Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 134: Harden

The cancerous blightling jumped for Edge’s throat, both bladed claws and segmented tail aiming for the gap in his armor. Even if the creature’s weapons missed on the first pass, it was ready to clamp on with its barbed legs and start carving into his flesh.

If he had hesitated for a second, he would have taken some serious wounds at this point and been dosed with the crab’s numbing venom in the process. But Edge didn’t hesitate.

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He had been watching monsters converging from across the grove long enough to consider his options. He had a plan in place and was already executing it before the creature leapt. By the time that it was halfway to his body, his elemental blade had emerged from his palms, pointed at the flying menace.

The instant that the crab soared into range, Edge speared the creature straight through the middle, impaling it upon the end of the iceblade. He saw mana congeal along its body half a heartbeat later, adding some manner of magical reinforcement. But the monster’s reflexes were a hair too slow, letting his weapon penetrate its shell before the skill had time to bolster its defense.

The ugly bastard squirmed and spasmed as its insides turned to slush. It didn’t have enough Disruption to shield it from the subzero mana radiating out from elemental blade. It stopped struggling a few seconds later, when its organs began to freeze.

The blightling was heavy for its size, and its weight pulled his arms down. But it wasn’t too heavy to carry, thanks to the rapid conditioning Edge had undergone over the past week. Not that he planned to hold onto the disgusting thing for much longer. Before he tossed the crab fiend aside, there was something that he wanted to do first.

Since Sasha was in front of him, and the rest of the crew was waiting back at camp, it was a perfect opportunity to steal a new skill without having to provide an explanation that he wasn’t ready to give. He felt a surge of gluttony from Skill-Eater as his core burst into flame, eagerly awaiting its next meal.

Extraction, Edge issued the command, and his chains shot out from the ends of his wrists. The living links slithered their way up the frozen sword, impervious to its potent chill. They began digging into the crack the iceblade had made, since the crab’s defensive skill had faltered when its insides froze. The black links broke through the monster’s shell, parted its flesh, and dove into its core.

Both times that Edge’s mind had tried to enter a shadowreaver’s core, Skill-Eater had stepped in to stop his consciousness from traveling along with his chains. He knew that it was for his own protection, but he was a great deal stronger than he had been just a few short weeks ago. He was ready to find out what was inside, if his core was willing to let him.

I’d like to see what’s in there, if you think I can handle it. To his surprise, he felt Skill-Eater consider the matter before agreeing to his request. Either this monster’s core wasn’t as dangerous as the reavers’, or he had grown enough to face whatever awaited him within. He wasn’t sure which it was, but he was about to find out.

His awareness rode the black chains, permeating into that strange space where time trickled past. A scene representing the core-wielder’s inner world—the place that they felt most connected to.

What he saw when he was drawn inside the monster’s core was unlike anything he could have imagined. What in the world? Or maybe what in what world is the right question.

For a long moment, Edge simply stood there, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. His brain struggled to process what he was seeing, because it lacked any frame of reference to categorize the experience. Unlike the other cores he’d visited, this one wasn’t a room or a natural setting. At least, it wasn’t any natural environment that his mind could categorize as such.

Instead of trying to grasp the scene as a whole, he began cataloging the individual features. His surroundings were too complex, too intense, to take in all at once. Edge began by looking up, staring at the strangest sky that he had ever seen.

The sunless heavens were bone white, interspersed with patches of pale yellow—the shade somehow evoking an impression of putrefaction and decay. There were banks of clouds floating high overhead, or of some manner of mist at any rate, ranging in hue from rust to crimson. Instead of being puffy around the borders, the clouds were cubic, all hard angles and rigid lines.

The longer he looked, the more confused he became. Edge couldn’t tell if the ceiling was a thousand feet up or a thousand miles. If he was standing in a large enclosure, on the surface of a planet, or had entered some manner of dreamscape or computer simulation.

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Motes of ash rained from the sky, glowing with a faint silver light. He had the sense that the floating specks of charcoal had once been something more—reduced to a memory of their former glory by long exposure to this place. He instinctively tried to avoid touching them, although it was impossible to evade them completely, given the sheer volume of the prolific ashfall.

With the world above out of the way, Edge turned his attention to the world below. Instead of soil, grass, or rock, the surface was coated in what appeared to be chitin, or perhaps some manner of plastic. It was a deep maroon hue, with splotches of sickly purple here and there, where the substance was thin enough to show a bit of what lay beneath.

