Ambush

Fi looked at Kyle from her position wrapped around his neck with some worry on her face.

“Are you sure you’re alright Kyle?” she asked quietly remembering the brutal way that he had killed the two Giant Rabbits earlier.

“I’m fine Fi,” Kyle replied quietly, he knew why she was asking but those were monsters and what’s more they had been trying to kill him and he had been outnumbered so he hadn’t had a lot of choice but to use those methods of fighting.

Digby glanced over his shoulder at the two, he too was slightly worried about Kyle but for different reasons, at the moment Kyle didn’t have any methods of dealing with groups. This meant that he had struggled a lot more than Digby had previously expected with only two opponents, granted one of them was a Level 2 but this would quickly become a problem if Kyle wasn’t careful especially considering he somehow had a Skill Point deficit to worry about.

“So, what did Kyle gain from that last battle Fi?” Digby asked hoping that he had gotten something useful.

“Well, when he finally gets to the point that he can purchase new Skills again,” said Fi glaring at Kyle as she said this. “He can unlock the Stealth Skill, as well as the Skinning and Butchering Skills.”

Digby chuckled slightly at the emphasis Fi put on the Stealth Skill, when he had been younger Kyle, like most small boys had been prone to mischief growing up, most memorable of which was the night of the Barghest attack. However, one thing he had always been lacking in was any talent for staying hidden which has landed him and his friends in trouble many times over the years.

Kyle looked down at his partner in exasperation, he was pretty sure that she didn’t have any right to look at him like that, she had been just as bad back then, although with her small size and flying abilities she had been caught a lot less often than he had.

“That’s great Fi,” Kyle said sweetly causing Fi to twitch involuntarily.

“But what about things that are actually useful right now?’ he asked in the same sickly tone as before causing the little serpent to fume at his words, though there wasn’t actually anything she could say to deny that knowing about new Skills that Kyle couldn’t unlock until he fully recovered from forcibly unlocking Will Made Manifest.

“You’ve reached 22% of the experience you need until you Level Up,” Fi said through gritted teeth, still annoyed that Kyle had turned the tables on her.

“As for magic,” she said staring at something in front of her that the other two couldn’t see. “The only thing really worth noting is that your Mana Skin went over 50% Mastery, you’ve made some progress on the other spells, particularly Minor Physical Armour Enchantment but they’re still some ways from being mastered.”

Kyle grimaced slightly, he had been working on mastering Mana Skin for several months now and had only mastered it to 21%. It was irritating to think that with just one cast in a battle situation he had more than doubled months of work. It really was amazing how much difference life and death situations increased your growth.

“Alright what about Skills?” Kyle asked Fi who immediately brought up a screen for him to see with a pleased look on her face.

Skills Increased!

Light Armour-Mastery

Level 5-22% to next Proficiency Level

Mastery Skill that provides bonuses to the use of Light Armour. Related Sub-Skills can also be unlocked.

Current Bonuses-One Bonus Available for purchase

Increases Magic Defence provided by Light Armour by 5%

Sub-Skills

Magic Armour- Increases effects of temporary Enchantments placed on equipped Light Armour by 15%

Unarmed Combat-Mastery

Level 12-8% to next Proficiency Level

Mastery Skill that provides bonuses to fighting unarmed. Related sub-skills can also be unlocked.

Current Bonuses-One Bonus available for purchase

Increases damage dealt by unarmed attacks by 12%

Increases the damage dealt by punches by 7%

Sub-Skills

· Leg Sweep-Increases damage by 5%. 20% chance to cause Knockdown. Costs 5 SP. Cooldown: 5 seconds.

· Hook- Increases damage by 10%. 10% chance to stun for 2-5seconds. Costs 10 SP

· Living Weapon - Allows unarmed attacks to benefit from the Blunt Weapons Skill. Passive

· Choke hold- Holds the target in place and slowly deals damage based on the targets Endurance. Costs 15 SP per second for a human-sized target with a lower Strength Stat than the User. Extensive use will cause the target to lose consciousness. (May be used with an appropriate weapon to decrease SP cost on larger targets)

Kyle smiled happily, with these two new Skill increases he now only had -6 Skill Points, a few more fights like that and he would be able to buy a new Skill, especially with him getting closer to Levelling Up for the first time. Then he blinked slightly, there was something a little odd about that notification.

