Chapter 55: The Scavenger
“This is a good weapon. Overall, it’s several times better than Sonata..” Rakna muttered. “Would it be preserved if the latter absorbed it?” He mused to himself and waved the Greatsword around with one hand.
“By the way, Alexa, I have a question. It seems that these Items are scaled to me in some way. Can you tell me how exactly?”
[You’re half-correct, Rakna. This Loot is actually scaled to the Plateau instead of you specifically. But that does not mean these aren’t good Items. An orange item like this sword could probably be considered a rare commodity even until the 50th Plateau.]
“I see..” Rakna hummed and put the sword inside his spatial ring before looking at the two final drops at the same time; one orange and the other purple. One of them was a ring and the other was a necklace. He took a look at the ring first.
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Designation: Spell Item/Ring
Name: Basic Earth Ring
Rarity: Orange
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Description:
A magical ring forged with the essence of earth magic.
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Effect:
– Allows the unrestricted use of Spike (T.10)
– Allows the unrestricted use of Anchor (T.10)
– Allows the unrestricted use of Quake (T.9)
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Cooldown: 5 minutes between each use.
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Note: Keep in mind that these skills still require mana to be cast even if they are Item dependent.
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“So, it gives me the ability to cast magic out of my element, huh?” Rakna commented. “Not bad. It has plenty of potential uses. Especially Anchor. Controlling gravity could be quite useful. As for this necklace..”
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Designation: Spell Item/Necklace
Name: Eruption Gem
Rarity: Purple
Number of uses: 3/3
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Description:
A necklace imbued with the magic formation of a powerful spell.
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Effect:
– Allows the use of the Tier 7 Earth Spell, Eruption.
Cooldown: 10 Min.
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Note: This Item will break after all of its uses are spent.
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“Eruption.. That’s the spell that the stegosaur used against me when I was falling. I’ll have to look into it later,” he said and equipped both accessories which, just like the boots, were not visible.
After he was done with that, Rakna eyed the large corpse of the Dreorin, and once again, his vision tunneled and highlighted the veins of the creature leading to its heart. When he saw where said muscle was, he realized why the triceratops hadn’t died although its upper body had been blasted by Gungnir. For some reason, their heart was awfully close to their neck.
As he was thinking that and trying to resist the small urge to just gouge the heart out to eat it, he suddenly got an idea. When he ate Aquila’s heart, he had felt something similar to a mana flow go through his body. Then, his Nirvana Skill somehow converted all of it into power.
“What if..” He muttered while deep in thought and Pronos looked at him. After contemplating for a minute, Rakna made his decision. “What’s the worst that could happen?” He said and approached the carcass’ neck. He extended his claws and drove his hand inside its body, cutting the arteries around the heart and then dragging it out.
Rakna stared at the bloodied heart. “I hope this works,” he mumbled and bit into the muscle with his fangs. A disturbingly good taste spread in his mouth. He swallowed the first bite and then put the rest into his mouth.
He then sat down to meditate. He observed the flow of energy infiltrating his body and this time, instead of letting his Nirvana Skill do its work, he forced it down with his soul power and managed to sustain the energy in its raw state all across his body.
After a few seconds, he started feeling some pain but nothing unbearable. At the same time, he also noticed some of the energy being absorbed by the cells of his body. A minute later, the pain was considerably higher but the energy was also almost depleted.
Then, ten seconds later, when everything had been absorbed, Rakna snapped his eyes open and released the breath he was holding. He glanced at his wings and was relieved to see that his little experiment had been successful; his wounds had been healed. Even his stamina and mana were back to around half of their value. He even felt stronger than before for some reason.
A second later, the System sent him the prompt that he was half-expecting.
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You have employed your soul to control your internal flow; Soul Core has leveled up! Mana and Stamina Consumption reduction has increased by 2%! Mana drain has increased by 1 MP.
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Congratulations! Through executing a specific action and meeting several conditions, you have learned a new Nirvana Skill; The Scavenger!
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The Scavenger: A derivative of the Nirvana Skill, The Harvester. By manipulating the flow of energy when eating a creature’s heart with soul power, the user can scavenge it to heal and restore both mana and stamina. Additionally, a small percentage of the victim’s attributes will be permanently bequeathed to the Host.
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The Absorption Factor is equal to 0.5% for creatures of the same level. This number increases by 0.5 for every ten levels above the user. As for foes below the user’s level, the percentage will decrease by 0.1 for every level until nothing is gained.
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Note: The effectiveness of the heal and the amount of mana and stamina regenerated will also depend on level difference.
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“Oh..” Rakna uttered dumbly. He had expected some sort of self-healing skill since it was what he was going for by doing this but it had straight-up given him a second Nirvana Skill.
On top of that, anyone with common sense could see that this was a completely broken ability. With this, he could go around stealing monsters’ attributes and get ahead of everyone else long as he delegated enough time to hunt.
“Well,” Rakna quickly recovered from the surprise and immediately went to the other corpse. He took out the Dreorin Greatsword from his ring and beheaded the triceratops with two slashes before reaching for its heart just like the other.
He then ate it as well, and this time, the process took exactly a minute and he was almost back to full power again. Then, a small window flickered in front of his eyes.
