[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 82: A Shrinking Feeling

After selecting [Source Chain], Sam stood at the edge of the island looking over the crumbling Skyshard below.

He didn’t need to be anywhere near the actual [Sourcestone] to use its abilities or even access any information about it. He had full access wherever he was on the Skyshard now that he had established a connection to the [Sourcestone].

Whether he would retain that connection when he was on another Skyshard was something he intended to find out. For now though, he scanned the Tiles that Raiko’s Skyshard couldn’t sustain and focused.

A scintillating spear of hardened light shot out of Sil’mara, his Skyshard, and pierced the Tile below. His Skyshard rumbled ominously for a moment before the Tile below broke away and drifted through the air.

The mandragoras that were watching, along with his cat, cheered uproariously.

It wasn’t at all like a fish on the end of a fishing line like he was expecting. There was no fight, perhaps because a Tile couldn’t fight back.

His Skyshard reeled it in slowly but surely. It was surreal. The sandy piece of floating island was solid stone on the underside, but the top was filled with dunes of sand like he had pulled it off some coastal beach along the Atlantic coast.

Tufts of grass wafted in the breeze; tall man-sized dunes trickled down into sandy valleys.

The whole thing looked and smelled as if it had been beside the ocean just a few moments ago. Sam searched for a water Tile of any sort down below, but from this vantage point he couldn’t find any.

None that were in danger of falling away, at any rate. Sam wasn’t about to poach one of Raiko’s Tiles.

He still had room for three more Tiles.

Skyshard Achievement Complete!

Seize and reel in 1 Tile of Common rarity or higher successfully with [Source Chain].

You earn greater Skyshard Experience!

Woah, an achievement?

Earning that achievement took Sam completely by surprise. A welcome surprise, for sure.

He already knew it was possible to earn Skyshard Experience through quests, but through achievements was a different thing entirely.

On the surface, it seemed similar to his previously finished hidden quest, in that he could successfully complete certain actions and receive a reward for them. All of this without being made aware of the objectives at all.

This opened his mind towards additional opportunities to earn Experience. However, with only one achievement completed thus far, Sam only had a single starting point to go off of.

He hoped that achievements applied to more than just Skyshards, such as Path and Job achievements.

“I’m going down there,” Sam told Komachi. “You want to stay up here and wait for the giant litter box to arrive, or do you want to come with?”

Before she could answer, one of the mandragoras offered an item to him.

“Is that… a carrot?”

“It’s a flute!” Komachi cried, accepting the item that was actually meant for her all along.

And immediately played it.

Suffice it to say, she was not good.

Okay, she was flat out terrible.

The mandragoras enjoyed it for some inexplicable reason, especially the one that crafted it for her.

Sam winced, but kept a smile plastered on his face.

“Get any skill ups?” he asked hopefully after a few minutes of hearing her play as they lowered themselves to the Skyshard below from the [Makeshift Rope].

She nodded enthusiastically. “My [Instrument] skill went up to Primitive II!”

Primitive is about the right sound, Sam said to himself in the privacy of his own thoughts, where Komachi’s feelings wouldn’t get hurt.

“That’s great Komachi,” he said to her. And it was, because it meant that soon it would sound like a child blowing on a flute instead of somebody sticking it into the wrong end after an all-you-can-eat meal at taco bell.

“I know it’s bad,” she admitted sheepishly. “Honestly, I was trying to buff you. And it… didn’t work.”

Aw, now I feel like an ass.

They dropped to Raiko’s Skyshard and Sam took a slight detour to nab the [Dullahan Greatsword].

A dullahan had taken it from where Sam stabbed it into the ground and resumed its earlier reverent position, offering up the sword again. It weirded him out a little how much it resembled a statue.

And now I feel even worse.

He tried to explain to the dullahan that he wasn’t rejecting the sword, but it made no move or suggested that it understood him.

After hastily re-arranging his Inventory some, Sam stuffed the huge blade into his Inventory for later. Space was getting limited in there.

Your [Inventory] Trait has reached (☆ Primitive VII).

An increase was an increase, and from just organizing his Inventory no less, but Sam couldn’t help but wish for a rarity level up. Having a pocket dimension to put his belongings in without weighing him down was incredibly useful.

But with it being of such a low rarity, it was also extremely limited. He was relying on that pouch for its enhancement, directly affecting his Inventory trait.

Taking another peek inside, the space actually seemed a bit bigger. Mostly he could tell by the gaps between his various items that simply wasn’t there before because his stuff was recently so jam-packed in there.

While they made their way toward the rim, Sam squeezed Komachi tightly in a loving embrace. “And that’s okay,” he told her seriously. “The first step to being sorta good at something is to suck. Just stick with it and keep practicing. If anybody complains, then tell them where to find me and I’ll sort them out.”

“Thanks Sam.”

They crested over a series of hills, the sun climbing high into the sky. “What is that?” He pointed at the dark vertical line in the sky. It appeared to be in front of the sun and it seemed like the oddest shadow he’d seen so far.

Considering the countless floating islands, that was saying something.

“It’s just… a straight line. Judging by its thickness, it must be pretty huge to be casting such a large shadow,” Sam added.

“Looks like a Tower,” Komachi said off-handedly.

“What do you mean?”

The cat looked at him blankly, as if she didn’t know what she had just said. “Wut.”

“You said it looked like a Tower, how do you know that?”

