13 -Dungeon (3)

Location- Underwater Maze , Time- Unknown; Third Pov

'Well, I am out of stat points again' thought Noah while laying on the ground waiting for his body to restore to peak.

'Hey system, what's exactly skill you mention?'

[It's the same as the definition of that word, you can register any skill of yourself in the system, it would be upgradable either by yourself or you can use stat points]

'Oh, so what about my dodge skill, how much to level it up to next level and what are the features of level 2?'

[Level 2 would be 5 percent increase in the effect of skill and the cost is 300k stat points]

'300- What the fuck, this is too expensive, why ?'

[Because of the fact that it is already at a high level skill, so upgrading it level 2 is similar to higher levels of any other skills of yours]

'It's too confusing, is there any other way to classify the skills ?'

[Here's another classification for skills, using badminton as a analogy 

Trace- Can hold a racket

 Initial - knows how to grip a racket correctly 

Newbie- Can hit the upcoming ball

Beginner - Can go back and forth for few shots 

Proficient - Can play tennis

Advanced- Good enough to go pro

Mastered - is one of the best at tennis

Transcendent - Change the view of the everyone's understanding of tennis ]

(A/n- Skill Mastery here is taken from 'Pokemon Alternate Universe adventures', it's my favorite pokemon fic, so do check it, it's available on webnovel, you might like it :)

'So where does dodge instinct and vitality sucking skill of my physique ranks on this chart'

[Dodge instinct will be at proficient level and vitality sucking property will be at trace level]

'I see'

'How much to double my vitality sucking to 20 vitality points per second ?'

[1000 stat points]

'I guess it would have been too easy otherwise' He internally sighed 

'Register my sword skills as a new skill'

[Registering, Basic Sword techniques has been created- (Mastered)

Water Breathing (Sword) has been created -(Advanced)

Water Breathing has been created- (Advanced)]

' I see, how much to upgrade these to next levels of mastery ?' Noah asked the system, anticipating the amount 

[To upgrade Basic Sword techniques to Transcendent mastery will require at least 100M stat points, exact amount will depend on which direction you want to evolve the skill

To upgrade Water Breathing (Sword) to Master Level will require 1B stat points 

To upgrade Water Breathing to Master level will require 10B stat points]

Noah was gaping at the absurd amount 'The hell?' He started cussing at the system internally.

After calming down, he realized that unlike levels, these masteries are more like collection of levels, so this price was reasonable, plus the fact that the difference between pro player and a top pro player is vast and this case it would be too vast as his sword style as a lot of aspects

As he was thinking, he looked at his Hp, it is full, his Mp capacity has doubled and reached 6k, it is due to fact that he was near death's role and has exhausted his mana reserves twice, this happened.

Well, he got up and thought whether he should start moving or wait for his mana to reserve. He checked the lifeless or more like energy less body of archer and tried to suck it's vitality and result was as expected - Failure.

Well, he at least got the cool looking bow of the archer, he tried putting mana in it and shot, unsurprisingly he missed.

'Woah, the mana consumption is surprisingly low for this weapon, if one considered the penetrative power of this thing, it gives me vibes of a light saber, why did this knight didn't have a sword instead of a magical light saber?' pondered Noah.

Well he didn't had to think for long, he tilted his head slightly and a arrow blitz passed an inch beside his head.

He turned his head back and saw a Silver colored junk of metal with a crossbow in his right hand and a light saber in his left hand ?

A wild grin can be seen on Noah's face, he charged towards the new 'knight' 'First: Water surface slash'. A concentrated wave of water , no , of mana which behaved as water was flying towards the silver knight at a fast speed, it was a flying slash.

However, silver knight blocked it with his saber and replicated a similar flying attack at Noah, however he saw that literally from a mile away.

Dodging was easy at first, but the onslaught of flying attacks mixed with arrow laced in mana from the crossbow was annoying.

So, to increase his dodging area, he started running on the wall and interchanging between ground and wall 'Ninth :Splashing Water Flow, Turbulent'.

However, the knight did an unexpected maneuver, he threw his crossbow at Noah, Noah was initially gonna dodge as per his instincts and let that pass beside him, but he for some reason thought about dealing with this odd move.

Just as crossbow was 30 meters away from him, 'Eleventh : Dead Calm', his perception of reality slowed down, his thought process accelerated, it would take around a second for that thing to reach him in real time, so normally, seeing the speed of that thing thrown, he would have dodged it , but his paranoia didn't allowed that move, so he started using his favorite form.

However, his mind was only accelerated, so just looking at where he his and the flying crossbow is, he instantly made his thought process normal and put mana in his left hand or more specifically in the bow he was holding.

And like a sniper who didn't aimed, he shot and surprisingly when the magic beam hit the crossbow it exploded. Noah smirked and used the cover of smoke to get near his target while building speed.

'Tenth: Constant Flux X Seventh- Drop ripple Thrust' In the smoke he used his mana and weird movement of rotating his sword and his body to generate a dance or move which was getting deadlier by second and just as he reached his target, he transferred all his mometum in the thrust and as expected the core of the silver knight got destroyed due to surprise factor and the speed of Noah's move.

