Mature Content Warning: None

Author's Note: We're moving right along...

Chapter 16.1: Shall I Become a Badass?

Money was an interesting thing. In and of itself, it provided nothing more than extra weight and a means to inspire envy. However, as a tool of society it provided an easy means of acquiring many of the things that a person might need in life.

The copper that Scott had sold to his acquaintances had fetched a fairly decent price, though he would probably sell the rest of the load to the scrap yard directly. His associates had offered a little over half-price for once, which told him that they must have just sold off a load of material recently and wanted to acquire more as quickly as possible.

As it turned out, his pipes weighed more than he had originally thought that they would. He had sold roughly two hundred thirty of them and scored a little under seven hundred dollars. If he took them to a scrap yard he might earn around twenty-one hundred dollars for the rest, if not a little more.

He rubbed his chin. If he went to several different salvage yards he could slow the process of the IRS discovering his inter-reality item smuggling. As long as he kept records and hid said records, he could claim it as a legitimate business once life became a bit stranger. He would have to be careful, but beyond the fact that he was non-human and he currently owned a slave girl he had done nothing inherently illegal. Well, if you did not count the illegal immigration angle.

For the near future, small amounts of money would not be an issue. What really caused Scott a bit of concern was his desire to see his way forward. He needed to choose a training path for his physical skills. His magic was straight forward at the moment, but his swordsmanship training would require him to select a primary method of combat.

A slight frown creased his features. He had to make a fairly important decision soon. His training in swordsmanship would take a while, even with his bonus to combat skill development. He had to focus on exactly what sort of swordsman he wanted to train himself to be. Scott contemplated the situation then frowned once more. He tried to work out the choices, but each had their own merit.

If he went the sword and shield route, he would have to learn a skill for using shields. It was the most defensible route, and many would consider it to be the best route. However, it also seemed somewhat shameful given his true nature.

He was no longer human. His power would increase at a considerable rate, and honestly there would come a point in time that any shield that he used would be more for decoration than anything else. The same thing might even happen with armor.

His natural defense and durability were already quite good, and would only grow further. It would be better to focus on using his superhuman strength and borderline superhuman agility to enhance his attack capacity since his entire body was capable of shrugging off the sort of strikes that a pre-dream martial artist might have been capable of dishing out.

Should he dual wield? With his strength and agility he could dual wield fairly hefty weapons. Dual weapon training was more feasible for him than for a normal human, but that did not mean that it was the best route. Though, it would look quite badass.

Dual wielding was flashy and cool but he could tell that it would take a lot of time and effort to ever develop his skills to the point that he would be able to fight effectively while wielding them. He could throw his swords to unleash an enchantment, but if he was going to do that he would be better off with axes or hammers.

Scott rubbed his chin. No, it would probably make more sense to keep one hand free for casting magic. So, that left another option. Did he specialize in fast, light-weight, one-handed swords or did he go for a massive two handed variety?

A random thought crossed his mind.“What about guns?”

He did wonder how they would stack up in the future. Firearms could dish out a lot of punishment, but they would be useless against some monsters. Of course, so would swords and axes unless they were enchanted. Could a gun be enchanted? If so, what limits would there be? Would a firearm skill allow for greater damage or just higher accuracy? That was something akin to how his swordsmanship skill worked and it would make sense if it worked that way with guns.

From what he could tell, an increase in swordsmanship did not make him automatically do more damage. It seemed to relate to his having developed his skills in sword combat to the extent that it was a little easier to hit his target where he wanted. Thus, he did more of the damage that he wanted in the places that he wanted to do it. He could also block and parry a little easier. He felt that the swordsmanship skill was not about dealing more damage with his sword, it was about mastering control of his weapon so that he could apply his attacking power more effectively.

Of course, that might be because he had not really trained himself to do anything but hit his target. He had not worked on his stances or tried to improve cutting power at all. He just hacked at things and tried to hit the spots that would probably hurt the most when they were struck.

“From what I can tell, it seems like my weapon attack stat, hidden strength stat, and the base damage of my weapon determine attack damage.” He thought about it, and the more he considered it, the more he favored two-handed weapons in his mind.

