Day 77

<System updated>

<Version: 1.3.6>

<Report: Numerous bug fixes>

<The following "Sub-System" updates:>

<Modification SS prices tweaked>

<Slayer SS given new quests and made easier to access>

<Lore SS granted automatic display timer>

<"Sub-System" related rewards can now be acquired through achievements without administrator input>

<Added 1239 new achievements>

<Added 137 new skills>

<19 new abilities recognized>

<Some skills now have cheaper progression>

<New fusion blueprints added>

<The racial and national perks that were once hidden, will remain secret no longer>

<Known bugs:

<lack of brackets (<>) for achievements>

<Charm stat is still locked>

Well, that's new.

I blinked awake. My posture was at its worst, my spine curled into an L shape with my upper body resting against a wall and my torso touching the dirty floor. I sat up, and stretched, attempting to pop my back like I had many times before. But no pops came.

"Hm?"

I twisted and turned, curling myself into truly inhuman positions, yet no pops were heard. I stood up, rising to my feet immediately with no dizziness, soreness, or pain. I let my arms fall to my side at rest, but as I did so, I felt an uncomfortable scraping at my right arm.

I looked over.

I was met with the growing stub of my right arm. Logic lost its place in my mind as panic hit the alarm bells.

"GAH!!" I audibly screeched and fell back slamming into the dirt wall and causing bits of dust to fall on my hair. I panted loudly as I stared at the exposed bone and stringy muscle, including tiny nerve strings and arteries that pulsed with vitality.

"Max! Are you okay?" I heard a high voice sound out from a few yards away. I calmed myself and peeled my eyes away from the grievous injury.

"Y-yeah. I-i'm fine. Forgot about my, uh, injury." I located Lily and walked over to where she was crumpled on the ground. I poked her once, then twice. "You good?"

"No." She squeaked out. "I think that bird got my spine. I can't feel my legs." My face immediately lost its mischievous smile, instantly replaced with worry. I carefully turned her over from her side to her stomach, where I saw a big patch of her armor and cyber mesh were gone.

A nasty cut dug deep into her spine, a good chunk of flesh missing and thereby exposing the tiniest gleam of white bone, just slightly above the end of her tailbone. The hole was about one and a half feet, and maybe ten inches wide. Most of her back was visible, along with the immediate area around the end of her spine.

I grimaced, too worried about the injury to care about anything else. "Use my paralysis resistance skill, and my [Health Pulse]. I'll go rouse Oldren and see what he can do about your armor."

"W-wait!" I stopped mid turn and looked back at her. "..Can you stay here for a bit?"

My mind was a storm of plans and ideas, tasks that needed doing and goals that required action. But the fear that corroded her face wiped all of that away. I smiled and edged closer to her. "Sure." I planted my back on the wall and sat right next to her head, her injury to the wall but not touching it.

"Mm. Mmmmmm!" I looked over at her. She was… gesturing with her eyes or having a seizure. I wasn't sure which. "What?" She sighed. "Lap pillow." I followed suit and sighed as well. But considering the painful and serious injury she was currently putting up with, I didn't put up more resistance than that.

Getting her head on my leg was quite an experience, one hand down and with a crippled participant. But once it was done, her head was propped up on my thigh like a pillow. I folded the bulk of her long curvy brown hair behind her head, as I myself banged my skull against the earth, waiting for my arm to regenerate.

I consciously pumped my recovered stamina into the wound, and let the healing energy go to work while I did a deep dive into the skill vault. I spent the next few hours playing around with the status and checking out any possible new additions.

I went to the skill creator tab that I unlocked in my fight with Cinder, and it was still mostly blank. However, it did have a little picture of a planet, and a number counter showing 13/78.

No clue what that means.

<[Rumination] lv7 -> lv8>

I went through the codex and compiled all of the common notifications, and then slimed them down. I also dissected the conditions part, separating it into ailments for poisons and magical effects, and afflictions for injuries.

