Asher gasped as a somehow both powerful yet gentle pulse erupted from his body, calmly washing across the empty cavern and stopping Loratta mid-sentence. Immediately after purchasing his final skill, he suddenly felt more than he had in his entire life. As though he'd finally found his place in the universe and was ready to fill the role that was expected of him.

Loratta clearly understood what had happened, as she raised an eyebrow, smirking at him. "Well you're certainly opportunistic, I'll give you that. Though I hope you don't think completing the Stage of Discovery is going to help you any. Unless that new skill you just unlocked gives you the ability to breathe dirt, you're still going to die here."

Asher stared at his hands in wonder as he flexed his fingers, barely even feeling the pain from his carved-open midsection as certainty surged through him. He didn't feel any stronger, but he felt as though he better understood himself. Like he was more sure in his own abilities. He still didn't understand exactly what these strange stages that Moxy and Loratta had mentioned were, but clearly there were benefits to going from one to the next.

Asher's mind screamed a warning at him and he flickered through the astral without thinking, narrowly dodging a rock javelin that blasted through his midsection. It would seem Loratta wasn't planning on giving him any time to get used to having all fifteen of his skills unlocked.

Fine by him.

Returning to the material plane, Asher used Distortion to dart forward, closing the space between them in an instant. He was forced to drop low in order to dodge three needle-thin slime blades that shot out from Loratta's raised fingers at his chest, but he managed to rake his mithral dagger across her leg before slipping into the Astral as he shot through her.

Tumbling across the bleached ground, he jumped to his feet and turned around just in time as the skill ended and he returned to the material realm. It seemed he wasn't quite fast enough however.

Asher's eyes widened as he witnessed a heavy blade of slime erupt out of Loratta's back, and he barely managed to jerk his body to the side with a hurried use of Distortion before the blade slammed into him. Rather than pierce straight through his heart, it ripped through his left shoulder, tearing the muscles to shreds.

Gasping in pain, he slipped into the astral not a moment too soon. Immediately after freeing himself from the blade, the slime-blade erupted outwards in hundreds of thick needles in the blink of an eye. If he hadn't managed to free himself from the blade as fast as he had, the left half of his chest would have been ripped apart.

"You're slippery as an eel, and just about as annoying to fight," Loratta sighed, turning around to face him once more. "Why not just stop all this nonsense and-"

Her words faltered as she stumbled, almost falling over as her leg failed to support the rest of her body like she'd expected. Confusion spilled across her face as she glanced down, blinking at the sight of her leg.

Unlike the rest of her body that looked as pristine as ever despite having battled against The Mole and Tombstone for at least half an hour, there was something wrong with her leg. It was absent of blood and didn't look quite like he would have expected, but there was a clear gash carved across her lower thigh where Asher had raked his dagger mere moments ago. He'd been hoping to sever her artery and score a lethal blow, but it seemed despite the fact that the wound he inflicted remained, her body was still that of a slime, meaning no blood came flooding out of the injury.

Loratta stared dumbly at the gash cut through her leg, scrunching up her face as her body refused to flow back together and fix itself. "What exactly did you-"

Her eyes widened and she ducked, just in time to avoid the dagger Asher had lobbed straight at her face. Seeing no reason why he should wait for her to come to her senses, Asher continued his assault, pulling out another of his many daggers with his one functioning arm and darting forward.

It seemed one unexpected downside of having a body made from slime, was that it could be cut by rusty iron just as easily as polished mithral.

Snarling, Loratta glared at him, and spike after spike of hardened earth erupted from the ground, each one aimed to stab directly through his midsection. Asher narrowly dodged each spike through careful uses of Distortion, before getting close enough to create another tunnel of compressed space, using it to stab a dagger directly into her eye.

Screaming in rage more than pain, Loratta lashed out at the same moment, forming a wicked blade with her hand and slashing a few inches into his side before he managed to slip into the Astral. Narrowly avoiding being cut in half, Asher panted, carefully watching to see what effect his latest attack would have even as his blood flowed from the deep wound Loratta had inflicted.

Although his dagger would have penetrated deep into her brain had she been a regular person, Loratta seemed entirely unharmed by having six inches of steel shoved right through her eye socket. However, when Asher danced away from her attack into the astral, yanking the dagger from her head with a sickening suction sound, his skill proved itself useful yet again.

