Then came the blood. The pungent stench of iron came a moment later. Shards of ivory bone glistened within the dim light as they fell to the floor.
For a moment, Soren barely even reacted, a scream caught in his throat.
Then came the pain. An immense throbbing pain that demanded his attention.
Both knees fell to the ground, Soren's intact hand shooting up to cover his mouth, the survival part of his brain not wanting himself to scream, so as to not alert anything of his position.
His body trembled, sweat having gathered at every exposed pore and falling to the ground, the immense struggle of trying to suppress a scream more demanding than any workout.
It was a good thing that he had fallen to his knees, because a disorienting dizziness took hold of his mind a moment later. Before his mind could fall into any more disarray, a system notification popped up before his vision.
[Natural passive healing effect of {Unknown} armor has been activated.
Warning: The level of repair is limited by how much mana the User currently possesses.]
Not even a moment later, the throbbing pain from his hand reduced to a semi-tolerable level. Not completely gone, but considerably better.
Gradually, his dizziness also fizzled out, now allowing him to think a lot clearer.
Taking a look at his hand, Soren takes note of how the bleeding was almost completely stopped. It was still leaking like a dripping faucet, but he likely wouldn't pass out in the meantime.
"Dammit…" The bad part about this passive effect, was that he was now almost completely out of mana…
[Mana: 6/50…]
'I was way too overconfident in my control over this ability…' He wallowed in self-deprecation, not exactly sure what to do. Should he go… find his fingers?
The thought brought a shiver down Soren's spine. "Well, to live is to learn, huh?"
He let out a shallow laugh as he began searching around the room, finding all four of his mangled fingers with the use of his clairvoyance to guide him.
It's a very odd feeling to be holding your own fingers without them being attached to your own body. It's quite indescribable.
With a fuck it mentality, Soren used the little remaining bit of his mana to try and attach the fingers back to his hand with the use of his ability.
It somehow hurt more than having his fingers being blown off. He had to connect each nerve linking between his fingers and his palm. He could only get two fingers connected before his mana finally ran out.
Soren fell to the floor, now fully exhausted, the two other detached fingers held tightly in his other hand.
Looking to the side, Soren took note that the casing around the halberd had crumbled apart, likely from the immense amount of feedback coursing through it. He was surprised that the halberd wasn't affected by-
Wait, what were those wisps of mist leaking from it?
'Identify.'
[Honorary Title: N/A
Weapon Type: Pole Arm
Weapon Rank: V
Weapon Potential: Due to significant damage to the weapon, it no longer possesses the ability to improve…]
'Agh, dammit! I guess this is another consequence of my overconfidence…'
He had majorly screwed up on this, but at least the weapon didn't completely break.
The wisps of mist oozing from it were still concerning, so Soren moved on to the description.
[Description:- ]
[Due to the nature of the damage sustained by the weapon, the origins of it have been corrupted. The system can not guarantee that the user will be able to understand the information displayed.]
[Does the user wish to proceed with the description?]
'What the hell?' Soren honestly couldn't believe it. 'How powerful is this ability, that it allows me to corrupt the origins of an item?!'
The thing that freaked him out the most, was the fact that this was the ability at its lowest rank. He really couldn't imagine what it would be capable of at higher ranks.
'...I wish to see the description.' Soren mentally gave consent, not even a moment after, a system interface appeared before him.
"What in the…" His shock caused him to accidentally speak aloud, the screen before him a jumbled mess of symbols vaguely resembling letters. It was completely unintelligible; the system had really downplayed how corrupted it was.
He couldn't be bothered with trying to decipher the description, and just looking at it for more than a couple of seconds made his head hurt, so his focus shifted to the only uncorrupted part of the weapon.
[Skill/s:
{Hunter's Tenacity} → {Call Of The Void}
{Self Repair} → {Atomic Aptitude}]
'Nevermind, spoke too soon.' Soren didn't let himself be surprised. Instead, he mentally pulled up the descriptions of the corrupted skills.
[Call Of The Void:
Skill Type: Active
Skill Rank: I
Skill Potential: N/A
Skill Proficiency: 0.0%.]
[Description:
The embrace of the void is cold, yet inviting. The space in and of itself has its own conscience, a living entity that awaits the arrival of guests, engulfing and confining that which heeds its rapturous call.
This skill provides the user with the ability to heed the call of the void, allowing this item to be stored within the embrace of the void. The skill can be activated at will, giving the user the ability to summon this item at any point in time and space.]