The newly included notification should read as: <You have been inflicted with x> and <You have been ailed by y>. Though it remains to be seen whether that will actually work or not.

I flexed my new hand. The healing process was a strange one. I was allowed the displeasure of watching my bones, muscles, arteries, and nerves grow like vines and twist around each other. My bones regenerated like living sand. Little grains grew on the end like stalactites and slowly filled upwards. Muscles just sort of sprung up and tied around the bone, though the arteries and nerves noticeably grew first, the muscle enclosing and hugging them.

Probably around three hours passed until I was confident in moving my arm again. The healing only took one, I was just a bit hesitant about moving and messing up the process somehow. Even when my arm was fully formed i still felt a fizzy sensation beneath the skin. I found I didn't have a choice, however, when Oldren decided to walk over to us, now fully repaired and with an annoying look on his face.

Max: Not. A. Word.

He rolled his eyes, then pulled out a shiny L shaped object from behind him. My arm.

Oldren: I managed to snatch it while you were running away. The actual arm is still inside though. No way in hell am I touching that.

He tossed it to me, but just outside of my reach, causing the metal to collide loudly with the wall. We both froze.

Lily stretched and blinked awake. She pried herself up and yawned. "How's your spine?" I asked.

"I… think I'm all healed up?" She touched the open spot on her back. Her face gained a slight red tint. I turned back toward Oldren. "Any chance you included a healing factor in these suits?"

"Actually, I did." He proclaimed with a smirk. He kneeled down over lily and began sketching some sort of rune over her armors core with his enchanting pen. He then instructed her to feed the core mana, which she did.

I felt in my sixth sense the hole start to slowly close up, starting with the mesh.

"I don't have any mana related skills besides enchanting, so you'll have to feed the mana in yourself."

"You can't just make some kind of absorbing enchant? Those are usually a fantasy staple." I questioned.

"True, they are. But if they exist it didn't come with my knowledge pre-download. I imagine they are, but would be fiendishly complicated, impossible to inscribe, and require multiple different elements. It's out of my league."

…

"So, what now?" Lily said, breaking the silence.

"We escape." Oldren replied.

"And what makes you think the bird isn't spawn camping us?" I asked.

"It's been at least a day already! There's no way that stupid thing has stayed around for that long without a meal, especially with it's young to feed."

"I'm not so sure…" I replied. "I have a feeling that attack wasn't just a one off thing." Lily nodded her head in agreement. "Yeah, something isn't right. I have a bad feeling…"

"Ugh. Fine, how about this?" He transformed one of his hands into bare metal and pried out my old arm from its metal and mesh coffin from where I had tossed it on the floor, his face crinkling in disgust.

"We'll do a test." He walked over to the entrance of the cave, preparing a throw to the outside. I flinched. "Wai- wha- OLDREN NO!!!" But he had already chucked the decaying flesh into the dirt outside.

"Hm? What's the problem?"

"You dumbass! If the bird really is out there, now it's acquired a taste for human flesh! Mine specifically!"

"Oh calm down, drama queen." He listened outside for a moment, as did the rest of us. "Hear that? Nothin'. I told you, the bird. Isn't. He-"

The ground shook as a gust of wind exhausted into the cave. I threw myself over Lily while Oldren was rocked off his feet and sent barreling deeper into the cave. A calamitous CAW was audible above the noise, followed by crunching and the sound of apocalyptic wings thrusting upwards and away.

"... You were saying?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I didn't catch his reply.

—

I watched as the cyber mesh between the previously dissected sleeve of armor and its full body counterpart stitched into each other, the armor plates cracking back into place and the metal regrowing like scales.

I flexed and tested the armor, now good as new from Oldren's fancy repair enchantment. "Some good that armor did, huh?"

"It wasn't made for tier… I don't know six? Seven? Eight? Monsters, okay?" Oldren breathed ruefully. "It's supposed to stop you from getting injured by petty shit, tier 3's and 4's. Not the fucking raid boss that bird was cosplaying as."

