6 Chapter 6
[ ITEM DIGESTED ]
[ ITEM CAN NOT BE FURTHER IMPROVED ]
" Blyat. " As he had planned, he went to improve his armour and after devouring twenty-five of them, they could no longer be improved. He was a bit disappointed but the improvements it received, he hoped were satisfactory.
He summoned his armour and had a look at how much it had improved. Looking at the long mirror he gave a few poses. The improvements were very satisfactory and it looks more sturdy than before. The chainmail shirt was thicker and had more weight, but it did not feel that heavy. There were the shoulder guards that he got from the giant undead he defeated a week ago. He first doubted that it was too big for him, but the mist shrunk it down perfectly to match his size. The gauntlet, luckily was considered armour by the mist, it protected his forearms and fingers but left the palm open.
Then came his helmet, " Hehe, I look cool. " It had a skull-like design, that was bolted with two strips of metal, one round it above the eye holes and another one running vertically. It also came with chainmail that covered his neck, throat and the top part of the shoulders and it had two curved horns coming from the sides of the helmet. ( Check the paragraph comment for the picture. )
Overall, it gave him a very creepy look, despite how cool it looked to him, with a colour scheme of black and grey, it gave a creepy and threatening vibe to anyone who sees it. But he did not give a flying fuck what others felt anyways. It was not like anyone was gonna come and visit him anyways. The only visitors he got were those undead, and they serve no other purpose than to give him free gifts every night.
Curse magic was another magic that piqued his fascination. The curse magic he had learned, has a very direct approach and is simple in application. To do curse magic, two parties need to be involved:
1. The Caster, and
2. The Victim
The caster is the one casting the curse and the victim is the receiver of the curse. The effects are almost instantaneous, but it requires the caster to have physical contact with the victim. Curses are powered by two things, magic power and the intention of the caster.
Certain curses rely more on the intention of the caster than the magic power, as the magic power act as a power source to keep the curse active.
The intensity of the curse is directly proportional to the intent of the caster. Take, for example, his two curses: GRIP and MAGIC DRAIN. The intensity of the GRIP curse is dependent on the emotions like rage and wrath, while MAGIC DRAIN is dependent on greed and gluttony.
From the above, one can see that emotions play a vital factor in the working of a curse. It was for this reason, Nikolai's curses were not as strong as he want them to be, it was due to the over-reliance on his spell UNDEAD WILL. As it suppresses all emotions, it made the curses weak. He tried to remedy it by abstaining from using UNDEAD WILL during combat.
There was nothing much interesting going on for the next few weeks. Sure, there was that giant undead that came occasionally, but since he had previous experience with dealing with them and with an upgraded arsenal of weapons, armour and two new curses, they stood no chance against him.
{ One month Later }
" 35, 36, 37... " With a log tied to his back, he did pull-ups while sweating profusely. He shifted to this intense workout ever since he found regular exercise a bit too easy and yielded no results. The previous week, he managed to do a hundred push-ups while not breaking a single sweat. He wondered if it was humanly possible to get this kind of strength in such a short period.
He eventually blamed it on the three new passive he got.
[ PASSIVES ARE UNLOCKED ]
[ NEW PASSIVE: ORCISH REGENERATION* ]
[ NEW PASSIVE: ORCISH PHYSIQUE* ]
[ NEW PASSIVE: BLOODLUST* ]
It took three weeks to get these passives, that too from three different Orcs.
These undead Orcs appeared two weeks ago and they were very different to the regular Undead he had faced before. They were big, strong, agile and more ferocious. With a physique that was made for combat, they had posed a big threat to him when they came to kill him. Nikolai had spent a while fighting with weak undead that he became stagnant and made no improvements. But these undead Orcs ironically helped him to get out of the stagnant state.
If there was one thing, these undead orcs carry from the regular undead is that it was not exactly emotionless, as it was able to release blood lust and killing intent, to which Nikolai was greatly taken aback that he got injured many a time in dealing with them. Also, they gave him a new weapon: A Dane axe.
" 50! " Nikolai finished his push-up set and landed on the ground and immediately took off the log on his back. After dehydrating himself, he summoned the Dane axe.
Currently, the Dane axe was his favourite weapon, and the second was the sledgehammer. With a long reach and a big axe head, it deals devastating damage to any undead that dared to come close to his range. But it was the least improved weapon in his arsenal, as he had only defeated six orcs in the past month.
This past month, was a very hectic month for Nikolai. He gazed at the surrounding of the cabin and admired his handy work. There was the potato farm, with all the potatoes harvested and replanted, he hoped for a good harvest. Then there was the smoked deer meat he was preparing outside and looked to be almost ready.
Night came and it was time to deal with the undead. This night was his lucky night, as six orcs emerged from the dark forest and all of them had Dane axes.
ROAR!!!
With an unholy roar, they made a beeline towards him. Brandishing his bow, he released an arrow, it made contact with an Orc at its head, but it did not stop its momentum, instead, it made it angrier than it previously was, which was what he was aiming for.
The enraged Orc increased its speed and soon it overtook all its kin. It lunged at him, with its ace raised to cleave him in half, but Nikolai was a tad bit faster as he moved to the side. The axe head missed its target and instead sunk itself into the ground. Nikolai summoned his round shield and used the edges of the shield to punch the Orc.
He immediately changed to the chain and wrapped the neck and used the GRIP curse. The chain kept a vice-like grip on its neck, it tried to pry it open, but the chain was not letting go. Nikolai yanked the chain pulling the orc close to him, just in time for the other Orcs to arrive and brought their axes towards him with violent intentions. Unfortunately for the chained Orc, he was promoted to meat shield and had to bear the brunt of five axe heads chopping its body.
