Hell Difficulty Tutorial

“So what can Noodle do? You spend the most time with him,” I ask Izzy.

Meanwhile, said white snake is coiled around the shard of bone I gave him from Veil Ignition Station no. 2. He straight-up ignores the second one from the Bone Fortress. So far, he hasn’t eaten or absorbed it. He just keeps flicking his tongue towards it and touching it with his scaly body. He is emitting a small amount of mana though, and I observe the process, even activating my trait to do so.

Izzy watches as well. “Noodle can eat mana from the air. He can also perfectly store and digest until he can’t be felt at all.”

That seems somewhat similar to Biscuit’s primordial energy and a tiny bit to my black mana. The difference is that Biscuit seems to be able to… well, who the hell knows. He just does a bunch of weird stuff that scares some people a lot.

My black mana is an extremely dense form of mana that tries to absorb and dominate any mana in reach. Meanwhile, Noodle actively eats it, and then it… it disappears or gets used for something.

“Can Noodle grow bigger or make use of that mana?” I ask.

“He…” Izzy hesitates as if there is something she is hiding. Her eyes glance at me, Biscuit, and Noodle. “He can grow bigger if he wants to. And I think he needs a lot of time to slowly digest that mana and use it to become stronger. He can absorb a lot, but then it takes even longer.”

So he pretty much has his own reservoir where he can store absorbed mana, changing and transforming it into something he can use.

From my own testing, I know that using mana you’ve taken from someone else is extremely difficult. Each person has a slightly different kind of mana. Part of that can be mitigated by changing the frequencies, but it’s not quite as simple as that. It’s very difficult, and the results of using someone else’s mana can turn out catastrophic. Of course, that’s assuming you aren’t a monster like Lissandra.

That’s one of the reasons I want to improve my [Resonance] and master my eyes more. My skill set and [Mana Manipulation] should help me pull it off. Maybe not now, but sometime in the future. I have a very situational and extremely powerful build in mind.

A set of skills I believe should mess up anyone trying to use mana in the presence of my Pride enhanced domain.

Oh boy, this is going to be scary in a year or two.

“Noodle also seems to be registered as Isabella’s pet or something,” Sophie adds, lifting her head from the construct she is working on. “His growth is being influenced by Isabella’s, and we think some of his abilities might transfer over to her at some point. Noodle can even resist her flames now, they don’t even damage him anymore, and he seems to have a knack for reading people, not unlike Izzy.”

At that point, the three of us turn to the snake, who continues to ignore us. I’m absolutely sure he heard and probably understood what we were talking about.

Yet he pretends not to hear and continues to snuggle up to the bone.

“This one’s for free, but you’ll have to work for the others,” I tell the snake, before grabbing Biscuit and standing with him in my arms.

Noodle looks at me and then moves his head just a tiny bit, in a tiny imitation of a nod.

There are still some things I want to examine about his skill, and a few pieces of bone aren’t exactly a high price to pay.

Lily’s already got a few for the purpose of researching new ways to modify our bodies.

 

---

 

Later that day, I meet with Maya, as she returns from her hunt with Tess and Lily. She is holding Bloodthirst. I’ve decided to let her borrow the weapon and examine its effects while I work on other stuff. She agreed readily, unable to contain her excitement at getting to try out a new weapon.

“So?” I ask. “How was it?”

“Well, we almost died. A strong three question mark monster popped up out of nowhere and nearly ate Tess. It even resisted Lily’s [Disintegration] a few times through sheer size.”

“Huh? Were there supposed to be monsters that strong here?”

“Yup, they’re all over the place, mostly sleeping or hibernating or something like that. You generally find them marked on maps as places to avoid, but we started checking them out. The one we met escaped, but Tess left a mark on it, declared it her prey or something, so we’re going after it again tomorrow.”

It almost makes me want to grab that map and go out on my own, but I push those thoughts away. I have to stick to the plan.

Maya seems to notice that and smiles, lifting the sword with its white, red tinged, blade. “As for the claymore, it’s very sharp and it gets even sharper when you cut anything that could be counted among the living. I think the moment it ‘tastes’ the blood of a target, it becomes more dangerous against that target. And there might be some kind of weird debuff at work too?”

“That’s it?” I ask, taking the claymore from her, and examining it.

 

Bloodthirst (Arcane, Damaged) - Bloodthirst once thrived on the essence of life, growing stronger with each battle. Its hunger for blood has lessened, but it still draws sporadic strength from fresh wounds, offering glimpses of its once insatiable power.

 

“I think it’s also absorbing some of the blood, but I haven’t noticed much of a difference. Maybe it needs to absorb more to reach its full potential”

The blade, despite its sharpness, has been clearly damaged in multiple places, a piece of the hilt is missing and broken as well. It looks like the weapon was chipped away piece by piece by some powerful force. Maybe it was damaged by contact with another weapon or skill. Hell, maybe it was a full fledged arcane item before Whitey destroyed it.

Thinking of it, there isn’t anything of much use for me to learn from studying it at the moment. At least not anything more useful than my current projects.

“You can keep it for another week or two if you want,” I offer it back to Maya, who takes it without any hesitation.

