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[Skill-Eater] Chapter 49: Seven
🕑 Added 2024-07-18 17:01:00 +0000 UTCEdge had been hoping that the deputies would arrive in time to save them. But when he glanced in the direction of town, he still didn’t see anyone coming. Meanwhile, the reavers surged forward in a tide of living shadows, scissor-claws poised to strike.
Riller fired off a final poison arrow, scoring a glancing wound along one of the smaller monster’s arms before dropping his bow and drawing his knives, ready to meet the creatures’ charge. That graze couldn’t have injected too much poison, but maybe it will slow the fiend down.
Jumo and Sasha moved to guard the flanks of the hunters’ formation with their spears, with Riller and Edge standing front and center. He raised his crude blade and tried not to panic, as the quartet of monsters came rushing at them, murderous intent clear in every crook of their features.
The only bright spot in all of this was that the newly spawned monsters were less agile than the others he’d seen. They were still learning to control their bodies and had no experience using the starter skill they had been granted at birth.
But the hulking monster and the last stage-one from the original pack were going to be trouble. Based on what he’d seen so far, none of the crew would be able to hold them back for more than a few seconds. After checking in with his core, Edge decided that he had enough mana left for three more slashes, or maybe five seconds of elemental blade.
I might be able to pull off one combo using both, but it will only last a second. At this point, he would have been willing to reveal the existence of his other skills. But he didn’t see how they would help under the circumstances.
Within another few heartbeats, the monsters were going to hit their line as one. When they did, they were going to tear the hunting party apart. Edge kept looking for an opening, hoping to find a way to take out the stage-two monster before it struck again.
But his luck had run dry. Without the element of surprise on his side, it simply wasn’t going to happen. Not without the mana he needed to use his abilities to their full potential.
He braced himself and steeled his resolve, knowing that this was likely going to be the final moment of his life. Even if it was, Edge was determined to take at least one more monster with him. He raised his blade and picked his target, ready to make his stand.
Just before the reavers fell upon them in a bladed blitz, Trapper appeared in a flash.
She leapt out of the grass as the monsters surged past, silver blade poised to strike. The closest reaver stopped to see what had happened, slow to realize that it was under attack.
Before it could raise its guard, Trapper plunged her sword into the fiend’s chest, stabbing it through the heart and killing it instantly. The other monsters heard its death cry aborted their charge, pulling back to see what had happened. Edge felt his first glimmer of optimism since the shadowreaver had evolved. Four on four just became three on five. It still looks bad, but maybe we can pull this off.
Not wasting a second, Trapper reached for her pack and threw her last bladewire net at the big reaver, razored mesh spreading out to take it from behind. He watched the device come flying for the monster, his prayers for survival riding the air alongside it.
In that moment, it seemed like it was going to work. But his hope was fated to be stillborn a mere heartbeat after its conception.
Just before the deadly net landed, the stage-two reaver turned into shadows and slid away, vanishing like smoke on the breeze. Edge knew in that moment what had happened. Something that shifted the odds firmly back in the monsters’ favor.
Sometimes, when a creature evolves to stage-two, one of its skills will evolve at the same time. In this case, its other shadow ability had transformed into shadow step, the same skill that Edge had stolen from the reaver he’d defeated in the ruins.
To say that this was bad news would be an understatement of the highest order. Not only had Trapper lost the element of surprise and wasted her last net, the big monster was far more mobile than he had feared. It would be able to avoid the hunters’ strikes and set up killing blows with ease. Not to mention, run down anyone who tried to get away.
“Oh shit,” Trapper said, her train of thought mirroring his own. “It evolved a rare skill. I still can’t believe that thing evolved mid-battle. It’s too bad we can’t do the same thing.”
Or can we? Her words triggered an epiphany within him. In that moment, Edge knew that he still had one shot at surviving this mess. He wasn’t sure if he could pull it off. But he didn’t have a choice other than to try or die where he stood.
Right now, he was at cycle six. If he could hit cycle seven and meet the requirements for evolving his core, he could evolve to stage-one, increasing Skill-Eater’s power in an instant.
He wasn’t sure if one more kill would be enough to cycle-up again, or that he would be able to meet the conditions for evolution mid-battle. But it was the only thing he could think of that might give him a chance. As matters stood, someone was going to die within the next few seconds, and all of them would be meat for the monsters shortly after.
Edge had to act fast, before the opportunity was lost. He needed to score a kill before the reavers recovered from Trapper’s dramatic reappearance and started working as a team.
He turned his gaze to the monster that Riller’s arrow had grazed. The one with a bit of poison pumping through its veins. He waited until it lunged for Sasha, who was barely able to remain upright.
Before the reaver’s beak could claim her life, Edge leapt behind it, activating elemental blade and slash while still in midair. Mana went surging into his arms like a damn bursting, accelerating their motion as a sword of ice emerged from his hand, trailing mist as if froze the moisture riding the breeze.
Now, it all came down to whose blow landed first. In that moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl. His entire world narrowed to the subzero skill in his hand and the monster before him. Just like before, it turned out that slash was faster than lunge. His attack landed first by the narrowest of margins.
His iceblade hit the monster in the side of the neck. The extra momentum from slash let it carve deep into its feathered flesh, not stopping until it hit the creature’s spine. The glowing blue blade froze the entire region solid, stopping the flow of blood to its brain just before Edge ran out of mana and the skill flickered out of existence.
Half a heartbeat later, his iceblade broke down into particles that scattered into the wind. The monster collapsed and then went still, and he grinned in savage satisfaction at the sight. Although he had scored a kill and saved Sasha’s life in the process, his gambit had come at a price.
Before Edge knew what hit him, the big reaver’s claws went plunging into his back, carving deep into his muscles and puncturing both his lungs. He tried to scream but broke into a wet cough instead.
Unable to draw a breath, he toppled to the ground. Without air in his lungs, strength abandoned his body like a marionette with severed strings. He didn’t have any mana left in the tank, so he couldn’t heal the damage, even though his organs hadn’t been destroyed.
In another second or two at most, his heart would stop beating and death would claim him.
In the final moment before Edge crossed the threshold of oblivion, his Guide flickered to life in front of his face. He read the words on the screen with a strange sense of detachment, just before his vision faded to black.
You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle-up your core.
Your new cycle is [7].
You have two attribute points awaiting allocation.
Congratulations. You have reached the final cycle of your stage.
The conditions for evolving to stage-one have been revealed.
The requirements are:
1. Fill all six slots on your core with skills.
2. Advance at least one skill to rank 2.
You have met the conditions required for evolution.
Would you like to ignite your core and evolve it now?
Edge sent his intentions into the System as the abyss rose to claim him.
A blink of an eye before that midnight tide could pull him under, he was drawn into his core instead. To that strange place where time flowed at a different pace.
Comments
Robert McCarter
Very fun! TYFTC! 😀
