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『Chronicles of the Blood Tower』
"Uh… Goblin?", Rasmus asked Melody in confirmation with a blank stare.
When Rasmus woke up on the desolate planet, the beings and creatures he had to kill and fight with were more like monsters you would see in an apocalypse. He had never met a goblin or seen one. Well to be fair he had heard of them back on Earth in fantasy games and novels. But, he wasn't too sure if Melody was being serious so he asked back to clarify.
"Yep! Green bipedal creatures that are small little cretins, no bigger than a meter tall. They are nasty little buggers that seemingly look weak, but compared to most challengers they are actually very dangerous.", Melody spoke with a bit of a joking manner, but there was a hint of seriousness in her voice.
Rasmus didn't know whether to be relieved or not that they sounded like the goblins he knew of, because if they were, they sounded pretty easy to hunt in all honesty.
"What makes them so dangerous?", Rasmus asked, tilting his head lightly to the side in confusion.
"Well, those little buggers aren't stuck up brats living under their families homes for their entire lives, although they are small, they are a bit stronger than your average level 0-10 trialist. They've been born in the Tower and have had to live while being prey most of their lives. So they naturally know how to fight, whereas most challengers just try to rely on skills without much fighting experience.", Melody spoke furrowing her brows as she picked up her cup of water for a sip.
"Hm… But are those both the monsters for the hunt and the trial? It would make sense to have some varying difficulty from the test and your average hunt." Rasmus scratched his head as he was a bit confused why some challengers would die if they already had practice.
"True, the thing is, the species of goblins vary. In the hunting areas, you can find any normal goblin with some goblin shamans and if you're unlucky or lucky possibly in your case, a high goblin. But, in the trial they have the mutant species of goblins as an average level, you'll find hordes of those in the test, but the problem is when you face the end of the test. The Floor Master, a high ranker, will always change it up but he will use some type of mutant monster from the goblin species. Or even evolved species from goblin descent, like ogres or even ogre champions.", Melody trembled a little bit as she spoke of the Ogres.
'Hm… It seems I'll really have to observe and be careful first in the test before acting in the open', Rasmus thought to himself as he normally wouldn't be worried about these monsters.
Rasmus, since coming to the Tower, noticed something very shocking since coming from the desolate planet. Now that he could feel and perceive mana, he knew that the monsters on that planet had no mana whatsoever. If those monsters could strengthen themselves with mana he would have died on day 1 and become a human stew for that minotaur.
"Well, I appreciate the information." Rasmus spoke as he raised himself from the seat picking up his tray.
"Indeed, I'm glad to meet a youngin' like you these days who knows the value of their own life." Melody smiled faintly as she rose up as well.
"Oh! Since we're done here anyways let me walk you out and give you directions to a smithy I know nearby that sells some good equipment… though I think you'll only be needing a new weapon seeing that your equipment is quite sturdy itself, not something you'd see even on mid-ranking floors.", she continued to speak and led Rasmus over to the sink to put their food trays in.
Rasmus nodded lightly and followed Melody to the entrance of the Inn where she pointed down the street and marked his map he took out from the spatial inventory.
---
Rasmus currently was heading over to the hunting ground portal. The portal was like the one he had come through before when arriving in Eden. It would teleport him over to an inhabited area in the floor where he could pick and choose which area that was closest to the city he was residing in currently.
In front of the portal he saw a couple parties checking their gear, some people to the side recruiting temporary members and even some trading some mana crystals from the monsters they hunted for gear or other miscellaneous items.
Rasmus leaned against a tree by the outskirts and watched the busy parties preparing themselves while he pulled out the spear he bought from the weapons shop he visited.
The spear he bought for 10 mid-grade mana crystals was a bit interesting. When he went to the shop he initially was going to buy a cheaper spear, but he asked the owner to try out the spear in the training room downstairs and something odd happened. When he swung the spear he was thinking of buying in the training room rousing up his mana he gained a new skill, one that was passive for anybody using a weapon of choice, but what came with it shocked the owner as the owner told him to buy a better spear.
