System Change

Derek gazed down at his shirt rapidly disappearing from the corrosive toxin, then, with a sigh, he reached down and ripped the shirt off. Another one down… Brandi’s going to be mad at me over this one. After that, Derek reached out and grabbed Simeon by the forearm so the man wouldn’t be able to escape. Though, judging by the man’s actions, it didn’t look like he would even try.

With a quick thought and a flick of his wrist, Derek replaced his current pants with the armor Tyron had made for him. Since he currently had fingers penetrating the outer layer of his chest, he only summoned the pants. Derek glanced up and looked at the pandemonium in the Great Hall. Some nobles were running and screaming, while others fought.

Two sections of the massive room were currently filled with a green mist from two men who had exploded themselves with a poison skill. There were three others who tried to do the same, but they had been a split second late on activating their skills, and had been ground into nothingness by Marrick’s fine sand. The old man still stood off in the corner as if nothing concerned him, but Derek didn’t miss the sand moving through the air, creating a makeshift whirlwind to slow the spread of the poison and maybe even try to contain it.

Ryven was currently moving Sabrina and Robert away from the action, toward himself and Osian with his invisible barriers, and Osian was watching everything carefully. Derek couldn’t tell if the King of Indria was currently doing anything, as, if he was, he was doing so with invisible barriers like his brother.

“Not very smart?” Simeon Ileal spoke. “Says the one with my toxin spreading though his entire body. I know what I’m doing—smart or not. What you did—throwing your life away for an impostor king and queen—was not very smart.”

“What are you talking about?” Derek asked in confusion. “Who said I was throwing my life away? I’m the one holding onto you. You think some puny little toxin is enough to do shit to me? Man… I could tell you a story about a fish and you wouldn’t even believe it.” He did have to admit, though, the whale that he’d fought before had a toxin that was much less potent than what the patriarch of the poison house was emitting. Derek had already activated Greater Meditation to work on offsetting the amount of health he was currently losing.

With a flick of his free wrist, a potion appeared in Derek’s hand, and he quickly gulped it down. Looking at the scene, Simeon scoffed, “Big talk for someone who already had to drink a potion.”

It was big talk for someone who had to drink a potion. But Derek wasn’t going to let this chance to train his skills pass him by. Somebody with the skill of the man before him would surely be a great opponent to level Greater Meditation and maybe even a couple of other skills. So, he had taken the skill potion the first chance he’d gotten.

“So… is this it?” Derek taunted. He reached down and cast both Cure Toxin and Rejuvenation. The two skills and Greater Meditation were able to fight back visibly against the toxins that the man was emitting. “If that’s all, I’m going to be disappointed.”

“You!” The man half-shouted and dug his fingers deeper into Derek’s chest, finally hitting his sternum and stopping.

Derek saw confusion written on Simeon’s face as his attack completely lost all momentum when he hit bone. Even the toxin only stayed in his flesh and refused to spread into his sternum. It was one of the perks of having such high endurance, along with an evolution that Derek was still trying to understand.

“So… that was it,” Derek sighed.

With his jaw clenched, Simeon tensed and Derek watches as the putrid green on his fingers began to spread up his arms. Once it reached his shoulders, it kept going. Soon, the man would be nothing but a walking, putrid ghoul.

Getting the sense that this transformation wasn’t unlike that which the former King of Astrus had done with his ice, Derek reached to the side quickly and opened up his Void Storage before tossing in all of his storage items and closing it. There was a good chance that something like this would be enough to destroy those items, and Derek didn’t want to risk such a thing happening.

Next, Derek turned his head and shouted, “Osian! Cage! Both of us!”

“But…” the king hesitated.

“Just do it!”

Derek didn’t feel anything, but he did see a rising green mist begin to leave Simeon’s body. As it moved through his clothing, it completely destroyed it. Soon, though, it hit the invisible barrier and stopped. By that time, Simeon’s entire body from head to toe had turned completely green, and had even changed its consistency.