"I was thinking about calling it a 'Sky Terror'. I feel like 'Stupid Bird' doesn't do it justice." Lily piped up. I looked pointedly at Oldren. "All in favor?" He raised his hand silently and dropped it just as fast. We all agreed unanimously. Usually I do the naming, so I felt little bit of pride at her initiative.

"So~, what now?" Lily asked again, this time to no one in particular. "Explore?" I raised. "Explore what?" Oldren's failure to escape, and success at painting a target on my back had put him in a foul mood, not that he doesn't deserve it.

I pointed deeper into the cave. "I spotted something weird down there. Vaguely manmade looking? Some kind of ruin with a sculpture in the middle."

"Sure. Why not? Nothing else to do." Oldren breathed.

We got up and walked, Oldren staying ahead and me and Lily walking side by side diagonally behind him. As we did, the walls transitioned to smooth stone, and then to sculpted bricks. Tilted pillars of ruined grey stone covered in lichen and moss drifted into view, forming beams that held up the skinny trapezoid shaped hallway.

The floor changed as well, the plant life only swelling the deeper we went in. The glimpse of the same humanoid sculpture I saw before I passed out widened more and more as we got closer. We finally chanced upon a large circular room, a spear like symbol carved on the walls and a huge crack in the ceiling that beamed down a ray of light in the center.

The floor rose in a circular fashion an inch or so, lifting up the stone corpse left upon its shoulders. The strange being was a dark, camouflage green. With dozens of slightly different shades swirling and fitting together like a storm, grainy in appearance yet smooth to the touch.

The golem sat with its legs pushed outwards, its arms at its sides and also heavily strewn on the ground. The bulk of its body swelled at its arms, which carried massive growths at the forearms, resembling riot shields.

Though hard to tell from its lazy sitting position, its height standing up would easily dwarf me. Perhaps eight feet or so? Maybe ten?

"What is all this?" Lily asked in awe.

"Some kind of ruin?" I asserted.

"Looks more like a tomb." Oldren disregarded, poking the green giant laying collapsed in the center. For a moment I tensed, physically preparing for the statue to come to life, but nothing happened.

"Cave ends here." I noted. "If this really is a tomb, what's the deal with this thing? A fancy coffin? Lily, what's the appraisal say?"

"That's the thing…" She said, confused. "It's coming up empty."

"What do you mean, 'empty'?"

"Hold on, it's loading… Appraisal block?.. Apparently this thing has an ability that's blocking my appraisal!" Me and Oldren shared a look. "So it's definitely a dislocater right?"

"Yep." Oldren agreed immediately. Lily gave him a sceptical look. "How can you be so sure?"

"Oh, Lily. Sweet, innocent-" her frown deepened. I spoke over Oldren. "Appraisal block is a fantasy staple, right next to regular appraisal and slavery. You didn't see a 'no authority' message or anything similar, right?" I knocked a fist onto the cool stone.

"What else could it be?" I finished.

"Hmm… A monster the system has never seen before?" Lily put forward, though she clearly doubted her own words.

"I feel I don't need to voice my opinion on that one."

We poked around for another half hour, but found nothing interesting. The crack in the ceiling turned out to be just that, a crack. Not an opening. I'm not sure how natural it is, considering it reaches through at least a mile of rock in order to deliver light down here.

We went back to the cave mouth. We sat around, conversation attempting to puzzle out a plan eventually losing out to talking about our past lives. Turns out, Oldren is quite the playboy. His story got darker and darker as he talked about his descent into addiction. Before we knew it, he spilled his whole life story, leading to us all getting a bit more connected.

On another note, I also got to hear a bit about Lily's life. Apparently, she was a bit of a loner. Unable to make friends, her parents not exactly helping.

"What a bastard." I scoffed. Lily waved her hands back and forth quickly. "Nonono! It wasn't that bad! I must have been a bit dramatic. It really wasn't a big deal."