---
Name : Rasmus Trostas
Age : 16 (real age not identifiable due to distortion in time axis in host's prior location)
Class : Caster - Apostle of Annihilation
Level : 0
Attributes -
Strength : 132
Speed : 157
Mana : 1,972 (Blood Core synchronized successfully)
Dexterity : 201
Stamina : 425
Status : Healthy, Holder of Key Fragment, Blood Core (unique power source), Lenoah's seal (weakening), Reverse Mana Flow Technique
Skills -
1) Basic Mana Strengthening - B+
2) Tower Language - Passive
3) High speed Body Regeneration - Grade A-
4) Mana Perception - Grade S
5) Blood Resonance - (unique skill)
6) Draconic Hellfire - (unique skill)
7) Polymorph - (unique skill)
8) Spear mastery - Passive (mastery of weapon materializes mana into aura manifestation)
---
He had something called 'aura' now which was fundamentally different than the blood aura he used. The Tower recognized his spearmanship that he honed over the countless years on the desolate planet and when used with mana, the attributeless mana coated the spear and was called 'aura'. At least that's how the Tol and the shop owner explained it. Thus, he looked around and found a new spear that was, albeit a little more expensive, would be able to handle 'aura' which was something only specialist warrior families were able to use.
Rasmus gripped the steel spear shaft and examined the engravings on the blades on the opposite ends of the spear. They were engraved with runic language, which the shop owner said cost him a pretty penny, allowing the mana to be conductible with the spear's ore that was used when moulding it in the furnace. The ore was called 'Puranium' which was a basic mana conductive metal and was incredibly firm and sturdy.
Rasmus gripped the spear and headed towards the portal, ignoring the gazes of the other people who were thinking he was some idiot trying to handle something beyond his level all on his own without a party.
Rasmus approached the guardsman appointed to guard the portal by the City.
"Name and level.", the gruff voice spoke through the platinum armor looking down at Rasmus.
"Rasmus, zero.", Rasmus replied coldly to the guard as the guard was giving him a look of contempt slowly realizing he might have to be a little blunt with the man, if he wanted entry.
"I said NAME, meaning your full na-", The guard spoke irritatedly then choked suddenly on his words.
Rasmus glared at the man rousing his mana and blood core to the limits, no longer concealing them, to make the guard understand he didn't want to play any kind of games here.
"Ahem- Please select a hunting area…" The guard let out a fake cough, as the onlookers from earlier shrunk back reflexively at the immense amount of mana a level zero, no not even a level 20, should have.
"Area C, in the outskirts of Fromda." Rasmus replied, as he picked out his hunting ground earlier from the information he collected.
The guard lowered his gaze avoiding Rasmus' eyes and moved to the side, permitting entry, as Rasmus walked through cooly.
In reality, Rasmus was also a little nervous as he didn't really care much for the guard or the manner of speech he gave to Rasmus, but rather Rasmus was nervous from all the gazes on him as he never liked attention in the first place.
Fwoosh
Rasmus walked through the portal facing the other side and found a luscious deep forestry in front of him. He could barely even see the artificial suns rays as the branches and vines from the forest were covering the entirety of the surroundings.
Rasmus gripped his spear tightly and spread his senses around him to perceive any fluctuations in the mana for signs of beasts.
As he didn't think monsters would attack right out of the portal he was initially relaxed, but seeing that he didn't see anybody when he came through, he'd rather be safe than sorry.
He roused his mana and decided he'd rather not use the blood core in training against the beasts. Seeing that his mana levels were absurdly high even for low rank regulars, and the fact he could use reverse flow mana made him decide that there was no need to do so, and might as well polish his spear techniques and focus on the hunt.
Rasmus focused his mana to strengthen his body and lowered his posture focusing on his calves and shot forwards into the lush forestry.
Bang!
Rasmus was inwardly shocked as the ground shook a bit from his old location and exploded forwards rapidly heading in deep to find his prey.
A few minutes later…
Rasmus was walking towards a clearing in the forest. The path he had followed was course and roughly man-made, or made by monsters, he couldn't tell as there were no tracks. But, there was a lake in front of him that was shimmering against the open sun.
Rasmus suddenly came on guard as he noticed presences within the area of the lake. In front of him he saw 2 small green creatures and recognized them immediately as Melody's description of goblins came to mind.
He quietly hid his presence and observed them at the lake. But he was not fooled by their presence. Goblins were tricky little bastards and he could easily tell why. The 2 goblins in front of him were acting around, seemingly foolishly drinking water, unguarded. But he could feel 3 similar presences waiting around the lake hidden, not only that but his years of experience could tell through the goblins actions drinking the water, that they were not fooling around but acting as bait with their eyes wandering every now and then, looking for a random fool to come by.
