“Recommended to consume more blood using blood drain to increase blood affinity, a sufficiently high blood affinity would be capable of countering the infection, however it would require constant consumption to work. Prognosis indicates that if completed successfully, 4:30 continuous hours of consumption would raise blood affinity to the point where the infection could be eradicated, however this would cause the infection to run its course sooner, allowing a window of 10 minutes that can be spent not consuming blood”

I really wasnt looking forward to that. On one hand, higher blood affinity meant more health, as well as not becoming a zombie, while on the downside, I had to go through four hours and thirty minutes of slogging through goop and sucking it into my hands… trying not to think about it, I tried to sense the blood of other organisms, showing me humanoid blobs of the goop just beyond the door the robot came out of.

“Well thanks for the information”

“You’re welcome. Blood scent skill unlocked, consumed by prognosticator”

Did it just reply to me… anyway, after the skill was consumed by the prognosticator skill, I say the various figures outlines, with mini screens appearing next to them, telling me things like how many hits they could take, how many of their kits I could take, their move speed, etc… to be honest, after the boss, these were ridiculously easy.

Smashing apart each one with a single blow from my spear, I began charging through, a small arrow in the corner of my vision guiding me on what appeared to be the most roundabout route in the lab. In hindsight, this route did allow him to spend nearly all his time consuming blood instead of having to waste time hunting down individual blotches of goop. Having the blood replenish all of my resources certainly helped as well, using a combination of ki boost, the various conversion skills, and the various healing skills to keep going.

I’ll be honest, save for being drenched in monster slurry, it was very fun.

I tore through hallways filled with goop like a 1000 degree knife through virtually any material. And when I say filled with goops, I mean as in literal hallways where the goop reaches up to your neck. The sight of giant holes forming, massive amounts of goop splitting apart as if I was moses, parting the red sea. I still remember where running in blindly got me last time, but this time if I dont i would be guaranteed to die. Also splattering the humanoid and animaloid blobs of goop, or as I like to call them, goop zombies, all over the walls was very cathartic. I just kind of lost myself in the moment, and before I knew it, I was staring down the main body in front of the lab.

“Foolish human, thinking yourself so powerful. You may have been able to slay each of my extensions, but that is like fighting the hair on the barbers floor, scattering with the barest touch of the wind. For you see, I am the original, having collected my power for untold time, I have the strength to-”

This time, I didn't even let the bastard finish his distraction speech, cutting it in two with my spear before it could use all the mana it was gathering.

“You little piece of shit”

“ASSHOLE!!!”

Another cut, and…

“KILL YOU!!!”

“RAWRAGHDGSDGREAREDH”

“KILL”

“EAT”

And one final cut, and they finally stopped talking, allowing me to slash and devour them in piece. With how much my skills and blood affinity leveled up, I was finally able to buy that magical healthcare feat, making it a bit easier to suppress the infection.

“You have leveled up x10. Mp, ki, pp, and blood conversion have leveled up, ki boost leveled up x2, medical magic, ki healing, and psionic healing leveled up, blood manipulation leveled up x3, advanced blood affinity achieved”

I just bought magical healthcare, and I was already over 50 feat points again. It appears I made the right decision to save up. Quickly typing in 1337 into the keypad, the lab opened up. There were 4 corpses lying on the floor, nothing but skin and bones. Seems like I was too late…

Trying not to think about that, I looked at one of the test tubes filled with the enzyme designed to stop that thing, and received an interesting message from prognosticator

“Anti prion enzyme: a solution designed to exterminate the megaprion codenamed perfect storm. Consuming it after having consumed so much of said prion may have additional effects, likely evolving the magical healthcare feat”

Of course, I decided to almost immediately chug the medicine. What? Doctors orders.

“Magical Healthcare feat evolved into Pluripotent Cells feat. this feat combines intelligence, strength and constitution into one stat (PPC, or pluripotent cell) this is because each of your cells now works as a brain, muscle and stem cell”

Well holy shit…

I immediately put all of my unused stat points from leveling up into PPC, since that gave so many benefits in comparison to my other stats.

Seriously, when you have to choose between your intelligence, your strength, your toughness, or any other such statistic, it would be really difficult. Now, I could just focus on that one stat, occasionally putting points into the other stats every once in a while. I could just stare at my character sheet for hours… such beautiful big numbers…

With these new boosts, I might be able to find my way back to Milesio and the goblins safely. As well as keep them safe.

Name: Aether Cael Level: 20 HP: 2016/2016 [level*PPC*1.6] (68/hour)

MP: 1360/1360 [level*PPC] (14/hour)

PP: 220/240 [level*WIL] (65/hour)

KI: 1360/1360 [level*PPC] (65/hour)

PPC:63 DEX:10 WIL:12 CHA:7 Unused stat points: Status effects: Skills:fire resistance 2, pain resistance 4, radiation resistance 3, mana bolt 1, medical magic 6, ki healing 5, psionic healing 5, KI conversion 4, MP conversion 3, PP conversion 4, blood conversion 4, ki boost 3, elementalism 11, meditation 3, shadow foot 1, prognosticator 1, aether blast 2, spear mastery 6, hidden presence 1, runic enchanting 2,blood manipulation 4, Feats:Basic regeneration, beginner magic affinity, advanced blood affinity, beginner ki affinity, beginner Psionic affinity, monster hunter, friend of trasgu, basic aether affinity, vampire, pluripotent cells, Feat points: 52

Even the interface got an upgrade, becoming much easier to read. Now, having gone through this period of power leveling, I returned to the “fantasy” part of the dungeon.

