BlueShear
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Chap. 35
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 18:32:00 +0000 UTCCHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Abilities. What were they? How did they work? And why could you only use so many at a time before your soul began to warp and stretch under the strain?
These were all fantastic questions!
They were also ones he didn’t really have the answers to. Of course, it could be that he’d known once upon a time, and now the information was squirreled away in an obscure scientific journal under a stack of similarly esoteric academic papers somewhere. Or, it could just be that he really had no idea.
All he did know for certain was that the soul was integral to the process. One’s Soul Grade corresponding directly to the number of ability slots a person possessed. And in turn, the number of high ranking abilities they could use. The list went as follows.
v [G Grade - 2 ability slots]
v [F Grade - 10 ability slots]
v [E Grade - 25 ability slots]
v [D Grade - 50 ability slots]
v [C Grade - 100 ability slots]
v [B Grade - 150 ability slots]
v [A Grade - 250 ability slots]
v [S Grade - 500 ability slots]
Meanwhile the abilities themselves, depending on their rarity grade, cost a certain amount of ability slots to use.
v [Common - 2 ability slots]
v [Uncommon - 10 ability slots]
v [Rare - 25 ability slots]
v [Epic - 50 ability slots]
v [Ancient - 150 ability slots]
v [Legendary - 500 ability slots]
In effect, these two lists and their guidelines might as well be spoken gospel, as far as the vast majority of people were concerned. The pertinent parameters by which any conscientious ascender would do well to abide by, lest they fall prey to their own misguided arrogance. They were there for a reason after all. And it only took going over your limit once to realize how bad of an idea that was.
The symptoms of overtaxing one’s ability slots ranged from acute nausea, to severe dizziness, to crippling anxiety, to crippling mania, to severe brain fog, to intense migraines, to crazy mood swings, to physical weakness, to hallucinations, to the inability to focus, to the inability to control mana, the list went on and on.
It also left you incredibly susceptible to soul damage, mind control, body possession, soul corruption, demonic corruption, and a whole cornucopia of obscure spiritual maladies.
Now, did any of that stop people from doing it anyway? No of course not! The benefits of whipping out a high grade ability, well above their level, in the midst of battle—even if only for a second—far too tempting of a prospect for some to willingly pass up. And while sure, it had its downsides, the upsides were just as plain.
So long as the ability in question was worth the inevitable backlash. It was a practice that only really gained widespread popularity after the tutorial—when humanity at large, and moreover, the high rankers leading humanity’s charge, were shown just how weak they were compared to the true powers of the cosmos.
Most simply referred to it as Overclocking. A dangerous practice which strained ones body, mind, and soul to their absolute limits, for so long as the ability in question was slotted in. And, on a completely unrelated note, by far the best way to train up one’s attributes, was to consistently push past ones limits.
Coincidence? Ha! As if! Did somebody say speedrun!?
Richard paused.
Because if so, could that same someone please do me a favor and raise their hand? I really would like to know. Was it one of the children, perhaps? Or was it just another of the voices in my head?
“What? No! It wasn’t us!” hissed the first.
“Perish the thought!” hissed the second.
“We’re innocent, we swear!” came the third’s grating tones.
Quiet you three! I can barely think with all that yapping!
“Apologies, great one,” came silky smooth cadence of the fourth. “On an unrelated note, if you wouldn’t mind answering a quick survey we had prepared? It really is a great help, and should only take a minute or two.”
Oh! Why yes of course. I have time.
“Wonderful! And, please, feel free to answer as you see fit, there is no pressure. Now then, have you ever considered going on a bloody homicidal rampage? How many times have you considered going on a bloody homicidal rampage? And how soon can we expect for you to go on an indiscriminate hack and slash no holds barred killing spree? If you could just give us a ballpark estimate, that’d be great.”
You know, I haven’t ever really thought about it before. Huh. Tell you what, I’ll get back to you once I’ve ruminated on the idea for a while. Probably from somewhere dark and isolated, to better give it the attention it deserves.
“That’s all we can ask for. Here’s my card just in case you come to the right conclusions sooner than anticipated.”
And so saying, the indistinct shadowy figure plopped the blank card—like a square of smoking charcoal glowing with faint embers—into his open palms, before dissipating into a cloud of ash and sulfur. The infernal card spat and hissed wherever it touched his bare skin. Then suddenly, words began to burn themselves into the blackened paper, as if they were being written in real time. A fancy cursive scrawl of looping letters appearing with a spray of bright orange sparks.
