[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 98: Clean Up Duty

The rest of the day passed uneventfully.

Once it became clear that Raiko’s Sacred Tree could alter the course that the Skyshards were following, with Sam’s maintaining its position above, Lenal had nothing but questions for the Sage.

Though there was an entire Skyshard to explore, nobody was really in the mood for it after a night full of fighting flying beasts.

Sam was the first one who went up to the supposed Field of cliffs. He didn’t want anybody watching him Breaking it more than he had to. He didn’t know how he felt about Lenal yet, and exposing his bloodline to her seemed reckless.

Besides, even if she were trustworthy, her professors might not be. Sam didn’t want to end up as a test subject or an oddity to be studied.

He went up alone with a sleeping Komachi tucked into the crook of his arm. Sam knelt at the border between his [Core Tile] and the tethered monster nest.

What he saw surprised him.

[Monster Nest (Cliffs)]

(Time Remaining: 1d 12h 8m)

Destroyed before it could become a proper Dungeon, this [Monster Nest] has corrupted the Tiles’ mana to the point that it cannot sustain normal life. Devoid of monsters and the ability to become a Dungeon, this erstwhile Field will crumble to nothing once its durability falls to zero as denoted by the Time Remaining field.

Sam grumbled to himself. So there wasn’t any way he could nab a Field, it would seem.

Damn. And I really thought I was on to something.

The Tiles were basically useless. If he Broke them, they would just be destroyed. The notification was clear on that front.

Once everybody else woke up, they organized into groups of 2, Matt and Kai, Raiko and Lenal, and finally Sam and Komachi with Chester Chompers (CC for short) the Third as their mobile storage.

With so many dead monsters to loot, it was not a fast process. Sam, with the mimic in tow, undoubtedly did the lion’s share of the work. But as it was largely up to CC, Sam didn’t mind much.

More than anything, the bird monsters dropped [Wind Crystals] of various sizes and rarity. Most of those went into the mimic’s Inventory that Komachi was enjoying keeping track of.

She’d be liable to forget where the stuff was later, and it was a serious possibility whatever Sam handed over to the mimic might never be returned to him.

However, the risk was worth it. If CC proved himself to be trustworthy, at least with regard to Inventory, then he’d be exceptionally useful for storing things. Especially items that didn’t have a purpose in combat.

Besides, the whole endeavor was a bit like training a pet. Start with the little stuff, and maybe he’d get more reliable over time.

Sam used the majority of his time spending his huge supply of bonus points.

With his HP hovering just shy of 1,500 and MP likewise beneath 400, he had some hard choices to make.

In reality, this was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for. A ton of extra bonus points to spend wherever the hell he wanted was amazing.

Having to decide where to allot them was significantly less amazing, but no matter where he put them, they would make life easier.

With a whopping 20 Strength Talents, 35 bonus points would turn into somewhere over 40, netting him a free 5 Strength.

Not bad at all, even when factoring in the extra Strength he now received as part of Voidknight and Copper Swordsman.

That got him wondering about when his Path hit 20. Would it also give extra stats or even additional level up rewards like Swordsman did?

His Void Path was only 4 levels away from 20. If he put in the work, he might be able to hit Copper on his Path soon. Assuming it applied evenly across all the pillars of progression.

He hoped they did, but there was no telling.

“Machi-mach,” Komachi sang to herself, swaying on top of her mimic who scuttled about here and there lifting its lid and hoovering up all the dead birds.

Komachi assured Sam that the mimic wasn’t eating them in the traditional sense, but storing them in its ever-expanding Inventory. It had, as she put it, “badonka big” Inventory space.

If the mimic’s Inventory was anything like Raiko’s, then all that meat from the carcasses would still be good. If they were edible—and that was a fairly big if—then they would be good on food for a while.

At least they’d all have plenty of protein. Too bad they didn’t have salt, oil, or any other cooking ingredients that would make the food taste good.

Raiko’s stash of Earth food was bound to run out sooner or later, and Sam wanted to have a plan in place well before then.

Besides, there was only so much fast food and junk you could eat before you got sick.

It seemed a lot of the things she gathered were mostly last minute affairs, or else raiding a grocery store would’ve staved off their problems for a little longer. Understandable, considering she was trying to save two worlds at the time.

Sam pulled up his Status again and mulled over his decisions, letting his feet move on autopilot. His [Traversal] Skill Sphere made it nearly impossible to trip over anything but the roughest terrain.

It was the perfect match to allow him to take care of any notifications and stat selection—as he was doing now—without worrying about falling flat on his face and breaking his nose.

Would it even break now that my Vigor is over 100? What does 100 even mean, compared to Earth levels? I could crush a stone into dust before I was at 100 base Strength. What could I do now?

Well, there was the [Dullahan Greatsword], for one. Not only was it incredibly strong, but paired with his new Strength he could now get the most out of it.

Even gimped as he had been with enough Strength to wield it, but not enough base Strength to wield it effectively, he still was able to deal astonishing amounts of damage to the Abyssdiver boss monster.

The damn thing’s wing was sheared clean off just from throwing it.

That couldn’t be normal.

He doubted his [Charred Claymore] could do that even if he had every ounce of power behind it and had high stacks of [Rolling Strikes].

There hadn’t been any time to use his Breaker powers on it, and during the fight itself, he had limited opportunities to bring it to bear on the creature.

Could I have been using a bit of my bloodline without realizing it? Another facet of my bloodline, maybe?

