Chương 93: 92 - Aggressive Assimilation

Every breath was painful. Alexandra lay against the walls of the cave, the cold light of the mushrooms illuminating the room. She looked at the three dead trolls. She'd done that. She'd done that, and she didn't regret it. In a way, it made her feel even worse about it. She wasn't sure what to think about what Laika was forcing her to become. A little over a month, and she was already a murderer. Not just of trolls. Several humans, too.

Just because she had her reasons didn't remove the guilt, though it was muted now, under the curse of cold blood. She summoned her journal to make sure she had a chance at survival. Giant Slayer 4 -> 5 Inflict Weakness 9 -> 10 Drain Life 1 -> 3 Combat Sense 9 -> 10 Aggressive Assimilation: Drain the entire lifeforce pool of a troll (1/1). Aggressive Assimilation: Extract the essence of a species' lifeforce and convert it into a temporary buff. Each level increases the buff's potency and the conversion efficacy.

Uncommon. Her expression didn't change. This was what she wanted. Now, she had to hope this skill worked as she expected it to. She grabbed the half-spear beside her and pushed herself up.

"Fuck." The pain was unbearable. But she had to move.

"Thank god I got so many constitution quests." So far, she'd earned a whopping ten constitution points from her daily quests, bringing her to a total of thirty-seven. This was her highest, while she had only gotten six dexterity quests, her lowest. The difference wasn't enormous, but battered as she was, it was worth all the gold in the world. Back on Earth, such a collection of injuries would have knocked her unconscious. Now… Well, now, she wasn't in great shape. But at least she could move.

Alexandra walked to the far side of the cave and headed deeper into the dungeon. The tunnels all looked the same, and now they started to branch out. She made the conscious decision to follow the wall to her left. She met the next troll in a tunnel. It was slowly walking up, perhaps toward the room she was coming from. She ducked behind a stalagmite. The ground shook under the beast's steps. Moment of truth, now. Either Aggressive Assimilation worked as she wished, or she was dead. She was in no state to fight.

Alexandra took a deep breath, the troll another step. It was slow. Another step. She had to pull the trigger before it found her. Fuck it. Alexandra reached with Drain Life, feeling the powerful vitality of the troll. It wasn't quite the club-wielding one, but it was still a fucking troll. But her skill had leveled up twice, and it made everything so much easier. She redirected a sliver from the torrent of lifeforce. She could take more. So she did.

When the lifeforce reached her, it didn't try to join her pool, and failed because of the rank and species difference. Instead, she directed it into Aggressive Assimilation. Extract the essence. What was the essence of a troll's lifeforce if not endless regeneration? At least, that was what Alexandra was banking on. The troll stopped. Alexandra pressed herself against the stalagmite, not breathing. Her ribs were screaming from the contraction. The troll's head swung left, then right. It had felt something.

Of course it had. She was pulling at its life. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. She pulled harder. The troll took a step toward her. Come on. Another step. She could smell it now. Dirt. Mushrooms. Come on, come— It was like drinking fire. Warm, yet not exactly. Something fundamental shifted inside her, like her body knew what to do, and couldn't stay broken. It flooded down through her chest, and she felt her ribs move.

She almost screamed, almost gave herself away. She clapped a hand over her mouth as the bones ground against each other. It should have been agony, and it was, but the move felt incredibly purposeful. Her instincts knew that it was good for her, so she didn't panic. Her next breath didn't hurt. She hadn't taken a full breath in over an hour. She hadn't known, consciously, how much of her concentration had been spent simply managing that. Now her lungs filled. All the way. The wrongness was gone.

Then her ankle snapped, bent, and broke. Except, it did all that to heal her. A few seconds later, it was as good as new. Just in time to jump out of her hiding spot and avoid the troll's charge. It had found her. She didn't engage. She kept draining. Her bruises healed, then the cuts on her cheeks. Even the ones that had cicatrized a long time ago. She passed a hand over her skin. It was as good as new. Only her hair and her missing finger didn't heal.

