Chapter 88: Strange Beasts and Horrific Combinations
Name: Isaac Thoma
Class: Bladewraith
Species: Human
Level: 31
XP: 8,129 /9,300
Health Status: Healthy
Mana: 600/600
Stats
Fortitude
50
Perception
95
Strength
60
Agility
105
Magic Power
60
Magic Regeneration
80
Free Points: 0 Stat, 9 Skill
Aura
Aura of the Crimson Dawn (short range, combat, blood, regeneration)
Aura of the Desperate Seeker (long range, sensory, mental, projection)
Central Skills
Form of Horror XIX
The Chosen Weapon XXIV
Skills
Hundred Faces XIXThe origin of this chapter's debut can be traced to N0v3l--B1n.
Stealth XIX
Power Strike XXVIII
Piercing Strike XXVIII
Sundering Strike XXV
Blades XXVI
Sneak XIX
Sweeping Strike IX
Far Strike XXI
Manifold Strike XVII
Hunter’s Gaze XXIV
Phantom Step XV
Unknown Fear XVI
Bestial Regeneration XVIII
Undying Focus XV
Tools of Terror XIX
Fleeting Presence XI
Crippling Blow VIII
Absolute Blade Mastery IV
General Skills
Gralloch IX
Alchemy X
Aspects
Aspect Skills
Poltergeist (2 stack)
Poltergeist’s Flight
Poltergeist Shift
These things were not meant to go down easily, and had been designed to be functionally immune to being one-shot.
Still, having this meant he could inflict massive damage in a single attack, targeting whatever he would reduce the monster’s capabilities the most, making the rest of the fight considerably easier.
And now, it was time to test this nasty little piece of work.
Isaac walked over to his Tier 6 circle, and tossed in a single dice, some more of the mixed minced meat and a bit of chicken from his pantry, some salmon he’d had left over from the sushi he’d had for dinner a couple of nights ago, and summoned the creature. He wouldn’t even be properly fighting it, he’d just be smiting it with his new ‘Ultimate’.
The beast rose every natural weapon its component animals held wreathing it, the salmon’s scales facing the world, edge-first, ready to cut right through anyone who came too close, several layers of hide making it tough beyond imagination ... and precisely none of that helped it in the slightest.
Isaac activated [Wave Charge], flinging himself forward far faster than he could have ever managed afterwards, holding out his right hand, open and with the fingertips pointing forwards, straight at the monster.
Then, a split-second before impact, he activated [I Am The Sword]. His skin turned a silverish-grey, just like the blade of Old Reliable, and then the world vanished in a haze of crimson,
Another moment later, Isaac was on the other side of the monster, once again able to move his limbs, and, surprisingly enough, clean. Thankfully, the blood, gore, and other icky shit had sloughed right off.
Chimera (Geckota-Suidae-Bovinae-Salmonidae-Phasanidae) (Lv. 27) has been slain. 500 XP gained
He turned, looking at the large body behind him, lying dead on the ground with a tunnel carved straight through and a massive pool of blood beneath it, dead before it had even had a chance to bring its [Aura] to bear. That was the power of a legendary, second Evolution cooldown [Skill].
Unfortunately, that kind of power came with some serious drawbacks, namely, he could only use it once an hour and even that required him to regenerate 750 mana while his pool was full during that hour or it wouldn’t have the power to activate.
Isaac walked over to the body and began to hack into it with his sword until he’d retrieved the binding, a ball of weird, wormlike, glowing strands located near the heart.
As a Tier 6 binding, it could be used to hybridize [Auras], or temporarily make them feel more like certain Aspects, whether said Aspects were slotted or on your person didn’t matter.
That meant, he could add the ‘desperate’ portion of the [Aura of the Desperate Seeker], which he’d been successfully managed to avoid properly being sensed by others, to the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn] to make it feel like the emanations of a powerful vampire, hungry for blood.
Or he could aspect the [Aura of the Desperate Seeker] with blood, making it seem like something was seeking the blood of the living.
Of course, merely having a different [Aura] would not be enough to make him seem innocent if his [Aura] was registered while doing something illegal, because as far as the world was concerned, if anyone could falsify their auric signature, it would be him.
But this was still a very important development.
Isaac began to channel his [Aura of the Crimson Dawn] into the orb, which began to glow red, and then added in his [Aura of the Desperate Seeker]. Rather than both [Auras] glomming together and becoming unusable, only the sensory [Aura] remained, spreading out as normal but with a noticeable red tint. Nice to see that the instructions on how to falsify your signature when you had two [Auras] had been accurate.
And now, on to the next one so he could practice with his woefully neglected combat [Aura]. He’d stuck with the sensory one for the most part, it was the one that was familiar, it was the one he was good with, it was the one that felt right. But he’d grabbed a second [Aura], one meant for combat, for a reason.
While his mana regenerated so he could start the fight with full mana, he continued to write the plan for safe summoning, then kept going once it his full so [I Am The Sword] could recharge as well.
This time, sadly, the beast got really lucky with its random addition. It had ended up gaining the parts of some kind of squid or octopus, long tentacles lined with claws on the inside whipping through the air.
Its build was also far more like that of a cow, built for charging and running down its target while the tentacles would ensure that merely sidestepping the attack wouldn’t be enough to dodge.
