Shadow of Nyx

Shadow of Nyx

As soon as the word "Accept" left Jason's mouth, time seemed to stop. The black orb in front of him began to tremble almost as if this inanimate object became excited, and in a sudden movement this floating black orb dropped into the center of Jason's palm in the shape of a teardrop.

[System Message – Assimilation of Inheritance has begun – Termination of this process will result in the loss of this inheritance.]

As the teardrop splashed into his hand, a black flame quickly enveloped his hand. A searing, deep cold emerged from this flame, and it felt as if Jason's very being was having the heat sucked dry. Jason knew that this was the first trial of the inheritance, and that if he couldn't even endure this he might as well quit and wait for the inevitable invasion of the Demons and death of his family.

A progress bar appeared on his interface, and began showing the percentage of the assimilation.

[System Message – Assimilation – 1%]

[System Message – Assimilation – 2%]

The flame quickly spread and began to crawl up his arm, enveloping his torso and head as it spread downward. The cold was akin to taking a bath in liquid nitrogen, and each passing second was torture. However, with each passing second, the progress would increase by 1%.

Leviticus watched from the side as a strange black flame quickly enveloped Jason. He could tell Jason was in an extraordinary amount of pain, but at the same time he could see determination in his face and the tenseness of his body. From the strange item, to the body language of Jason, Leviticus could tell that Jason was in the process of activating some sort of legendary skill or technique.

After what seemed like an eternity to Jason, but in actuality was only a little more than a minute and a half, the progress bar completed.

[System Message – Assimilation – 100%]

In an instant, the flames vanished; to anyone watching, it would seem like they just disappeared. Jason gasped and fell to his knee, breathing heavily Jason examined the state of his body. He knew that these flames had entered his body, and could feel them lying dormant inside. He no longer felt any pain or cold from these flames, and he felt a slight intuition that he could summon these flames if he desired.

Deciding to look through the new class before he tried anything, he looked at his interface.

[System Message – You have assimilated Nyx's Inheritance – Class – Grade X

Description – Before Nyx left the mortal realm, she prepared an inheritance for a mortal worthy of Her. You have been chosen to be taught the ways of Nyx and will be given a trial at each breakthrough phase. Failure will result in death.

Phase One – Shadow of Nyx – Level 0/10

You have been selected as a candidate to obtain the inheritance of Nyx. Become one with the shadows as you begin to incorporate the Night into your being. All stats are tripled during the night, or in any shadow during the day.

Skills: Unlocked

Shadow Affinity – Active – Become as incorporeal as a shadow, phase through all physical and magical attacks. Length – 2 seconds | Cool down – 1 Minute | Mana – 20 Mana

Dark Optics – Passive – Darkness is as bright as day to you. Nothing can hide from you in the dark.

Shadow Flame – Passive/Active – The fire of the night lives within you. Ability to manipulate this fire is granted. Damage is classified as shadow damage. Length, mana requirements, and cool down are dependent on skills user creates.

Stealth – Passive – When in shadows the user becomes semi-transparent until discovered. User is 50% more difficult to be discovered when in the shadows.

Shadow Immunity – Passive – Shadow damage deals no damage or status effects to User.

Locked

Invisibility – Unlock Requirements: Level 1 + 200 Exp Cost – Active – Become one with the dark until you become discovered or initiate an attack. Length – 2 hours | Cool down – 10 minutes | Mana Cost – 5 Mana per minute.

Shadow Clone – Unlock Requirements: Level 3 + 400 Exp Cost – Active – Create a shadow copy of yourself, with 25% of attributes. Switch places with clone at will. Length – 10 minutes | Cool-Down 20 minutes

Shadow Hop – Unlock Requirements: Level 5 + 1000 Exp Cost – Active – Jump from shadow to shadow. Range – 25 Feet | Length – 1 minute | Cool down – 3 minutes | Mana – 10 mana per jump.

Cold immunity – Unlock Requirements: Level 7 + 1500 Exp Cost – Passive – Immune to all environmental and magical cold effects and damage.

