Chapter 96 - A-G-22097 Part 3 (1/2)
Like a well-oiled machine, Fanged Rats fell dead one after another. The combination of Brance and Gabby was devastating. With Brance pulling their aggro before flinging them up and Gabby's rapid-firing arrows into their weak points, it only took a couple of minutes for the pair to massacre the entire mischief.
-Your Party has killed 14 Brown Fanged Rats.-
-All Party members have received 180,000 XP-
-Party Member Gabriella Sanford's (Gabby) Prestige has increased.-
-Party Member Benjamin Sanford's (Benny) Prestige has increased.-
-All Party members have received 10 AGI and 4 DEX-
-14 Affinitiless Tier-1 Codexes have been located-
-Due to the restrictions in place by the Alpha Egress Core, you will have to remove the Codexes manually.-
-Sliver of Skill (7) have been located.-
Due to the restrictions in place by the Alpha Egress Core, you will have to remove the Slivers of Skill manually.-
Brance and Benny stood back to back with shields raised, panting heavily, as was Gabby, who was shaking her right arm vigorously to get the blood pumping again. This left only Cynrik, who had periodically saved the other two boys from getting overwhelmed with an occasional [Fireball], to collect their spoils.
With [Mana Sight] active and his left hidden blade extended, Cynrik moved from one dead rat to the next, digging out their Codexes and moving on to search for the Slivers of Skill.
Unlike Codexes, however, these Slivers didn't emit a Mana signature, and he found himself at a loss after staring blankly at one of the corpses for a couple of minutes.
Although [Mana Sight] was extremely helpful in most cases, it wasn't omniscient, at least not in its current state. So even though it acted like a pseudo-form of x-ray vision, it turned out to be relatively useless when looking for something tiny like a Sliver of Skill.
With no other option, Cynrik turned to Tobs for help.
{Tobs, can you give me a general location to search, we are pressed for time, and I can't exactly perform a necropsy on this thing.}
-…-
{Plllleeeaaassssseee!} Cynrik even went so far as aiming puppy eyes and sticking out his bottom lip towards the cavern ceiling, where he imagined she was floating.
-Sigh, check the head.-
{Thankies Tobs, love yah mean it,} jumping excitedly on the torso of a dead Fanged Rat, Cynrik expertly started carving at the head. Thanks to his STR and DEX, it was effortless to crack open the creature's skull and cut into its brain, so after a few moments of digging, Cynrik located an anomaly in the rat's brain and plucked out a tiny wooden piece.
”Oi Benny, wash this thing off for me,” not wanting to rub the mixture of rat brain matter and blood on his clothes, he enlisted the help of the Party's Water Affinity User.
A few seconds and a splash of water later, Cynrik held up the small piece of wood named Sliver of Skill and used his [Inspect]
-You have Inspected a Skill Point Item.-
-These items are broken into the following categories, Sliver, Shard, Fragment, Piece, and Chunk.-
-Each category has a specific Skill Point value. Sliver: 1 SP, Shard: 3 SP, Fragment 10 SP, Piece: 50 SP, Chunk: 100 SP.-
-To obtain the SP stored within the item, you must absorb it into your Codex.
”Shit, that's pretty relevant,” with newfound vigor, Cynrik bounced around to all the remaining corpses, cracking their heads like watermelons and digging out the other six Slivers of Skill.
Finished with his task, Cynrik was in the middle of wiping the splattered blood and brain matter off his face when he heard an awkward cough behind him, making him freeze in place.
Turning his head robotically, his eyes landed on his Party members, of which Gabby and Benny were pale-faced and about to throw up, while Brance had his arms crossed and was shaking his head in disappointment.