Soon enough, I came across a new part of the dungeon. It was made from concrete, with a few strange embellishments, like mosaic covered walls, impressionist paintings directly onto the grey stone, and other pieces of… public art?

Soon enough I noticed the stomping sounds. Further ahead was a large forested area, filled with automatons whose limbs were made from concrete, each piece connected to the other with rebar, as well as trees bursting through concrete and asphalt. Behind me was a large, squat structure, most likely the lab. I could see that far to the left there was a passage that stretched from the concrete into the ground, forming a tunnel that goes under the forested area. I assume that was how I got to the lab area in the first place. Anyway prognosticator, what am I looking at?

“Concrete golems, formed from rubble and ruined buildings, these automatons share many characteristics with stone golems, however these sacrifice a portion of their toughness for increased strength. Their steel reinforcement acts as a form of muscle system, allowing it to use greater force. This makes it much more agile than the standard stone golem, as well as greater ability to sustain damage from armor piercing sources like picks. They are animated by a paper talisman sealed onto their chest.”

It was around this moment when one of the golems noticed me, walking closer. I noticed the paper postered to the massive block of concrete that acted as its chest, covered in a strange script of foreign symbols. I remembered where the myth of golems came from, a figure of clay animated by a Jewish rabbi by writing a magic word on its forehead, which I assume was analogue to the page of script pasted to this golems chest.

Once it got within 5 meters, I noticed it seemed to be sending a suspicious amount of mana to its legs, and thanks to prognosticator, I could already see the path it would take while charging at me. It looks like its plan was to get close and then pounce when I thought it was a slow moving hunk of rock. Too bad I could see that coming, and braced my spear right where it’s paper would be.

“Here is my spear, kindly run at it as fast as you can”

Looks like it lacked the ability to actually think, since even though my spearhead was in perfect positioning to skewer it, it still charged directly into it.

Once it hit, it drove deep into the paper, though the golem still didn’t stop, continuing his charge and its fist going straight for my gut. Luckily, with my enhanced health, I was able to tank it, though it actually dealt around 70 damage in one hit, and it’s other arm was already winding up. Seeing this, I tried to copy the robot and form a shield of mana, and one of ki as well since those were still two of my biggest resource pools. I only put about 50 units of MP into the shield, while about 300 units of ki were sucked up to block the rest of the damage.

Of course my ki was going to quickly regenerate anyway, so I decided to spend a bit more on a ki boost, as well as spending almost all of my PP to buff my stats as well. This ended in the golem having a lot more holes on the paper on its chest, with the irradiated effect activating every time. Unfortunately, that didn’t really do much… stone is apparently very resistant to radiation poisoning.

“Ki boost leveled up, aura shield unlocked level 3, mana shield unlocked level 1, spear mastery leveled up, autokinesis unlocked level 2, radiation resistance leveled up x5”

Nice, I wonder which I should get next… psychometabolism seems like it would boost my PPC stat by a bit, as well as boosting my dexterity, but I have so much more ki than I have psionic power… and ki cultivation seems like it would be a much greater overall boost in the long run…

oh look the golems friends came…

this time I bobbed and weaved around them, not waiting to get hit. I tried using slashing attacks to cut away the paper. It worked for some of them, but quite a few had tricks up their sleeves. One had the real paper on its back, the one on the chest being a decoy, another had the real one engraved onto the concrete, covered by a paper decoy, one had the paper stuffed in its elbow joint, keeping it from moving that arm too well, but protecting its paper. It didn’t really make them that much harder to kill, but certainly more interesting, like solving a puzzle.

Soon enough I managed to bust them all up, getting a few more levels in spear mastery, as well as a new combat mastery skill, which helped with the dodging. After I hit level 20 I noticed that I was leveling up a lot slower. Maybe it was weird for me to level up so fast in the first place?

Anyway, I began to walk through the forest, reaching a large circle of standing stones, with a few forming a throne in the center. Upon said throne, was a giant, his skin having a metallic copper sheen, his hair tied in dreadlocks behind his head. His eyes seemed to be made from molten gold, and at first I assumed he was a golem.

“Quien eres, y que haces en mis tierras?”

Ok, not a golem… prognosticator?

“Elder Nephilim, a nephilim who has, through the use of Solomonic rituals, exceeded the lifespan of its race, changing in appearance from its human like origin to better suit its angelic blood. The one in front of you is still less than a Millenium old, but granted that it’s eyes have already begun to turn gold, it is no less than 700 years”

“Saludos, yo soy un simple viajero, pasando a mi destinación”

The nephilim seemed distrustful, squinting at me

“Un simple viajero no podría escapar de esa plaga tan fácilmente, sin mencionar la destrución de los guardianes que puse a la frontera”

Oh, the golems were his…

“Este viajero encontró una oportunidad para erradicar esa plaga. No fue algo completamente fácil, pero con mi lanza y sus encantos, no era imposible eliminar a esa criatura de dondequiera que la encontré. Aunque me tendrás que perdonar por los guardianes, ya que me dejaron ningún otro recurso que defenderme”

Now the giant seemed a bit more interested. If I play my cards right, maybe…

“Tenías mi curiosidad, ahora tienes mi atención. Me podrás enseñar los encantos de tu lanza que te dejo aniquilar esa plaga?”

“Tal vez, si tú me enseñas cómo tú animas los golems?”

The nephilim seemed to hesitate for a moment, but he acquiesced.

“Trato, aunque deberías conocer que la animación de materia muerta es muy complicada”