Chapter 73: Lull?

Derek let himself fall to the ground, landing lightly on the indescribable gore covering the rocky ground as far as the eye could see.

He stayed like that for a couple of seconds until his brain caught up and realized he wasn’t about to eat pavement, then dropped into a relaxed stance and carefully walked over to where Ye-in was standing.

“We’re all okay, right?” Atticus’ voice rang out behind them, followed by a hand landing on Derek’s shoulder as the pilot stepped between them.

For a brief moment, Derek was about to pull away; there should have been no way for Atticus to avoid getting absolutely filthy with his fighting style, but there wasn’t a speck of dirt, blood, or viscera on him.

In fact, glancing back with his [Aura], it seemed as though the mess on the ground had receded around every place the other man’s feet had landed.

Apparently, Atticus is only bad at utility magic when it comes to chores. Derek sighed internally.

Out loud, he simply shrugged.

“Mana’s a little low, and I had to take a couple of potions.”

“Good to go,” Ye-in said with a lot more certainty than he’d been able to muster. Though the loud clunk of her heavy shield dropping to the ground and the following sigh of relief partially gave lie to that.

“Help me with these!”

The breathless command came from Mimi, who was coming out of the airlock, staggering under the weight of a pair of turrets that were each larger than her and had to outmass her by at least an order of magnitude, barely kept in place by spatial warping that at least tried to keep them in line with her center of gravity.

Though considering how she was already wobbling, Derek was fairly sure there’d be no end of dents in the walls to hammer out everywhere she’d passed through.

Atticus was the first to reach her, only to find himself lying underneath the gun he’d tried to take off her hands less than a second later. Though the wheezed “I’m good” along with the thumbs-up he gave them cut off any concern at the knees.

Unfortunately, without the other turret to counterbalance the one she was still holding, Mimi wasn’t in much better of a situation, forcing Ye-in to divert to catch it, leaving Derek to go rescue Atticus.

“So, what are these?” he asked, when the turrets were planted on a tall rock overlooking the crash site. They were obviously energy weapons, but there was far too much armor laid over top to get the kind of good look at the internals he’d need to deduce more.

“Atmosphere-optimized lasers with protective enchantments on the muzzle,” Mimi explained.

“Perfect,” Derek replied with a grin. Even optimized for use in an air-filled area, they’d still diffuse far more quickly than in outer space, but they should reach the horizon with relative ease, and that was all they really needed at the moment. And the enchantments would prevent the superheated air created by the laser’s passage from melting the muzzle, which was a serious risk with the level of power they were throwing around.

Of course, using weaker settings was entirely out of the question.

He took a long moment to think, running a few quick calculations, then decided that this time, he had the time to buy [Skills].

The first was one that would have entirely trivialized the swarm they’d just brought down, had he had any weapons to use it on. Now though … well, it should still have some niche benefits.

Fractal Beams (legendary)

Energy weapons are a staple of warfare in space for a reason. As such, most people have ways to protect themselves from such avenues of attack, most of which effectively boil down to “make the energy bounce away to somewhere you don’t care about getting wrecked.”

Even if someone has this Skill, that defense works if there’s just one target they want gone. But the moment there are more than one … well, that’s where Fractal Beams can really ruin their day by taking any re/deflected energy and reconstituting it into a solid beam, and guiding it into a new target, with the maximum deflection angle being one hundred and seventy-nine degrees.

Multiple secondary targets can be set prior to firing, as can targetting priorities; however, a description or “type” can also be set as a valid target.

Cost: 50 mana per refraction

It was mostly a boost for point defense: the first time a laser hit an enemy missile, it’d chain throughout the entire salvo until it ran out of energy or he ran out of mana, but it’d also make one hell of a mess of enemy formations.

All those defenses dedicated to disrupting or deflecting energy weapons would simply end up feeding this [Skill], with him being able to take all the energy blocked from doing damage instead getting thrown at another enemy vessel, even the ultra relativistic electron beam running the length of the Dragonfly being able to bring one hundred percent of its power to bear, albeit across a formation, rather than one ship.

Unless … unless he somehow managed to get two ships so close to each other that the fact that the beam couldn’t be deflected right back didn’t matter, and he just kept it pinging between just two enemies.

Which should actually be pretty doable in the current situation.

On to [Skill] number two.

Energy Screen (legendary)

Ironically, one of the most persistent tropes in Science Fiction was invented purely as a matter of convenience, a way for the ships to take hits without the filmmakers having to muss up the expensive models used for exterior shots prior to computer-generated images … but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to play with shields in real life, right?