“Realised did you,” Fi asked with a smirk as Kyle read through the screen again with wide eyes. He finally had a Sub-skill for Light Armour and what’s more it was one that enhanced his Enchantments. The 15% increase wasn’t that useful now with his enchantment spells as weak as they were, but at later Levels, when he had improved his Intelligence stat and spell tier, it would become an impressive boost.

“Six to go huh?” Kyle sighed.

“Yeah, you should remove the Skill Point debt soon,” Fi confirmed. “But it might still take a while for you to be able to unlock any new Skills.”

Kyle sighed to himself, Will Made Manifest was a useful Skill but unlocking it had set him back quite a lot in terms of what he had planned to unlock, even with staying behind to train against actual monsters.

After this they continued along in silence for a while, keeping a close eye out for monsters. When suddenly Fi, who had been watching the trees for any arboreal monsters let out a cry of shock.

“Kyle! Look out!”

Hearing her warning Kyle activates Dodge Roll barely managing to avoid what looked like a lump of slime falling from above, but to his surprise instead of splattering the area around where it landed it formed itself into ball.

Inside the ball of viscous material, he could see small shapes flitting about at high speeds and a small dark mass, the ball pulsated slowly and started to move towards Kyle, as Digby cried out a warning.

“Kyle be careful that’s an Amoeboid!” Digby shouted as the thing launched itself forwards, its body stretching out as though it planned to engulf the young man and his companion.

Kyle cast Mana Darts, puncturing the things gel-like body with the shards of magical energy and causing it to collapse on itself before reforming.

“Well, that didn’t work,” said Kyle in surprise as the thing started to close the holes he had made in its body.

“Fi, what can you tell me about it?” he asked backing away from the Amoeboid.

“It’s a Level 5 Mana Mutant that has a high resistance to blunt attacks, as we saw before piercing damage doesn’t do that much either,” she replied as she quickly read through a screen that only she could see.

“If it engulfs you, it will digest you in a matter of minutes! Be careful.” She continued as she quickly took flight, annoyed there wasn’t much else she could do to help.

“Don’t worry Kyle, you should be able to take it down if you use your Skills and spells correctly,” encouraged Digby, this would be a real test of Kyle’s knowledge and skill but Digby was hopeful that he wouldn’t have to intervene, even though this monster was well-protected against two of Kyle’s main methods of attack, it wasn’t very fast, nor did it have a lot of ways to attack.

Thinking quickly Kyle cast Mana Orbs creating three explosive balls of energy that slowly orbited his body, cringing as he felt his Mana plummet. With just two spells had used around half his Mana, even with the reduction in Mana cost he got from Scion’s guard and Mana Manipulation.

He glared at the amoeboid, if it wasn’t for its resistance to blunt attacks and ability to swallow him whole he wouldn’t have to use so much MP at once. He had chosen to use Mana Orbs instead of his other defensive spells because if it managed to swallow him, he didn’t see any real way for him to get out of its body in time to avoid being digested, so a spell that would prevent it from doing that was needed.

Just to check how resistant it actually was to blunt damage he swung his chain at it, but as expected the weight bounced off its strange body causing it to ripple but doing nothing noteworthy in terms of damage.

The rippling grew more pronounced until Kyle realised that it wasn’t so much that the surface was rippling because of the hit, but that the Amoeboid had formed a large number of finger-like tentacles, several of which lengthened suddenly reaching out towards Kyle with surprising speed two of them piercing one of the leather portions of his jacket and ripping into his flesh drawing a gasp of pain from Kyle.

“Holy crap!” Kyle shouted as one of the floating orbs of Mana struck a tentacle and promptly exploded causing the tentacles to recoil just as quickly as they had come at Kyle. Luckily the explosive radius of a single Mana Orb was small enough that it wouldn’t affect the caster, just an enemy, because that looked like it hurt more than the shallow holes he now had in his shoulder.