It read:
ONE HELLUVA CORPORATION
If you can’t trust us, who can you trust? It only takes one call to change your fate.
For a FREE Consultation Call: 666-666-6666
(Nuns, priests, and clergymen will be turned away at the door.)
Richard studied the strangely weightless card for a time.
Hmm… I don’t know. It might just be my paranoia talking, but I’m getting this weird feeling I probably shouldn’t call that number. What do you think horse head man?
Richard turned to his good friend, lifelong companion, and sometimes lover: man with the head of a horse.
“Neeeigh!”
Oh good! And here I’d thought I was going mad.
+++
Two-hundred six, two-hundred seven, two-hundred eight!
Plastered with sweat, Richard grunted and strained. Working his leg muscles till they felt just about ready to fall off. Crouching up and down, up and down, even as his arms struggled to keep the lvl 1 boar carcass from sliding off his shoulders. Fingernails dug into the hide of the boar, the whole of his mind focused on the task at hand. The burning in his quads, the grinding of his gums—chasing after that next squat like it owed him money and he was there to collect.
In fact he was so intent on his workout, that he didn’t even have time to entertain the myriad hallucinations constantly bombarding him on all sides. Head pounding, muscles aching, and feeling on the brink of starvation, due in large part to the Uncommon ability he’d slotted, without a doubt his astronomical resilience stat was putting in work. As he was able to set all those negative sensations aside for the sake of one thing and one thing only. Forward progress.
Two-hundred ninety eight, two-hundred ninety nine, three-hundred!
Richard let the carcass slip from his shoulders, the nearly one hundred pounds of dead boar impacting the hard-packed earth with a ground quaking thump!
Almost immediately his legs gave out, unceremoniously dumping him onto his rear. He let his quivering legs settle for a couple seconds more, before performing a few quick stretching exercises in hopes of avoiding any unnecessary cramping later down the line. In all honesty, he probably rushed past this step far faster than was ideal, but in his defense, his body was literally eating itself from the inside out.
Or at least it sure felt that way.
Not masking his impatience, Richard reached forward and tore free a chunk of “meat” from the carcass of the elite. The very same he’d crudely butchered in anticipation of this training session. In actuality, much like it’s namesake, the stuff more resembled candy than it did actual meat—with a kind of stretchy taffy consistency at odds with the elite’s supposed size and density. And the taste! Gods! Don’t even get him started on the taste.
Sickly sweet taken to its furthest extreme, the stuff was cloying to the point of being nearly inedible. It left him grateful he didn’t actually have the capacity to chew. Fortunately the weird muscle taffy was malleable enough that he could just sort of… gulp it down whole like a baby bird, if he wanted to. Of course, this came with a very real risk of choking to death, but you know what they say.
No pain, no gain! And if I really want to maximize my gains, I can’t balk at every little choking hazard that comes my way. Not when the alternative is that I fail to hit my protein!
This was another key aspect of maximizing attribute gain when training them up the hard way. A healthy and balanced diet. Or rather, the regular consumption of high level, and or high quality, monster meat. Practically steeped in mana and an overabundance of life energy, a regular intake of prime monster meat would not only help to fortify the body and mind, but greatly aid in one’s recovery. Of course there was the caveat that it really did need to be of the highest quality possible, otherwise you risked ingesting all manner of impurities.
Which would actually end up slowing your growth, rather than aiding it. Usually this meant the meat of elites and named monsters, as, for whatever reason, their bodies were far purer than their more run-of-the-mill counterparts.
Richard tore off chunks of pinkish taffy and stuffed them down his throat with an animal ferocity. Grunting, growling, and choking in equal measure, he managing to put away nearly six times his natural body weight before his enhanced metabolism was at last satisfied.
Through dogged repetition, your ability [Super Enhanced Metabolism] has ranked up in proficiency.
[Super Enhanced Metabolism] has reached lvl 1
[Super Enhanced Metabolism] has reached lvl 2
[…]
[Super Enhanced Metabolism] has reached lvl 4
Continue to push past your limits, discover creative solutions, and apply your ability in unorthodox ways to further increase its proficiency.
Blinking away the notifications, Richard let out the longest belch he thought he’d ever heard, let alone experienced. Waving away the cloyingly sweet fumes with a grimace, he brought his mind—freely under his control, now that his hunger frenzy had abated—back to the task at hand.
Without wasting any time, he folded his legs under him into the lotus position, popped a fist full of mana crystals into his mouth, and finally, got back down to his roots.
Richard began to cultivate mana.