When he bent down to touch it, the ground was warm and slightly tacky. He could feel a faint vibration coming through it—a rhythmic pounding like the beating of a distant heart. The surface had a bit of elasticity to it, putting a slight spring into every step he took.

By now, he felt accustomed enough to this bizarre, unsettling place to examine what lay ahead of him. As far as Edge could tell, he was standing in some manner of forest, at least in the sense that there were tall growths dotting the landscape. But they didn’t look like any plants he had ever seen or heard of. They seem foreign to both Earth and Ord.

Growing from the ground were bizarre amalgamations of tentacle and tree—deep blue growths a hundred feet tall. They wriggled and writhed in the ashfall, grasping at something that he couldn’t perceive. They were repellent on a primal level, and he moved to stand as far away from them as possible. Beyond their freakish appearance, the trees were infected by some manner of pestilence. Weeping masses along their lengths pulsated, dripping a milky fluid that shimmered strangely in the soft lighting like an oil slick.

There was an ocean in the distance, filled with virulent teal water that looked incredibly toxic. Edge couldn’t tell if it was acid or poison. All he knew for certain was that it wasn’t an ocean capable of supporting life as he knew it. It tainted the horizon, throwing an eerie neon glow across the white canvas sky.

This doesn’t look like any planet that I’ve ever heard of. If this core represents the place where the blightling feels most at home, then where in the hell did it come from?

He decided that it didn’t matter right now. Maybe if he entered another monster’s core, he could learn more about their true nature. Or perhaps he could find someone who knew about the subject. Regardless, it was a matter for another day.

Before he started looking for the blightling’s skill, there was one last feature that demanded his attention. There were monsters in the distance, battling with each other in an endless cycle of predation and consumption. Some were so big that they could have given a kaiju a run for its money.

Edge didn’t stop to take a closer look. He was ready to claim his prize and get the hell out. He’d seen enough for one day and was still in the middle of a race for his life. Though time passed slowly here, it still passed. He needed to pick a power and keep on running while he still could.

At least the skills in here seemed normal enough. There were two of them to choose from. One took the form of a big claw with wicked serrations along the interior. Every time the claw closed, it released a thunderous clack. It was some manner of pinching attack, likely the one that had sheared the beast’s leg. The other skill looked like the monster’s shell, only tougher and thicker.

As he cycled-up and grew more experienced diving inside the cores of others, Edge had begun to get a better feel for what the appearance of each skill revealed. By now, he could get a sense of what each power did by observing its behavior. It wasn’t a perfect method, but it was sufficient to help him decide which one he wanted to steal.

The claw attack was useless for something with human hands. Although it was uncommon, its only value was to Absorb it and feed its experience to his other skills. Fortunately, the second skill was far more interesting.

At first, he had thought that it created some kind of shell or exoskeleton, which might be tricky to use with his armor and would draw attention if anyone else was around. But now that he had a better sense of its nature, it turned out that the power was more flexible than Edge had feared.

It was a defensive skill that would let him harden any part of his body, making it resistant to slices and stabs, and able to distribute blunt force trauma over a wider area. It’s basically extra armor on demand. If I can activate fast enough, it should let me block a blow or reduce the damage of a heavy hit, and it’s thin enough that I can use it under my armor.

Now that Edge understood how the skill worked, he knew that it was the power for him. While he would always prefer to get out of the way if possible, this would be a fantastic addition to his skillset. A form of defense that would synergize with his equipment and make him less reliant on regeneration, which wouldn’t do him any good if he was hit hard enough that it killed or disabled him outright.

Around this point, he realized that he was starting to feel ill. Being in here was harming him, although it was taking time to reach its full effect. Since he wasn’t planning on sticking around regardless, Edge was ready to [Extract] the skill and leave.

Skill-Eater must have come to the same conclusion, because the living links were already heading for the armored shell without waiting for his command. While harden was easy enough to catch, it took the black chains a minute to subdue it. Their coils wrapped tight around the shell, but they had to struggle to break its spirit and yank it out of the monster’s core.

Apparently, defensive skills were inherently difficult to [Extract], and this one was Uncommon. He had noticed that the rarer the skill, the more work it took to digest, both on the removal side of things and once he had it in his mouth.

But after some tugging and pulling, the black chains yanked harden free from the blightling’s core, sending Edge back into his own body to resume the desperate dash for his life.