Seeing his status first felt like the right move. It was quicker to go over, even if he did like to look at the massive amount of MP and HP he'd gained solely from the lesser eldritch horror for tens of minutes at a time.

  'Still nowhere near Soph's absurd level of Magic Power, but that eldritch horror had more MP than everything else I've killed combined. If I hadn't gone into it and ripped it apart from the inside, it would have killed me. Or worse...' Lone thought as he shuddered, recalling the forbidden knowledge that had been crammed into his brain during their battle.

  Pushing those memories right back into his fifteenth mental puzzle where all of his unwanted memories belonged, he began going through the skills that had ranked up over the last five months as well as the new skills.

  Going down his skill list, the first was his brand new skill, Fortress Shield Mastery.

  Lone was technically in a fortress shield right this moment. It was why his SP was maxed out despite that stat typically draining every moment a person was conscious.

  Lone had created the skill when he had gotten annoyed at Hilda constantly getting behind him and walloping him with her big fuck-off hammer, Gurt.

  Her Agility just outpaced his own so much that he had an outburst and basically created a bone shell around himself.

  She hit it and it cracked, of course, but a new skill was born. It took a good amount of effort after that to power level it to master rank and earn that additional effect.

  Right now his second Blood Clone was serving as a fortress shield. Lone was sure that it wouldn't be many more months before the skill's information updated to state more than just he owned it. He had given up the information of the skill to the guild, after all.

  Whenever he was out and about, Lone always had a buckler made of his own bone attached to his right arm, even when fighting and encapsulated in his fortress shield. It was simply too useful to not always have one ready.

  Four percent sounded small but in actuality, when your entire life revolved around fighting, even a single percentage chance to guarantee an attack will hit your shield was massive.

  Nothing new or impressive with this rank-up, but since it was a parent skill that stacked on top of all other shield skills, it made Fortress Shield Mastery nigh undefeatable. A truly gargantuan amount of force would be needed to even so much as crack a fortress shield made of his own bones, let alone break through it.

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  Lone had barely focused on this skill since it didn't really impact his fighting style all that much. The only use it had received was when he tried fighting with both a greatsword and a greataxe at the same time to middling results.

  Soph, on the other hand, had also trained the skill up to intermediate rank, though only level one. The difference in ability and application of the skill, however, between the two of them was noticeable even to the untrained eye. Of course, she was better than him.

  Full Charge was interesting. It gave some devastating killing power to Lone's bone fortress shield, especially when he created it with spikes on its exterior. It also factored in Survivor's Speed when determining his maximum possible swiftness.

  'There're probably more applications I just haven't thought of. I wonder if Divines have as many skills as I do and if they use them in a similar way. The additional effects from weapon masteries at intermediate affecting more than just their original weapon type must be a pretty widespread fact among the strong,' Lone thought.

  Not a useful additional effect outside of drawing but it sure had improved the quality of his self-drawn maps and the portraits of Soph and Sophie he liked to sketch while imprisoned between missions.

  Maybe he'd eventually have perfectly steady and 100% controllable hands when drawing in the future. That was a quaint idea that did nothing if not distract Lone from the fact an Arch Devil was out for his blood.

  It had taken four sessions with Stoner Heeth for Lone to get the second publicly known earnable additional effect. His puzzles had also begun taking different shapes and forms as soon as the skill hit intermediate rank.

  12 of the puzzles were still boring old vaults, although no longer rusted and in disrepair and some were becoming blurry as if changing form.

  Three of the vaults, however, had taken the form of Rubik's cubes but with 33x33x33 dimensions instead of the typical 9x9x9. They were 9x9x9s until the skill became advanced so that only spoke of how crazy those particular puzzles would become at expert and master rank.

  These newly defined puzzles were the fifth, the tenth, and the fifteenth puzzles. Without Lone's active cooperation, Stoner Heeth couldn't even get past the fourth puzzle anymore, let alone tackle the initial Rubik's cube one.

  'I look forward to Hazel's reaction to my mental defences now. Well, assuming she's willing to meet me. I fuckin' hope she is. I don't trust anyone else to invade my mind to train the skill,' Lone thought.

  Nothing new or special here but still, his maps of the dwarven kingdoms, of ruined and flourishing urds and kriegs, and of the extensive Farwinds that connected then, were noticeably more detailed and easier to interpret, in part due to this, and in part due to Drawing and Art mastery.

  Just as Lone was about to pull up the next skill's information, a new skill at that, Blood Thickening, Soph interrupted him.

  'There are two adventurer groups up ahead. One of them somehow noticed your blood bubble and the, uh, what did you call it? Wyvern? They've spotted them even at this distance. One group is talking about attacking the carriage while the other seems fed up and is trying to tell them to think before acting,' she relayed via their telepathic connection.

  'I wasn't done with my recap. I'm really still not in the mood for idiots...' Lone responded.

