Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 40: Chop

As he walked away from the camp in the dead of the night he was going over his future path of development. He couldn’t just focus on training with the new guidance system all day due to the third class skill requiring large amounts of time battling in the forest.

On the way from the camp he tried using [Axe Mastery] in an actual battle with a barghest. He was disappointed to see that the trajectories wouldn’t actually assist him in battle, and completely shut off right before the battle started. It seemed it was purely a training mechanism.

Finally he arrived at a small clearing some distance from the camp. He didn’t want to accidentally ruin his home in case the skill had any unexpected effects.

He started with using a small amount of energy and channeled it through his new fractal as he swung the axe. The energy transformed as it ventured out through his hand and into the axe. As he swung down he could see a translucent edge formed by cosmic energy.

It was like the axe head had gotten a bit larger, as the translucent edge ran a few centimeters in front of the actual edge, and its length was roughly 10 centimeters longer compared to the actual steel edge. The edge created from cosmic energy looked like a copy of his axe’s actual edge, with some faint fractals added along its length.

It wasn’t spectacular but he used a minuscule amount of energy in the strike. He tried using the skill once more, but this time he put far more cosmic energy into the skill. The translucent blade grew quite a bit larger, now stretching noticeably outward. The blade was now over one meter long, making his once short-ranged axe have almost as long a range as the great sword he had commandeered. Luckily the edge didn’t grow downward along the haft, but rather outward. Otherwise it would be hard for him to swing it without maiming himself.

It was out of Zac’s expectation it would grow to this size. As he continued putting in more power into the skill it kept growing, but Zac soon felt that he was starting to lose control over the skill. Suddenly the cosmic energy blade simply dissipated, leaving no trace of ever being there.

It seemed that there was a limit of how large he could grow the blade without it starting to become unstable. After some experimentation he knew that he could keep the blade stable at roughly one meter. Any larger and it would quickly become unstable. The longer he made the blade the shorter duration he could keep it.

It seemed that this was all that there was to the skill. He tried shooting it away like a ranged attack or boomerang, but nothing happened. It was firmly lodged to his axe. Of course, the proficiency was only at early stage, and it might get more functions at higher levels.

Zac was still quite pleased with the skill, even though it wasn’t as flashy as the black lightning of the demon leader. It wasn’t fancy but he could immediately imagine a few uses for a skill such as this. For one he could surprise an enemy. He or she might have thought that they dodged his strike, but instead they were well within the range of his skill blade.

It was also a brutal instrument when fighting against multiple enemies. If he pushed it past its point of stability he could wield a huge blade and slash at multiple people at one, at least for a short duration before the skill broke. With his monstrous strength he believed that he could create a great deal of carnage in that brief window in time.

Of course, that would be a last resort attack, as cramming that amount of cosmic energy into one skill use would greatly drain him.

There was one thing he didn’t understand with the skill. He had gained his Dao seed from managing to incorporate this intangible force of heaviness into his strikes while he was walking back to the camp, but he was utterly incapable of doing the same with the skill.

He tried using a few Dao empowered strikes, and they did have an air of weight to them. It wasn’t as tyrannical as the axe-man’s of course, but it felt like these strikes should be harder for someone to block compared to normal strike.

But when he tried incorporating this feeling into [Chop], everything got jumbled and he didn’t even manage to produce the blade. He saw no reason that they shouldn’t work together but guessed that he had to practice some more before being able to use it as he wished.

The last thing for him to test out with the new skill was the sharpness. It was somewhat pointless if he got a larger edge if it wasn’t sharp. Sure, with his strength he’d do damage anyways without a sharp edge, but if the translucent edge was dull he might as well swing around a tree trunk.

He charged up a meter long blade and swung down upon a rock almost as tall as him. With a clang the cosmic energy blade cut halfway into the stone. Satisfied, Zac let the blade dissipate.