With his hand still wrapped around the poison man’s forearm, Derek was able to feel just how much the man had changed. It was like he had lost all bones. Derek was still able to keep a tight hold, and he wasn’t slipping, but, at the same time, his hand was able to be almost completely balled into a fist—that’s just how fluid the man’s body had become.

First Alanah, then Tevarian, and now this guy. Do all classes have some kind of transformation skill, or is it only a select few? Derek thought about everything he’d seen, then realized that technically, Edgar had also been able to transform into pure lightning at some points. Though, he looked like it was a repeatable skill that he was able to use over and over instead of a single, consistent transformation.

“You’re even more foolish than I thought,” Simeon said in a garble voice—it was like he was speaking with a mouth full of water. “First you save those two, and now you lock yourself in a cage with me. I’ve heard stories of your ‘accomplishments,’ but you truly overestimate yourself—not living up to expectations.”

“Uh… well… you actually got something wrong,” Derek said. “I think I estimate myself just fine. And as for being locked in a cage with you, that’s not right. No, you’re locked in a cage with me.”

Stolen novel; please report.

With that, Derek swung his free hand out and stopped it just at the man’s face. Then, he activated Absolute Nullify. With the large wall created by Absolute Nullify behind the man, Derek grabbed him by his throat and pushed him against it. He’d toyed with the idea of opening a portal with Void Travel and just tossing the guy in, but he would have missed out on a lot of skill experience by doing that. Plus, I don’t know if I’d even get experience if he died inside. I didn’t with those chickens.

“That’s much better,” Derek said, as he took in a deep breath. The wall from his skill hadn’t done any harm to the man, but what it had done was absorb any and all of the poison mist radiating out from his body. “I’d rather not breath any of that shit in, you know?”

“Ugh!” Simeon grunted and summoned a ball of sludge with his free hand. He tried to push it forward, into Derek’s stomach, but as soon as it formed, it was pulled into Absolute Nullify. Finding that his skill didn’t work, he pulled his hand back and jabbed it into Derek just as he had with his other one.

“So, you’re kind of a one-trick pony? Aren’t you?” Derek said. “You don’t need to answer that. It was rhetorical.” Derek released Simeon’s arm with his left hand, then channeled the void into it before crashing his balled fist into the man’s chest—where his heart should be. If it’s the same as Tevarian, he won’t be affected by this.

Derek didn’t like the fact that it seemed that his void affinity seemed to have a weakness to fully transformed people, but he was happy he found out early enough so he would be able to work on remedying said weakness.

After a delayed reaction from Derek’s attack, Simeon let out a heavy cough, and his hand slipped out of Derek’s chest in an attempt to reach for his own. Derek was seething with anger as he wiped the toxic goop from his face. “Some of that got in my mouth!” He spat on the ground to try to get the burning sensation to go away. He spat a few more times, then cast his Cure Toxin and Rejuvenation on his tongue and mouth to make it go away.

Derek was surprised. He had expected his attack to completely fall flat since the man had completely transformed, but it didn’t seem that was the case. I guess some affinities counter better than others? That’s good to know.

However, Derek knew that Simeon didn’t seem to have all that much endurance and vitality, yet a full channeled void covered fist to his heart hadn’t immediately sent him to the ground in a Dying State. Instead, it had only knocked the breath out of the man and caused him to go into a coughing fit.

I wonder how much damage that really did. Derek, though, had taken the quick break to grab the man’s other arm and rip his hand out of his stomach. There weren’t any bones protecting that area, and his hand had been getting deeper and deeper. With that stopped, he was able to watch his rapidly depleting health refill even faster than it was depleting.

Before his very eyes, the gruesome scene of the toxin eating away at all the flesh on his torso was just as gruesome as it knitted itself back together in its recovery attempt. Derek had long since gotten used to even the most extreme pain, but the feeling of his flesh healing still gave him the creeps.

