BXBX NOVEL Chapter 10 - (10) Talent
The cave wasn\'t very large, maybe wide enough for two grown men to walk and still have a foot of space between them. Geth trudged through, killing Slimes as he went. Just moving 5 feet forward required killing eight Slimes on average.
It took him almost half an hour to reach the first bend, the Slimes were now mostly Level 4 and Level 3\'s were far and few between.
After turning the corner, he looked down the next portion of the cave and found that there were far fewer Slimes than before. Where they were packed tight previously, they were spread out here, almost as if they were avoiding each other.
That wasn\'t the only difference, they were also much larger. Where the other\'s had only been a foot or so in height, these came up to his waist.
Geth quickly slipped back behind the corner he\'d come from and glanced back towards the entrance. It was almost 50 yards away at this point, littered with cores and Slime goo splattered everywhere.
Now that he was no longer surrounded by Slimes he had the time to consult Albus.
:You\'ve killed 240 Slimes of which 90 were Level 3 and 150 were Level 4. You have 11 AP to place, 1 TP, and 4 SP:
***
Option 1: Upgrade an existing Talent
Option 2: Thick Skin
Option 3: Reflection‐ Reflects 1% of damage taken back to the attacker as True Damage.
***
His eyes immediately lit up when he read through his options. \'Option 3, no doubt. I\'m really going to need to upgrade my Talents eventually though.\' He frowned a bit at the thought and hoped he wasn\'t making wrong decisions.
Albus lit up momentarily, two new pages appeared at the back of the Grimoire. As the pages dulled down and the shine stopped, Geth could vaguely feel the shape of runes floating in the Mana that surrounded his body.
He upped his Defense to 35 and Wisdom to 31. \'Albus, would there be much of a change if I used SP on inspection?\'
:Inspection\'s fully upgraded version can identify top-tier magic items along with reading the Runes that make up their composition. When it comes to enemies, it will highlight weak points, help with tracking and finding traps, and can vaguely show the trajectory of movements. It, like most Special Skills, has 10 Levels to upgrade:
He instantly lost all hesitation at the thought. At the moment it was his only Skill, so he directly used an SP on it.
Albus glowed dimly again, another page appearing in the section where the Inspection Skill was located. As the page dulled, Geth\'s eyes shone with the same light, a Rune lightly etched itself onto his pupil. There was no pain, just the now-familiar chill of Mana.
Now that his upgrades were completed he peeked around the corner and observed the large Slimes. The difference was immediate.
He could see the dull glow where their cores were located. It would have been impossible to see them initially in that mass of gel. He could also make out a dull light towards the top of their bodies that definitely wasn\'t there before.
Before he had the chance Albus was writing :These creatures don\'t have eyes, what you are looking at is an organ that allows them to vaguely sense the Mana in the atmosphere. They can likely feel the large amounts of Mana inside of each other and instinct is keeping them apart:
Geth decided to sit back and monitor the situation. Every now and then, a Level 1 or 2 Slime would crawl from around the next bend and start working its way through this area.
Any time they would get too close to one of the large blobs, a section of goo would reach out and pull it into its body. With his new Inspection Level, he could see the small Slime enter their bodies, and then the Mana slowly being dispersed causing them to grow slightly larger.
These big blobs consisted of two Level 7\'s, five Level 6\'s, and thirteen Level 5\'s. They were spread evenly throughout the larger section cave that was before him.
After observing for a while longer, there was nothing else that could be learned. It was time to make his move.
Geth rushed towards the closest one on the left, which was brown. It was slightly darker than the brown ones that he\'d been killing. As he got closer to it, he spun on his left foot, sending a roundhouse kick towards what he\'d thought was the creature\'s head.
His foot sunk through the creature and slowed down quickly. It felt almost as if his foot had sunk into thick mud.
He pulled his foot back out and backed up quickly while looking at the results.
:Slime; HP- 185/200:
He hadn\'t been able to see the creature\'s health from his previous distance.
\'Fuck, this is way worse than what I\'d expected.\'
He moved back in to cause some more damage while the creature worked on twisting its wide-body to face him. There was another brown Slime to the right who had already noticed the commotion and was inching its way over.
Keeping track of the creature\'s "eye", he was able to stay behind it and continued making swipes with his foot or piercing with his hand.
His goal was to dig to the creature\'s center and grab its core for an instant kill before the other one reached him.
:175/200:
:170:200:
:155/200:
As he continued attacking the Slime\'s head, he suddenly felt uncomfortable and looked off towards the other one. Instead of seeing the monster inching towards him, he saw a rock the size of a softball just inches from his face.
As he tried to jump to the side, his leg felt suddenly trapped and he toppled backward instead. The projectile missed his head, but still slammed into his shoulder. It was painful, but nowhere near as much as he\'d expected.
:Geth; HP- 489/500:
Before he even had a chance to glance away from Albus\' warning, his HP had already ticked up to 490.