33 - Equipment Upgrade

You live and learn.

I felt better after a few days, but not completely ok.

Something had changed in me.

Whenever I walked past another person I just saw a vision of a monster superimposed on top of them.

I really didn't know why the dragon in particular had been so impactful.

I think it was due to my reason for killing it.

Killing criminals, I could justify to myself by taking the moral high ground. Animals, to eat, and the sphinxes and forest giant from before as necessary for my increase in strength.

But this, this had just been slaughter for the sake of itself, to relieve my frustrations.

Well, at least the original purpose was fulfilled. I wasn't as anxious to find the warp drive, or as annoyed at not being able to find any clues on it, as before.

However, that made me think.

I had searched all over, but there was no warp drive, not even any clues to a warp drive.

The only options left were two more forbidden zones.

I had been to 4 forbidden zones by now.

The deep sea, sylvia's forest, the western part of the desert with the sphinxes, and the part even further west with the endless sandstorm.

There were still 2 more forbidden areas left, and the rumors spoke of them as though the most dangerous of all.

I decided to wait and look a while longer before going there.

***

4 years passed.

The abyssal seraphim were on high alert the whole time, expecting an invasion from the 90th floor of the Abyss. However, it never came.

They didn't relax, though. If anything, this only made them more nervous as time passed.

This was the only thing they were afraid of. They were stronger than anything else in the entire multiverse besides the things at the 90th floor and below.

Arachne used a certain communication method to ask for her heavily sealed Sanctum Septica, but it was ignored.

She expected that, but she didn't fret. They couldn't keep denying her for too long.

Meanwhile, I was thinking it was about time to take a risk and visit a forbidden area, but something happened.

I got a new skill.

After [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption], my void mana absorption speed had increased drastically.

I had never forgotten to absorb daily, so now I had over 500,000 VP.

This was 500x as much raw energy as the max blue mana I could store.

I found that I could release more than 10 billion MP, but I couldn't store more. However, I could store more than the equivalent void mana, 1000 VP.

This also meant my current mana pool was enough to cast a 10th circle spell over and over, for who knows how long.

Today, something weird happened as I learned a new skill.

I had been trying to see what would happen if I began releasing all my built up void mana in one go.

I know, wasteful, but I had 500,000. I planned to stop after releasing 100,000 VP.

I had been doing it in an isolated part of the desert.

The void mana, even without any spell or technique, slashed and diced the surroundings into less than dust.

Or it would have, if it wasn't all sand. This was in the part of the desert where there was only sand everywhere. However, to my surprise, slowly but surely even the sand began to disintegrate. I actually saw the ground that noone had seen in all the time this part of the desert had been there.

The ground then also was slashed away, leaving a giant crater that began to form and only grew ever larger as I continued this process.

Eventually, there was a large sphere of destruction around me.

Or rather, a half-sphere of destroyed ground. Any sand that tried to fill the crater evaporated soon after entering the "domain" of destruction.

As I floated in the center of the destruction, I was also bombarded with the void mana as it rebounded on itself back onto my body.

I resisted it with aura, and as I floated there and got bombarded by my own void mana I was releasing in droves, I began absorbing it.

That's right, I actually began absorbing back the void mana I released as it bombarded my aura, and the effect only grew stronger the longer I went through the process.

I decided to repeat this everyday for a while, and today I suddenly felt a large suction force appear inside my bloodstream, and I rapidly began absorbing the void mana back into myself.

After just an hour, I had absorbed all the void mana I had released, which amounted to several months worth of prior absorption.

I couldn't absorb void mana at all without eating it before.

Opening a void rift, I stuck a large number of defensive array protected mythril plates in and took them out with extreme speed, and the void mana in them was absorbed before I could even think about devouring them.

I got an idea and used [Void Hazmat] and stuck my hand in the rift.

Suddenly, I felt a ridiculously large amount of void mana rush into my blood from my hand.

