Devouring Dragon Heir-Chapter 23: Ch Phantom Veil (S)

Klaus sat on his bed, the soft glow of his laptop screen illuminating his face in the dim hotel room.

The news headlines screamed at him, splashed across every major digital publication.

"MYSTERIOUS GATE DISAPPEARANCE SHOCKS WORLD!",

"ICE GOLEM’S LAIR VANISHES – GLOBAL INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED!",

"SCIENTISTS, HUNTER EXPERTS CONVERGE ON CAPITAL AFTER UNPRECEDENTED PHENOMENON!"

The sheer scale of the investigation was immense. Governments were scrambling, universities were issuing statements, and the Hunter Association was in crisis mode.

"This is insane" Klaus muttered to himself, spearing a piece of pasta from his bowl. He chewed slowly, his eyes fixed on an image of a bewildered scientist being interviewed.

"The amount of chaos is too much. If a mad scientist traced it back to me, I’m done for then." The thought sent a cold shiver down his spine.

The power of the state, especially when facing an unprecedented threat, was terrifying. They would turn the world upside down to find answers.

"I can’t use the permit to enter the gates anymore" he continued, speaking to himself, the system, or simply the empty room.

"Not for a while, at least. I’ll have to get a stealth skill, and also I’ll have to awaken the shadow element somehow"

Stealth would be crucial for navigating the world, for avoiding unwanted attention and for continuing his secret progression without alerting powerful entities.

He needed to become a ghost, especially after today’s incident.

He walked up to the mirror, examining his reflection. His dark hair, usually uniform, now had a scattering of faint white freckles, almost imperceptible unless one looked closely.

It was the visible effect of his growing Ice Affinity.

"Will I have rainbow hair if all elements awaken?" a flicker of amusement crossing his face. The idea was absurd, but then again, his life had become a series of absurdities.

"Anyway," he continued, turning back to the bed "I can now create skills related to ice, well, only till E-rank for now."

The system’s voice rang in his mind, confirming his thoughts.

[Ding! The Host is advised to use the Fusion Panel to upgrade lower rank skills]

"Oh, how can I forget about that?" Klaus exclaimed, hitting himself lightly on the forehead.

The Fusion Panel! It had been buried under the excitement of his new powers and the shock of the gate’s disappearance.

This was another one of the system’s mysterious features, one he hadn’t had time to explore.

Klaus hurriedly opened the Fusion Panel. It materialised as a sleek, transparent interface floating before him, displaying three prominent boxes: two marked for "orignal material" and one larger one for the "Product of Fusion." A peculiar design, yet intuitively simple.

"What a strange ability" he mumbled, rubbing his chin. "I’m not sure how much it will be useful." Fusion sounded powerful, but the practical applications remained to be seen. For starters, he decided to review his current skill panel, to see what ingredients he had to work with.

--------------

[SKILLS]

MORTAL

F - Passive Aggro

E - Slash

D - Swift Step

B - Herculean Strength, Haunt

SSS - Stellar Sword Descent

***

ABOVE MORTAL

Dragon’s Might (Myth)

Origin Absorption (Divine)

Dragon God’s Sight (Divine)

***

AFFINITY BASED

ICE - Frost Action (D), Ice Spike (D), Ice Golem Summoning (C)

***

[TRAITS]

Natural Hunter (C)

Gatemaster (S)

***

His panel had grown quite a bit more than before, especially after the addition of the ice-based skills from absorbing the golems and the dungeon core.

It was a clear testament to his rapid progression. To start, he chose the lowest-ranked skills to experiment with: Passive Aggro and Slash.

Passive Aggro was a simple F-rank skill that, as its name suggested, grabbed the immediate attention of any monster, making it attack Klaus without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Slash, an E-rank skill, gave him a 5% chance to inflict bleeding on the enemy with a physical attack. A very basic skill

As soon as he mentally dragged and dropped the two skills into the designated columns on the fusion panel, a new metric appeared: Compatibility: 41%.

"System, what is compatibility?" Klaus asked, intrigued. This was a new term, a new mechanic to understand.

[It indicates how good the fusion of the product will be]

The system responded instantly, its voice devoid of emotion as always.

[Between 0 to 50%, the new product’s rank will be the same as the greater of the two reactants. In the above case, that is the E rank.]

[Between 50 to 60%, the new product will be one rank more than the greater of the two reactants.]

[Between 60 to 70%, it will be two ranks greater.]

[Between 70 to 80%, it will be three ranks greater.]

[Between 80 to 90%, it’s four ranks greater.]

[Between 90 - 95%, it’s a whopping five ranks greater.]

Klaus’s eyes widened. Five ranks greater! That was insane! An E-rank skill could jump all the way to B-rank with extremely high compatibility.

The growth potential was immense. "System, what about 95 to 100%?" he pressed, his imagination running wild.

[Host would be lucky to find a compatibility of more than 90%] the system stated, a hint of something resembling a sigh in its tone. [It is almost non-existent possibility for compoatibility to be grated than 95%, but in theory, a miracle might happen.]

"Hmm, nice," Klaus mused, bringing himself back to the current fusion.

"But since these skills are lower level, I guess I will just fuse them. Even if it’s only 41% compatibility, these skills don’t affect my combat much"

He confirmed the fusion.