She scratched her belly and made… a very non-cat noise. A squeak?

“Komachi, you good?”

“Yeah, why?”

Sam opened his mouth to say something else, then realized who he was talking to. He let it go.

Another affectionate pat on her fluffy noggin later, he decided to switch topics. “So what kind of buff were you trying to give me?”

“Haste. It’s supposed to increase the effect of your Agility.”

“That sounds really awesome. Keep up the practice!” Sam was far from the fastest, but with the new stat bonuses from Swordsman, he was coming a long way from the hilariously low Agility and Dexterity he used to have.

But unless he focused them, or found a Job that shored them up massively, he would always be slower than other Jobs that specialized in those stats.

Which was okay for Sam, but there was no harm in covering his bases, especially since he now had upgraded to a pocket Bard.

“I will,” she promised. “It’s Wind mana based, so that was one of the more useful songs I could pick from. I noticed that was an advantage Raiko had over you, flying around like some kind of mage ninja.”

“I noticed that too. You have Wind mana now?” Sam asked. “Or did you always have it? I can’t remember what sort of mana Clerics had.”

“Yeah, since Cleric. It feels more… I dunno, more instinctual after those notes started appearing when I cast [Regen].”

Sam nodded. “I understand. There are some things that just seem to click, right?”

“Mhm.”

Occasionally the ground rumbled beneath Sam’s feet as they made their way over the shrinking Skyshard toward the edge Tiles.

Sam had an idea in mind for what he wanted to get but he had to be fast or else the Tile might crumble into nothing.

Looking up, he could still see his Skyshard reeling in the sandy Tile. Every so often, a gust of wind blew a drift of sand down below that sprinkled the [Plain Tile] with grains of grit.

Taking his new [Traversal] skill out for a test drive, Sam decided to try to hop over the [River Tile] that was filled with snaking silvery streams.

Reeds as tall as his shoulders obscured the opposite banks, but there were enough moss-covered stones to suggest the possibility of a crossing.

He never would have tried it without the [Traversal] skill. Those green stones were the slipperiest things next to a greased floor, and only just.

Even with his relatively low [Traversal], however, Sam was astounded at the change. He hopped from one stone to the next, feeling like one of those mountain goats that could scale vertical walls with ease.

He slipped once or twice, but never enough to fall into the rivers below that were deceptively deep and swift.

We need some bridges over these, he thought to himself as he and Komachi put the [River Tile] behind them.

The rest of the trip was easy-going from there. For as pristine and beautiful as Raiko’s Skyshard was, it was oddly empty of creatures. Even wild animals seemed scarce.

Then again, the Skyshard had just been liberated from demons. He doubted that many creatures would stick around out in the open. Maybe they were hiding. He didn’t know and didn’t have the time to go poking around in every valley or hillside cave.

Arriving at the first of the Tiles he meant to salvage, Sam inched his way forward until he felt the shift. The Tile itself was, now that he focused on it, a [Forest Tile].

There wasn’t some big line that suddenly shifted from plains to forests. It was a slow, gradual process. But from high above, you could see the demarcation better. There was an area that the Tile began to thin or join with its neighbor.

For the [Plains Tile] and [Forest Tile], Sam saw small berry bushes, shrubs, and other border plants that seemed to grow here purely because of their neighbor.

I wonder if you can create something new by the way you place the Tiles instead of just what the Tile itself has?

It felt possible, but he reminded himself to walk before he ran.

For now, he had some Breaking to do.

Like he had done back on one of the first floating islands, Sam searched for some source of mana that he could tap into. But unlike the island he had gained a [Water Concept] from, this was an entire Tile, not just a fragment.

It took Sam several minutes to figure out what he was doing wrong, and by that time the Tile was beginning to shake so violently that Sam wondered if he and it would be dropped into the sky below.

“All right,” Sam said, pulling out the [Dullahan Greatsword] with some difficulty. “We’re going to see just how tough you are.”

“Me?” Komachi asked.

“No, the Tile, Komachi. You’re plenty tough.”

The little cat purred affectionately and proudly.

Sam didn’t need to be delicate here. That, he assumed, had been his problem. He was trying to Break an entire Tile into its component pieces.

Delicacy need not apply.

Straining all of his considerable Strength to the limits, Sam raised the massive greatsword over his head and slammed it down as hard as he could while envisioning something quite different than he usually did with his bloodline.

Rather than a single weak point, he envisioned a chain of them like dominoes.

Sam threw everything he had at the first weak point. Explosive Breaker energy blasted through the ground, throwing up clods of dirt and debris dozens of feet into the air.

And, just like dominoes, the weak points fell one after the other as shockwave after shockwave of Breaking force obliterated each and kept the chain going.

A full minute later, hardly any time at all now that Sam thought about it, the Tile shivered and folded in on itself.

He had found a vantage point well away onto the [Plains Tile] by that point and watched with relish as the [Forest Tile] folded up like a book, then again, and again, dozens of times until all that was left was a cube floating just over the vast emptiness at the edge of the [Plains Tile].

As he came closer to inspect, the cube slowly drifted toward him as if magnetized, though Sam had done nothing to influence it that he knew.

Placing his hands on either side of the cube, Sam was surprised at how heavy it was. Heavier than anything a foot to a side should ever be, and yet with his over 100 Strength, he still lifted it quite easily.

“One down, one to go,” Sam said, stuffing it into his newly expanded Inventory with a grin.