FMH 35!

- Luke -

“Years.” Luke sighed as he looked at all of the scars that lined his body. They were faint and silvery, but he had only ever healed perfectly when he had been able to fully submerge himself in a pool of water. “Cookie is waiting for me, but it's taken years… five? Eight? Ten? Just to get through another two.”

Alert: system clock registers time since Sigil application as Years: 29 Months: 11 Days: 12 Secon-

“Just stop already!” Luke shouted at the sigil, trying again without success to tear the branded enchantment out of his flesh. However, just like every other time, he was only able to tear furrows into the area around the sigil; if nothing else, the control aspects were still active. “At least I found a new function…”

One of the most annoying things about the magical thing was that he never knew when something he had done a thousand times before would make it speak up. Luke snarled and did one of the harder things he had to do nowadays: he tried to think back and make a plan instead of just being reactionary. 

There were times where he wondered if the choices that he was making were the right ones, but he was always distracted by an enemy whenever he started planning. They always seemed to know when he wasn't fully focused, and used that time to launch a sneak attack on him.

In fact, the reason that Luke had been trapped here for so long was exactly the creatures launching sneak attacks. This Zone had apparently been set up to stop him from running through it, because there was some kind of energy barrier set up at the end of it. He still remembered the day that he had first arrived at it, and gained a quest from his sigil.

You have entered Tutorial Zone, Zone five! This Zone is designed to test your reaction speed! There are a few enemies here that will hit you with a stick if you can’t take them down fast enough! Caution: the longer you go without defeating your enemies, the more dangerous they will become. More enemies may spawn.

Quest received: Open the way. Defeat all the enemies in Zone Five! Reward: barrier vanishes, tutorial is completed, skill granted based on total accumulated unused skill pearls. Enemies remaining: 18,000/1,000

Since that moment, Luke had been doing everything he could to kill the enemies as fast as possible. At the start, he was able to kill hundreds every day. They would swarm him with their katanas, spears, and rapiers, attempting to bring him down through sheer numbers. Luke would have been fine with this type of beetle, except for the small fact that his opponents were intangible until they attacked. Luke had one full second before they couldn’t be hurt again.

Now… years into fighting against them, the ‘Physical Phantoms’ had been reduced to under a thousand. Their respawn rate seemed to be tied into how many existed in the area, meaning that as he killed more, fewer returned. “Maybe that’s where they all go at night? To ‘repopulate’?”

Luke chuckled, even as he whipped around and slammed his fist into a semi-ghostly skull. The humanoid popped like a soap bubble, and a rush of Potentia flitted into Luke’s Sigil.

Damage: 210 (blunt damage). Exp gained: 1 (T3 Physical Phantom destroyed.)

“One Potentia.” Luke punched the ground the being had stood on and snarled. “This place is useless!”

To gain increased Potentia, please fight new types of monsters, or more powerful ones!

“Sigil!” Luke bellowed, spinning and backhanding another beast.

Damage: 280 (blunt damage). Exp gained: 1 (T3 Physical Phantom destroyed.)

Enemies remaining: 56/1,000

Alarm: you have requested to be alerted when you have gained enough Potentia to increase your skill ‘Fully Geared’. Would you like to do so now?

“I… what? When did I do that?” Luke narrowed his eyes at another popup that told him it had been roughly ten years since then. “Yes, increase the skill.”

Skill deactivated while increasing tier! Please use caution.

“Pure hate right now.” Luke turned and started sprinting away from Zone five. By doing so, he only took light damage to his back instead of having his kidneys skewered. “Why would I get a warning ahead of time? That would be too well thought-out.”

Health: 214/234

His forehead started to burn slightly, and the air around him shivered as double the amount of Potentia needed to reach the ninth level of a skill - so a total of eleven thousand - began draining away and getting funneled into the skill. Everything that could feel the fluctuations of something attempting to break through to a new tier took that opportunity to rush at Luke. He swatted a phantom, getting both an outgoing and incoming damage indicator for doing so.

Damage: 70 (physical damage). 

