Form And Deployment
I told the shade to stand back up, he did just that. Now that it was standing again I got to take a better look at it, a wispy black smoke escaped from it constantly, it didn't make it very high in the air before it dissipated. I put my hand on it, the black misty chitin that formed it's body was incredibly cold, incredibly so, I recoiled from how cold it was. In fact, It was like shoving your hand in a snow bank.
A little tether in my mind was telling me where it was. There wasn't to much more to test other than to fight it, I am most certainly gonna get beat the hell out of with my whole 0 combat experience. But I'm sure they could. It would at least show how capable this one is, either way I commanded it hide in my shadow, it fell through the floor and all that remained was a dark puddle that zipped over and disappeared in my shadow. Neat, I think it was time to try Void Lord Form though.
I activated the skill, In an instant my body began emitting a black mist, soon it fully enveloped me and when it had vanished, I got a look at myself. I was a condensed black mist. Where my legs were there was now nothing, I must admit though, it was very strange to be weightless. Unlike the tendrils the extra arms didn't feel like I gained something new. I had an instinctual control over them. I guess it made sense, this ability appeared quite costly with how long Void Power took to recharge, it wasn't permanent like tendrils either so it would be very hard to learn to use the extra arms. I could only use it for 50 seconds every 48 hours after all.
Now lets try moving. Rather than walking I glided across the ground and left a dark misty trail behind me. it also appears the 1.2 x bonus applied directly to things like casting speed, movement speed, and more noticeably, my health mana and stamina. It wasn't like a stat boost that would only boost what it gained from the stat, but rather it stacked with my natural health taking my 50 hp pool and making it 60. I was missing the extra 10 hp though. Same with the extra 20 mana and stamina. My abilities seemed unchanged as well and worked as they did before. Either way I saw a red notification near the edge of my vision. That Void Power I spent on the tendrils came back to bite me
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Due to a lack of Void Power Void Lord Form is being cancelled.
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It would appear my time is up. The mist thickened and encased me, I walked out as a black water like substance fell to the ground. Like a melting candle. "Nice trick.", "Thank you for the input Zephyr."
"Bring out that shade, I wanna see what it can do." I guess I didn't even need to ask, "Will do." A black puddle escaped from my shadow before stopping, the shade crawled out of it along with much more of that black mist. "Eugh." This shade didn't have any hand to hand combat skills so I pulled the dagger out of my inventory and tossed it over. It caught it, I gave it the order to attack Zephyr. It didn't rush but rather walked slowly. When it was within 3 meters it stood still.
"If your not gonna make the first move then I will." A gale of wind appeared under Zephyr's feet and he dashed forward. The Shade was decapitated without any resistance. I could hear the chitin crack as Zephyrs blade took off it's head. Apparently though Zephyr had decapitated it didn't die, a billow of smoke appeared and it's head reformed. Zephyr spoke
"Makes since, they're just mana after all, as far as we know they don't have any organs and it sees through those cracks right? A decapitation doesn't really mean much other than limiting its view. A being of mana like this would have a mana core hidden somewhere in there head somewhere. But this isn't the case for yours. It won't be able to heal the next wound though, this blade does 30 dmg. Not sure that really matter though, gotta find the core to kill the damn thing"
I guess Zephyr stopped playing around as wind blades tore through the shade, it seems one hit the mark as well.
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One of your shades has fallen.
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It disappeared in a black smoke. The wounds it had sustained before the blade that found the core all leaked a black liquid similar to the black water from when it was a puddle but much more dark since it was condensed inside of it's body and not spread out like when it was a puddle, It also flowed out very slowly when with some of the larger wounds it should have flowed out quite fast, it was viscous unlike when it was a puddle and leaked slowly.
I learned a few things from that quick fight though. The only real reason it has to heal is to stop it from having holes in it's body that might restrict it in some way or expose it's core. That black liquid that leaked from it is used to make the core unviewable even if there's a wound that should expose it. It might have another function that I'm not aware of. To kill it you would either have to find a way to drain all the liquid so you can see the core or take some shots in the dark and hope ya get lucky, that would leave you in optimal stabbing distance though so most people probably won't do that.
When we finished it the sun had finally went down and darkness was closing in. Zephyr started a fire again, we cooked more salt pork but we also had a little bit of fresh beef so we cooked that as well. The emotions around the fire were strange, vex was as unreadable as ever, Kala looked kinda pissed, quentin looked exited yet anxious, and Fink had a cold stoicism around him. Zephyr was strange, he looked anxious and troubled. To be fair, we had lost much ground to the Belrend Empire over the last year or two so we were losing.
But it wasn't that kind of worried. I wasn't sure what it was. That didn't matter though as we finished our meal and made our way back to are tents. I also learned something, the tendrils can retract back into their point of origin till they disappeared fully. That meant I didn't have to cancel them to get rid of them and that would certainly be useful.
I drifted away feeling strange, it was an interesting feeling. I felt my chest was cold, yet it was a fake cold yet also real, my skin still felt cold but it wasn't dangerous like normal cold, it was real yet couldn't harm me, I could stay like this forever without repercussions. But since I wasn't really cold I didn't mind, as a matter of fact, I would always be able to be cold at night. No more pillow flipping. Kinda sucks I don't have one of those.
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I awoke again. The first thing I noticed was that it was a little later in the day than when I woke up yesterday, the sun had already crested the horizon, apparently everyone else had already packed. the only thing left was the tents they were still sleeping in. First things first was to take down the tent, it only took 10 minutes and I spent some more time packing it up. Once that was done I didn't have much else to do. I decided to make a bow with Void Armory. Lets go with a long bow.
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-100 mana
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It was simple yet effective, just like the dagger it had a few fancy parts like some engravings at the ends and such. Nothing that should be a problem though.
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Dispel? Y/N
Void Longbow: F tier
damage 10
skills
Void Armament: Does 10% more damage when equipped by a shade
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With my lack of mana I wouldn't be able to make any arrows though, that was fine for now. After an hour everyone was up and I finished a while ago so Zephyr and all of us set out back to the hidden portal. It didn't take long to arrive and once we had it was already set up. Zephyr sighed, then he walked through. And after him, we all did.