Skills

Skills

"Why are you like this?" Hestia asked with a long suffering sigh.

"What, I'm right aren't I?" I insisted.

"Well um yes? But still!" she said angrily.

"See it's fine then and besides you have to admit that it would be kinda funny to hear about a bunch of thieves missing fingers." I said with a chuckle.

With that my little construction project came to a close for the moment and I could finally throw myself into the middle floors before the monster rex to raise my stats. Obviously I got a good deal of smoke from killing the orcs to make my new workshop but as it was from level one monsters the amount was not optimal.-

While I was busy with all this Bell was dealing with his own issues in the form of his new porter, Liliruca Arde. She was a feisty Pallum girl that had been tagging along with Bell as a porter for a while now but her familia was starting to cause problems for Bell due to it's nature. She was a member of the Soma familia and despite Soma wine being the most expensive and popular in the city the familia environment itself was a rotten place.-

The adventurers screamed as the flames consumed them and I yawned in boredom while casually watching their souls get purged. As I had found out the boost in stats I got from killing each sinful soul was actually terrible at barely three or four per kill. In addition it turns out my apathy towards murder was in fact a side effect of my skill. I know this because even thinking about killing an innocent soul makes me feel sick. Yay for morally questionable mind altering skills! Sarcasm aside this at least let me understand how the falna worked a bit better when it comes to skills and magics.-

Skills weren't just one off buffs that showed up and that was that but rather were very literal representations of you in some way. My skills minus [soul gaze] were each a sort of amplified representation of my own will, fears, hopes and experiences. [Vessel of sin] was from my fear that I'd stop being me and would turn into a monster as I grew stronger. The skill now basically turned me into a technically "righteous" existence as a result. That unfortunately meant that Bell was practically doom driven due to his two skills. [Liaris Freese] was all about growing based on the strength of his emotions.-

[Argonaut] on the other hand was apparently all about enduring suffering to achieve success. It was a match made in hell if I ever saw one. Bell had literally caused himself to be built for hardship since these things on a falna were very much permanent. He could get Hestia to strip his falna from him but if any god gave him another those skills would be there waiting. They were a part of his very existence now for better or worse and every other adventurer with a skill was in the same boat. Heavy thoughts aside I delved until i started getting swarmed by level two monsters on the sixteenth floor .-

Sidestep, smash, backstep, slash I moved in a dance of aggression and death within the minotaurs never stopping for more than a moment after each swing of my weapon. Blood fell on the stone floor from me as well as my foes.

"SLICK!"

A rough stone blade draws across my back cutting it open shallowly but with a small flex of my will the cut seals shut almost immediately. I had gotten quite good at flesh mending with my technique in battle but I had hard limits. One such limit was that anything deeper than a millimeter took too long and too much focus to deal with. Another was that i couldn't heal burns or disfigurement during a fight either. Finally was that anything I mended like this leaves a scar on me permanently. I could of course remove the scars later with my technique if I wished but I preferred to keep them as a reminder of my flaws that I needed to correct.