Heavy Metal [ A Monster Evolution LitRPG ]

Chapter 48 – Skills Go Up.

“That’s interesting, it lowers the use of stamina and MP on active skills?”

Rusty looked at the new skill description he received with a certain glint in his visor. While he did not have a stamina stat like many other living beings, he did have mana. It was his only battle resource, which he needed to watch carefully; once it was reduced to zero, he would fall into a state of slumber. If what this skill implied was true, then any active skills he used while holding a sword would cost fewer Magic Points.

However, his focus was not on the skill description but on what had just happened. One of his basic passive skills had actually turned into something new. His guides had mentioned something like this, but they weren’t quite sure if he would be capable of it. Rusty was an irregular dungeon monster who shouldn’t have been able to heighten his level or acquire new skills without the dungeon heart’s help. The dungeon created all the monsters and redistributed their stats, not the monsters themselves.

Now it was clear that his skill could reach new heights but there were also some limitations. From what his guides had told, the skill upgrades were determined by his form and level. It was possible that to gain an even more advanced version of this passive skill, he would need to evolve into a monster of D rank. It would probably take a while until he could confirm this new knowledge and before that there were other things he needed to check.

First he needed to confirm if the new passive skill actually did what the description said. While holding his bronze sword, he performed a basic power slash that had also begun reaching a higher point and perhaps would ascend to a higher tier skill. His weapon glowed red and slashed forward with increased speed.

“It does work!”

Previously, the power slash skill had consumed five points of his MP; now, it only cost three points. This meant there was a flat reduction of at least forty percent to his active skills, complementing his passive swordsmanship skill. This was not all he noticed; with the ascension of the skill came additional boons besides the lowered mana cost.

“It feels a lot lighter than before…”

Rusty held his sword and could tell that his movements had become sharper than before. It was as if his eyes had been opened, and he now realized how many unnecessary movements he had been performing during his attacks. Before, each sword swing had been planned but slightly awkward. Now, every movement flowed more naturally, almost as if the sword was becoming an extension of his arm. He practiced a few more swings, confirming the increase in his precision and speed.

“I wonder how it will feel if I reach advanced swordsmanship or eventually master the skill fully…”

This was just the tip of the iceberg, and his guides had mentioned the sequence to him beforehand. Soon after came advanced skills, then expert, master, and even grandmaster. There was still a lot he could improve, and he had multiple skills to train. With the help of this tactic, it was possible to do this at a record pace, but he was still working on a tough schedule.

He wanted to descend further down and start leveling, but he also recognized the importance of his skills. Stats weren’t everything, a lesson he learned after facing off against that adventurer leader. With the help of his Basic Elemental Charge skill, he was able to fend him off. Under normal circumstances, the man would have likely emerged victorious, given his more advanced skills and probably higher level. Yet, one skill managed to turn the tide of battle, making Rusty quickly realize that skills were just as crucial as his main level and stats.

“I don’t have any passive skills regulating Elemental Charge and Discharge though, so I won’t be able to lower how much MP it uses…”

When leveling active skills, they would usually just increase in power, or the area they covered would become wider. This held true for his Basic Elemental Charge skill as well, which, once leveled up, would affect everything further from the item he charged up. Gaining forty percent more time with the skill active would have been much better than just intensifying it. However, he wasn't sure what would happen once an active skill had been upgraded. The tactic of using it to slay each of the living armor monsters was working, albeit not as quickly as with the passive skills.

Rusty continued with leveling up his passive skills along with his active ones, focusing on power slash and thrust the most. He was systematically luring in more living armors, even deciding to try multiple ones at once. With both shields and his body being hit from all directions, his defensive skills were being leveled quite fast and soon they also started advancing to the next tier of power.

Rusty nodded in satisfaction as he read the new skill description. His efforts were paying off, and he could feel the difference in his defensive capabilities already. With Shield Proficiency, he was more adept at using his shields efficiently and somewhat knew better how to predict enemy movement while defending. Soon, his other defensive skill had gone through a change without really much of a change in its description.

What had changed was his durability stat, which had gone from an E+ to an E++. Rusty wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it seemed that it wasn’t enough to elevate this stat to the D rank. Perhaps if his Metal Body was upgraded further, it could reach that level. Once the Metal Body skill had ascended, he also noticed a slight change in his armor plates. They had seemingly changed in some way, either increasing in thickness or density.

With both his defensive skills now upgraded, he was able to focus on the offensive ones. For hours, he would lure in more and more of his living armor counterparts, lowering their HP to one point before using an active skill to finish them off. Eventually, multiple of his passive skills were reaching the threshold of advancement, and finally, one of his active skills had reached over level nine.

“...”

“...”

“...”

Rusty waited for the system to continue giving him more updates, but after the first one, it didn’t continue. Even after he went into his status screen and selected the list of all his skills, there was no new active skill, just the regular Power Slash skill with ‘Max’ written in brackets where the level used to be. It seemed that active skills were a bit different than passive ones. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but soon he would discover why. Despite this setback, he persisted, as he was gaining experience for many of his skills and regular levels.

