Chapter 179: Chapter One Hundred Eighty

I was not proud of my reaction to the cloud of arachnids trying to  tear through the shadow dome. "Spiders! Holy shit no! Keep them away!"  Despite NOT having a phobia, something about a huge swarm of spiders  raining down on us was absolutely the most terrifying thing I could  imagine. The bone wyvern had absolutely nothing on these things, despite  being literally a thousand times the size at least. Without thinking at  all I triggered Boiling Cloud, unleashing a wave of superheated steam  right at the wriggling bastards as they writhed above us.

Callie  flinched and yelped, batting at the cloud, which didn't really manage  to get all the way through the dome very well. She glared at me.  "Solomon, sweetie, can you maybe not melt our fucking faces off? I don't  like the things either, but having my eyeballs boiled is even lower on  my list of things to try than spider baths." Her voice was a bit stiff  with discomfort, though that skill wasn't really designed for single  target damage so much as diversion and distraction, so her face didn't  get too badly burned, and her Vitality caused the slight redness to fade  after.

Even so I winced in horror. "I am so sorry. I  wasn't even thinking, I know better than yo use that damn skill in close  quarters. I should have guessed it would get bottled up." I sometimes  lost track of when Callie's shadows were and were not solid. I reached  down to wrap my arm around her waist. "Ok, I'm going to get us out of  the way, just wait until my signal and drop the dome ok? I can use Leaf  on the Wind to carry us both out of the way. Just let me know when  you're ready ok?"

She shook her head wryly, but she had a  smile on her lips. "It's fine. It wasn't fun, but neither of us were  hurt much. I'll count to ten and drop the dome. Just be ready to get us  clear as soon as it comes down." I nodded, making sure Leaf on the Wind  was refreshed and readying a cloud step if needed. Callie started to  count down backwards from ten, and when she hit one I jerked her back by  the waist and threw myself backwards full force, pulling her with me as  I resonated the skill through both of us.

It was a huge  strain extending the skill over the two of us, but keeping Callie safe  was my priority, closely followed by getting the fuck away from all  those spiders, preferably as far from them as humanly possible. As the  dome came down I was glad I'd put in the effort, beacuse there was a  squeal of predatory glee from the creepy spider fucks as they plummeted  through the air right at our faces and by the time I stopped with my arm  around Callie twenty feet away, the spiders had already reached the  spot our heads had occupied when the drop began. I shuddered in fear at  the thought of one of those on my face, mask or not.

One  of the damn things somehow managed to brace itself on another one mid  fall and push off it, flying toward us full speed with a sqeal. A crowd  of falling spiders was terrifying, but just the one was mostly gross. I  removed my arm from Callie's waist, slipped my cane into my hand,  stepped up, and swung the cane at the flying arachnid full force like a  kid hitting a ball with a stick. The sickening crack and then thump of  the cane smashing in part of the spider and then the spider hitting the  wall was loud enough that we could hear it even over the chittering.

I  wasn't letting them close in, so I triggered Sucking Mud on the floor  between us. They could climb walls, but hopefully that would hold them  off for a minute while we got our bearings. I shuddered. "Ok, that was  deeply unpleasant. I count twenty four left. They're G rank, but also  small and weak, which is good right?" Small was relative, they were  about the size of a palm, but still, normal mortals could smash normal  spiders. G ranked spiders should be more than killable by someone at the  same rank.

Callie shook her head, staring in annoyance  and disgust at the writhing mass. She raised a hand and the walls began  to surge with waves of shadow. It wouldn't be enough to spear them or  anything, but it would throw them clear and make the floor their only  real option. "No. You need stats to get to G rank. If their stats aren't  in Might, which I think we would have noticed, they must be in  something else. No telling what that is or how dangerous it might be.  Given the lack of healing and the fact that we noticed them, I'm  guessing whatever it is, it's probably something offensive, maybe in  their bite."

That drew a curse from me. "Well, that's not  ideal. Keeping them off the walls is good, but they're pretty light.  These stones are pretty porous, so Sucking Mud is less dense than  normal, but they'll figure out how to cross eventually. Can you swap the  wall waves for blades or something, maybe spear them?" I didn't feel  like playing whack-a-spider for the next few hours as we slowly tried to  maneuver them into being crushed one by one.

Sadly  nothing was ever that easy. "No. Might isn't infinite. I can only manage  so much power in total over all my shadows. Diffusing them that much  means I can only exert a small amount of force per square inch. It's a  big corridor. None of the individual sections will have enough power  behind them to damage a G ranked creature, even a small flimsy one." She  gestured to the squirming mass of spiders, scattering and bolting  around, trying to climb the walls and find a place on the floor to  cross. "They won't sit still either, so a single huge blow is out too."