I pause for a moment and give her a look. She’s dark-skinned and probably the oldest person here, not that I’m going to say that out loud. She was 28 or something, I think. A professional trainer in her past… I pause with a feeling of amusement. In her past life is what I was about to think. It’s only been a year and already I’m thinking of our time before this as a past life.

“You are not going to sell these items for a better passive?” she asks, after a moment.

“I was thinking about it, but… they are damaged, and I didn’t make them. Arcane items start at 100,000 shards, so assuming I found one undamaged on the floor I would get anywhere between 10-20k shards. If I were to make one, it would jump to 50k. So a damaged arcane item like this would probably fetch anywhere from 5-10k shards. It does make for a nice chunk of change, but it would still leave me a ways off from what I’d need. For now, I’m just going to examine them, maybe use their materials to make something else later.”

“Anything for me?” she jokes, spinning the claymore in her hand.

“You go by Knight in the Community, right? We also share some of the same skills, so I may as well throw you a bone." I say, trying to act pompous, "How about you become my knight, call me 'Lord', and handle the occasional annoyance on my behalf? I’ll throw in some perks if you like, I could even get you an item or two.” I joke, riding my good mood over my recent progress.

Surprisingly, Maya seems to take it seriously and appears to think it over.

In the end, she answers with a smile that seems to imply that she’s only half joking, “Sounds better than being a minion. So as your knight, I would be responsible for killing your enemies, leading your forces, and collecting taxes, right? I could do that.”

My knight... It sounds weird, but it makes a certain kind of sense that things might slide in that direction with the way events have progressed. With everything we’ve seen across all these floors, It’ll only be a matter of time before things like that start happening on Earth. Maya, despite deciding not to enter Beyond, is strong even compared to the other Hell difficulty attendees we met in the tournament. She doesn’t lack much of the skill she’d need to enter Beyond.

However, the seriousness of her declaration surprises me even now.

Not wanting to deal with it now, I don’t reject her, but push it into the future, “It doesn’t sound too unreasonable.”

“Got it, my Lord,” she says courteously before bowing gracefully. Then, with a wave of her hand and a cheeky smile that breaks the immersion, leaves, heading for the area she uses for her sparring matches with Lily.

 

---

 

I Boost myself to the top of the tower our group has taken for our new headquarters, I stare down at the fort stretched out below me. It’s the former secondary base of the Black Tower after their HQ was mostly destroyed, but it’s still somewhat impressive.

I watch mana moving in the air as it powers the web stretching across the area containing our base and its surroundings. It’s an improvement on a system the former owners already had in place, courtesy of Sophie. She is getting quite good at it too, she’s visibly improving as I watch the changes.

As for the prisoners, there are a few dozen of them, mostly using this place as a safe haven against the monsters. There is power in numbers, as they say. They are mostly brutes, not unlike those I’ve already met. It’s not even like all of them are powerful. In this place and other “rural” areas, they tend to be weaker than our group.

It seems like the closer one gets to the “central” area, the better the prospects are, with the prisoners there even managing to create something like normal cities if you want to call it that. Or maybe they truly are.

This moon seems to have been used as a prison for hundreds of years, maybe even longer. With the way people at higher levels tend to live for centuries, some of them have more than enough time to set something up for themselves.

There are rumors about multiple Champion candidates; there are even rumors that most people think of as more of a legend, whispers that an Absolute candidate may have been thrown in here, wounded, and left to die, betrayed by the people of his planet.

Information tends to be very sparse and hard to come by, most of these people are fully occupied with their survival, deprived of the luxury of caring about things like this. There have already been a few attempts to kill our members when they went out to hunt. One group tried to kidnap Sophie, another tried to force Min-Jae into betraying us, and more besides.

All of these people were dealt with quickly, cleanly, and with prejudice, showing the others that we are not to be messed with, because that’s the only thing people in this place seem to understand.

Joining me at the top of the tower is Izzy. She’s come alone this time and doesn’t bother trying to connect to my emotions, sitting next to me instead and joining me in admiring the view.

I still remember the way she was when we appeared on the 3rd floor when she was still under Sophie’s [Geas]. The current Izzy seems more mature. She’s still only 11 years old, a young girl who's been forced to spend the next 4 years here in this tutorial. Forced to kill to survive, forced to make hard decisions. She might be childish at times, but sometimes she feels like the most mature of all of us. So I have to wonder if she’s not allowing herself to be childish from time to time as a method of coping with everything she’s been forced to go through.

“Sophie decided to go to Beyond,” she says, looking at me with her green eyes. “She’s strong, so she will do well, but she can be dumb sometimes, so will you help her? For me?”

In response, I poke her side, “We’re in the same group, so I will. Why so serious?”

“You can be hard to read sometimes, so I want to be sure.”

With a sigh, I allow her to connect to my emotions, and she does so very gently. Lately, she seems to be getting nervous whenever she finds herself unable to sense the emotions of those around her as if she had grown overdependent. I wonder if it's anything like my overreliance on [Focus].

“You aren’t using that skill to block your emotions anymore,” she states, sounding happy to say it.

“It had to happen somehow,” I shrug.

“Maybe you aren’t as dumb as I thought,” she declares.

At that, I decide to stay quiet, and Isabella giggles quietly, sensing my emotions.