[Atomic Aptitude:
Skill Type: Passive
Skill Rank: I
Skill Potential: N/A
Skill Proficiency: Scales with user's [Atomic Manipulation] ability.]
[Description:
An influx of the user's mana has given this item an aptitude to the atomic affinity. Grants the item the ability to be repaired with the use of [Atomic Manipulation]. There exist a myriad of applications that come with an aptitude to an affinity, but the user must figure that out for themself.]
Soren honestly didn't know how to react. One thing he did take note of, however, was how the system interface was a little less glitchy, at least compared to how it was before.
It was still a headache to look at for too long, but it was a lot more manageable now.
With a simple thought, Soren activates the {Call Of The Void} skill, feeling a deep
connection established between him, the halberd, and a far away entity.
A moment after the connection was formed, Soren felt a small amount of his mana be drained, before the weapon seemingly vanished from every one of his senses.
It quite literally appeared as if it wasn't there in the first place. There was no light, no obnoxious sound effect, it just simply disappeared.
Even so, that feeling of a connection still remained, feeling just as strong as if it were still in his very hands.
With another thought, Soren was astonished to see the weapon back in his hands without a sound. Checking his status, he saw mana wasn't needed to bring something back from the void.
That could come in handy.
The most surprising thing was that the speed in which he could store and summon the weapon was incredibly fast. It was barely even a second after the thought that the skill would activate.
The feeling of the connection he experienced earlier seemed to settle in the back of his mind. It was still just as strong, but it wouldn't be a distraction, which he had been slightly concerned about.
He was curious whether these corrupted skills came as a result of him nearly breaking the weapon, or if just exposing something to enough of the Atomic affinity would yield the same result? Minus the whole having to nearly break the item part, of course.
'Wait-!' Taking a look at the {Atomic Aptitude} skill, Soren seemed to have completely glossed over the fact that it allowed him to repair with his [Atomic Manipulation] ability.
Granted, that came at the cost of the standard [Self Repair] skill that any decent weapon possessed.
But that could honestly be to his advantage, because if the new corrupted ability simply ran on mana from him, rather than atmospheric mana, he'd likely be able to repair the weapon at a far quicker rate than what [Self Repair] could offer.
Not wasting any more time, Soren activates his ability, only to stop himself immediately, having been completely out of mana, having a decent chunk of the already meager amount that was recovered spent on testing the other skill.
Sitting on the floor lotus style, Soren calmed his errant emotions, trying to helplessly speed up the recovery process.
…
"What or who could've done this…?" It was a question pointed at no one in particular, well, maybe the lifeless body of the sentinel lying on the ground, if you wanted to count that as a person.
The aitherian mercenary sent to investigate the disturbance in the infamous Lab City was left perplexed.
It hadn't seen anything like this in all its life, the sentinel's head seeming to have collapsed in upon itself, like the implosion of a dying star.
It didn't help that whatever had killed the sentinel had aimed for its head, seeing as that was where they kept all their recorded data. The mercenary could only hope that it had a backup somewhere on its body.
With a thought, it activated the ability bestowed upon it once it had become a mercenary, an ability that came from a relatively low ranking bloodline, but it was practically vital to any mercenary or anything of that sort of profession.
The reason being that it gave one the ability to do more than just a surface level identification. It didn't just give a simple description of something. If the user accrues enough clues, the ability could outright give a description of what occurred.
The reason why the bloodline was still so low ranked was for that very same reason. The ability was powerful, but it still required one to even be able to gather enough evidence to even be worth anything.
Regardless, it would still be of use as long as the mercenary could find anything related to the murderer from the sentinel's body and the room. It had already scanned the dented object that the suspect had likely used as a weapon against the sentinel, already being halfway able to get a description from the ability.
Taking a sweeping scan of the entire sentinel's body, it didn't take long before it found a small audio recording device implanted deep under its chest cavity.
With barely any hesitation, the mercenary straightened out its hand, its nails more than sharp enough to rival a sword.
With a sickening crunch, the mercenary ripped a hole out of the sentinel's chest, not bothering with the gush of the already room temperature 'blood', that being cold enough to nearly freeze water, coming from the ghastly wound.
Taking hold of the audio recorder, the mercenary yanked it out of the corpse's chest with ease, not able to stop the faint smile that had formed at the corners of its mouth.