Chương 90: Chapter 77 – Cloak of Ash

Ding! You have fully dissolved, bound, and tethered an Ancient Ash Tortoise Shell to your channels. You have created the [Cloak of Ash] skill. [Cloak of Ash (rare)] – Formed from the dissolved shell of an Ancient Ash Tortoise and bound to your channels, this cloak of essence-infused ash flows with movement, disperses under command, and hardens at the point of impact to intercept incoming attacks. Sustained through continuous essence input.

Cade read through the description as he deactivated his [Hyperfocused Meditation]. It was everything he had wanted to build. So why did it still feel incomplete? His fingers brushed across the cloak draped over his body. The sensation made him pause. It felt nothing like ash should have. There was no grit or powdery feeling, no rough edges clinging to his skin. The material settled across him with the soft weight of draped silk, cool against his body and smooth enough that it seemed to slide over his skin.

It shifted with every subtle movement, flowing over his shoulders and down his back in soft folds that barely seemed bound by gravity. And yet beneath that softness lay a subtle tension, like a coiled muscle beneath skin. Relaxed until needed but ready to spring the instant he released. Cade pinched the edge of the cloak between two fingers and lifted. The hem rose easily, stretching away from his body in a thin sheet of pearlescent ash that held together more than he felt it should have.

He pulled it outward, watching the particulate structure thin and elongate as it stretched away from him. The cohesion wavered slightly as he extended his arm fully. At roughly half a meter, the stretched ash began to fray. Fine particles peeled loose from the edge and drifted away before the tether tugged them back into place. Cade let go and the cloak flowed back into shape almost instantly, settling against him once more. So the range is limited to just around my body. Good to know.

Focusing on the essence tether connecting them, he willed the material to harden. He felt the essence channels within the cloak tighten. The soft drape across his shoulders drew taut in less than a second, the fabric-like texture locking rigid. The cloak hardened so completely that his movement stopped with it. Flowing ash locked into something dense and unyielding. When he pressed against it, it no longer felt like cloth at all. It felt like the shell it had once been—solid and hard as ivory.

He released the command, and the tension vanished as the cloak softened back into its fluid form. With another thought, it locked rigid around him once more, the flowing ash stiffening into solid structure before loosening again just as easily. Cade cycled it back and forth several times, feeling the cloak shift between a fluid and a solid. Each transition took less than a second—fast enough to save his life, but not instantaneous.

That same quiet wrongness lingered beneath the skill, subtle but impossible to ignore. The cloak obeyed him. It moved, hardened, and flowed at his command. But it still felt like directing something external. It was useful and responsive but not quite part of him like the rhizome had become. Like moving a tool with perfect familiarity instead of a limb with instinct. The System—or the Record—had recognized the skill as functional enough to codify, but Cade knew better. It worked. It would be useful.

But it was not finished. He let out a slow breath and looked down at himself. For the first time since entering Cynthia's Legacy, he was wearing something that felt like it belonged to him. Not borrowed or scavenged or improvised out of desperation. It was his. The shell had saved his life. But this—this was the first thing he had made for himself in this world. An odd mixture of emotions swelled in his chest as the realization hit him harder than expected.

He stood there for a moment longer, fingers brushing over the soft ash draped across his chest, before turning his attention back to the broodmare's corpse. What remained was little more than a half-charred ruin. Most of the essence already liberated from it had gone into the cloak hanging from his shoulders. The dense green life essence that had once lingered within the corpse had largely dissipated back into the environment by the time he finished shaping it. But not all of it. A small amount still remained.

He inhaled, summoned the white flames again, and spewed them across the corpse. White fire spilled over the ruined carcass, and the last dregs of dense white essence rose above it in slow, curling currents. He drew it in. The essence flowed into his channels. While only a little remained, it was enough to leave him feeling nearly full again. He exhaled slowly, satisfied with what he had accomplished. He had wasted a great deal of life essence shaping the cloak.

Most of what the broodmare had held had bled off into the environment while he worked. But it was worth it. And if he needed more, there was still an entire plane of essence trapped in the ash around him. It wasn't nearly as dense as what the broodmare had yielded, but it was there if he wanted to take the time to absorb it. He adjusted the cloak once, then turned toward where he thought the Ashen Front lay and started walking. Ash shifted softly beneath his feet.

It was not the cracked, dead ground he had crossed in the wake of the Ashen Emperor. There, the earth had been stripped bare and left dry and split, every trace of ash and essence devoured so completely that the land itself had looked starved. But here, the ground was buried beneath a pillowy white layer that rolled in shallow drifts across the terrain. Fine ash covered everything in soft, uneven waves, giving the landscape the look of a frozen white sea.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Cade frowned faintly. Did the Emperor simply consume everything in its path while the younger tortoises left some behind? If so, why? Another question for Vorduun. He kept moving. The terrain dipped gradually as he walked, the rolling plain giving way to a broad depression in the ash. Not steep enough to call a crater.

Just a shallow basin where the powder had collected deeper, the white surface shifting in soft ripples as he descended into the center. Cade's foot sank half a step deeper than expected. Then the ground beneath him moved. Ash exploded upward. Cade twisted on instinct as something huge erupted from beneath the surface directly under him. A massive circular maw burst from the powder in a spray of white, ringed with black, grinding teeth that tried to snap around his legs. The cloak moved.

Pale ash surged downward in a violent rush, and the loose drape around his lower half hardened just as the worm's maw slammed shut. Instead of punching into flesh, the worm's black teeth ground against the hardened cloak. Cade felt the force of the bite, but the teeth failed to penetrate. Essence tore from his channels in a heavy rush as the cloak locked rigid at the point of impact, feeding the structure enough to hold. The worm tried to bite down harder and Cade felt the drain on his essence increase.

