ground, and I turn and grin at Nik, who's standing beside Gold, a Crimson Wall in front of them. It's a completely opaque wall the color of blood, and I can't see them through it.

Why is he-

Something moves behind me, and I turn to find all of the dummies attacking me, with the one I beheaded having regrown its head, the head having regrown its body.

"Gah!" I yell, jumping back.

I draw my real sword the moment I realize that the dummies each have a wooden sword coated with shadows. These things can fight back!

I fight the dummies for almost ten minutes before the fight stops, and at this point, I'm soaked in sweat, breathing heavily, and really, really damn confused. Every time I removed a limb, they'd just regrow it, and the limb would regrow their fucking bodies! And they knew all the Dark Knight moves I know, plus more!

"Nik!" I yell, turning to find him having released his Crimson Wall. "What the fuck was that?"

Gold looks confused and concerned, and Nik's just laughing. I'm a bit mad, since I'm in a lot of pain from the attacks that kept hitting me. By the end, there were fifty dummies, though I did learn that if I damaged them badly enough, they'd stop moving. Then, I learned that I had to get them through the chest to deactivate them, but 'badly enough' usually meant their chests were destroyed.

"Dark Knight hazing," he grins at me. "Once someone's strong enough to actually remove something from one of them, we tend to let them. It triggers a fail-safe in them, and any that aren't still strapped to the racks activate like that. Consider yourself lucky – I was in a group of five Dark Knights when when managed it, unaware of what would happen, and all fifty dummies that were there had been unstrapped. I was knocked-out for a week, and that was considered light."

Nik only removed five of them for me, and there are fifty on the racks. The ones I destroyed aren't repairing, though the ones with just a stab through the chest are. I walk over to one of the ones I destroyed and start poking through the splinters, finding a wooden orb at the center, though my attack to the dummy had not just cracked it in several places, but completely broke it, splitting it into six cracked fragments.

I pull them out and turn them over in my hands.

"Appraisal."

No response. Even if it's broken like this, having most of it should yield a response. Or am I missing something?

"Appraisal!"

"It takes Level 10 Appraisal to receive a result," Nik tells me, walking over. "They're golems."

"I figured," I tell him, piecing the core together as I realize something. "They grow whole new cores?"

"Yep," he nods. "We're not sure how, though."

"What are these markings?" I ask, holding the core together as best I can. "They look sort of like runes of some sort."

"Old magic," he answers. "The runes that make up old magic are much more flexible than the Skills we receive through the Kingdom, though it tends to cost more Mana to use."

He holds a finger out, and the tip begins to glow with a blue-white light. He quickly draws in the air three runes, and as soon as he completes the runic formation, it converts into a fireball, which blasts through the air, slamming into the far wall and exploding massively.

That was hella awesome.

"That takes me around ten Mana," Nik tells me.

Fireball takes five.

"However," he walks over to one of the dummies, pulling out his sword and quickly marking runes along the blade of the weapon, before swiftly driving the sword into the dummy's golem core, burying his blade down to the hilt in the wooden dummy and the ground. "It has its uses. I just used runes to amplify the effects of momentum and decrease friction."

Which allowed his blade to easily pierce even the powerful golem bodies with ease and the ground beneath, despite the fact that it can't be that much easier for him than it is for me.

"Unfortunately," he says. "It's difficult to use them with Skills and such, and again, it takes extra time and Mana to perform. I only know those two tricks, plus one other, and that's after five decades of studying, as well. However, it really is possible to do nearly anything with old magic, because of its versatility."

Old magic… is this the type of magic the nine children Big Flame told us about used? Extra Mana cost can be acceptable if it's truly as versatile as he's telling me.

"Where did you learn it?" I ask.

"There are texts in the libraries of every City that contain the knowledge of it," he tells me. "I'm sure you'll pick it up easily."

I nod, and he tells me that he's got two more Skills for me, once I've caught my breath, so I take a few more minutes to catch it completely and drink a little bit of water, sipping it every twenty to thirty seconds.

Once I've caught my breath, Nik teaches me how to use Dark Slash, which projects a slash of darkness along the path of the blade, sending it through the air. Sort of like what I sometimes saw in video games, cartoons, and anime, back in reality.

It takes me a few minutes to manage the spell, a wave of darkness flying out of my blade as I slash it through the air, a blue window appearing in my vision.

New Skill! Dark Slash Active Project the darkness outward in a devastating wave. Distance: 5 feet per Level of this Skill Cost: 50 Mana

It doesn't have any added effects to it, but such a Skill is definitely useful. I can't combine it with Dark Strike or Strike of Darkness, but I can combine it with the same stuff I can combine them with.

I'm starting to realize just how broken and OP the Dark Knight line of Classes really is. This must be why the Shadow of Life went after them in that other Boundary – to decrease the number of people capable of fucking with his plans so thoroughly. So many Skills that will stack on each other, with several of them exclusive to these lines.

He must really, really hate the Dark Knights in this Boundary, for having people like Nik, Theodore, and Isaac among them, all of them at or nearing Dark One and possessing a plethora of Skills and abilities that allow them to just be a pain in his ass.

And I'm such a pain in the ass so fast, he's literally trying to get me killed fast so that he can be 'sure' of his victory.

I have no plans for that.

"One last Skill," Nik tells me, then looks at Gold. "Gold, this Skill negatively affects anyone without the Dark Knight or Blood Priest line of Classes within its range. Stay over there, and don't come near us. Considering what you are, you'll likely feel a strong urge to get Zack out of it. Don't – he won't be negatively affected at all, and entering it will give you nightmares. If you want to really resist it, then leave the training yard before I use it, so you don't have to deal with that primal instinct of yours."

Nik walks closer to me, so that he's a conversational distance away, then looks at Gold, who looks hesitant. He's scared of what's about to happen. I smile at him with reassuring thoughts, and he nods, then leaves the training yard, closing the door behind him.

"Shroud of Darkness," Nik triggers the Skill.

Immediately, the air around him turns dark, filling with a blackness. I can see us and everything within the range without issue. He's expanded it twenty feet in all directions from him, and it looks surreal.

"Only Dark Knights and Blood Priests," he tells me. "Remain unaffected. We can see clearly in this, and all of our attacks have increased damage. Anyone else will feel a suffocating darkness around them with their defensive and offensive values effectively halved, their regenerations temporarily suspended."

Nik releases the Skill, and looks weary.

"It costs 50 Mana a second to sustain," he tells me. "Reducing by two per Level. Finally, it can stretch only five yards out per Level of it. It's exclusive to Dark Ones. I've had it for nearly thirty years, and am only at Level 2 of it."

"It's Rank 5, isn't it?" I ask, and he nods. "Damn, that's awesome."

"Yes, it is," he smiles. "Even if it's intensive. And all of our attacks have extra damage through it, regardless of their affiliation."

That makes it even more powerful, if just a regular stab will be increased.

I spend the next two hours attempting to use it, with Nik giving me every bit of advice he can for it. Eventually, though, I manage to gain it, and promptly pass out from the mental exhaustion of trying.