CH 279

Unique Skills

[Hardening] turned out to be a much better skill than I had hoped for.

Honestly speaking, considering the diverse applicability of this skill, I don’t think my other two unique will be anywhere close to as useful as this one but, until I fully figure them all out, I have to keep testing.

The next skill I decided to test, was the mysterious [Black Mist] skill. I really had no idea what this one could do.

This was exactly the kind of skill that you simply have to use directly to understand what it does, and honestly, there’s a good chance that even after using I don’t figure it out completely.

It would have been easier if I called Ralf with me and test it on him to get a better idea but……

Since it is an unknown skill, there were too many dangers in using Ralf as a test subject so I decided against it.

First I’ll try it against no target, and if I don’t get it, I’ll use it against monsters.

And if I still don’t understand it, only then will I have to ask Ralf to help me with it but…….

While thinking of such things, I activated the skill.

[Black Mist]

The moment I spoke it inside my head, a blackish mist suddenly released out of my body and instantly wrapped the surroundings in darkness.

It was as if I had suddenly walked into a dark room with no light, and even I, the user himself couldn’t see anything in his surroundings.

Since I had no light source on hand, I decided to use [Fire Ball] to light up the area but scarily enough, even using a fire ball didn’t create enough light to see my surroundings.

Only when I brought the hand that had a fire ball active right in front of my face did I get the feeling like I was able to see something shining slightly, but that was it.

Looks like this [Black Mist] completely robs the eyesight of anyone caught in its area of effect.

The fact that even I myself lost my eyesight was a demerit but, if I know things are going to get dark beforehand since I’m the user, I could always figure out ways to deal with it. I mean, I do have an abnormal amount of skills on me after all.

All the skill took away was your vision. I could already think of how well this would work with detection skills like [Perception Sense][Life Presence Sense][Mana Sense][Hearing enhancement][Perception Range enhancement][Wild instinct] and [Sound wave detection].

On the other hand, if I use [Silent steps] and [Stealth], it would make me borderline impossible to find.

It’s a skill combo that would be near impossible to deal with for anyone who sees it for the first time.

……….but, I also just figured out another weakness of this skill.

And that was that this mist could very easily be blown away by the wind.

It wasn’t even that strong of a wind but, the [Black mist] I had released had already dissipated into the air.

In about 10 seconds or so, I was able to see my surroundings again.

If I can’t predict when the wind might blow, this skill can very easily become useless, let alone if someone could use wind magic that would easily get rid of this.

And when I’m with teammates, it would make it harder for them as well so, while this skill certainly was strong, it also had very clear weaknesses.

But in the right place, at the right time, a skill like this can be a game changer. I suppose that’s also what most unique skills are like huh.

Now the only thing I don’t know is if there’s any other side effect that it causes outside completely robbing the target of their eyesight but, that’s something I’ll only find out with more testing.

I’ll try it on some scrub monsters to make sure it’s not poisonous or something and if that’s not the case, I’ll have Ralf be a test dummy to tell me if he felt any other side effects.

Lastly, I need to check if [Crimson Eyes] could see through the [Black Mist].

If it can, the [Black Mist] would lose one of its weaknesses for me personally.

Although it was useless against the white fog of the Roza forest, so I don’t have much expectations.

I activated [black mist] once again and then when I used [Crimson Eyes]………as my vision got dyed in red, I became able to see my surroundings again.

So it failed against white fog but if its ‘darkness’, it didn’t matter if it was due to mist, the crimson eyes worked well against it eh?

My questions towards the [Crimson Eyes] skill rose again but, at least I know that it works well against the [Black Mist].

Both [hardening] and [black mist] have had some good  compatibility with my existing skills, and I just know that they were bound to very useful to me in the future.

Stopping the [Black Mist] testing here, it was time to test the last remaining skill.

I was thoroughly satisfied with the two skills I got already but, the last one was, quite frankly speaking, one that even I was a bit worried about.

I mean it’s literally called [Suicidal Blow]

With wording like that, I was wary of even testing it out but……….

I don’t have the choice to simply ignore a unique skill that I gained after so much hard work either.

Just in case, I pulled out a health potion and kept in an easy to reach location, took a deep breath, and readied myself for whatever’s about to happen.

I walked towards the same tree I tested the string and hardening on, and then activated my skill.

[Suicidal Blow]

The moment I did, I instantly felt all strength leave my body.

Right after I felt both my stamina and mana completely drain, I then began to feel a power rise within me, one many times more than what had been drained out of me——–

And strength much higher than even [Mad Warrior] began flowing across my body, and I was engulfed by a strong euphoric sensation.

I gathered all of that strength into my fist, and decided to smash it all into the tree in front of me.

The fist I swung distorted the air, broke the sound barrier and hit the tree with speed the eye could not follow, and instantly uprooted the entire tree from the ground with the impact.

A few seconds after my fist had landed——–a huge explosion roared around the area and shockwaves spread across, and the tree that had been uprooted from the impact bounced across the ground, crashing and smashing everything in its way as it got blown away into the distance.

The impact was so strong that I was worried I had smashed my own fist as well, so I timidly looked down to check on the condition of my fist……….

Only to see it completely unhurt thanks to a visible glow of mana completely enveloping my fist, the same as what the Heracberg had used against me.

As soon as I sighed in relief, a strong sense of fatigue hit my entire body and I collapsed to my knees as my legs lost all strength.

And unable to even think of anything further——I simply lost consciousness and fell asleep right there and then.