The Chimera pawed at the ground like a stereotypical bull while its [Aura] fully extended, slamming into his. The beast’s [Aura] was similar to Amy’s in that it could fuse things together, but far cruder. Mostly, it could bog you down by attaching your shoes to the ground or thicken the air to impede passage, but it also had the inconvenient ability to bind things to the physical realm, meaning phasing wasn’t going to work here unless he could push the [Aura] back.
It slammed into him, hot, heavy and oppressive, running into a field of dark red that wrapped around him. He grinned and pushed it back out, stopping the attack cold.
They charged at each other and moments before impact, Isaac jumped, creating a wedge of [Aura] right in the beast’s path.
Tentacles whipped up and around, aiming to intercept, bind and tear him to shreds, but he forged a shield out of his [Aura] over his head, kicking off it to rocket straight back down onto its back.
[Form of Horror] activated and by the time he impacted, ten razorblades tore through its spine, then Old Reliable’s ability to triple its manifested forms activated, sending another twenty identical blades moving along at the same vector, at the same speed, flashing through the openings in the hide and tearing at its insides.
At the same time, the ‘cow’ slammed right into the construct and was stopped cold, blood trickling down its forehead.
Sadly, a severed spine wasn’t enough to cripple everything below the damage, as separate brains existed for each limb, as a quick check with his sensory [Aura] showed. Whatever the mystery addition had been, it was starting to get on Isaac’s nerves.
He switched back to the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn] and began to dodge, weave and dance atop the chimera, carving up tentacles with claws and auric constructs as he did so, blood flowing freely and being absorbed by the [Aura] to power it. Cuts began to accumulate on his skin, but they healed after a split second, the recovery part of the [Aura] working overtime to keep him safe.
All the while, blade control was directing the little copies of his claws to tear at the internal organs, shredding them. It was a hell of a lot less effective than it would have been if he’d had his sensory [Aura] to see where they were going, but the blades were inside the torso of a being with relatively normal organs, even if it had a lot of them. Something in there had to be important.
Two minutes later, the chimera finally fell and Isaac breathed a sigh of relief. These things were a fucking pain to fight, even if you tried to weaken them by tossing together a bunch of random and weak crap, they could still get a lucky bonus that turned them into a true threat.
Isaac phased for a brief moment, causing the blood and viscera that had splattered him to drop to the ground, and jumped back onto his lawn chair. His laptop appeared on his lap, pulled from the storage space, with a whisky tumbler appearing on the small table next to him.
He’d been writing for maybe a couple of minutes when his phone rang.
“Hi Isaac, it’s Raul. Do you have a time right now?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“I finally settled on my third [Class] and now I’d like to learn how to use my [Aura] before work on Monday. And, well, we both know you’re pretty damn good at teaching that stuff.”
“Yeah, sure. I need a little bit of time to clean up here, but you can come over right now, the mess should be gone by the time you arrive. See you soon.” Isaac said and hung up.
[I Am The Sword] had come off cooldown by now, so he summoned another Tier 6 Chimera and tore it apart with his new [Skill], then began the long and arduous process of removing the giant carcasses.
His spatial storage wouldn’t have fit them even if it had been fully empty, but right now there was so much crap in there that barely a third of the body could be transported at a time. It took some doing, but eventually, they were all piled into the disposal pit and dissolving under the acid he’d poured onto them.
By the time Raul wandered onto the clearing, Isaac was back on his chair with his drink and was merrily writing down the secrets of the universe.
Using [Hunter’s Gaze], Isaac looked his colleague over. The results were ... interesting.
At first, Raul felt like an ordinary huntsman, someone who worked outside and spent a lot of time in nature.
Yet he was also very, very different. Rather than the rifle he’d had when Isaac had first met him, he wielded magic that crackled under his skin and instead of his faithful hound, there was a dinosaur sitting on his shoulder and the friggin dragon in his breast pocket, currently doing its finest teacup chihuahua impression.
Likewise, instead of a nice and proper wilderness outfit, resistant to the elements and blending into his surroundings, he wore his [Skills] like a mantle resistant to all things he might encounter out here.
The [Aura] still wildly flickered around Raul, but Isaac could tell at a glance that that was partially down to its nature. It was suffused with power and magic, but its true nature was, well, nature. Raul’s [Aura] was the embodiment of the mystical aspects of the natural world, serving as a magical focus, sensory ability and even providing weak healing and phytokinetic abilities. It was a solid jack of all trades [Aura], with the tradeoff being that Raul would have the devil’s time trying to control it and it was only a mid-range [Aura], far too short for the sensory abilities to be truly useful.
“That’s certainly an impressive upgrade.” Isaac commented “You know, I can see it now: In ten years, you’ll have an entire nature reserve of creatures straight out of the old myths and ride a dragon to work every day.”
“Oh, that’s the dream.” Raul agreed “Getting out of the cities, away from the crowds, not to mention the magic ...”
“Nature is good, nature with magic is better?” Isaac suggested.
“Yep.”
“And now, it’s time to see what that [Aura] of yours is capable of.” Isaac announced, spreading his arms even as his [Aura] swept out, wrapping around Raul’s, testing and probing.
It reacted immediately, instinctually, beating it back with a burst of power.
“Was that deliberate?”
“... er, maybe?” Raul said sheepishly.
“Yeah, first step, let’s make sure you’re able to control it enough to not lash out when provoked, then go from there.” Isaac said. This was going to take a while. It’d be worth it when Raul had it under control, but damn, it would take forever time.
