Chapter 170 (1/2)
Warning! Your Soul Skill has become unstable! If you continue to feed it, the effects will worsen. Calculating effects….
Error, unrecognized Soul Skill. Adjusting Parameters….
Expanding Search…
Isolating comparable Soul Skills…
Match found! Adjusting Parameters…. Calculating Effects…
Warning, death may result from the usage of an unapproved Soul Skill. Consult with a Village spirit for further assistance.
While the notifications appeared before Randidly, the pain in his chest continued to worsen. Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and rode through the pain, refusing to fight against it, but also refusing to lose consciousness. He just let the experience flow through him.
He did this because he could see what was occurring within him, and was worried that cracking down too forcefully would worsen the situation. In his image of what was occurring with his Soul Skill, the constant rotation of grass, rot, and heat burning it all to ash had produced a thick layer of those small, emerald crystals, which now filled the soil. At the moment, those crystals were glowing, emitting a strange green light, seeming furiously hungering for something.
That power they emitted excited the forces of rot and ash, causing them to rotate faster, almost attempting to give those green crystals what they wanted. As they rotated faster, a powerful suction force was created, drawing nearby items in Randidly’s consciousness towards the Soul Skill. Fortunately, his actual skills seemed to be immune to the strange happening. Randidly looked wildly around, inside himself, but both the small golden pellet he had gotten from the lonesome spear style, and that strange, murderous death energy were completely still; locked in place by familiar, tiny gold chains.
Randidly expression turned grim. Someone was forcing him a certain direction. He wasn’t quite sure exactly was, but he abruptly regretted choosing the Rain Path. Because if they were trying to get him to do something very specific…
Because if they were trying to strong arm him down a path that he didn’t feel was of his own choosing...
Well, Randidly wouldn’t be able to help himself. After all, he did not negotiate with terrorists. His stubbornness wouldn’t let him.
But for now he could only stand still and bite his lip to keep himself from screaming. This was an entirely different sort of pain than Shal’s tortures, one that stemmed from the fact that the two forces that made his Soul Skill were rotating so fast that it was threatening to tear him apart from the inside out. They pulled and pulled an pulled, and the suction grew and grew…
But nothing was shaken free. Randidly’s consciousness was relatively clean. So after a time, the suction passed, the energy and light faded from those emerald shards. The forces of rot and ash slowed in their rotation, until they returned to something like their normal speed. Sighing, Randidly relaxed slightly.
Whoever had caused this… well, he kept his face carefully casual in the aftermath, in case that individual could spy on him. After all, he had felt those hands within his body. If those hands were related to the golden chains that had forced him to the reward for the Carnage path… and had caused the reward to turn into a strange energy that currently hovered within him…
It would lead him somewhere. And with gleaming eyes, Randidly hoped that at the end of the road, that individual was ready to play hardball, because he wouldn’t hold back. He would break their plans and burn their carefully prepared path to the ground.
But he needed to let that burning resentment go, and carefully added the remaining 14 PP to the path. There was some activity, as the emerald shards seemed to pulse slightly, but it didn’t set off a chain reaction, which relieved Randidly. At least for now, he wouldn’t have to experience that mental anguish again.
After adding all of the PP, he relished in the fact that Randidly had gained 1128 Skill Levels in his time in the Prison. It had been two years, so any less than that might be embarrassing, but it meant that he experienced a huge amount of progress, both in terms of skill levels and stats. Most of that was in his combat oriented Skills, but he also had a large amount of improvement in the passives, as well.
Randidly looked over his status screen, pleased.
Randidly Ghosthound
Class: ---
Level: N/A
Health(/R per hour): 556/1307 [+8] (470 [+12])
Mana(/R per hour): 12/1439 (130.75)
Stam(/R per min): 601/1450 (201 [+4])
Vit: 137 [+4]
End: 66
Str: 105 [+12]
Agi: 126 [+12]
Perception: 100