The Energy Screen is a forcefield that can easily be anchored to a discrete object such as a person or starship, perfectly keeping out harmful objects and energies while allowing regular light, messages, and non-hostile small craft to easily penetrate. Taking hits will wear down the field, while the chance of spot failures will skyrocket the weaker the shield is.

If the screen cannot be fully empowered to cover an entire starship, it can be initialized at a lesser cost and then fully fueled over time.

Cost: 100 for a personal shield, minimum .1 mana per square meter to initialize starship shield, 20 per square meter to fully energize

Basically, it was the real-world equivalent of the shield that had become a staple of classic sci-fi, for a very simple reason: pre-computer graphics involved impossibly detailed models for exterior shots, and having shields meant the ship could take hits without those very same models having to be mussed up to simulate damage.

Though despite the fact that it could be used on him, it was still primarily meant for use on the ship. Not to mention that both his mana supply and regeneration were presently shot due to the battle and potion use during it, so he’d have to play the delay game if he wanted to get much use out of this acquisition.

Danger Radar (legendary)

Space is big, and while it’s almost entirely empty of everything, including threats, the latter do exist, and, despite the vast distances involved, can often seem to come out of nowhere. Especially when it jumps ahead of the light announcing its arrival, aka, the Picard Maneuver.

But getting blasted apart without even the chance to resist is the boring way out.

And that’s exactly what this Skill buys its wielder. The opportunity to react. It does not guarantee the chance to win, but any attack that comes “out of nowhere,” irrespective of whether “nowhere” is a blind spot or a simple surprise, will carry enough forewarning for at least some response to occur.

It does not, however, trigger once the user is already in the middle of combat, unless the new threat is entirely separate from the current issue.

This Skill triggers with threats to the user, their ship, and their current crew.

“Sucker-punch immunity” would probably have been a more descriptive name.

Which was incredibly valuable in its own right, albeit heavily cheapened in the current situation, where he was more than aware of the approaching danger.

And now … Derek began to pace, thinking, [Aura] whipping back and forth across his surroundings in a manner more reminiscent of an irate cat’s tail than the careful scan he was attempting to conduct.

It still told him things, though.

For example, the ground was slippery as hell, and it was a miracle no one had slipped yet.

Weeeeeell … Atticus had, but that had been a separate set of issues. Otherwise, the ability to deal with low-friction surfaces was one of the more fundamental requirements for a speed-based build, something their pilot was, at least in part, going for.

Meanwhile, Ye-in’s starter Class, [Martialist], likewise had something for that.

And Derek himself seemed to be somewhat capable in this arena, an unexpected side benefit of [Shapeshifter’s Acrobatics], most likely.

“Mimi, you should probably stay near the ship, if you can,” he declared. “How many more turrets can you make, and how quickly?”

“I have the parts for twelve, and the raw materials for forty, but you won’t get any until after the first few guests have arrived.”

Derek glanced over at Atticus and Ye-in. There were at least a dozen more monsters incoming, and these wouldn’t be fodder.

They also didn’t seem to be anywhere near big enough to be Raid Bosses, not that they’d seen any of those on approach either, but these were coming from further out, and they were presently located in the lowest-Level location on the planet. It could only get worse from here on out, unfortunately.

Saying “I have a plan” felt a few (hundred) steps too far, but he did have ideas.

***

A mere ten minutes after the two turrets had been installed and connected to the ship’s reactors, the first monster came into view.

Big, ugly, blob-like, and at least Level 50, if Derek’s ability to analyze his opponents was even remotely accurate. Though the real issue would likely be the aura of decay that clung to it, visibly corroding the ground it rolled over.

That seemed to be the core of its menace, assuming there wasn’t anything he’d missed while staring at it continuously for ten seconds and trying to suss out its every attribute and, more importantly, weakness.

An almost conceptual rot that cared not one whit for how things should normally decay, it was simply how anything that the creature wanted gone would fall apart. Gone.

What it didn’t have, apparently, was any kind of defensive power beyond its ability to rot away anyone engaging in melee combat along with their weapons. Which would still be a not-insignificant problem. Hence … well, for one, that thing had to go. For another, they did have a plan.

“We’re going with the hedgehogs.”

Czech hedgehogs, to be specific.

An old military “gizmo” meant to counter tanks, attempting to push them aside, would merely result in them getting pushed deeper into whatever ground they were resting upon and being jammed in place.

