“This’ll be the third time I’m fighting this guy.” Kurushimi said, absentmindedly staring at the living armour from a tree. At this point in time, it had caught up to the canisfangs and the backup had come from their side. Naturally, the canisfangs had become a lot more confident with a larger headcount to fight with. Kurushimi couldn’t help but feel a sense of deja vu, which she had gotten quite a lot over her time in this world. She was now a lot higher level than the living armour, herself being Lvl. 37 whilst it was only Lvl. 26.

“Are you going to sneak up on it and kill it quickly?” Voice-san asked. In her first fight with it, she did indeed manage to sneak up on it and land a good hit through its chest. Although at the time she failed to kill it instantly, she could definitely manage such a feat now.

“No, the living armour is still good practice even if it's weaker than me now…” As Kurushimi said this, the living armour had stepped up to the canisfangs and started fighting. Swinging its huge greatsword around, it was cleaving through the canisfangs like butter. Seeing it lug around the greatsword with little to no effort, she wondered what its strength was, since she didn’t know whether she could carry it herself despite being eleven levels higher.

“Ah, my appraisal leveled up, didn’t it!” Kurushimi suddenly exclaimed before hastily covering her mouth with her hand. Luckily, the living armour was making a lot of noise by chopping up the canisfangs and didn’t seem to notice her. Earlier, she had leveled up appraisal when she appraised spectral magic. So, it wouldn’t be a surprise if she could see more stats when appraising monsters now.

Kurushimi’s eyes lit up with mana as she focused on the living armour. Being able to see monster’s stats beyond HP, SP and MP would truly be useful for the future and for comparing her own stats with others. Shortly after, the menu appeared, displaying the stats of the living armour.

《Living armour, Lvl. 26, HP: 200/200, STR: 200, END: 150, SP: 174/200, AGI: 160, MP: 100/100 》Just as she had hoped, she got to see all the stats of the living armour this time. Extra information such as its skills or a description of it still hadn’t appeared so that was likely to require a higher level of appraisal. Although, Kurushimi was quite satisfied with the results from the appraisal.

“That will be really useful.” She commented as she looked over the stats of the living armour before closing the menu and looking up towards the sky. It had turned fully dark without a hint of the sun and that should mean… nightwalker was now active. Her stats would now have a 25% increase, making her significantly stronger. After opening her own status menu, she looked over her own boosted stats.

“300 HP, 307 STR, 283 END, 191 SP, 284 AGI and 181 MP… Not too bad.” Kurushimi said, finally jumping down from the tree. Her stats certainly were behind her level, but over time she would gain more and more stats through her unique skill and end up on the higher end of monsters for stats. She knew this was just the setback she would have to face to balance out her future strength.

“Ha… Feels like I'm playing Kayle again…” Kurushimi commented with a sigh as she walked out of the trees, her camouflage beginning to wane. The living armour had almost finished its fight with the canisfangs, only a few of them were left and even they were on their last legs. She really felt that they were polar opposites. It wasn’t that she was too weak for her level, isn’t the living armour just too strong?

She didn’t really make any attempt to hide her approach, letting the living armour easily hear her as it currently wasn’t noisily lugging around its greatsword. As she had spoken about with Voice-san earlier, she wasn’t going to bother sneaking up on it. She wanted to fight it for experience anyway and even if she did, she would end up fighting it normally anyways as its survival instinct would detect any attacks that threaten its life. Kurushimi felt that she may have only gotten that hit in on the first time because the attack wasn’t life threatening.

“It’s hard to believe those survival instincts aren’t a skill. It’s a shame as it would go really well with evade…” As she walked towards the living armour, sword in hand, she rambled on. Her skill, evade, evade would be a killer combo with the living armour’s survival instinct. Her evade could tell her an attack was coming and then the survival instinct would tell her the direction, eliminating evade's biggest weakness. However, as she discussed with Voice-san before, it was likely that its survival instinct wasn’t a skill and was natural. But Kurushimi held a small bit of hope that Voice-san was wrong!

The living armour turned towards her. Its helmet was still closed, so she wouldn’t have to fight it in its berserk state yet. Seeing this, she truly felt sorry for the canisfangs. They were so outmatched, they hadn’t even activated its berserk state! ‘But it serves them right for picking on weak and defenseless girls…!’ However, despite feeling sorry for them, she immediately had thoughts like this. It seemed that the grudge against them was deep and still hadn’t passed entirely.

As the two stared each other down and slowly approached one another, the scene really resembled a meeting between two humans rather than two monsters. Both were civilized and didn’t rush to tear each other apart. Kurushimi almost felt like she was facing another human until she reminisced about its horrendous screaming and the berserk state, instantly sending the thought away.

With the next step, she leaned forward and kicked off the ground, starting a sprint towards the living armour. Both hands holding the hilt of her katana, she slashed downwards and caused the katana to meet with the greatsword. The sight of the small katana pushing against the greatsword and winning was a very irregular sight to see.

In this stalemate, her shadow beneath her started to move ever so slightly. A tendril of her shadow slowly crawled across the ground and touched the living armour’s foot. Just as the living armour suddenly looked down, the tendril slithered up and wrapped around its leg. Smirking at the successful grab, Kurushimi looked up at the living armour and said, “It’s too late!” With her shout, the shadow suddenly pulled on the living armour’s leg.