I  groaned. "Can we snipe them one at a time? If one blow would be enough  maybe you could take pot shots at range." We couldn't just stand here  until the Sucking Mud wore off. If Callie couldn't do more than waves on  the walls, then there was no way she could keep the floor free. The  spiders were slipping back away from it as they began to sink in, but I  only had twenty plus charges left today. Twelve of those charges would  only burn a single hour, and that was assuming I didn't have to tweak  the skill at all during that time.

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She shrugged. "Maybe.  It could work. Even if it does though, they'll probably try to scatter  once the first one dies. I'd need to be able to hit them fast enough  that they couldn't avoid it. They're quick little bastards. Not much  Might, but they weight very little too. I wish I had a way to hit them  faster." She was biting her lip, glaring over at the shifting carpet of  spiders. As she said that though I had a thought.

"Wait."  She turned to look at me questioningly. "What if you did. Flurry of  Blows could be extended to you. It would give you a few shots at a much  faster rate. I'd have to keep using it, but with your Perception you  should be able to find the right spots to aim, and Flurry of Blows will  make sure they can't dodge." I could practically feel the headache  beginning just from thinking about rapid fire spamming of a skill that I  had to share with someone else. "You want to give it a try?" I tried  not to let the impending pain shake me too much.

There was  no hesitation in her expression as she agreed, and I felt my heart warm  a bit at her trust. I knew that letting people use skills on you  required you to let your guard down for them, and being willing to open  herself up to the power I was using for that long meant a lot to me. I  put a hand on her arm, reached down into myself, and triggered Flurry of  Blows, pushing it out of me and into Callie, making sure that she got  the full brunt of the skill. My brain twinged roughly as I did it, but  not as bad as the last time I'd shared a skill. I was pretty sure  repetition was helping me improve at this.

Callie let out a  deep breath, closed her eyes for a three count, then opened them and  stared coldly at the spiders. She flicked out a hand, and a spinning  arrow of darkness blurred across the room, smashing into a spider, with  two other arrows landing so soon after it that the sound was almost one  continuous noise. I grinned at her and she returned it. "Ok. There were  twenty four of these things, so all I have to do is kill twenty one  more. Seven more times triggering that skill should be easy enough  right? You're not almost at your limit?"

She looked  worried about me, and I smiled under my mask, shaking my head. "Won't  even take me down to half of my charges. I should be at thirteen after  this." I neglected to mention the head pain, but I didn't want her to  worry. I could handle it, I'd just have to take things one charge at a  time and try to minimize the damage. The better I got at it the less  pain I would feel when I used the skill this way. In fact, I was  beginning to have a sneaking suspicion about skill growth the way I was  doing it.

I was pretty sure that when someone changed a  Skill, with a capital S, they had to alter it the same way I was doing.  The more they changed it and the better they got at that change, the  more stable it became. Once the Skill had taken on its stable form, from  what I could tell, that would the next form of the Skill. That was how  people evolved unique skills, and it was why that path was considered  nearly impossible. The more changes you made the more strain, and the  harder it was to complete the Skill.

Normal Skills had a  heritage, and method of evolution that you could follow by accruing the  knowledge of other people, basically using information to fill in your  understanding of the Skill instead of changing it to better suit you so  it could evolve naturally. That was why Skills became more  individualized as they got stronger, because there was less standardized  information and the Skills needed to altered in order to better fit the  user so they could fill them up with their own experiences so to speak.  You could fill a Skill up with just normal experiences, but it was less  efficient and would take much longer than anyone would reasonably  spend.

Beginner DS Mastery was like that too. I needed to  alter the Skill to fit me so that I could elevate it. In its current  form it would probably take me decades to properly complete it. I could  alter it and make it more compatible with me, but none of my changes had  taken so far. I was pretty sure that in return for how versatile and  powerful it was, altering the Skill was harder in comparison. I needed  to change each individual subskill to properly attune it to what I  wanted to achieve before I could reach the next level.

So I  focused. I used Flurry of Blows. Then I used it again. I focused on the  task of making it a skill that could buff others, that could be spread  by touch, and with every use, that became a little more true, my head  hurt a little less, and the skill flowed a little more smoothly. This  was my first time testing my theories and trying to make a stable long  term change, all this information on Skill growth had been the fruit of a  ton of research on my down time. In the end though, as the last spider  died, I felt the skill click into place in a way I'd never experienced  before, and I knew I was right. I'd found the path forward. Now I just  had to alter all the other subskills like that. I groaned internally. I  really wished I hadn't picked such a convoluted build.

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