Looking at the skill selection menu Lloyd saw he had five different skills -the maximum amount according to the system- this was great as it would give him more options to choose from, three inferior and two common.
[Condensed plasma (Inferior)] – when used will give lightning an increase in damage, lightning will do increased damage closer to the source becoming weaker further away, overall range will be decreased while active.
[Electric infusion (Inferior)] – increases damage done by weapons infused with lightning, makes weapons more conductive of electricity and makes the electricity infused more effective.
[Flashbang (Inferior)] – creates an orb of condensed mana that will temporarily blind nearby enemies when thrown, grants you a few seconds to escape or launch a surprise attack during a fight. This skill loses efficacy against higher levelled targets.
[Explosive charge (Common)] – shoots a shard of unstable plasma that will explode either when encountering a barrier be it natural or an enemy or when given a mental command.
[Plasma bolt (Common)] – summons a bolt of plasma to throw at your enemies, the bolt will gain momentum the further it travels but is unstable and will decay after ten seconds.
Lloyd went over his options and thought about the skills different use cases, the first two were boosting skills but weren’t particularly useful for him. For the first one boosting his lightnings strength was great but seeing as it was only stronger close to him it lost its strongpoint as Lloyd wanted the enemies away from him, not next to him. For the second skill, he did infuse his weapon with electricity to kill the compies, but most of them died on the spot from the shock and would probably explode if the energy was any stronger. The last of the inferior skills was called flashbang, and what it did was self-explanatory, it would create and orb of mana that would blow up and stun or blind enemies temporarily. The problem with this one was that it was ineffective against higher levelled enemies, which would be the main targets for a stunning skill highly reducing is usefulness.
Moving onto the common skills, both were amazing offensive skills, the first was effectively a lightning grenade, and the second one would let him launch a bolt of lightning like he was Zeus. While both were good, they did have their own specific use cases, Explosive charge would work best against a group of weaker enemies whereas, plasma bolt would excel against singular strong targets. Thinking back to his current situation Lloyd didn’t have any problems taking out groups of weak enemies, but he was sorely lacking a powerful offensive skill to let him hit above his weight class. Considering this, Lloyd decided to choose plasma bolt, to shore up one of his weaknesses.
Having gained his first skill, Lloyd decided to experiment with it. He activated the skill and a beam of energy appeared in his hand, but it didn’t stop there. The bolt kept infusing itself with mana continuously and Lloyd felt he could put up to half of his mana into the skill. Ultimately Lloyd only ended up infusing a quarter of his mana into the rod, but it was still brimming with energy.
The small cave that Lloyd was sitting in was being illuminated by the bolt with an alien glow. The bolt itself was now two meters long and weighed about ten kilos, which was almost nothing with his new strength. Lloyd would have loved to stare at the bolt for a longer, but he could feel it quickly destabilizing, feeling this Lloyd walked over to the mouth of the cave and looked for a target. Looking around Lloyd found a target in a tree about half a kilometre away on a distant boulder, he then took aim and launched it toward the tree. Lloyd looked on in amazement because just as the skill description had said, the bolt didn’t slow down or fall but shot straight like a bullet and actually gained speed, reaching the tree in just a matter of moments. When the bolt made contact with the tree, the trunk burst into flames and creaked before the weight it was holding up came crashing down, destroying the tree in a single shot.
The tree collapsing after just one hit far eclipsed what Lloyd was expecting as the tree was over a meter across at the trunk. The amount of power exhibited in that one skill was enough to turn anything he’d encountered so far into paste, but thinking about it the skill probably wasn’t as powerful as this display of power would lead him to believe. Firstly, if he was close to an enemy he wouldn’t be able to put as much energy into the bolt as it took time to charge, just putting in a quarter of his limited reserves had taken over twenty seconds. Secondly the bolt’s ability to gain momentum wouldn’t do any thing at close range making it significantly weaker. Also, even if he found a target in an advantageous position like where he’d found the tree it was unlikely that it would stay still long enough for the hit to land. Chances were if a beast was going to be hit it would either see the bolt or detect the powerful energy fluctuations coming from it before it was hit.