With the lack of support, the living armour was unable to contest against Kurushimi’s katana and staggered back. Turning her blade upwards, she thrusted forward towards it but the blade was quickly caught before she could pierce its helm. Its hand wrapped around the blade and struggled to hold the katana back.

But from that point on, all it took was a turn of her wrist to send the blade upwards and cut off the fingers of the living armour. With the fingers flying through the air, she stepped forward and slashed diagonally across it’s torso. The blade easily tore through the metal carapace of the living armour.

A moment later, as Kurushimi had expected, the living armour’s eyes lit up with a crimson glow. The armour moved about and pulsated as it started to roar. “I’m not gonna let ya!” Kurushimi shouted as she jumped up, disappearing and reappearing above the living armour with the use of short-distance teleportation. The katana in her hand faded away with a golden light as her polearm appeared in her hand.

As the living armour’s mouth opened up, she thrusted the polearm into the now open gap and pierced through its helm. As it stabbed through, the blood suddenly exploded out and tore through the insides of the helm. The knees of the living armour slowly collapsed until it fell to the ground, the crimson glow in its eyes quickly disappearing.

Looking down at the bloody mess of a head that was left, Kurushimi smiled at her handiwork. “Blood magic in the head! Doubt many will live through that~” she said, pulling her polearm out of its head and stowing it away again. The polearm was much more suited to quickly stab through its helmet and kill it than the katana, so being able to switch out was rather useful.

“Kurushimi! Don’t forget, spectral magic!” As she stood over the living armour, the sound of Voice-san shouting at her reminded her what she was originally here for. She had nearly forgotten about that after getting too into the fight with the living armour. Not wanting to miss the chance, she casted spectral magic with the living armour in mind.

As the mana moved around and entered the body of the living armour, it returned to Kurushimi with something. A chill ran down her spine as the mana came back. She had no clue what happened but something clearly did happen compared to no results like before.

“Did something happen?” Voice-san asked, watching Kurushimi shake uncomfortably.

“Yeah, something happened but I’m not sure what…” Just as she replied, a ‘ping’ interrupted her speech.《’Living armour’ spectre has been acquired!》Kurushimi furrowed her brows in confusion. With the system message, it was confirmed she did in fact receive something. However, even though she had a name for what she acquired, she still didn’t know what it meant or what it was.

“Try checking your status menu to see if anything has changed?” Voice-san suggested. Kurushimi nodded to the suggestion and pulled up her status menu. Like how it displayed status effects such as ‘bleeding’ or ‘berserk’, maybe it would say something about the living armour spectre that had supposedly entered her body? As she looked through the status menu, she did indeed manage to spot something new. Below her stats was an entirely new section.

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Spectres

Currently owned: Living armour spectre (1/2)

Currently equipped: Living armour spectre (1/1)

Active buff: Through embodying the soul and spirit of the living armour, the user has gained the ability to sense dangers that may risk their life. Whilst equipped, the user will have an increased survival instinct during battle, allowing them to tell when someone or something may cause lethal damage.

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“So basically, I’ve equipped the spectre of the living armour and got a buff from it?” Kurushimi asked, trying to put the new information into simpler terms. With this, she felt that she finally understood what spectral magic actually was. It was the ability to take the spirit, or ‘spectres’, of a monster and equip it to gain a buff from it.

This likely meant that different monster spectres gave different buffs, which explained why spectral magic fit into so many categories. If every monster had a unique buff, practically anything was possible with the right spectre for the job. So offensive usage, stat increase, pretty much anything could be attained. Although, it looked like only one buff could come at a time and only two spectres could be stored at once.

Kurushimi felt like the skill really should have come with a better description, although shadow magic was similar in the way it didn’t explain the possibility of controlling a target or anything else. Using the ‘magic’ type skills seemed to require a lot of experimenting. Now that she had three of them, she felt that she should really avoid them until she can get a way to figure out what they are prior to learning them.

But putting aside the annoying descriptions, Kurushimi was excited about one other thing. “The buff is describing the living armour’s battle instinct, right? Am I actually able to get it?” She had a slight bit of hope for attaining it prior to the fight but didn’t expect to actually get it. Due to this, she didn't really know how to react.

“The active buff you gained looks like what the living armour had.” Voice-san agreed. This would really be a good thing if she could now pair that with her evade skill. Sneak attacks would be impossible and the rock golems would be a lot easier to deal with. Avoiding them or potentially hunting them would become a lot easier.

“Oh, but…” However, just as Kurushimi was thinking about that, two things came to mind. “I’m gonna have to choose between the stat buff or this, aren’t I? But before that, I have to find what spectre will give me a stat buff!” Realising these two, she suddenly felt she was incredibly unfortunate! If she wanted to keep the active buff from the living armour, she couldn’t gain the stat buff and if she wanted the stat buff, she couldn’t use the evade/survival instinct combo.

However, the most annoying part was that she needed to find what monster would have the spectre which gave her a stat buff. At the very least, it was guaranteed there was one since spectral magic was under the stat enhancement category, but she would have to find the specific monster that gave it. How many monsters were there? Although she had only seen a handful, it would make sense for there to be quite a lot across the world. She would be lucky if the monster was in this forest at the very least. In the end, it seemed that it wouldn’t be that easy after all...