A sharp, hungry pull ripped essence through the tether as the cloak resisted the pressure of the closing maw. Too much force concentrated in too small a space. The ash held but saving his flesh had cost him a large amount of essence. Cade twisted and tore himself free from the mouth as he commanded the cloak to soften. He sidestepped away and drove his will into his right palm.

A dark spear erupted from his hand, two meters of hardened wood thrust into shape in less than a breath, etched with branching fractal lines that glimmered faintly beneath the surface. This time the sensation was slightly different. The rhizome drew first from the essence filling his channels, feeding on what he had absorbed from the broodmare before reaching for anything deeper. Between the cloak and the spear, he had already burned through nearly three quarters of what he had just taken in.

Cade consciously cut off the flow of essence to the rhizome, severing the excess before it could draw any more while keeping the tether feeding the cloak intact. Only then did the rhizome dip into his health, stamina, and mana. He still felt the drain, but it was a minor pull compared to the brutal cost it had previously demanded.

The worm reared upward, its segmented body bursting free of the ash in a writhing column as wide as a minivan, pale armor in ridged bands streaked with violet corruption between the seams. Its maw flared open again with a deep, guttural hiss. Cade stepped in before it could lunge. He drove the spear into the soft seam beneath its jaw. The point punched deep and thick violet ichor burst across his arm. The worm shrieked and twisted violently, its head snapping sideways as the spear tore free.

Its massive body slammed into the ash where Cade had stood a heartbeat earlier, but he was already moving along its flank. The cloak streamed behind him in pale pearlescent waves as he drove the spear into the worm's side and forced [Prismatic Conduit] to life. He felt the drain on his health immediately as lightning gathered in the spear, shrieking as the charge built. This time he did not hesitate. He knew exactly what he wanted. Destroy.

He fed the command into the forming charge and drew more of his own vitality to force it denser. The rhizome drank greedily from his health and the bolt screamed into being. Cade drove the spear further into the wound. Prismatic lightning detonated through the creature in a violent bloom of radiant light. The blast tore through its body, splitting the worm open from the inside, and blew a jagged line of ruin throughout. The worm convulsed then collapsed into the ash with a wet, shuddering impact and went still.

Cade stood over it, breath steady, cloak shifting in slow currents around his form. As the corpse settled into the ash, Cade watched a strand of pale green life essence peel free and drift toward him, growing thinner and more transparent as it crossed the space between them. It touched his chest and sank in. Ding! You have defeated [Corrupted Ashworm — Level 14]. You have gained additional experience for killing a creature above your level.

Dungeon Quest Updated: Cleanse Cynthia's Legacy Progress: Minor Corruption Cleansed: 25 / 100 Major Corruption Cleansed: 1 / 2 Cade stared at the notification for a moment, then glanced back down at the corpse. Interesting. The life essence detached first. The System message only came after it sank into him. Cade turned that over for a moment before summoning the white flames of desolation and burning the corpse where it lay.

The process went faster this time, more familiar and efficient than before but he still didn't receive a notification that it had become an actual skill. White fire rolled over the dead worm, its flesh and armor consumed and transformed into dense clouds of pure essence. Compared to the broodmother, this kill was clean. He hadn't scrambled. Hadn't improvised in desperation just to survive. The worm had caught him in an ambush.

The deeper ash blanketing the basin held enough pure essence to mask the creature completely, hiding it from his [Essence Sight] until it struck. It had been higher level. It had gotten the jump on him. And yet he still came out the victor. Cade drew in the pure essence from the worm's burning corpse, replacing what the cloak and rhizome had spent. Some of it settled into his body, easing the faint drain left behind by [Prismatic Conduit], but none of it became experience. Cade exhaled slowly.

Maybe there was a cap. A limit to how much usable experience the System could extract from one organism before the rest was simply left as essence. Another line to add to the growing list of things to test later. The white flames died as the last of the corpse collapsed into ash. Cade absorbed what he could, then continued toward the Ashen Front.

The land flattened as Cade continued on, the rolling dips and shallow basins of the ash plain smoothing into a broad white expanse that stretched unbroken in every direction. He moved at a steady pace, the cloak shifting around him with each step. Its hem trailed pale particulates that never quite touched the ground, drifting and rejoining the whole in slow eddies around his calves. Ahead, the white horizon, stained pale violet beneath the moonlight, stretched on without end.

With little else to occupy his attention during the long walk, Cade pulled up his status sheet to review his recent gains.

STATUS Name: Cade Whitehollow Age: 26 Race: [Human (F) – lvl 11] Health Points (HP): 638 / 638 Stamina Points (SP): 605 / 605 Mana Points (MP): 781 / 781 Statistics: Strength: 36 (52) -> 38 (55) Dexterity: 35 (50) -> 37 (53) Endurance: 36 (52) -> 38 (55) Toughness: 33 (47) -> 35 (50) Vitality: 37 (55) -> 39 (58) Wisdom: 39 (56) -> 51 (73) Intelligence: 37 (53) -> 49 (71) Willpower: 56 (81) -> 58 (84) Titles: [A Brutal Welcome], [Coreless Conqueror], [Shepherd the Young], [111th Integration Pioneer], [Perfectly Reforged Body], [Coreless Lawbearer] Law Seeds: [Inviolable Self], [Dissolution] Quests: Tutorial Quest: Lords of the Swamp, Dungeon Quest: Cleanse Cynthia's Legacy Race Skills: [Unbroken Will], [Identify (lesser)], [Hyperfocused Meditation (rare)] Skills: [Essence Sight (uncommon)], [Cloak of Ash (rare)], [Essence Manipulation (epic)], [Prismatic Conduit (epic)]