Chapter: 108

“Finally, now I can check my notifications.”

<[Short Sword Proficiency Level 1]>

[+2% damage when using short swords]

[+2% speed when using short swords]

[Parry – 5% chance] (Passive)

“Parrying? Awesome. I thought I could already do it though. Huh…” Jay didn’t understand why the sword proficiency gave him a skill he already had.

In this world, people can learn a technique without a weapon or skill, and still fight effectively in combat – the only difference is, if a weapon or skill says it will do something, there’s a 100% chance it will accomplish it. Eg. A shield will say it has a 15% chance to block – this means, in the 15% of the time it does block, it will block perfectly no matter the skill of the user.

This is why Jay and his minions can disable body parts by stabbing at them with swords even though the sword doesn’t specifically say that it does, it can still happen due to physical damage – meanwhile a sword may have the ability to disable, and landing such a hit means guaranteed success.

Jay carried on, checking his other notification that he ignored before.

<[Mental Coating – Level 1]>

[Mana shield – defence from mental/magic attacks]

[Area covered – 8 Liters]

[5 Mana per second]

“8 Liters huh? Well, I guess it coats it, so that’s about the size of a small bucket of water, enough to cover my sensitive brain. Seems like a high mana cost, but I am low level so I’ll have more mana later on – but knowing the pain of not having it, it’s totally worth it. Hopefully I can cover my whole body by the time I fight mental-based monsters that are strong enough to harm it.”

Looking at the corpses, Jay retrieved the sword that Lamp lost, stashed the bones of the three siltwolves in his ring along with nine ferritic plates and three more spines, before making his way over to the variant.

It’s body was strange. It had no black fur like the other silt wolves, neither did it have any eyes, nose, ears – it seemed to all be covered by a fleshy, hairless hide – the hide itself was a deep, dark blue. It’s mouth was made up of the three fleshy flaps – one of them missing since Jay had blasted it off. It had no claws, and was completely defenceless if not for it’s mana abilities.

Jay extracted the bones from it’s flesh with his ring, and they tenderly left it’s body. No ferritic plates or spine were left behind however, and Jay noticed the creature didn’t have any plates lining it’s back, so his previous conclusion about the back-spikes being the ferritic plates was correct.

The extracted bones were the same colour as Red’s, predominantly cobalt-blue with blotches of red, though Jay noticed a few purple spots after looking more closely, almost blending into the blue.

As Jay was about to leave, he noticed something strange – a lump in the remaining dirt-crystal flesh. Pulling out his sword, he carved a hole to examine what it was, holding his breath in the event of it simply being gas or pus – though he was pleasantly surprised.

Pulling open the flesh, he uncovered a dark purple stone. It seemed like it had been polished for years, reflecting Jay perfectly under the light from the lamp.

“Huh, a nice little reward for catching one of you slippery bastards.” smiled Jay as he went to analyse it.

[?]

“What?” He analysed it again.

[?]

And again a few more times, with the same result.