Nikolai immediately summoned the sledgehammer and slammed the blunt weapon at the back of the chained Orc with all his might.
The force pushed back all the orcs and Nikolai used this opportunity to deal as much damage as he could. With a downward swing, he smashed an Orc's knees, not stopping the spinning motion, he slammed the hammerhead into another Orc's abdomen, causing the Orc to bend forward, with an upward swing he delivered a sledgehammer uppercut that destroyed the Orc's head, just like in a Mortal Combat fatality scene.
He blocked, an incoming axe head from the top, but he was too slow to intercept an attack from the side. The impact from the attack was so strong that he was sent ten feet from his original position.
There was a dull pain from his side, the armour prevented him from getting killed, but it could not all the attacks from getting through. Worse of all, he had not cast UNDEAD WILL and he taking in all the pain. Why you asked, because he wanted to use curse magic to its fullest, being in an Undead state was limiting its potential. He realized that he was getting reliant on the spell and decided to use it only for important instances.
" Blyat. " Nikolai was a not man of few words, although he spoke only a few sentences, and the most common words he uttered were usually Russian slang words. Living alone in the forest, made him realise a few things. He realised that speaking was a waste of time, the only thing he spoke to was the creepy voice in his head. Correction, he could communicate with the creepy voice just by thinking, so it made talking even less necessary. To be honest, he thought he was going insane.
Back to the fight, the Orcs began to circle around him looking for a weak spot.
The was complete silence, no one was moving, all waiting for a moment to strike.
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ROAR!!!
The silence was broken when an Orc charged at him from his back. Nikolai narrowly dodge an overhead attack and countered with a low roundhouse to the back of the knee, putting the Orc in a kneeling position. Summoning the sword, he decapitated it with a two-handed downward slash.
With only one more Orc to deal with, his chances for victory were very high, but it was soon thrown to the drain as the last Orc tackled him to the ground.
STOMP!
Using its large foot and combined with its muscled form, it stomped its foot so hard, that the armour lost all its durability and turned back into black mist.
His chest was burning, after that devastating stomp, he could feel his ribs cracking under the pressure the Orc was putting on his chest. It lifted its foot again for another stomp but Nikolai rolled to his side. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he summoned the shield blocking a powerful swing that almost destroyed the shield.
Twisting his hips, he landed a vicious low roundhouse causing the Orc to stumble a bit, but it was enough to bash the Orc's head with the edge of the shield. He immediately summoned the Dane axe and with a full swing, he brought down the axe head and decapitate the last Orc.
He fell ass-first to the ground and immediately removed his shirt to inspect the damage he had received. There was a bruise on his side and another on his chest, with adrenaline already spent pain flooded his body like a released dam.
Normally, this kind of injury would take at least a week to completely heal for a normal human, but he was no normal human.
His bruises were already starting to heal as shown by the gradual disappearance of the dark patch on his side and his chest. Ten minutes later, it was completely healed, such was the miracle of the passive: ORCISH REGENERATION.
With the acquisition of these passive, new spells, and weapons, his mind wandered to an interesting topic. Just what is the dark mist? It was definitely related to those fifty corpses he found in the basement, what was their aim to place this Symbiotic dark mist inside him? So far, this mist was helping him, but will it backstab him one day. He knew this mist and the creepy voice were sentient or somewhat sentient in nature.
Too many questions but no definite answer. So he left these questions to be answered by the future him.
He let the mist devour the Dane axe the Orcs left for him.
[ ITEM DIGESTED ]
[ ITEM CAN NOT BE FURTHER IMPROVED ]
That came after the fifth Dane axe was devoured. So with no other things to devour, the mist devoured an undead Orc.
[ ITEM DEVOURED ]
[ DIGESTION TIME: 1 WEEK ]
' So a gift after another week. ' Once an item was devoured, if it had already been devoured before, the digestion was a lot lowered, but if it has something interesting to give him, it would take a week to digest. He wondered, if there was a way to decrease this digestion period somehow, but as of now he had had information on how to.
And so the story of the daily life of Nikolai continued, every day was a routine. Practice and survive during the day, and fight to the dead in the night.
The week came by a little more quickly than he expected, following a routine religiously does wonder to one sense of time.
[ ITEM DIGESTED ]
[ NEW SPELL LEARNED: UNDEAD VISION* ]
The creature called an undead was a creature with a pitiful existence. As creatures without a soul, and powered only by magic power. People detest them for their inherent hatred towards anything living.
But this inherent hatred for the living was not as shallow as people think it is. As any creature without a soul, they are attracted to souls like a moth to a light. The undead cling to anything that possesses a soul, they reason that by devouring a living person's body, they could also devour their soul, hoping to fill the voids inside their rotting carcass, but such was not possible.
" UNDEAD VISION " Nikolai cast his new spell.
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His vision... there was something wrong with his vision... Everything was black and white. Scanning his surrounding, he noticed something very peculiar... he saw a flame, a small flame that was inside a grasshopper... The flame was very small.
He caught the grasshopper to further examine this flame. The flame was the size of the one a lighter produced. ' It looked so weak and fragile, so weak and fragile, so weak and fragile, so weak and fragile, SO WEAK AND FRAGILE, SO WEAK AND FRAGILE, SO WEAK AND FRAGILE!!! '
CRUNCH!!!
Without any warning, Nikolai crushed the small insect. What had he done? He heard voices in his head and it did not belong to the creepy voice. It sounded more sinister than it, it sounded evil!
He opened his palm to notice the bug was still twitching. It was not dead yet, but it soon will. The small fire inside it was slowly dying. ' Is this flame... its soul? '
The mist suddenly enveloped the dying grasshopper, and devoured the dying flame???
[ SOUL DEVOURED ]
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you are enjoying the story, please do leave a comment or better a review. It will greatly help me.
