322 A New Experiment
—–
Aside from the three beasts, there was Spore and Huginn who had reached F Grade. Something odd had happened especially to Spore, who was small and oddly cute. The mushroom cap he has suddenly changed in shape and resembles a big hat that a magician would use, and it now wears patterns painted over his face that make them look like he’s laughing, sort of like… a clown. And well, Huginn became bigger and more intimidating, though he seems to be able to shapeshift his size to an extent.
—–
Name: Spore
Type: Plant
Rank: F
Race: Dark Trickster Mushroom
< Health Points: 60/60 >
< Strength: 50 >
< Agility: 100 >
< Vitality: 60 >
< Intelligence: 130 >
< Dexterity: 80 >
Buff: +4 Intelligence, +4 Agility
Skill: [Poisonous Spore] [Poison Fog] [Mind-scrambling Smoke]
Growth: 0/50
—–
—–
Name: Huginn
Type: Bird
Rank: F
Race: Dark Shadow Stalker Crow
< Health Points: 70/70 >
< Strength: 70 >
< Agility: 180 >
< Vitality: 50 >
< Intelligence: 100 >
< Dexterity: 80 >
Buff: +6 Agility, +4 Intelligence
Skill: [Voice Mimic] [Shadow Flight] [Shadow Feather Projectile]
Growth: 0/50
—–
Spore continues with his set of hazardous Skills. His newest Skill produces a pink smoke that can cause confusion or even madness for a few minutes to any enemy that smells it. This Skill could be used for a variety of scenarios when I would want to just turn someone mad… maybe.
Lastly, Huginn’s new Skill is the first Attack he has gotten, alongside an increase on his Intelligence, which calculates his damage using this Skill. With this Skill, he can attack from the distance by firing feathers made out of his own shadow.
“I suppose F Rank Familiars are really stronger than G Rank, the difference is very noticeable…” I said.
“Indeed.” Eleanora admitted.
Incidentally, I still had some Skill Points left, so I attempted to use them to see if I could Level up the Summoning-related Skills. However, I quickly found out that there was a problem. Skill Points requirements escalated the stronger certain Skills could be.
Because of the incredible potential of my Summoning Skills, I required 10 Skill Points to merely give 1000 Skill EXP to a Skill related to Summoning… That’s problematic. Does this also affects other Skills?
I tried it out with other Skills, but Summoning seemed to be the only troublesome one, particularly.
This only makes me wonder what’s the true power of Skill Points, what sort of essence are they?
If they escalate based in the power and potential of a Skill, they might be good only to level up Skills I acquire naturally or that I was able to get when I was Talentless.
Well, I can still use them to learn Skills from Talents, so it is not as if they had become useless, and the requirements to level up [Hard Worker] had not changed either.
I suppose Summoning in specific is some sort of Power that cannot be easily improved through Skill Points, I’ll have to keep that in mind, I suppose.
“But what about you? You’ve surely grown stronger.” I said, quickly averting my attention to Eleanora. “Let me see your status a bit.”
—–
Name: Eleanora.
Spirit Race: Half Vampire.
Spirit Type: Blood/Dark
Spirit Realm: Rank 1 (Upper Stage)
Level: 3/30
< Health Points: 554/554 >
< Strength: 613 >
< Agility: 462 >
< Vitality: 289 >
< Intelligence: 197 >
< Dexterity: 450 >
Link Skills:
[Link (Blake): [Hard Worker: Level 2]
Passive Skills: [Half-Vampire: Lv3] [Charm: Lv3] [Spirit Link: Lv1]
Active Skills: [Assassination: Lv3] [Illusion: Lv3] [Stealth: Lv3] [Spearmanship: Lv2]
Magic Skills: [Blood Edge: Lv4] [Shadow Sneak: Lv3] [Blood Bat Transformation: Lv2] [Blood Threads: Lv2] [Shadow Trap Creation: Lv2] [Blood Aura: Lv2] [Blood Enslavement Contract: Lv1]
Title Skills: [Vampire Queen: Lv3] [Demon Slayer: Lv1] [Progenitor Vampire: Lv1]
Available Stat Points: 0
Available Skill Points: 30
—–
This has made me think about how to Level Up [Spirit Link]… That Skill has been Level 1 since we acquired it. Could Skill Points be able to Level it up? Well, it seems to be earning Skill EXP Naturally over time by using the Linked Skills, but still, it is taking ages. Well, aside from that, Eleanora’s Strength that surprised me a bit.
“Hm?! You’ve surely grown stronger but what’s with that monstrous Strength?!” I asked. “I’ve calculated your Strength Stat Growth and there’s no way it would increase this much…”
“I ended finding a way to put my Stat Points into Strength! I didn’t wanted to become weaker than my Master.” Eleanora said with a smirk. “After all, Spirits are supposed to be stronger than their Masters, isn’t it?”
“…Certainly, but this is a bit of an exaggeration now.” I sighed.
“I can now smack a stone wall into rubble like the other day! Isn’t that great?” Asked Eleanora.
“Yes, you were rather incredible there… I would say it was rather charming.” I sighed.
“C-Charming?” She asked.
“Well, especially when you’re ruthless and murderous with your opponents, that’s really charming of you. I feel like my heart beasts faster each time I see you unleash your strength.” I admitted wholeheartedly.
“M-My lord…” Eleanora suddenly blushed, covering her face with her hands.
“Have you thought about learning a new Skill yet?” I wondered.
“N-Not yet, I am mostly thinking about saving the Skill Points for now until I feel like I lack something.” Eleanora replied.
“Hm, that’s a good idea.” I nodded. “For now, let’s go to the underground hideout, I want to try out something there…”
.
.
.
“UUOOOOH!”
The groan of my Demonic Arm as it devoured the corpses of the bandits resonated underground. Its original human arm shape suddenly transformed into a monstrous demonic beast, devouring the offerings I had for him.
“Hm, I can feel you’re certainly growing stronger. Do you like these offerings?” I asked with a smile.
“I do, Master! They’re filling me with energy…!”
The demonic arm spoke as I had given him the authorization, and did so rather happily as he began to devour everything. I had decided that keeping too many of these bodies would be too much for my alchemy, so I ended deciding to make the arm eat most of them, while also working as an experimentation for me.
At the end, the arm had grown stronger. It didn’t had any stats I could see, but I could feel it had become tougher, and filled with more energies, particularly with a lot of Blood Essence, which was promptly shared with me.
“I suppose this is a more clean and efficient way to clean up the piles of corpses we end up holding here.” Eleanora replied while analyzing things out.
“Indeed… Now I want to do another experiment, let’s go out and find some monsters, preferable Gray Wolves.”
“Another experiment?” Eleanora wondered.
When we came back to the surface, I asked Huginn to find some Gray Wolves, and after an hour of searching, he found an old and weary Gray Wolf, a good specimen to experiment on. It was old already, and it wasn’t going to help bring more of his kin anymore either.
“Ggrrrr…!”
When we had him surrounded by my Familiars, Eleanora quickly caught him with her Blood Threads.
“Now what insanity you want to do?” She wondered.
“Make a Blood Pact with him.” I said.
“Eh? With this beast?” Asked Eleanora.
“Come on.” I said.
“Okay… I don’t think it’ll work, but let’s try it out.” Eleanora said.
She activated her [Blood Contract] Skill and then dropped a bit of her blood inside the wolf’s mouth, making the beast swallow the blood right after.
“GRAARRR…!”
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