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Chapter 117 - Wind Chamber
🕑 Added 2024-08-25 20:29:01 +0000 UTC"Ohh, yess."
This was exactly what I wanted, after the skill upgraded, the snow morphed and changed as I channeled mana into the new skill structure. From what I glimpsed already, the skill was vastly different than it once was and I couldn't help but feel giddy at the upgrade. Something told me waiting to upgrade it was the right choice.
Mana flowed into the skill and snow exploded into existence from my hand. Even the upgrade couldn't get rid of that requirement. The snow appeared deceptively mundane, but carried a great deal of power inside of it. Smaller and more compact than the snowflakes I usually made, the palm-sized flakes flew out from my hand in great arcs that looped around me.
They flew with a mind of their own and only required minimal guidance from me by either nudging the skill or direct action from [Ice Manipulation(Un)]. That was a good thing too because the skill kept pouring out snow the longer I channeled mana into it. Creating a sea of white as it drank in the mana I was giving it.
The skill changed in unexpected ways, vying farther away from the initial skill than I thought possible.
You have upgraded a skill:
Sweeping Slash(Common) -> Sweeping Snow(Uncommon)
It took the changes I wanted and took them one step further. It changed the target of the skill from a handheld weapon to the snowflakes pouring from my hand. The only downside was they still had to originate from me, but that didn't seem all that bad from what I was seeing.
That was the first thing I found a workaround for during my testing. The wave was the perfect time to test my new skill to discover all the ins and outs and I wouldn't let this time go to waste.
The snow had to originate from me, that was undeniable, but what constituted as me? Could I produce it from my hammer? Have it come out of my armor?
The answer to those questions was yes.
As I grew in strength there was a rising feeling of comfort with the ice I used. Not the chunks I threw around as projectiles, the ice I used more intimately. The Ice in my hammer and armor.
They became almost an extension of myself, bathing and becoming saturated with my Law and Spirit as I fought with them.
With the growing connection, skills flowed through them easier and for this one, could be substituted as my body.
Snow formed on the surface of my armor before leaping out to join the rest of the storm I had conjured up in an endless flurry of activity. The snow ran its course quickly, the mana holding it together and fueling its flight dissipated rapidly. After the mana ran out, the snow would break apart into a multitude of mundane snowflakes and flutter to the ground. This prompting me to continue making more of it and draining my mana quite quickly for a lower rarity skill.
The skill itself changed dramatically. No longer did it create gangly mana blades that extended out from the snow in thin blades. The mana enhanced the Ice the snow was made of, making it sharper and easier to cut things with.
Where it lost its reach, it increased its sharpness. Losing the breadth of the skill for an increasing depth in another area.
It combined well with my other skills. I could let it blow around me while I focused on melee, letting the snow cut and devastate whatever was in the area.
Overall, the skill didn't change much in lethality but I had high hopes for it. The snow left too shallow of wounds to do any real damage but that could be fixed. At least it was usable now.
With my testing done, the rest of the wave died quickly. Playing around with my new snow more than I should have led to a few wounds but nothing too serious.
The mini-bosses took a little more oomph to take down than what the little snowflakes could handle.
With my new skill thoroughly tested, it was time to end things.
I had things to do and time waited for no man.
"Are you absolutely certain this is going to work?" Abigail said for the umpteenth time.
"Yes, Abigail, for the millionth time it's going to work." My tone was dripping with annoyance. While I understood the doubt, it looked... poorly constructed, but it was beginning to be annoying rather than comforting.
Ever since the end of the wave and I arrived back at the Wind Chamber, she had been going over everything... again. The previous checks were somehow not enough.
With the amount of worry she was showing I was surprised grey hairs weren't sprouting from her head.
The rectangular box of wood had glowing lines running all over its length with mana stones powered and glowing sticking out of it. The wood used was some Oak equivalent that Brayden claimed would hold up well to wind. The hardwood was anchored deep into the earth for support and was giving the go ahead by my fellow builders.
We were about to test that claim.
Before she could say something else or utter the same exact question again, I stepped inside the Chamber. It was built tall enough to accommodate my 6-foot-tall form, with the ceiling resting a few feet above my head.
Latching the door shut behind me made me starkly aware of how heavy-duty the latch was. Thick rods of metal connected the two slabs of wood together. It felt like it would hold up against even my strength for a time before failing.
Vinny didn't hold back on the latch.
The four wooden walls closed me in without anyone else to witness the bloody affair this was about to become. Disrobing as quickly as I could, I wanted to get this over and done with. Fear was the mind killer and I didn't want to let it build up.
