"You sure this is safe?" Asked Zwei while looking at the relentless barrage of attacks the bunny was dishing out against the young man with purple hair. She was fast, had a dirty mouth she insisted in ussing to mock her oponent and had already defeated him five times.
"I'm next, so yeah, i'm sure of that." Aki said before clapping his hands and getting the attention of most people in the room. "Robin, Jony, you did well demonstrating your capabilities in single combat, but now i want you to work together and attack me." That raised several eyebrows, but most people were already used to the lord's masochistic tendencies when it came to training. Aki healing his oponents and buffing them was also only a surprise to the newbies.
"Are you sure you want to..." Robin, the rabit-kin, was still smiling her murderous smile while heaving for breath, but was suddenly interupted by the sudden new presence that sprouted from the ground.
"Aki, i found it." Arcenis said after her head popped out of the ground.
"Ha! And you said i was crazy. I was right about the gods' minds, why would i be wrong about a secret underground enanic civilization? Trust me a bit more sis." He said while smiling a more normal smile. "Training will be adjourned, i have a new appointment with tons of gold and the pipsqueaks using it." He animatedly said while leaving his patients behind after getting his naturally pale assistant to guide them to their rooms earlier than expected.
*****
"WE WILL CONQUER THE UNDERDARK!" Screamed the much more childish side of Aki while bashing another tentacle creature in front of him with a very long metal pole.
It was hard to say if these things were from one species and evolved into gross shit or if they just naturaly mutated to begin with, but no two of the things had any semblance to the other besides the tentacles coming from somewhere in their bodies. Some were kiling machines with limbs filled to the brim with muscles and bone spikes who fought in a strange pattern, but some looked like the work of a middle school kid's idea of a funny monster, with one that had faces in their butt cheeks or a very long and curved bone spike in place of the crotch.
"Tis..." Alma felt like face palming as her foster parent smashed more and more things to the walls and opened holes in even more with spears of arcane light. For some reason she could not help but associate it with a kid making a mess. The maid carrying her seemed completely frightened by the gore though.
'Have i become numb to his atrocities or someething? I normally would react much the same way as this girl?' She tough while sighing and sending small water bullets into the fray. Aki's idea of father-daughter bonding time included slaughtering unnindentified creatures and grinding together for hours or simply reading her a book while drinking some hot chocolate in the garden.
As she received a level up notification, she switched the element to fire, which caused a strange smell to rise up from the monsters that were actually flamable.
'I wanted the fused skill anyway, so i have to start using then together even if it hurts a bit.' She though as she put a small wind shield to block the smell and guide the fire, getting a bit of strain on her head, but it was overall not that hard. 'This wand problably has a very disgusting description, doesn't it?' She concluded while looking at the small dark brown wand that perfectly fit her hand and was soft like a feather while having a white claw at the end.
It was a strange design, sure, but it also had plenty of obviuos functions, so she couldn't force herself to throw away the present even if she suspected she would feel very bad after learning about it's origins. (Not wrong, it was made troll stile after all)
"Aki!" She belowed with magic.
"Yes sweety?" He said before stablishing a mind bridge.
"Twired. Swleep now." She said and floped over the soft bosom of her maid.
[Did you get a strange skill or something?] He imediatly asked while burrying a electric pupper fish thing crawling on tentacles. The excuse was generally used for her to mess around with the system.
[Not really, my mana is just empty and i'm a bit woosy. I got enough levels to evolve though, so i'm going to take a nap.] Answered a teenage girl's voice.
[Isn't it better to wait? You're barely a year old, i'm sure you can get some great evolutions, sure, but there should be something even better if you can get some skills to level five or so.] He softly suggested, not knowing how to better convince the willfull girl. It had been some time since he'd found out she was a reincarnator, but their interaction wasn't exactly perfect when it came to words yet.
[I said i'm taking a nap, not evolve. It won't make a diference if i practice with these things or a wooden dummy if i'm not in any kind of danger at all, your words. I'm not stupid, you know?] Her voice was still mostly cold, but it was actually easy for Aki to tell she was a bit irritated. Anna spoke in a similar way, if with a bit more emotion behind it.
[I know you're not stupid, i'm just worried you weren't paying attention when we discussed build workshop. Most people zone out to my nerding, you know?] He meakly answered, which made his 'daughter' kind of pissed since they both knew he spoke like that simply because she didn't really like him.
Even if carring, he was still a sociopatic and controling bastard after all. He couldn't fault her for not liking him with reasons like that either, so he just tried to appease her and not cause conflict. They both loved Anna after all, so neither wanted something bad to happen between two people she held dear. Neither felt sure she would choose them, but it was quite obvious Aki would be left to gather shells if she was forced to decide.
That was just who she was, it was even part of the reason Aki fell so hard for her.
With the baby sleeping, Aki went back to grinding his stats. He'd spent most of his time grinding skills the last few days, so now his sheet was actually bigger, but he only got a couple of points from the training.
He needed a real chance to die to get his physical stats higher. Why?
[Soul revolution: 20% more XP received. The soul rises. The soul becomes more condenced. Will is easier to manifest. Less damage from truth. Immune to effects below a certain threshold. Recovers more quickly from any effect against self.] (The XP bonus doesn't change with level, but the rest does.)
[Alpha Lv 10: 50% easier to train under stress. 100% easier to train under death treath. You exude an aura that demands reverence from those beneath you. You smell of danger to those above you. Fear effects are 100% more effective. Unique skills receive 20% more XP. Outer pack receives 10% more training XP. Inner pack receives 25% more training XP.]
