FMH ~ 26!

“Goat Call!” Luke ordered his skill to activate, and a strange bleating resounded through the air. It didn’t take long before a couple of goats started running toward him, clear confusion in their annoying square eyes. Right now, Luke was after food so he decided not to use Cookie to turn them into inedible paste. He set her down and took a step forward, driving a fist down as the goat passed. 

*Splat*. 

For an instant, there was a shimmer over Luke’s hands that formed two curled goat horns. The horns started in front of his knuckles and curled back and over his wrist. As soon as his attack ended, so did the shimmering blue horns. Luke looked down at the demolished goat and frowned.

Damage dealt: 110 physical. No Exp gained.

“How much health does a goat have?” Luke asked the air, getting only silence in reply. When the next goat jumped at him, he swatted it with his left hand much more gently. No horns this time, and Luke’s actual fist hit the goat. 

Damage dealt: 88 physical. No Exp gained.

“Huh.” he hit the next goat as hard as he possibly could, his fist meeting the charge directly. The goat detonated into gore and bone fragments.

Damage dealt: 315 physical. (current maximum damage reached!) No Exp gained.

That last hit had been with everything Luke could muster, and he was panting after putting that much force into it. He thought over it for a while as he went to the top of the zone and sat amongst the bones that he had collected. “Absorb goat horns.”

Fully Geared activated. Target: horns of Battering Ram. Absorbing… 1/500 in progress. 500 total needed. Time until completion: 4:59:59.

Luke sat amongst the disintegrating horns and thought about the changes in his body. He had always thought that it was using Cookie that killed everything in a single hit, and she was definitely deadly… but part of it was definitely his own power. Using only about a third of his strength with Cookie, he could reduce goats to a splatter. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he could achieve the same effect by putting everything he had into a punch, but he was happy to know that using Cookie was the superior option.

While he sat there contemplating, he used Goat Call every once in a while. The goats tried to run away when they got close to him, but the compulsion drew them in. To get food, he took them and gently snapped their necks, building up a pile of food. Five hours passed as he sat there in silent contemplation.

Battering Ram Horn (x500) have finished being absorbed by skill ‘Fully Geared’. You are now able to slot the Ram Horn as a fist weapon for either right or left hand slot.

“Left.” The skill bound onto his left hand, and he punched twice. As his hands shot out, blue energy horns appeared over each hand for a bare instant. “Neat. Good to have a backup for when Cookie needs a rest.”

Luke got to his feet and jogged down to the guardian area. Dozens and dozens of guardians stood at the edge of the zone, and he remembered that twelve hours hadn't yet passed since his last fight here. “Isn’t there supposed to be different types of you based on the time of day? Monkeys as far as the eye can see…”

Mana: 142/190. (38 mana (20% total) reserved by right and left fist weapon)

He activated Bum Rush. Luke’s legs tensed, mana flowed into them, and he shot forward. He crossed the final one hundred feet in that single flash of motion, and joined combat with a roar, slamming Cookie through three stone heads before she started to lose momentum and he came to a halt. Their bodies crumbled, and he laughed at the rush he felt from traveling so fast. “Once per minute! That’s fine by me!”

Luke lashed out with Cookie one-handed, backhanding an ape that tried to jump on him as the weapon passed. 

Damage dealt: 91 physical. (Physical damage reduction detected.)

The ape was reduced to powder, only leaving behind its metal claws and a pearl. That seemed to happen about ten percent of the time, usually the claws also vanished into the ground. Luke was looking forward to absorbing these items and seeing how he could use them going forward, but that was a thought for later. 

Now that Luke had realized that he could use his hands to attack without damaging himself, he was having an easier time fending off the onslaught of these huge creatures. In a real way, he had been intimidated by them at first. Going from fighting shin-high goats to fighting eight-foot-tall stone apes was quite the shift. It was only as he fought them that he realized that their size was actually a disadvantage for them. 

There was a large surface area that he could land a hit on, and they could only attack with a small amount of that. Claws, teeth, and so on. Similar to a human, Luke supposed. While he was enjoying himself, injuries were starting to appear again as the sheer numbers began to overwhelm him. His armor was tattered, and he hadn't taken the time to fix it up before leaping into the fray.

With a wild swing of Cookie, Luke cleared the area around him and activated Bum Rush to bring him out of the zone. He slowed down gracefully, likely on account of his Innate Balance, and looked back at the apes standing patiently at the edge of the zone. “So creepy.”

Luke drank some ‘water’ and healed up, watching the huge horde that wanted to tear him apart but couldn’t come any closer. He took off his armor and looked it over, grunting at the deep slashes that were through the first few inches of it. “Can’t fix that…”

Although his ‘Fully Geared’ bonus said it could absorb armor, it didn't seem to count the hides that he wrapped around himself as armor. To be fair, it was simply extra inches that kept blades from his actual skin, but wasn’t hide a type of natural armor? Not according to his skill. Too bad. Perhaps if he took the time to create actual, working armor by using his rusty leatherworking skills, the skill would count it? Luke glanced at the guardians again and shrugged.

“Welp. I guess I need something to do while I wait the twelve hours it takes them to go away.” He worked for the next few hours, moving all the gear from the top of zone one down to his new area. Then he started working on the small mountain of cured hides, finding the production to be rather calming. He drove a small rock through the hide easily; there was no need for some of the usual proper tools when his strength was enough to shatter six inches of solid stone.