Kyle quickly stepped backwards as he clutched at his wounds so that he would have more time to react if the monster tried to attack him again however to his surprise instead of attacking him the tentacles instead lashed out at Fi who squawked in shock as she threw her serpentine body into an evasive manoeuvre. In her surprise at the sudden attack she failed to react in time and was tagged by one of the tentacles sending her crashing into a nearby tree.

Digby instantly reacted conjuring a dome of earth over Fi as she slid to the ground preventing the Amoeboid from continuing its attack. As Fi hadn’t been making any threatening moves towards the Amoeboid Digby had thought that it would continue to ignore her, but the opportunistic monster had instead decided that she was a much easier target than the young man who had already damaged it. Being only a Level 5 monster there was no way that the Amoeboid would dare attack Digby himself, in fact if he wasn’t using a Skill that caused monsters to ignore him unless he made a threatening action there was no way that any of the monsters that Kyle had fought thus far would have revealed themselves at all.

After Digby cast the defensive spell around Fi, the amoeboid recoiled in shock as a powerful being seemed to suddenly appear within the area of its perception. As the creature had been mutated from a simple Amoeba it had no ‘sight’ as such and simply relied on a form of magical perception which was in fact one of the main things that allowed it to be classed as a Level 5 monster, along with its comparatively high resistances and ability to regenerate minor damage. An Amoeboid wasn’t actually all that dangerous compared to monster at Level 5. The difference between a Level 4 monster and a Level 5 monster was far greater than the difference between even a Level 2 monster and a Level 4 monster as they often had several more Skills than lower level monsters. Provided one had a weapon or Skill that an Amoeboid wasn’t resistant to and you avoided the ambush that was the monster specialty it was far easier to defeat than most Level 5 monsters. It was only due to Fi’s warning allowing Kyle to dodge the Amoeboids ambush that Digby had allowed Kyle to even think about fighting the thing by himself instead of instantly destroying it.

Digby’s sudden appearance threw the monster into a state of panic and it tried to escape rolling as fast as it possibly could away from the suddenly intimidating companion as Digby angrily activated his Combat Form quickly growing as he prepared to utterly destroy the insignificant being that had dared attack someone that was incapable of fighting back in his presence.

Kyle himself was currently just as angry as he had been the other day when Ben had crippled Ryan, once again he had been unable to react as someone dear to him had been badly injured in front of him. Flames flowed down his chain as he cast Minor Flame Enchantment causing the shadows cast by the trees to shift as he slowly approached the retreating monster.

“Digby, stay out of this,” Kyle growled causing Digby to halt his advance as he stared at the young man with wide eyes, remembering what had happened the last time Kyle had lost his temper, if Kyle lost consciousness now he would probably be unable to advance to the next Level before Jerald defeated the Zone Boss but something held Digby back all the same. If he killed the Amoeboid now, not only would letting Kyle fight the thing been for nothing but he might lose some of the confidence that he had built up since coming to the Zone now that Fi had been injured in front of him.

What was more Kyle was using one of the few abilities he had that would actually deal significant damage to the Amoeboid, though it possessed decent resistances against piercing and blunt damage which rendered not only normal attacks from Kyle’s chain all but useless but also decreased the amount of damage Mana Darts, which dealt a combination of both piercing and magical damage would do. This was one of the pieces of information that was usually hidden from a user by the System, the skill descriptions provided by the System only revealed basic information about a Skill or spell. Before Priests of the System and Soul Companions became common people would have to conduct their own research into how their Skills worked, but Kyle had simply had to ask Fi, who as a Soul Companion had greater access to the System than anyone other than a Priest of the System.

On the other hand, elemental damages were the Amoeboids biggest weakness, even a weak flame like the one created by Minor Flame Enchantment would be able to injure it far more than most attacks and the monster’s speed actually increased as it used its tentacles to pull itself forwards in a panic, not only was there suddenly and extremely powerful being appearing seemingly out of nowhere but now the enemy that had attacked it earlier was preparing to attack using fire!

