Alright! Time to do some magic testing! Pumping my clawed fist in the air I step out onto the wet grass. After that little encounter I obtained the [Blood Contract] skill, as a bonus I learned quite a bit about how my magic flows. The evolution and the contract showed me a lot. For now, I want to push my limits and see what I can do.
Buckets of rain fall from the sky, bouncing off my large blood umbrella. The whole area is a footing hazard as oceans of mud and water roll down the mountain. If only the weather was nicer⦠The wicked storm came out of nowhere and has been drenching the area since I woke up. I remember reading something about mountains breaking up storms, but I am guessing that does not apply when the storm is magical in nature. Looking up I can detect torrents of Ether from the clouds above. A shiver runs down my spine at the feeling, but I donât have time to concern myself with the spooky clouds. I have testing to do!
There was something I recently noticed about my [Vorpal] skill, and that is how it tears away at something when it extracts the Ether from the monsters I kill. I thought that maybe, I can imitate the effect. Not necessarily replicate the skill, which I canât even begin to understand the depths of, but to manipulate external Ether. Since I started the game, I have only used my own Ether to create magic, or used magic circles to draw magic from another to power spells. The [Sacrificial Magic] is able to use the Ether of another in a way that is completely different from [Vorpal], and that is what I want to investigate!
For starters, I am going to try to combine both ideas to try and draw Ether from the air and use it in place of my own. The weather, while dreary, is actually perfect for this. The amount of Ether in the air is quite a bit more than normal, so I should get at least something out of this.
Reaching out into the air I create tendrils of blood similar to those red energy tentacles that the [Sacrificial Magic] uses. At the same time, I pull on the feeling I got when [Vorpal] would steal the Ether from a monsterâs corpse. The wind starts to pick up as I feel Ether draw into my blood tendrils just a tiny bit. I pull harder and harder, but I just canât quite get any more into the floating blood. The end result feels like it is missing something, the effect is far lower than I had been hoping forâ¦
Damn it, the Ether in the atmosphere is too, I dunno. Loose? It is like trying to snatch at a flake of dust in the ocean, the currents of my own force keeping the object I am trying to grasp away. Or like when a drunk idiot at the local 7/11 is trying to stand on a solid unmoving platform. Everything just keeps slipping.
I need the Ether to be tied to something to have any hope of this working. Thankfully, I have a volunteer! I peer down at the mountain of chicken corpses before me. The little bastards had all been huddled together from the rain under an outcropping nearby. I simply took advantage of their proximity and applied a tiny bit of pressure to the blood in their heads. A real snap, crackle, and pop situation. The sound was rather satisfying, not sure what that says about me though.
Anyway, I spear one of the chickens with a blood tendril and let the Ether flow. Immediately, I feel a difference. I can sense the Ether filling the tendril, though⦠none of it is channeling back into my body. There is a repellent force as if the Ether is refusing me for not being the original host.
I learned on the forums that the act of killing a creature nets you some of its Ether capacity because you taint a portion of the beingâs soul from the act. Or, at least that is the rumor. The church seems to heavily restrict that information. Sadly, they didnât realize the one person who they gave that information to immediately posted it online.
The point is, [Vorpal] seems to sacrifice a part of my own soul to taint much more of the enemies so that I can gain even more power when the monster is stronger than me. My assumption is mostly based on feeling though, so I canât be 100% sure, but I trust my gut more than anything. A womanâs intuition is the most powerful thing in existence, no matter how much men claim otherwise.
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My new goal is to try and taint even more of a creatureâs soul with my own, if I can accomplish that then the effectiveness of [Vorpal] will go up. I donât know if I can mess with a Unique Skill like that, but I sure as fuck will try. If only there was [Soul Magic], then I could really get down and dirty with my broken skills. Sadly, when I asked on the forums about it, a few people asked around for me but got in trouble with the church. Apparently, messing with the souls of others is taboo. Crazy, I know.
The only allowances the church makes is for the natural process that comes when slaying monsters. I suppose I can understand why I got that [Heretic] Title now. [Sacrificial Magic] uses up the soul to generate much more power for my spell formations. And I did kind of use a human to do so. My badâ¦
Not that I plan to stop using the magic. A dragon can do what they want! A little heresy never hurt anybody. Much. Back to reality, I take the Ether in my tendril and begin to pour my own into the mix. I am using the same technique I used before to produce blood so I think this will-
Aaaaand, I once again find myself soaked, and not by the rain⦠Blehk!
Actually, blood does kind of taste good now that I have evolved... It is weird, but it has a rich tangy flavor I just canât stop thinking about. I will just file the feeling under things to remember that do not apply to the real world. Not sure where I would even get blood to drink at my college. Maybe there is some occult club? No wait, stop. Vorpalia focus! You need to stop thinking like a teenage girl who just watched twilight for the first time.
Cleaning the blood from my body, I bundle it all up into blood plates and stack them along the wall. Since the Ether was not my own, I could not directly control it and only use it as part of a chain reaction to generate more blood. Once I got it going, the Ether quickly blew up and just created a mess. But, even with the disaster it can make, I can see some fun uses for it. Hehehe.
I will need to keep working on it, but for now I should get to upgrading my skills! I got a big boost to my Ether after evolving, and that was on top of the amount I got from killing the giant snake. Right now I should have just barely enough to upgrade two skills to High Rank! Naturally, I am going to go with [Blood Magic] and [Lightning Magic]. Though, that will heavily deplete my maximum Ether, so I will need to go hunting for something strong enough to actually use the high ranking magic soon.
Sadly, judging by the reactions of the adventurer party, I figure that the snake was the only thing on that level on this mountain. My only option left is to head to The Abyss.
This game has some really cool parts, but my favoriteâaside from the dragonsâis The Abyss. I mean, a super dungeon running under the entire surface of the planet! How cool is that?! No one knows how far down it goes, but just getting to the second layer means you are pretty strong.
Honestly, this world is pretty damn dangerous. Very little of the surface is survivable for humans, and the entire underground is a labyrinth filled with monsters. Not that I care, I am a monster. As for the humans⦠Well, sucks to suck.
Opening my menus, the familiar glass panel pops out in front of my eyes. I quickly switch the GUI over to the skill section with my thoughts and get to work. It has only been a couple weeks, but I am already getting High Rank magic. That would be unthinkable for anyone else, but I am just too awesome. And clearly the game recognizes it! I still have no idea what exactly triggered the Unique Skill or my evolution though⦠But momma always told me to never shove your fist in a gift horse's mouth!
Momma was rather senile.
I didnât seem to get any new skills for the evolution, which is sad. But, I did notice that the text for [Vorpal], which was gold before, is now slightly red and glowing. Not sure what thatâs about.
Can I upgrade [Vorpal] actually?
[You have not fulfilled the conditions to upgrade this skill.]
Oh?? So it can be upgraded, but it wonât tell me how.
I suppose that would be too easy.
Probably gotta do something crazy though. I only got the skill after nearly dying after getting cut up and slaughtering chickens to eke out a win by the skin of my fangs.
Glaring at the skill menu, I canât help but think that maybe if I save some of my Ether and fight something strong, then maybe I can get a skill to Knight Rank. Maybe if I meditated I could increase my Ether as well. Meditation is one of the other ways to increase your Ether, probably because if everything was based around combat then crafters would be shit out of luck.
For now, letâs upgrade [Blood Magic].