After the End: Serenity

During the Tutorial, Serenity completed another level of the Solo dungeon. It was annoying; a beach and shallow sea level where the monsters tended to come on him without warning. Having a giant, head-sized clam latch onto your foot from under a layer of sand wasn’t dangerous, so it didn’t set off his Skill that warned of danger, but it was certainly annoying. It was even worse when it was immediately followed by a pair of giant lobsters flinging themselves out of the sea where they had somehow been hiding in the shallow water, forcing him to fight while partially hobbled.

On the other hand, it gave him a good time to practice using himself as a sword. However weird it was to think of, it was surprisingly useful; he could alter the blade simply by thinking about it, including changing the Affinity and length on the fly. The sword didn’t have the magic-nullifying properties of his ax and couldn’t simply be called back to his hand, but it was incredibly sharp even though it didn’t have a “real” blade. He could also use any of his skills with the sword as the starting point, and it even had its own - his own? - aura radius.

Annoying seemed to be the theme of that level. The constant salt spray, sand and dried salt everywhere, and being continually wet from the waist down simply added to it, as did the waves that kept coming in even during battle. It was enough to make him seriously consider casting a water-aversion spell, but he’d have needed something to deal with the sand and salt as well and it simply wasn’t worth it. Not for the single day he spent making his way through the level.

Somewhere in the middle of the level, he gave up on waiting and placed his Attribute points. He’d put it off out of concern that it would worsen the mana leakage, but he decided he was already going to suffer for that because he’d increased his attributes for the Tier up; he might as well just do it all at once. He was a bit surprised to see that it took most of his remaining Ev, but at the moment he had no other use for it.