As his stats grew, his bloodline opened up more and more to him. No matter how much he used it, the bloodline never seemed to increase. He was catching up to its strength, not the other way around.

It was an odd feeling.

And that just made more of a case to get more Strength.

A spray of sparks accompanied the removal of his [Dullahan Greatsword] from his scabbard. Fortunately, despite this new weapon’s massive size, it still fit into the dramatically smaller [Biting Sheath], due to the wonders of Expansion magic.

If this scabbard ever broke, he wasn’t sure what he would do. It was too useful to go without.

Komachi and Chester twisted around to look for threats, but when they saw that he was just examining the blade, they relaxed and went about their cleanup duty.

In truth, Sam wasn’t pulling his weight. However, most of the kills were from him, so he didn’t feel quite so bad about it. Besides, it’s not like Komachi would likely listen to somebody else.

She was just as likely to wander off if she went with Kai or Raiko. And Lenal was nervous around Chompers. The poor elf had been through enough.

[Dullahan Greatsword]

(Colossal Greatsword) (F-Class)

(★☆Uncommon II)

Enhancements

Slashing Damage V | Swing Speed I

Impact Damage III

Imbuements

Metal Mana

Impact Mana

The dullahan’s spirit of bravery that once wielded this sword now lives on in this weapon. The wide blade, spanning considerable length, broadens into a top-heavy crescent blade suitable for slashing attacks. Too heavy and large for most humans to wield, except those that command exceptional strength and skill.

Requires: 100 Strength

[Greatsword Foundation] (★ Common)

Not only was his new sword stronger and with only a slight drop in swing speed compared to his [Charred Claymore], it was more than 2 rarity grades higher. His claymore had been Primitive, but the dullahan blade was Uncommon II.

He was still fuzzy about what the tiers meant on the rarity grade, but it only made it a larger leap in power. Unlike the claymore, however, the weapon was imbued with both Metal and Impact mana.

While the [Charred Claymore] was made of metal and therefore had Metal mana as a matter of course, it wasn’t the same thing as having an imbuement of that mana.

Sam could feel the deep wellspring of Metal mana inside the massive sword. It was an order of magnitude greater than the claymore’s.

It was like comparing a cup of water to a pond. You could get a general idea that one was significantly larger than the other… but after a point, any analogy broke down. The difference was simply staggering.

No wonder he made short work of the Abyssdiver.

Sheathing the large blade, Sam looked back at his stats. He was using a lot of MP now with [Void: Smother], [Void: Surge], and even [Void: Scour] at his disposal.

There was clearly a large disparity between his HP and MP. His Job wasn’t meant to have high MP, and yet his Path seemed to demand it of him.

Having Raiko refresh his mana every encounter would be great, but he couldn’t count on that Glyph buff being around all the time. And if he started to rely on it and was cut off from his group… it would be a blow to his fighting potential.

It wasn’t that Sam felt he couldn’t rely on his allies, but overreliance was a different story. He wanted to be self-sufficient first, then build from there.

I keep coming back to Strength, he grumbled mentally. In a way, if I’m able to finish a fight faster, then that’s less MP I have to spend. Less chances of taking damage, and therefore less of a drain on my HP.

But life didn’t work like that, and he was bound to come across something or somebody that could heal. And if he was caught in a battle of attrition, he wanted to be able to go the distance.

Then there was his Insight. It was integral to his Path and seemed to have something to do with being able to discern more about the world at large.

Much more than that, however, and he wasn’t too clear on the particulars, but already he could tell that his higher Insight made it easier to understand how things worked whether somebody explained it to him, or he came across an item in the wild.

His Vigor was already high, and Swordsman would ensure it stayed that way along with his Void Path’s Vigor Talents… but he had commonly been at 800 or less HP.

It didn’t hurt nearly as much to lose so much HP as when he had less, but it wasn’t as if he was only taking a hundred or two-hundred points of damage per fight.

Even with his Thanas armor, he was getting hurt diving headlong into battle. He had to remind himself that much of the wounds he sustained from the Zuu were due to the use of the [Dullahan Greatsword].

He couldn’t control it properly and was often left wide-open after a strike. And there were so many Zuu that there always seemed to be two more to take revenge for a fallen bird brother.

“Heckin’ birbs,” Komachi muttered.

Sam made a non-committal noise of agreement.

Would 35 Vigor get me to 2,000 HP?

He sighed. Everything suddenly felt worth trying!

If it was only a few points, he’d know what to do with them. They wouldn’t represent the possibility of changing his build so much.

But 35 points were more than most of his magical stats except Mind. He could double any of them in the blink of an eye, and since his Void Path seemed to use magic, that wouldn’t be an absolute waste necessarily.

Ten points into Mind, he told himself. Just to see how far I go with it. His [Hidden God’s Manatuned Cloak], aside from giving him a sizeable boost to Insight and Awareness, also increased his MP by 10%.

Sam stopped the thought before it could get going. He could see its eventual arc into “yes, but [Max HP UP] increases my HP by 15%!” and that way lay madness.

Ten points were thrown into Mind, bringing his MP up to 485. He liked the sound of that, so he put two more points to bring it up to 503.

Happy with having half a thousand mana, he turned to Vigor and put 3 points in to bring his bonus points down to 20. His Max HP jumped up to 1,493. A very unsatisfactory number, so he added another point.

Looking at his Status, Sam eyed the shimmering numbers. Now where to put the rest….