Chapter 119: Testdrive [pt 1]

The Warden of the Cinderfall did not roar.

It came down onto all fours in the middle of the ring, and the black fire in its seams brightened once, and then it simply started running, and eleven hundred pounds of it crossed two hundred feet of packed ash without making a single sound.

Theo let the Genesis Eyes open and gave it everything he had.

[STATUS]

IDENTITY

Name: —

Age: —

Race: Lycanthrope [Cinder-strain]

REALM

Realm: Enhanced

Rank: IV

CLASS

Authority: Dark Fire

Domain: The Cinderfall

ATTRIBUTES

Strength: 209

Stamina: 240

Agility: 156

Intelligence: 88

FOUNDATION

Constitution: [Emberhide] — 100%

Circulation: [—]

ABILITIES

Skills:

[Cinder Howl]

[Fang of the Black Kiln]

[Ash Shroud]

Traits:

[Domain Anchor — within the Cinderfall, its wounds burn shut]

[It Sweeps The Floor]

AFFINITIES

Primary

[Dark Fire — Extreme]

[Note: It has been alone in here for a long time]

Theo was first shocked to see he could actually see the full status of a monster. But when he considered how similar they were to when he looked at a human. He instantly knew that it was because of the nature of monsters.

Some monsters were harder to see than the others. Monsters in the Dungeon for example, often respawn. So, perhaps, that had to do with why he could see them. Then Theo now had to focus on the technical aspect of what he was looking at.

Donzo had been a hundred and eighteen Strength, and Theo had taken four cuts to the shoulder getting near him.

’Two hundred and nine. And two hundred and forty Stamina, so it can do this all day and walk home after.’

’...And it has a Domain! It has an actual Domain and I’ve got three question marks where mine should be!’

Theo rolled the nine feet of shadow out to his right, put his weight on the leg that still did not want it, and found that he was grinning inside the helm like a lunatic.

’Right. Okay. This is going to be extremely educational.’

The Lycan stood up out of the sprint and swung.

He crossed both forearms, locked the plates, put every pound he had down into the floor, and took it.

It took him off the ground.

He went sixty feet and into the swept band of bones at the rim and the whole pile went up like a kicked woodpile, and Theo came out of it on one knee with both arms ringing to the shoulder and four thousand years of somebody else’s dead rattling down around him.

’Right. Two hundred and nine is a lot.’

’Do NOT block that again!’

He came out sideways as the second one landed and turned six feet of ring floor into a crater.

Then he tested the thing he actually wanted to test.

’Not the whole floor. Just his feet.’

The darkness under the Lycan’s back legs gathered and went thick as tar, and Theo pulled.

The Warden’s footing moved a foot and a half to the left while it was pushing off, and eleven hundred pounds of it went down on its shoulder and ploughed a trench through its own arena.

’IT WORKS!’

Behind him at the treeline Sivvy said something with her hands over her mouth and Yura did not answer her.

’It works, it works — oh, that’s expensive. That is a LOT of mana for a foot and a half.’

He was on it before it got up.

Nine feet of shadow came down through the meat above the hip, went all the way through, and grated on the packed floor underneath. Theo felt the blade go in and knew with a butcher’s certainty that he had cut something that mattered.

The wound burned shut while he was still pulling the sword out of it.

[Domain Anchor — within the Cinderfall, its wounds burn shut]

’...You have got to be joking.’

It came round backhanded and caught him across the chest and threw him the length of the ring.

He did not block this one. He went with it, put the shadow down under his own heels a few dozens feet out, and skidded to a stop upright with the plates smoking and his boots ploughing two long trenches.

Then it planted both feet and opened its mouth.

Fang of the Black Kiln came out in a column eleven feet wide. Black fire, lightless and starving, and it ate the dusk out of the whole eastern half of the ring on the way to him.

Theo put every scrap of darkness he had in front of it.

He tore it off the wall and out of the floor and off his own shoulders and condensed it into a slab twelve feet across, and the black fire hit the black shield, and for a second and a half nothing in that ring existed at all.

Then it came through.

It washed over him and he stood in it with his arms up and the Shadow Fragment screaming along every seam, and it went on for four seconds, and Theo went down on one knee inside a pillar of fire that gave off no light whatsoever.

’That’s — okay — that HURTS—’

It stopped.

He was still there.

The obsidian had gone pitted and white down the whole front of him and along both forearms. The wisps off the crown of the helm had gone out. Underneath the plate his chest was burnt through to the muscle in three places and his left hand would not close.

And the armour was already drinking.

Threads of darkness came up off the floor and climbed his shins and ran into the plate, and the pitting filled in from the edges while he watched, and the wisps came back off the crown one at a time.

Theo grinned.

’It repairs itself using darkness, and I have got a great deal of darkness.’

Then, under the plate, the burns began to itch.

[Limitless Body — Adaptation in progress]

[Foreign attribute: Dark Fire]

[Resistance: forming]

Theo looked down at his own chest. Then up at the thing that had done it.

’...Oh, you should NOT have done that.’

’That is literally how my body works!’