They also weren’t hard to make, just three metal struts welded together at right angles so that they could stand up, but even if the fabricators weren’t spoken for, they still didn’t have the time to make them the “normal” way.

What they had instead was a bunch of heavy weapons in the armory that had come with the ship, weapons that none of them cared to use, and they had Ye-in. The plan practically wrote itself.

Then again … anyone who assumed that the plan would neatly translate to the real world one hundred percent was one hundred percent guaranteed to wind up disappointed.

Behind him, Ye-in was hefting a sizeable sword that looked like a blacksmith had started making a tower shield, changed his mind halfway through, and been too lazy to properly reshape it.

Then, she threw it, a pulse of mana and a flash of red light hurling the weapon a good fifty meters before it clattered onto the ground, already transformed into an anti-tank hedgehog whose edges gleamed silver, were sharp as razors, and had been reinforced by her [Skills] to avoid being crushed the instant the incoming creature before it had the chance to do damage.

Derek found himself beginning to pace, then forced himself to stop where he was and bloody well stay there.

However transient being so limited in terms of mana might be, it was still doing a damn good job of driving him up the wall.

There were ways to start increasing his natural regeneration, locked behind certain Raid Bosses, and he was even at a point where he could start to work towards them … but those things were not something they could fight with just the four of them. It’d be near the top of his priority list when they got back to civilized space, though.

Aaaaaaannd he’d let himself fall into daydreaming. In this situation. With the monster right. The hell. There. Even if it was moving at speeds that made molasses look like hypersonic missiles by comparison.

Only one thing to do: stand here and lure the creature over the hedgehogs.

“MOVE, YOU LARDASS!”

It took Derek a long moment to realize it hadn’t been him who’d yelled that. Apparently, Atticus shared his feelings on the creature.

And the monster clearly didn’t give a shit what they thought; it simply continued on at its glacial pace. How was that monster ever even supposed to be a threat to whoever summoned it? If it was that slow, unless it was summoned right next to someone, it seemed to be harmless … though it hadn’t shown so much as a single scorchmark from the constant laser fire it had taken since its appearance. Hopefully, this wasn’t an “immortal snail” kind of situation …

Atticus drew a knife out of the empty air and threw it at the faceless, featureless blob-thing, where it splattered across the advancing front of blubber as rust-red goop.

“Please tell me that wasn’t one of your good knives …” Derek asked.

“Nah, I like to think a good one would have held up better.” Atticus shrugged.

It was at this point that the monster had finally reached the hedgehogs and simply started to roll over them, entirely ignoring the obstacle they should have posed. Not great, but also not so off the wall that they hadn’t come up with a contingency.

Had taken all of five seconds. No one even had to say anything. Ye-in used [Ranged Activation] to begin to cast first [Piercing Strike], then [Sundering Strike] on the bladed tops of the hedgehogs.

The process was slow, painfully so, nothing that could be used in normal combat outside of very specific situations, but this definitely counted.

For a good ten seconds, they watched the blob crawl over their errected defenses, a glow slowly building … until it flared to full brightness, the light visible for a mere heartbeat before the monster suddenly dropped a meter, the exact height of the hedgehogs.

And then it just kept crawling on.

Derek felt his jaw drop as he watched it move, hand already raised to start blasting, only to return it to his side as he saw the trail of slimy entrails it was leaving behind.

Well, that was anti-climacti- … Derek spun as [Danger Radar] screeched in his ear, all but physically picking him up and turning him around to face the newcomer.

It was barely more than a shadow, flashing towards his face, claws that seemed to scrape across his eyeballs the instant he looked at them, flickering from place to place, not even seeming to have a fixed position on a body that seemed to only tangentially share his reality ….

Derek triggered [Predator’s Force] as he glared at the creature, the psychic attack taking the force of every Aspect he held and smashing it straight into the creature’s mind as he sidestepped.

He wasn’t quite rewarded with his would-be assassin bellyflopping against the rock; instead, it vanished into the stone.

“It’s in the ground!” Derek yelled and jumped into the air, holding himself at the apex of his leap, dangling from one hand while his eyes flickered across the plateau underneath him.

However, before that particular fucker revealed itself, something far larger, some manner of quadrupedal nightmare, unfurled from a seemingly random crack in the ground behind Ye-in. And it was already far too close for him to shout a warning.

The good news was that she did manage to dodge, having somehow dodged it.