  'Sophie says she's happy to take care of them for you, but, uh, between us, I think you should do it. You've trained how to hold back, she never will. I-I know you're upset and I know you like your skill reviewals considering how often you do them, but, uh, yeah. Here they come,' Soph said. 'Four C-rankers and one B-ranker, by the way. None have silver plates or above, though the one that I think is the leader of the other group, the one not coming for you, is a silver plate.'

  'Think they'll let me tell them I'm a gold-silver plate before or after I pacify them?' Lone asked as he made his blood shield turn into a thick flowing cape to reveal his form. He also ordered the blood wyvern to maim but not kill anyone who tried to harm or enter the carriage.

  'Their killing intent is strong. Probably after,' Soph answered.

  'Strong enough for me to get the resistance?' Lone wondered.

  'Nope. You're too used to death. Like you and Sophie have discussed, since she and me can't so much as summon a flicker of killing intent directed at you, you'll need someone capable enough of killing you and intent on it too,' Soph said.

  'Yeah, yeah. Any mages?' Lone inquired.

  'Nope! At least, I don't think so. Nothing in their mana says 'I can utilise this energy' to me. There're two in the other group though. One's a fire mage I think judging by the colour of their mana. I can't tell what the other one might be,' Soph responded. 'I'm gonna go back to reading. Lemme know though if you need to use the Express Soph Transport System.'

  Lone got up and cracked his neck. He squinted and could see four humans running towards his precious carriage, weapons drawn and hatred in their eyes. The fifth was trying to stealthily jump from tree to tree with a bow in hand.

  "Money's on a grudge with a blood mage and they just assumed I'm a mass murderer or something like their grudge's target. There's not a thing suspicious about a blood bubble and a blood wyvern or two. Yeah, no talking sense into those kinds of heads, not until they've been slapped around a bit," he sighed.

  It only took a few more moments for the five valiant warriors to reach Lone who had, to his credit, taken out a steel swordspear and wasn't underestimating the foolish adventurers even one bit.

  "Today is the day you die, vile blood mage!" the one Soph had pointed out was a B-ranker shouted as he slid across the gravel path while moving his longsword into a thrusting position. "Mana Severance!"

  Lone's eyebrow rose in interest as he shifted his body slightly and caught an arrow that had been aimed for his heart in between his ribs and arm. He untensed those muscles and let the entirely metal piercing instrument clatter to the floor.

  Two more melee warriors flanked him as a bright blue spear of energy flew in his direction from the leader.

  Of course, he let it hit him though he did block it with his unshielded wrist as he spun on one foot and used the flat side of his swordspear to trip one of his two flankers while kicking the other square in the chin.

  The young woman with a shortsword and buckler fell head over ass while the burly man whose jaw had been introduced to Lone's boot went flying into the air.

  "T-Two seconds!" the handsome young man who was sweating and clearly quite drained after his skill usage was beyond shocked for whatever reason.

  'I guess the skill scales off of some metric and I made it near worthless somehow? Better question is why didn't I earn it? I know that's not a racial skill since he's a human. Bloodline skill, maybe?' Lone wondered as something sharp pricked his neck.

  He glanced down only to see a dagger trying its hardest to gain any purchase on him but had instead barely succeeded in drawing his blood.

  "Shame. No assassination-based skills? I was hopeful, but you are just a C-ranker," Lone sighed before slamming his head back, reverse headbutting the woman trying her best to sever a critical artery.

  As if someone so inexperienced could ever hope to escape the sight of his Enhanced Vision. Still, the blade wasn't even poisoned.

  Considering the leader hadn't followed up his Mana Severing with another attack, Lone couldn't help but think that he was dealing with an incredibly inexperienced group as a whole.

  Two more arrows flew his way in quick succession, one of which he dodged automatically with Evasion Mastery while the other he simply caught and returned to its sender. A gruff yelp quickly followed suit.

  "We done?" Lone asked the stupefied B-ranker.

  "H-How are you a C-ranker?! It's impossible!" The man seemed to regain some of his composure and readied his longsword.

  Lone sighed and reached up to his collar, resulting in a flinch from the still hesitant young man who stood a few dozen metres away from him.

  He pulled out his adventurer plate that was wrapped around his neck. "I'm a gold-silver plate adventurer, and while I am technically a blood mage, my cape and wyvern are not born of magic. Now go collect your archer friend and come back here to explain yourself. I was quite busy before you decided to waste my time."

  Lone looked up into the sky and moved a little to the right and nodded. A visceral scream slowly became audible before it stopped abruptly when Lone caught the man he'd launched into the air by his leg, breaking and almost separating the limb from the man's body.

  Dumping said man on the ground and ignoring the two women also on the floor, one holding her bleeding nose in agony, the other simply staring in shock at his adventurer plate as she lay there on the road, Lone got back into the coachman's seat of his carriage.

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