Bro, I'm not an Undead!

He saw weird things everywhere, no space to spare, but a vast playground which he thought was too cool..

Somehow that sounded vaguely familiar.

The view was indeed blue though and Skullius couldn’t help but try to gasp.

In a word, what he saw was… beautiful.

This world that he was in, seemed to be structured into three different portions that he could see from where he stood.

The rising hills that rose into an ever lilac sky while glowing clouds full of humidity circled around them as they rose, the blue vegetation that coloured these constructs in different saturation making the view come to life.

In the opposite side of this vast place, a thick forest could be seen chalk full of rising trees, shrubs and grasses of all assortments, all having the dew dew drops of a wet environment.

Frankly, the humid air did not correlate to any tropical climate of any kind as the actual temperature was rather moderate.

One could infer that the humidity originated from the vast ocean that separated the dense forest of blue and the hills and mountains on the other side.

The only patch of flat ground uninhabited by tall green invaders was were Skullius stood now, as merely a plant or two other than the patches of grass could be seen, this whole stretch going for miles in the direction behind him.

“Wooow… this is pretty good,” Skullius thought. “The staff can store actual worlds? So the Galemonger was actually summoning his bros from this world, huh?”

Though he said it casually, this was by no means a normal thing for a Cluster beast, even for a Cluster General like the Galemonger.

Skullius began pacing over the ground as he studied the place. He had no intention of fully investigating every inch of this blue scape just yet but he was more than pleased to do so after he had settled some matters.

Above the beautiful view that he saw, Skullius was also intrigued by another aspect of this place.

There was abundant mana!

Strands of the thick energy in this world kept teasing his mana core, making him just want to sit here and absorb it while practising his skills.

He would have enough time for that later, though.

Red Rage probably would as well.

As he waded over the beige coloured dirt, Skullius began thinking about the special effects of the Elimparidis Staff. One of its aspects was how it could absorb energy from… stored Dimensions, and that was what would fuel the skills [Jolt Ray] and [Jump].

By stored Dimensions, Skullius assumed that this was such, as it was the only thing that made sense to him.

Well, with all the things he had seen so far, it would make sense either way if another crazy thought came to mind, but this was his ultimate conclusion.

Skullius suddenly saw something shiny in the distance, which he immediately rushed to pick up.

“Oh…”

Right beside a sunflower-like plant which had unfurled its petals in an unnatural way, an Enriching gem was lying on the ground!

It was red, with bits of white starry lights swirling within the colour while a hazy green squirmed around to disturb the peaceful harmony of red and white.

“This is….But wait… Wouldn’t that mean…. I see now…” Skullius thought aloud as he connected the dots with his higher intelligence.

His thoughts had been right but it seemed crazy to him.

The Galemonger had stored an entire Cluster into the white gem over the staff!

This wasn’t just a random world!

That was insane!

With his knowledge and understanding of Clusters, the Enriching gem he was currently looking at was of a higher level than the ones he had seen before.

Skullius’ sockets flared as he looked at the gem that reflected his appearance on its glassy exterior.

“Hmm. Now that I think about it, how come I haven’t thought about absorbing these in my Penetrator form?”

Skullius focused on the gem as he willed the energy within it to be absorbed into him.

However…

“Hmm? It won’t budge. Am I doing it wrong?”

Skullius tried several different methods but as he held the gem but the energy just didn’t react to his pull at all!

This strange occurrence led Skullius to think..

“Can undead not absorb the energy? Or beasts in general?”

Along with that line of thought, several things would begin to make sense actually.

If beasts could absorb the energy from these gems, they would be… much, much stronger that the humans physically wouldn’t they?

Perhaps the Enriching gems were a way created by the Deities to supplement humans’ naturally stronger but slow stat growth in order to balance out the powers between beasts and man.

Well, the word ‘balance’ might not be the best one to use.

“If I can’t absorb them, I’ll just keep them for my Discount Human body then. I’ll still need to finish absorbing the other gems though.”

Skullius looked at the world for a bit longer before looking and calling out.

“You can pull me out now!”

His voice soared through the air as it went, intended for a certain Pelvis-Boar-Man to hear him.

He was currently stored in a spatial storage ring along with the Staff but his will, intent and voice still reached Red Rage who could detect it with his manipulation of Null Life Essence.

Shortly after calling out, Skullius vanished from this world and appeared outside again.

He was about to go on a joyful raving when he saw…

“What the heck happened here?!” he asked in surprise as he saw the tree that he had been resting on leaning in an unnatural pose while the ground was too clean of dust and pebbles than it had been before!

Red Rage merely pointed at the city and expressed an answer through his mental link with Skullius.