???? - Unlock Requirements: Level 9 + 5000 Exp]

As Jason looked through his class, he could feel nothing but joy! Shadow damage was one of the rare damage types that very few could give, and very few had resistance against. Thanks to this new class, he now had both! Not only would he deal a damage that very few would be able to resist, but there were so many advantages to this class that each new perk astounded him further.

The current skills he had unlocked were already incredibly overpowered. With the Shadow affinity, he could completely avoid any damage that was sent his way for a brief moment. This would be a life saving skill and a trump card that would surely save his life many times in the future.

Dark Optics was basically an upgraded version of Night Eyes. He could already tell a difference though as he looked around the room that was only faintly lit before with his night eyes. What was once a faintly lit, black and white room, now became a bright room with a plethora of colors. What stood out the most was the blood on the ground from the sacrifices that had been used to build the summoning ritual.

Jason could see a tinge of black surrounding the light of the torch that Leviticus had recently lit, clearly defining for him where the light ended and the shadows began. As Jason's new class was all about shadows, he figured this was how his class helped him distinguish where shadows were since his vision was now unaffected by the dark.

Jason was really excited about the Shadow Flame skill. This was akin to a manipulation skill of an element, a powerful and rare skill that allowed Users to manipulate the element that had been mastered according to their imagination. This was a skill that was typically only seen with mages and sorcerers as their classes focused around the manipulation of mana and magic, but Jason would never complain about having this skill.

Having seen the ways that Users in the past had manipulated their elements, Jason could already see multiple different paths he could use to use this skill to his advantage and become a terrifying force on the battlefield.

Stealth was normally only a rogue or assassins skill that was exclusive to their class after level three. Now that Jason had this skill starting out at level zero with this new class, he could already think of a dozen locations that now opened up for him to explore that were originally too dangerous for him. He could now easily sneak in, and sneak out without ever needing to put himself in danger.

Putting aside the locked skills for now, Jason was most awed by the fact that this class multiplied his stats by 3 during the night. This was an incredible boon to Jason, as Demons only ever came to battle during the night. The sun was deadly to the majority of weaker demons who needed to hide during the day time, while it considerably weakened the rest. Only those that were lesser demons or higher were unaffected by the sun, and received boosts to their strengths during the night.

With his stats being tripled at night, Jason was an even more deadly demon hunter and would deal a lot larger blow to their forces when they were stronger. Demons may become stronger during the night, but that now had no affect on Jason. While the majority of Users would wait for the morning to hunt Demons and magical beasts to level up and complete their quests, Jason would prefer the night-time when the Demons and magical beasts were typically more active.

Ignoring the two mythical chests that he had gotten, as he intended to open them when he was alone, Jason looked at the rest of his rewards. The title of Demon Hunter was a title which allowed him to deal an additional 10% damage to all demons, and gave him rights equal to a baron in any part of the world. With this title and the renown he obtained in practically every location in this world, he would be able to skip the annoying grind of obtaining noble status throughout the world of Socrathia.

As he glanced at the 1000 gold coins he had obtained, Jason opened up the trader option in his interface and immediately traded 900 gold for dollars. This would solve a lot of his financial issues for a short while and also cause his wife to get off his back about spending so much money on the helmets. He knew Beth would be absolutely shocked when she saw their bank account now, as 900,000 dollars would be sitting in their savings.

Chuckling Jason stood up and looked to see what Leviticus was up to.

"Jason, are you ready to leave?" Asked Leviticus seeing that Jason was standing up and smiling like he had just found a million gold coins on the ground.

"It's actually time for me to return to my world for a bit." Jason nodded his head. "I'll walk with you out of this forsaken place, but after that I'll need to go."

Nodding in understanding Leviticus began to walk alongside Jason back through the tunnel to get out. They began to talk about the battle, and different tactics they could have used to defeat Shrarzok the Shadow.

The fact that Jason had said he was returning to his world was not strange to Leviticus at all. To the NPC's of Socrathia, they all knew that the Users had come from a different world. They knew that a demon invasion was coming thanks to the oracles spread throughout the land, and that somehow Driblark would escape the cage that he had been in for the past thousand years. They just didn't know how he would escape or how bad the invasion would be, so their most powerful magic users created a summoning pool that summoned warriors from another realm. These warriors would be given access to The System, and would fight alongside them in the inevitable battle against the Demons. They would also be given the ability to travel to and from their world.

