Lloyd finally woke up from a long slumber after the excruciating damage from the attacks of the gravebound ghoul that tore his flesh away from his body. He stood up weakly and looked at his right arm which was now dressed up with gauze.
'I didn't die, huh?'
It was quite a miracle that he was able to parry the tentacle last night but still, his arm was almost destroyed in the process. The blade of the dagger had been chipped off by the tentacle which was even harder than steel. It had become practically useless since it was damaged beyond repair. The loss of a weapon only added to his pressured brain.
"You're awake."
Luna approached him, holding her own food ration which she had planned on eating for breakfast just about when Lloyd woke up. Right now, they were the only ones inside the cave.
He looked around and remembered that before his consciousness blacked out, he had previously thought that Shane and the others would have already left him behind after realizing that they can't continue protecting him if he was hurt beyond saving. Nevertheless, he knew that leaving without this aloof but reckless girl with monstrous skills would be a big disadvantage, so they're probably outside, scouting the area, since Luna was left together with him inside the hidden cave. And the other girl, Klaudia, would never leave Luna's side.
He caught a glimpse at the carcass of the gravebound ghoul still lying on the far ends of the cave, having several cuts that broke off the human faces in its body, making it look even more grotesque than before.
"What happened afterwards? I passed out from the intense pain."
"We have slain the hellspawn and the trial seemed to have made us awaken already."
A shocked expression was plastered on Lloyd's face, not due to the slaying the ghoul, but because of the latter part of her statement.
"Wait, did you just say we have awakened?"
Luna nodded as she picked out a small pork side dish from the ration with her left hand and put it in her mouth without a care regardless of how unladylike she looked right now.
"You can check for yourself. You can now see the soul tree system and your status by forming the image of a status screen in your mind the same way as you see status screens in video games."
Lloyd then followed her instruction and imagined a status screen appearing in his mind. He might have been a poor outskirts kid from the outer district but he knew what a status screen from a video game looked like, so, it didn't take him too long to manifest it. A status screen now appeared in front of him. An image of a tree-like diagram with 8 circles being connected like branches could be seen on the upper portion of the screen. The first orb was shining in white light while the others were greyed out. He couldn't understand it so he asked Luna for the extra details.
"What are these circles that are lit and greyed out?"
"You are looking at the soul tree system. That would be the indication of our aspirant rank, if I'm not mistaken. The more lit orbs are there, the higher our ranks would be."
"I see…"
Lloyd continued to explore his status screen while Luna silently ate her rations. Below the soul tree, he could see some descriptions written in human language which explained some of the changes that happened to their characteristics.
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Name: Lloyd Claudel
Rank: I
Title: Awakened Aspirant, Eternally Stagnate
Innate Ability: Midas Hands
Skills: Materia Generator, Materia Refinement
Ascension Requirement: 13/1000 enemies killed
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Lloyd read the description of the awakened aspirant. Apparently, it was a title given to all aspirants who have awakened their innate and soul tree system. Aside from being a title, it served no purpose at all. He then looked at the Eternally Stagnate and after reading slowly, his eyes blinked and carefully tried to understand what it was saying.
"No, no, no! This can't happen!"
Lloyd had a horrified look as he realized that the description of the latter title meant that he will never learn a new skill no matter how much he tries to rank up. His shoulders slumped and his eyes looked so lifeless which made Luna look at him with curiosity. How is he going to survive now and get stronger if he can't learn new skills at all?
'Curses!'
After some time, he gritted his teeth and unwillingly went back to reading the rest. He might find something useful that would compensate the shortcomings received from the wretched title. His innate ability 'Midas Hands' was described weirdly. An Artificer tapped into a forbidden sorcery which dumped a vast amount of knowledge into his mind and let him craft any kind of equipment, but a curse guarding the sorcery corrupted the knowledge which made every equipment crafted was embedded with random names and abilities based on the materials used.
Based on his understanding, this innate ability allowed him to craft all sorts of equipment, providing that he had sufficient data about the things he wanted to make such as the form of the object. However, it looked like he wouldn't be able to decide the name or customize its features the way he wanted it to be. It was quite a bizarre innate ability. Helpful or not, it wasn't really suited for fighting. His chances of surviving in a battle seemed to have no increase at all. He would try to experiment on it later and see what he could do with this ability.
