All Chapters of SKILL DEVOURER: BECOMING OP WITH INFINITE MANA: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
105 chapters
OUTER SEAL INTEGRITY
He set it on the table in his room and looked at it.The warmth was still there. Constant. Not fluctuating. The kind of warmth that came from something regulated rather than something burning.Terra pulled the chair from the corner and sat across the table from him. She looked at the egg. Then at Flint's right hand where the numbness had already begun receding for the second time."You know what it is." She said."A sealed creature." He said. "Demon mana wrapped around something that's still alive inside it. Same principle as the cavern. Different scale.""Different age." Caravan said from the doorway.Flint looked at him.Caravan stepped inside. He looked at the egg on the table with an expression that was not quite recognition and not quite surprise. Something between the two."The containment on this one is not four centuries." He said. "Older.""How much older." Flint said."The mana pattern at the surface." Caravan studied it without touching it. "This predates the first demon wa
THIRTY-ONE PERCENT
By evening the outer seal was at thirty-one percent.His left arm had gone numb twice and recovered twice. His right was back to functional at the wrist, the fingers responding cleanly when he tested them against the table edge. He had eaten once. The two hounds were asleep at the foot of the bed.He was considering the third session when the door opened.Dylan came in first. Behind him, Terra, Jolene, Cael. Caravan last, ducking slightly under the frame.They looked like they had been out in the cold for eight hours, which they had.Dylan sat on the floor against the wall with the particular collapse of someone whose legs had simply decided they were done."Three contracts." Terra said. She held up the sealed documentation. "Dylan, Jolene and I. A Ridgeback Prowler for Dylan. Stone Fang for Jolene." She set the papers on the edge of the table, away from the egg. "Mine is still pending — the beast accepted the approach but the binding didn't seal. I go back tomorrow.""What beast." Fl
GROWTH STAGE
By morning the Void Serpent had moved from Flint's wrist to his shoulder.It sat there with the settled weight of something that had decided this was its position and saw no reason to negotiate. Its tail curled once around the back of his neck. Not tightly. Just contact.[VOID SERPENT — BOND STATUS: ESTABLISHED.][PRIMORDIAL CLASS — GROWTH STAGE: NASCENT.][FEEDING REQUIRED FOR DEVELOPMENT.]He read the last line twice."What does it eat." Dylan said.He was in the doorway with a plate of food from the center's kitchen. He had been standing there for approximately thirty seconds absorbing the situation before speaking, which Flint appreciated."Mana." Caravan said from the chair by the window. He had been there since before dawn. "In its nascent stage it processes raw mana directly. Human, beast, ambient. It will take what it can reach.""So it eats the air." Dylan said."It absorbs what the air carries." Caravan said. "The Northern Highlands have a high ambient mana concentration und
VOID SERPENT
Jolene came back at dusk.She knocked once and came in without waiting. Cael was behind her. Both of them carrying the particular look of people who had seen something they needed to put words to immediately."Two more bore points." Jolene said. She spread a hand-drawn map on the table. "Northeast of the first one, along the main vein line. Spaced at roughly four hundred meters apart." She marked the positions with a finger. "They're not exploratory. The depth is consistent. Whoever drilled them knew exactly where the vein ran.""Survey data." Flint said."Has to be." Jolene said. "You don't hit the vein at that depth three times without knowing the precise location beforehand."Cael sat down heavily. "The Beast-kin settlement is two miles from the closest bore point. The lower vein line runs directly beneath their eastern boundary."The room was quiet.The Void Serpent had relocated from Flint's shoulder to the top of his pack in the corner. It was awake. Its head was turned toward t
TEN DAYS
Elder Sava poured tea.She did it unhurriedly, the way someone moved through a task they had performed ten thousand times and had stopped thinking about. Two cups. She set one in front of Flint and kept one for herself.He waited."The bore points are not the problem." She said. "They are a message.""From the Mana Collective." Flint said."From a man who came to this settlement three weeks ago with six armed escorts and a sealed document from the human kingdoms." She set the pot down. "He calls himself General Vorax. He serves the demon king Berkshire, though he presents himself as a human military commander when it is convenient." She looked at Flint steadily. "He told us that this territory belongs to the human kingdoms by right of the old border agreements. He told us the Beast-kin settlement has thirty days to vacate and relocate south of the lower ridge."The room was very quiet."If you don't." Flint said."He left the document and his escorts drilled the first bore point on th