It took a few minutes of avoiding the troll, focusing solely on Drain Life and Aggressive Assimilation, but Alexandra was completely healed. She finished off the beast with a well-placed jab. Its deep vitality depleted, it couldn't regenerate as it should. Alexandra stood over the troll's body and breathed. Just breathed. In and out, deep and even, the air cold and damp and smelling of mushrooms, stone, and blood. She did it again. And again. Because she could. She rolled her shoulders. She laughed.

A short, sharp sound, almost surprised. It echoed in the tunnel. She felt good. Better than she did since… Forever. Even the healing sessions with the Hands hadn't been that thorough. It was her body knowing itself and restoring its functions to their peaks. Only her finger was left missing. She looked at it. Turned her palm. It really was gone. If even troll-like regeneration wasn't enough to bring it back, she didn't know what would. But it tracked to what Bamir had said. Her finger hadn't been severed.

It was gone. Just gone. And she hadn't recovered the lost lifeforce either. Her white hair attested to that. It wasn't enough to dampen her mood. She had bigger problems. Had. She looked down the tunnel. The mushrooms pulsed their quiet blue. Somewhere deeper, there were more trolls. She didn't know how many. She didn't know how deep this dungeon went, or where the chieftain was. What she knew was that as long as there were trolls, she could drain them. As long as she could drain them, she could heal.

As long as she could heal, she could keep going. She stepped away from the corpse, ate a ration of dried meat she'd prepared for the night, and drank a sip of water from her gourd. Alexandra checked her grip on the spear and walked deeper into the dungeon. It was easy. Too easy. She took this opportunity to train. Each troll was a fantastic sparring partner. Every injury could be healed. Alexandra was free to try moves that she didn't think would work, fail, and try again.

As long as she avoided hits to the head, she felt like she could keep going forever. Only, she didn't want to keep going forever. She'd lost all sense of time, but she knew quest reset time was coming. She could feel it creeping closer. Considering the gates of the dungeons only opened at night, she needed to be out before sunrise. She kept searching. She kept going deeper. She kept fighting. Until, eventually, she found the chieftain. It stayed at the bottom of a chamber that opened wide enough for a house.

Alexandra stood at the tunnel mouth and looked at it across thirty feet of bare stone. It looked back. Bigger than the others. Not enormously so. Maybe a head taller, shoulders that made the club-wielder seem narrow. But it held still in a way the others hadn't. It was watching her assess it, and it was doing the same. She walked in. It moved fast. Faster than its size suggested. She got the half-spear up, and it struck on the haft.

The crack of that impact ran up both her arms and knocked her sideways into the wall. The wood held. She dropped under the backswing, drove the point into the meat behind its knee, and pulled hard on Drain Life before it could turn. The chieftain's vitality was something else entirely. Denser. Like pulling current from an ocean versus a stream. She didn't need it all. As long as she had a sliver going her way, she'd win. Eventually. After getting hit once, Alexandra didn't rush to fight it. She kept her distance.

It was stronger than her. Her spear looked like it wouldn't survive another exchange. It took a long time. Longer than she would have liked. But she defeated it. She couldn't lose. Not with the troll's regeneration buffing her. After at least an hour of running, draining, and regenerating, the troll chieftain collapsed. The tip of her spear lay broken somewhere on the cavern floor. She picked it up and drove it inside the beast's throat. It didn't regenerate. She shook her head.

What had started as an impossible task had turned into the easiest fight of her life. All because of her skills. It would only work on trolls, however. Alexandra left the chieftain corpse behind and traced her way back up the tunnels. She arrived in the entrance cavern. The doors were shut. She put a hand on them. Pushed. They didn't move. She frowned. Opened her journal. Aggressive Assimilation 1 -> 2 All this for only one skill level. She thought back to Raymond's comment about training under duress.

All risks had been eliminated, so her progress had slowed. Still, competency wasn't only driven by the system. Because she could take injuries she shouldn't have survived, her understanding of combat had grown in ways the system couldn't capture. Then she looked at her daily quest. Sure enough. It had reset.

"Just my luck." She'd have to wait for nightfall to get out. She patted her satchel, which still held a few strips of meat. Her gourd, however, was almost empty.

"That's going to be a long wait."