[You have received 500 stat points]

Noah suddenly had a thought, not all his moves especially the tenth one didn't formed water, like when he used tenth form, dragons weren't forming unlike how it was depicted in demon slayer.

So, he tried to make the mana act like water which was a challenge even to his understanding of water itself. He stood their for a long period of time trying to convert the mana completely in water.

Something weird was happening, he knew that, still he didn't stop, the world blur, only he and his mana existed, he entered a state of flow like water, formless and always flows..

He didn't realized it before but he knew that when he uses his mana to enhance his sword techniques and act as water, the mana consumption was low, that's why he was able to fight previously even when his mana was low.

After countless hours, he was able to make his mana convert into water directly as he wanted it to. This change was a qualitative one which eh felt.

Now, he tried to enhance his body with mana, after few tries he was able to accomplish this.

[You have created mana enhancement skill - reduction of mana consumption by 5 percent for a certain amount of mana]

'Oh, now it is starting at 5 percent for this one, maybe it's related to improved understanding of mana itself'

'Put all the stat points in this skill'

[ 200 stat points consumed, .... 10 percent

300 stat points consumed ... 20 percent]

'Noice' He internally affirmed and looked at his new sword which was a freaking light saber, 'It's time to dual wield' He thought with a crazed smile and started running heading inside the maze.

'He didn't had to wait for a long to see a cavalry of knights patrolling, they seemed to have noticed his presence and started firing long range attacks at him. 

'Ninth: Splashing water flow, Non-Turbulent ', this is a new move he created just now due to increase in understanding of water itself in his previous endeavor. Instead of usual exchanging between wall and ground, he currently was running straight towards the gold hunk of metal.

He was using minimum movement to dodge the projectiles, moving like water, his flexibility was up to the test at this moment and he didn't disappointed.

As, He was one hundred meters of the soldiers, he thought used his another new move.

'Tenth: Constant flux, Dual wielding drill' 

He started rotating his body and in turn both of his swords and launched himself towards the gold knight, he was rotating himself and positioned his both swords such that all projectiles were getting deflected and from outside it looked like a drill was closing on the gold knight.

However, gold knight was not a pushover and Noah knew it too, so he used almost half of his mana in this drilling attack, this move's penetrative power was even higher than his Drop ripple thrust, so he was excited to see the result.

The Drill with a half white and half blue color (due to using different swords , one normal and another is light saber) clashed with the long Great Sword of the golden knight.

Sparks could be seen flying from this interaction, However 3 seconds later, we could see the result, the drill stopped and Noah was hit like a homerun by the gold knight straight above the wall. 

Noah's instincts flared and he immediately used the rotational momentum to use 'Second Form : Dual water Wheel' and two circular layers of water could be seen parallel to each other, they could n't form a cocoon of protective space, but could still be helpful in the current situation.

As expected, arrows came with a lightning speed that he could still not react to , however his previous precautions helped him deflect those arrows, but it also pushed him away from the wall, he landed on the vertical surface of exactly opposite wall he was above a second ago.

He stick to the wall and looked at the gold knight, his gaze met that knight's, Noah 's face showed a savage grin, he was unknowingly having fun. The projectiles stopped coming for a moment.

He really liked that he was able to get back to his peak performance in less than 2 hours.

This just means a lot of training, and life and death scenario's just increases the effectiveness to whole new level, just this one cheat was enough to increase his growth level to new heights, he could only dream about it before.

His previous experience and recent breakthrough showed him that he is at tier 9 opposed to tier 8 his system was showing, that thing is broken according to him.

He looked at the army of bronze and silvers that filled his vision with gold leading it.

He was going to use a ultimate move he thought about just now, both the move type and the name too.

' Ultimate Move - Winter's Mercy : Eleventh : Dead Calm X Tenth : Constant Flux X Third : Dual Flowing Dance X Ninth: Splashing Water Flow, Non- Turbulent X Fifth: No intent Slash'

The projectile 's continued again, however Noah's descent from the wall was unfettered, he directly slashed one of the bronze knights and landed in middle of the army, surrounded by army of silver and bronze.

What followed was a Unstoppable dance, each knight was either one died in one strike due to Noah's speed, even some which defended were used as a springboard by him to kill any other knight, coming to them in few moves later.

Any one will say that this was a beautiful piece of art, however for the knights, it was a massacre, he completely took advantage of the fact that gold one couldn't directly come towards him due to him surrounded by his army, so killing all those wasn't that hard either.

The silvers weren't defeated by one shot, but it took a few shots, which rallied with many different individuals.

It took Gold knight nearly 5 mins to reach the intruder, however, it costed him his army, he was no facing the intruder who had just exhausted his mana reserves now, however he was smiling no he was crazily smiling.

(Author Here, the second part of double release is here, please comment to let me know about your thoughts on the fight scenes, hopefully next chapter will have some new content :)