This time, however, instead of condensing his mana pool into consumable beads of dew, he directed the threads of mana toward his soul instead. Well, less towards his soul, than the Master Formation stamped across it. Given the fact that most didn’t acquire the ability to perceive their own soul until at least A Grade[1], he was forced to work more by feel than sight.
———
[1] A Grade – consisting of Lvls 700 ~ 1000.
———
Directing his mana into a hollow void inside of him, jam packed with a wealth of sensory input and blaring white noise which, without his previous experiences tinkering with the soul, he wouldn’t have even known what to do with. Thankfully, a map of the universal Master Formation was something he’d thought it prudent to include in each and every one of his library balconies. Meaning all he really had to do was feel out the complex fractal, and see where his Master Formation differed from the universal standard.
And that’s precisely what he did.
The very first thing he noted were all the inoperable sections. Places where the formation was disrupted or simply cut off. Poorly inlaid channels like a helter-skelter medieval drainage system. Gunked up organic pathways like cholesterol buildup in the arteries. As well as entire swaths of territory purposefully blocked off by fortified ramparts and well manned outposts—armed soldiers peeking over sturdy battlements with weapons in hand.
Of course, none of these were actually present, not in the way he’d described. They were merely representations constructed by his mind in it’s desperate attempts to contextualize the etherial and unreal. Accurate enough summations of the challenges he’d face in trying to unlock the full potential of his Master Formation.
Saving those problems for another day, however, Richard eventually managed to stumble across the section that pertained to his current situation. It was a rather inconspicuous line, especially when compared to the entire grand tapestry, and yet he knew it would be crucial in the days to come. Without further ado, Richard took the threads of mana he’d dragged all the way here, and began to carefully trace the framework of the requisite architecture.
Time passed in a blur.
The whole of his focus constrained to a singular purpose. Every time he directed his mana, he made sure to empty it all in one go. Sucking on the mana crystals he’d gathered to rapidly replenish his pool, before emptying it again—the complex framework he was building like an unending pit in which his mana simply disappeared. In this way, not only did he manage to get a decent head start on his soul seal, but his cultivation received a massive boost in efficiency as well.
Only when his body began to literally fall apart from the grating influx of mana, did he finally exit his cultivation trance—warm blood running from his nose and eyes. Feeling out his progress, he estimated only 2% of the soul seal had actually been completed.
Nearly a hundred and fifty f grade mana crystals for just 2% completion?
Richard winced.
He’d known progress would be slow, but this was just plain miserable.
I suppose I’ll just have to procure some higher ranked crystals. And some higher grade meat wouldn’t go terribly amiss either.
Which of course, meant defeating more beast dens. Not that he’d been planning to slack off in that department, but still, it was nice to have all his priorities neatly laid out. Finished with mana manipulation for the next little while, Richard immediately leapt back into his muscle training.
Rolling the lvl 1 boar corpse onto his back with a grunt, he grit his gums, and began another round of pushups—cross checking a men’s fitness magazine he’d thrown in his soul palace who knew when, to make sure his form was immaculate. As he counted off each pushup in his head, he ruminated on what exactly he wanted to get out of all of this.
Ideally he’d pump up all his stats to the maximum, in preparation for his evolution to F Grade, or maybe even another prestige. But, if he had to pick one area in which really he wanted to excel, it would have to have been control. It was just too integral to his occupation as a talismanic artificer. The ability to control multiple paper constructs simultaneously too convenient for him to ignore. And if that really was his end goal, it was going to take a whole lot more than pushups to make up the difference.
He’d need to perform complex actions that required insane coordination, mental flexibility, and persistence. Something that pushed his mind to greater heights of control.
Well, I’d say I put this off for long enough.
And so, without further ado, Richard opened his mouth, and began to speak.
“Ta-uh-an nana boo-wuh-ah bububah…!”
Hmm…
It was possible this would take a bit longer than he’d anticipated.
Comments
Bamen Sanders
Well… you’re not wrong
Bamen Sanders
I will keep writing this series for so long as it feels natural to write and people want to read it :)
PboyÖ02
I’ve just been wondering… is there a very rough plan for how long this series is going to be? I wasn’t sure just from the chapters from RR, but now it seems this story can easily last for years or pretty much as long as you want to. Do you want to it to last like Dotf or Primal hunter for probably thousands of chapters?
Touch
What magazine is this? Squat and push up only strengthen thighs, chest, and some triceps. You baby forgot Bicep, whole entire back, and entire shoulders! Not to say inner glutes and calves! He’s gonna have so much muscle imbalances and twisted posture
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