Clothes would only get ripped to shreds from what I was about to do.
Standing in my birthday suit was a bit odd knowing that outside the Chamber countless people looked on with curiosity. If the walls fell down they would be in for a treat.
Let's hope Brayden built them sturdy enough for that not to happen and matched the integrity of Vinny's latch.
I gave the technique booklet one last skim before I was ready to turn everything on. Borealis: The Northern Wind Body Refining boasted a range of different benefits.
Raising my Wind affinity, and to a lesser degree my Ice affinity, while also making slashing attacks harder to penetrate the body. Where I didn't get the poison resistance Mitchell received, cutting attacks would need more power to get through my skin and muscles after this.
My body would be particularly strong to Wind Blades and skills like it.
What it all boiled down to was using both gale-force winds and small, sharp hail-like ice to rip and shred the body to pieces. A very pleasant and lovely experience that I was at the edge of my seat for.
Like the grinding down of a sandstorm but instead of sand, little pieces of ice were used.
The first thing I channeled my mana into was [Hail(C)] and [Permafrost(Un)], to create the ice I needed and the temperature required. [Ice Manipulation(Un)] evened all of the bits out into irregular shapes with some truly wicked edges.
To make sure that they were able to damage my body, I channeled both my Law and Spirit into the ice for increased durability. I wasn't sure if it would be able to do its job without it.
Thinking about getting pummeled with it was less than pleasant.
The room was big enough that the wind would circulate throughout, looping back to hit me over and over again and was built to facilitate exactly that.
While rectangular on the outside, it was circular on the inside. The space between the outside walls and inside walls was filled with different plates and pieces to wire everything together. Well, not a wire exactly but it was close enough to call it that.
Mana needed to flow from one side of the Formation to the other through channels engraved on the various pieces and I didn't want those exposed for people to touch. It was already sketchy enough and that was without people having access to the insides of the Formation.
The lines carved into wood that were visible on the outside were durability Runes for the wood itself. I added a little extra to the wood to make sure this thing didn't fall about mid-operation.
After creating the hail that the wind would need, it was time to power up the next set of Runes.
The Ice and Frost Runes carved into the ground.
[Permafrost(Un)] could lower the temperature around me, but that wasn't enough to harm me.
Some... extreme measures were needed for me to get damaged by low temperatures. After getting my bloodline, even the coldest of temperatures weren't enough to bring harm.
This combination of Runes was a thorn to get right. It needed to be enough to damage my body, but not too much that the Body Refining process was done by the Ice instead of the Wind.
[Glacial Presence(R)] made the whole thing that much more difficult to tune correctly.
The Northern Winds technique needed a careful balance of the two to do what it intended. It needed the cutting windchill the cold provided but not so much that it was the dominating factor.
The exposed loops of Ice covering the floor plunged the temperature inside the room well below zero. The Ice making up the Runes didn't need to be buried like the previous time I made one and seeing the sharp increase in effectiveness made me cringe. I hadn't known that burying the Rune caused that much of a loss.
The increase in effectiveness also came from the string of Runes that I tied together to make it better than one big Frost Rune.
It was hard to find an off switch for the Ice and Frost Runes so I had to isolate them somewhat. Making the room itself separated from the outside atmosphere.
Otherwise, the Runes would work endlessly to bring the environment in line with what the Runes meant. Wasting mana to cool the whole area outside the chamber rather than the small room I needed it to.
The barrier was a base Formation that one could buy from the store. While it was meant to defend from outside attacks it worked for the purposes I needed it to.
A bit overkill really, but it saved me time from having to learn to separate the two manually.
All around the room, various runes lit up on the walls and ceiling to contain the frosty temperatures radiating outward. With the Runes contained, the room quickly plummeted in temperature even faster than before. I knew from testing, various lines on the outside lit up during this and I had to assume people knew it was starting.
All the heat was exorcised in ferocious vigor. Saturating the room with my Law turned the crusade almost feral. The pervading aspect worked to drive the Ice mana into a frenzy eliminating and infiltrating anything that wasn't itself.
The wood lining the room frosted over and began to contract, creaking and groaning from the treatment. Brayden built the room with the contraction in mind, making the wood slot right into place from the planned contraction.
That contraction was tested extensively to make sure that everything would stay where it was intended.
[Glacial Presence(R)] climbed to new heights that I hadn't felt the skill reach before. It was hard to keep the grimace off my face from the increasing stats the skill gave.