Seeing the ability wasn’t as overpowered as he first thought, Lloyd became glad since it meant he wouldn’t have to worry about any one-hit finishers from his foes just yet. The other effect of this realisation was wondering how good the skill would be in close combat. Returning deeper into the cave Lloyd decided to test the damage done against one of the compy corpses. Lloyd decided he’d set some conditions for this damage test, he would have to stand only a meter away from the corpse, and he could only charge the skill for a second at most. Laying the compy against the wall Lloyd stood a meter away and got in position, counting to three he summoned the bolt and infused it for just less than a second. The bolt was only about half a meter long this time but when it hit the compy the result was still extremely volatile.
The body on the cave floor had been replaced with a smouldering pile of ashes but this wasn’t the source of Lloyds focus. The thing currently on his find was the blinding pain in his shins, it seemed that while the effect of his magic on himself was nullified it could still harm him. Lloyd was currently experiencing firsthand the effects of taking a lighting bolt to the leg, his limbs were slightly twitching without his control, and it felt like his heart would explode the way it was beating. Needless to say, this all hurt a lot, but it was nothing compared to the burning he felt in his shins from the heat of the explosion.
As a kid Lloyd had played with fire a few times, getting too close to the heater, touching boiling water, and also literally playing with a burning stick and touching it. All of these times he’d gotten badly burned, but none could compare to the excruciating pain of having the skin singed from his legs. Calming himself through the pain, Lloyd lied down and looked down at his legs. His legs were mostly bright red like sunburnt skin, but some parts of his legs had charred and cracked. The amount of power it took to damage him like that was serious and meant two things. One he couldn’t use it at close range, and two it would still do significant damage without the long charge time meaning it would still be decent as a mid-ranged skill.
Realising the power that he could take advantage of was an exiting prospect, but he was still dealing with the fallout of his mistake which dragged him back to reality. Lloyd looked at the burnt flesh and thought about his options, he did have the option to use a health potion, but he only had three and no way to replenish them. While his current predicament probably was deserving of one of his potions, he wanted to save them for a rainy day so to speak, if he could hurt himself like this from just misusing a skill what about when a powerful enemy hit him? He wouldn’t have the friendly fire nullification to protect him, and his body would be taking the brunt of it, not just stray energy.
Lloyd thought about his other options, and they were worse. he would either have to wait it out and let it heal by itself or try to heal it by running mana through that part of his body. Seeing as Lloyd wasn’t willing to expend a potion just yet and he didn’t want to sit in a cave for two weeks he decided to try and run mana through his leg to try and speed up the repair process.
When Lloyd closed his eyes and focused, he could slowly rotate the mana in his body through his veins. Lloyd gradually had the mana snake its way through his capillaries and across his shins. When he did this the results spoke for themselves, the charred parts of his leg started to regain colour and turn to the burnt red most of his legs were. The problem with doing this was that it was gut wrenchingly painful, the slow process of a scab forming and being reabsorbed by the body that would usually take months for an injury of this degree was not meant to be done like this. As the mana coursed through his body it prompted his cells to start producing vital energy at an accelerated rate, while this prompted his body to heal, it also gave him the drawn-out pain of the healing process far faster than he could handle making it feel like his skin was being peeled off.
This method of healing left Lloyd completely drained of mana in just twelve minutes, he sat against the wall of the cave drenched in sweat from the pain. Even though he didn’t want to he would need to continue with this, because just those twelve minutes was enough to get rid of almost a third of the burns.
Lloyd repeated his mana cycling three more times before he was out of energy, unfortunately even though he was mostly healed he was still out of commission for the time being. Now that he wasn’t char grilled anymore Lloyd decided to find a soft patch in the cave and gnaw on a piece of the compy meat that he had now realised made him fall asleep faster. Soon enough Lloyd passed into sleep eager to have a break from the day’s activities.
Lloyd awoke drooling with his face covered in dirt, he spat out the dirt and wiped his face off blinking heavily. It seemed he been woken up by light coming into the cave, but it wasn’t the morning sun. when Lloyd fell asleep it had been around midnight, but now the sun was high in the sky and on the way down, he must have slept for over half the day.
Lloyd groggily dragged himself up against the wall and looked at his legs, thankfully the wound had healed enough so that he could move, just very slowly. Normally Lloyd wouldn’t have bothered with healing himself anymore than this since he could walk, but he currently needed to be in top condition to fight the local fauna.
