Chương 6: A Mitten-Like Shell

Zander decided to continue exploring his skills with [Scarlet Gauntlet]. He activated the skill while keeping an eye on his Blood Well and the timer on his phone. The task was far from trivial, but he managed it. He could feel the skill activating, and his Blood Well dropping little by little. After about a minute, the skill activated completely, and both his hands and forearms were once again covered in a misshapen mass of blood. A quick glance showed him that his Blood Well had dropped to 174.

So, each activation of [Scarlet Gauntlet] costs me 25 Blood Points. I can activate this skill 7 times with a full Blood Well. If only my Blood Well went to 200 and not 199, I could do it an eighth time. This was also an opportunity to check his Blood Well's regeneration rate. After checking, Zander realized that it took him 3 seconds to regenerate 1 Blood Point, which meant 20 Blood Points regenerated per minute, or 10%. It would therefore take me 10 minutes to refill my Blood Well if it were completely empty.

That's much better than my Health; it's something, at least. Back to [Scarlet Gauntlet], Zander couldn't help but sigh. This doesn't look good. No way in hell it was intended to look this way. It was crude, a far cry from the sleek, articulated piece of armor he had imagined. The "glove" was a bulbous mass of crimson matter that encased his hand and forearm in a single, rigid block.

There was no definition for his fingers; they were stuck together inside a thick, mitten-like shell that flared out disproportionately around the knuckles, mimicking the padding of a boxing glove but with none of the symmetry. The surface was hideous, an uneven landscape of ripples. It tapered messily up his forearm, thinning out near his elbow in jagged, organic streaks that looked more like dried splashes than a piece of armor. It's ugly, but it did kill the squirrel in two strikes, so that's something at least.

It did have one major downside, though: his fingers being stuck together, he couldn't grab or manipulate small objects, like his knife, when using the skill. He had to dismiss it to use his hands for anything other than punching. As far as he was concerned, there were two things to improve with [Scarlet Gauntlet]: reducing the skill's activation time and refining the shape it took on his hands and forearms. He decided to start by reducing the activation time.

Until now, he had activated the skill mentally and let the process run its course. He should try to be a little more involved in the process. He dismissed the skill and activated it again, but this time, he focused more on the process. He wouldn't know how to explain it, but he could feel his Will helping somehow. It took 50 seconds for the ugly gauntlet to fully form, instead of one whole minute before. Bolstered by this success, Zander redoubled his efforts. Hours passed in this manner, one after another.

When he finally stopped, he had managed to reduce the activation time to 2 seconds. The last hour was frustrating because he hadn't been able to make the slightest progress. Even so, 2 seconds is a hell of a lot better than a minute! I'll continue later to see if I can go from 2 seconds to instant activation. Next, he tried to improve on the gauntlet shape, but it didn't change, no matter how hard he tried. He admitted defeat after an hour without the slightest improvement.

Having reached a plateau regarding [Scarlet Gauntlet], it was time to move on to [Mind's Dominion]. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Before that, he stood up to take a few steps, just to stretch his legs a bit. Then, he sat back down, activated the skill, and transferred points to Might. It took him about 4 minutes to transfer the 10 Will points needed to increase his Might by 5 points.

Just like with [Scarlet Gauntlet], it took him several hours to reduce the transfer time. But no matter what he did, he couldn't get it below 2 minutes. He had just reached a plateau with this skill too. Until now, he had been making transfers to Might. He switched targets and tried transferring to Resilience. As with Might, the transfer was finished in 2 minutes. He glanced at his Health, and it was still at 200/200. So Resilience increase from [Mind's Dominion] doesn't increase my Health. What does it do then?

Probably makes me more durable and harder to hurt. I'll have to try it out in a fight. Next, he pushed himself to his feet, the damp layer of dead leaves compressing under his boots. It was time to run multiple skills at once. He remembered how [Mind's Dominion] had abruptly shattered the moment his focus slipped earlier, so he braced himself. Closing his eyes, he initiated the slow, steady transfer of Will to Might.

As the heat of new strength began flooding his muscles, he simultaneously drew on the energy of his Blood Well, triggering [Scarlet Gauntlet]. The mental whiplash was immediate, like trying to juggle ten heavy stones while standing on a wire. He felt a pull in his chest as his Blood Well drained, coinciding with the crimson matter rapidly hardening over his forearms.

The [Mind's Dominion] transfer flickered, threatening to fail, but Zander grit his teeth and clamped down on his concentration, forcing the two skills into a precarious harmony. To test the balance, he dropped into a combat stance, a memory from his martial arts practice when he was younger. He launched a heavy, gauntleted punch at a towering pine, the bulbous red shell colliding with the bark in a deafening crack. Wood splinters rained down as he pivoted, throwing a heavy hook and a sweeping block.

His breathing grew ragged, but he kept moving, forcing his mind to simultaneously track the thrumming momentum of his strikes, the strain of his Will, and the faintly glowing numbers of his Health and Blood Well in his mind's eye. All of this took him almost the entire day. Night was already falling, and that was when Zander's stomach reminded him of its presence. He hadn't eaten since the evening before.

He took the opportunity to take inventory of his provisions; he had enough dried meat and water for 2, maybe 3 days, if he was careful with his consumption. I'm lucky my water bottles stayed intact after my fall this morning. He would need to find water and food in the coming days. Luckily, thanks to his BloodForged trait, he could eat and drink anything without fearing poisoning or anything else. So he ate some dried meat, then quenched his thirst.

He then took the time to think about the future; he had no choice but to finish the quest assigned by the System or die trying. The good news was that there was no time limit, so there was no rush, especially since his parents, the only family he had left, were no longer of this world. A wave of sadness washed over him at the thought of his parents. He buried his emotions long enough to adopt a strategy for what came next.

He decided to keep it simple; he would follow the System's indications to head toward the Apex Predator during the day, while facing the beasts on his path to gain power, without forgetting to procure food and drink. He would stop every night to work on his skills before going to sleep, probably in a tree or on the bare ground, unless he happened to find a cave or grotto for temporary shelter.

He opened the note-taker on his phone, created a new note, and added a line: Day 1: Survived my first beast, and reached level 2. He then turned off his phone, put it away in his bag, climbed the nearest tree, and, like the day before, strapped his bag down before tying himself up. He checked the surroundings, but there was no sign of life; apart from the squirrel, he hadn't encountered any other living being.

He then plunged into his thoughts, recalling the moments spent with his parents; the thought that he would never see them again saddened him greatly. And so it was, perched in a tree and thinking of his parents, that Zander let himself drift off to sleep.