It seemed that cutting through things would use up the energy faster compared to simply having it summoned, but even while not cutting things it continuously drained him slowly. Of course he could likely keep inputting more and more energy and the blade would remain. But it seemed to be a wasteful use of cosmic energy.

Zac felt that the skill was best used as either a finisher or surprise attack, not in a long protracted battle. He would only be able to use it continuously for a few minutes at the most before being completely drained.

The sharpness seemed to be roughly the same as with his actual axe. It did seem to model itself after his axe’s edge after all, so it made sense that they would share some features. He wondered if the sharpness improved if he got a higher grade weapon in the future. He was sure that his weapon was a low F-grade blade, as he had looted it on some random demon after all. It couldn’t be too valuable.

He then brought out a sword from his pouch to test whether he could use [Chop] with other weapons, but it at least didnʼt work with swords.

He was planning on testing some more but a snap of a twig in the vicinity stopped him in his tracks.

Zac got a sinking feeling, as he had made sure that there were no beasts in the area before trying out the skill. He quickly slunk down into nearby foliage and started to retreat toward his camp, taking great care to not make a sound.

Only the gwyllgi among the demons seemed to be active during the night, but he had never heard those beasts make any sounds while moving through the forest. That meant that the snap of the twig was more likely to be one of the war parties moving about.

He swore at himself for his carelessness. He had been on a high from his new boosts and wasn’t as careful as he should be. Even when grinding beasts his biggest priority had always been keeping a lookout for these parties. He always kept moving and didn’t fight close to his base as he didn’t want to attract attention to that area.

Now he was quite close to his camp, and his swing into the stone had made a sound. He soundlessly passed through the layer and entered his illusion array. He could only hope it was a large critter that was lumbering around in the dark.

Zac held his axe at the ready, vigilantly gazing into the woods. His hopes were soon dashed as he saw one of the roving war parties moving close by. The demons conversed in their language with subdued voices, seemingly arguing about something.

The core of the party consisted of 6 demons and an imp. They generally seemed to be average soldiers, with none of them wearing expensive-looking gear. There also were a few gwyllgi and barghest surrounding the party.

Zac didn’t dare to move even though he knew that his camp just looked like an empty area with some extra dense bushes. His illusion array was effective on the eyes, but he had no idea whether there were skills that could sense the array. He had tried it with his [Eye of Discernment] without finding anything, but it was also the cheapest skill that the Nexus Node offered.

Suddenly he saw a gwyllgi was slowly coming extremely close, moving some ways from the group. If it kept moving the direction it did, it would enter the bushes he had moved to the edge of his camp, and soon after enter his array.

Zac’s fears came true as it trotted forward and entered his camp through the dense bushes. Zac was ready and with lightning speed he grabbed the hound’s neck as soon as it was through the array, and with a twist broke it. With his strength he could probably rip its head right off, but he didn’t want any blood to spill.

He slowly dragged the corpse into the camp and flung it to the side. Luckily the array also had sound dampening, so no one should have heard anything. He resumed his vigil against the rest of the group, and it seemed no one among them had noticed the missing beast. The gwyllgi often moved some distance from the parties acting as scouts, so it would likely take some while before they noticed their missing beast. Unfortunately, they had stopped just 50 meters away from the camp.

They still seemed to be arguing about something in hushed tones. One of the demons seemed nervous and kept pointing toward where Zac had tested his skill. The others seemed unconvinced and dismissive.

One of the demons rolled his eyes at the nervous one and started to actually walk toward Zac’s camp. The nervous demon entreated him, but was just met with a dismissive wave of his hand. He started fiddling with his pants and stopped at a tree just half a meter away from the edge of the illusion array.

The demon was actually relieving himself. He looked around the area while he did so. His eyes stopped a second on the camp. It should look like a normal clearing to him, but the demon slightly furrowed his brows. Soon they smoothed out and he casually looked away again and continued with his business.

But Zac’s heart started beating rapidly after scrutinizing the demon’s face.

Heknew.