Chapter 007

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‘ ‘ for thoughts.

“ “ for speech.

Please point out any mistakes/inconsistencies you find and feel free to comment on anything regarding this FF.

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Ch 000 has been proofread thanks to Kuroyuki! Check out his awesome work. It increases the enjoyment of reading it by a lot!

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The skeletons and the giant flightless bat weren’t rushing towards him. It was almost as if they were confident of disposing Jack. Suddenly the giant bat let out a high pitched screech. Jack felt a wave of fatigue and lethargy overcoming him. He felt an urgent need to fall asleep. ‘Oh boy, the bat put some kind of status on me. I need to run, or I will be turned into tenderized mincemeat by his skeleton flunkies in no time.’ Jack thought as he tried to fight the urge to sleep and attempt his escape.

In a few moments, it was becoming apparent to Jack that he was going to be slaughtered. He used all his concentration and summoned the Inventory. He then equipped his starter dagger and stabbed his left arm. The pain freed him from his stupor and Jack ran with all the speed he could muster, towards the exit to the upper level of the catacombs.

After around 15 seconds, the bat screeched again, and he could hear the skeletons clattering towards him. ‘Fuck, I am feeling sleepy again, I need to cause pain without losing too much HP.’ Jack thought as he attempted to mentally shrug off the bat’s screech. He took his dagger, and skinned apportion of his forearm till he felt fully alert. He repeated this process, to escape towards the narrow staircase leading upwards.

By the time Jack managed to reach the staircase, his self-mutilation had caused him to lose around 5% of his max HP. Jack turned around to see that the skeletons were still following him. The lead skeletons were wielding war hammers. Fortunately, the staircase was narrow, so he had to deal with them two at a time. The bat was unable, or unwilling to follow him up the staircase, but it was still screeching in regular intervals. While backpedaling on the stairs, Jack skinned both his palms. He figured he could use his fingers to induce pain in his palms on demand.

Jack went a certain distance up the staircase, and he noticed that the skeletons stopped following him and waited for him. ‘I must be out of range of that damned bat’s screech.’ Thought Jack as he stored his dagger and readied a couple of darts. He imbibed the darts them at the eye sockets of each of the skeleton one after the other. It shaved off 20% of a skeleton’s HP and disoriented them for some time. While they were disoriented for a bit, Jack rushed towards them as he activated force gloves on his hands and mana fists on his feet.

He pummeled one of the skeletons. Each of his hits force glove enhanced punches were shaving off a tenth of its HP. After he could land three clean hits, the other skeleton was about to recover, so he kicked the skeleton he was pummeling, using a force blast to knock it backwards. It fell backwards, and tangled the other skeletons. As soon as Jack started hearing the bat’s screech, Jack performed an open palm strike on the recovered skeleton with his left hand, and dug into his right palm with his fists.

The cumulative pain his skinned palms caused him was enough to shrug off his mental lethargy sufficiently, to retreat up the stairs deactivating his force gloves. He repeated the process of stunning the skeletons with his imbibed dart eye socket shots, and quickly punching them rapidly with force gloves to shave off almost a third of a skeleton’s HP. Jack got hit with a stab from the claymore wielding skeleton behind just as he managed to ‘kill’ his first skeleton and the bat screeched. Jack lost around 15% of his HP, leaving him with 80%, he quickly clenched both his fists and dug into his palms.

‘These two handers are slower and seem to have lower HP, but they do a lot more damage.’ Jack thought as he retreated once more. The claymore skeleton, which had stabbed him, took the place of its colleague and kicked its inanimate corpse downstairs. Jack used another couple of darts. The war hammer wielding skeleton had around 40% HP left while the claymore one had 80% left. Jack rushed at the disoriented skeletons and kicked the claymore skeleton, using a force blast to make him fall backwards.

Jack then disarmed the war hammer skeleton, and smashed it with its own war hammer. The skeleton dropped, and Jack quickly retreated as he heard the bat’s screech. He rubbed the shaft of the war hammer with hands and stored it in his inventory. ‘I should keep at least a weapon of each type for backup. These can prove to be tactically useful’ Jack thought as he readied another couple of darts.