Kyle activated Lash causing the weight of his chain to slam into the creature’s body like a meteor, ripping through the ‘skin’ that had mostly protected it and causing a viscous fluid to leak from the hole.

With a single strike Kyle had done more damage to the thing than the rest of his attacks so far, the damage caused flames covering his chain made it more difficult for the Amoeboid to repair the tear in its body and soon two more attacks slammed into it leaving the creature unable to recover as its body collapsed in on itself allowing Kyle to bombard it with Mana Bolts until it finally perished as Digby removed the dome of earth that had been protecting Fi and tried to get the barely conscious companion to drink a healing potion from his inventory.

When the tentacle had struck Fi it had ripped some of her scales away which had only made her impact into the tree worse, her flexible body had folded reducing the impact as she struck the tree, but as she slid down the rough bark had torn more of her scales away and ripped the tender flesh underneath leaving a large area of torn skin.

As soon as he had defeated the Amoeboid Kyle rushed over to his fallen companion and quickly started bandaging her wound, neither he or Digby had any healing spells so giving her a potion and bandaging her wound was the best they could do.

Fi smiled weakly at their worried faces, now that her wounds had been treated she was feeling much better than before and looked over to where the dead body of the Amoeboid still lay.

“Nicely done Kyle,” she croaked causing a tight smile to appear on Kyle’s face. Even in her current state she was still taking the time to congratulate Kyle on winning the fight.

“Don’t worry about that now Fi,” he replied quietly. “You need to rest now.”

Fi nodded her head tiredly, but first she had something she needed to say. The thing she had been waiting to say for far too long.

“Congratulations on Levelling up,” she said quietly just as her consciousness faded.

Seeing this Kyle started panicking, until Digby smacked him on the back with one of his large paws causing him to fall flat on his face.

“Ow! What was that for?” he asked Digby wiping dirt off his face.

“You need to calm down, she’ll be fine,” Digby replied rolling his eyes and handing over another health potion.

“Drink that,” he commanded taking a closer look at the small wounds created by the Amoeboid’s tentacles. Luckily, both tentacles had hit one of the leather sections underneath the outer layer of the jacket, losing most of their momentum, so Kyle’s injuries weren’t that bad. It would have been a different story if it wasn’t for Scion’s Guard however and Digby reminded Kyle to thank Emma and Thomas for making remarking that it was the second time that the jacket had protected Kyle from being badly injured.

Digby was just thankful that the Amoeboid hadn’t been a variant as those had the ability to secret the caustic substance that they used to digest their prey through their skin which not only made them considerably more dangerous but also allowed them to destroy equipment, cloth and leather armour in particular very easily. Digby shuddered thinking about the consequences of damaging the jacket that those two had worked for so long on would have been, the two holes already in it were bad enough but if there was much more damage than that it would look like Digby hadn’t been protecting Kyle like he had promised he would, especially with Fi’s wounds. Digby gritted his teeth in anger, he had completely failed to protect the member of their group who currently had no real way to defend herself. Digby hoped that she would get some good choices to advance her Skills when she woke up, companions like Digby and FI could only obtain certain Skills and Spells depending on what the being they most resemble, so Fi should at the very least get Skills related to poison due to her serpentine shape, but Digby wasn’t sure what her having feathers meant, Kyle and Fi had kept quiet about Fi’s true nature over the years so Digby expected she was something just as rare as Kyle’s racial variant.

Gently Kyle reached down and picked up his trusty companion taking care not to put any more pressure on her wound than the bandages already were.

“Let’s get going,” he said to Digby as he cradled Fi in his arms.

Digby nodded, FI would be fine now that her wounds had been treated, but he did stop to collect the Amoeboid’s nucleus which was a valuable alchemy material before following Kyle a grim smile, on his face, they would probably only have time for one more battle before Jerald defeated the Boss, so they would have to make it count. You did not want to be in a Zone while the spatial pocket collapsed so it was paramount that they evacuated as immediately after Jerald killed the Boss as the Zone would only be able to sustain itself for about an hour longer which should be enough time for them all to leave safely, even if Jerald was near the centre of the Zone.

Today was turning out to be very interesting indeed.