Nothing is Impossible

A little past midnight, 5 cloaked forms climbed through the third floor of the guild barracks, using a magic item to not set off any of the magical wards that were set up all along the perimeter of the building. They then activated another magic item, this one blocking all the sound in the air. It was widely known as silencing magic and blocked the casting of any spells, whether they needed to be spoken or otherwise.

After looking around and making sure that they had not been seen at all they began securing the perimeter of the room and making sure that there were no loose ends before they began their operation. They spotted their target and got into position.

Once everyone was in position, they struck.

***

Even as Atlas was sleeping, his body felt a spike of danger and reacted. He shifted to Strength before teleporting out of harm's way, lashing out with his scythe and decapitating the closest man in an explosion of blood. When the blood settled, there was nothing left of the man, Atlas had obliterated him with an effective 118,850 strength. There was absolutely nothing the man could do except die.

Atlas moved again, killing two more men before the shock of the first's death could be fully comprehended by the attack group. The two remaining men hastily raised their defences, lashing out with magic wildly, trying to hit him and incapacitate him.

Two seconds later, they were all corpses.

The scythe went slack in Atlas's hand, and he collapsed to the ground. He had never woken up after all.

Danger Sense (Z): Your body responds to danger that you are not aware of by taking over your body and fighting for you, not disturbing you at all in the process and leaving you in a coma-like state. This skill will warn you of the danger seconds before taking action itself, and if you don't respond, it will carry on as previously stated. When fighting, your body will hold nothing back and completely annihilate all aggressive entities.

Atlas had slept through the entire thing.

He fell on the ground, sleeping soundly once again. He didn't know he was sleeping in a pool of blood.

***

Atlas awoke and felt weird, half his face -the part of his face touching the ground, was covered in some caked on substance and he scratched a bit of it away, finding his hand covered in flakes of dried blood. He stared, not fully comprehending for a couple seconds before he jumped up and looked around, spotting pieces of people here and there and dried blood everywhere. He was far away from the bed he had slept in, and he wondered what had happened.

His notifications helped explain a little bit.

Level Up! X121

Danger Sense has reached level 7!

Atlas struggled to understand, pulling up his skill and after he read he felt understanding dawn on him. He was the one who had killed these men, and he had no idea why or how. It looked like the men had all been exploded, almost like a bomb had hit them. It looked nothing like how he would have killed them, so he didn't know what to say.

He then got a very interesting notification.

You have paid off your exp debt to the system for the tutorial. Debt Paid: 1,000,000 exp. Debt owed: 0

You are the first to pay off your debt to the system! Title Gained: Great Credit

Great Credit: You are a very trustworthy person and when you take a loan from the system or a system affiliated entity, you will not accumulate interest until a year has passed, then whatever interest you would have gained over a year, will be given all to you at the same time.

Due to you being in a difficulty higher than Hard, you were not informed of this debt for the purpose of making things between the difficulties slightly more balanced.

Atlas merely shrugged it off. It was nice, but he didn't think it would really do much for him, other than either later down the line or very occasionally, he didn't even know how to get a loan in the first place..

After going to the bathhouse and cleaning off all the blood, he went to the training ground and pulled up his stat sheet. It was time to update everything.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Atlas Channing

Tier: 3

Level: 240

Class: Reaper (Epic)

Subclass: Absorber (Rare)

Mana Pathways: Rare

Mana: 22,249

Life force: 29,720

Life Force Pathways: None

Stamina: 29,620

Stamina Pathways: None

Aura type: None

Aura Tier: N/A

Titles: Shadestrider, Skill Grandmaster, Boss Slayer, Powerful Soul, Sythesiser, Fate breaker, Debuffer, Glimpse of Transcendence, Combat Master, Great Credit

Achievements: Cannot be viewed, reach Tier 5 first.

Skills: Archdragon of Death (Y), Spell Crafting (ZZZ), Breath of the Consuming Void Dragon(ZZ), Multiplying Debuffs* (ZZ), Absolute Mana Monarchy** (ZZ), Perfect Mind Shattering Thoughts*** (ZZ), Master Scan* (Z), Mind Step** (Z), Battle Recovery (Z), Fast Training Techniques (Z), Flawed Utterance (Z), Danger Sense* (Z).

Spells: None

Talent: Z

Potential: Z

Skill: SS

Stats:

Endurance: 2,962

Constitution: 2,972

Strength: 2,982

Dexterity: 2,992

Wisdom: 2,981

Intelligence: 2,961

Free points: 221

He frowned. He had kept off using his free points for almost all of tier 3, and now he had a large number of them saved up. His first thought was to do what he always had and split them up evenly and keep the change, but he was now realizing that while his stats gave him no weaknesses, they also gave him no strengths. So, going out on a limb, he put 111 into intelligence and 110 into strength. Boosting his two highest stats to even higher proportions.

His stats now looked like this:

Stats:

Endurance: 2,962

Constitution: 2,972

Strength: 3,092

Dexterity: 2,992

Wisdom: 2,981

Intelligence: 3,072

Free points: 0

Satisfied, Atlas began creating a new skill. He had gotten an idea after waking up this morning and finding himself in the center of all those corpses. What would happen if he combined his danger sense with multiplying debuffs? It felt like it could be a brutal combination and he hadn't been using his debuff as of late. It seemed stupid, to have such overwhelming firepower and magic and instead use debuffs to slowly weaken the enemy.

So he decided to take a chance and combined them. Not bothering to think more for fear of rationalizing a reason to not do it.

Combining Skills: Danger Sense (Z), and Multiplying Debuffs (ZZ). Combine? Y/N

Selecting yes, the skills combined.

Combining…

Because of your title Skill Sage, and your Skill Sage Candidacy, you are able to choose between __ options instead of leaving it up to luck.

Skill Upgrade options:

1: Fusion: Both skills fuse into a stronger skill. How skills normally combine.

2: Evolution: Skills fuse to each other and a higher concept, effectively tiering them up and Fusing them at the same time.

3: Divergence: Skills combine and then separate, creating two slightly weaker skills with a wider variety of effects.

4: Evolutionary Divergence: Skills go through evolution and then divergence, in that order. Rarest effect, as it requires evolution and divergence to happen at the same time, which is rare in nature.

5: Mutation: The skills are fused and then a mutation concept is chosen. Mutation concept is completely random but must be a concept that you are connected to in some way.

6: Simplification: Skills concepts get simpler, but also more powerful after fusion.

Atlas was slightly surprised that he now controlled this aspect more, but he was definitely pleased by it. After reading through all of the options, he chose mutation. Atlas bet it all on randomness. These skills weren't his core skills, so he felt he had some room to change them a bit.

Mutating…

Combining…

Mutation Concept: Slothful Death

Fusing…

Skill Gained: Multiplying Slow Death (ZZ)

LUCKY BONUS!

Skill Simplification!

Simplifying…

Sleeping Death (ZZ): The Sleeping Reaper has come to Kill. You can fall asleep at will, and when you are asleep, you become a killing machine (Skill activation has a cooldown of 1 hour). While asleep, only your passive skills can be used and you regenerate resources twice as fast, each strike also adds 10 debuffs. While asleep, you cannot differentiate between friend or foe, and you won't wake up until 10 minutes have passed or you take enough damage to lose 25% of your life force in a single strike. If attacked while naturally asleep, this skill activates on its own, and doesn't wake you after 10 minutes.

Atlas grinned. This was more like it. Now he could feel completely safe when sleeping, and his debuffs wouldn't be wasted, in fact, they would only make him stronger. He was a bit confused. Didn't it say simplification? Nothing about that skill seemed "simple" to him.

Only one thing left to do.

Test it.