Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 6: Ticking Clock

Setna huddled between the ferns as death prowled the sky above. She peered through the sprawling fronds, praying that the foliage was thick enough to shield her from the monsters that had been stalking her for days.

Her heart hammered in her chest as a flock of feathered serpents flew past her hiding spot—tongues darting out to taste her scent on the breeze. She froze every muscle in her body, not daring to breathe as the deadly creatures soared over her head.

She had already seen what their venom could do and would rather die by her own hand than experience it herself. Her last memory of Ruby was tainted blood erupting from every orifice after being bitten by the serpentine monstrosities.

When the last snake vanished from view, Setna let loose a deep, shuddering sigh. She waited for a few more minutes to make sure they were really gone, then opened her backpack and checked her supplies. I have enough scent-erasing ointment for another few days at most. After it runs out, the next time the monsters find me, my bones will join my friends in this cursed place.

Her features twisted with bitter regret. We were such fools. I thought that we could handle anything this dungeon could throw at us. That even if we couldn’t clear it, we could scout the boss’s room without running into anything that we couldn’t defeat or outrun. This biome must be deeper into the frontier than I believed—capable of sustaining late stage-two and early stage-three life forms.

Not only had deciding to explore the Savage Garden cost Setna the lives of her crew—the only people on this whole fucking planet who cared about her—their entry was going to spark a war between the Crimson Claws and the residents of Puppet Town, even if neither side knew it yet.

The quest she’d triggered mentioned that it would relay itself to the leaders of both forces, but it said nothing about informing them of the other’s involvement. When the clock hit zero four days from now, both settlements would send elite units to complete the quest to conquer the dungeon.

But the convicts would know they hadn’t been the ones to find the Savage Garden. That another faction was trying to claim the quest’s reward. It meant that the prisoners wouldn’t just be coming to clear the dungeon, they would be ready to wipe out the competition along the way.

In short, in approximately one week’s time, both groups were going to run into each other outside the entrance. At which point, a vicious battle would ensue.

Neither settlement could afford to pass up the opportunity that the manufactory offered—the ability to create basic cores with the right resources, and even some common specialty cores. Having more cored residents would dramatically increase the strength of the holding that claimed the manufactory, giving them a fighting chance of surviving the changes that had been wrought to the surface of Ord.

And that was just the beginning. Once the jailbirds in the Gilded Heights were aware of Puppet Town’s existence, they were unlikely to leave it alone, even if the dungeon wasn’t in the picture. They would follow her tracks back to the Ivory Plains and besiege the settlement she called home.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Setna had recognized the name of their leader from the System’s message. Yussuf the Red was an infamous killer who had a long-standing grudge with Earl the Earthhammer, the Sheriff of Puppet Town.

By this point, it was inevitable that the men would meet on the field of battle. That the conflict wouldn’t end until one side was destroyed or subjugated. She wasn’t sure what would happen if Puppet Town won, but she knew that a grim future awaited them all if the Crimson Claws came out on top.

Not that she was likely to live long enough to see it. Setna was trapped in here. No matter how hard she searched or which direction she traveled, she hadn’t been able to make her way back to the entrance, and her supplies were running out. Her only chance of survival was if Puppet Town entered the dungeon first and cleared the way to her position.

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If they made it in time, she could offer her rescuers some valuable intel on the dungeon and its inhabitants, and her friends wouldn’t have died in vain. That thought gave her the strength to keep going, bolstering her resolve as she lay down to get some rest within the monster-filled gauntlet known as the Savage Garden.

***

Edge woke up late the next day, suffering from his very first hangover since arriving on Ord.

Apparently, Jenny’s brews were potent enough to have lingering aftereffects, despite his high Durability. He ignited his core and tried using Regeneration to cure his pounding headache. But even after pleading with the beating heart living inside his skill garden, Regeneration wasn’t able to lend a hand.

A hangover must count as being poisoned instead of tissue damage. Since he was here already, he spent some time taking in the view, pondering the changes that had occurred within his core after evolving to stage one.

Like the interior of all cores, Skill-Eater contained a space that was known as a central chamber. Edge’s took the form of a spacious stone room with rows of lights hanging from the ceiling. It had the ambiance of a workshop and being here made him feel calm and safe.

In one corner stood a large brass double tank that represented his reservoir—the component that stored the ambient magicytes he absorbed from the environment until they were ready to be burned. It featured a series of pipes that permeated the walls of the room, which led to the mana-pores embedded in his skin.

Across from the reservoir was his reactor, where raw magicytes were converted into the refined mana that powered his skills. Edge’s reactor was a hulking furnace forged from black iron, with a bulbous grill covering the front.

When he peered through the bars, an infinite plane of living flames met his gaze—a blazing hellscape that extended far beyond the boundaries of the chamber. A network of conduits connected the reservoir to the reactor, and another led to the pillars where his skills were socketed.

Adjacent to the central chamber was his skill garden, where the embodiments of Edge’s powers were socketed into the slots that fed them mana from the reactor. There were eleven marble pillars rising from the floor, each representing a skill socket.

But his skills weren’t bound to their pillars anymore. After his core had evolved to stage one, they could freely traverse this mysterious space, going about their business until he called upon their power.

He spent a few minutes greeting all eleven of his skills, thanking them for their service and requesting their ongoing support. Edge had developed a suspicion that forming a connection to his skills could enhance their capabilities, and he had been working on improving those relationships ever since. He watched them play for a few minutes before returning his attention to the other features of his core.

There were two more objects of note in the room. The first was what looked like a glass terrarium. It was the representation of Edge’s Auxiliary Skill Slot—the implant he had received for killing the garax. It let him socket an extra skill, even though it couldn’t gain experience and rank up. He was planning to use it to swap out powers on the fly, letting him adjust his skillset to meet his current needs.

The final component of his core was a shadow-shrouded door. Most cores only contained a central chamber and a skill garden once they evolved one, but Skill-Eater was special. Even though the door was sealed right now, Edge knew what was on the other side—a wild, alien landscape, where a giant was restrained by endless black chains. In fact, this entire chamber was contained within that mysterious entity, which was the true form of the being known as Skill-Eater.

When he had first bound his core, then again when it evolved to stage one, Edge had spoken with Skill-Eater face-to-face. The ravenous lord bound in chains had promised to share some of its power and that they would speak again once he evolved his core a second time.

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Edge had mixed feelings about his fate being tied to that enigmatic creature. Skill-Eater had changed his life and saved it on numerous occasions. Most of the time, they acted like partners, working together toward a common goal.

In darker moments, his hungry passenger felt like a parasite, using Edge as a host to nurture itself and regain its full power. The giant normally slumbered inside him, although it had woken up on occasion to share an insight or help him out of a jam.

He needed to learn more about his unique situation before he decided what he was going to do about it. But one thing was certain. The story of Skill-Eater was far from over.

Edge spent a few minutes staring at the epic skill that was digesting in the corner, which cheered him up quite a bit, before he snapped back into his own skin.