"That's not nothing. You know that's borderline abuse right?" Oldren said, his knee to his chin and a hand on his cheek. "And your mom ignored it too! Bystanders, though not as bad as the perpetrators, still carry some blame!" He reasoned. Lily just shook her head.

A beat of silence passed before Lily changed the conversation. "What about you Max? What's your life like?" I opened one eye to look at her. "You know pretty much everything about me. I'm a pretty boring person."

"Y'all have talked before?"

"Well, we lived together for a good month before we left the forest. What else would we do in all that time? Besides labor, all we ever did was chat."

"Dang, I didn't realize y'all knew each other for so long. Explains the cave scene."

"The what scene?" Lily asked, confused. I pointed at Oldren. "We don't talk about that. Actually, how do you even know? I thought you had shut down at that point."

"I have my ways…" I squinted at him. He looked away and started whistling. "Smooth. Anyways, I have a plan I want to try out." I stood up. "I'm gonna make a break for it."

"Why? You know you're just gonna have to come back anyways right?"

"I mean, there's a chance it left." He gave me a look. "Yeah, yeah, I know. At the very least it might have left this zone. If I get like a minute or two I can grab us dinner. Regenerating that whole arm has made quite an impact on my nutrient levels, and I'd like to remedy that."

"Ok, just be careful!" Lily said, clearly worried. I waved her off. "As soon as I notice anything off I'll teleport right back." I stepped up to the cave mouth, and zoomed off. There was a pretty large patch of rocky hills in front of the cave mouth, lightly obscuring it. Although it had been upturned during the chase, it was still quite defined.

The forest outside of it was light. Emerald green grass dispersed conservatively among loose, muddy dirt teeming with insects. There were only a few trees, though there were many downed logs littering the ground. I'm talking more wood on the floor than in the dirt. And most of them were pretty long too, triple to even quintuple the height of the trees still standing.

Most likely the product of the sky terrors reign in the local area. If it creates such gale force winds wherever it roams, I can certainly see taller trees not having the best time because of it. Many of the logs are rotting and piled on top of each other, creating a sort of melting playground of wood chips and leafy shrubs.

Many of the flora were just large, ugly bushes and shrubs with tiny leaves. Huge patches of ground were missing in some places like a post activation minefield, displaying the extraordinary deep roots required for plants to thrive in this place.

While this sort of environment was hell for large creatures like elk and boars, smaller vermin like rabbits and shrews thrived from the variety of hiding places and lasting sources of food. Finding them in the woodwork was extremely easy, but all of them were far too small to even count as a snack.

Thirty seconds had passed. Nothing. A bit of sweat dripped down my forehead. The stress was killing me. But I pressed on. Empowered by my [Brash Dash], I leapt around the pieces of decaying lumber, leveling all of my mobility skills in the process.

Keep in my mind, I, and by extension, my skills, are in no way perfect. I still slip on wet surfaces. I still trip on roots, or get stuck in dirt pits. My skills drastically decrease those moments, but they still occur regularly.

Like right now.

I slipped on a piece of bark, dusted with old dirt. I fell down a short scaffold of wooden logs, before a thorny patch of brambles "softened" my fall, scraping against my armor. I sat there on my back for a moment, before noticing some movement in my peripherals.

I turned my head upwards, which actually positioned my skull upside down. A spot where I saw a rabbit pinned down by a chunk of lumber. I spun and righted myself, crawling on my hands and knees towards the creature. The thorns tried to press into my palms, only to be crushed instead by the metal plating.

The bunny scrabbled, trying to shove itself deeper into the hole, but it failed to do so.

I got your ass! I stretched out my fingers, and then clenched them into a fist. As my wrist blade shot out of my upper forearm, I lunged at the bunny and dug the sword deep into its neck. I reached with my other hand, chest and cheek rubbing against the dirt to pry out the little bastard.