“Gonna need some stretched sinew.” Luke worked single-mindedly deep into the night, only looking up from what he was doing when a strange sound reached his ears. The sound turned out to be gravel falling to the ground as all the Stone Apes -except one - was reduced to rubble. Luke was pleased to see that the metal claws and pearls from the ones he had defeated remained on the ground, shimmering or reflecting light.

He stood and stretched, then went to collect all the drops. A casual swipe sent the only guardian to join all the fallen ones, and Luke had a minute before the others would come after him. He managed to get everything back to camp, and activated his skill to absorb the metal.

Fully Geared activated. Target: Metal Gauntlets of Stone Apes. Absorbing… 1/10. 1000 total needed. Time until completion: 37:58.

“A thousand are needed?” Luke snorted as he looked at the ten measly items he had grabbed. There were more a little further into the next zone, but certainly not a thousand. He ran over to collect the rest of the metal claws, and dragged them back over the cooling remains of the two guardians that had tried to stop him. “Now I have eighty, but… this’ll take a while.”

He got to work on his goat-leather cuirass, finishing a rough version after only another half a day. Now that he had made a test model, Luke knew that he could do it faster. There would be less mistakes next time; working off a prototype would help. The metal gauntlets had all vanished into… his skill or something, so now he decided to see if he could start absorbing the chestpiece. “Fully Geared, activate!”

Fully Geared activated. Target: trash-quality mana-dense cuirass. Absorbing… 1/1. 100,000 total needed. Time until completion: 00:59.

“Yeah, no.” Luke cancelled the counter and started over, making a new chestpiece. “I just needed to see if that would work.”

Over the next few weeks, Luke continued to grab gauntlets and improve the quality of items he was making. Every time he made a new design, he would throw it away unless it reduced the amount of items required. 

Fully Geared activated. Target: flawed-quality mana-dense cuirass. Absorbing… 1/1. 10,000 total needed. Time until completion: 00:59.

Fully Geared activated. Target: common-quality mana-dense cuirass. Absorbing… 1/1. 5,000 total needed. Time until completion: 00:59.

Fully Geared activated. Target: excellent-quality, intricate mana-dense cuirass. Absorbing… 1/1. 500 total needed. Time until completion: 00:59.

“All I needed to do was make it the highest quality I could, make patterns on it, and use the best material I had on hand!” Luke pretended to be cheerful, but the words were bitter. He had spent a week detailing this piece. “It won’t take as long next time, just gotta keep telling myself that…”

A month passed, then two. At this point, he absorbed enough metal gauntlets to be able to use the claws himself! Luke got ready to start tearing large chunks out of the Stone Apes, but found himself disappointed at the result.

Metal Gauntlet (x1,000) have finished being absorbed by skill ‘Fully Geared’. You are now able to slot the Metal Gauntlet as a gauntlet (Armor) for both right and left hand armor slot.

“Armor? But… they’re claws!” Luke really disliked the seemingly nonsensical nature of this skill. “Ugh… right hand.”

Gear

Head: None.

Shoulders: None.

Gauntlet: Metal Gauntlet (Stone Ape). Effect: +10% overall health. Hands are considered armored when attacked. Strength: slashing/piercing attack reduction (80%). Weakness: Blunt force, magical, elemental damage reduction (2%). 

Torso: None.

Legs: None.

Feet: None.

Right Hand: Battering Ram Knuckles. Effect: +5% physical damage (Blunt). Right hand treated as a weapon when attacking.

Left Hand: Battering Ram Knuckles. Effect: +5% physical damage (Blunt). Left hand treated as a weapon when attacking.

“Okay, ten percent health? Not bad, I can see how that’s helpful. I like life.” Luke stepped toward the edge of the zone, steeled himself, and blocked a metal claw with his left hand. 

*Clang*. The attack stopped just above Luke’s skin, and a translucent three-fingered gauntlet appeared over his hand and halfway down to his elbow. Luke gripped the monkey, then punched with his other hand to demolish it. “Interesting. That still hurt a little… it reduced eighty percent of the damage, but the force still hurt. Just like wearing armor naturally. Now I’m not bleeding though, that’s extra-handy.”

Health: 162/165.

The real danger from the Stone Apes was the damage over time that he took. Bleeding, infection if the wound would ever be left unattended, and so forth. His layers of hide were usually enough to stop his guts from getting exposed to the open air, but it was still concerning when he was surrounded. Luke had come close to death far too often to take these creatures lightly, no matter how easy it was to kill them.

“Let’s see… the skill says I can devote more mana to it for increased power, right? Let’s add all of my mana except what I need for my Leap… that’s… twenty percent to my weapons, and seventy-four percent to my gauntlets, leaving eleven mana. Perfect.” Luke devoted his mana, and his hands lit up. The armor that had only appeared during a block was now clearly viewable, appearing as a shifting layer of blue energy over his hands.

Health: 259/261

Mana: 11/190 (179 reserved)

“Enough of this, there’s work to do.” Luke ran out and started testing the capabilities of his weapon and armor, trying to see how far he could get through the area. He even considered trying to get through and clear the zone, but as soon as he passed what he estimated to be the one-third mark, all the creatures sank into the earth behind him and an equal version of a new type appeared in front of him. These were Stone Leopards, and they were fast. Beyond that, they had the same metal claws as the apes, but on all four paws.

*Slash*.

Health: 220/261

*Slash*.

Health: 172/261

Unless he caught the attacks with his hands or forearm, the attacks seemed to take huge chunks out of his health; way more than the apes. No… it appeared that only his armor had the health boost? Luke had no choice but to retreat, and as soon as he passed the one-third mark again, the leopards vanished and the apes appeared again. He needed to test the capabilities of this armor, and see what it was doing to him.