NINE DAYS LEFT
They went to the camp that night.Flint and Cael only. Everyone else stayed at the settlement. Dylan had argued this for six minutes before Flint pointed out that reconnaissance did not require six people and the camp had sentries.The northern approach to the upper ridge took two hours in the dark.Cael moved through the highland terrain the way someone moved through their own house. No hesitation. No wasted steps. He communicated in hand signals when they got within a mile of the camp position and Flint read them without difficulty. He had operated with more than forty different field partners across a hundred lives. The language of silence and gesture was one he knew better than most.The camp came into view from the ridge overhang above it.Forty meters below. Torchlit. Well-arranged — the work of someone with genuine military experience rather than the assembled mess of a force that expected no resistance. Eight tents in two rows with a command tent at the rear. The fire placemen
PRIMORDIAL CREATURES
Seven days out from the assault, Flint started running the northern ridge.Not for speed. His body wasn't built for speed yet. For resistance. The highland terrain was uneven, cold, and required the kind of constant micro-adjustment that built the stabilising muscles faster than any flat surface could. He went out before the settlement was fully awake and came back when it was.The pack came with him.He hadn't asked. They simply appeared at the building entrance on the first morning and fell into formation around him as though it had been arranged.By the fourth morning his time up the first ridge face had dropped by four minutes.[BODY CONDITION: IMPROVING.][VESSEL INTEGRITY: LEVEL 1 — GRADUAL PROGRESSION DETECTED.][MANA CHANNEL CAPACITY: 17%.]Seventeen.Two percent higher than his last reading. He filed it without celebration. Progress was progress. What mattered was the trend.He fed the Void Serpent after every run. The creature had taken to waiting at the building entrance wh
CONTAMINATION CLEARED
They left the settlement at the second hour of night.Six of them. Flint. Terra. Dylan. Jolene. Caravan. Cael at the front. The two Beast-kin observers a hundred meters above on the ridge face — Flint had confirmed their position before departure with a look and a nod from Daya at the building entrance.She had looked at him for a moment."Come back." She said. Not a plea. A directive."Yes." He said and left.---The approach took ninety minutes.The pack stayed at the settlement. The Void Serpent did not.It had moved from the doorpost to Flint's shoulder as he was leaving and it had stayed there for the first mile of walking before he understood it wasn't going to go back. He had considered the options and decided that a Primordial class creature on his shoulder in a night assault was either a liability or an advantage and that he wouldn't know which until it mattered.He left it where it was.The camp came into the same view as two nights before. Torchlit. Steady. The sentry rotat
SOMEONE DIES
They reached the settlement as the sky was beginning to lighten in the east.Not dawn yet. The specific grey that preceded it — the hour when darkness had made its decision to leave but hadn't fully committed. The highland cold was at its deepest point, the kind that came from the ground rather than the air.Daya was at the settlement boundary.Not waiting. Standing. The distinction mattered. A person who waited carried anticipation. She carried something more neutral than that. Readiness, maybe. The posture of someone who had made their peace with both possible outcomes and was simply present for whichever one arrived.She looked at the group. Counted. Found everyone.Then she looked at Flint.Something moved in her face. One thing, quickly controlled."Come inside." She said.---The settlement was awake.Not publicly. Lights in windows. Movement in the buildings furthest from the boundary. People who had not been able to sleep and had found small tasks to occupy themselves through
THE WORLD EDGE
Edran didn't answer immediately.He got up and went to the back of the hollow. The rock face there had a natural shelf, formed by two overlapping layers of stone that created a shallow covered space. He reached into it and came back with a folded piece of material that was not quite cloth and not quite leather, something between the two that had been sealed against moisture so many times it had changed consistency.He unfolded it on the flat rock between them.A map.Hand-drawn. The lines were precise in the way of someone who had drawn them from memory and checked them against the real thing more than once. Flint looked at the scale. The Northern Highlands occupied the left third. The eastern territories spread to the right. And at the far right edge, where the detail grew sparse and the lines became more tentative —The World Edge."Four hundred miles." Edran said. "East and north. The terrain changes three times. The highland gives way to the Shear Flats — two days of flatland with