As soon as he confirmed, the box indicating the final product shone with various colours, swirling and mixing,

then a countdown of 3 seconds began. Klaus held his breath, a faint hum of energy filling the room. After the count hit 0, a shimmering effect took place, like light passing through water, and a new skill appeared in front of Klaus, replacing the old E-rank Slash and aggro in his panel.

[Ding!!! Fused Skill: Blood Lure (E)]

Effects:

- Aggravated Presence: Slightly increases the likelihood of nearby monsters getting taunted by the user. This effect is passive and constant, but weaker than a dedicated taunt.

- Wounding Strike: Physical attacks have a 50% chance to inflict a minor Bleed effect on the target if the target is taunted by the above effect.

"Wow, even if the rank didn’t change, the effects have still improved significantly!" Klaus exclaimed, reading the new description.

The Aggravated Presence was a bit less effective than Passive Aggro but still it was good thing for him, making it more reliable for drawing attention.

But the real game-changer was Wounding Strike. A 50% chance to bleed, conditioned on the target being taunted, was a massive jump from the old 5%. It meant he could reliably inflict bleeding damage where he was already drawing aggro.

"Good job, System!"

[Ding! Welcome, Host.] The system’s prompt reply seemed almost pleased.

Klaus then tried different combinations of skills, curious to see their compatibility on the panel.

Of course, he only experimented with skills in the "Mortal" rank section. There was no point in playing with skills he couldn’t even use yet, like Dragon’s Might or dragon god’s sight.

He tested Swift Step with Herculean Strength, then Haunt with Ice Spike, but the results were always disappointing. Unfortunately, every skill combination he tried was always below 50% in compatibility.

Even Frost Action and Ice Spike two skills from the same element didn’t have good compatibility, sitting at a meagre 35%. It seemed that fusing skills wasn’t as straightforward as just putting two together. It required specific synergies, rare combinations that were hard to come by.

With that, he closed his fusion panel and fell into deep thought, stretching out on his bed. He gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about how everything worked in this strange, new world.

At first, when he woke up here, he didn’t have any concrete goals beyond survival. But now, he had some clear short-term objectives in mind:

- Ranking up: He needed to become stronger, faster, and gain access to higher-tier skills and more powerful enemies.

- Guardian Academy: This was his direct path to understanding the world’s hidden truths, to gain access to resources, and to find more information about his new reality.

-VR Access: The Guardian Academy also provided access to advanced VR training facilities, which could supplement his growth, allow him to absorb skills without dying.

"The VR world and my subspace sound similar does the VR have a subspace"

[ding!! more investigation is needed on the matter]

Klaus rolled his head back in a relaxing position, letting his eyes close for a moment.

"Can’t wait to thrash that Heavenly Will bastard," he muttered, the words filled with a quiet, burning resolve and his hate for the heavenly will.

He opened his eyes and pushed himself up. "System, how many draw points did I get in these four days?" He had been so focused on elemental affinity and fighting that he hadn’t kept a close tally.

[Ding! The Host was awarded 2 DP for each golem killed. In these four days, the Host killed 90 normal golems and one golem boss. Therefore, the Host has obtained 182 DP.]

Klaus was about to say something about the relatively low amount, especially from the boss, when the system interrupted, as if anticipating his thought.

[Host, please don’t ask why the boss did not give more than 2 DP. It’s because you are fighting monsters way weaker than you should.]

Klaus felt a bit speechless at the system’s bluntness, but he replied firmly.

"It’s not like I don’t want to go to high-level gates. But they are owned by guilds or the association, and I don’t want to affiliate with anyone before getting a much stronger foundation for myself, or perhaps a stronger skill or artifact that can mask my abilities better."

"I’ve been thinking the same," he continued, elaborating on his strategy.

"The highest a public permit allows is B-rank, and the capital city only has one such dungeon. I plan to absorb its core eventually, but I can’t enter directly right now.

Otherwise, the investigators will quickly catch the fact that I was present in both places where these ’incidents’ happened." He couldn’t risk drawing that kind of direct, high-level attention yet.

[Host doesn’t need to worry about not having a stealth skill or artifact] the system stated.

[After this dungeon raid, the total is 352. So the Host can draw again. This time, just get something related to stealth or invisibility.]

"Hehe, I almost forgot that I had 170 DP left from earlier," Klaus grinned, a lightbulb going off in his head. The previous draw hadn’t been a full wipe. "This makes things easy, I guess." He had enough for a elite-tier draw.

Klaus summoned the Lucky Draw feature. He scrolled through the options. Given the urgency for a stealth skill, he couldn’t afford to be stingy.

He chose the Elite Draw for 100 DP and then added parameters: [stealth] and [invisibility]. Each parameter had its own cost.

The first costs 10 DP, and the second, in line with the system’s scaling, costs 100 DP. The total for the draw was now 100 + 10 + 100 = 210 DP.

His remaining DP was 352 - 210 = 142 DP. It was a significant investment, but essential for his current needs.

A panel shimmered in front of him, the familiar countdown beginning. Klaus held his breath, crossing his fingers once more.

[Congratulations on getting the skill Phantom Veil (S)]

Th𝗲 most uptodate novels are published on free(w)ebnov(e)l.𝒄𝒐𝙢