Time seemed to pass a crawl, the dry man’s training of choice getting more creative by the second. After overcoming the initial shock of losing my limbs, things had turned dull quite quickly, from my end. My tormentor didn’t seem to share this problem, however. In fact, the old man took great pride in his work, almost admiring his handiwork as if it were art.

In a way, it was art, since everything he did to me was temporary. Whenever he dealt me a blow, [Dark form] would mend the wound. This took seconds when it came to small cuts, no matter how plentiful they were, but could take up to several minutes when he chopped off an appendage.

Unfortunately, this disparity when it came to time also meant that the dry man preferred these wounds in particular. As a result, I found myself rolling on the floor more often than standing up.

As the training progressed and the dry man experimented, I decided to take this opportunity to practice [Adaptive physiology], one of my newest skills. The system had rewarded my with it upon reaching my latest constitution milestone and for good reason.

By flexing a set of imaginary muscles, my internal organs could replace the function of other, wounded organs, which meant that [Dark form] could heal far more grievous wounds than I believe it would have otherwise been able too. After all, the skill could now focus on healing my wounds, rather than keeping me alive in the short term. For example, if my heart was pierced, [Dark form]’s first order of business would be to make my blood flow by itself to keep me alive. Only then could it set about healing the damage that had been done. With [Adaptive physiology], the aforementioned skill could skip straight to step two of the process, speeding up my general healing speed and easing the skill’s burden significantly. The more I thought about it, the more I started to appreciate the newer of the two skills.

The only downside to this ‘two birds, one stone’ practice method was that [Adaptive physiology] didn’t gain any proficiency, being a milestone skill.

A day of this torturous training passed. It was only torture in the sense that it was incredibly boring and rather uncomfortable, as I couldn’t feel the pain, but the point still stands. After about twenty hours, the dry man asked me to check my status to see how much I had progressed.

[Dark form](91%) -> [Dark form](94%)

I couldn’t stop the elated smile from appearing on my face, even if I tried. The amount of progress I had experienced in a single day was mind blowing. And to think I had never tried this strategy before! Unfortunately, my temporary mentor wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. He didn’t hesitate to douse my spirits.

“Hmmm. Not bad, I suppose… Unfortunately, this rate of progress won’t get you the skill advancement you seek. Not within the time frame of a week, at least.”

“What?! But it went up by 3% already! It shouldn’t take more than 4 or 5 days to get to the limit, right? If not, I wouldn’t be able to tier up my class in time either!”

The dry man frowned, muttering something under his breath. I couldn’t make out what he said, but I thought I heard ‘impatient’ being uttered.

“You should know by now that skill progression isn’t linear, child. Those last few percentages could take twice as long as the three you gained just now. The higher the skill-tier, the more this issue escalates. For a tier 5 skill, your progress has been astoundingly quick. I imagine your generally weak defences play a part in this.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, attempting to mask my surprise. My defences, weak? For a tier 3, I felt that…

“I mean that a tier 5 skill like yours would normally be owned by a tier 5 classer. As a result, the system has balanced its skill progression for that tier. How often do you think a tier 5 would be heavily wounded to your degree? The truth of the matter is that the higher your tier, the lower your chance of being wounded or killed becomes. Because of our lifespans, conflicts between higher tier classers are fewer and further between than others. Even then, we might not be wounded enough for your skill to gain much progression. Regardless, that’s not the point. The point is that no matter how fast you progress, what we’re doing now won’t be enough to reach the limit. Luckily for you, I have another plan.”

Something told me I wasn’t about to like whatever he had in mind…

----

Sure enough, I didn’t like it. Not. At. All.

The dry man had taken a moment to summon some old acquaintances along with a few strangers, but hadn’t given us much time to catch up. Ash, Dullahan the innkeeper and Olgierd the bone knight were three people I got along with marvellously, which made it all the more a shame.

Of the new strangers, however, I only vaguely recognised one. The necromancer from Necropolis, an unknown tier 5. That, along with the fact that the other strangers had also reached tier 5, or so my manse sense led me to believe, made it clear that whatever the dry man was up to, it wasn’t anything good.

The man in question took a few more minutes to discuss a plan with his underlings, before handing some more hushed instructions. Then, the group encircled me and took up their positions.

“Congratulations, Arthur. Your debt to me grows deeper by the day. If things go to plan, you should reach your tier evolution in a day or two.” The dry man proclaimed smugly.

“I thought this particular favour was a freebie? Going back on your word, are you?” I teased back, not quite sure what to expect.

The dry man scowled, his smile freezing. “Don’t bother blocking, we’ll keep you alive…” he finished ominously, before releasing a barrage of skillfire in tandem with the other tier 5’s. Unable to react in time, I decided to trust him. Not that it would have made a difference.

Surprisingly, the initial blast wasn’t too bad. I was left significantly wounded, of course, but the dry man had dealt me worse blows by himself, just moments earlier. Honestly, it felt a little underwhelming… or so I thought.

Moments after the initial hit, half a dozen strange effects took hold on my body. The left side of my torso turned ashen grey, before collapsing under its own weight and turning into dust. To my horror, I noticed that the effect was spreading. My right arm, which had been left mangled from the initial blow, was twisting unnaturally, my blood splattering from the underlying veins, rather than spouting. Something had made the sanguine liquid turn goopy, clogging up what remained of my blood vessels.

Like this, unidentified ailments spread across my body, only stopping when they came across a different effect. The ailments battled for dominance with each other while [Dark form] desperately tried to quell the damage. At this point, I wasn’t even sure what [Adaptive physiology] was supposed to be doing anymore. This was going to be a long night.

And a long night it was. Then a long day, then a long night again… Only when the morning of the fourth day came around was I released from my boredom. I had closed my eyes early into the training, slightly put off by the… visuals- but nothing could keep them closed when a system notification appeared with an audible ‘ding!’. Only audible to me, of course…

I opened my eyes with a combination of excitement and dread, hoping to see exactly what I had been training for…

[Dark form](100%)

Tier 5 skill.

Dark elemental mana courses through your body. This increases all of your physical abilities and increases the durability of any weapon you hold.

Your body heals rapidly.

You ignore pain.

Tier 6 upgrades

[Illusory form]

Your body becomes an expression of your existence, rather than an anchor. Instead, your existence becomes anchored to an illusory symbiote attached to your physical body. As long as this illusory form isn't killed, you cannot truly perish.

Your physical form quickly reverts to the shape of your illusory form whenever damaged.

[Dark embodiment]

A direct upgrade of [Dark form].

Healing speed increases. Effective physical properties are enhanced.

Missing parts of your body can be temporarily replaced by artificial copies of the original.

Depending on the size and function of the replacement part, more dark-affinity mana will be used.

[Dark overload]

Passively absorb any mana and expel it as overloaded mana.

Store overloaded mana seamlessly within the body.

Note: Maintains previous skill effect.

Sure enough, I had gotten what I had hoped for! Finally, two entire tiers later, Dark form was ready to evolve again!

Now to consider which option-

My thought process was interupted by another projectile that sent me sprawling into the dust. I panicked and stood up, shouting that we were done.

"Stop, stop! I got it, I got the skill!"

Ash sent another prokectile at me for good measure, but the others relented and took a step back. I gave the man in question a glare, but something about the innocent look on his face told me he had done it on purpose...

Regardless, the situation quickly calmed down after that, most of the strangers departing after bidding their leader goodbye. A few minutes later, I was left alone with the dry man and his three generals, who, thankfully, were kind enough to leave me alone while I went through my options...