If he had the strength and agility to wield a massive weapon, and the skill to make it easier to hit his opponent, why go light? He could batter through shields and cleave his foes asunder. Besides that, with his current strength he could probably wield such a weapon in one hand as comfortably as someone wielded a heavier one-handed sword.

“Maybe I should ask Sonja? She did promise to show me a few things about sword fighting.” said Scott aloud. She had more actual knowledge of fighting with melee weapons. Everything he knew had come from reading and Internet videos.

She was still out doing girl things with Shara, so he would have to forget about his swordsmanship training for the moment. Instead, he would check his magic skills. He had opted to reallocate two of his skills and have them work in the real world. He could now train his alchemy, rather his mystic chemistry skill in this world. He had absolutely no idea how to train that other than a vague thought about grinding up things and placing them in boiling water.

He would look into that more, later. Right now he had another, better known, option. Scott decided to go do something that he had not done in a while due to running around with Sonja and his desire to hunt. He decided to head into his backyard and spam-train his dark magic skill.

“I can maintain my current form for about an hour, I think.” An hour sounded like a good amount of time to practice his skills.

There would be no point in attempting to train his mana generation or sensing skills, but he could still use them to prolong his dark magic training session. While Scott walked he decided that he would quickly cast his jolt spell using his vitality until he grew weak then use mana to continue to train while his energy regenerated over time.

Scott took a deep breath then casted his spell. The dark energy attack sparked from his fingers and he felt his life force drain away. He repeated the process again and then once again. He had used his spell somewhat frequently to hunt but he had not just stood still and spammed it like this before, or at least not to the extent that he intended.

After he had casted it a dozen times, he felt like he had been whipped and beaten, so he began to generate mana. That power was not endless. If he used it more than a handful of times in a given area, he would start to seriously impact the life force of the creatures and plants around him.

He generated mana by drawing on the rainbow fire, the life force of the world around him, and used it to cast his spell. After the third casting he happened to glance down and noticed that the grass nearby had begun to wilt. A wild flower had lost a petal. Simple plant-life such as grass was the easiest to draw vitality from, but it did not have much of it to begin with. Even using their life force enough to drain a single full point of vitality from a blade of grass would cause it severe health problems.

Normally, he drew tiny fragments from multiple nearby sources, but if he casted the spell often enough the vitality drain would compound. Plus, he automatically drained a little vitality from the world around him as a means of restoring his health. That drain was infinitesimal compared to the vitality drain of a spell, but it still caused a minor impact on the life around him.

Scott moved away from his current location and continued walking until he found a part of his yard where the grass had not started to wilt or dry up. He worked his magic a few more times and then repeated the process. Once he finished his most recent spell-cast, his eyes widened and a joyful smile crossed his lips. A little voice had informed him that his dark magic skill had increased! That had happened much more quickly than he had expected.

He continued to train. He found a good location and then casted his spell three times. He moved to a new location and repeated the process once more. Scott kept up the pace and by the time he had drained his entire back yard of a reasonable amount of its vitality, he had increased his dark magic skill level once more.

“I’m so close to increasing my magic level one more time that I can almost taste it.” muttered Scott. He refused to kill the grass or the flowers, and had even resolved to cast no more than once in any given spot during his training from now on. The plants had a right to their lives, such as they were.

The front yard had little life in it due to his recently repaired asphalt parking lot. Perhaps he could try taking a trip through the woods?

Scott had spent very little time of his remaining hour during his training, so he had time. “Yeah, I think so.”

He walked to the front of the house then left through the gate. For a moment he stood and marveled at his rebuilt home. The place had never looked so well-maintained. It looked like it had just been built, and even sported a fresh coat of paint.

A small smile crossed his lips. His house actually looked like the sort of place where someone might actually live. Who would have though it possible?

While he walked around the fence and headed off toward the woods, he could not help but think about recent events. Surprisingly, he realized that he was content. For the first time in his life, at least in his adult life, he had a reason to both get up in the morning and sleep at night.

Scott thought about Sonja and Shara. He thought about his new nature, and he thought about the possibilities of the future. No matter what he did, or where he went, he knew that the depressed asshole that he used to be was nothing but a bad memory.

His life was not perfect. He still felt a lot of deep and abiding anger about certain things, but as long as nothing set off that dormant emotional volcano of rage then there would be no problem.

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