The bad … well, it seemed like both her and Atticus, who’d hurried over to help, would be unavailable to support him against the flying twat.

Derek could feel his heart starting to hammer faster as his eyes continued to flick back and forth, his [Aura] likewise sweeping through the ground in a frantic search for the monster.

The clawed shadow burst from the ground behind him yet found itself crossing a line of [Aura], and he twisted to face it, this time locking his feet in position while he threw his hands up, twin [Anima Bolts] racing out to meet the beast.

It twisted to the side and aborted its attack, out of his sight in a flash. He tried to follow, to get a bead on it, only to have to abort that in favor of protecting himself from a slash across his back, transforming his skin into the scales of a Void Dragon and throwing a [Mana Shield] between them. It promptly shattered under the blow, yet slowed the claws enough to leave him none the worse for wear, save for shallow scratches.

And then it was gone again.

He needed to see it to hurt it, and it was far too good at not letting itself be seen.

The next strike at his back was met with a [Phantom Limb], the bones of the conjured dragon wing shattering even as they smacked the creature out of the air, but it wasn’t his bones that broke. None that’d exist beyond the end of the [Skill] activation.

Unfortunately, the strike had also sent him tumbling, forcing Derek to lock his right hand into position to stop the spin, then yanked to send himself hurling higher before fully “perching” there. He wasn’t comfortable on the ground with it being able to hide in the rock.

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Where. The fuck. Is this thing?

Derek entirely missed the next attack until he felt claws pierce the bottom of his foot.

He yerked the limb back, adding the claws of a dragon to his toes and raking it across the top of the creature in a spray of red blood and black ichor.

And then it was gone. Again. Why the hell couldn’t he …

“You cheating bastard!” Derek swore when he realized just what this particular creature’s flavor of bullshit was. He couldn’t look straight at it. Literally. First, catching actual glimpses of the damn thing hurt, but the real issue was that, in essence, his cone of vision had a repulsive effect on the monster, endlessly forcing it to the side, yet never buying him any distance. Anyone unlucky enough to have to face it would only ever be able to see it out of the corners of their eyes, if they saw it at all before they shuffled off this mortal coil.

There was something he had for that, though. The pre-cast spells he’d anchored deep within himself using [Aspect Integration] and the Aspect of the Magebreaker Specter.

The creature’s next attack run was its most successful yet, claws already digging into the skin above his spine when hundreds of [Blink Bolts] suddenly teleported out of their storage space and blew through the monster in a titanic shotgun blast of light and mana.

Many-Angled Assassin (Lv. 39) has been slain. 500 XP gained

And now, the fucker was dead. But he was running out of trump cards. In fact, not counting the mana potions at his side, that had been the only tool of last resort he’d had.

Derek’s sigh of relief was nothing of the sort, more a slow exhale after whose conclusion he’d forgotten he had to inhale.

The creature that had snuck up on Ye-in was dead, hacked into so many people that he could only identify it by the process of elimination. Another was a smoking ruin, lying mere meters from where Mimi had set up the laser turrets.

But more creatures had shown up, too. Enough that any thought of tearing them apart one after another with their power combined instantly fled his mind. The battle had been reduced to a simple paradigm of “find the biggest problem, kill the biggest problem, find the next biggest problem.”

The sizeable turtle-thing that was perhaps thirty seconds from reaching the ship certainly qualified.

Derek hammered an [Anima Bolt] into its eye, which promptly detonated under the impact, the surrounding eye socket beginning to burn and boil and melt under the force of the attack. Only for the creature to withdraw its head into its shell and trundle onward. And he couldn’t rely on it succumbing to the corrosive aftereffects to kill it in time.

A second [Anima Bolt] splashed off the shell, however, leaving him with a problem.

Fire and plasma washed out from underneath the creature as he cast [Spatial Detonation], the monster so low to the ground that most of the force should have impacted its body directly.

Should. Have.

Derek tried again, this time detonating the ground under its front feet, the monster briefly finding itself stuck in the resultant hole before it began to scrabble its way out, even with him casting a gravity-enhancing spell upon it.

This wasn’t working. The force of the explosions wasn’t hitting right; they were simply washing past the monster. It was as if something had taken the concept of “path of least resistance,” and forced it upon everything Derek threw at the thing. He’d never land a decent shot, unless …

Okay, this is nuts, and if it doesn’t work, the ship’s gone, and we’re dead. Why the hell not try it?

