The Forgotten Legacy

Standing over the body of the Arachne, he felt both strained as well as incredibly excited. He had just killed his first D grade monster. He had used a lot of mana to do it, his stamina had also taken a beating, but his health was in decent shape.

Level 132 was slightly higher than he had expected but it was still within his estimations for what this dungeon would throw at him. The fight had been hard, the monster had been able to tank a good amount of his skills during the beginning and if it wasn’t for it having been weakened by his sword and distracted by his summons, fighting it one on one would have been much more difficult.

Status:

Name: Shaun Clermont

Race Human I

Level: 114

Class: [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger – Level 122

Profession: [Advanced] Elemental Creator – Level 107

Health Points: 8159/13524

Stamina: 3215/12298

Mana: 4268/46770.5

Stats: (Available Points: 32)

Strength:

1290

Dexterity:

1385

Endurance:

1230

Vitality:

1352

Intelligence:

1346

Perception:

1327

Willpower:

1406

Soul:

4677

Affinity:

Basic: Earth, Fire, Nature, Air, Water

Advanced: Lightning, Ice, Magma

Titles:

New Initiate, Apex Predator, Planetary Forerunner, Elementalist, Expert Solo Dungeoneer, King, Impossible Feat. Mana Body, Mana Mind

Heritage:

Azreal’s Legacy (Hidden)

Skills:

Class:

[Advanced] Blade Mastery (Level 79), [Advanced] Earthen Echo (Level 63), [Advanced] Enhanced Mind (Level 122), [Advanced] Elemental Strike (Level 81), [Advanced] Stone Skin (Level 33), [Advanced] Elemental Shift (Level 48), [Advanced] Elemental Summons (Level 52), [Advanced] Mirrored Elemental Blade (Level 28)

Profession:

[Advanced] Elemental Fusion (Level 111), [Advanced] Creators Control (Level 115), [Advanced] Element Coercion (Level 98), [Advanced] Meditation (Level 125 – MAX), [Epic] Mana Mastery (Level 10), [Advanced] Runic Scribe (Level 125 – MAX), [Advanced] Elemental Storage (Level 53), [Advanced] Creators Plan (Level 56), [Advanced] Creators Domain (Level 22)

His skills had jumped up quite a bit, and now he could summon an extra creature and a third blade. His blade mastery skill also went up a good amount of levels, and considering that he had used his swords to fight for a majority of the battle, he felt good about the gains.

The 4 levels for the kill weren’t bad either, it was about 20 levels higher than him and a full grade higher. It wasn’t the most he had ever received in one go but now that his level had increased so much from his profession, getting 4 levels from one kill was a good amount.

Removing his swords from the body, he retreated away from the area to somewhere far enough away that if anything came looking it wouldn’t find him. Along the way he examined Death’s Kiss. On the surface it hadn’t changed, but in the gem, he felt the life force of the monster he had killed filling it, if only a little.

The blade had done great things for him in that fight, he was able to wield it like it was an extension of him, fully connected and like it just knew exactly what he needed from it. It was the first time he had fought with it, yet it felt like it had been with him his entire life.

Shaun did a final search of the area around him before settling down into a comfortable position on the ground. It would be a good few hours before he was back up to full in his mana and stamina, and during that time he decided to be productive.

He wouldn’t be bothered in the dungeon and he was in no rush, taking out the Dragon Core he placed it in front of him and got back to work on connecting to it. He had already spent many hours attempting to link with the core but had as of yet had no success.

As always he could feel the core emitting an essence that seemed to want to connect with something and he had already exhausted his brute force method. Here, in the dungeon, where no one would come knocking on his door asking him to do something, he chose to just meditate without trying anything with the core, they could just sit together in peace for a while.

The longer he sat the more he noticed something odd with the core, if he wasn’t interacting with it, trying to force anything to change or bond, the essence it emitted actually expanded out. To test a theory he tried to grab a hold of it with his mind and all the essence retracted back in around the core like some kind of defensive measure.

Shaun pondered on that for a while, not interacting with the core again while he put together everything he knew about the core. The first thing was that it obviously wanted to connect, how or with what he was unsure. The second thing was that forcing a connection wasn’t possible, their had to be a choice and it had to be two sided. He couldn’t force it into submission but rather he needed it to willingly open itself up to him. The third thing he know knew was that it would continue to expand its reach, even going so far to surround him with essence, but even then it wouldn’t physically connect, it needed something more.

Testing a new theory, he tried to replicate what the core was doing, he let out his own aura, holding back the aura of the armour and sword, just using the aura that was purely his with no outside interference.

The moment his aura hit the essence it was if there was a solid wall between the two, but the essence of the core didn’t retract back immediately. Finally, a breakthrough.

Having finally found an avenue to interact with the core without having it fight back, Shaun just sat there and allowed his aura to fill the air around him, the core doing the same. For a long time aura and essence just sat next to each other, neither pushing the other in any way, until out of nowhere the essence actually touched his aura and both pulsed for a split second before pulling back.

For that split second he felt a fleeting connection that almost overwhelmed his mind. It was as if there was a consciousness inside of the core, one of massive power that could overwhelm his own mind if he let it. But that wasn’t the feeling he got. That fleeting moment of connection was a test, one he wasn’t sure he passed or not.