Health: 212/234

“I took damage from hitting it? Wait, it didn’t die?” Luke’s brow furrowed, then he remembered that punching things with your bare hand hurt, and rarely did enough to kill something outright. It had been… twelve? Eighteen years? Since he first gained ‘Fully Geared’. He had needed to use some of his Potentia in other ways to survive, but almost everything had been saved to get this skill to the next tier. Lux Bond in place and finished off the staggered Phantom. “My growth woulda been faster if anything else gave Potentia!”

Enemies remaining: 55/1,000

He crossed the Zone boundary and looked back. Zone five was eight miles wide at its widest point, and there were… he checked his quest, “only thirty-two monsters in that whole area? Ugh… finding them is going to take forever.”

Luke decided that it might be time for a quick hunt. The goat meat that he had acquired a few weeks ago was starting to become rather… sparse. However, there were plenty of vegetables and herbs in the ‘safe Zone’ that was zone four. All of the food here was toxic to the extreme, and had been beneficial in increasing his Resistance sub-characteristic.

Since he was in a ‘safe’ area, he decided to take a look at how he had developed in the last… “Thirty years. I’ll kill them all if I ever get out of here.”

Cal Scan

Level: 8

Current Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 0/5,500 to level 9!

Body: 26.8

Fitness: 35.2

Resistance: 18.4

Mind: 17.75

Talent: 15.5

Capacity: 20

Presence: 14.6

Willpower: 22.2

Charisma: 7

Senses: 18.4

Physical reaction: 23.5

Mental energy: 13.3

Maximum Health: 234

Maximum Mana: 312

Mana regen: 5.16 100 per second (Overridden by local ambient levels.)

“Isolation and constant combat has been good for me.” Luke looked at himself, noting the powerful and bulging muscle hidden under layers of filth and blood. His pants were simple wraps of raw goathide that was tied up with ligaments. No shirt, his head and face was now coated in a dense bush of hair. Since he hadn't been in a pool recently, it hadn’t all fallen off in… a few years. “You know, I never noticed, but my Charisma dropped by three points? I didn't even know that was possible… oh! It’s because I don't have Cookie with me anymore! That makes sense, I haven't tried to make myself presentable nor hold a decent conversation in… I don't even know how long.”

“I guess it doesn't really matter. I will clean up my act when I have Cookie back and safe with me.” Luke lapsed into silence as the area around him continued to thrum with power. Potentia continued to be drained through his forehead and into an unknown Location. Was it perhaps his brain? Is that where skills were stored? Or was it going into some kind of different layer of reality that allowed him to- 

*Chime*.

“I should go kill something!” Luke smiled as he turned around and started walking back toward zone five. He blinked, remembering what he was doing thanks to the thrumming and shifting air around him. “Right, I need to wait until my skill reaches the new tier.”

He sat down right at the edge of the zone, eating a poisonous potato and snacking on goat jerky. An hour passed, then two, and night began to fall. Still, his skill was deactivated and upgrading. Out of sheer boredom, he decided to look at what had changed over the years. Pulling open his skill list, Luke started to mutter. “Bum Rush got up to level seven, innate balance up to level six, and obviously Fully Geared is getting to tier eight.”

A deep, shuddering inhalation while he closed his eyes was the only way that he was able to stop himself from devolving into cursing at the people that had put him here. Luke distracted himself by using his finger on the ground to start doing some basic math. No matter what else he had forgotten over the years, for some reason basic mathematics had stuck with him. seven levels, six levels, I got to level eight… combine that with the final level in Fully Geared… nineteen thousand, two hundred Potentia. Okay… perhaps I should not be too upset with the outcome.”

“Wait, didn't I already kill almost eighteen thousand Phantoms? Doesn't that mean that I nearly exterminated an entire Zone just to get to this point?” Luke’s expression brightened immediately. “So when I get past this, all I need to do is make sure to kill absolutely everything in every Zone! That will let me get strong enough to find Cookie the fastest!”

In that moment, he felt a sense of incredible satisfaction. Somehow, he knew that this was the best way forward. A manic smile grew on his face as he planned out the next few years.