Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6), Dakota Krout [free novels to read TXT] 📗

kill’ for everyone and everything on that Zone. Your ritual was not intended as anti-personnel; it just so happened that it did hurt things. None of that sweet, sweet experience for you. Please note that if you create whatever this was again for the express intent to kill things, the costs to do so will be vastly higher.

My apologies for any inconvenience and for the interruption to your day, but I am here to maintain the balance and must fulfill my role.

~A.

“Who are… wait, I see the sign off, but I didn’t know there were any active admins. Are you from the game company?” Joe waited for a long few seconds, but there was no reply to his questions or concerns. It seemed that message had been a pre-recorded response in anticipation of someone becoming grumpy about not getting experience for something they had done in the past, rather than an actual person currently watching him and giving him answers. “So you just irrevocably nerf my class and walk away? This is unacceptable! You are going to require different resources for the same effect?”

Joe lodged an official complaint right away. He was not going to let this stand.

With nothing else to do for the moment, Joe sat on the garbage and waited. At the end of his rituals, the area of garbage that was being doused in acid should have dropped by about five hundred feet? Not terrible for a Beginner-ranked ritual. With nothing else to do while he waited, Joe decided to burrow into the trash and activate Essence Cycle. He had not gained a single bonus characteristic since he had come down here, and Joe was feeling like he had been slacking.

He was not prepared for the overwhelming dark-aligned mana that was flooding the place. Normally, when Joe activated this ability, he was immediately aware of large surges of dark mana, but they were interspersed with all sorts of other colors. In fact, it usually tended to look a bit like a kaleidoscope, which was fun and always interesting to stare at. Here… darkness. All encompassing, saturated darkness. Then the darkness filled with numbers. Joe sat for an unknown amount of time, contemplating the darkness and data before finally managing to voice his thoughts.

“But why? Why is it so dense here, compared to anywhere else? Is it the garbage? The fact that things are rotting, that things are breaking down here? Is the garbage itself releasing dark mana?” Essence Cycle was broken as a notification shocked Joe into coming back to himself.

Skill increase: Essence Cycle has reached Beginner 0! You have spent time actually using this skill in varying environments, attempting to understand the why. It matters.

Tier increase bonus: You are now able to activate Essence Cycle without dropping into a meditative state. This allows you to follow mana emanations to their source, as well as moving between active and inactive states without an outside influence.

Characteristic points gained: +5 perception! Sometimes it is not necessary to make great leaps of logic, or to bend your mind to a strenuous task. Sometimes it is just important to look at the heart of a matter and see it.

Joe immediately reactivated the skill and peered around. Now, instead of just a dense cloud around him, he was able to see that the darkness was striated. The refuse was indeed releasing mana and pushing it into the air. He stood and picked his way to the densest nearby cloud. As he stepped into it, he checked his characteristic sheet to see if anything had changed. He smiled as he noticed the difference immediately, then choked on the air and stepped out quickly.

Column of Choking (methane, carbon dioxide, heavy metal toxicity). -30 health per second. Neutrality Aura is balancing the damage. Caution! No oxygen; gas exchange cannot function! Suffocation imminent.

“What in the abyss…?” Joe dropped his gaze to the ground, then cast Acid Spray on it. He started burrowing down, turning on Essence Cycle every thirty seconds or so. “What in here is so toxic that it is pumping out nastiness like this? I'm gonna find you.”

As he sank closer, the numbers in the column shifted. The aspect count increased as he dug lower, and finally, ten feet down, he uncovered a huge barrel that was rusted to the extreme; almost to the point of falling apart. He almost cast Acid Spray again, but something told him to take a look at it more closely instead of destroying it the easy way. Bracing himself, he eased forward and checked it directly.

Item: Barrel of Slag

Reduction value: 131 Unique aspects, 200 Rare aspects, 280 Uncommon aspects, 310 Common aspects, 543 Damaged aspects, 1,023 Trash aspects.

Reduction cost: 625 mana per second.

“That’s handy.” Calculating the size of the barrel, Joe figured that he would not be able to get everything on the first try… unless… maybe he could, if he was willing to take some damage. He deactivated his Exquisite Shell and Retribution of Shadows. When his mana was back to full from releasing those, Joe took one last deep breath of clean air and deactivated Neutrality Aura. He held his breath as long as he could, which was just long enough to refill his mana to the limit. He activated his Ritual of Reduction, and the barrel was covered in his dark blue mana.

One second… two… at four, the barrel showed no hint of falling apart, and Joe’s mana bottomed out. The pain hit his head like a Dwarven Warhammer, and he gasped. Big mistake. A whole host of debuffs scrolled across his vision, but he only had eyes for the barrel itself. Was it going to fall apart, now that he had weakened it?

Three more seconds passed, and all that happened was a large amount of rust falling to the ground. Perhaps… it had been in such poor condition already that his mana didn't do much to it? Joe watched anxiously as his mana refilled and his health dropped at almost inverse proportions. He was