Anything ~ 36!

Dev edit is complete!

Small note: Chain-link Scourge has been changed to Chain-blade Rope during edits.

Displeased with the feeling of his bones poking through his skin in a few places, Luke meandered around Murder World for a short while until he found a trickle of water. He dropped into it and started slurping down the fluid, then let it wash through him as his Skills kicked in and began rearranging his insides. “Ugh… that feels so nasty. I really need to find some armor and upgrade away from what I’m wearing now. Maybe I should just go ahead and reuse that soul brand thing on my weapons?”

He watched without flinching as his ulna reformed, *slurping* back through his skin and collecting together into a solid whole once more. Luke took a moment to try to think of the last time he had managed to break one of his bones… but he couldn’t. It had been so many years ago that he had taken enough damage that his bone even cracked… perhaps there was something to that? He had taken lots of damage, but his bones had just stopped breaking after a while.

Then he got busted up twice within a single day. First his skull, then his torso and arm. “You know… I used to help Cookie get stronger by bathing her in the water. Maybe I need to break over and over again so that I can come back stronger? Some kinda ‘repair with gold’ thing, but using mana instead? Is that what my ‘You Need to Stop’ Skill is telling me?”

His Sigil tried to chime ‘no’, but he had long ago learned not to trust the intrusive thoughts that it pushed at him. Even so, he didn’t have a whole bunch of time to waste testing a mere theory right now. He had a few days to get back to Zone twelve and-

Healthy return possible. Timer set until return is forced: 00:59:59.

“You want me to go back in an hour?” Luke bellowed at the timer that had appeared. “No! I just got here! I refuse! Sigil! Devote enough Potentia to Open Up to get it to Tier seven!”

Caution! Increasing the Tier of this Skill may result in being trapped between worlds while it increases! No secondary portal generation method detected.

“Do. It.” He hissed at the Sigil. A swirl of Potentia drained away and filled the Skill to bursting, and it greyed out on his status sheet. “Lemme see all my skills.”

Skills: Tier: Level

Source-cerer’s Armory: 9: 0

You need to Stop: 3: 1

Bum Flash: 2: 7

Goat Call: 2: 0

Pristine Balance: 4: 0

Open Up: 7: 0 (Tier up in progress)

Feather’s Fall: 4: 2

Shockwave Cleave: 4: 0

Giga: 1: 0 (Activation still in progress)

“What’s that?” Luke looked at his Skill list in surprise. There was a Skill there that he had never seen before. “Giga? Like the Giga Ant? That was supposed to be a Tier five Skill! What a waste… fine. What does it do?”

Giga. Tier 1, Level 0. Congratulations, you’ve gained one of the most dangerous Skills available on [Murder World].

Effect 1: Mana is your body. Your flesh and bones. Sustain yourself on it. Gorge yourself on it. Pure mana can no longer damage you. You gain 3n% size per level. When you have reached your increased size, all Body Sub-Sub-characteristics will be boosted by the same amount.

This Skill increases from exposure to high mana saturation, Potentia cannot be devoted to it.

“Is that why I was taller?” Luke muttered uneasily at the blaring warning it gave him. “Thought that was the solid mana burning me out. Why is this the most dangerous Skill? Dangerous for me, or for the people I fight? It even increases naturally…? Welp. Can’t do anything about it now.”

If his body was heavier, he’d never know it thanks to his massive fitness. If the growth was making his limbs longer, Pristine Balance was compensating perfectly on his behalf. “Not seeing the downside. Maybe I’ll need a specific type of armor? Well… no, I have my Armory.”

The Murderhobo sprinted downhill for the next half hour, soon arriving in position to see the Pteranodons. They were waiting for him; creepily staring at his man flesh. He figured it had to do with the pulsing that was coming from his Sigil as his Skill was increased… but they were tracking him far too carefully, and in near perfect unison. He cautiously stepped across the boundary, and the largest among the birds flew away like an arrow shot from a bow.

Another flapped forward, and Luke saw what was different: all of the birds he could see had nearly transparent horns growing from their heads. The horn flashed with color as words floated from it. “Luke… you survived. You are no longer welcome in our Zones.”

“Snails.” Luke hissed and took another step forward, met with a line of light that hit his arm and numbed it slightly.

Damage taken: 5 paralytic. Effect overpowered by Body. Arm is numb for 5… 4…

He traced the beam of light back to the horn of the creature, shook off the effect, and kept moving forward, “The strongest of you really are the horse-faced parasites, aren’t they? Interesting that they told the truth for once. You know, when I was escaping, the spells they were casting had to be almost fully dodged or I’d die. Put me in a pretty bad place as I ran for the exit. Guess what, bird-brains? This run-through… I have all the time I need.”

He tapped his Sigil, which was pulsing intermittently. “No Skill available to leave, no way for the person holding my reins to pull me back. Plenty of time to kill as I please.”

