Level 1 Fallen

Diane's body faded from view as the took a running stance, and I quickly applied both Spark Shot and Sand Bolt to my arms, together with the Poisoned Grasp that was already present from earlier. Something that I had thankfully learned while leveling up Myriad Strikes-X so far was the fact that it became easier to enchant at higher levels. Although the backlash still existed, and didn't get any less because of the level increasing, I didn't have to worry about the enchantment failing and needing me to start over.

Instead, I only needed to use a complicated enchantment ritual if I wanted to add custom effects to the enchantment, such as creating shadow wolves instead of clones with Animate Shadow. Maybe, eventually, there would come a time when I would be able to do even that without an incantation or other form of ritual.

Once my enchantments were ready to go, I used Killing Stare on the giant, grabbing its attention. Admittedly… seeing something this tall turning to face me, walking over and lifting a tree to swing down at me… it was a horrific sight. A tree trunk thicker than my body slammed down, forcing me to jump to the side in order to evade.

Thankfully, while the giant was incredibly strong, with the shockwave of the swing alone enough to carry me nearly an extra meter, it was equally slow. The tree that it used as a club cracked under the weight of its swing, and I disappeared from where I landed, appearing on the outstretched arm of the giant.

Lightning and sand shot out of my left palm, while my right hand swept down with my blade, carving into the thick hide of the creature. It let loose a roar of pain, swinging its arm and causing me to fall towards the ground. I tried to correct my posture during the fall, only to see a black foot rushing towards me. Oh, this is going to suck.

The funny thing about Glancing Step-X… I still needed to be standing to use it. If there was nothing for me to step on, the skill wouldn't activate. A fact I learned painfully when I tried to project a platform of ki beneath me to use as a foothold, only for the skill to fail. Then, the platform was shattered by the kick, and I was sent careening over the trees.

As I flew through the air, I caught sight of Diane appearing behind the giant's neck, her daggers slashing into its black hide from behind. It staggered, letting out another roar of pain while trying to swat at her. At that point, I crashed into a tree, unable to see what happened next.

What I did know was that by the time that I emerged from the branches, Diane was sent flying through the air as well. My hand reached out, forming a projected net of ki to catch her. She looked over, giving a small nod before disappearing again.

My gaze focused on the giant, once more using my Killing Stare to grab its attention. It turned towards me, letting out a roar of frustration before marching closer, crushing trees beneath its feet. As it approached, I focused, condensing a layer of projected armor around myself that anchored me to the ground. My left hand continued to fire off more and more electricity and sand, both seeming utterly useless against this enemy. Granted, there was the issue of skill level, but that's what this training was for.

Just like the trees, the giant aimed to bring its foot down upon me, colliding with the armor that I had projected. I could feel the ground beneath my feet cracking, and I thrust my sword up into its exposed foot.

Another howl of pain echoed out as the giant stumbled backwards, before crashing down against the ground. Nearby, I saw Diane appearing, nodding at me while her daggers dripped with blood. Going by the x-shaped mark on its chest, she must of dealt a killing blow while it was distracted with me.

Diane reached down to loot the giant, its entire body glowing and disappearing, turning into a single bone nearly two meters long. Shrugging her shoulders, she picked it up and put it into her inventory. "Let's find somewhere to train the new skills before another one shows up." She said, to which I wholeheartedly agreed. If I had my stronger skills enchanted on my arms, that fight would have been over much more quickly.

The two of us looked around, finding a small cave that the giants wouldn't be able to fit into. There, we began training the skills that we had acquired from Harkenfeld. Most of them. I couldn't train Poisoned Grasp because it only gained experience when it was used on a target. Diane didn't have any form of self-recovery skill that would be able to keep up with the stacking poison, so that skill couldn't be trained for now.

Naturally, Diane was immediately against the idea of training her own Poisoned Grasp skill on me, saying that she could hunt down small animals in the forest outside of the cave. However, I dismissed that notion, pointing out how much time would be wasted finding a suitable target. And then, once that target died from the poison, she would need to find another one.

"Even if the poison levels up enough to kill me faster than I can recover, that's fine." I said in a firm tone, making her stare in confusion. "I trust that you won't steal the loot from my body, and I can get back here almost immediately. As long as Glancing Step-X isn't what drops, or my positive trait, I have nothing to worry about. And if one of those does drop, I can have you loot my body and bring them back to me in the city."

Diane bit her lip, but nodded her head. "Fine… but only until the skill has leveled up enough to be useful at our current level." She said as a compromise, to which I agreed.

Like that, Diane grabbed one of my arms, continually releasing more and more poison into it. Because of her level, her natural Magic stat was high enough that the drain from this basic skill was almost nonexistent, taking her only a few seconds between casts.

Meanwhile, I aimed my other arm at the far corner of the cave, shooting out constant streams of lightning and sand. In order to use Poison Shot, I had to bring my hand up to my mouth, so it would have interrupted my training cycle to include that for the moment.

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With the Duke of All Trades-X and Adrenaline Surge skills active, my body was quite resistant to poisons. For the first half an hour, I didn't even need to activate my healing skill. However, because of how long the duration of the poison was, it continuously stacked the effects.

