Cost: 5000 MP per use.
This was a skill meant for Druids to tame wild animals. There was little doubt in my mind that a nightmare had ever possessed this skill before. It made me wonder, if I could apply this skill to nightmares, in the same manner, that I could apply it to animals.
Skill: [Barbeast Armor] Lv. 1
Details: A skill that significantly multiplies the user’s defensive prowess, making them as sturdy as a full-grown adult Barbeast. Reduces incoming physical attack damage by 95%. Attacking the user with physical attacks while this skill is activated will cause recoil damage to the attacker, and has a 10% chance to inflict a random negative status effect.
Cost: No Mana Cost [Passive Skill].
It was a good thing I never attempted to physically punch Wunder.
Skill: [Possession] Lv. 1
Details: A skill that enables to user to take possession of the physical forms of objects, beasts, nightmares or people. Possessing objects costs 100MP per second, but the user cannot possess certain magical or enchanted objects. Possessing beasts and animals costs 1000MP per second, and the user’s Intelligence must be higher than that of the beast for the possession to succeed. Possessing people and nightmares costs 10,000MP per second, and the user must battle and triumph against the will and consciousness of the person to succeed. Weak-willed and weak-minded individuals are easier to possess, while stronger willed individuals are more difficult, if not impossible, to possess.
My breath – I had breath now – went still. This is Arol’s ability? It was, as I remembered her entering my cloak with relative ease. She can possess people?
No, she couldn’t. The mana cost for possessing people is insane… I doubt she had that much mana available.
My current MP was 448,000. Assuming a cost of 10,000MP per second, I could possess a person for about forty-four point eight seconds before I ran out of MP. There was no way Arol had possessed as much MP as I did, which meant possessing people was out of the realm of possibility for her. Still, I believed I could cheese the skill by merely walking through a door and refilling my MP with the aid of [Gatekeeper], I could potentially increase the amount of time my possession would work.
Skill: [Phantasm] Lv. 1
Details: A [Sustained] Skill. This skill enables to user to enter a wraithlike state. When activated, the user gains the classic abilities of most phantoms such as intangibility, floating, teleporting short distances, invisibility, casting minor illusions, summoning short eerie winds, projecting voices, and reading one’s darkest fears. In exchange, however, the User gains the weakness of specters and phantoms, and cannot use any other skills or abilities while Phantasm is activated, with the exception of Epithet Skills or other specter-related skills such as [Possession].
Cost: 25% of Available Mana.
A skill that turned me into a ghost, but I couldn’t use any of my major offensive skills while it was active, making it somewhat less useful in combat. If nothing else, the skill would be excellent for infiltrations and evasions. Escaping enemies would certainly be far less challenging when one could turn invisible and phase through objects.
Skill: [Ice Manipulation] Lv. 1
Details: A skill that enables the user to freely create, use, and manipulate ice and its other derived states and forms.
Cost: 8000 MP per use.
Other derived states and forms? The other derived states and forms of ice were more than just ice. Why was this skill called Ice Manipulation and not Water Manipulation?
A low, beastly growl interrupted my thoughts. On the floor, as I was, tired and exhausted, I only barely managed to catch a glimpse of the creature in the forest approaching me. My nostrils whiffed, the scent of earthiness and meat entering into them and rolling in wafts into my brain. Meat. Not just any meat. Gamey, tender meat.
I could smell it. Meat. Blended in with an earthy scent, my body shut down all unnecessary thoughts. Action was the only thing on my mind. Action.
With energy I did not know I possessed, I lunged. I tackled the meaty smelling creature. With more strength than I realized, I pinned it to the ground.
It was a chameleon panther. Another one of those green-furred leopards that seemed to populate the Hlahan Forest. Yet, it was not the panther itself that had brought forth that yearning, that overwhelming smell of something delicious. No, it was at the corner of the creature’s mouth, stuck in between its teeth, left in the space between its claws. That was where the meaty smell came from.
I forced pried open the creature’s jaws and examined it. There was no doubt. The scent was further overwhelming now.
Meat. Food. Meat – MEAT!
I wiped away the accumulating drool with the back of my hand with great difficulty. My new species was going to be problematic. As a skeleton, I never felt hunger or thirst. I was never overpowered with primal instincts, coded into genetic behavior. For the most part, I was immune to mental manipulations because I lacked hormones, a heart, and even a brain.
As a High Ghilan, I had regained all of those. There was a heart, beating, pumping blood through my system which I could hear with overwhelming clarity. There were lungs, intaking and exhaling air, doing so at a rate so quickly and so silently, that it only made the pounding of my heart sound faster. There was a stomach, intestines, and an overwhelming sense of hunger that pervaded me, so much so that I would pack a handful of grass and eat it, but only refrained from doing so because I knew that it would not solve anything.
Then, there were instincts. Instincts peculiar to my race. The instincts which told me that the panther beneath me had recently eaten a human. That the flakes of skin stuck in its teeth belonged to a male. That the scent of blood on its claws had belonged to a female.
