As soon as he dropped the core in his mouth it changed consistency immediately, completely liquifying and then it started to soak into his bones.
He felt a rush of heat spreading through his skull and down his spine before closing in on his chest, he suddenly felt a slight pulse as a tiny lit of strength seemed to surge his body.
[Mana Core Consumed]
[Calculating…]
[Mana distributed, Mana and Health recovered]
[Stat increase:
Strength +1
Vitality +1
Mana +2]
'Ohhh, I could get used to this! Not only do I feel great just consuming a single core gave me a good boost that weeks of training would give… how the hell can monsters do this? Isn't it super unfair?!'
Seth couldn't believe how easy it would be to increase his stats from now on, couldn't he become stupidly strong if I just hunted a bunch of weaker monsters constantly?
"On that note, how on earth do monsters not grow quickly? Maybe it's their habits or such that prevent such large amounts of growth… I'm just having chills thinking of a monster that went of a massacre and ended up eating thousands of cores"
'Anyway, I have no use for the rest of this corpse… guess I'll just leave it, man I should try get a spatial storage item as soon as I can, though I guess I'll have to figure out how I'd go to a settlement to purchase one in the first place when I'm a walking skeleton.'
Putting those thoughts back in to his mind, he takes a glance at the cavern entrance before deciding to finally step outside, as he walked at a calm pace, he exited into what seemed to be a larger cave with nothing but the sound of water dripping every now and then.
'Hmm, now which way should I go? Since I still have no idea where I am and my map only shows places I've been and consciously mapped it's not useful at all, this place is meant to be some ravine right? I don't see light peeking through here, though I did in the cave back there, I think it was coming from the left? So, I guess I'll go that way'
Making a snappy decision he plodded away without a second thought.
"Let's see… guess I'll try figure out what I'll do when I surface from this place, one of the first things I'll need is equipment, this bone club won't last too long especially if I keep using the crushing strike, if I can find some materials to create at least I makeshift weapon that's more durable it would be for the best"
'But what would be even better is if I could get lucky and find some corpses with Armor on, I don't know if this place is a popular dungeon or not, but it would be much easier to get equipped that way, the best thing would be some full-plate mail that I can use to hide my appearance'
As he mumbled on about his future, he came to a wide area that was full of light raining down from above.
'Nice, seems I made the right choice going left'
He felt a bit happy now that things went his way for a second, before becoming utterly flabbergasted at what he saw laying around the bottom of the ravine.
"What in the living hell happened here?!"
Corpses, ruins and everything in between scattered as far as the eyes could see, buildings of all variations ranging from smaller houses to large shops laid in tatters like they'd been through a maelstrom.
Seth couldn't help but pause in silence as he stared at the scene, he had said he wouldn't mind finding a corpse or two for equipment, but this is beyond a joke, just with a glance he could see hundreds of corpses, now dried or entirely turned to dust resting in this place, what equipment they wore was essentially rusted through or broken to pieces.
Not just that but there were plenty of bones donning basically nothing or tatters that were clearly peasant clothes or such, they were likely civilians.
"Such a massacre, I've never seen or heard of such a thing! Did this happen after I died? Or maybe it was something that happened a long time ago? God this is fucking annoying knowing next to nothing!"
He stopped hesitating and started to wade through the ruins, as he did, he decided to take a look upwards out of curiosity, but he wasn't expecting what he saw once more, he knew he was in a ravine, but it seemed to go on for almost a mile upwards barely allowing the stream of light to reach the bottom.
"How the hell am I supposed to get out of here?!"
'And how on earth did all these ruins get down here?! Surely, they weren't built here, right?'
Cautiously stepping on everything, he took in the surroundings, it looks like an utter disaster had his wherever they came from; he could see holes in the remaining bones and pieces of equipment like something drove through them with ease.
Seth entered some of the more intact buildings occasionally, usually the ones made with sturdier and longer lasting materials but most of the stuff inside was decayed or ruined giving him no clue as to where he was.
He kept walking, not stopping for a single second as if something were scratching at his mind.
It took maybe another half hour of wading through the ruins until he saw something moving in the distance.
'Something's there! It kind of looks like… people? Uh, oh god what do I do if they see me like this I'll be attacked on sight!'
He inwardly panicked, he may have dealt with that pig easily but he's still basically a new-born with only a handful of tricks, any half-competent adventure could do him in easily.