Quickly taking my hand out before the rift closed, I shivered at the speed.

I could absorb all the void mana I had absorbed in the past 5 years in one day at that rate.

Of course, the void rift had to stay open that whole time.

Actually, I noticed something else even more crazy. I wasn't taking time to absorb mana into my blood, only into my bloodstream to interact with my blood. Meaning if I devoured something with even more void mana in it, I might be able to absorb it into my blood even faster.

However, just my hand alone wasn't enough to absorb enough of the void mana at once. The overall amount of void mana absorbed in those few seconds by my hand was less than by all the mythril plates.

This was because there were a lot of plates, vs. just my one hand.

Thinking up to here, I had an idea, but I couldn't do right now as is.

I wanted to go into the void to absorb for a longer amount of time, but I needed to cast [Void Hazmat] as I did so, which would use up the void mana faster than I could absorb it, even with my faster absorption speed now.

I also needed the rift to open up larger, but I could do that by just replacing the mana I compressed and used to slash out with void mana.

I could try and make an array to mimic [Void Hazmat], but previous attemlts at thay showed me it was easier said than done.

I could keep a mythril plate with an array inscribed on it safe, but not anything near it, like [Void Hazmat] did.

For now, although I had recieved an amazing skill, it wasn't useful to the current me.

I decided to call it [Void Mana Absorption]. Although I could absorb void mana before, I couldn't do so through my skin. Even after getting [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption], that didn't change, yet now it had. I felt it was appropriate.

Breathing out a sigh, I headed to the capital.

***

Dragons were rarely hunted, since you needed to be at the peak of the class blood stage to kill them, and even then it was usually dangerous and hardfought.

It might've seemed like I had a relatively easy time, but that's only because I was no longer at the peak class blood stage, but the void magic stage.

Even just at the entry level, I had way more mana than anyone at the peak of the class blood stage, I had the [Void Severance Slash], and I had the void mana burst attack I came up with.

Moreover, although it didn't come to this, I could also have inscribed some 10th circle arrays and power them near infinitely with void mana, bombarding the dragon to death with constantly active offensive arrays.

It was only 4 things, but don't underestimate how much those 4 extra things completely changed the level of power I was at.

Just the hundreds of times more mana, stored as void mana, was enough to do whatever I wanted to anyone below the void magic stage, not to mention the other things.

This is all to say that dragon parts were rare, and sold for a fortune.

Not even a small fortune, a straight up fortune.

I only sold part of the corpse, around half the scales and some other parts. I kept the rest.

The corpse was stored in the treasury's 2nd floor containers, so I didn't need to worry about it decaying or otherwise losing valuable parts like the blood and flesh.

I had asked some well known blacksmiths in the capital to forge me some equipment from the scales and tendons.

I requested a lot, just to fill up the 2nd floor of the treasury, but the dragon was huge, so I only used 10% of the scales and tendons, and no other parts.

Or rather, I would have used up 10%, if the parts weren't so damn durable.

It's a good thing for the equipment, but awful for the blacksmiths trying to forge them. In the end, several of the greatest blacksmiths of the capital had to come together, alongside some array masters and enchanters, to barely make me a bow.

It was ridiculously strong, as far as normal bows went. It was probably one of the strongest bows below the void magic stage, I thought.

Well, that thought would turn out to be horridly wrong, but that's a story for later.

The point is, it was strong.

Enchantment was a subset of array mastery. Arrays themselves were an advanced application of runecraft. Small arrays called enchantment arrays were inscribed on an object. It worked on a different system than normal arrays, hence the different name.

I was the best arraymaster among those present, so I inscribed them myself after working out the design with other people.

Of course, I didn't reveal that I was at the void magic stage, or an 11th circle arraymaster.

I powered the arrays with void mana, and the bow became hypercharged, in a sense. With that, the enchantments and arrays would constantly be active.

