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Chapter 130: Hunter of Many
writer:Monsoon117      update:2022-07-21 16:42
  The insects neared me, their shining mandibles clapping with enough power to split cars apart. It wouldn’t even hurt me, but I decided on practicing my skills. I leapt, dodged, and dashed between the insects. Kinetic Leviathan throttled them, pulling them off balance. Combined with my speed, they couldn’t even touch me.

  The unique skill was pretty damn good. If I could actually outweigh Yawm by a decent amount, it would be invaluable against him. So good that I experimented on Gorger of Mana with Force of Nature.

  Enhancing a skill was simple so far. I just needed to use Force of Nature to augment a different unique skill. It was an intuitive, natural process. In my eyes, augmenting Gorger of Mana would be much the same way. Since Force of Nature revolved around close combat, telekinesis, and gravity, mixing it would be simple.

  While dodging the beetles, I pushed and kicked off of them at times. During these light touches, I pulled them towards me with gravity wells. I would puncture them with sharpened spines of my armor. Before I pushed off them, I would stab my armor inside and drain what I could.

  After a few hours of practicing this, I got a good handle on it. The solar beetles leveled up along with me, letting the challenge remain constant. It was invigorating and fun for many reasons. These beetles once posed a serious challenge for me. Now they were mere fodder.

  I could’ve crushed them all in seconds. Event Horizon would drain their souls. My fists would crush them to powder. Their teeth and claws would shatter against my skin. With my magic, I could set them floating helplessly off the ground. Seeing my progress was a solid moral boost.

  Against Yawm it was different. We were so far apart that I couldn’t even see my progress. These beetles were different. They crumbled with ease. After a while, I wondered why Gorger of Mana wasn’t being enhanced by Force of Nature. I was shifting with fluidity and even grace. I was well past the point of augmenting.

  My status disagreed with my sentiment. Several more hours passed before I began thinking skills couldn’t be enhanced anymore. I was a renegade of Schema’s. It didn’t surprise me that a few things didn’t work right. Even if that was the case, learning all this would help me in the long run.

  I’d just have to do it the good old fashioned way. I kept engaged and involved with what I was doing, ensuring a steady progress. As I did, I fell into a rhythm, a sense of ease falling over me. It was like breathing or counting your steps as you run. If you think about it, it reminded me of running.

  As a baby, humans can’t even crawl. The idea of running is daunting to say the least. As we progress, we gain finer control of complex movements. Eventually it culminates in dextrous and difficult activities. The skills in Schema’s system were similar. They combined as I learned them, turning into tasks just like walking or jumping.

  In this case, it was fun to just get lost in the process. I theorycrafted with the cipher for weeks on end. Getting some quality time killing eldritch was like ice cold water on a hot summer day. Damn it was refreshing compared with sitting down, hunched over a book for hours.

  For that reason, I don’t know exactly know how long I spent dodging beetles. I stopped every few hours, getting some distance between me and them to chug some rations. After that, I jumped right back into the thick of it. Once the beetles were worth killing, I turned around towards them.

  As they evolved, the grew ugly. Their shells thickened until they looked like shambling chunks of yellow pavement. Their mobility was lessened, interfering with their sleek, aerodynamic shells of before. This rendered them unable to fly anymore. What they lacked in mobility, they gained even more in strength.

  Imagine you injected a vial of steroids into a beetle and it swelled up. Yeah, combine that with a few spikes and you had these new solar beetles. Their disorientation tactic suffered from this as well, making their previous light display far less blinding. With Restless Senses on high alert, I hardly noticed when I closed my eyes for it.

  The abstractions were frenzied, their abstract forms shivering with energy. The entire time I avoided the eldritch, their tornado of energy condensed. It was a physical wall of lightning at this point. The energy looked delicious, so I reached out with Event Horizon.

  I stretched the aura out to its fullest extent, a cascade of mana coming in. It was like standing under the force of a waterfall. It converted straight into my cipher, the rune devouring the mana with hunger. I no longer dodged the beetles as I passed them. I let my armor kill them for me.

  Tendrils of it shot outward, puncturing through their hard shells. As solid as their shells were, my armor skin made their hide seem soft. These armored spines stole their life force, taking their mana from them as I passed by. As I gained more and more control of that function, I used my other skills with Gorger of Mana.

  With my streams of gravity, I held beetles in place, preventing them from escaping. With my enhanced senses, I dodged them, letting my armor rip and tear at all angles. I was a ball of hungry spines, puncturing them with needles that sucked out their mana and health. When surrounded, I was a nightmare to deal with.

  I culled the horde with a steady, slow pace. Not even a drop of mana was wasted. I wrung them dry, like squeezing blood from a stone. If they clamped their mandibles on me, I detonated my runes in timed bursts. This gave me the strength to tear their teeth apart.

  The abstractions even dove at me from above. They were mana sponges, letting me absorb their vitality. It was satisfying because I was getting the most out of the monsters. At the same time, it was eerie. Why? Because it was something that Yawm would’ve done.

  These eldritches were out to kill me though, and they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to me. They weren’t intelligent either. I wouldn’t do something like this to a crowd of people for instance. Maybe I would though, given the right circumstances.

  Enough with ethical dilemmas. I finished the last of the high leveled beetles, enjoying a bit of silence. I invested all my excess points into endurance, handling the issue with little thought. After that, I ate, exploded out a shit real fast, then jumped right back into action.

  That’s how literal days passed before I even thought of stopping. Before I knew it, I wasn’t even thinking about using Gorger of Mana with Kinetic Leviathan. It all just clicked. Once the entire process grew a bit tedious, I finished off the last bit and ran back to Yawm’s.

  As I did, I jumped from the side of a skyscraper. I landed onto a mini-van, my feet slicing through it with ease. I burrowed into the ground before catapulting myself from the earth. I landed on the ground, running out my momentum. As I did, a notification appeared.

  I floated into the air bubble on the far side of the pale fortress. I walked through the doors, a bit of water dripping off my armor. I stepped forwards, towards my room. As I passed by Amara’s room, Yawm walked out. He sighed, his lumbering shoulders wider than a fridge.

  “Ah, it’s good you’re back Daniel.”


  I raised a hand, “It’s good to be back. I got caught up in the whole process.”


  “Hah hah, it’s easy to do.” Yawm crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “I just finished a

  with Amara. It wasn’t particularly helpful.”


  “Heh, she’s by no means a natural teacher. At least from what I’ve garnered from her.”


  Yawm nodded, “My sentiment is the same.” He squinted at me,

  “Wait a moment…are you…shorter?”