System Change

Derek closed his eyes and felt the void building up inside him once again. With another thought, he activated his skill, and the gathered energy exploded into the sky again. Instead of changing his focus to recovering his mana this time, Derek prepared Void Call again.

Before any Void Beast made a move to break out of the void, Derek already had another beam of energy flying into the sky. But he didn’t stop there. His natural recovery was amazing, and he’d also already gotten used to keeping Greater Meditation activated whenever possible. So, he still had plenty of mana left to use the skill again… and again.

He was, after all, with probably the strongest person from his current system—other than himself, of course. So, what point would there be in being careful? He did believe that there were Void Beasts out there who could give Alanah a run for her money, but he didn’t believe that there would be any stronger than him—at least not in his current system… and not after many of the things he’d learned.

Specifically, he recalled Dave speaking to him about the ‘level’ of Void Beasts he would be able to call. The mysterious elf had been pretty confident that the strongest Void Beast that he could bring to him would be close to how strong Derek was at the end of the raid. Since then, he had increased his stats and skills by not a small amount, so, putting two and two together, he figured that, if he believed the elf—which he did, at least about that—then there would be no worries for him and Alanah no matter how many he called at once.

And, on top of all of that, it would give him a chance to see and prepare for whenever he did the same with Silvi and Avery. A little preparation never hurt anyone, and I doubt I could find a better time than with Alanah right here by my side, he thought to himself as he shot a third beam of void energy into the sky with his skill. With all that in mind, Derek went ahead and used his skill two more times before stopping when he heard a loud crash coming from above that could only be a Void Beast arriving.

In total, Derek was able to fire off five Void Calls before the Void Beast made itself known. Unfortunately for the beast, it wasn’t even as strong as the previous one. However, before Derek jumped into the air to give it a hand with breaking out, Alanah disappeared and reappeared in the sky close to the cracks.

“It’s not the first time I’ve done this,” she looked down at Derek and shouted to him. “Not all Void Beasts are even able to break through, so I’ve had to ‘help’ my fair share back on the other continent. I can’t let you have all the fun.”

“You do you,” Derek replied to the siren with a shrug, and the half elf did.

Using her rapier as a sort of pry-bar, Alanah jammed it into one of the bigger cracks and went to work. Piece after piece fell out and vanished before hitting the ground, but soon enough, a disappointingly small Void Beast appeared. When it saw the person helping it out, it let out a loud roar.

Derek considered the beast disappointing because it was small, but not small enough to be one of the Void Beasts that carried the vital blood. This also meant that it wasn’t large enough to be a beast that would end up giving particularly good stats. Sure, nobody would complain about getting a meal or potion made from it, but there were far better ‘ingredients’—as Silvi would put it.The beast roared again, then vaulted out of the void. But, before its entire body even cleared the hole, it had grown its own hole in its head courtesy of Alanah’s lightning quick rapier skills. Its roar was immediately silenced, and its body was stored in the blink of an eye. If Derek hadn’t been watching closely, he may have even missed the death of the beast.

“That was disappointing,” Alanah raised her voice again and said to Derek.

Derek began to reply to her, but before he did, he saw a giant claw with razor-like nails reach out of the break in the sky and grab Alanah—gripping most of her upper arm and a good portion of the armor on her shoulder. The siren’s eyes widened, then realization struck her and she smiled. A massive Void Beast appeared behind the claw, and just as it made to strike down on the siren with its other claw, Alanah flicked the blade of her rapier with her finger.

The first claw released the siren, then mirrored the second when the massive Void Beast reached for the sides of its head to protect itself from Alanah’s attack. The next moment, the beast had six holes in its chest and it fell forward out of the void, flipping end over end until finally crashing into the ground. The beast hadn’t died instantly, but not long after touching the ground, it breathed its last breath.

Alanah came down beside it and stored it in her ring. “That one was much better,” she said as she walked toward Derek after storing the corpse.

“Should give good stats,” Derek agreed.

Stolen story; please report.

Alanah nodded, then shifted her attention back to the sky, where a final piece was restored—causing the sky to look like nothing had ever happened. “So… five uses of the skill, but only two beasts?”

“I guess…” Derek shrugged. Void Call was the skill he knew least about, and it was also the skill that had the least informative information on it when he checked. “I figure some are close by when they hear the call, while some are farther away. Not ever use of the skill is going to draw one in. I don’t know how they feel it, but I imagine that if they are too far away, they lose whatever feeling my skill gives them before they make it close enough to me to try to break out of the void.”

“Fair enough.”

“Yup,” Derek replied. “But still, it’s not a bad time to test it out.” With a smile, he stepped forward and loaded up another use of the skill. He wanted to see what exactly he could do with it—and just how much it was going to take to gain another level or two. As the energy built up, Derek smiled, then pulled another skill potion out of his storage and gulped it down. Here we go!

