NOVEL NEXT B1 | Chapter 61
Ashley
I wake up as I sense a drake beginning to enter my bunker, making me shoot up to my feet from pure instinct alone before turning towards it. Finding the thing sticking its head inside and looking around the incredibly dark cavern. Eventually finding me and letting out a roar.
The sight of the monster makes me grit my teeth before I quickly breathe out a wave of destruction flames straight at the drake. Catching it off guard.
Then I flap my wings, sending several of my sharpened feathers at it. With me following after through the air, with both of my blades drawn.
Just as I expected, after the destruction flames clear up to reveal the drake again now missing quite the number of scales, it swipes its wing from its place perched on my barrier and sends my feathers flying. But it doesn’t manage to block or avoid my blades that I use gravity magic to make heavier the moment they are about to hit its missing scales. Leading to my blades cleaving straight through its unprotected flesh as the drake lets out a roar of pain.
I activate Assimilate without any hesitation, and follow it up with another wave of feathers that pierce into it as the drake falls to the ground.
But it doesn’t die just yet. So I follow it down there before grabbing both blades and driving them straight through its neck. Since I have no idea where its heart is, and its brain is still covered by its skull. Something I doubt I could pierce with my strength.
Then I get the System Messages I’m looking for.
{You have been granted 3 Skill Points for killing a monster within a Unique Domain.}
{You have slain a being while Assimilate is active. You have now unlocked the Skill Tree: Destruction-Touched Drake}
{You have unlocked a new Skill Tree, therefore the root skill of the Skill Tree, Mid-Stage Destruction Mana Manipulation, is now unlocked for your usage.} – [ERROR – Mid-Stage Destruction Mana Manipulation is already unlocked. No skills are unlocked. New skills will now be added and made available to purchase to the preexisting Skill Tree: Destruction-Touched Drake.]
{Congratulations, you have now reached level 44. Your PHY and MEN have increased by 1 point, and your MAG by 2 points. Please choose where you wish your 1 Free Point to be allocated.}
My mind nearly blanks out when I read the System Message about the mana manipulation.
Right. I didn’t actually read the messages that I got from killing the other two drakes.
Was a little busy running for my life.
Or rather, flying for my life.
I actually feel rather relieved about not having to hide my skill anymore. It makes things so much easier.
On that note, how is everyone outside of the Domain taking my reveal, anyways?
“Not well,” Chaos answers right away, the guy practically watching my every move in here like an overprotective father. Which I guess he kind of is now. Sorta. “And I am more than just ‘sort of’ your ‘overprotective father’, I am! Do you know how shocked I was when I learned you’d ended up in this Unique Domain?! I lost control and nearly destroyed a galaxy!”
I blink at that before glancing upwards at the ceiling of the cavern as if Chaos were there.
You what?
“Oh, uh, forget I said that,” he says, dismissing his previous words as I struggle to not raise a brow. “The universe is split, but over half of the people are either wishing to ally with you or deciding to ignore you entirely.”
Wait a second, go back to what you said before. You lost control and nearly destroyed a what?
“Right, so let’s move on from the whole ‘lost control’ part, shall we?” Chaos says, making me blink for a second as I realize he’s worried about me realizing he lost control. Not about the ‘nearly destroying a galaxy’ thing. “Why would I care about a random galaxy?”
I just kinda stare at the ceiling for a few seconds, my attention locked on that tone of utter confusion in his voice. Like he has no idea why there would be anything wrong with wiping out a galaxy and everyone in it.
Right. Primordial of Chaos.
Almost forgot about a bunch of the things he did in the past.
“Why should I care about a bunch of random mortals?” he asks, once again sounding confused.
I guess you have a point. Although killing them yourself is a bit… brutal. Even if unintentional.
Well, whatever.
That’s your life, not mine.
“Right, so back to what I was saying before,” Chaos says, clearly moving on from the topic. “Most of them won’t be a problem, and a minority of them will likely target you but only inside of Official System Events. So you don’t have to worry much about them.”
That’s good.
“As for the last tiny minority that are actually plotting to kill you if you make it out of the Unique Domain alive?” Chaos continues, sending a slight chill down my spine from his tone. “Don’t worry about them either. They seem to believe that I don’t care about you. Likely because of my past of not caring about anyone. So I’ll go ahead and play with them a bit.”
Another chill runs down my spine at that, but I just nod my head without saying a word.
Let’s just move on from that.
I turn my head to look at the entrance of my little cavern, which was damaged a little bit by our battle. So I go ahead and repair it with new barriers. A process that ends up being a little bit more complicated than the process of making said barriers in the first place. Of making the barricade.
Then I go ahead and begin preparing to fly out of my cavern to hunt a bit, only to pause when my stomach growls. Hungry for food.
I pause, glance outside of the cavern once more, then turn my head towards the drake’s corpse.
Well, guess I’m eating drake today.
I let out a light groan as I fly up to the entrance of my cavern, not exactly happy about my dinner. A dinner of burnt and incredibly tough drake flesh. Flesh that made me gag from eating it.
But my body can consume anything perfectly fine thanks to that skill meant for zombies, so it’s fine.
Fine.
Right. Totally fine.
“You should learn to cook,” Chaos comments.
Shut up.
“Shutting up,” Chaos comments again, sounding amused this time.
I take a deep breath while trying to wipe the memory of my meal out of my mind. Then I focus on the surroundings of the cavern, where no monsters are within sight. Strictly because the king just had another fit.
Alright. The monsters with the lowest level here are the ants, followed by the lizardmen and spiders. Then the kobolds. With the dracoraptors and drakes at the top of the food chain.
“This is likely the outskirts of the Unique Domain, so the monsters will grow in level as they get closer to the center,” Chaos explains, surprising me with facts I wish I didn’t know now. “All Unique Monsters spawn at the highest level of whatever Class they are in. With the monsters of the Unique Domain gradually growing stronger to around the same level by the time you get close to the UM.”
Right. So these are the small-fry of this place.
Gotcha.
Anyways, since I allocated my free point while eating, I go ahead and search for a spider nest. Because those seem to be the easiest for me to handle.
There are fewer of them than the ants, and they’re still a relatively low level. Not to mention that their silk may be flammable, and I haven’t managed to kill any of them yet. So I don’t have their Skill Tree.
And I just want a skill from them.
It would help if I got the Skill Trees of every monster in the area before I moved on. Just to help prepare me for the higher leveled monsters.
Especially since I’m not hiding Assimilate anymore.
Although, as I fly through the abandoned skies towards one of the nests, I can’t help but wonder.
Do the people outside know exactly what my skill does?
“They do not,” Chaos says, sounding rather pleased. “All they’re assuming is that you take one skill from your enemies. No one believes you’re taking the entire Skill Tree as they’ve yet to see you use any later skills from the Skill Trees you’ve taken.”
Nice. Some secrecy still remains after all.
“Ashley?” Chaos asks.
What?
“Be careful when you get closer to the UM,” he says, sounding genuinely worried. “Unique Monsters let off a frequency that will cut off our mental connection for a time. So when you get close enough, we won’t be able to talk anymore.”
Okay.
On another note, I wonder how Blake is doing?
“He’s currently fighting to take over a fortress from the kobolds inside,” Chaos casually mentions, almost making me stop flying from the shock. “Do remember that you can spectate other users’ System Events even while inside of one yourself. So long as it’s not an Official System Event you’re in, that is.”
He’s what?!
And… I didn’t know that.