Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 28: Quagmire

Trapper reached down and touched the soil with both hands. She ignited her core, and a raging torrent of mana surged out of her reactor, through her fingertips, and into the ground. It was an incredible release of magic—the most Edge had ever seen from a skill that wasn’t part of a combo.

For the next tension-saturated second, nothing happened. Then the soil began to change. The beast started sinking as the dirt took on a liquid sheen—folds of earth running like wax as the ground changed from solid to liquid within a half dozen heartbeats. He deactivated his vines, since they no longer had an anchor, then got ready to make his next move.

The scorpion knew that something had gone terribly wrong. It tried to get away, but the hunters weren’t about to let their prey escape. The crew let loose a heavy barrage, taking care not to step onto the altered ground themselves. Weapons and skills rained down upon the beast, forcing it to Harden its exoskeleton to avoid taking a killing blow.

The moment the creature deactivated the defensive skill, it spun in place, feinted, and then took off in the other direction. But it was already too late. Before it could take ten steps, its body slid into the soil, as the ground beneath its feet became a Quagmire.

The Rare skill could only affect an area within a radius that was determined by its depth. At twenty feet across, Trapper could only make it eight feet deep, but that was enough to submerge everything but the tip of the beast’s tail.

It was hard to swim in the swampy muck and the surface wouldn’t support much weight. It meant that most creatures that were caught by the skill were only left with one option. To sink.

The scorpion was in trouble, but it wasn’t going down without a fight. Its head broke the surface, slipped below, then emerged again a few feet further out. It’s standing on its rear legs to take a breath, then walking along the bottom. If that was all Quagmire could do, Edge would have laid even odds on the creature drowning or reaching solid ground. But creating the mud pit was only half the story.

When Trapper sent out a second pulse of mana, draining her reservoir dry in the process, the altered ground rapidly resolidified. The excess water leeched away, packing the struggling scorpion inside a coffin of earth.

It tried to dig itself free, but the weight of the soil was too great, and it couldn’t raise its limbs. It managed to force its head above the surface. But that was as far as it got before it was immobilized by the dirt. At least for a few more seconds.

“Quick,” Trapper spoke between gasping breaths. “Steal its skills before it breaks free.” Edge didn’t need to be told twice. He went running for the bound beast, conjuring his Elemental Blade along the way.

Combining the momentum of his charge with the strength of his body, he drove the tip of the crystalline sword straight into the predator’s eye, penetrating the brain below. It screamed and struggled, but it was helpless to resist as the subzero mana ran rampant throughout its tissue.

By this point, he had considerable experience using this technique and could judge how much punishment his victim could take. The instant that the creature stopped fighting back, Edge canceled his iceblade, reached out, and activated Extraction.

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He found himself standing in a sweltering jungle. Emerald growth carpeted the ground—so thick that his visibility was limited to a few feet in front of his face. He couldn’t see the skills living inside the beast’s core, but he already knew which one he wanted to steal first. Go for Harden. He gave the black chains their orders, and they darted into the verdant growth like tigers on the prowl.

Edge followed the sounds of combat that broke out a few seconds later, until he arrived at a small clearing. Within it, the living links were in the process of subduing a skill that took the form of the scorpion’s exoskeleton with a coating of clear gemstone running along the exterior. Judging by the intensity of the struggle, it was a high-rank version of Harden, which only made him more excited to claim it for his own.

Not long after, the chains locked tight around the armored shell, yanked the skill out of the beast’s core, and tossed it into his mouth. He wouldn’t have been able to break the diamond shell with his teeth, but he’d learned a little trick about eating Harden after stealing it from the cancerous blightlings. Ever so carefully, he used his iceblade to freeze the skill inside his mouth, making it brittle enough to shatter with a few more chomps.

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He enjoyed the flavor as the skill turned to goo and slid down his throat. Although it was difficult to put into words, the taste itself seemed hard, kind of like a shot of whiskey. It was accompanied by a sense of impenetrability. Of taking heavy hits without falling down.

He savored the sensation until his Guide appeared, bearing a message from the System.

You have extracted the skill: Harden (Uncommon, Rank 3).

You already have this skill in your collection.

Its experience will be added to your existing skill.

Now standing inside his own core, Edge watched as the beast’s copy of Harden merged with the one living in his skill garden. As he had hoped, the skill kept on shining when the joining was complete, prompting a new message to appear that made him giddy with anticipation.

The skill (Harden) has advanced to Rank 2.

Its mana efficiency has been enhanced.

Please choose between one of the following options:

Your scales will gain bladed serrations, allowing them to damage anything that attacks you. The cost for hardening large portions of your body will be greatly reduced, and the skill’s overall drain will be lowered. The scales will conduct a portion of the kinetic energy they absorb into the ground by your feet, effectively reducing the impact.Warning: if no option is selected, your skill will remain unchanged and gain a slight bonus to mana efficiency.

Edge contemplated the visions that accompanied those descriptions, although he didn’t have time to ponder the matter at length. Even in this strange space where time ran slow, the beast was well into the process of dying. He needed to make his decision before that happened or he would lose the chance to Extract more skills.

While the bladed scales sounded cool in theory, they would only work against a limited range of attacks. Bites, tail slams, maybe claws to a lesser extent. They would be great if something wrapped around him to constrict him or bind his movement, but the upgrade would be useless against weapons and ranged attacks. Edge was already specialized for close-quarters combat to a greater extent than he preferred, and the range on the scale-blades was even closer than that.

Moving on, reducing the drain for Hardening large portions of his body was great. Right now, the cost increased exponentially if he made the patches of scales bigger than the back of both forearms. If he tried to Harden his whole body outside of using Overdrive, he would drain his reservoir dry in a couple of seconds flat.

A lot of skills could inflict area of effect damage or come at more than one part of his body at the same time. He would be in just as much trouble fighting multiple opponents, who could hit him from numerous angles at once.

Taking this upgrade would enhance his defense without having to constantly balance the size of the scales versus the drain to his mana. Plus, repositioning them required a conscious effort of will. If he was slow to notice an attack and make the adjustment, he would fail to block the blow.

The third option was interesting too. It would soften the impact of the hits he took, reducing the shock to his insides and weakening the force of the attack. If that was the complete picture, he would have gone for it.

But the vision had let him know that the upgrade was more nuanced than that. Since the force was redirected through his feet, it wouldn’t work if he was Leaping or standing on something that couldn’t handle the impact. That being said, most of the time, it would effectively increase the armor value of his scales when absorbing blunt force trauma.

On the other hand, Edge had a lot of Durability, his new armor, and Regeneration. He wasn’t as worried about suffering internal damage now that he could heal his organs, and the effect wouldn’t do much against punctures, serrations, or slashes. He also had to position the scales in time and watch where he was standing, or he wouldn’t benefit from the upgrade at all.

In the end, he decided to go with the second option. After he advanced the skill a few more ranks and increased his Generation, he could Harden large parts of his body for long periods of time without a prohibitive drain, dramatically increasing his physical defense with a form of protection that would stack with his attributes and armor.

He sent his intentions into the System, then watched as Harden changed shape. Once they were done glowing, the scaled arms representing the skill began to grow. Instead of just the back of both forearms, the entire arm and the fists attached to them were covered in scales too, indicating that the ideal size of Harden was larger than before.

Edge didn’t stick around to appreciate the upgrade. Not with the beast hanging on the verge of death and two charges left on Extraction. He chuckled as a pulse of gluttony emanated from his core, urging him to hurry. Don’t worry, big guy. I’ve got this. It’s time to find out what else is on the menu.