Defiance of the Fall: A LitRPG Adventure

by TheFirstDefier

  The first part was the vision, which Zac now was certain was shown to him so that he could plant his Dao Seed. The other part was this guidance system that could help him improve his form and fighting abilities. It might have been more convenient if the System crammed his head full of these things, making him master these aspects immediately.

  Perhaps that wasn’t possible, as it was related to the Dao. Or perhaps the System didn’t want to just hand things out willy-nilly. The guidance system was a godsend in any case, as Zac had missed the Tutorial and sorely needed some guidance.

  Of the two, he felt the Dao vision was the most valuable. One might be able to gain those seeds by themselves by meditating or being an expert on a subject, but Zac’s intuition told him that it wasn’t that easy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been the third but the three-millionth to attain a Dao Seed. The world was full of experts, after all.

  He decided on the spot to use the time he earlier spent cutting wood on practicing his axe form in the future. That time would be freed up as soon as he finished the second class quest in any case.

  Zac sat down to recuperate and devoured some meat from his pouch before continuing back home. It was dark when he returned to camp, as usual, this time due to his new skill rather than grinding monsters all waking hours.

  Still, he couldn’t rest, as he was too excited about what his other skill would be like. He started cutting wood at a furious speed, lumber flying left and right. After roughly ninety minutes, he slowed down and caught his breath. He was only ten swings away from finishing the quest for the [Chop] skill, and he wanted to be in rested condition just in case.

  He drank a mouthful of water and steadied his breath before once again hefting his axe and swinging the ten final strikes.

  This time, Cosmic Energy didn’t enter his mind, but information. This time, the impartartation was akin to when he’d bought [Eye of Discernment] from the Nexus Crystal. Zac was a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t get another vision that could give him another Dao Seed or the like, but he knew that was a rare opportunity he’d gained.

  The skill was another fractal, and the usage was similar to the identification skill. It needed him to circulate Cosmic Energy through his energy pathways in a specific manner, then imagine it entering this fractal. The difference was that while [Eye of Discernment] placed the fractals inside his eyes, the new one was on the top of his right hand. It wasn’t a physical manifestation; rather, it superimposed itself on his pathways.

  This was different from his eye skill, which was isolated fractals in his eyes. The [Chop] skill’s fractal seemed to actually merge with his class pathways. It didn’t look out of place or messy, but it felt as a missing piece of a puzzle was added.

  When Zac rewrote his pathways, there were many parts that looked blurry and missing. It seemed from his new skill that they were slots for his skills. Maybe even other skills, like [Steps of Gaia] that he was eyeing in the store, could be slotted into his pathway gaps.

  He tried doing the same with his ocular skill, but it was a closed-circuit fractal, giving no opportunity to integrate with his pathways. The Axe Mastery fractal was in an enclosed space in his mind, and he had no way to connect it to his pathways either. Unfortunately, he lacked any more skills to experiment with. He actually had enough Nexus Coins to buy the cheapest skills by now, but he didn’t want to burn his hard-earned cash for an experiment.

  He wasn’t sure what benefits there were to slotting it into his pathways compared to simply having them like his identification skill. He would have to test it and find out.

  Even though it was late at night, he couldn’t wait, too eager to find out the effects of his new skill. Even if he realized it would be nothing like the great spells he saw in the vision, he had already fought against someone with an impressive skill. It was the demon leader with the great sword, whose furniture now adorned his campsite.

  The black arcs of lightning had almost gotten him killed a few times. From the simple name of his own skill, he realized that it might not be as extravagant, though. But he did get it from a Rare class, after all, so it shouldn’t be useless.

  He planned to try out the skill by using it a few times, then find a demon beast to test it on, so he left his camp in search of a decent target.

  As he walked some ways from the camp, he made a new discovery. A skill screen had been added to his various prompts. It hadn’t been there when he bought the identification skill, which was why it had taken him all day before trying it. He surmised it must’ve activated when he got his class skills.

  Normal Skills:

  Eye of Discernment – Proficiency: A glimpse into the unknown. Upgradeable

  Class Skill

  Axe Mastery – Proficiency: Early. The seed of Dao is planted. Upgradeable

  Chop – Proficiency: Early. There is greatness in simplicity.

  The screen showed scant information, but it did give Zac a few answers to things he had been wondering about. The class skills seemed to have proficiency, and both were at early stage. His Dao Seed was at early stage as well, and he guessed that if he progressed in [Axe Mastery], the seed might follow.

  [Chop] would likely simply get stronger if the proficiency increased. His identification skill had no proficiency, and it seemed that it wouldn’t get stronger. He had wondered about whether he could improve his skill and get more information about enemies, or even be able to identify items.

  It was, however, upgradeable. He saw no hint of the requirements, but it was good to know that he could improve the skill into a better one. [Chop] wasn’t upgradeable, which was a bit disappointing. He could only hope the description was true, that there was greatness in simplicity.

  If he went by his knowledge from video games, then he’d likely need to raise proficiency to the max before somehow upgrading [Axe Mastery] into a higher-tiered skill. As that option wasn’t available for [Eye of Discernment], he could only hope to find out some clues at a later date.

  Of course, even if he wouldn’t be able to upgrade [Chop], he’d still try to max out its proficiency. Who knew if the System would reward a title or new class quests if he did. The System did like it when people put in effort, after all.

  40

  Chop

  As he walked away from the camp in the dead of 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 ten 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’d 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 beyond Zac’s expectation it would grow to this size. As he continued putting 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 there was a limit to 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 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 once, 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 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 would improve 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 from 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 didn’t 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 have been. 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 six 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 in 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 fifty 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.

  He knew.

  41

  Apex Predator

  Zac didn’t dare hesitate and furiously chopped his axe down through the array while the demon still had his pants down, doing his business.

  As Zac suspected, the demon was ready for the strike, and without hesitation, he lifted his sword
to meet the oncoming attack. Unfortunately for him, Zac’s strength was in another league, and with the addition of the Dao of Heaviness, the force of the swing simply broke the poor demon’s arms and continued unimpeded into his head.

  It looked like the array didn’t hold up to scrutiny when observed at such proximity, or maybe the demon simply used some ocular skill more powerful than his [Eye of Discernment]. The demon had noticed something was wrong but didn’t want to alert anyone to this fact until he was back at safety in his group. But some discreet facial tics had foiled his plans.

  After the swing, Zac quickly grabbed two of his knives from his pouch and hurled them at the war party just as they were shocked by an axe appearing out of thin air and killing their comrade.

  One of the knives punched a hole through the imp, instantly killing it, but the other missed the demon he was aiming for. He’d trained his throwing skills diligently since his embarrassing throw that completely missed the target in his first battle against a barghest. Together with his increased stats in Strength and Dexterity, his aim was quite good by now, but he still couldn’t always hit his targets when throwing in rapid succession.

  He threw another dagger, but the demon dodged it, and it was ready for the attacks now. The barghest were stupid, however, and a knife instantly slammed into its torso, maiming it badly. He had a decent stock of knives by now since killing the scout demons surrounding the valley with the incursion, and could keep throwing them for a while.

  He didn’t have any time to kill the other barghest, as he saw one of the demons starting to conjure a fireball. Aghast, he didn’t dare to hesitate, and hurled a dagger at the mage. He couldn’t have him burn the camp down, or even start a forest fire. Every demon on the island would know a battle was happening here.

  A magic shield stopped the dagger in its tracks, so Zac had no choice but to charge out of his array toward the demons. There still were five demons and a couple of demon beasts against him. Fortunately, he’d killed the imp immediately; otherwise, he’d have to worry about those fireballs. They were still extremely deadly, even with his improved constitution.