[Enhanced attribute values Lv 4: Status points work 40% more effectively. 40% easier to raise status through training.]
[Shadow's swiftness Lv 1: Dexterity is 2 times as effective. Reduces difficulty of raising dexterity through training by 5%. Training dexterity is 5% more efficient.] (All other stats have one skill like this with the exact same thing for their specifics)
That's just how it is. You need synergy to actually get things done. Unless you have millenia to train without anyone bothering you.
By the way, Aki got a new unique Skill.
[Divine enemy Lv 3: Any related to the divine naturally dislike you to a certain extent. You give 30% more XP for anyone related to the divine. You get 30% more XP from killing any related to the divine. You deal 30% more damage against the divine. You receive 30% more damage from the divine.]
He was supposed to get it at level 10 straight away, but until the gods are ready to attack it practically just gives him more XP, so the gods tried to veto the skill, but there were too many gods with their prides hurt, making it unavoidable for him to at least get the skill.
What does that mean? I don't know, it's just the 20° chapter, try to ask the system instead!
*****
As fingers snapped right besides his face, Mark woke up with a start and materialized a summoned sword to his hand the very next moment.
"Up here faggot." The voice of an old man sounded in his head, but when he turned to look there was only a purple bird perched on the top of his bed roof. It was definetly a monster though, no other way it would look so comically muscled and tough with a strange coloration like that. "Finally woke up shit head, been here for some time, thought of fucking your wife too, but she seems unhappy enough to have to sleep with you, so just leaving her with the memory of one night was too sadic even for me." The crow-like monster said and spat on the floor. Somehow. "Here's your fucking letter." He said while throwing a paper envelope like a frisby, and dissapeared.
Right outside the capital city of the kingdom Aki never bothered to learn the name of, the crow that just retarded the mind of a king to insult him popped into existence again, started floating without beating it's wings, took out a small cigar and lighted it, puffed in, and exaled. "That's the shit, hehe" He already sounded less gruff even with just a puff, but didn't dare to delay around now that he'd been detected on the material plane and began to fly over to the bodder, to his flock and new master.
*****
"GGGGRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..." A shoking sound reverberated in the tunnel that led to the underground Aki had gone exploring. It just sounded so wrong that...
"Come on fuckface, it's just some light, you don't even have eyes!" Complained the wolf boy as he hauled a tail of a flopping segmented monster on his back. He'd already eletrocuted, mind banged, torched, poisoned and bleed the thing, but the giant worm was just too fucking resilient!
Somehow it was extra sensitive to light though. He'd needed make the whole tunnel propel the thing foward and ask the rest of the exploration crew to shove light to it's face. "Any time now Sam, no pressure." Aki told the floating crystal while gritting his teeth. He was casting about a hundred basic earth spells to stop the thing from running away with it's own manipulation and bodily contractions, no way in hell he was going to drop it's mind barrier himself while hauling it's ass up phisically as well.
[Understood, starting relaxation procedure and procastination sub-routine.] It replied.
"That was one of your best jokes till now, but i think my lungs will break if i try to laugh at it dude. Knock it out." He told the crystal with a half smile that seemed to push half his face's skin up with it.
[I'm trying. It will go down in 3... 2... 1.] And there was a shower of dirt as the giant worm was hauled out of the burrow in great speed as it's magic stopped. It was so long that it actually didn't matter though, it's face was still mere meters away from the entrance.
Aki feel to his knees and howled before laughing while pumping his fists to the air.
"I HAVE MY OWN CARRIER WORM!" He shouted to the skies.
[Negative. This is a specimen of the greater gnome burrowing...]
"I don't give a fuck! It's name is now Carriete Worminton and it's to be refered to as Carol for short!" Aki said the first thing that came to his mind before passing out in exaustion and brain hemorragy. He was going to be fine though, his head could take much more pressure and his brain didn't need as much oxigen to work.
It's because of situations like this that he went to the far away ocean just to drown himself after all.
He'd also thought something like this was going to happen, so he'd ordered S9 to drag the worm to the reinforced cave they'd made after finding out something like this existed. And they all said it was going to be a waste of resources!
They were going to fatten this thing until it gave Aki a shit ton of rubber, because it somehow ate rocks and released a compound that could be described as nothing else but brute rubber. Aki tested it, but even with the amount it should need to ingest, there were not enough biological rests that it could be extracting, so the only thing he could surmiss is that it was doing something similar to SCP-3000.
He'd derived several magical reactions out of the teory behind the thing, and somehow most of the bullshit he spewed as a joke turned out to be correct. There was the flame that produced heat with life force and something Aki could only call hydrochloric acid, but he had no way to test what the air turned into, he only knew it could suffocate someone and would rapidly expand from the original mass because of the many times he healed his lungs and the breeze that kept hitting his face. The minerals all turned diferent whenever he changed the slightest things, so Aki simply stopped after he'd somehow turned lead into uranium, or something vaguely yellow and metalic, he didn't try to mess with it further, so he wouldn't acidently produce the active version of said mineral.
The only thing that was harmless was, ironically enough, mercury, which turned into water. He tested it, completely safe for comsumption even for normal people. No adverse signs in or out of the guy he'd tested it with.
By the way, gold actually worked like a flesh subtitute and silver turned into a base for a soul. It was strange.