Knocking an arrow, a completely normal arrow, it became immediately tranfused into an entirely new arrow with the same basic look but new effects around it, and as I barely pulled back the bowstring ever so slightly, just a smidge, and let it release, the arrow had decimated a spherical region with a radius of 10 meters.

That might not seem like much, but understand that this was a normal arrow.

All the enchants couldn't even be applied all at once because the arrow would've broken.

I also didn't knock it back by a lot, I didn't cast any spells to enhance the effect, and I didn't use a technique (not that I knew any significant archery special techniques at the time).

It was, let me count here...5 major components of the attack away from peak power, and it still did that much damage.

And when I say decimated, I mean it utterly shredded.

I tried it again with a new mythril arrow, defensive enchants and all, and applied some basic spells and a bit more force, or rather, all the firce I could muster since I couldn't actually pull the bowstring back all the way, and let's just say it was a good idea I did that test outside the city.

Now there was a large 1km. wide crater next to the city, and people coming in from outside always asked what happened to make it.

This one weapon took a whole year to make, a stupid amount of manpower and energy, and although the end result was something everyone was proud of, it was probably going to be their best work for the rest of their lives, but absolutely nobody, not even me, wanted to put in that much effort into making another equipment.

So, for the other 3 years, I had exchanged some dragons parts with the royal family fkr mythril and asked for more mythril equipment.

The last batch had been finished recently, but I had gotten carried away by the [Void Mana Absorption] testing, so I hadn't gone to collect it.

I was going now.

Actually, the blacksmiths and array masters from the southern Rekka kingdom heard about what happened and came personally to ask me to let them make me a weapon from dragon parts too, since it was the honor of a blacksmith to make such a thing.

I of course agreed, but when that conversation had happened, the blacksmith from the capital of Axel who was in the room made a traumatized face. The creation of the bow had really taken a toll on all of us.

By the way, it wasn't evident because the area of damage was compressed to less than a meter wide, but my max strength [Void Severance Slash] was equivalent to an attack that could destroy 10 kilometers in front of me.

This also meant the bow was about 1/10th the power needed to open up a void rift.

Mayne I could get that up to 10/10ths if I had a better arrow. Something like...a dragon scale arrow...

No, that wasn't happening. Maybe some years down the line, everyone would feel energized enough to try their hand at another year long project with dragon parts, but for now, noone was willing to even talk about it.

But, at least the Rekka people were willing to make me another thing, and since an arrow, a consumable item, would be a foolish ask, and I didn't really need a sword, or another weapon at all for that matter, I asked for armor instead.

I didn't want anything clunky, so I asked for a cloak.

The result? Something beautiful.

The cloak was made of the scales placed on top, with the tendons on the inner portion to allow a softer texture to touch my back.

Of course, the tendons too were extremely hard, though not as much as the scales, so a lot of effort was put in to making them softer.

Actually, in the process, a lot of new methods of softening hard materials were created solely for this project.

The scales were of a water dragon, so they were a deep, rich blue, while the tendon-made inner fabric was a staunch white. This didn't look the best and also wasn't the best for stealth, so we managed to use magic to forcefully change the color.

This was a more durable process than dyeing it, or rather, since the magic actually changed the base color instead of applying a coat ontop of it, the color wouldn't fade no matter what, since it was now the actual original color of the cloak.

The fabric became black, and the scales a deeply dark azure, like the night sky.

Well, the night sky is just black, but you know how sometimes it just feels dark blue? Yeah that. The scales were whatever that was.

The scales were too large, just 2 were needed to make the cloak, so those two were cut up after a lot of difficulty into little pieces that resembled smaller scales. This gave the cloak its unique scaled look even though the actual scales of the dragon were way larger than the pattern formed on the cloak.

The end result was that the cloak looked amazing, felt amazing, and of course, had utterly ridiculous effects.

Even at my level, I thought the effects were outrageous.

1. My base speed went up like crazy, which added on top multiplicatively on other speed enhancements like spells and skills.