Reluctantly Lloyd ate a small portion of roast compy and laid back down, before trying to do another mana cycle, he decided to see if his energy control had improved since his last healing session. Holding his hands in front of him Lloyd channelled his thoughts for the mana to condense in between them with his body as a conduit. Mana coursed through his veins travelling with his blood until it reached his fingers where it exited through his fingertips and started to form a small translucent ball between his palms.
The mana was moving far easier now than it was before, it seemed that previously the mana had just sat in his blood getting pushed through with the stream. But now it was like it glommed onto his blood cells taking full advantage of their acceleration and then detaching at his desired location. Currently the ball of mana he was gathering was only the size of a marble and could only take a tiny bit of mana before it began to become unstable. Seeing that his mana marble was beginning to decay, Lloyd flicked it away across the cave.
When the marble hit the wall it burst into a cloud of mist with flickers of lightning in it, this was interesting because Lloyd hadn’t used a skill. It appeared that the mana he’d been running through his body had naturally gained a lightning affinity. This was an interesting prospect as if Lloyd could refine the affinity and supply the marble with more energy than he currently could it might become a viable attack method.
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Shaking his head Lloyd got back to his current task, as while all this speculation was interesting, he had to focus on the initial intention of that experiment. Luckily for him his guess had proved correct, and his mana control actually had improved, this meant that he could recover faster than before since he would be a lot more efficient. Glad it wouldn’t take as long as before Lloyd began cycling mana through his wounds once more.
As his burns recovered in record time Lloyd was fighting off unconsciousness, as while it was now faster to heal, it was condensing the healing process even further making it hurt way more. Unfortunately, Lloyd had no way to administer anaesthesia so he could only grit his teeth and tough it out until he healed, thankfully with his new energy control it wouldn’t take long.
After just three minutes Lloyds legs were back in top notch condition, but while his legs were better, he still had to mentally recover from the pain of healing himself like that. While before it felt like his skin was being peeled off when he was healing himself it now felt like he was standing next to a flame and a block of ice at the same time while he rubbed himself with sandpaper. Needless to say, this was extremely taxing mentally as it was very difficult to make himself sit through that. It also made him very worn out, so he ate the last of his original dead compy and meditated while focusing on the mana patterns.
An hour after having finished healing Lloyd was finally ready to set out after his mishap and started to head out of the cave. When he reached the mouth of the cave Lloyd was greeted with an unexpected yet familiar face. Standing in the opening to the tunnel was a compy, having gotten used to these little buggers’ antics on his previous day of adventure Lloyd held up his spear and got ready to dispatch the creature. However much to his surprise this compy, unlike all of its prior brethren, didn’t pounce at him but rather let out a scratchy, crow-like call and bolted like its life depended on it.
At first Lloyd was confused and even somewhat glad that the thing had some common sense and didn’t throw its life away for nothing, but going over the series of events in his head he realised what had just happened. That little shit was a scout. This was disconcerting for a number of reasons, mainly something was actively looking for him, but also because they now knew where he was. At first this made Lloyd nervous, but he thought about it for a minute and got a bit more confidant, this scout was still a compy, so that meant that the group that had been hunting him were compies and unless the leader of this hunt had ten or more levels on him then he couldn’t see himself losing.
Now that he knew he was being hunted Lloyd decided he wanted to get ready for this fight properly. The small cave Lloyd had been staying in was in a cliff wall on the side of a gorge and if the compies thought he would be there then he wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where they planned to attack him. Knowing this Lloyd decided to have a stakeout and scaled the cliff opposing his cave and lied down on some scrub at the top. Lloyd’s plan was to wait for the compies to come into sight at which point he would begin charging a plasma bolt beneath the cover of the bushes. When they reached the mouth of the cave he would release a devastating attack on them, this would hopefully kill them all in one hit showing them they had no business to be hunting him.
With a plan ready to be put into action Lloyd waited excitedly for the compies to show up. The minutes passed by quickly as Lloyd went over his plan in his head, if he didn’t manage to kill them all in one hit, he would have to go in and finish them off in a melee. While Lloyd wasn’t as confidant with this as he was just blasting them, he should still be able to clean them up with his spear. As twilight set in and the sun started to sink into the horizon, Lloyd's wait came to an end.