Rasmus gripped his spear and measured out the opponents. Their mana levels were incredibly weak compared to him, and he estimated them to be in the 200-300 unit range based on the Tol's units. He couldn't see exactly the weapons in hand for the 3 hidden goblins but he thought it would be safe to assume they would have ranged weapons like darts in case, predicting the worst case scenario always ahead of time. The two goblins that were visible, had 2 small machetes that were chipped and rugged, but if anything getting hit by that would be painful and there was probably some kind of poison on it. Meaning he had to avoid being nicked by these sly bastards at all costs.
Regardless, Rasmus still observed their features in detail as he was kind of excited to see such fantasy-like creatures, and gather more detailed information for future use if needed. The goblins had pointed ears, pointy noses with warts that looked disgusting, and some kind of yellow war paint that looked like tattoos, as it was dried. Based on what Rasmus had seen from passing by inscription shops and weapon smithies, it didn't seem like runic language, meaning there was no need to worry about their bodies being strengthened by miscellaneous magic.
Rasmus finished up the observations and stepped forwards out into the open as he felt confident in dealing with these little thugs.
The goblins noticed the human walking out and turned to each other then grinned devilishly.
"Keruk… krukkk…", the goblins muttered while sheepishly grinning and then picking up their machetes looking for a fight.
Rasmus roused his mana internally, but blocked the flow from leaking out on purpose, hiding his strength, disguising himself as a weak prey that wandered in alone.
He lowered his posture shifting his feet in a 12 to 4o'clock posture and lowered bent his legs, raising his spear with both hands. The goblins flinched at Rasmus' emotionless eyes that hid the inner predator within them, but quickly shouted out in a war cry, "KERUK! KRUK!"
The 2 goblins attacked simultaneously, one jumping up in the air and the other running around in a wheel-arc trying to flank Rasmus.
'Hmm… they're leaving the left side open… but that's on purpose, the hidden one over there should be making a move soon..', Rasmus quickly had a thought within the split second of their movements and decided his course of action.
Instead of bursting out scaring the goblins with unnatural power, he matched their speeds and first lifted his spear pointing at the goblin in the air while looking at the goblin flanking him.
The goblin in the air grinned, as Rasmus took his eyes off him, but quickly widened it's eyes in shock as Rasmus quickly jumped up suddenly reducing the space in the air between them, meeting the goblin's chest and thrust the spear fiercely through the bloated belly.
Spurtttt
Green blood gushed out like a waterfall over Rasmus' spear out from the belly of the skewered goblin as Rasmus skillfully shook the front hand gripping the spear shaking the goblin's light corpse off the spear.
Suddenly in that moment the goblin hiding in the left burst out from the bushes and a dart came flying from another goblin hiding behind Rasmus.
As the dart flew at Rasmus faster than the goblins bodies, he tilted his head to the side dodging it with minimal movement, lowering his posture and then quickly rousing his mana to burst at a higher speed than the goblins who narrowed their eyes at their comrades' sudden death.
As the two of them came within striking distance, Rasmus gripped the spear tightly as a golden sheen of materialized mana came from the spear; the so-called 'aura'. He then burst with a speed too fast for the goblin's eyes to follow and twirled the spear in a defensive maneuver creating a crescent like movement severing their heads without them even being able to cry.
Shing
The cut was so smooth and quick that the two remaining goblins hidden didn't have time to react and Rasmus quickly straightened his posture in one smooth movement, and then flung the spear with immense strength at the goblin who shot the dart.
Thwock!
Rasmus didn't even spare a look to confirm the kill as he already had shot forward to the last goblin hidden, to not give it time to escape and roused up the skill he had confirmed to inherit through the blood core and mana application.
'Draconic Hellfire'
Rasmus' afterimage at the open scenery in the lake quickly vanished as he was suddenly behind the hidden goblin staggering back in shock at it's dead comrades.
In Rasmus' hands a bright emerald green fire started to wrap around them as Rasmus took his bare hands and grabbed the 1 meter tall goblins skull and raised it in the air.
Sizzzzssss
The goblin cried out in pain as the draconic hellfire melted through it's skin and quickly down to the skull in a matter of half a second, melting faster than any kind of heat possible as Rasmus hand let go of the goblin dying and the gooey silver brain matter leaked out of the dead goblin's melted skull.
The goblin plopped on the ground twitching every now and then till it suddenly and finally stopped moving for good. Rasmus wiped the sweat off his forehead and sighed. There were a series of 'ding' noises popping up in his head. The Tol had given him some new information and Rasmus opened it up to see.
Experience gained.
You have leveled up.
Calculating results.