He focused for a brief moment, warping space to fold the ground upwards and around the creature, the magic immediately beginning to wear away beneath the power of the creature, but not before he triggered [Spatial Detonation], pouring the spell into the cage still wrapped around the beast.

For all that the magic had failed the first time he’d tried it, there was a fundamental, foundational difference between the ground underfoot exploding, and a foe being literally wrapped what effectively amounted to a bomb, and that bomb then being wrapped in a massive layer of stone he deliberately left unaffected, simply twisting the geometry of existence to ensure the blastwave had an entire mesa’s worth of rock to bounce it back onto the intended target.

To not put too fine a point on it, it was the difference between being alive and “living on” as a cloud of individual atoms scattered to the winds.

And the little “ding” that confirmed the kill for him was extra sweet.

For all of two seconds.

Then the hollowness of a functionally empty mana pool hit him.

Derek twisted the cap off the bottle of mana jellies, then threw a handful of them into his mouth and bit down, nearly gagging as the explosion of potion all but forced itself down his throat.

Too much, too fast … and yet not nearly enough.

He glared at the mana pool section of his status sheet, which was showing it as being barely halfway full.

Crap.

A second handful flew into his mouth, though he made sure to only bite on them one at a time, rather than internally waterboarding himself again by crushing all of them.

And then the last ones in the bottle went down his gullet too, finally leaving him with his mana at full. But that’d be all he’d get for the entirety of the battle.

The first thing he saw as he was searching for a new target was a writhing ball of tentacles that only partially seemed to exist in reality, bearing down on Mimi. Who simply shrugged, and simply threw the thing that just so happened to be in her hand straight at its face.

In the end, there was only one person who wasn’t surprised when the roll of duct tape smacked into the monster’s “nose” with a resounding thwack that made it rear back in shock seemed to be Mimi herself, who’d already turned back to deal with the turret while the monster was doing a damn fine job entangling itself in the plastic strips that should have not been anywhere near that effective …

Either that [Skill] of hers, the one that let her fix anything and everything, with duct tape included, fixing reality itself … or [Mythos of Duct Tape] had gotten one hell of a threshold bonus.

Honestly, the answer didn’t really matter at that moment. Mimi was safe, the monster was burning away underneath the concentrated fury of the laser turrets, and Derek could focus on finding his own next target.

He decided to cast a repeat of the previous combo, warping the ground up and around the creature and casting [Spatial Detonation] onto the innermost layer of stone. Derek even knew what he’d call that if he ever managed to combine both into a single spell. [Spatial Collapse].

It was effective as hell, but also expensive. One quick glance at his mana pool later, and his rapier dropped into his hand from his spatial ring. No way in hell would he be able to finish this battle with magic alone.

And then, for the second time in the battle, the only thing that saved him from losing his head was [Danger Radar].

He hurled himself forward, grabbing space and yanking to accelerate himself further, making a second grab to stop his momentum once he’d crossed almost fifty meters. His arm muscles burned as his entire body weight pulled on them, yet he held fast, rotating around the little nodule of spacetime he’d dug his fingers into and flinging himself straight back at the creature.

Even the ball of barely present eldritch limbs seemed shocked that he was rocketing back at it.

Also, would it be able to dodge an [Anima Bolt] at this distance and closing speed?

He hurled the spell at the creature, then yanked himself over the path of the incoming creature as the beam of incredibly destructive energy smashed through its target.

No, not smashed … flew. Through. The goddamn creature, completely and utterly harmlessy.

Oh. This was going to be that kind of fight.

A lightning bolt did the same, the streak of plasma moving through a particularly indistinct patch of monster, leaving Derek forced to jump over an insectile limb that nearly took off one of his legs.

His rapier stabbed down, piercing clean through his opponent’s “weapon.” Too clean. No resistance, no blood, no indication that he’d actually hit the damn thing.

The moment of confusion that followed might be brief, but it was too long nonetheless.

A bony limb smacked into his hand, crushing his thumb and flinging his arm back, the rapier going flying.

And the monster was already lunging at his face …

With mere fractions of a second to act, Derek lashed out at the creature while transforming his entire right arm into the one thing that should be able to hurt the creature, entirely uncaring of whatever fuckery the monster had for defenses.

And such, it was not frail human phalanges that broke against the abomination’s flesh, but the claws of the Abnormal Hunter that sank home with a nauseatingly wet “slorp,” stopping it dead, limbs frozen in apparent shock even when they were on the verge of hammering into him from every possible angle.