One by one a few compies started to file into the clearing but most seemed to be more scouts, so Lloyd held off on the bolt for a bit. After five scouts were running around the gorge the main group started to arrive, but it was not what Lloyd was expecting. Into the canyon came almost thirty compies all of them looking to possess a skill based on their size, but there was one exception. One of the compies was not like the others, it was covered in scars and more importantly, was over a meter and a half tall as opposed to a couple feet like the rest. Seeing this monster of a compy Lloyd began channelling energy into a bolt and started to focus on the giant. The result however was not what Lloyd had expected, for one the name differed from the others, but also upon using identify it narrowed its eyes and stared straight at him.
Hypno-fang Compy Alpha -lvl 7
While Lloyd had been very confident about killing a high levelled compy with ease this thing in front of him was a different story. Judging by its size and the fact that it was called an alpha this thing had to get way more stats per level than its lesser brethren – so it would be stronger even at a lower level. Also, he no longer had the element of surprise, just like when he felt the compies watching him the alpha had sensed him using identify on it.
Not wanting to completely waste his opportunity, Lloyd sprang into action and launched the bolt at the alpha. Knowing the general direction of the attack the alpha wasn’t taken completely by surprise, but it still couldn’t completely dodge the bolt coming its way at such a high speed. While the alpha managed to dodge any lethal damage it still got a huge gash on one of its thighs and lost a large part of its tail. although the strike failed to kill the alpha, it did take out several of its nearby minions.
The alpha screeched at the top of its lungs and all the small compies stared straight at him awaiting orders. With a flick of the alphas head, all of the small compies started sprinting up the side of the cliff, weaving across the rockface trying to get to him. For now, it seemed the alpha was staying back, but it looked to be planning something. As the first compies started to reach the top of the cliff Lloyd infused his spear with mana and began swiping them off the edge. The weaker of the compies were killed or immobilised from the fall but some got back up and started climbing again.
Once the compies started reaching the top of the cliff in large groups Lloyd started having to try a bit harder, swinging his spear, he knocked off two and stabbed one. Another soon followed only to be stomped on, the next group were fried with a few stabs and electrifies. After a few more groups the compies stopped coming up the cliff Lloyd crept over to the edge and looked down.
While the ground was littered with dead compies, most of them were still standing, gathered around their alpha seemingly channelling mana into it through some kind of skill. As the compies infused their alpha with mana they slowly hunched over and seemed to become weaker, eventually the weaker compies started leaving and retreating back the way they came.
Lloyd began to understand what was happening, the smaller compies were imbuing the alpha with their energy so that it would be strong enough to kill him. Realising the alpha would only become stronger the longer he left them Lloyd ran down the cliff to confront the alpha. Reaching the bottom of the gorge the remaining compies left infusing their leader turned tail and ran.
Now stronger than ever, the alpha looked at Lloyd inquisitively, Lloyd stared back ready to react at a moments notice. Without warning, the alpha shot forward swinging its arm in a wide arc in front of it, out from the hands shot gashes of purple energy. Lloyd ducked under the gashes as they were the signature sign of the compies poison-claw skill. Seeing Lloyd dodge with such ease the alpha ran forward once more swinging its head down to try and bite into his torso. Lloyd responded by grabbing his spear with both hands and shoving it between the beast’s jaws, the two locked in a clash of strength trying to topple each other through power alone.
Neither combatant gained any ground stuck in a violent stalemate -though Lloyd could feel his legs would give out soon enough, seeing something had to be done Lloyd quickly infused his spear with electrify. This worked great for Lloyd as the alpha had no way to block the hit, so it took the full force of the shock. the alpha flinched back aggressively, leaning over seemingly panting in pain. Lloyd slowly approached the beast with his spear raised ready to finish it off.
The creature looked at Lloyd with regret, almost as if to ask for mercy, but Lloyd felt it pertinent to finish it off as it was too great a threat to leave alive. Despite his thoughts, Lloyd did hesitate almost deciding to let it go, but this moment of hesitation was clearly what the alpha wanted. In one smooth motion the beast swung its head, grabbing the spear with its jaws launching Lloyd away from his weapon.