When they arrived at the junction where the paths separated, Leviticus pointed down the tunnel he had gone down when they separated paths.

"Down there is the treasury of these bastards. Want to go check it out? I only grabbed my gear and hurried back towards you."

Leviticus chuckled, "I figured you might need some help since my path ended up in a dead end."

Jason glanced at him with his eyebrows raised, "Did you run into any trouble?"

Leviticus smirked, "Just another one of those undead knights. It wasn't too difficult for me as I had leveled up on the way there by taking out the other undead minions on my way."

Jason nodded, he had guessed that Leviticus had run into further undead minions. He was tempted for a moment to mention the undead amulets, but in the end decided against it. He had already made the mistake of forgetting to give one to Leviticus before he left but seeing as how everything turned out well in the end there was no need for an apology. Jason would just make sure to not make the mistake again; after all, having a plenitude of experience from the future didn't assure that he would never make any mistakes nor that he couldn't make mistakes.

They walked down the hallway towards the treasury, continuing to talk about the previous battles they were in and the experiences they had obtained through different battles. Jason learned that Leviticus had only recently joined the guards and had become a captain in the guards. He originally hailed from the elven homeland of Lothremben but had left his small village after it had been destroyed by magical beasts.

He then traveled around doing odd jobs here and there and lived off the land until he decided to settle here and receive training in order to become stronger and return to his homeland to seek revenge against the magical beasts that had killed his people and ravaged his home.

Jason could sympathize with him, as he had lived through the exact same situation in his past life. Only instead of magical beasts it was demons, and Jason was given the opportunity to go back to the past to make sure it never happened.

When they arrived at the treasury, Jason's eyes widened. There were piles of weapons, food, rare materials, copper coins, silver coins, and gold coins all around the room. The room was about the size of a basketball court, and shelves lined the whole room holding up the precious bounty that the cultists had gathered.

Seeing Jason eyeing up the bounty that lay before them, Leviticus smiled. "Jason, I see that you're a smart man. Not only are you smart, but you also have the air of a commander about you. You saved my life, and my intuition tells me that you're an ambitious man. You saved my life, and thus everything here should belong to you."

Jason glanced over and nodded at him, acknowledging his well-placed intentions.

"Thank you. However I can't accept this favor. You and I are a team now, and if we're going to work together we should share the loot. You are right though, I do have grand ambitions. I intend on creating a guild among us Users that will stand against the boundless tides of demons that are coming our way. Much of what is here will help me greatly in creating a capable force."

Leviticus nodded thoughtfully, and after a moment of pondering responded to Jason. "Then let us use what is here to create this organization. If you'll allow me, I can help you set this up without any hindrances and even provide some personnel who can handle the administration in your guild. It is fate that we have met, and you and I can help each other to accomplish our goals. You take everything for now, and I will let you know how much these people will cost. I only ask that you then use this guild to help me reclaim my homeland and rebuild it into a great city."

"Deal." Jason accepted without any hesitation. Bringing Leviticus in to help manage the administrative duties would save him an enormous amount of time. He would only have to vet these people that Leviticus would bring in, but other than that all that Leviticus required of him fit into his goals nicely. He would have to build a guild city eventually and reclaiming an elven land in order to do so would bring him much fame and renown.

Leviticus nodded as Jason stepped forward to collect everything into his inventory. A grand total of 230 gold coins, 450 silver, and 535 copper were added into his bag. He left behind all of the food and rotten materials that he found but found a good deal of uncommon green equipment and materials and even a rare blue amulet.

He and Leviticus then turned around and walked out of the crypt.

As Jason and Leviticus exited the decrepit chapel, Leviticus urged Jason to find him at the guard house when he returned. Promising to do so, Jason opened his interface and chose to log out. He couldn't wait to see the look on his wife's face when he showed her their bank account!