Soon enough, Simeon let go of his own chest and eyed Derek once again. He looked down at his recovering torso and his mouth opened wide. After a moment, he closed his mouth and spoke. “It matters not,” he said. “I don’t need to defeat you. Keeping you busy while my people kill the traitors is enough. And from your attack, it may have stunned me for a moment, but it did nothing much of my health. You’ll be here until I run out of mana.”

“Dude…” Derek said. “I could just teleport out of this cage and leave you in here. Then Osian could squish you, or whatever it is he does. That potion I drank before was a potion that increases the speed that my skills grow, not a health potion or anything. Do you honestly think I would be messing around in here if the outside wasn’t under control?” He was speaking the truth. “You’re just a training dummy.”

He’d already seen the quick reactions of everyone, and while the poison explosions had hit a few nobles, they were all high-level nobles, and the poison didn’t look anywhere near as potent as what Simeon was using.

“You think this is the only place we attacked?” Simeon said with an evil grin. “The rest of the nobles’ families were in a separate celebration. With all the strong gathered in here, who is left to protect the weak?”

“Uh… she is?” With his free hand, he pointed to the side where a transformed Alanah had appeared minutes ago. At her feet, there was a pile of bodies—some headless, some with gaping holes in their chests, all dead. Derek had wondered where she and Avery had gone off to, but she’d been thinking two steps ahead.

“That… the Siren?” Simeon’s garbled voice came out.

“Yes,” Derek said. “The Siren.” Derek still had a hard time wrapping his head around the actions of the man and his accomplices. “Why would you do this? You knew it was suicide. Surely it wasn’t because of just the loss of your sister. Tevara and Tyler lost their entire family, yet they were still reasonable in this situation. You’re the patriarch of a noble house. Why lead your house to death like this?”

“We will not serve under usurpers along with all these other traitors!” the man spat.

“Oh,” Derek said. “So, along with the others that helped you, you did some shady stuff and know that your families aren’t going to survive the upcoming investigations. Why not try to run or even cross the sea? That’s what we all thought you were going to do.”

“Oaths…” the man finally spat out after some time. “We are bound to the eldest of the Sinclair line. We cannot leave the kingdom with the oaths.”

“So… you’re saying that because the siblings turned out to be decent people, you couldn’t escape?” Derek said with wide eyes. “Now that’s karma if I’ve ever heard of it.” He laughed as he watched Simeon grow more and more angry.

“You son of a bitch!” the man exploded, then he stepped forward as best as he could. His head and neck stayed pushed against Derek’s Absolute Nullify wall, but his body still moved forward a little as his neck stretched. The man wrapped his arms around Derek and squeezed. “Let’s see you survive this.”

Derek’s eyes widened as the man’s body began to swell. There was no telling how much damage Simeon would do at such a distance, and he didn’t want to find out. “You know,” Derek said quickly. “With your head still like that, it’s really hard to miss.” Derek raised his hand, and as fast as he could, activated Spatial Collapse.

He couldn’t see it, but he knew that the small box created by the skill had appeared and was inside the man’s head. Simeon’s swelling had gone all the way from his feet to his waist when he felt it happen. Instantly, the swelling stopped, and the man began to revert back to his original form.

Derek let go of his throat and canceled Absolute Nullify, causing the body to fall to the ground with a thud. Simeon’s eyes were empty and blood flowed from his ears. If that wasn’t enough to confirm it, then the notification he’d received was.

You have killed level 250 Human Toxin Mage

425,600,500,000 Experience Gained

Derek dismissed the kill notification and then looked out at the crowd. It was mostly silence at this point. The only noise was the light clang of dishes as Silvi sat eating at a table as far away from the flowing poison and sand that was still permeating the air. The rest of the dishes had disappeared from the tables, as while everyone else was fighting, Silvi took her job as the head chef for the celebration seriously and shifted from dish to dish, storing them all so they wouldn’t be contaminated during the fighting.

“What are you all waiting for?” Derek asked the room. “The sparring demonstrations are done for the evening. Let’s get this all cleaned up and continue with the celebration. Don’t think you’re getting out of giving gifts just because of a little spat.”

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