Lloyd toppled to the ground falling against the rock wall, turning around he could see the alpha standing between him and his spear. Without any weapon to defend himself, Lloyd now only had his body and magic. Seeing Lloyd was now weakened the alpha made a move, the beast took a step forward releasing an ear splitting screech.
Instantly, a dark green rune appeared in front of the alpha, the sigil started to release a verdant miasma. This noxious gas began to float and contort into wraiths that looked like small compies running on air. After five seconds the rune stopped spewing miasma and there were now about fifteen compy wraiths circling him. One by one these apparitions began to get closer, suddenly one shot forward to cut him, unfortunately for the wraith, Lloyd was expecting this and swung his fist to intercept.
Much to Lloyds confusion the punch passed straight through the apparition, and it sliced into his arm before retreating. The mass of creatures circling him slowly shot forward one after another slowly cutting away at him. Lloyd flailed around like a fool slowly being cut apart, with each hit he took Lloyd lost a bit of blood, and soon enough he would be easy pickings for the real compies.
Thinking quickly, Lloyd could only hope that if they were immune to physical strikes then energy based attacks could surely do some decent damage. Releasing over half of his mana reserves, a blast of light shot out from his body, the shockwave of energy blasted through the apparitions making them disappear with a crackle. When the last of the apparitions dissipated and the floating sigil shattered in the air, as the rune broke the alpha looked at him in surprise. It seemed that it hadn’t expected him to triumph here, in its confusion the beast hesitated to make a move and giving it no reprieve Lloyd took his chance.
In a fraction of a second a bolt of energy appeared in his hand, this time there was no infusion of mana and Lloyd slammed the bolt straight into the side of the alpha’s skull. The alpha was sent reeling as its head was charred from the heat. Lloyd shot forward grabbing the alphas throat, entering a grapple down on the ground he began channelling electrify into its neck making it spasm violently. Somewhere in its uncontrollable thrashing one of the alphas legs got hold on his thigh and Lloyd was flung off. The force caught Lloyd by surprise, and he had the air knocked out of him. As Lloyd panted on the ground his opponent made a move, the alpha got to its feet and limped over to Lloyd, the beast placed its foot down on his chest to hold him in place.
The alpha intended to finish him off quickly as to not give him a chance to retaliate, with a rapid motion the beast swung down is wide open jaws to finish him off. Seeing this frightened Lloyd out of his stupor, it had only been three days since the system arrived, and he refused to let his journey stop here.
A ruthless punch soared up to meet the descending jaws, his fist went straight into the alphas throat, sliding harmlessly past the soft tissue. With his hand deep in the beast’s throat Lloyd gripped onto its oesophagus walls making it gag and stop, with its descent slowed the alpha tried to pull back its head to attack again.
The compy alpha tried to pull away but found itself unable to as Lloyds free hand gripped its bottom jaw. Sensing victory was near, swathes of energy flowed through his veins into his hand, his arm bulging with power. The alpha desperately tried to bite down in a final attempt at survival, but that was its last thought. What followed was a deadly electric explosion from deep within the alphas throat, the damage done separated head from its body showering him in blood, fulfilling his initial plan against the compies. To show them they had no business hunting him.
With an eruption that powerful in such a vulnerable location the alpha really had no chance. The source of such a deadly explosion was not actually a skill, it was a volatile lightning marble infused with almost half of his energy. Normally this wouldn’t be a viable option as the fallout of such a unstable attack would be worse than his misused bolt, but the enclosed location of the alphas throat had made it the perfect testing ground.
Pulling himself out from under the bloody corpse of the alpha, Lloyd examined the damage from his fight. He had several flesh wounds lining his body from the wraiths and a few bruises and impact wounds from the larger alpha. Overall, the damage wasn’t too bad, and he could walk it off or heal himself fairly easily, the alpha however was a completely different story. Anything above the shoulders was just gone, all that remained of the head was a few charred fragments of bone and scale. The marble had also shredded the skin and flesh above the chest making it peel back like a grotesque flower.
The alpha compy had been far more durable than its smaller kin, but any part of its body that may have been used as armour were now completely unusable. The majority of the scales that hadn’t been destroyed had been on extremities or were in patches too small to be useful for armour. Disappointed that this prime crafting material was wasted, Lloyd decided to make some distance from the scene of the crime.
