Chapter 17: Birth of the Fake Necromancer II

“Don’t learn Resist,” Gloria said after she got the short description of both skills. “I’ll teach you the reverse flow breathing. They do roughly the same thing.”

“But it’s a four-starred skill,” Teo said, scratching his chin as he checked the wall of texts hovering inches away from his nose. To be honest, he wanted to learn Resist as it would allow him to add valuable points to other attributes. But he wanted Gloria’s advice before making the final decision. She knew about the system and players more than he.

“That may be true. But, let me tell you a secret, reverse flow breathing will grant you a rare grade skill after you master the exercise,” Gloria’s eyes were shining like stars in a night sky. She appeared exceptionally zealous when explaining the skill. “Can you imagine it? A rare grade skill that can do everything Resist can, then more.”

“A rare, you say? You’ve my attention.” And Teo got hooked. While the Resist sounds tempting, a rare skill changes everything. It might be worthwhile to skip on this common ability.

Gloria crossed her legs, then rested her elbows on her thighs. “The skill you’ll learn after mastering reverse flow breathing is called Cleanse. It has one passive and two active abilities. Let’s start with passive first. It—”

Teo attentively listened to her every word. Cleanse was more amazing than he had thought. In fact, it was way better than Resist. Its passive ensures that your coherence would never fall into chaos. Meaning a hundred percent immunity to status effects such as [Fear], which targeted one’s mind.

The active function, which costs mana to deploy, had two abilities that came in phases. Phase one removes all negative status effects upon activation, and phase two provides a short period of immunity to said effects. Paralysis, bleeding, anemic, poisoned, diseased—Cleanse was effective on all of them.

“That’s so broken! No wonder you didn’t add any points to WIL. With a passive like that, you don’t even need to.” Teo exclaimed, shaking his head at the ridiculous abilities.

“Well, I haven’t learned it yet.” Gloria shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve yet to master the damn breathing.”

“Is it that hard?” Teo asked, curious.

“Very. And also painful. If you lose concentration even for a micro-second, a horrible pain will course through your lungs and stomach. Well, I only learned the exercise a month ago.” Gloria’s shoulder shook when she mentioned pain.

“When are you going to teach me?” Teo asked, eyebrows raised. The allure of the rare skill filled him with the courage to even ignore Gloria’s scrunched-up face. Growing up as a bottom feeder in a society dominated by people with god-like powers, he had quickly learned a truth—nothing worthwhile could be obtained without suffering. He was ready for the pain.

“At the next green zone. It’ll take some time to grasp the method; we need a safe environment.”

“Uh. Alright.”

Teo turned to the skill selection list and pressed the [Tame] icon.

You chose to learn [Tame]

Proceed?

[Yes/No]

He wordlessly selected yes.

Congratulations on choosing your rewards. You will learn [Tame]

Warning! [Tame] is resonating with [Willpower Aura], [Mind over Body], and [Weakening Domain]. Upgrading to [???]…

Error! [???] is too high level for the user’s current level. Unable to proceed. Looking for an alternative…

Alternative found. Proceeding for descent…

You learned [Dominator(growth type)]

Teo stood mouth agape as a parade of texts flooded his vision, with continuous beeping sounds ringing in the background.

“You alright?” Gloria asked, raising an eyebrow. Teo’s sudden colorful facial expressions made her confused. She wondered if something was happening with his skill selection. Did something go wrong?

“I’m fine.” Teo controlled his expression and showed his partner a disarming smile. “Everything’s fine. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

Although Gloria didn’t buy his excuse, she stopped pursuing him on this issue. She put her gun on her lap and went into a meditative posture. A moment later, her breathing became subtle.

Teo didn’t give her any heed. He was busy understanding the skill description.

[Dominator(growth type)]

Rank: Unique[☆☆☆☆☆]

Level: 1

Proficiency: 0%

[Passive:]

Unlock the Leadership attribute, which is calculated as [250% of WIL + 50% of MAG].

If the gap exceeds more than 50%, Observe will now display the WIL of a target.

[Active:]

Your will shall be the law.

You can break and control the wills of others(applicable to beings with lower WIL than you) and make them your subordinates. The larger the difference in willpower, the stronger your control would be.

Cost: 20 mana

Note(a)! Each subordinate will take up some Leadership points.

Note(b)! The longer a target remains as your subordinate, the fewer the leadership points they consume.

Note(c)! This skill is a growth-type skill. You can upgrade the ‘rank’ when certain conditions are fulfilled.

There was no visible expression on Teo’s face, but his heart was pounding in his ears. The skill’s description was so detailed that it would’ve been weird if he couldn’t understand anything. What blew his mind was how a two-starred common ranked skill changed to a unique rank with five stars. It was like winning a lottery.

But… why does it have to be a skill that depends on WIL again? When will he escape that damn stat? He wanted to add points to strength so he could crush monster skulls with bare hands. He wanted to have more mana to learn more skills and be a juggernaut on the battlefield. [Players] with these attributes have a brighter future than the rest.

Yet the possibility inched further and further away from him with every point he added to the WIL. Teo wanted to butcher that damn wraith who forced him on this path.

But there was a hidden danger. From the skill's description, it seemed like it would work even on humans. Something that could control the humans? Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. He would get hunted and killed the moment word gets out, like that one time when a city-wide witch hunt was organized to catch a little girl who awakened [Captivate] skill years ago.

I better not open my mouth about this. He peeked at Gloria, sweat covering his face. Not even her.

He exhaled a long breath and collected his thoughts.

XXX

So Observe will display WIL? How does that work? Teo stared at meditating Gloria and activated the said skill.

[Gloria Smith]

HP: 500

Status: ??

WIL: 29

So that’s how it works. A new panel was added to [Observe] just below status. To think she already has so many points on WIL. Let’s test the skill then.

Teo scoured the map for the nearest zombie. However, he didn’t expect to see so many red dots. They used to be a lot less before he challenged this level two zombie. What happened?

“Hey Gloria, why are there so many new red dots on the map?” He asked, confused.

Hearing her name being called, Gloria opened her eyes and leveled Teo an even stare. Oh, I forgot he never went to school. She felt annoyed for being asked such an obvious question, and was about to give Teo a piece of her mind.

“Ahem,” she cleared her throat to douse her annoyance, then said, “The monsters will respawn after a certain amount of time passed after their death. That’s how a dungeon works. On the first floor of this dungeon, the respawn time of zombies is only thirty minutes.”

“They respawn?” Teo asked, surprised. His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline from the explosive news. He never knew the monsters would reappear after you kill them. Goosebumps filled his skin as a gruesome image of him getting chased by countless zombies flashed in his head. “Is this why Lyria’s Cemetery remained uncleared until now?”

“Not really.” Gloria shook her head. “Lyria’s cemetery isn’t a normal dungeon. After the second floor, the monsters become exponentially stronger. You’ll have to defeat a boss-class monster clear the challenge. However, the despairing part is not this. From the fifth floor, you basically don’t get any experience from killing monsters. Your level will stagnate. Expended mana would take ages to recover, and your skills will become weaker. By the time you reach the tenth floor, these debuffs would’ve stacked to the point of leaving you with only your attributes.”

“…scary” Teo could barely form a word on his lips. Lyria’s dungeon became a hundred times scarier than what he heard in stories.