Chapter 57- Levelling up
Leo had believed the soul capacity was fixed at ten.
It was not.
Leveling up increased it. After the last few kills he checked the receptacle again and confirmed the change. The capacity had risen from ten to twelve. He sat with his back against a tree for a few minutes and ran the numbers until a simple pattern emerged. Base capacity of ten, plus two souls for every level above fifteen. Level sixteen therefore meant twelve. Level seventeen would mean fourteen. The rule was clean and consistent. He tossed it to back of his mind and stood up.
They moved deeper into the woods. The second band of goblins never had time to form a proper line. Leo cut through them while Shen stayed a few paces back, arms folded, watching without comment. By the time the sun began to lean west the goblin trails had gone quiet behind them.
It was not until dusk that they found something larger.
A Goblin Blood-Chanter stood in a shallow clearing, elite rank, level twenty-two. Nearly twice the size of the ordinary goblins, its chest was painted in dried blood and it held a heavy ritual staff of bone in one fist. The moment it noticed them its eyes glowed red.
[Goblin Blood-Chanter — Elite Lv.22]
[Skill: Blood Frenzy — attack speed and damage surge at low HP]
"Elite," Shen said.
"Blood Frenzy. Those ones get dangerous once their health drops below ten percent."
"Then we finish it before that," Leo answered.
They engaged together.
Leo closed the distance first, sword low, aiming for the legs to limit its mobility. The Chanter reacted faster than the smaller goblins. It planted the bone staff and swept a wide arc of blood-red energy that forced Leo to break off and roll left. The ground where the energy passed sizzled and left a dark stain.
Shen threw three sealing talismans in quick succession. Two stuck to the Chanter’s chest and began to glow. The third was caught mid-air by a swipe of the staff and burned to ash.
The Chanter slammed the staff into the dirt. A pulse of force knocked both of them back a step. It then charged at Shen, it’s staff raised high. Shen crossed his arms and raised a barrier of layered paper seals. The staff crashed down. The barrier held for less than a second before the top layers cracked and peeled away. Shen was forced to leap sideways. The staff struck the earth hard enough to leave a shallow crater.
Leo used the opening. He sprinted in from the side and cut across the Chanter’s exposed ribs.
[Forgefire Strike]
[- 342 DMG]
The blade bit deep enough to draw a thick stream of dark blood, but the wound closed almost at once under a film of the same blood-magic.
The Chanter turned on him without hesitation. The staff came around in a horizontal sweep aimed at chest height. Leo ducked under it, felt the wind of the heavy bone pass over his head, and answered with a rising slash aimed at the wrist holding the staff.
[Slash]
[-57 DMG]
The cut landed but only scratched the thick hide.
Shen recovered and launched another set of talismans, this time aimed at the legs. One wrapped around the Chanter’s left ankle and tightened.
For a moment the creature’s stance faltered. Leo pressed the advantage, driving three rapid thrusts at the torso. The first two were partially deflected by the staff. The third punched through the lower abdomen. Blood sprayed.
[-350 DMG]
The Chanter roared and ripped the ankle seal free with raw strength, then swung the staff in a full overhead arc. Leo raised his sword to block. The impact jarred his arms and drove him back three steps. His boots slid in the dirt.
[- 94 HP]
The Chanter followed immediately, mixing staff strikes with short bursts of blood energy that forced Leo to keep moving.
Shen tried to reapply seals, but each one lasted only a few seconds before the Chanter’s magic burned them out. One of Shen’s stronger seals, the kind that usually locked an elite in place for several heartbeats, was shattered outright when the staff struck it. Fragments of glowing paper scattered across the clearing.
Leo watched the staff during every exchange. Forge-Sight highlighted a thin hairline crack that ran up the bone from just above the grip. The material was old and already brittle. He timed his movements carefully, staying just outside the full reach of the swings while waiting for the right angle.
The Chanter raised the staff for another heavy downward strike aimed at Shen. Leo stepped in from the opposite side, set his feet, and put everything into a single slash aimed precisely at the crack.
