Chapter Eighteen

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Congratulations! You have leveled up!

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"Finally!" Edward smiled as he lifted his broadsword from a goblin hunter's neck. He tore two arrows away from his shoulder and turned to look at Ikarus. Two goblin warriors— the weaker kind— were still fighting Ikarus. The small dragon— although outnumbered— wasn't having any problem fighting off his foes. They had been online for nearly six hours by this point. Ikarus had practiced with his claws almost that entire time— which now meant he was deadly with them.

Ikarus lept from the bleeding neck of one goblin warrior before he hopped to another. Two streams of blood quickly erupted from the dying goblin's jugulars. They fell to the ground, dead. Once Ikarus confirmed his two opponents were defeated he ran up to Edward's shoulder and purred.

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+10% XP

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Edward smiled at the notification and caressed Ikarus's chin. Edward took a moment to look around him— to the half dozen corpses surrounding the duo in a circular formation— and smiled. Then he opened his menu and gazed upon the notification hovering before him.

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You have leveled up!

Due to your blood-origin status, you have been granted 20 stat points!

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︽

Ikarus has leveled up!

Due to his blood-origin status, he has been granted 20 stat points!

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"Twenty stat points?" Edward mumbled in shock. He gazed at the screen with widened eyes, his mind barely comprehending what he was reading. His current stat total only equaled seven when added together. Now, though, he was easily tripling that!

However, he quickly realized this monumental achievement was only possible due to his origin. For a moment, he wondered how many stat points the average player gained, though he set the issue aside as soon as he thought about it.

He opened his status and gazed upon his newfound power.

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Lvl: 2

XP: 10%

Title: The Winged Legion

—

HP: 5

MP: 5

SP: 10

HUNG: 4/5

—

DMG: (Iron Sword) 7

DEF: (Leather Armor) 6

—

POW: 2

AGI: 2

END: 1

WIS: 1

LUC: 1

—

Stat Points: 20

—

Skills: [Dragon Tame]

—

Choose a new skill: [Talon Strike], [Draconic Presence], [Draconic Language]

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"A new skill, too?" Edward giggled with a grin. He felt like dancing in his boots to celebrate. First, he looked at his stats and decided how to spread them out. Edward knew he didn't want to focus too much on one area, but he also didn't want to feel like a jack of all trades.

He still didn't know what the Luck stat did, exactly, so he decided to consider that his last priority. He didn't use Mana very much, so he also decided to ignore that stat as well. Therefore, he added only two points to both Luck and Wisdom before focusing on the rest of them.

With eighteen stat points left, Edward brought his attention to his Power stat and his Endurance stat. These two were his most important stats, at the moment. Endurance increased his health— which would be useful— but also his hunger.

To keep his hunger bar full, Edward had been resorting to eating wild berries. Sometimes, he would eat a poisonous one that dealt damage to him, but he learned to ignore the poisonous ones with time. His main concern was that he spent too much time and energy looking for berries to fill his considerably small stomach. He believed it would be nice to be able to leave his stomach to do its own thing until he needed to fill it— thus saving time to do other things. He put ten points into Endurance, thus raising his HP and max hunger to 60. With his eight points remaining, Edward decided to put three into Power and two into Agility.

Once his stat points were all allocated, Edward focused on his skills. Because he leveled up, Edward had been offered to choose between a skill list of three. Whichever skill he chose would become his while the other two would possibly be forced to wait until his next level up.

He took a moment to read all three skills, first starting with [Talon Strike].

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[Talon Strike]

Allows the user to amplify their attack power of a single strike. This strike will result in an attack that deals 5x the normal damage of an ordinary attack but will drain the user of most of their stamina.

Can be further upgraded.

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Edward didn't feel super excited about this skill. It was a good skill, but not one he needed at the moment. He chose to ignore the skill for two reasons: First because he was leery of the stamina usage. Edward wasn't the type of person to rely heavily on stamina, mainly because his Agility stat was still lacking. Secondly, because the skill wasn't unique to Dragonkin, which made Edward believe there might be a better one down the road.

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[Draconic Presence] - Unique to Dragonkin

Allows the user to personify the existence of the race of Dragons. In its beginning stages, this skill is only useful as a party trick— as it only brings about a mental debuff to all who experience it. This skill will not work against those with a strong will, at least for now.

Can be further upgraded.

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Edward knew this skill wasn't strong from how it was described, but he also held great hope for an upgraded version of this skill. Perhaps he'd eventually be able to upgrade it until it directly buffed his stats? 

He nearly chose this skill had he not seen the last one.

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[Draconic Language] - Unique to Dragonkin

Allows the user to speak the language of dragons as if it's their native tongue. This skill is a knowledge-based skill, which means the knowledge related to the skill will be inserted directly into the user's consciousness. This may cause headaches, anxiety, or drowsiness for up to 48 hours.

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"Finally!" Edward yelled. He immediately selected this skill without another thought. Then, as soon as the status screen disappeared a painful headache began to rock around his brain. He fell to his knees, immediately dizzy, as he tried to keep conscious. A few seconds after the pain began, Edward began to hear strange words as if they were telepathically communicated to him. At first, this language was completely unfamiliar to him— nothing more than a foreign dialect he didn't recognize.

The language sounded similar to German, but also close to French. The language— which he now recognized as Draconic— had many words full of Zs and Ks. As soon as he recognized this fact, a few of the words began to make sense to him. He began to hear familiar phrases and names. He even heard a song at one point, but his mind was too confused to concentrate on it.

He was like this for what felt like an entire hour. His mind was quickly overwhelmed with all of the information flooding his brain— the pain only making it worse with every newly discovered word or phrase— until Edward eventually blacked out.