Name : Rasmus Trostas
Age : 16 (real age not identifiable due to distortion in time axis in host's prior location)
Class : Caster - Apostle of Annihilation
Level : 4
Attributes -
Strength : 132
Speed : 157
Mana : 1,972 (Blood Core synchronized successfully)
Dexterity : 201
Stamina : 425
Undistributed points : 400
…
---
Rasmus looked at the panel in front of him and raised his eyebrow.
"Hm…", Rasmus looked at the panel in interest as he started to question exactly what the Tol was.
How could it calculate what he killed and give him these 'points' so to speak?
He questioned the validity of these points to see whether they actually had any effect, and if so, how could they raise an individual's ability forcibly through mana? Was there even a need for other attributes besides mana if that was the case?
Rasmus tapped the undistributed points and allocated 100 into speed and another 100 into strength in an experiment, to see if they would have any actual effect as it would seemingly double from the amount put in.
Rasmus suddenly felt a surge of energy pass through his veins, and felt that his body itself, not his mana, was being reconfigured at a speed too fast to even notice. It was sharp pain that lasted barely a second as his muscle fibers were forcibly shredded and healed thousands of times in the span of a millisecond.
Rasmus flinched and lifted his hand to examine it. There were seemingly no changes appearance-wise and he clenched his fist. He turned to the tree the goblin laid sprawled in front of and swung his fist without using his mana at the trunk.
Bang!
Rasmus already had abnormal stats compared to anybody taking the trial floor test and most stats were around 30 per average and they would fluctuate to one side of either mana or physical attributes depending by class, that was only at level zero and the range of fluctuation was around 10 units. Thinking about this, Rasmus realized why many people come out to hunt beforehand, because they could effectively gather mana crystals from the monsters, and get a rather massive increase in their attributes from the 100 points they could get per level.
Rasmus thought this was pretty much fraudulent. Nothing on earth could possibly explain what was happening here in terms of science, biology and what not. The biggest reason Rasmus could point this to, was… mana.
Suddenly, Rasmus had a thought, 'If this is fraudulent… then what exactly am I? No… what is this blood core?'.
Rasmus found that every time he felt he found an answer to his questions, only 3 more would pop up when he found an answer for one. He quickly shook his head lightly dismissing the thoughts, deciding to think about them later, and focus on what was at hand.
He coalesced the dragon hellfire into the tip of his finger and made a small tip of mana appear like a heated scalpel. He crouched down and flipped the goblin's body up to face him.
He didn't even wince as he was so used to killing and looting corpses by now that, since the Tower seemed a bit brutal and to emphasize survival of the fittest, He was immune to it.
Rasmus dug the sizzling blade carefully into the chest of the goblin then used his free hand to move it around and find the mana crystal. His hand moved around in the gooey innards of the goblin and found what he was looking for, as he pulled out a small crystalline object. The mana crystal he looted was incredibly small and Rasmus identified it to be a low-grade mana crystal.
However, he was not done with the corpse here. He reached into his spatial pocket and pulled out something he had bought yesterday. They were small test tubes, vials if you will.
Rasmus picked up the goblin and nicked a part of it's leg arteries and let the green blood ooze into the vial. The reason Rasmus did this was for the blood core. He didn't think of eating a straight up corpse anymore as it was completely barbaric and there were people in this Tower who would find him incredibly repulsive if he did. Not only that, why would he rely on that for food, when there were actual god damn cooks?!
Rasmus cracked a smile and rose up to do the same for the other corpses.
As he finished up with the last goblin that was skewered to the tree by his spear, Rasmus took the spear out and wiped his hands in the lake to clean them.
He raised his body up and gripped his spear, as he walked deeper into the shrubbery to continue his hunting for today.
---
3 hours later…
At the same lake Rasmus had killed his first goblins, a young man walked out towards the lake to see the dead corpses.
His silver long hair that fell down to his shoulders, flowed freely through the wind. His sharp eyes and nose, along with his chiseled jawline made him look like the classic silver knight in any princess and hero story.
However, the man's eyes narrowed at the scene that lay in front of him as he checked the corpses one by one.
"How is this possible for another trialist?... These goblins were killed in a matter of seconds. But not only that it seems the assailant is like me… Someone who utilizes aura and magic.", The young man mumbled to himself inspecting the corpses.
He clicked his tongue and rubbed his hand across the saber's handle that was tucked neatly inside of the scabbard on his waist.
Gray Windsor. The other irregular who came with Rasmus, who also shocked Mathis, turned away and headed back to the portal.
Chapter 10 - Fin