“I see…. At least he got the job done. I hope…”

It really was undoubtedly Unbreakable’s freakish strength.

Skullius shook his skull and retained his focus on what was important right now.

He sat down.

He didn’t much time left if Unbreakable had finally dealt the final blow to the Galemonger. Soon, he would be wanted for the incident he caused with the hundreds of mercenaries.

“Now….” he said as he took the Elimparidis Stone Staff and held it firmly within his hands. “High level skills are probably still impossible for me to steal with my current level of mana manipulation. But what about this…?”

Skullius’ hand flared with Null Life Essence, his vision swimming from his sockets as it sank into the staff!

He was about to do it again!

He wanted to see if he could actually attain something from the staff to use as his own!

The skills seemed too high level and specific to the staff and thus he had decided to let them be.

But… how about the aspects, in particular the one that dealt with Increasing skill proficiency by 300?!

Null Life Essence bubbled in Skullius’ vision as once again, a vast array of complex trails, coding for the effects of the staff were laid before him.

There were many of them, all being more complicated than any of the ones he had tackled before.

However, it was easy to distinguish between which ones were skills and which ones were special effects, aspects of the staff, because of the degree of complication, the arrangement that was placed and the traits of the patterns.

The aspect for 10,000 mana points in particular was vastly different from the others.

It shone brighter than all the others, with Skullius feeling the cool pressure of mana from it.

The aspects of storing Dimensions and using the energy from them to power [Jolt Ray] and [Jump] had connecting patterns to two extremely complicated patterns that the Penetrator could have sworn would take him years just navigate.

All three of these were easy to distinguish and thus the Penetrator singled out which one was the one he needed.

‘It doesn’t look too scary…’ Skullius thought as he saw the pattern for the increased skill proficiency.

It wasn’t as complicated as the rest but was no straight line. It would be pretty difficult to speed run while leaving Null Life Essence within it but he was willing to give a long, hard try.

Skullius’ vision sank in and he began the ‘battle’. Skullius swam through the channels but he felt an incredible force that tried to push him back after he made a single sliver of progress within the long channel.

The Penetrator had to put in some heavy work to push further than a few steps.

The process was arduous to say the least and this wasn’t exactly a physical contest where Skullius would have infinite endurance and thus it wasn’t easy.

The sheer amount of concentration for this exceeded what he needed for [Great Rush] before, which was saying something.

Still, Skullius powered through because he knew that the benefits were worth the cost.

Minutes seemed to pass.

Then hours.

Skullius put in all his raw mental oomph while feeling a tremendously uncomfortable sensation.

If one was given a task to walk up a hill but with a sack full of rocks and with the handicap of one step per minute, it was easy to fall into despair.

But Skullius powered through while greeting his unseen teeth.

Thankfully he had enough Null Life Essence for this task and after he had lost track of how many turns he had made…

He finally reached the end.

He hit a wall and at first, nothing happened.

But then… a surge of energy pushed his vision back as the moment he himself return to his body, he was finally rewarded for his efforts!

Unlike what he expected though, something marvellous showed itself.

[You have challenged the higher Tiers of mana utilisation from this world and have succeeded!]

[Your understanding of the compounds of the world and mana increases!]

[‘Depths of the Core’ has reached LV4]

[‘Bringer of All’ has reached LV3]

[‘Elevated Mana Manipulation’ has levelled up]

“Yes! Finally!”

Skullius’ sockets flared as he saw these notifications.

The Silentburn Levin over his bones crackled as he grew excited.

However, this wasn’t all.

[The Vehement Bone Nullmancer grows…]

[You have awakened a powerful skill to better crush the balance and overpower other warriors in the lands]

[The Nullmancer passive skill, ‘Epiphany’ has been unlocked]

Skullius cackled as he saw the arrival of a new skill!

This was something he hadn’t been expecting at all!

Finally, his class was showing some more growth!

He immediately delved into the skill’s description.

…!

Skullius read it an additional time.

Then again.

…!

Afte re-reading it more than ten times, each successive time causing a flaring in his excitement, the Penetrator roared into the sky as his joy knew no bounds in this moment!

“Why I have been ignoring this power is a mystery even to me!” he called before he turned to his Hound.

This excitement could be revelled in later as there was time to spare.

Now, he wanted to get ready to move on with the proceedings.

With something like this in his arsenal…

He couldn’t help but want to rid himself of this current situation so he could explore everything further.

“My bro, how big can your mouth get?” Skullius asked the Hound as he stored his staff and activated [Flesh It Like You Mean It].

—

[Author’s Note]

Sorry. I’ll have to postpone the Sponsored Chapters to tomorrow. 21/08. Something has come up