For the next hour or so, Derek relied on Alanah to take care of any and all of the beasts while he focused solely on using Void Call over and over. Even when the sky was broken and more than one Void Beast appeared, he continued to send his void energy into the air—even into the void tunnel that they were breaking out of—just to see how long it would take for Void Call to go from its current level to the next.

Alanah stayed floating just in front of where the sky seemed to break each time and took care of each and every Void Beast before they were even able to jump out. A couple fell to the ground and died, and were just lying there after bleeding out, but the vast majority of them were killed so smoothly and stored before they were even able to fall.

“This is how it should be!” Alanah shouted down at Derek without turning to look at him. “If I would have been able to draw Void Beasts to me so easily, I would have met all those requirements long ago.”

Derek could even see a smile forming on the corner of Alanah’s face whenever her head turned enough for him to see. It looks like she’s at least having fun here, Derek thought as he shot another beam into the sky. At least, she’s having much more fun than she was when we were running those crappy dungeons. The beam of energy narrowly avoided Alanah before dissipating into the void where he was aiming.

Once, Derek fired off a Void Call and Alanah dodged a swipe from a Void Beast at the same time, causing the beam to pass directly through the siren. That had scared Derek. But he breathed a sigh of relief after a few moments with nothing happening to his friend. That was how he figured out that the skill had no attacking power. It really was just condensed energy that basically wasn’t even tangible.

Alanah had widened her eyes and looked down on Derek, too, expecting the worst. So, she was just as relieved as he was when nothing happened. However, Derek was sure that, based on the skill level and Alanah’s own stats, she would have at least survived and healed up even if it was a damaging skill. But that accident allowed Derek to learn more about his skill, which was what he had been trying to do all along. Still, he would be careful not to directly hit the siren again.

“Keep them coming!” Alanah shouted as she finished off the next Void Beast. “If they keep coming this fast, I don’t have to worry about the sky healing and them having to break through again. It makes things much easier.”

“It’s your show,” Derek muttered, not sure if Alanah was even able to hear him. He directed his skill into the sky once again, then focused on Greater Meditation to bring his mana back up so he could continue doing so. The next time he used the skill, he was pleasantly surprised when he gained another level in it—growing Void call to level 6.

A bit over an hour and a half of constantly using the skill to gain the level—and that was with the potion… Is it leveling quicker than it should because Alanah is fighting creatures not from this system and I’m close by, technically having a part in the battle since I am continuously directing a skill in their direction? There were so many things that Derek didn’t know, but, like usual, he shrugged and continued.

“I just leveled the skill!” He shouted up at Alanah so she would be able to hear him.

“That’s great!” she shouted back as her rapier pierced the skull of a particularly huge beast—killing it instantly.

Once again, Derek fell into a rhythm with casting his skill, and Alanah fell into a rhythm slaughtering. However, after another hour or two—Derek completely lost count after leveling his skill—Void Beasts stopped appearing in the sky. Alanah ripped at the cracks for a short while—keeping it open for any would be summoned beasts, but nothing ever came.

“Huh…” Alanah shrugged when she landed beside Derek. The two watched the sky completely heal. “Was that all of them? Surely not…”

“Yeah, I doubt it,” Derek said. “Maybe they got wise to what was going on, or you slaughtered all of them that were kind of close by. Like I said, I don’t really know the details of how the skill works. I’m not sure if more will come here or not. And I’m not sure that more will come if we leave Cydaria and go to… Indaria and try there,” he explained. “So, what do you want to do?”

“Well, I was having quite a bit of fun slaying Void Beasts,” Alanah replied. “There is just something about them that makes them very fun to fight. I’m not sure if you noticed, but there were a few that could even talk in the bunch that I fought.”

“Oh?” Derek asked, with brows raised. “I didn’t see them. You must have taken them out before they even poked their heads out of the hole.”

“Yeah…” Alanah nodded. “The first two, I was just mechanically killing, and barely heard them say a word or two before they died,” she explained. “The last one gave me the ‘how dare you’ spiel before it died.”

“Ah… one of those…” Derek nodded.

“Should we go?” Alanah finally asked after standing silent for a bit. “It doesn’t look like…” she started, but was interrupted by a single, massive pounding sound from the sky where she just was at.

Both Derek and Alanah looked up to see what was going on. Shockingly, instead of the sky breaking piece by piece, it spider-webbed, then, with another bang, an entire large area of the sky was destroyed—revealing a Void Beast that was about the same size as Derek.

“Looks like the boss has arrived,” Alanah said as she pulled out her rapier and slowly began to transform into her Dawn Siren form. With her now unsettling, seductive voice, she said, “This one is mine, too.”