The journey toward the Grand Dungeon had been a fruitful endeavor so far. As Victor got closer to the dragon’s stronghold, the number of high-level monsters also increased, drastically raising his level and stats. “Status,” Victor mentally chanted, and a glowing blue screen appeared before him.
[Name: Victor]
[Race: Netherborne]
[Level: 302]
[STR: 470325, DEX: 470325, CON: 470325, INT: 470325, WIS: 470325]
[Skills]
[Consume X]
pαпdα-ňᴏνêι·сóМ [Raise Undead X]
[Shadow Magic X]
[Annihilating Aura X]
[Freezing Cone VII]
[Stealth X]
[Doom Ray X]
[Spirit Movement V]
“My Freezing Cone spell leveled up from five to seven, and my Spirit Movement went from level three to five. But how can I unlock new spells?” This question bothered Victor, another reason he needed to get Alice back, either to ask her directly or use her to acquire the information from a city. If Victor appeared in front of a Delver team and kindly asked them how he could gain more skills, he doubted they would drop their weapons and happily run him through how this world’s System worked. Victor had already confirmed that his System differed from Alice’s as he lacked the party feature. So what other features was he missing? Perhaps Victor couldn’t gain any new skills, and his only chance was during his reincarnation.
Victor looked over his stats. He had increased by around twenty levels over the last few days, a testament to the insane number of high-level monsters he had slaughtered recently. Sadly, due to the higher-level opponents, he couldn’t passively kill them with his Annihilating Aura. From his experiments, the skill sent out pulses of death mana that invaded nearby monsters’ bodies and, within a few seconds, caused their death. But if the monster was strong enough, their own mana would act as a shield and negate the death affinity mana from entering. So although it often weakened them as they had to waste mana on defense, it was mostly pointless. It only caused the monsters to flee, making his job harder.
“I am an assassin at the highest levels of play.” If Victor treated this world like a game, then against top opponents, his skillset was specialized in assassination. Consume, Raise Undead, and Annihilating Aura were the skills that made Netherborne so world-ending against weaker foes. For example, a Netherborne could appear within a city by using Stealth. They could then kill everyone in seconds with Annihilating Aura and raise the dead to overrun the few powerful people who resisted death’s initial waves. This was how cities crumbled and empires burned when a Netherborne materialized on the mortal plane.
But versus ancient dragons that were on the level of demigods? A few weak undead would be obliterated in mere seconds, and the Netherborne’s Annihilating Aura would be shrugged off as an annoying breeze.
Victor hadn’t thought much about his abilities before, and he assumed a Netherborne without a human’s intelligence would do the same. But with the appearance of Hackers and demigod-level dragons that could manifest blackholes on a whim, Victor decided now was the time to use his brain over brawn. A stupid Netherborne would continue slaughtering everything until it eventually ran out of prey and was starved or defeated by a stronger foe. Although Victor had avoided cities so far, he was running out of prey to kill, and he was, unfortunately, going down a similar route to ruin as his ancestors. His hunger was not sustainable unless the environment provided an unlimited supply of monsters to kill.
Victor’s thoughts were interrupted as the ground beside him erupted, and an area a hundred meters wide vanished into an abyss. Something truly titanic surged upward; he saw a circle of teeth bigger than cars surround Henry. A second later, they snapped shut, obliterating the poor horseman. With the creature’s mouth closed, he saw it was an earthworm, except it was the size of a skyscraper. Brown, armored scales protected its sides and vulnerable head as it munched on its lunch.
Before the creature could dive back down into the depths of the forest, Victor pointed his right hand toward the tunnel and began charging his Doom Ray. Purple energy swirled around his hand, and his stats dropped by a few thousand. He did not seem to possess mana or stamina and instead used his lifeforce to cast spells. If not for the fact that if he reached zero lifeforce, he would perish, he would spam his spells and obliterate everything with a Doom Ray to the face.
Victor’s Stealth skill automatically deactivated as the Doom Ray entered its final stages. However, Victor kept its power at around one percent. Otherwise, the continent may sink into the ocean. As an experiment, he once used ten percent of the Doom Ray’s power. It caused an earthquake and made a hole in the ground that caused a volcano to form; it also consumed a whopping hundred thousand stat points and reduced his lifeforce to near zero. He had learned his lesson and henceforth always limited his powers.
The earthworm seemed to sense the enormous energy that had appeared near its head and screeched. The earth trembled as the titanic creature burrowed into the dirt. Doom Ray was almost finished charging, so Victor used his other hand and cast a quick Freezing Cone spell. The flash freeze on the creature’s head rooted it in place. It squirmed and smashed its head against the walls to break the ice.
Victor smirked as he floated over and released his Doom Ray spell. Despite being in the middle of the day, the area lit up in an unbelievable flash of white as a meter-wide ray of purple light blasted into the creature. The few trees in the vicinity burst into flames as a wave of superheated air passed through the area alongside the smell of burned meat.
Victor looked around at the destruction with an eerie grin. Nothing felt better than decimating something with only a fraction of his power. He floated down the side of the enormous crater. Despite his impressive height, he looked like a tiny dot as he descended toward the corpse. Once at the bottom, he looked up at the earthworm’s bones. “So it does have bones…makes sense. A creature this size would need bones to support itself against gravity.” The pile of bones and cooked flesh looked like a mountain to Victor as he raised his claw. This was by far the biggest creature he had ever killed, and he was skeptical his Raise Undead skill would even work here. Was there a range limit? Did he have to be closer to the monster’s core?
Deciding to test it out, Victor first used Consume to replenish his spent stats. The mass of flesh and bone glowed a faint blue as a wisp the size of a barn floated toward him and vanished into his body. “Hmm, another level and ten thousand stats in each category. Not bad.” He then used Raise Undead.
Half of his stats vanished into thin air, and death affinity mana surged through the area. “This better be worth it,” Victor muttered. It had taken two whole days to gather those stats. He watched as the mountain of flesh bubbled as if boiling before melting into a cursed-looking green soup. Neon-green smoke rose and shrouded the crater in a cloud. The weird cloud then condensed and fell onto the corpse. The bones began floating, repairing and rearranging into the correct order. Finally, the cloud swirled around the new skeleton, and neon-green flesh materialized. Next, the death mana created black scales that floated and clamped onto the earthworm’s new body.
The process took a few minutes as the body was so thoroughly destroyed… “Maybe I should have just floated inside its mouth and clawed out its brain. It would have saved me a lot of stat points…” But Victor couldn’t be too angry after seeing the final result. A thousand-meter-long creature that could give leviathans a run for their money towered over him as if he was a mere pebble and blocked out the sun. Its black scales shifted and partially revealed the glowing, neon-green flesh below as it rose into the sky. Its mouth opened, revealing an abyss of razor-sharp teeth. If someone told Victor this monstrosity could eat a moon in one gulp, he would believe them.
From the open mouth, a familiar horseman emerged. He was drenched from head to hoof in green fluid. Victor paid the useless henchman little attention as the rapid flapping of wings filled the crater. Then, quickly activating his Stealth skill, he looked up and saw three dragons approaching the crater’s edge.
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