The skeletons recovered and another war hammer wielding skeleton took the vanguard. Jack shot them with his darts, disarmed the claymore wielding skeleton. He then bashed the skeleton with an overhead swing with the flat of the blade before quickly retreating. The skeleton had only a third of its health left. Jack heard the bats screech and he gripped the claymore’s hilt very tightly. Jack stored the weapon in his inventory.

He then used another couple of force imbibed darts, rushed in to finish off the unarmed skeleton before quickly retreating. Another claymore wielding skeleton took its place and the war hammer wielding skeleton had two thirds of its HP left. In short order, Jack disposed of all the six skeletons while around 18 darts in total. He had around 60% of his HP and a third of his MP left.

Jack used a couple of potions to recover his HP and MP. He then skinned both his palms, grabbed one of the lying war hammers and went downstairs to confront the giant ugly bat. The bat screeched and caused Jack to stagger visibly. Jack quickly gripped the shaft of his war hammer tightly. His skinned palms seared with pain, and Jack was able to collect himself. He took a quick turn and threw the war hammer at the giant ugly bat. The bat was too slow to dodge and lost barely a tenth of tis HP. ‘Holy shit. That move easily shaved off at least 30% of a skeleton’s HP and it lost only 10%? This is going to be a long fight.’ Jack groaned mentally. He backtracked as the bat shrieked more powerfully and jack was disoriented for some time. Jack recovered in time to barely dodge the bat’s attempt to bite it. He quickly backtracked towards the stairs and grabbed another claymore.

Jack waited for the bat’s long distance sleep screech. As soon as he heard it, he gripped the sword’s hilt painfully and rushed towards the bat. The bat didn’t attempt to doge, but stood stiffer. As Jack approached the bat balanced itself on one forelimb, and swiped Jack with its other forelimb. Jack able to block the swing with his claymore, but he was shoved sideways. Jack gripped the sword hilt much harder than required, and as expected the bat shrieked to disorient Jack.

The bat was swooping down on Jack to bite him, when Jack quickly ducked and stabbed the claymore in the bat’s body before rolling sideways out of reach. The bat had lost another 15% of its HP leaving three forth. It was unable to dislodge the weapon from its body and hobbled at Jack with vengeance. It shrieked again, catching Jack unawares and disorienting him. Jack recovered, but he was slammed sideways by one of the bat’s forelimb losing a third of his HP.

Jack quickly ran away from the bat, grabbed a spear form one of the nearby skeletons. He then imbibed it with force and threw it at the bat. The bat was struck losing another 8% of its HP. Jack saw a nearby longsword and he quickly stored it in his inventory, when the bat used its sleepy screech. Jack went on all fours and rubbed his skinned palms to resist it. He grabbed a nearby shield, imbibed it with force, and threw it like a Frisbee at the bat’s head. It caused the bat to barely lose around 2% of tis HP, but it appeared stunned.

Jack grabbed a nearby longsword, held the blade’s edge and balanced it between his thumb and forefinger. He then imbibed it with force and threw it towards the bat. IT was lodged in one of the bat’s shoulder causing it to lose around 9% of its HP. The bat had a little over 50% of its HP left. Jack repeated his force imbibed shield and longsword throw leaving the bat with around 45% HP. Jack grabbed another war hammer spun himself and threw it towards the bat. Before the war hammer could hit it, it screeched, forcing Jack to damage himself again so that he could remain lucid. The war hammer collided with the bat and it had a little over a third of its HP left.

Jack looked around and saw only one war hammer and one claymore lying around. Jack grabbed the claymore and threw it in an overhead arc to land behind the bat. He then grabbed the remaining war hammer and charged towards the bat. Anticipating its disorienting shriek, Jack did a half spin and threw his war hammer at the bat. He had timed it correctly and he heard the disorienting shriek as soon as he had released the war hammer. When Jack regained his senses, he was pleased to see that the bat had only a quarter of its HP left. Jack rolled back and readied a couple of darts. His force imbibed darts did a measly 5% damage each leaving the bat with 15% HP.

Jack then ran around the bat, towards the last claymore. He grabbed it in both hands and ran towards s the bat. The sluggish bat had almost turned to face him, when Jack did a running jump and landed on the bat with the claymore piercing the bat’s torso and finally managed to finish it off.