After that half hour mark, I had to use the healing skill once every ten minutes, then once every five, and after two hours, I was using the skill once every minute as more and more injuries registered on my status. Fevers came as quickly as they went, my arms became itchy and sore, or began to grow discolored before the healing set in.

After three hours, I had to stop my own training, focusing on constantly activating my Internal Recovery-X to keep up with the damage inflicted by the poison. Diane looked at me in worry when I reached this stage. "Should I stop?" She asked, but I shook my head.

"No point in stopping after it's come this far. Keep going. Once I die and respawn in the city, the poison will be out of my system." I told her, and she nodded, redoubling her efforts. She seemed to find a new kind of resolve from my words, as if wanting to accelerate my death to end the pain sooner. While I was thankful for that, it certainly increased the amount of pain in the present, causing me to grit my teeth.

At least this is good training for my healing… I thought to myself, since I was constantly recovering from nearly fatal injuries. This was… definitely not a training plan that I would encourage for others, though.

Finally, the speed of the poison overcame the speed at which I could heal, and I died of heart failure ten minutes later. When I respawned, I immediately activated Ghost-X to avoid being sighted, checking what I had dropped. Both of my bags had dropped, as did the Confuse skill. My brow twitched at that, realizing just how major the drop rate increase was. This was with Diane's level already being far above mine.

Using Glancing Step-X, I rushed back to the cave, where I found Diane standing at the entrance with a grim look on her face. Looking inside, I saw my blackened corpse, the skin starting to already decay. "How high did you level your skill?" I asked, walking over to loot myself and recover the lost items and skills. Though, the act of touching such a thoroughly poisoned corpse led to me receiving a bit of the poison again. Not enough for me to need to heal any time soon, but poison nonetheless.

"Nineteen…" She admitted, causing me to chuckle.

"We'll resume then." I sat down, several meters away from where my corpse had been, as the area itself had been tainted now. Diane looked at me in surprise, wanting to refute before I stared her down. "Now that the poison has been cleared, I can take it. We'll probably get your skill to evolve before I need to heal again."

That caused her to relent, sitting next to me and taking my arm once again. Since I no longer needed to focus on healing myself, I resumed my own training. After all, I had been nearly ready to evolve my own skills, since I had a much faster casting rotation than she did.

Sure enough, I didn't need to heal again before her Poisoned Grasp evolved into Apply Poison, a skill that let her apply a more powerful poison to any item she was touching. Now, she no longer needed to directly grab something, but could instead use it through her weapons.

At about the same time, my Sand Bolt and Spark Shot both reached level twenty. However, I didn't evolve them right away, wanting to take the time to level up all of my other basic skills first. If there was some skill combination that I wasn't aware of, I didn't want to regret later that I might have missed out on them.

While Diane began to train her new shadow skills, I worked on Purify, Clean, and Poisoned Shot. Given Purify's ability to remove contaminants in food, I thought that it might be able to remove poisons after it evolved. Meanwhile, Clean was to try and clean the poisoned stain of both where my body had been and the area where I was firing the Poisoned Shot.

I continued this cycle for several more hours, Diane briefly leaving to hunt us some lunch, and then afterwards told me that she was going to go out and test her newly evolved skills. I nodded my head, signaling that it was fine. While I could get stronger by training in seclusion for the most part, Diane was another matter, not being able to gather skill experience as fast as I did and needing to hunt to gain levels.

Thankfully, she returned in a much better mood, seeming quite pleased with herself nearly an hour later. At that point, I had finished another round of skills, and began working on Create Water. I had already been notified of a possible fusion between Purify and Clean, but was resisting the urge to evolve them until this last skill had been leveled up as well. As for Poisoned Grasp… I'd still need more time to find a target that I could hunt for that one to level up.

Finally, as the sun was starting to set, and Diane had left to procure dinner, Create Water had reached level twenty. At this point, I was no longer creating just a few cups of water with every cast, but rather entire gallons.

Now, with all of the skills that I could level up out of the way, I took a look at my options. Create Water had opened up two more fusion possibilities. It could either be combined with either Poisoned Shot or Spark Shot, while Purify and Clean still showed their fusion option without having changed.

Judging by the skill fusions, I could make a guess as to what the skills created would be. Create Water combined with Spark Shot would likely lead to some form of localized thunderstorm skill. Meanwhile, Create Water combining with Poison Shot could either be poison rain, or the ability to simply create masses of poison in similar quantities to the water that I could create.

Between the two of these options, the lightning one seemed more desirable. While both were AoEs, and I didn't want to get Diane caught up in any area effect lightning strikes, I definitely didn't want to get her caught up in area effect poison rain. So, with that in mind, I fused Create Water with Spark Shot, Purify with Clean, and just evolved Poison Shot and Sand Bolt.

The two fusions created the skills called Thunderstrike and Reject Impurities. Thunderstrike's description said that it summoned a cloud in the target area, which could be controlled to summon lightning bolts on command. Meanwhile, Reject Impurities kept the effects of both of its base skills, but also allowed the user to remove diseases from a target creature. It might not be able to remove poisons, but it was getting better.

Next, Poison Shot evolved into Poison Bomb, which shot out a poison sphere that would explode on command. Sand Bolt evolved into Sand Lance, which was just bigger and better damage.

"Someone looks happy." Diane's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I saw her standing at the entrance of the cave.