Deus Didymus: Rend

Chapter Sixty-Four: Towards Level Six

"N-No one!! We just thought you were easy prey-!"

Kami twisted his foot, rotating the dagger in the captain's flesh. The crunching of the man's bones and his following screams, shook Sumin and Chulmoo to their cores-even making Jinju shudder.

"Easy prey wouldn't constitute sending a platoon of heavily armed soldiers and mages," Kami refuted. "Who sent you?"

The instructor extracted his dagger, slamming it into the captain's thigh.

"Talk."

Through his nauseating pain, the captain squirmed around Kami's dagger. He wailed and gagged as the blade's edge tore his flesh asunder.

"You and White Rabbit were our targets!!" the captain forced through his hoarse throat. "We knew you two were strong, so we planned to kill you for the xp!!!"

"Did Zenith send you?" Kami questioned.

The captain shook his head, "We just followed the bounty he put on her head!"

Kami retrieved his dagger, wiping it before sheathing it in his thigh-pocket. "You can thank Zenith for your death; you'll see him soon."

In the blink of an eye, he drew his rapier before thrusting it into the captain's throat. With the light faded from the captain's eyes, a screen of light hovered in front of Kami.

Level Up!
Choose: Stats, Skill, Item, or Upgrade

Kami turned toward Jinju, "Noona, you said you wanted the upgrade card?"

"Eung."

"If all of your skills are upgraded at ten, then why not pick up the extra skill to be upgraded?" the instructor inquired.

"You passively gain skills when you level up. Plus, most people can't even dream of reaching level ten," Jinju replied. "So getting the upgrade then is an easy front load of power."

Kami pinched his chin.

The stats card augments everything I can do without the Catalog, the skill card can give me something new, the item card will give me an item, and the upgrade card upgrades a skill I already have...

The instructor swiped his hand vertically through the air, drawing his skill menu into the air. He spread the screen to a wider degree, listing the skills: Expertise, Sneak Attack, Thieves' Cant, Cunning Action, Whispers of the Dead, Wails from the Grave, Tokens of the Departed, and Shadow Sneak.

Tokens of the Departed and Shadow Sneak are new... The first allows me to extract souls into coins while the second lets me hide in shadows.

Kami pinched the upgrade card, causing it to shift to a ghostly mist. It flowed into his skill menu, enveloping Shadow Sneak before changing the text to 'Spectral Walk'.

Hm... I guess I can walk through walls now too.

"I can't believe you leveled up off that," Jinju remarked, her hand on her hip.

"I'm more surprised he won!!" Chulmoo exclaimed. "There were at least three dozen of them!!!"

"You'll get used to it," Sumin grinned.

Yeeun stretched her hands to the dungeon's roof, "That was magnificent!"

"To think someone like you exists," Percival mumbled. "And he'd beat you too?"