It wasn’t entirely clear who was more surprised, him or it, but after a timespan so infinitesimal that Derek half-felt he’d imagined it, the creature surged up his arm and towards his torso.

He … well, he cast [Anima Bolt] from what used to be his fingers, now even deeper within its body.

The beast promptly exploded, vanishing in an instant, all but deleted from reality.

And the same went for everything below his elbow.

He stared at the stump for a long moment, crackling energy writhing back and forth like an unheld garden hose, yet the pain seemed not to be forthcoming, beyond a general awareness of “you’re missing part of your arm, dumbass,” which seemed to be more academic than anything else.

Also, he didn’t seem to be bleeding out …

Derek let the transformation travel higher up his arm, the resultant limb twitching back and forth under his control, lengthening into something more whiplike than anything else.

Okay, this idea is brilliant. Unbelievably stupid, but brilliant.

Finding himself another creature that likewise seemed to only partially exist in reality, one of only three opponents left in the field, he whipped his arm forward and made it sink into the creature, then triggered [Anima Bolt].

Another chunk of his “arm” went with it, but the creature promptly died.

Yet that moment of triumph wound up being short-lived as Derek dropped to the ground, exhaustion forcing him to his knees, casting the [Skill] from physical stamina taken far more from him than he’d expected. It was as though something had taken an axe to his sternum, then scraped every scrap of energy he still held out of his very bones, rivers of sweat running down his body.

Damn, he was going to have to literally pour it out of his boots later, wasn’t he … At least there were only two creatures left.

Ding.

Okay, one left.

He forced himself back to his feet, then looked around to find the final monster. Honestly, the task didn’t turn out to be very hard, considering it was presently located in the middle of an incandescent clouds of energy that had Ye-in bouncing through it, powerful strikes followed by sudden escape and redirection of her momentum to feed straight back into the next attack.

[Forceful Nebula] was a [Skill] he knew to be of the cooldown variety; clearly, she wasn’t holding anything back either.

Then, a hail of throwing arrows empowered by several [Skills] tore the monster apart, and just like that, the fight was over.

Derek thought about heading over to her, yet when he started, he found himself unable to take even a single step without staggering and thought better of it. Cursing in his mind because he no longer had the spare breath for it, he instead stumbled his way over to the Dragonfly.

One step after another, the actual distance left to cross actively banished from his mind in favor of just trying to maintain his progress.

“Are you ...” Mimi cut herself off with a gasp, freezing where she stood, barely within view.

“Doesn’t hurt. Yet.” Derek tried to make a dismissive gesture with his right hand, but all that wound up happening was the stump wrapped in eldritch light wiggling back and forth a little.

“You …” she began, but he interrupted her. “Infirmary, I know.”

With that, he entered the ship. The inside was a bit messy, material strewn all over the place, but admittedly much less so than he’d feared. A bag of flour had exploded in the kitchen, and the mess had spread; several tools lay in the corridor, though those were more likely from where Mimi had built the turrets rather than having been outright hurled there, judging by the lack of dents in the surrounding walls.

All told, most of the damage had been contained to the exterior.

The infirmary, meanwhile, was almost pristine. Probably down to the fact that they didn’t use it much.

Well, that was over now … he flopped onto one of the beds, which instantly started beeping with concern, the wallscreen displaying his silhouette with various injuries highlighted. It was mostly the arm, though.

Okay, do I even have enough mana … yep. Barely …

Then, finally, Derek returned his body to “normal,” the arm instantly alight with pain, everything below where it now ended somehow burning despite no longer being there, the blinding pain not even letting him curse as he clutched the stump to his chest, jaw clenched, only an agonized hiss escaping between his lips.

He barely managed to trigger [Lifesurge], the stump of his arm gushing blood, almost immediately sealing over with a fresh layer of skin before suddenly ballooning outwards, re-adding a good three centimeters to its length even as the [Skill] forced his mouth open as it restored the lower lip he had neither realized he’d gotten between his teeth, nor that he’d bitten straight through.

“Fuck,” he breathed, his voice hoarse for some reason, crimson droplets spraying from his mouth. Derek spat, blood splattering the dusty ground, then drew a bottle of water from his storage, took a swig, swished it around his mouth for a couple of seconds, then spat again, uncaring of the mess he’d have to clean up.

“Fuck!” he repeated, more loudly this time. That “trick,” as useful as it had been, would notbe repeated. Should not … but he was sadly quite aware of the fact that that choice wasn’t entirely within his control.