No more words needed to be exchanged. Dozens of beams shot at Luke, and he Bum Flashed out of the way to avoid them. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded: during his previous escape, the unicorns had been unprepared for him; even more, they had thought he was one of them. He remembered all too well how, during his surprise Sigil-forced mad dash out - pushing Bum Flash to the extreme - the horses had carved him up at a distance with various spell effects. Avoiding most of them had been luck, actually escaping had been a shock to everyone involved.

As he remembered the state he had been in when he got back to the base world, Luke’s eyes reddened. Instead of cleanly dodging as he had the last few attacks, the Murderhobo sprinted forward and let his armor repel the majority of the damage so that he could punch the talkative bird in the face. A Flash to the top of its head later, and he wrenched the horn out of the beast’s skull.

“Pretty new to this Zone, huh?” He commented as he looked at the only partially-dissolved crystalline snail body that extended into the pteranodon. Clapping his hands together, he powdered the horn and shoved the grains into a pocket. The other dinosaur-birds that saw this scattered like a flock of pigeons that just had a tiger dropped amongst them. “You know you’re a delicacy back on my world? Your bodies are going to help me get a snail-hunting team together. That team will help me ensure that not even a single one of you exists on this Plane of existence, ever again!”

“You’re a monster!” One of the pteranodonicorns screamed at him, swooping in to try and tear off his arm. Luke whipped out his Rope, managing to coil it around the creature, pulling hard and cleanly dividing the creature in half with the simple-seeming motion. That was the last one that got close, and he knew that they had finally come to their senses.

“Abyss…” Now he would need to get across one of the chains that connected to the lower Zone, and he’d have to deal with swooping birds and magical attacks. If they managed to numb him too much, he’d be easy pickings as he ran. He had a few options available to him at this moment, and so decided to use them. “Thirty-three thousand Potentia to use… bring me up to level eleven.”

Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 33,676 -> 19,276.

Fourteen thousand and four hundred Potentia gushed into him, altering him further and further away from human. “The point goes in Physical Reaction.”

That was all he could get out as the Potentia went to work, enhancing him beyond his natural potential for growth. He panted as his skin stretched and broke from muscles growing rapidly and smoothing, healing in the next instant as the Potentia worked its wonders. This was the first time he had ever intentionally put a point into physical reaction, as far as he could remember, and it made him feel… jumpy. Hyper and amped up.

Also fast.

Luke sprinted out and onto the chain as he looked over the sudden changes to his status; just as Giga chimed that his body had adjusted to his new size.

Cal Scan

Level: 11

Current Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 19,276/23,300 to level 12!

Body: 32.4

Fitness: 40.8

Resistance: 24

Mind: 18.6

Talent: 16.3

Capacity: 20.9

Presence: 18

Willpower: 27

Charisma: 9

Senses: 26.25

Physical reaction: 32.5

Mental energy: 20

Maximum Health: 290 -> 377 (Giga)

Maximum Mana: 324

Mana regen: 5.43 per second Overridden: 100 per second.

“Physical output jumped to twenty-six fifty-two kilos…” Luke tucked into a forward roll to evade the scattering of strange no-color beams of light, which were surprisingly visible as they moved through the foggy blue air. “Poison and disease resist jumped from thirty-four percent to forty-five… disease resist? I’ve been ignoring Resistance since I’m immune to poison, but… what if what I need to grow my Skill is getting subjected to diseases?”

*Chime.* His Sigil screamed ‘no’ at him.

“Hah! Nice try, now I know it’ll work for sure!” Luke howled with wild laughter as he jumped, dived, and Feather’s Fall-ed his way down the chain, much to the frustration of the pteranodonicorns. They started coming closer and closer… then they were in range. “Bum Flash!”

The Murderhobo was among them, his hands grasping at horns and leaving sundered flesh behind everywhere he moved. He screamed in pleasure as he attacked with wild abandon, reveling in his unending mana regeneration. Iridescent horn after horn was turned to powder in his grip, shoved into a specially-made satchel that Andre had made upon Taylor’s request. He didn’t get all of it, since powder tended to be carried in the breeze, but he got enough.

“Now you die, human!” One of the pteranodonicorns laughed as they flew below the level of the chain. “You can only float, you cannot rise!”

Luke Flashed to that one and gripped its horn. He tore it out, and glided on the slowly falling beast. “That would be true… if every single creature, in every single world, didn’t think I was the most delicious morsel in existence.”

The blur fog surrounding him opened up to show hundreds of unaltered pteranodons winging toward him. Luke laughed and began his ascent, his trail marked with death with each ‘platform’ he used to reset Bum Flash. “A Skill upgrading, combined with ‘You Need to Stop’ informing them that I’m tasty? I’ll never run out of willing sacrifices!”