Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 135: Siege

The moment that he was back in his own skin, Edge flung the monster to the ground. He stomped down hard, frozen shell shattering beneath the heel of his boot. As he sprinted out of the grove, his chains tossed the blightling’s skill into his mouth. Then they retracted through his wrists to slumber within his core, leaving him to chew on the run.

He found himself struggling in more ways than one. While harden couldn’t hurt him, it was incredibly tough to eat. Over the next few seconds, he tried as hard as he could to sink his teeth into the dense mass of chitin, while he fought to stay ahead of the horde of monsters clattering behind his heels.

He bit and he chomped, pressing his teeth together so hard that they cracked. But he couldn’t break through the shell, despite his best efforts. He could feel [Extraction] wearing off. If he didn’t swallow soon, he was going to lose the skill.

That was when an idea came to him. The monster’s body was easy to shatter once it was frozen. Maybe it will work on harden too. Knowing that he was going to have to time this just right, Edge conjured his elemental blade. He pointed the glowing tip toward his own face, and then cracked his teeth open wide enough for the weapon to pass through.

Before the skill could force its way out of his mouth, he poked it with his iceblade, trying as hard as he could not to let the subzero sword touch his own tissue. It was a tricky maneuver, especially while running through the woods. But thanks to the boosts to his Reflex and Control, he was able to skewer the shell in his mouth without freezing his own face in the process.

After a few seconds of contact, the skill froze solid and stopped squirming. Harden was so cold that it was painful to hold between his gums. But by this point in his adventures, a little pain wasn’t enough to stop him. Edge didn’t bat an eye as he gathered his concentration, positioned the skill between his molars, and then bit down as hard as he could.

His jaws strained and flexed, but he could feel the wad of shell in his mouth starting to give way. A little more force should do it. He dismissed his iceblade and then drove the palm on his hand into his jaw, adding just enough force to bite through. With a tremendous crack, the tough skill split down the middle. A few chomps later, it was ready to be digested.

It tasted like grilled lobster dripping with butter, but that was only half the story. Edge had the sense of taking a hit head-on and not falling down. Of turning aside claw and blade with his own bare flesh. Of being so hard, that nothing could break him. I think I’m going to enjoy this one.

You have Extracted the skill: Harden (uncommon, rank 1).

Digestion is complete.

Would you like to slot harden now?

I think you already know the answer to that. Apparently, the System did know the answer, because that thought was enough to get the skill moving toward an empty slot in his garden. Edge was drawn inside his own core long enough to watch the shell lock into place on top of a marble pillar.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Once he had claimed it, the skill’s appearance changed. Instead of a thick crab shell, it shifted to a pair of forearms that were raised in a blocking position. Along the outside of the arms, the skin was covered in delicate scales made of a translucent mineral.

Now that it was his, Edge learned more of the details about how the power worked. There weren’t any surprises, and he was pleased with what he discovered. Harden would work on any part of his body, covering it in a crystalline substance that was harder than diamond.

The mana requirement was reasonable, and there wasn’t an upfront cost, although the drain would grow exponentially the more of himself that he covered. If he hardened his whole body at once, the skill would suck his reservoir dry in less than a second flat.

He could keep it going automatically, but changing the position or coverage of the scales required a moment of concentration. He would have to experiment with the dynamics later, but Edge had the feeling that the most effective way to use it would be to keep the scales the same size displayed by the skill—about enough skin to cover the back of both forearms.

Harden was a fantastic power to add to his collection, and he would give it a test drive whenever he had time to spare. But not just yet. At the moment, he needed to survive the monsters’ ambush. Both right now, and whatever happened after he made it back to the crew.

Edge snapped back into his body and kept right on running, bursting free from the tree line a few adrenaline-soaked seconds later.

He looked over his shoulder as he stepped out of the shadows and into warm sunlight. Hundreds of chitinous forms followed only a hundred feet behind his boots. The monsters weren’t as fast as a person in a straight sprint, but they were everywhere and showed no sign of fatigue.

“Hurry.” Sasha called to him. “We need to stay far enough ahead that Trapper can activate her devices after we pass through.” They pushed on, pumping their legs like mad until the duo reached the bottom of the butte and began to climb. They passed by a few scattered monsters along the way, but the main mass was still a good thirty seconds away from the base of the ascent.

Unfortunately, not all his troubles were behind him. When Edge reached the butte, he discovered that a second wave of monsters had emerged from the far side of the rise and were headed their way. The crew must have already been surrounded by the time they saw the flare.

It seemed that their choice of campgrounds was a two-edged sword. The narrow rise the hunters had relied on to limit the padamas’s approach made it possible to box them in too. If it were up to him, he would have tried to break through the cordon, even if the odds looked less than stellar.

But Trapper must have had another plan in mind. She signaled for Edge and Sasha to help hold the hillside, then turned and began manually detonating her traps. The first wave of crabs coming from the forest disappeared as the ground gave out from under them, dropping them down onto a series of needle-sharp spikes that lined the bottom of each pit. The spines must have been made of something incredibly hard. While some shattered, most of them pierced straight through the creature’s shells to impale the organs below.

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Edge shuddered when he imagined what it would feel like to fall into one, although he was far more worried about what would happen when the swarm of monsters overtook them. Trapper’s pits were effective, but they weren’t going to be enough to hold back the horde.

Thankfully, past that point, the butte was made of stone. The crabs couldn’t dig under the trap field, but they were going to push through the pits by filling the holes with their chitinous bodies and climbing over each other.

A lot of them are surviving the fall anyway, Edge noted. The ones that were able to activate harden in time. On a brighter note, the delay gave him and Sasha time to reach the others. They had survived the monsters’ ambush. Now they needed to survive their siege.