[SLASH]
The staff exploded into a shower of bone fragments and dust. The Chanter staggered, howling, both hands now empty.
Blood Frenzy activated at once.
[Warning: Blood Frenzy activated — ATK +25%, ATK SPD +20% while HP <20%]
Its skin darkened, veins stood out, and its remaining speed and power jumped sharply. It lunged at Leo with bare fists and short claws of hardened blood that formed along its knuckles.
Leo met the charge with a series of short, controlled cuts.
He kept his distance, circling, never letting the creature set its feet for a full-power blow. Shen rejoined with precise strikes from the flank, aiming for joints and the already-wounded abdomen.
The Chanter’s health bar dropped steadily even as its attacks grew more frantic. When the bar fell below ten percent the frenzy peaked.
[Warning!!]
[Blood Frenzy activated — ATK +50%, ATK SPD +60% while HP <10%]
The creature’s movements became almost a blur. It charged Leo in a straight line, arms wide.
Leo stepped into the rush. He ducked under the left arm, felt claws rake across his shoulder guard, and drove his blade upward through the center of the chest.
The sword punched through the heart and out the back. The Chanter’s body locked, then went slack.
[-465 DMG]
[Ding~]
[Soul Captured: Goblin Blood-Chanter — Tier: Vivid]
[Potential: Skill transferable to weapons]
[Soul Receptacle: 9/12]
Shen walked over, breathing hard. "That staff break did not look like luck. You hit the weak spot on purpose?"
Leo nodded once and pulled his sword free.
Days two and three blurred together. Green blood and gray dust.
They did not log out. Sleep, wake, kill, capture what souls they could, move on.
Leo stopped counting corpses. The system kept the tally for him. A faint soul settled into the receptacle whenever a body fell close enough and within the sixty-second window. Most did not. Range was only ten meters. Still, the number climbed steadily.
Somewhere in the middle of the second day he stopped flinching at the sensation of each new soul settling into his core.
[Ding~]
[Level Up: Lv.16 → Lv.17]
[Soul Receptacle Capacity: 14]
[Soul Captured: Goblin Runner — Tier: Faint]
[Soul Receptacle: 11/14]
[Ding~]
[Level Up: Lv.17 → Lv.18]
[Soul Receptacle Capacity: 16]
STR 180 | VIT 154 | DEX 131
HP 3080 | MP 1620 | STM 960
On the evening of the third day Shen received a message from the guild. Everyone was being called back for a mission involving a collapsed cellar in the dwarven region.
"Don’t die out here," Shen said.
Leo gave a short laugh. "Noted."
On day four Leo continued alone.
He was already deep under a canopy so thick that no sunlight reached the ground. It felt like night even though the clock still showed afternoon.
He moved carefully, trying to keep a sense of direction in the darkness.
Something lunged from the dark.
He felt the hot breath a fraction of a second before the body arrived.
Instinct took over and he rolled sideways. Claws scored the dirt where he had stood.
The creature was too fast and the light too poor for him to see more than a dark silhouette circling him at a distance of roughly fifteen paces, testing the range. It made no sound on the leaf litter.
After three more near-misses the system finally locked onto it.
[Direfang Warg — Elite Lv.24]
[Skill: Shadow Lunge — a blink-lunge that closes distance in an instant]
Level twenty-four, alpha of its pack. Seven feet at the shoulder, lean muscle under fur matted with old blood. A split ear, a pale scar across the muzzle, and a pair of long yellowed fangs that gave the breed its name. It moved without sound. Every step was deliberate. The scars said it had survived a long time in these woods.
It was intelligent. It did not simply charge. Shadow Lunge let it close twenty paces in a single blink.
The first time it used the skill, the space between them collapsed without warning.
Its jaws closed on Leo’s sword arm just above the elbow. He felt the pressure of the fangs through the armor, the grind of bone against metal.
He survived only because his body had learned to react to the sudden spike of mana that preceded the skill. He twisted hard, forced the sword between the jaws, and kicked off the creature’s chest to create distance.
[HP: -317]
Blood ran down his arm from two puncture points where the fangs had found gaps.
