Chapter 243: Gold and Bones (1/2)
Zac was about to walk out of his hiding spot, but he suddenly realized something. He was almost completely naked. His brows rose in surprise, but as he looked at the ground he understood what had happened.
Scraps from his former robes lay around him, corroded and discolored. It almost looked like he had molted a layer of skin, and Zac couldn't help but frown in disgust. He had expected the robes to have repaired themselves while he meditated, but he was dead wrong on that point.
The rat vomit must have overtaxed the robes and destroyed the inscriptions. It was regrettable since it was a very convenient item, but Zac wasn't overly saddened by it. The clothes had lost their usefulness to a large degree already. The shields it could summon simply weren’t strong enough to protect him against threats anymore.
Besides, he had gained a huge amount of Endurance since he got his second class. In fact, he had more than doubled his Endurance in just a few short weeks. It was to the point that he hadn’t really acclimatized to the huge improvements and he still avoided strikes that wouldn’t be unable to hurt him.
It became readily apparent during his fight with the rats. He had taken thousands of strikes from the frenzied beasts but he walked away from the battle with only surface wounds that had bled a bit. If he had taken those kinds of strikes during the beast waves he would have been out of commission in no time.
So the loss of the defensive option wasn’t really an issue, but Zac would miss the fact that he never needed to change or clean the clothes. It seemed that he would have to go back to his old style of wearing whatever, and he started scouring the mountains of loot in his cosmic sack for anything serviceable.
Finally, he decked himself in the gaudy robes of Tyrbat Medhin, the royal he killed during the first day of the hunt. The robe hadn’t displayed any real defensive properties during the fight, but Zac chose it for another reason.
He had decapitated the former owner, drenching the robes in blood, but when he found it in his Cosmos Sack it was completely spotless. This could only mean that it had the cleaning-feature since Zac sure as hell hadn't done a wash during the hunt. Judging by how the man fought, having multiple rings with impressive defensive properties, that also wasn’t the only benefit of the robes.
A warm sensation spread through his body the moment he put it on, and he was surprised to see that grime that had set in his hair was turning into steam. In just a minute he was completely spotless like he had taken a proper bath.
The effect was amazing, and the inscriptions must have been designed by a neat-freak. But Zac still didn’t like the overly gaudy design, and he felt like Brazla while wearing the clothes. He chose to don a dark brown cloak that covered most of the gold, and since he was dressed he could finally leave his hiding spot.
Zac was filled with anticipation as he walked over toward where he hid the crimson crystal containing [Verun’s Bite]. He first scanned the vicinity, but thankfully nothing had changed while he was busy with his vision. There was only a sea of rat carcasses all around him.
He also realized that the miasmic field that he generated with [Fields of Despair] was completely gone from the rat den, and not a smidgeon of miasma remained in the atmosphere. It looked like the skill's effects were temporary, meaning that he couldn’t use it to terraform his surroundings to become death-attuned.
A full six hours had passed since he hid the crystal, but when he moved the carcasses blocking it not much had changed. The only difference was that the crystal now was almost completely opaque. Zac barely managed to make out the silhouette of something inside, but he couldn’t tell if anything had changed about the axe.
Zac was a bit stumped when he gazed at the huge crystal. It still emanated no energy fluctuations, and it might just as well be a large rock if he didn’t know what it contained. But he had no idea what to do with it now. The time on his hands was limited, and he had no idea how long it would take for his weapon to finish its evolution.
He had hoped that it would be done by the time Zac had gained his Dao seeds, but he had no such luck. He also wasn’t comfortable putting the crystal into his Cosmos Sack, since he had no idea whether that would somehow interrupt or affect the evolution.
Quite some time passed as Zac stared at the crystal, his frown deepening by the minutes. Finally, after staring intently at the crystal for almost half an hour he gave up and instead took out his shield. He didn't dare to destroy the crystal, so he would have to occupy himself with something else. He had only checked on one of the benefits from finishing his quest, and this was as good a time as any to check out the other.
The shield looked a bit worse for wear, but it wasn’t beyond redemption. But it would need to be worked by a blacksmith as soon as he got back to Port Atwood. The first thing he did after equipping the shield was to imbue it with the Dao of Hardness.
He would have thought some change would take place after the infusion, like how his fractal blades changed colors by which Dao they were infused with, but the shield looked just the same. There were no extra layers of protection forming above it either, and if Zac wasn't the one pushing the energies into the shield he wouldn't know it was there.
But he still knew that the Dao worked, since he could feel how it reinforced the whole shield from within. He tried slamming the shield with his fist to test the effect, and there was a clear improvement. He couldn’t even leave a dent in the shield after using over half his force, showing just how powerful the middle stage Dao Seed was. Of course, he still knew that he could break the shield if he truly exerted his full force.
But that didn’t mean that the Dao of Hardness was sub-par, but rather that the shield wasn’t anything special apart from being a high-quality product. It wasn't a Spiritual Treasure like [Verun's Bite], but something along the lines of the robes he just lost.
He also tried to infuse the shield with the Dao of Sanctuary, but the Dao wouldn’t enter it, just like how his Dao of Trees initially wouldn’t enter his axe. He also tried to infuse his body and his clothes, but nothing worked.
For now, it looked like the second Dao Seed would have to be a passive attribute boost since he couldn’t figure out a way to use it in battle. Then again, the power of an early-stage Seed was limited, and not something he would bring out in a battle with his current power.
Next, he started up [Bulwark Mastery], and as he expected there was a guidance system showing him how to work the shield. He had already found out that this type of skill was extremely common, and most classes had a similar one. The difference was that both his mastery skills also provided Dao Visions, whereas the equivalent skills for lower-grade classes just provided the guidance system.