He proceeded to move to the only two skills he had which were obviously non-combat skills. Materia generator lets him spawn random or chosen materials out of nothing at the cost of mana; an essence from their soul tree which let them use their active skills. The latter ability called Materia Refinement was also a utility skill. This enabled him to combine the materials and infuse it with soul orbs to create an awakened weapon, a utility tool, or an armor by using mana. Awakened armaments are equipment infused with soul orbs.
His eyes finally showed a hint of approval with these two skills. Since he could craft a weapon that would be strong enough to kill even higher ranks of hellspawns, would that mean that his skill sets are actually overpowered? There was only one way to find out.
Full of excitement, he took out one of the few common soul orbs he gathered yesterday from the corpses of the grunt sentinels they have killed. He wanted to see if he could really make a weapon out of any kind of material. He tried using the bone scythes from the sentinel as his base material and activated the Materia Refinement skill to fuse it with the soul orb. Upon activating it, another option came out from the screen, which was the forms of weapons currently within his knowledge. He picked out the dagger option and then the materials glowed a flashy white light. He noticed that his mana was rapidly being drained by the skill. With how fast it was sucking out his mana, he immediately felt exhaustion. Seems like he could only perform it twice in quick succession with the way he was right now. He needed to ascend in order to expand his mana pool.
Ignoring his condition, he looked at the receding white light and the final form of the weapon emerged which was a dagger with a slightly curved blade as white as the bone scythes of the sentinels. He picked it up and tried to examine it when another small screen popped out from the knife.
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Name: Sentinel's Dagger
Rank: I
Soul: Grunt
Ability: Calcified Blade
Description: Although made of bones from the lowly sentinels of the crimson forest, it has a sharpness and the hardness of a metallic sword that can snap almost anything in half.
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A grin escaped from his lips. He had succeeded in crafting a weapon, albeit an ordinary one with no uniqueness in it. He looked at the portion where an ability was written. It was described as a blade made of special bones that were capable of slicing off metals and hard objects.
'Not too shabby. I could use this to fight.'
After looking at his skills, below was a counter of the number of enemies he had killed which was labelled as 'Ascension Requirement'. It was quite a straightforward way to rank up. The counter was currently showing the number thirteen which summed up to the number of sentinels he had killed yesterday.
He sighed and dismissed the system's screen when he couldn't find any more details to read. Then, he heard Luna talking.
"Oh? So, your innate ability is about crafting weapons?"
A trace of interest had sparked in Luna's eyes as she looked at the white dagger held in Lloyd's hand. This was the first time Lloyd saw any changes to her expression since meeting her.
"Something like that. But not exactly." Lloyd replied.
This time, he tried using the Materia Generator skill. Something flashed and a rock-like object made of steel. The material forked out by the skill was a steel ingot, a common type of crafting material. He wanted to try again his luck for a better material but his mana says otherwise. The skill was quite costly just like the other one. He needed to wait for a while until his mana is fully replenished before he could use it again.
"So, there you have it. I can not only create weapons, but also generate materials for crafting."
"Hmm. Sounds like a convenient ability. Are you able to make a stronger type of weapon?"
Lloyd pondered for a while before shaking his head. He was also unsure of it and would only know once he tried it sooner or later once his mana fully recovers.
"It might be difficult. The skill description was not too detailed. I will try later on."
Luna nodded and didn't say anything else, finally done eating her breakfast and started cleaning up. Then Lloyd added:
"If you want a newly crafted weapon, I can make one for you on one condition."
Luna raised an eyebrow, seemingly interested with his deal. Lloyd paused for a bit, observing any changes in her aloof expression before finishing what he wanted to say.
"Teach how to fight."
"Okay."
"That's it?"
Lloyd was bewildered. He didn't expect that she would agree easily.
"Don't you want to?"
He hastily shook his head.
"It's not like that. I mean, aren't you worried I will be able to grasp your secretive battle style and tell others?"
She was still looking calm as ever as if nothing would be able to break that poker face of hers. Or was it something caused by her innate ability that made her emotionless? Lloyd wouldn't know and he didn't care.
