BLING!
[Ding! You killed a Lvl 82 Spider Titan and received 2,300,000 EXP!]
[Ding! You killed a Lvl 83 Spider Titan and received 2,500,000 EXP!]
[Ding! You killed a Lvl 85 Spider Titan and received 3,100,000 EXP!]
[Ding! You killed…]
[You leveled up!]
[You leveled up!]
[You leveled up!]
[You…]
[You have reached Lvl 58]
[You received 5 Stat Points for all of your main attributes!]
[You received 5 BP!]
[You received 5 Stat Points for all of your main attributes!]
[You received 5 BP!]
[You received…]
Following the wide assortment of pop-ups, Romulus looked at the five Titan corpses and the earlier Howler corpse. He descended from the skies and activated Devour on each of the corpses, which caused them to quickly vanish and assimilate into his existence, further improving his stats.
[Ding! You received 106 Stat Points in Strength, 110 in Agility, 101 in Intelligence, and 103 in Defense!]
Romulus then sucked out all the Magic Cores of the fallen monsters and crushed them, making their power his own.
[Ding! Your Affinity with the Darkness Element has tremendously improved!]
[Ding! Your Affinity with the Darkness Element has tremendously improved!]
[Ding! Your Affinity with the Darkness Element has tremendously improved!]
[Ding! Your…]
These system notifications got Romulus to thinking. "The Darkness Element should be my best element, but I don't really use it besides for a slim aspect of the A-Rank Death Scythe Skill," he pondered. "I have seemingly useful skills like Shadow Step and Shadow Bind, but I don't know how well they will stack up against other, quicker alternatives, such as my Lightning and Fire element skills, which serve as my main dexterity and damage dealer elements."
Although Romulus felt there to be no real need to change things up and fix something that wasn't broken, there was still this faint scratching at the back of his head. It was somehow telling him to delve into the Darkness Element and Shadow sub-element. With nothing except for this to back his decision-making skills, he put the Shadow Step and Shadow Bind skills to the front of his arsenal, planning to actively use them and rapidly improve their D-Rank and C-Rank statuses. He also added a peculiar D-Rank skill called 'Shadow Summon' to the mix, which was an unusual skill that randomly summoned something from a different realm, with that something being at or below the rank of the skill. Moreover, it had additional restrictions, such as the number of summons that could be summoned and also a certain fail rate.
To test out this odd skill, Romulus stuck out his hand and spoke in a cryptic, indecipherable language. Translations looked like: "I summon thee, from the Land shrouded in darkness, from the lands beyond. Come, serve I, your master, in the land of light, the land not meant to be… the land of deceit."
He didn't really know why the incantation was so prideful and yet so confusing at the same time, but he felt that there was more than meets the eye to it. Still, focusing on the matter at hand, Romulus saw a sigil fully form on his hand and solidify itself in a dark purple color. Then, with a similar flash of light, a far larger sigil appeared on the cobblestone road a few feet out. In the center of that sigil materialized the white silhouette of a short, three-foot-tall figure. When that whiteness surrounding it dispersed, a bony skeleton took its place. It had hollowed out eye sockets with a faint green fire wisp glowing inside them. It had nothing covering its body, with only its slightly cracked bones and small dents there for onlookers to gawk at. However, there was a dull shortsword in its right hand and a damaged shield in its left side, which was far more interesting for the onlooker in question.
Seeing this unknown creature made Romulus more than a little intrigued. Curious, he walked up to it. "Can you speak?" He asked. To which it failed to respond, with its willowy wisp simply following all his minute movements.
Furrowing his brows, Romulus said, "If you can't speak, then you must be able to take orders. Let's see," he looked to the left and pointed. "Go there."
Crick, Crack. Crick, Crack.
Even though the skeleton sounded like an automobile from fifty years ago with a lot of technical issues, it managed to follow the command just fine. Albeit very slowly, the first test had been passed. Now, however, it was time to try out a few more things.
After a few seconds and telling it to do things like swing, jump, block, and stuff such as that, Romulus figured he would try something a bit more physical. Picking up the skeleton with one hand, he used his S-Rank Transformation Skill to hover off the ground and speed through the eerily quiet Ghost Town with just a few feet separating him from the cobblestone. Realistically, and without any repercussions, this was the fastest and highest he could fly with his current strength. Still, it was more than enough for him to leave the Central circle, the Inner circle, and then finally arrive at the Outer Circle, all within 2 minutes.
FWIP!
When Romulus arrived in the Outer Circle, he immediately noticed that all the F-Rank through D-Rank monsters that he killed when he first got here had somehow come back to life. Or, rather, entirely new copies of them had come into creation. It was almost as if he had killed the byproducts of a type of source, with that source remaining unaffected and more copies still capable of being produced. The location of this source was completely unknown, but with time, Romulus believed that he would discover the truth of everything.
However, for now, he would like to see just what his Shadow Summon was capable of, so he threw it at a lone Night Walker that was aimlessly wandering the dimly lit streets.
Being a short, dark black goblin-like creature, this monster was the perfect test dummy for a skill that could prove to be quite useful. Even though Romulus could only summon one of these skeletons right now, that could change very soon. But regardless of that information, two opponents had found each other, with their system interfaces looking like this:
…