Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 9: Living Wood

By this point, Edge’s Leap had carried him high into the air.

He was already at the level of the lowest branches, avoiding the vines reaching for his legs with plenty of room to spare. The nymphs hissed in frustration as their ploy fell apart, and he landed on the ground twenty feet away from the closest tendrils.

Before the beast in front of him could recover from its surprise, he Shadow Stepped and circled around to its blind spot with his naginata poised to strike. Then he shifted back into solid form, brought his weapon down in a diagonal arc, and activated Double Slash while in mid-swing.

Mana went surging out of his core and engulfed the length of his polearm. Part of it wrapped around the blade, honing it on a molecular level to make the cutting edge even sharper than before. More of the skill’s magic infused the shaft, causing it to blur before an identical copy wavered into existence beside the first. The doubled blade was slightly offset and fuzzy, like Edge had taken a few too many shots at the bar.

The rest of the Double Slash’s magic went into his arms, providing the same boost to the momentum of his swing that Slash had offered in its original form. All this occurred in between the drawing of one breath and the next. The combined effect multiplied the force of his attack several times over, increasing the naginata’s penetrative properties along the way.

The nymph never saw it coming. It started to turn with a look of dawning realization in its big brown eyes. Then the skill-bolstered blade caught the beast on one shoulder and kept right on cutting. The naginata sliced all the way down to its waist, slaying the creature instantly and nearly bisecting it lengthwise in a great spray of sap. Shit. Edge winced. That was overkill. I need to steal Entangle before I finish off the other one.

He spun on his heels while scanning his surroundings for the beast in question. It had aborted its charge when it watched its companion die and had to be hiding somewhere nearby. Is it planning to run or press the attack?

Edge learned the answer to that question a bare second later, when more vines erupted through the soil on both sides of his boots. At the same time, two nymphs came charging in from ahead and behind, leaving him surrounded on all sides. To make matters worse, a big branch was directly overhead, which meant that he couldn’t Leap away by jumping straight up.

It was an unfavorable position by any accounting, but he wasn’t afraid. After all, this was a situation he had planned for. Moreover, the beasts had no way of knowing that he had eleven different powers comprising his skillset, along with attributes superior to most people his stage and several weeks of concentrated combat experience.

Edge had begun casting the moment that he realized what was happening. Before the writhing vines could close around his legs, two more sets emerged from the ground, in between their position and his own.

The newly-spawned tendrils reached out and grabbed the ones the nymphs had conjured. His Entangles engaged the other copies before they could reach him, marking the beginning of some intense vine-on-vine action.

His Entangle was rank two, and he had a ton of Amplification for his stage, so Edge wasn’t worried about his vines losing the fight. Instead, he darted toward the nymph in front of him, while both beasts let out screeches of astonishment that their prey was using their own skill against them.

The nymph looked up and turned to run, but it was already too late. By this point, he had taken aim and swung his polearm, sending the naginata around in a sweeping strike with the blade at the level of his knees. He Double Slashed along the way, catching the wooden predator right below the hips.

His attack sheared both limbs clean off, leaving the beast screaming in the dirt while clutching at the sap-spurting stumps where its legs had been a heartbeat before. It was critically wounded, but it wasn’t going to die right away. I can come back and steal a skill after I deal with the one behind me. Edge turned, but the creature had moved faster than he’d anticipated. It was already springing for his throat, with one barbed arm poised to strike.

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Its wooden jaws closed around his neck, while its arm-spike thrust toward his heart with Power that belied the beast’s size. But instead of penetrating two vital areas like the predator was planning, something rather different occurred. The nymph’s teeth shattered like glass as the barb on its arm snapped off at the base.

The reason why its attack failed was simple. A heartbeat before the beast’s natural weapons struck true, Edge had visualized his desire and activated Harden. By this point, both areas were covered in diamondlike scales—dozens of times harder than the tender flesh it had expected to encounter.

The beast braced its feet against his chest and shoved itself back, avoiding a swipe from his blade with inches to spare. He was ready for the creature to come charging back in or let loose with its skills. Instead, the nymph took one last look at Edge and then scampered into the foliage.

Its piteous whine was growing fainter by the second, and he was pretty sure that its retreat wasn’t a trick considering the circumstances. But if he chased the nymph now, the first one would die by the time he got back, and he would lose another chance to steal the skill he had come for.

Instead, he walked over to the dying beast. Edge took a quick look around to make sure that no other predators were nearby, then reached out with both arms and willed his ultimate ability to activate. Extraction.

He felt a pulse of gluttony as his core roared to life. A need to feed that infused every cell of his body and every neuron in his brain. Energy went streaming out of Skill-Eater before gathering in his wrists, accompanied by an intense pressure building just below his skin. The flesh of his forearms parted, and through the ruby gashes emerged a pair of thick black chains.

The living links burst free from his body like they were spring-loaded. They crossed the intervening distance in the blink of an eye, accompanied by a procession of chiming clinks. The animated loops entered the nymph’s body through the wound he had carved, then dove into the core beyond, dragging his consciousness along for the ride.

The outside world faded away, and when he opened his eyes, he was standing inside the beast’s core. Each creature’s core was different—a unique manifestation of their inner world, based on the place they felt most at home. While each species tended to share some aspects in common, Edge had observed considerable variation between individual creatures.

This nymph’s central chamber was the verdant shore of a riverbank. The sun was high in the azure sky, spreading its lifegiving warmth across the greenery below. The wind was blowing and the river added moisture to the air—a perfect place to stretch out in the sunlight and grow. It would have been a nice spot to take a nap, if it wasn’t for the animal carcasses spread out along the shoreline.

It was a timely reminder that nymphs were relentless predators, who only received a fraction of the energy they needed to survive from photosynthesis. By this point, Edge had spotted the skill he wanted to steal, which was easy, since it was the only power inside the early stage-one beast’s core. The vines representing Entangle were hiding below the water, trying to keep out of sight of the strange invaders to this sacred space.

It didn’t help at all. The black chains darted forth like a pair of vipers going in for the kill, encircling the creepers before binding them tight. The mysterious manifestations had grown stronger after Edge evolved to stage one, and they were able to remove the skill from the nymph’s core with no appreciable resistance.

The moment they did, he snapped back into his own skin and the chains threw Entangle into his mouth. One strange quirk about Skill-Eater was that its name was quite literal. If he wanted to steal another creature’s skill, Extraction was only the first step. Once the power was removed from its core, Edge had to chew it up, then swallow once its will was broken.

He had eaten Entangle enough times to realize that while each copy shared an essential flavor, the notes crossing his palate were always unique. In this case, it tasted like kale that was covered in a basil-balsamic dressing. Of course, that description wasn’t an exact match. But it was the closest that he could come up with based on the foods he was familiar with.

Since the skill was a low-rank common, the fight was relatively easy. Although the vines wrapped around his tongue and squeezed, they couldn’t do any real damage. A dozen chomps later, they dissolved into warm goo, and he swallowed it all in a single gulp. The pureed skill slid down his throat, past his stomach, and into the strange space beyond.

Now that Edge had done his part, it was time for Skill-Eater to handle the rest.