Jack sighed in relief and started collecting loot. After looting, he had ten iron helms, three claymores, four war hammers, two shields, two long swords and a spear in his inventory. Jack tried to use mana identify on the spear, but he failed to identify it. Jack shrugged, resolving to identify and repair all his loot before dumping it at the training hall. Jack quickly reviewed his notifications. He had gained some stats, and had leveled up to lv24 and reached 40% of xp towards the next level. He had also unlocked a new stat, Indomitable Will and a new subskill, Danger Sense. He had also gained another subskill to unarmed mastery, namely Mana Gloves. Jack summoned the respective stat and skill info:

Stat NameIndomitable Will Stat TypeSpecial

This special stat reflects your ability to concentrate in the face of external intrusions in your psyche. This stat increases your resistance to, and grants a chance to shrug off mental status effects like fear, charm and confusion. This stat is more effective with high Concentration. You cannot invest stat points into this stat.

Skill Name:Skill Rank:Skill Level:Skill Experience:Danger SenseBeginner10.00%Subskill of Survival

You have honed your instincts to detect approaching danger. This subskill alerts you to approaching danger and ambushes and provides a bonus to your Max HP.

Current level effects:

+20 to Max HP.

Skill Name:Skill Rank:Skill Level:Skill Experience:Mana GlovesBeginner121.63%Subskill of Unarmed Mastery

You coat your hands or feet with mana, imbibing it with a certain element. This adds a portion of your magic attack to your unarmed strikes. Some elements may provide additional bonuses. You can currently use the following elements:

Force: Negates feedback damage of unarmed attacks.

Reduces Max MP by 50 for each fist or feet coated with mana. (200 MP for both fists and feet)

Costs 3 MP/second to maintain for each fist or feet coated with mana. (12MP/s for both fists and feet)

At your current level of mana manipulation, you cannot maintain mana fists and mana gloves on a single hand (or foot) simultaneously.

Current level effects:

+52% of magic attack to your unarmed attacks.

Jack had mixed feelings about this stat. On one hand he was happy to have a mental analogue of Indomitable Body… but it meant that to grind it, he had to prolong his battles with the monstrous bat. His new survival subskill improved… his survivability by giving a chance to avoid ambushes while increasing his Max HP. Jack skinned the bat, and stored its furry hide in his inventory. He then salvaged some of its meat and its fangs. Jack was still not overloaded, had around 30 darts and a few HP/MP potions left. Jack decided to continue exploring. He went into meditation and recovered all of his HP/MP and STA.

Jack cleared the rest of the level by using a similar strategy. He separated the skeletons form the monstrous bats as much as he could and used his darts and unarmed skills (along with Mana Fists and Force Gloves) to finish them off. He then used the weapons dropped by the skeletons to main and kill the bats. He didn’t wield the weapons like a ‘proper’ melee weapon, instead opting to use each weapon once consecutively at the most. He also kited the bats with his darts to hear them shriek and screech to grind his Indomitable Will.

Whenever Jack was out of darts and potions, or his weight limit was full. He returned to the inner town to refill his supplies, dump his loot and refill his canteen with water. He grinded his Mana Identify and Mana Repair on his loot at every stop he made at the training hall. Each cavern in the second level of the catacombs had one of those bats and around 10-12 skeletons wielding a variety of weapons. In this fashion, it took Jack 12 days ingame (3 days in RL) to clear around 16 such caverns.

Jack was lv29 with 30% of xp towards the next lvl, and had gained a new trait in his Unarmed Mastery and Thrown Weapon Mastery. They were Opportunistic Brawler and Improvised Missiles. The Opportunistic Brawler trait allowed him to gain a third of the benefits of his unarmed mastery with scavenged melee weapons, however, he would lose this trait if he gained any additional melee weapon mastery. The improvised missiles trait allowed him to utilize one half of the benefits of Thrown Weapon Mastery for non-standard throwing weapons.

Jack arrived at a huge set of sealed double doors with a small circular depression in the center. Jack placed his stone coin, given by Instructor Theon in the depression. The stone coin disintegrated and the set of doors started disappearing. ‘Oh boy, I bet there is some OP boss ready to rape me in there’ Jack thought as he entered. It resembled a derelict throne room with a dim blue light suffusing it. Jack could see a stone throne with a figure of a bluish translucent humanoid sitting on it.

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