2. My mana circulation was faster, also multiplied on top of anything else, as was my sensitivity. The overall effect was probably about a 50% increase in both. That was a ridiculous amount, almost enough to cast [Void Severance Slash] without [Adrenal Moment].

3. My stealth was enhanced further. I found a way to put my skill [Stealth] on the cloak and improve its effects in the process, and with void mana being, well, essentially a cheat for this kind of thing, the cloak could hide me away in plain sight to a ridiculous degree, with no further energy input, basically forever.

I could die in the middle of the road and my corpse would still be hidden. As long as it was in the shade, it might even go unnoticed past till my flesh was eaten by maggots and only bones were left. I could've made the stealth effect even stronger but I opted not to.

4. Any attack below the peak of the class blood stage would probably never get past the cloak's defenses. Even if it came from the front, the cloak would erect a barrier if it sensed danger. This also lead into:

5. It was semi-conscious. The study of the soul was known as soulistry, and it was incredibly complicated, but basic systems with beast like intelligence could be made relatively easily.

The cloak would recognize its owner by my aura, blood, and mana signature, and to some degree it would recognize me even without those things, through my soul. I could will it to move a certain way, and it would fly to me if unknowingly separated, as long as it knew where I was.

It could float and fly, at a permanent mach 1000 (mach 1 = speed of sound) using an 11th circle void mana array I had made.

It could carry me as it flew when I wore it, too, so I could also travel that fast with no worries of A) losing my grip and falling, and B) spending energy focusing on speed enhancement.

6. It increased my healing factor, which was already near the peak, even further, where it now reached an extreme. One more step and I would be able to survive a stab through the heart.

It didn't get me to that level, but basically any attack that wasn't fatal or limb severing would heal in under 5 seconds. Before, it would take up to a minute to heal a large gash, such as if a sword stabbed into my forearm. As for lesser injuries, it was a blink and you would miss them.

7. The cloak had in-built "skill slots", like in my blood. Or rather, I could imbue spells into them, so they were more like "spellslots". Magic up to and past the 10th circle could be imbued, although I didn't know how far past it. There were 5 spellslots.

These weren't that useful, it was just 5 spells, but it could help in a pinch.

8. I already had a skill, [Fire Resistance], but the cloak was even stronger than that. I could walk through fire with no aura and the cloak's automatic shielding deactivated and still take no damage. Anything in my vicinity was the same, including my other clothes, and even someone else if I hugged them or carried them through a place filled with fire.

Well, swimming in magma or lava was probably still too much, but anything less than that was not even worth mentioning.

9. It glowed blue in water. Ok, that one was just kinda cool, but it's very important to me.

It could also glow blue normally, if I willed it.

Everything added together, it was a crazy piece of equipment.

Remember that this is one item.

I thought back to the cloak and how overpowered it was as I flew back to the capital at a leisurely pace.

All of a sudden, I wanted more, but that was easier said than done. Not to mention the diminishing returns after I got too many items.

Well, at the very least, it'd be nice to get a full set of clothing and some more weapons.

For clothing, it'd have to be even more flexible than the cloak, which was already maxing out the flexibility of dragon parts, so I'd need a different material.

I heard spider silk was quite strong when bundled together. I wonder if there was a way to get a lot of strong spidersilk...

I thought about going spider hunting somewhere, maybe catch some large, mana-rich spiders with strong silk, but for some reason the thought of it unnerved me, so I cast the thought away.

Weird. I hadn't gotten unnerved like that again after the whole "depression following the dragon killing" fiasco. Why would I feel that way now?

'Whatever. Maybe I'm just developing late-onset arachnophobia or something. Wait, no, that would be pretty bad, wouldn't it?...'

I shook my head and sped up.

I'd reach the capital in under an hour at this rate. I sped up more, and more again. 10 minutes. Again. 5 minutes.

Yeah, this was a good speed.