Something wet ran out of the corner of his mouth and down his neck before he could bring himself to wipe it away. Whatever it may be, blood, spit, gore he’d unwittingly swallowed … probably blood, though.

He sat up and decided to start digging through the medical supplies.

After a while, Derek found what he was looking for: a temporary prosthetic for regenerators. Basically, you could slap it onto the stump, and it would function in the original’s stead while the limb regrew, expanding and transforming more into a piece of armor than an actual prosthetic as the bone and tissue regrew along the inside.

It had neither the durability nor the fidelity to act as a true replacement, especially not in combat, but it would leave him much less of an invalid than simply waiting.

In theory, installing it should have been simple; all he had to do was pick it up and stick it on … yet trying to wrangle the floppy twenty-kilogram hunk of metal that always seemed to always bend in a way that was the exact opposite of what he wanted with his non-dominant hand was a hell of a lot harder than expected.

Derek wasn’t entirely sure how long he was at it, though it had undoubtedly taken up a sufficiently long span of time to exhaust his arsenal of profanity, when he felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped to his feet in surprise, launching the prosthetic across the room before Ye-in caught it.

“Want some help?”

“Yes, please,” Derek replied, holding out the stump, which she promptly slid the prosthetic on, the metal ring clamping down tightly on his arm before locking in properly, raw pressure replaced by cool magic before the previously missing “flesh” began to tingle, fingers starting to twitch as Derek tried to move them.

“So, what did we learn?”

Derek was aware that the answer she was fishing for was “ask for help if you need it,” so he wasn’t going to give it to her, mostly because, in his mind, he was pretty good at doing so.

“Next time, don’t try that with my dominant hand?” he asked.

Ye-in looked like she wanted to smack him for a long moment before deflating with a sigh. “Also true.”

She paused, looking him up and down, then sighed. “You look like hell.”

“I know.”

“Go get some sleep. The alarms are going to wake you if something happens,” she advised.

He nodded mutely, then carefully rose to his feet and began the long walk to his quarters. It was only thirty meters, yet it felt like it was miles and miles away.

His tongue hurt. His mouth tasted of metal. The emergency prosthetic hung heavy at his side, its fingers randomly twitching as he tried to get proper control of it. And with his every step, his boots squelched wetly from all the sweat that had pooled within.

Yet … yet there was an undeniable joy to his march. A satisfaction unlike anything he’d ever felt. The high of victory stretching his mouth into a rictus grin.

Well, it was either that, or one of those scratches had given him magical tetanus … probably victory, though.

As that thought passed through his mind, he stumbled into his quarters and dropped heavily into his chair. Just one more thing to do …

Derek once more applied the XP he’d earned, netting himself a further three Levels, for a current one of 45. Twenty-five stat points went into Strength, bringing that up to an even hundred, the remaining five into Agility, just for that little boost to speed that might be essential, leaving him with eleven more [Skill] points to spend. And what better than the other Central [Skill] of his current [Class]?

Vessel of Legend (legendary)

What is a legend?

The dictionary says it is an old story passed down without verification, a nugget of truth likely buried somewhere deep, deep down, but not guaranteed.

This Skill does not provide you with a legend. But it does ensure that your ship will be worthy of starring in one.

For starters, this Skill binds your ship to you, rendering its use subject to your will and allowing you to find it anywhere in the universe.

Furthermore, it will lend its magical weight as well, allowing it to fuel more enchantments than ambient mana would ordinarily allow for, with said magical weight increasing with the mass of your achievements.

Finally, its metaphysical weight is increased to whatever is most beneficial for it, as far as all Skills, both beneficial and hostile, are concerned.

Note that, while the legend is partially attached to the name of the vessel and can theoretically be transfered to another of the same name, assuming the captain is the same, this is not guaranteed to work one hundred percent of the time. Things such as the original bearer being destroyed in a way worthy of song, or the successor being built from the scrap of the original, increase this likelihood.

However, upgrading the ship, even if significant changes are made, will not outright remove the accumulated enhancements.

All sorts of upgrades based on the absurd stunts he pulled, though the one that most drew Derek in was the ability to add more enchantments. Especially once he learned to make ship-quality ones himself.

Limited ambient mana was the main bottleneck for magical starship enhancement, and the ability to ignore that, even partially, could be leveraged into punching even further outside their weight class than the Dragonfly’s quality already allowed them to.

There was, admittedly, another [Skill] that Derek desperately wanted, but [Starship Aspect] would not help in the slightest in his current situation. The power to get Aspects for beating starships could hardly work when all he was putting six feet under were eldritch creatures.