The warg did not press immediately. It circled again, head low, eyes fixed on him.
Leo kept his sword up and his weight centered, watching for the next mana spike. When it came he was already moving, but the blink still brought the creature inside his guard.
Claws raked across his left side, cutting through leather and scoring the ribs underneath.
[HP: -248]
He answered with a horizontal cut that opened a long line along the warg’s shoulder. Dark blood welled and dripped. The creature barely flinched.
[Slash — 304 DMG]
They traded three more exchanges. Each time the warg used Shadow Lunge the distance vanished. Each time Leo managed to turn the bite or the claw strike into a glancing hit rather than a full one, but the cumulative damage was mounting.
His left arm was growing heavy. His breathing was faster. The warg was faster and hit harder. He was losing.
Leo activated Hyperfocus.
His senses sharpened at once. The blurry silhouette became clear in every detail. The surrounding dark lightened enough that he could track individual movements. Time did not slow, but his ability to process what he saw increased sharply. Half a second before the next Shadow Lunge, a thin pool of shadow gathered under the warg’s paws. A clear telegraph. Once he could read that signal the fight changed.
He watched for the pool. When it formed he was already shifting his stance and angling the sword. The blink still closed the gap, but now he met the incoming jaws with the edge of the blade instead of his arm. The fangs scraped along the metal. He stepped inside the reach and drove a short thrust into the neck.
[Slash — 287 DMG]
The warg jerked back, blood spraying, and the Hyperfocus timer continued to count down in the corner of his vision.
They repeated the pattern four more times. Each successful read of the telegraph let Leo land another solid cut.
The warg’s health bar dropped past half, then past thirty percent. Its movements grew more aggressive. It stopped circling and began chaining the Shadow Lunges with almost no pause between them.
Leo’s Hyperfocus held, but the timer was now below ten seconds.
The health bar fell under ten percent. The warg’s eyes narrowed. It gathered itself for one final rush. Shadow pooled under both front paws at once.
Leo saw it, set his feet, and raised the sword in a reverse grip, tip angled upward. He did not try to dodge. He let the creature come.
The blink delivered the warg straight onto the waiting blade. The point punched through the chest just left of center, through the heart, and out the back.
[Critical Hit — 2,010 DMG]
The momentum carried the heavy body forward another half step before it locked. A short, shocked scream tore out of its throat. Then it went still.
Leo held the stance until he was certain. The Hyperfocus timer hit zero a second later. The sharpened senses faded.
The after-effects pulled at his muscles and left a dull ache behind his eyes, but the cost was milder than it had been the first few times he used the skill.
[Ding~]
[Soul Captured: Direfang Warg — Tier: Vivid]
[Potential: Skill transferable to weapons]
[Soul Receptacle: 14/16]
He pulled the sword free and stood swaying in the dark, bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts.
[Ding~]
[Level Up: Lv.18 → Lv.19]
[Soul Receptacle Capacity: 18]
STR 185 | VIT 159 | DEX 136
INT 86 | WIS 85 | CHA 96 | MFT 96 | STM 101 | LCK 77
HP 3180 | MP 1720 | STM 1010
He opened the Soul Receptacle panel.
[Soul Receptacle: 12/18]
[1 Epic — Inverse fragment, sealed]
[2 Vivid — forge-ready]
[9 Faint]
Two of the vivid souls were already forge-ready. One carried Blood Frenzy from the Chanter. The other belonged to the Direfang Warg.
Leo stood over the corpse that had nearly killed him and, for the first time since leaving the guild, felt the weight of real strength settle in.
The fight had torn a hole in the dense canopy above. A shaft of actual sunlight reached the ground for the first time in hours. He sat in that small circle of light, drank a recovery potion, and waited until the worst of the bleeding stopped and his breathing evened out.
He was just getting ready to move when the temperature changed.
An intense heat pressed against the side of his face.
He turned.
A beam of fire tore through the trees. He threw himself sideways and felt the heat scorch the air where he had been standing.
A wall of flame advanced next, torching underbrush and melting stone along its path. The wall parted.
A man stepped through.
.....