"That's your choice if you want to expose it. If I die just because my battle style was exposed, then I am simply weak and easy to deal with."
What she said made sense. In this world where lots of magical things could happen due to different kinds of innate abilities, it would be pretty hard to hide anything, especially when encountering those who have abilities that had something to do with seeing the future or seeing other people's aspects through some rare skills. Like what she said, she only had herself to blame if she would die immediately once her cards were revealed to others while the strong would prevail and live freely as they want. She probably had other hidden cards to play if ever her battle style would be exposed.
"Alright, fine. I accept to your conditions." Lloyd agreed and held out his hand. "Could you give me one of those elite ranked soul orbs from the ghoul? I want to test something."
Luna took out one of the soul orbs and handed it to him. He then proceeded to take out another of those bone scythes and once again tried using the Materia Refinement skill. However, a different result was produced which made his mouth twitch. After the glowing light receded, a voice could be heard in his head and the materials disintegrated into sparks of white dusts.
'Rank required is not met. Materials are destroyed!'
As expected, he was not able to create armaments of the higher rank. He needed to ascend before he could craft something better. Another thought had also entered his mind. The materials were probably another factor in creating a better equipment. The higher the quality of the material, the higher the chances of creating a good weapon or armor. If the material used can't match up to the rank of the soul orb, the same thing would happen just like how the bone scythes and the elite soul orb disintegrated into nothing.
"I guess my skill is limited right now. You'll have to wait until I could ascend."
"That's fine with me. For now, let's start with your training."
Luna picked up a makeshift sword from one of the bone scythes of the sentinels and threw it at Lloyd which he caught. Then with a shocked look, he asked.
"Ehh, are we really starting now?"
"The others would be back soon from scouting and we still have to keep on moving and find a way to escape from this trial. You should have noticed by now that we weren't sent home after awakening, right?"
"That's…"
He only started to remember that they were still in the unfamiliar environment of the crimson forest which was a part of the crimson wasteland.
"Now that you have mentioned it, why are we still here?"
Luna just shrugged.
"Who knows? Probably because we haven't completed the trial at all. Or, we were sent into something other than a trial."
He also had thought about it before, but he couldn't explicitly accept that they were caught in an anomaly rather than being sent to a normal trial. What were the chances that they were going to be brought into a sure-death place? Unless they were children from prophecies or something related to divinity, or someone had orchestrated this event, then the chances were zero. However, they were not related in some sort of god or whatever higher existence that might have played a trick in their situation.
His head hurt from thinking about those complicated things which where beyond the capacity of a normal outskirts rat like him. He shook off his thoughts and went back in track from their plans and listened to her advices.
"First things first, you'll have to build up your body. Otherwise, it is meaningless to learn combat skills with a frail body like yours. Practice a downward slash with that sword by using both of your hands. Do it a thousand times a day."
A thousand times?! Isn't that too much?"
Luna pondered upon it while looking at him and remembered that his arm was still on the process of recovering from almost getting separated from his body before responding.
"Three hundred strikes, then. Your body should be able to handle that."
Lloyd groaned as he grabbed the sword and started swinging it the way he was instructed.
'One… two… three…'
It took quite an hour before he finally reached three hundred strikes and his arm was getting sore while the damaged one hurt even worse than before. Luna then took another vial which seemed to be a potion like the one poured into his wounds. He paled as he slowly hid his arm and backed off.
"Wh-what are you doing? I don't want that thing."
"Don't worry. It won't hurt that much like the last time."
She gripped on his arm and hastily poured the contents on the wounds once again. Pain invaded his arm and into his body the moment the liquid touched the wound. It felt like thousands of ants were crawling and biting into his arm. It was a pain he could barely endure and he gritted his teeth so hard and bit his lips that it started to bleed.
The pain slowly went away after a few minutes and a profusely sweating Lloyd sat on the ground weakly. He had no energy to complain. However, he looked at his wounds and found out that most of the flesh that was gone had already been replaced by new ones and his arm and torso was now almost fully recovered. He swore to himself he will take revenge into this wicked beauty one way or another in the future. Just around the time they were finished, the other members of the group had returned with a grim look on their faces.