Her ravaged eye socket didn't heal from his attack.

For the first time since they'd started fighting, Loratta's face paled, and she raised a shaky hand to touch at her ruined eye. Again, there wasn't so much as a hint of blood, but her strangely fluid form refused to flow back together and fix his wound.

"How are you doing this?!" she screamed, slowly backing away from where he'd last vanished, her one remaining eye darting around in search of where he might reappear. "I'm made of slime! I have no flesh and blood! Your weapons shouldn't be able to do anything to me!"

"That's strange," Asher chuckled, returning to the regular world and giving her a predatory grin despite the horrendous shape his body was in. "Because from where I'm standing, it sure looks like they're doing something."

Narrowing her remaining eye, Loratta reached out a hand and clenched her fist. The moment she did, Asher felt a slight nausea spread through his body, and he raised an eyebrow at the realization that after seeing him breathe in her airborne poison for the last few minutes, she must have finally used her strange Compound Toxicity skill on him.

Unfortunately for her, Complete Resilience was more than enough to handle her attack.

Loratta clearly had expected her skill to be more impactful than that, as her one eye widened when all her skill managed to do was make Asher's grin grow wider.

"You know what, Loratta, as thanks for giving me that one free shot at you back when we first met, I think I'll do something similar," he said, raising his dagger and pointing back toward the entrance to the cavern. "I'll give you a five second head start before I gut you like a pig. Sounds more than fair to me."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Snarling, Loratta's panicked face morphed into one of pure rage as she seemed to forget about her strange wounds for a moment. Rather than try to stab him with a portion of her body again or fire any more rock javelins however, she did something new.

Raising a hand above her head, Asher flinched in surprise as her own hand exploded, sending small bits of slime flying everywhere. The self-mutilation caught him so off guard in fact that even with Comprehend speeding up his reaction time, he didn't quite manage to fully dodge the attack, and a few of the tiny flecks of slime had landed on him.

Slipping into the astral, Asher gasped at the realization that many of the tiny blobs of slime had come with him. Each one that had landed on his skin seemed to be partially fused with his own flesh, and he looked on in horror as he realized they were being absorbed into his own body. A wave of burning pain racked his body from head to toe, and his veins surrounding these different spots turned a horrific inflamed purple, forcing him to his knees in agony. Whatever this attack was, it was magnitudes more deadly than Loratta's airborne toxin.

Unable to keep himself in the astral, Asher reappeared in the material realm, groaning on the ground as he struggled to stay conscious. Even with his Complete Resilience, it was taking him everything he had to fight back against the pain. His muscles locked up and began violently twitching as the poison coursed through his body.

Complete Resilience – lvl 19

"You're still alive?!" Loratta gasped. Asher was just barely able to make out the look of utter shock on her face as she watched him writhe about on the ground. "But even if you have poison resistance, that's part acid. It should be literally eating you from the inside out! What are you?!"

As much as he would have loved to quip back with a snarky one liner, Asher was pretty certain his teeth were bleeding from how hard he was clenching his mouth at the moment. Loratta's acidic poison was busy doing everything it could to ravage his body, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt he'd have died within seconds without his impressive skills. Even now, he could practically feel his regeneration working overtime to try and combat the damage to his body before it could grow too severe.

Eternal Regeneration – lvl 18

"No matter. Even if it wasn't enough to kill you outright, you don't look like you have long to live," Loratta grinned, clearly enjoying his pain. "How about I grant you one final mercy and end your suffering for you?"

Hobbling on her wounded leg over to one of the giant pillars, Loratta placed her remaining hand against it. Even through his pain, a small part of Asher made note of the fact that the hand she'd detonated to hit him with this deadly skill was still missing, indicating that her attack hadn't come without cost.

From all his time studying up on The Big Book of Elements: Volume Six, Asher recognized her use of the Shatter skill as Loratta focused her attention on the giant earthen pillar before blasting the entire thing to pieces, causing another powerful rumble to shake the very compound.

"I think one more should do it," she nodded, limping over to the pillar closest to him and shooting him a hungry smile. "While I do wish I could stay around and watch you get buried alive, unfortunately, with this strange wound you've left me, it looks like I'll have to get a head start on my way out of here. At the very least, I want you to know your death won't be in vain. It will bring me much pleasure after all. Any last words?"