"Wait-"
On getting closer to take a look he couldn't help but gasp
"Brother?!-"
'Or not, just joking'
Standing there, seemingly dazed and swaying left and right was some bleached bones wearing some rotten equipment, he carried a short sword and a shield that looked tattered and almost falling apart, but as he stared at the figure something kept bugging him.
'Of course, I wouldn't be the only undead down here with all these corpses, but that shield… I need a closer look!'
Without hesitation he dashed out from behind some rocks he was observing from and ran straight towards the skeleton hoping to catch it by surprise, unfortunately the moment he stepped out as if on que the enemy's skull darted in his direction before taking a stance with the shield out to the front and weapon diagonally pointing diagonally downwards behind him.
'That stance! Is it a coincidence, I need to know!'
Undead are made from resentment, thus they contain the soul of the ones that died to create them, though they are essentially mindless monsters that follow their drowned instincts they can retain experience that was driven hard into the deceased in their lifetime.
[Reinforcement]
Without hesitating Seth turned it on, he couldn't underestimate his enemy especially when he was still a low level, and he didn't have any information on the skeleton.
He stopped a couple meters away from the skeleton and widely swung his club rotating his whole body to put his entire force in to the hit, unfortunately the enemy seemed to have saw this coming, it put the shield in the way of the blow but angled it so it would slide off the shield and pass overhead while it ducked.
"Damnit!"
'That was stupid of me! I just said I wasn't going to underestimate it then I got overconfident in my strength!'
Before he could curse himself even more, he felt a sharp pain passing through his left side.
[Health – 70%]
The skeleton took advantage of his opening and stabbed his lower ribs, Seth quickly retreated with a backwards jump before he could get attacked again.
'Fuck that hurt; if he were any higher it would have hit my core!'
[Mana – 79%]
'Man, second fight in and I'm already in a bad situation'
He took a few seconds before calming himself down while in a deadlock stare down with his enemy, it didn't seem like it wanted to take the offensive.
He quickly turned off [Reinforcement] to stop the drain before using [Lesser Reconstruction] to restore his cracked bones and health.
[Health – 100%]
[Mana – 60%]
Luckily, the enemy just stood there while he healed.
'You're going to regret not taking that chance!'
While the first attack was definitely foolish it wasn't for nothing.
The shield held by the skeleton now looked like it was a step away from breaking, he may have deflected it, but it was still a swing contained his full reinforced power.
'I've got to look for an opening I can exploit and finish it with a strong blow, I keep forgetting but I may have had two, no three lives, but in the end my combat experience is still pretty mediocre, I have to use what I have to my advantage'
In the end he engaged it in combat again, but this time he kept taking small, controlled swings aimed at the skeletons head before dodging away to avoid the counterattacks from the smaller sword, still he got hit quite a few times although they were more grazes than anything, it was going well until all of a sudden, the skeleton took an aggressive approach and advanced with a quick dash dealing a heavy slash to Seth's side.
'You think I'm done for is that it?!'
[Health – 36%]
The small wounds plus the surprise stab took his health down like a tonne of bricks, an immediate sense of fear set into Seth as the enemy seemed to have deemed the fight over.
"Well, you're wrong!"
Seth pulled off a reckless move once more while taking the stance for [Crushing Blow]
The skeleton which was in the middle of dealing a stab towards Seth's core took notice and shifted its shield above its body while dashing, it sensed it could block that blow and deal a killing shot.
'Please work!'
[Core Overclock]
[Mana Core overload initiated; mana will be drained as a side effect]
[Reinforcement]
The only way he could think of to overwhelm the enemy was use [Core Overclock], as long as he took out the enemy, he would be safe.
As the ability was launched a wave of bright red light rushed through the veins lining his bones and his eyes almost blazed with light.
He didn't have time to notice but with [Core Overclock] and [Reinforcement] his stats had reached the point of quadrupling, with his mana stat tripled.
[Crushing Blow]
Without a second to waste the move was initiated and a almighty blow proceeded to crush through the shield and the skeleton behind it with ease before hitting the floor and launching debris everywhere.
Seth remained in his finishing position for a while as his body was in pain from the ability he used, soon a notification hit him.
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
Unfortunately, he didn't have time to revel in his victory as the next message few messages proved the inevitable drawback were here.
[Mana – 0%]
[Core critical, mana purged, temporarily sleep initiated]
And soon after, his conscious waned till he fell asleep.