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Heart of Lv.44 Ancient Dreorin absorbed. Absorption Factor = 2%
+1 Strength
+0.9 Endurance
+0.4 Speed
+0.2 Dexterity
+0.4 Intelligence
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Rakna was honestly astounded. He had just gained the equivalent of around 3 attribute points by just eating a heart. A heart that was, granted, from a level 44 creature but it did nothing to mitigate how amazing this skill was. When he was finally able to stop staring at the System window in front of him, he closed it and opened his full status.
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Name: Rakna Xiorra
Age: 17 | Level: 16 (57/160)
Path/Race: Nine-Tailed Werewolf
Affiliation: Throne of Glory
Titles: Legendary Slayer, Wolf King, Divinity Slayer
Potential: S+ | Host Rank: I
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Werewolf Attributes:
Strength: 10 | Endurance: 7.5
Speed: 20.3 | Dexterity: 19
Intelligence: 14.4 | Luck: 9
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Normal Attributes:
Strength: 6.5 | Endurance: 4.9
Speed: 13.3 | Dexterity: 12.4
Intelligence: 9.4 | Luck: 9historical
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Available Attribute Points: 7
Available Skill Points: 1
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Equipment:
– Swift Dreorin Boots
– Ulvia’s Veil
– Basic Earth Ring
– Quake Gem
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Werewolf Statistics:
Stamina: 83/84.2 | MP: 159/164
Swiftness: 89.5 | Agility: 78.3 + 20
Senses: 365.4 + 5 | Atr Cap: 55.5 (Unchanged)
Attack: 102.8 + 10% Cold | Defense: 52.4 + (L)20
Magic Attack: 63.1 | MP Regen: 1.34/min
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Normal Statistics:
Stamina: 55.2/55.2 | MP: 114/114
Swiftness: 65.4 | Agility: 58.1 + 20
Senses: 270 + 5 | Atr Cap: 55.5
Attack: 74.2 + 10% Cold | Defense: 41.2 + (L)20
Magic Attack: 48.2 | MP Regen: 1/min
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Proficiencies:
– Flight (Lv.9)
– Weapon-Mastery (Lv.8)
– Taekwondo (Lv.7)
– Cooking (Lv.6)
– Karate (Lv.6)
– Judo (Lv.6)
– Taijutsu (Lv.5)
– Mana Control (Lv.5)
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– Mana Sense (Lv.2)
– Tracking (Lv.2)
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Magic Skills:
– Cold Star Magic (Lv.3) => [Cold Star Manifestation (T.0); Star Make (T.10 – T.1); Cold Star Mist (T.10)]
– Mystic Cold Star Magic (Lv.2)
– Dependent Earth Magic => [Eruption (T.7) {3/3}; Quake (T.9); Anchor (T.10); Spike (T.10)]
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Cognitive Skills (Passive):
– Eyes of the Soul (Lv.15)
– Pain Resistance (Lv. Max)
– Fear Resistance (Lv. Max)
– Fatigue Resistance (Lv. 8)
– Soul Core (Lv.3)
– Ireful Shell (Lv.2)
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Spontaneous Skills (Active):
– Claws (Lv. Max)
– Stealth (Lv.8)
– Fabled Sight (Lv.6)
– Appraisal (Lv.5)
– Reinforcement (Lv.5)
– Weapon Reinforcement (Lv.4)
– Intimidation (Lv.3)
– Call of Fangs (Lv.2)
– Artzpul (Lv.2)
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Nirvana Skills:
– The Harvester
– The Scavenger
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Unique or Racial Traits:
– Eion Auto-Sustainable Nanomachines
– Obsidian Blood
– Shape Shift
– Smell of the Wolf God (Incomplete)
– Luquila’s Wings
– Lesser Regeneration
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It was really starting to get full and he had barely had started exploring what the System had to offer. “Alexa, were you the one who removed the short descriptions to make it easier on my eyes?”
[Affirmative.]
“Nice work.”
[Thank you, Rakna.]
“Now,” after finally getting down with everything, Rakna put the bodies of the Dreorins into his spatial ring just in case and wrapped Sonata around his neck. “Get on, little guy.”
Pronos promptly jumped on his shoulder in one try, something that was already impossible for any normal snake. When he was snuggled under Sonata, Rakna breathed in and unfolded his wings as a silver mist emerged from the tip of the feathers.
“Artzpul,” he muttered and a shockwave was generated under his feet. With a single wave of his wings, he took off and activated Stealth followed by his newest spell, Cold Star Mist. The result was a disturbingly fast haze zooming through the sky, giving no room for anyone on the ground to see him moving inside.
Since he had the option to conceal his figure even better whilst flying, he would take it.
Rakna glanced at his map being gradually filled as he moved and looked at the two remaining arrows with squinted his eyes. “Why not,” he muttered and changed his course slightly.
This specific Trial seemed to be considerably farther away from the train station than the Battle Trial was. After five minutes of flying at full speed, he wasn’t able to reach his destination but his Fabled Sight caught something that intrigued him.
He plunged and used Artzpul to land in a nearby forest. At the same time, the mist followed him and invaded the area. While he was still hidden, he turned back into a therian and dispelled the magic following him.
When he made sure that there was no one around, he calmly walked out of the relatively small forest and headed toward the village he had spotted in the distance.