Chapter 533: Non-lethal Lethality (1/2)

A keening cry echoed out across the jungle as Zac swung his axe in one lightning-quick motion, his abyssal eyes keeping track of the streams of life inside the target. However, the massive boar didn’t fall apart into two gory slabs from the swing as one might expect, but it rather just seemed enraged.

A deep cut had appeared on its flank, and while it was freely bleeding down on the forest floor it was far from a grievous wound. With the high Vitality of an E-Grade beast the wound would soon enough heal by itself without any intervention.

“Kill through a non-lethal cut,” Zac muttered as he dodged the boar’s charge.

He had been walking around the jungles surrounding the former volcano over the past five days, fighting for a couple of hours while spending the rest on cultivation in his cave. He knew that any potential progress before the Mystic Realm closed its doors was limited, and he tried to make the most of it until Kenzie managed to crack open the tunnel.

The most obvious solution he could think of was gaining [Blighted Cut], a skill that would hopefully improve his offensive capabilities in his undead form. He needed a mainstay skill in the vein of [Chop], and this might just be it. Walking around in nature like this would also allow him to bond with nature for lack of a better word, trying to incorporate the lessons he learned from visiting David.

But completing the quest was proving more difficult than expected, though he was making decent inroads. The wound in the boar’s side had already turned into a sickly dark color, and the beast shook from the pain.

This effect solely came about from infusing his blade with the Fragment of the Coffin, as this was the only method he could think of to complete the quest. He had already tried killing an evolved beast the same way he killed Vul, the Barghest alpha, all those months ago. He had inflicted a shallow wound that blinded a panther before tricking it into impaling itself on a sharpened log that he had prepared.

He had technically killed it with a single non-lethal cut that time, but the System wasn't impressed. That meant that his initial guess was more likely, that he needed to use his Dao to kill the beast. Considering his class the most likely suspect was obviously Fragment of the Coffin, and the boar was just the latest experiment.

The wound had already been inflicted, so he didn't swing again. Zac strained his mind to connect to the wound instead, trying to impose his will upon it. It actually worked, and the wound kept getting worse instead of closing itself.

This was a method he had devised after discussing the Dao with his sister. He had already come to terms with the fact that his control over the Dao was pretty bad, and he probably wasn’t going to form any Dao Arrays like those Catheya described anytime soon. But he had also realized that there were more ways to make the most of your mental energy than just using fine control.

Kenzie had told him of the various ways she used her Dao infusion when fighting. Jeeves had taught her various ways that she could maximize the efficiency of her Cosmic Energy and Dao, doing as much damage as possible for as low a cost as possible. For example, when she shot the fireballs that seemed to bounce from head to head between her targets, it wasn’t the skill’s work.

Her skill was just a normal fireball, as basic as they came, but it changed with the help of her Seed of Tinder. It only managed to bounce around like that because she controlled her Seed of Tinder to move toward the next target from a distance, and the skill kind of just followed along if she controlled things just right.

Zac never used the Dao like that when it came to [Chop] for example. He just crammed a bunch of Mental Energy into the fractal edge before he launched it at his enemies. But he understood now that he didn’t actually need to disconnect his soul from the strike immediately, though it did free up his concentration for other things.

That was what he was doing now with the strike against the boar. He was trying to use the corrosive elements of the Fragment of the Coffin to worsen the condition of the beast, turning a non-lethal strike lethal. He urged his mental energies festering in the wound to spread toward its heart, to enter the bloodstream, to fight off the natural resistance of the animal. Anything that could kill it.

But he suddenly felt a pang in his mind, and the connection was broken. It was the natural resistance of an evolved being that booted the foreign intruder, and Zac knew that the wound would start to close if he didn’t do anything.

The attempt was a failure, but Zac still didn’t feel disappointed.

He had managed to hold the connection longer than his last attempt, and at a greater distance as well. He was quickly understanding that it wasn’t really a matter of control or skill, but it was more akin to learning to use a limb you didn’t know you had. A bit more and he would get there.

Then again, Zac understood that maintaining the Dao inside his enemy was only part of the requirements to complete the quest for [Blighted Cut]. There was also the issue of causing enough damage, which was as much an issue of understanding his Dao and his target as it was about maintaining its effectiveness.

His first attempt had simply been to keep the wound festering as long as possible in hopes that the beast would succumb that way. However, he quickly learned that maintaining a status quo wasn’t enough, and it was a losing battle. The mental energy infused into his strike was only so strong, and it would be slowly whittled down by the natural defenses of his target.

So he couldn’t just run out the clock, but he needed to proactively push his skill forward. This was where his own limitations came in, as he simply wasn’t able to turn the Dao into fine strands that burrowed toward his intended targets like some sort of designer poison. He could only push it in the general direction, just like he pushed the massive clouds of energy forward during his Dao Discourse.

But Zac was surprised how big an impact this simple action had. The previously shallow cut had quickly turned into serious festering wounds that would ail the beasts even after his mental energy had been routed.

The boar roared in pain and anger as it charged Zac once more, but a chain shot out from his back and punched a large hole in its forehead. There was not much point in practicing at the same target over and over, as the beasts quickly learned to resist his attempts.

But that was fine as there was no lack of beasts in the enormous forest, and Zac guessed that hundreds broke through to E-Grade every day right now. With the cultists gone and the defensive towers destroyed, the only threat to the beasts was the flock of birds from the mountains.