Success! Proud of my catch, (despite getting no xp), I quickly hopped out of the ditch and began making a break for the cave mouth. I must say, the successful hunt did put me in a good mood, but I wouldn't call myself careless.

My reaction may have been a bit more cautious, but as soon as I felt the shift in the air I began putting everything I had into [Way of the Wind]. Large movement. Spinning. Compressing. Cycling. Over and over again, the wind carried a depth and weight of measurable concern.

I waited for the danger to kick in, stock still like a prey animal, mentally hovering over the hyperspace button. When the wind violently changed and the tiniest instance of extreme danger made itself apparent, I teleported straight into the cave mouth.

A tiny fraction of time later, and a spear of force exploded into my last known position. I didn't see it, but felt it. The shockwave from over five hundred feet away kicked up dust and flattened the hair on my head, spilling over into my eyes until I brushed it back again.

A shadow leered over the land. My danger sense began to freak the fuck out. The Sky Terror burst onto the ground and lunged toward our cave. "oH SHIT! RUN RUN RUN!!!!" I screamed. I started hauling ass immediately, Oldren and Lily right behind me.

The light into the tunnel dimmed dramatically, as the wind shrieked and compressed. I glimpsed behind me to see the cave mouth dwarfed by the bird's own face opened up into a black abyss, its mouth unhinged like a boomerang, dozens of twelve foot blades of wind falling towards us like the blade of a guillotine. An execution worthy of a whole ass embassy.

I put my intellect to work, perceiving the location of the blades in relation to my body in space. Assuming their trajectory, I shifted my body into a somewhat unnatural shape in the hopes that the blades would gravitate towards the most armored parts of my body.

I mostly succeeded. Around seven of them ended up hitting me, with five simply shredding the outer armor and another cleaving through the finer second layer, straining but not breaking through the cyber mesh. The final one eased through a gap at my shoulder, cutting through the lower muscle of my triceps, just barely missing the tendon.

I winced but kept up my pace. Lily managed to dodge all the blades, mostly by luck save for a few scratches on her legs. Oldren got through in a somewhat comical way. Self bisection. But hey, if it works it works.

What I didn't sense was the second, much larger blade making a break for me. I did a little hop to make sure it hit my back plating and not my head, which worked, save for the impact force sending me careening into the ground.

I landed face first, sending a crack through my jaw and splintering my lower teeth. My face dragged through the dust for a second, before I smashed my palms into the ground and did a backflip onto my feet again, though my landing was very amateurish and unsteady.

Any feelings of self approval were dashed by the dread of seeing the tomb chamber. We had run out of cave. The bird had in fact not driven into the cave, its body far too large to enter. This seeming luck turned into a nonexistent one as the bird let out a blood curdling screech.

Aura formed into a dark, wispy jaw shaped into two V's that hovered in front of its face. It reminded me of the bite skill I had seen most monster use, but this one was clearly a very high level version. The dark skill lunged forward and bit into the mountain, carving out a huge cone of earth in one devastating chomp, straight up erasing that part of the mountain.

Then its kids soared in. Though they were small enough to fit into the cave, they chose not too. Instead, they helped their mother dig, using their own bite, claw, and tail skills to chip away at the mountain.

The nearly five hundred foot long tunnel came to a stop much faster than I would have liked. I turned around once I entered the tomb, skipping over the green sculpture and slamming my back into the carved wall. I leered at the far off scene.

The birds were making incredible progress. They tore through the earth like a drill, already halfway towards us.

I was nervous. I was afraid. The stress was eating away at me. But more than that, the fear of death had wormed its way into my gut. The thought that it might really be over. Over all the adventures and fights, only once have I thought I would die.

And even then it wasn't to the hands of a monster. The thoughts of being torn apart and eaten haunted my psyche. I shivered, but unsheathed my blades and stepped toward the entrance. Two hundred feet now.

"I'm gonna be real, I have no confidence that we can beat this. So, if this is it…"

I turned to look back at them. I smiled. "It's been an honor."

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