Waiting a moment to see if he could even string two words together in his current condition as he writhed on the ground, she laughed before turning and laying her hand on the next pillar and prepared to use her skill one final time.

Complete Resilience – lvl 20

Asher waited for the gang leader to focus on the pillar, knowing the Shatter skill required her to direct her full attention to her target for it to work. The moment she went to activate her skill, he struck. In her arrogance and complete confidence in her last attack, Loratta didn't seem to think there was even the slightest chance that he'd be able to move. And while he could barely do more than twitch a single hand in his current condition, that was more than enough for his purposes.

Concentrating harder than he ever had in his entire life, he used Distortion to make a small tunnel of compressed space stretching up from the ground all the way to her exposed neck. And in a single, desperate slash with his mithral dagger, Asher reached out nearly ten feet with his violently shaking arm…

And lopped off Loratta's head the moment she shattered the pillar.

The ground shook and giant portions of the ceiling began raining down all across the empty cavern as cracks began spreading throughout the ceiling that no longer had the proper support. Despite having finally ended Loratta's life, it seemed she would get her wish after all of destroying her compound and burying him under a few metric tons of dirt and rock.

The poison ravaging his body immediately lessened after Loratta's death, and Asher forced himself to his feet, ignoring the giant chunks of earth falling all around him and the cracks spreading throughout the remaining pillars as they struggled to hold up the rest of the compound. Trudging over to Loratta's body, he glanced down at her severed head, noting the look of surprise on her face. Finally, it seemed her strange skills had faded in death, as her blood was splattered everywhere and the clothes on her headless corpse were quickly being dyed red. Despite his own inevitable death bearing down on him, a part of Asher noted how the wounds he'd inflicted were finally bleeding.

Chuckling weakly to himself, Asher absentmindedly collected her giant glowing violet orb of shards, barely even noticing the small fortune he'd gained from the fallen gang leader.

Thanks to his Secret Seeker skill, however, he did notice what looked like a fine chain dangling off what remained of her neck. Curious, Asher tried to pick it up, finally managing with shaky fingers on his third try.

[Necklace of Shadow] – Allows the wearer the use of the Hidden Presence skill (Tier 2).

Would you look at that... I guess I managed to find an artifact to hide my elements from the truthseekers after all.

Laughing, Asher stumbled over to the shattered remains of the nearby pillar, collapsing with his back against it. Glancing at the ceiling, he spotted the giant cracks spreading even faster, and the rumbling intensified as a few portions of the ceiling finally started to give way, dropping thousands of pounds of earth into the cavern all at once.

At least if Brian and Samantha ever decide to come visit Whikoga, they'll never have to deal with a homicidal maniac made of slime, he thought to himself, smiling at his mental image of the two country bumpkins running around the city in wonder, taking in the myriad of sights.

As huge chunks of the ceiling began falling all around him, spraying him with clumps of dirt and shards of stone, Asher wished he could see their faces one last time. To apologize to Samantha for breaking his promise. He could only hope the trained hunter didn't try and track him down like she'd threatened, because he had a feeling his corpse was going to be hidden for the rest of time.

The remaining pillars fractured and fell apart, and the compound finally began collapsing in earnest. Hoping to distract himself from his impending demise, Asher tried to focus on the Eternal Mark he'd placed on Brian back when he'd first learned the skill. He noted how the happy twelve-year-old was currently somewhere near the edge of the forest, no doubt practicing with his bow and arrows. The minor scrapes he'd had back when Asher first impressed him with the skill had long since healed, and it felt like the kid had miraculously managed to keep himself from getting into any more trouble.

As dirt rained upon him in preparation for his live burial, Asher squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on the sense of wellbeing he got from Brian and desperately wishing he'd decided to stay with the hunter and her brother rather than make the trip to Whikoga, truthseekers be damned.

Right before he was crushed to death under a few thousand tons of dirt, Asher felt a sudden lurch, as though the floor had fallen out from under him, and what little strength he had left in his damaged body was sucked away as the world itself seemed to twist and churn.

The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was Brian's startled and horrified face.

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