Rather than do anything rash, he continued to do as he had been and let his aura and the essence just sit beside each other. He allowed himself to be open to whatever the core wanted, he was an open book ready to be read, it was up to the core to make the next move.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting with the core, but twice more the essence connected to his aura and both times it was for only a brief moment before disconnecting again. He would have been happy to sit like this until he finally won over the core but he was broken out of his trance by two monsters coming into the perimeter of his echo, both of them were close to each other and coming from the direction of where he had killed the Arachne.

It seemed that the time for meditating had come to an end. Putting the core back into his inventory he came to a stand and came up with a plan on how he would approach the two monsters. He would need to split his attacks with this fight. Somehow, they had tracked him down, and fighting two of them at once would take more out of him then the first fight, which he had used a lot of mana to win.

It didn’t matter though, he was more than ready to get back into the fight. By his estimations of how quickly the monsters were moving he only had a minute or so before they would arrive. Using that time he used his summons skill and summoned two Flame Hounds, two Artic Tigers and two Zapian Eagles.

His plan was simple, they would fight one of them off as long as they could and he would take the other one on one. There would be no ambush for these two monsters either, he planned on taking them head on. After communicating his plans to his summons, they got moving at a quick pace through the trees and directly towards the monsters.

The moment they saw the two monsters, both Arachne, just like the first, he and his summons split, each taking one of the Arachne. At the same time Shaun summoned three mirror blades, two powered with magma and one with lightning, then he pushed even further and powered all five of his blades with elemental strikes, each of his mirror blades had the element they were made of used, his own blades were both powered with magma.

The moment the Arachne saw them they let out a screech, one even going so far as to yell out about him killing their sister. This was no time for conversation though, they were here to kill him, but he sure as hell had come to kill them first.

The Arachne both sent out attacks at him, ignoring his summons, he deflected all four attacks using the elemental strikes he had pre powered and then at once both he and his summons went in to attack.

Five blades attacked the Arachne at once, and even with eight legs the Arachne was not able to fully defend against him. Relying on his mirror swords he pushed his mind to enter into battle against its legs while he focused on cutting with his physical blades, the curse of his sword leaving its mark where it touched.

When he saw the Arachne about to send out more of its webbed attacks he shifted into a bolt of lightning and slammed down onto its back, its attacks flying harmlessly through the spot he had just been standing. He used that moment to cut through its back with one blade and aim to cut off its head with the other.

At the last moment it moved out of the way and it narrowly avoided being beheaded, but it still got another curse put on it through the wound on its back. Shifting again he moved to stand in front of it, while it was looking behind it and followed up with stabbing through its chest with his blade while fighting off a leg with the other.

He moved so quickly that the monster was unable to keep track of him, all the while each wound was slowing it down, and making it easier to hurt. As the Arachne was getting ready to attempt to fire on him again he did something different and pulled all of his mirror blades into one, each overlapping with each other and sent it straight at the Arachne’s abdomen.

With the monster full focus on him it didn’t have time to dodge his attack and just as it let off its webbed blast he shifted into the air for a split second to let the attacks pass while his mirror blades punctured its abdomen.

The pained screech it let out was painful to his ears but he didn’t lose his concentration. Replicating his first finishing strike, he pulled air under his feet and blasted just to the side of the monsters head. Using the momentum he spun at the last moment and cut through its neck, separating it from its body.

Not giving himself a moment to enjoy killing the monster on his own, he turned to the second monster who was successfully fighting off his summons. One of his Zapian eagles were gone and both of his Flame hounds hadn’t made it through the fight, but his remaining summons were still giving it their all in holding off the monster.

Forming three for elemental blades, all of which were made with ice, he powered up 5 ice strikes in his blades and from a distance sent each and every one at different parts of the remaining Arachne. Four of five of his attacks hit with one of them being dodged, but even getting it full on with four ice strikes was enough to slow down the monster for enough time for each of his remaining summons to go in for the attack.

Shaun didn’t stand idly though, he pushed all three of his mirror blades at the Arachne and just like he had done before, he launched himself at the monster at an incredible speed and with both of his swords stabbed them right through the monster’s chest.

The Arachne staggered for only a moment before his Arctic tigers both jumped onto it and started shredding it with tooth and claw. It only took second after that for the monster to die and for him to get the kill notifications.

**You have defeated a (Arachne– Lvl 129). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

**You have defeated a (Arachne– Lvl 130). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

**Class: Elemental Blade Slinger has levelled up by +2 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger has reached Level 124. +6 Str, +4 Dex, +6 End, +6 Vit, +8 Soul gained**

**Race: Human has levelled up by +1 levels. Human I has reached Level 115. +16 Ap gained**

He only gained two levels from the two Arachne but they were both lower level than the last and as this was the last level before hitting Level 125 he figured there would be a need to gather much more experience than usual to level it up, but that wasn’t even something he was working to at this point, skill levels were more important.

Having a look over his stats he dropped everything into endurance, as it was his lowest stat and his stamina was getting more important in these fights. He dismissed his summons with a loving pat to each. He didn’t stick around the area for long, deciding to move back out and recover again and go back to meditating on the core until he was fully recovered. Only then would he move back out and fight some more.