His level had increased as he began killing more and more of the F-plus ranked living armors. While they weren’t E-ranked monsters, they still provided good amounts of experience and were high in numbers. He had spent days leveling his skills here already, and for some reason, the skill that didn’t want to advance itself was given to him after a level-up.

Initially, he assumed it was just a standard skill granted after leveling up. Rusty still received some skills from growing his levels, but none overlapped with the ones he had absorbed. The Shield Parry skill was something new and unrelated to the others. What led him to assume that he needed to go through a level-up to enhance the active skills that had been maxed out was that he had gained two skills at once. This had never happened before but he wouldn’t be sure until he confirmed it during the next level-up.

The new skill was quite intriguing but proved to be challenging to use in practice. Rusty attempted to use it against one of the other living armor’s and failed instantly. There was no visual cue to the skill, but once activated, he had to commit to a parry motion. If the timing was missed, as it was on his first attempt, he would open himself to an attack. The parry motion was quick and forceful, making it difficult to retract his shield once swung. Luckily, his body had become a lot sturdier than before and all the hits from his enemy only caused damage to their own bronze blades.

On the other hand, once the parry was initiated correctly and he connected with the enemy armor’s sword arm, it would stagger them back. A strange vibration would course through their body, causing something akin to a stunned debuff. During this window of opportunity, he had around a second to quickly go in for a critical hit. It was a clear high-risk, high-reward type of skill, one that would likely require a lot of time to master.

Eventually, one whole week had passed since his return to the dungeon. Rusty had spent all this time progressing through his passive skills without bothering to rest or sleep even once. When his body was damaged, he simply restored it with the numerous bronze bodies that had piled up. Over time, his leveling spree came to an end.
“This should be enough, I need to move on…”

All his passive weapon skills had been upgraded to higher-tier ones. It was clear that basic skills were F-rank, and fighting F-Plus living armor opponents allowed them to level up quickly. To repeat such a feat, he would need to do the same with E-rank monsters, something he hoped to confront soon. His main goal was to damage the dungeon and force the heart to banish him. To his surprise, this week of grinding not only allowed him to gain skill levels but also seemed to affect the temple area where he had made his temporary lair. The relentless battles and accumulation of defeated living armors had altered the environment.

“The number of bronze armors has decreased, there should be twice as many…”

The number of his lesser counterparts had decreased by at least half. It seemed that killing them and taking their bodies for spare parts had put some type of toll on the dungeon. Rusty wasn’t sure, but this dungeon might have required the monsters' bodies to be returned; otherwise, it would eventually run out of resources to recreate them. While adventurers sometimes took monsters or their body parts with them, it was not to the extent Rusty had done. His game-like storage space was quite vast and did not have the limits his stash tab did.

There was a limit of ninety-nine for each body part of the living armor but that didn’t stop him from gathering more. He could use his SP to turn those body parts into bronze ingots after reaching the limit. This was apparently enough to start affecting this place and either the dungeon was running out of resources, or it identified that something was wrong and decided to halt monster production in this area to lower its losses.

“Either way, this is a good start.”

It was time to move on with his current quest. All his skills had increased, and his time on the sixth floor was coming to an end. He had no idea how deep this dungeon went, and Alexander couldn’t tell either. Alexander mentioned that the tenth level was usually significant, but he would need to reach it first to confirm this. Thus, with a full inventory of bronze, he headed towards the seventh floor, which brought another change to the dungeon.

“This one looks… a lot different…”

Rusty had to take a moment to look around as a thick mist had gathered in this area. He had never seen anything like this before in the dungeon, and the space was also quite vast. His first steps caused him to sink into the ground, making his sabatons quite dirty. In the distance, he heard strange monster sounds, which some people would describe as toad croaks.

“There are no corridors here?”

It was a giant swamp, with it spreading out in all directions. The dense fog made it difficult to see far out and the ground was covered in mud. This place was not like the other floors and it would probably be a lot harder to hide himself from adventurers.

Rusty moved cautiously, each step squelching in the soft ground. The fog was thick, reducing his visibility to only a few meters ahead. The croaks and calls of amphibious monsters echoed eerily around him. He approached a few strange sightings, which turned out to be tall, dark trees with no leaves. In the distance, he spotted green lights, which, upon further examination, turned out to be structures similar to the temples he had seen on the higher levels.

Groans of monsters resounded from these strange structures that reminded him of the lesser undead zombies from the second floor. There seemed to be many of them surrounding this strange structure. The green lights revealed themselves to be some sort of magically enchanted braziers. They were around this area which for some reason was missing a lot of fog. It was as if the flames were pushing the mist away.

“That one looks different than the others…”

Among the diseased zombies that were still F-rank monsters, stood one that was different. Its body was larger with more muscular limbs and its movements were swifter. It was the first time Rusty had encountered a proper E-rank monster and it was an undead zombie type, something that he probably had an affinity for.

“I suppose, this is where it starts…”

While hiding behind one of the large swamp trees, Rusty scanned his surroundings to ensure no other monsters or adventurers were nearby. Soon, he equipped his shield and longsword; it was time to conquer this floor as he had the one before. Perhaps if he could continue slaying multiple monsters, the dungeon would need to react to his presence and eventually reject his existence.