The skill boosted all of my stats and that wasn't something I wanted right now. The harder it was to break down my body, the longer this whole process would take and the more painful this experience would turn out to be.
While it would be painful anyway, prolonging that pain wasn't what I wanted. As much as I had been injured lately, a masochist I was not.
Pain was inevitable, though, and it wasn't something I could fix. The skill didn't have an on-off switch. It worked always. If I was able to turn it off, I hadn't been able to figure it out yet.
When the temperature drop reached its peak, chills ran through my body for the first time in a long time. My breath turned foggy and my body started to shiver.
I felt cold.
It was almost shocking. I hadn't felt even the slightest chill ever since the tutorial began and it was weird to feel it again.
After the first two Formations were up and running where they needed to be, it was time to start the main event. The lines that had lit up before were a drop in the bucket compared to what happened now. Like going from low beams to high beams in a car. The bright LED kinds too.
The new light show started to create gusts of wind along the walls of the room. All the Wind Runes faced clockwise in direction, adding the gusts together, building on top of each other.
The planks the Runes were engraved on jutted out of the wall like fan blades. All angled inward slightly in the same direction, only extending a few feet in but created a fearsome speed of wind when given time to accumulate.
It felt similar to a tornado touching down right in the center of the Rune and the Winds even started to push me back.
As the Winds grew in strength, I strapped myself to the grate that was installed. For the Wind to be strong enough to hurt me, it was plenty strong to push me off my feet.
We planted a grate deep into the earth to act as an anchor, something for me to stand against for support while also letting the Wind through unimpeded.
A huge slab of metal would have disrupted the flow too much and done more harm than good.
Waiting for the wind to pick up gave me a surprise I hadn't seen coming.
The force of the Wind was enough to influence my control over the Ice. It tugged on them forcing me to tighten my grip over them to keep them from flying away. I hadn't had Wind do that before and wasn't something I had thought could happen.
Releasing my control over the Ice, I let the pellets of hail fly. The pellets began their circuit and every revolution would result in my bare body being pelted with them. While harmless at first, it quickly began to increase in intensity.
Beginning at a slight annoyance, rising to a small pain, then higher. It felt like getting hit by paintballs for a while before the Winds whipped them faster around the room.
Not long after, they began to draw blood. The small protrusions of the ice cutting at just the right angle.
Grunts sounded out from me when they hit a particularly sensitive spot. Like my face... or other areas.
The Wind built and built until the gusts themselves began to carve into me. The windchill rose with the speed of the wind and it was worse than I imagined.
I knew this would be painful but this was beyond even that. The cold was the most surprising. Ever since gaining my Ice affinity and harnessing it for my powers, I hadn't thought it would be able to damage me like this.
This experience took my blinders off and showed me my naivete. The cold was a harsh mistress and just because I handled it better than most didn't mean it couldn't hurt me.
I had to assume from the outside the place felt like a bomb waiting to go off from all the mana being used.
To accelerate the winds this much took some real strength. Almost every Wind Rune was tied to its own mana stone to keep them powered long enough for the process to complete.
Blood started leaking out of me at a trickle before quickly rising to a stream, then to a river. My shivering reached teeth clattering levels and I already wanted it to be over.
Only a few days to go.
Ugh, this was going to suck.
Comments
PenguinKills
I edited the description of the snow the skill produces and here is the new description, "Mana flowed into the skill and snow exploded into existence from my hand. Even the upgrade couldn't get rid of that requirement. The snow appeared deceptively mundane, but carried a great deal of power inside of it. Smaller and more compact than the snowflakes I usually made, the palm-sized flakes flew out from my hand in great arcs that looped around me. They flew with a mind of their own and only required minimal guidance from me by either nudging the skill or direct action from [Ice Manipulation(Un)]. That was a good thing too because the skill kept pouring out snow the longer I channeled mana into it. Creating a sea of white as it drank in the mana I was giving it." The snow is bigger in size than normal snow but smaller than what the shurikens were. P
PenguinKills
Fixed, thanks!
Kemizle
Question about the sweeping snow skill does the skill make snow like what falls from the sky or the big ❄️ shuriken? I think its cooler if it’s like snow from the sky. I could see him swing his hammer and a snow flurry blows past his victim and its death by a thousand cuts
Kemizle
The increase in effectiveness also came from the “sting” of Runes that I tied together to make it better than one big Frost Rune. I think you mean string of Runes
Demonlord
Thanks for the chapter 😊
James Faulkner
Tftc!
