Chapter 78: Getting Skills And Going Full Commando
The notification that appeared wasn’t the usual wheel.
Rather, it was a card — deep red, almost luminescent, with the impression of an A pressed into its face like a wax seal.
David stared at it.
Then the card opened.
Like a chest cracking at the seam, the edges peeled back and folded outward, restructuring itself mid-air until what remained was a wheel — ornate, unfamiliar, nothing like the flat generic display he’d spun a dozen times before.
’That’s not the normal one.’
The wheel began to dust. Fine particles lifted off the surface like ash off an ember, catching the light before dissolving, and then it started to spin. The tone it produced was lower than usual. Steadier.
David watched it, arms crossed, jaw tight.
The wheel slowed.
Glowed.
A single sustained tone rang out — clean, ceremonial, nothing like the flat pings the system usually threw at him — and then the display dissolved into text.
[Skill Acquired.]
David uncrossed his arms.
[Soul Echo]
[Rank: A]
[Class: Blood]
[Upon fulfilling complete criteria, the Player may re-summon the ability of a defeated foe.]
He read it twice. Then a third time, slower, like the words might rearrange themselves into something less good if he wasn’t careful.
’That...that already sounds peak.’
He caught himself before the grin could fully form. Kept his face neutral. Suspicious, even. Because nothing the system gave him came clean.
"Okay," he said. "What are the criterias? And are there any flaws?"
The system didn’t keep him waiting.
[Criteria I: The ability may only be claimed from a deceased individual.]
[Criteria II: The Player must have landed the killing blow to the deceased.]
[Criteria III: The Player must make physical contact with the corpse and mutter the activation phrase — "Claim."]
David stared at it.
’So I have to kill them myself. Touch the body. And say a word out loud like some kind of budget necromancer.’
He could live with that.
But he couldn’t still help but shake the feeling- The system always had an angle.
David turned that over in his mind, eyes still on the notification.
’Soul Echo. Re-summon the ability of a defeated foe.’
Criteria two: killing blow. Criteria three: touch the body.
’There it is.’
It wasn’t just a reward. It was a direction. The system nudging him forward the way it always did —
’Don’t get me wrong, the skill feels OP...but it kind of sounds like it wants me to kill to grow.’
He stood with that for a moment.
Then he shook his head.
’Mmm...Well, technically... I’m not killing people.’
Magical beasts. Dungeon constructs. Things that existed inside gates and dropped loot when they died. That was what the criteria applied to — at least for now, at least in practice — and that distinction mattered. Atleast enough to sit with.
Though it did snag, briefly, when his mind went somewhere else entirely.
’If I could kill an S-rank...’
He didn’t let himself finish it. The shape of it was already there anyway — sitting quiet and enormous at the back of his skull. One S-rank. One killing blow. One word muttered over a body that had stopped moving.
He’d walk away carrying whatever they’d spent a lifetime building.
"No...no...I shouldn’t think like that. I’m..
I’m a hunter. *ahem* system...is there a flaw?" he said.
[Each activation of Soul Echo carries a significant drain on the Player’s stamina. Skills cannot be used consecutively. Recovery is required between each use.]
David read it once. Sat with it.
’...That’s fair, actually.’
If it didn’t have a limiter he’d have broken something already just turning the implications over in his head. He gave a single nod — the quiet kind, the kind that meant he’d assessed something and decided it was acceptable .
Jacket came off in the hallway. Shirt followed before he reached the bathroom door, fingers working the hem loose from where it had dried stiff against his ribs. He got the shower running and stood with his hand under the stream, waiting for the cold to bleed out of the pipes.
Steam started to rise.
He stepped in.
The water hit his face and he exhaled — long, slow, the kind of breath he hadn’t been able to take properly since before the dungeon. Heat worked into his shoulders. The tension there, wound so tight he’d stopped noticing it, finally began to loosen.
’Quite a useful skill, honestly.’
He turned it over the way he turned over everything that actually mattered — not with excitement, but with the quiet calculation of someone thinking three moves ahead. He’d had skills before. Most of them proved their worth slowly, over time, through repetition and creative use.
But this one felt different from the jump.
’If I play it right...’
He tilted his head back. Water ran down his throat, his chest, the last of the dungeon rinsing off him in thin rust-colored streams.
’I could surpass my usual mediocre feats. I could actually become...a top hunter.’
David pressed one hand flat against the tile and let himself have it — just for a second, just quietly, the small private version of satisfaction he only ever allowed when no one was there to see it.
’Finally,’ he thought. ’I’ve got a peak fucking skill!’
~~~
He was done maybe fifteen minutes later.
David stepped out of the shower, grabbed the towel off the rail and ran it over his face first, then his hair, then the rest of him without much ceremony.
He wasn’t wearing anything and didn’t particularly care. The bathroom mirror had fogged over completely. He didn’t bother wiping it.
The pain was still there.
Faded — Virgin’s Touch had done what it could — but still present underneath, the deep kind that lived in muscle and bone rather than skin.
The kind that reminded you it had been earned. He didn’t give it much room. Didn’t prod at it or catalogue it. He just noted it the way you noted bad weather and kept moving.
He walked to the bed and dropped.
Not sat. Dropped — face down, full weight, one arm hanging off the side like it had given up mid-fall. The mattress took him in and he exhaled into the pillow and didn’t move.
’That was a really long night.’
His body was already sinking. The sheets were cool against his chest, the silence of the apartment pressing in around him like something physical, and for the first time in hours nothing was trying to kill him or reward him or ask anything of him at all.
He closed his eyes.
’Just need to sleep. That’s it. Just—’
Knock. Knock. Knock.
David didn’t move.
Knock. Knock.
He still didn’t move. Kept his eyes shut. Willed whoever it was into nonexistence through sheer intention.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
’No.’
Knock.
Knock.
"Oh my god." He said it into the pillow. Then he peeled himself off the mattress with the energy of a man being asked to climb a mountain, grabbed the first pair of pants his hand found on the floor and pulled them on — nothing underneath, didn’t matter, he went full commando— then snatched his shirt off the chair and worked it over his head as he moved, arm still threading through the sleeve when he crossed into the living room.
The knocking came again. Softer this time. Patient in a way that was somehow more annoying than urgency.
"I’m coming," he called out, voice still rough with almost-sleep. "You don’t have to knock so motherfucking loud."
He reached the door. Pulled it open.
His eyes landed on who stood there and stopped.
"Hey, pervert."
April Holliday stood in his doorway, looking at him with a particular uncertainty.
"You done avoiding me yet?"