Though after [Vessel of Legend], he also had three more things to go over, namely, [Skills] that had hit thresholds.

Anima Bolt (legendary, Level 10)

A magical energy bolt that gains new attributes and offensive power with each Aspect slotted. It can also be cast with life force.

…

When using this Skill, the user may choose to also count Aspects that were built upon, rather than just the ones presently visible on the status sheet.

Cost: 100 - 2,600 mana(10 per Aspect)/life force

Well. Two things to take away here.

First, that spell would

Second … he really should have read the upgrades before applying his Stat points, ‘cause a full-power bolt would actually require more mana than he presently possessed.

Aspect Hunter (legendary, Level 10)

This Skill increases Aspect drop rate and grants extra stat points for each time an Aspect Slot is used for the first time.

…

The drop rate increase goes from fourfold to eightfold.

Hot damn. That’d seriously cut down on the farming required for getting any Aspect he wanted… and give him a metric shit-ton of trade goods.

Then again, there was an entire battlefield out there which was now going to contain even more loot he couldn’t bear to leave behind. Derek foresaw a lot of filth and long showers in the foreseeable future.

Aspect Integration (legendary, Level 11)

Transform parts of your body into those of monsters whose Aspects you bear.

…

Furthermore, you may now set conditions upon which this Skill will automatically trigger certain transformations.

Nice.

The automatic triggers turned out to be pretty simple to set up, and what to pick was pretty easy to select.

Making his blood turn into that of the hydra in situations where he was injured, and it would only land on someone he wanted dead.

Ensuring that his senses would be protected from sensory overload by simply preparing a transformation into something that could handle a given input was likewise basic.

And it really was a no-brainer to force an automatic transformation to protect him from environmental hazards or elemental attacks if he had something that would do the trick.

Also, he’d recently learned that the Abnormal Hunter did not bleed, so transforming the end of any major blood vessels that got severed into that seemed like an at least decent idea.

There were other tricks to be discovered in the future, but for now … for now he’d have to be satisfied with the low-hanging fruit. And his bed.

Name: Derek Ambrosius Thoma

Class: Stellar Captain

Species: High Human

Level: 34 -> 45

XP: 7,011/12,900

Health Status: Exhausted

Mana: 17/2,500

Fortitude 100 -> 110

Perception 100

Strength 75 -> 100

Agility 115 -> 120

Magic Power 215 -> 250

Magic Regeneration 215 -> 250

Free Points: 0 Stat, 1 Skill

Central Skills

Aspect Hunter 9 -> 10

Aspect Integration 8 -> 11

Call of Adventure 3

Vessel of Legend 1

Skills

Lightspeed Learning 12

Skill Fusion 15

Knowledge Conversion 10

Branching Capabilities 4 -> 5

Anima Bolt 3 -> 10

Lifesurge 1 -> 7

Predator’s Force 1

Phantom Limb 2

Flash Forward 1 -> 3

Fractal Beams 1 -> 2

Danger Radar 1

Energy Screen 1

General Skills

Bloodline of the Hellborne Survivor

Stellar Processing 10 -> 13

Spellcasting 2 -> 6 (179 spells known)

Variable Weapon Empowerment 6

Phantom Armor 3 -> 4

Knightly Discipline 1 -> 5

Starship Upkeep 10 -> 13

Scholar of War 7 -> 8

Alcubierre Bubble 12

Eye of the Predator 5 -> 9

Shapeshifter’s Acrobatics 2 -> 6

Superior Arcane Spatial Manipulation 5 -> 6

Enchanting 7 -> 9

Aspect

Aspect Skills

Hydra

Regeneration, Redundant Organs

Poltergeist

Ephemeral Form, Spectral Flight

Least Demon Lord

Grand Hellflame, Moment of Immortality

Lord of Time and Space

True Spatial Warp, Cosmos Soul, True Spatial Affinity, And I Shall Not Be Moved

Caladrius

Healing Light, Inner Light

Fata Morgana

Hologram, Perception Block

Cosmic Leviathan

Charging to Infinity, Cosmic Gaze, Stellar Travel, Omnidimensional Maneuvering

Void Dragon

Wings of the Void, Scales of the Void, Star’s Heart, Infinite Mind

Magebreaker Specter

Internal Grimoire, Spellbreaker

Abnormal Hunter

Flickering Cloak

Yet the current look of his status sheet had him grinning all the way to the embrace of sleep.