For all that he wasn't very good with aiming, mental stats aside, Aki sure learned how to shoot fast, the abilities quickly leveling at a speed even he considered unnatural through the week they spent on the basics.

He could only give two explanations to this, one being that he had a hidden talent for marksmanship which used his more extensive knowledge on the theory of bowmanship and gunmanship to blossom given the right moment, and two being that due to the earlier factors and his awkward ass mind focusing on the lessons to an extreme degree he was able to avoid thinking stuff like how he wished to spend even more time like this with Septima, resulting in a hidden multiplier receiving a bonus and propelling his leveling speed.

Still, as time passed it turned out that even this hidden multiplier couldn't keep his leveling at a speed comparable to his magic.

Anyone that got to know his skill levels for the related abilities looked at him with doubt, scorn, shock and jealousy in that order. Apparently skill level was related to the effect you could cause with your current abilities, so even if his technique sucked in comparison with anyone with more experience, he'd have a similar level as long as his base capabilities were high enough.

Really, it made sense since someone with a thousand strength could theoretically always jab harder than a proper boxer with 500 strength despite only knowing the basics. Then again, it wasn't like someone at that level of power would be able to unlock said martial art either, be it because of a skill of their already making the weaker skill superfluous, or because the system would simply not grant levels for such a small effort, meaning that they'd need to look for an evolved version of the skill if they wanted to be stubborn enough to actually get anything from it, but that would mean actually reaching a level of mastery where said techniques made a difference.

Translating, Aki started considering how to master every weapon available to a certain while he could as it wasn’t like he had ever gained a spear or axe skill despite the way he used a helbard, nor did he lose his hammer related skill despite having a hammer head on his polearm.

Strangely enough however, on the first day of the fourth month something new happened. Waking up in the middle of the night, he was presented with a strange notification from the system, having been redirected from his newest courtier.

[The dungeon has been invaded! Initiating takeover protocol! Challenge dungeon’s defense system initiated, please assume control. Reward quest dispatched, please check * for further information.]

"Fucking pieces of fuck I'ma trying ta sleep the bloody hecklers cant hold it in ther pants fo one training session!" Cursed Aki, going deeper and deeper into a scottish accent until he was doing his best McDuck impression.

Thanks to the quest he knew exactly where the breach was. In all honesty, he wanted to fight, but he sure as fuck wanted to go back to sleep after going at it for two weeks straight. It was like the system was cursing him for wanting some excitement.

As he bounded forward with the help of several spells, he was quickly encapsulated in his armour, sending several alerts to those in the camp. He didn't need a missive on dungeon breaches to know shit could go down fast, nevermind that he indeed had read one before deciding on this whole training camp.

Shit WAS going to go down even if he closed the breech, so everyone needed to prepare. Be it bigger factions of the Nexus territory trying to interfere with an irregularity, outsiders trying to infiltrate or even Nether forces just giving a jab at a hateful capitalist nuclei that was any system, none of that bode well, be it from the interference of foreign energies that could inbalance a dungeon all the way to the release of entities even he could not possibly defeat being added to earth.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be any of that. While the tentacle monstrosities were most certainly not from inside Nexus sanctioned space as it was corroding the dungeon structure itself, the elves shooting it seemed to not like it either, so it was quite likely that this was not a planned invasion.

“WHOEVER THE FOCK YA ALL BE, I’L BE KILLING THIS HERE SHITSTAIN FIRST, SA DON THINK AH FOGOT YA’LL EVEN IF YE RAN, YA HEAR ME LASSIES?!?” Thundered the menacing voice filled with Aether and mana, which seemed to attract the attention of the eldritch being while paralyzing the elves, who soon started running while abandoning any attempts at shooting either monster in question.

Aki soon noted that shooting beams of radiance, pure fire or even arcane magic at the thing only had mild successes at best however, so sending the giant wall of tentacles through the spatial tear on the dungeon walls was not going to be so easy unless he decided to burn his very soul to fuel a spell that would effectively pass the wall of white his eyes could not hope to understand.

Which meant…

"Lea, warn everybody about what I'm seeing and don't let anybody kill themselves." He shouted through their connection, sending an apologetic feeling and dread which he did not allow in his face.

Confusion. Fear. Reassurance. Confusion. Dread. Anger. Refusal.

That was all she was able to transmit before he used his armored body as a projectile, reaching Mack 2 with an explosion to propel him and by taking out a special lance-like weapon to put in front of himself, the air being pierced by what looked like a pinecone with a sharp end, strange tubes between the scale like indentations that would gouge out several kilos of flesh.

Quickly, their connection was muffled, a few levels up on the related skill due to one reason or another being added to the fact that he had just left the dungeon through a crack in space. Touching the monster’s mind with his own, he was barely able to remain conscious as he shared with it his notions over pain, his body mechanically fighting to disentangle itself from the mass of tentacles he managed to take out of the expanding rift in space behind him. The vacuum wasn’t very big and he really wanted to kick his own ass for thinking for even a moment that this was a good idea, but there wasn’t any other real option now.

Barely five to ten seconds after throwing himself into the pile of oozing flesh, tentacles, maws and eyes he was already half ‘submerged’, the pole of his prototype weapon barely visible, yet he still set his one free arm for a straight punch, suffusing the bone with arcane energy, the muscles becoming taut with electromagnetic force and the fat burning with most of the heat in his body. As he summoned a weak field of repulsion behind his elbow and an even weaker gravity field in front of his knuckles, his breaking limb was let loose, images of knights, healers, harbingers and many others flickering behind his strike as it hit the dragon spike and breaking it’s hast in a way so as to shove it deeper inside the fucker, it’s flesh separating as the forces behind his punch were released inside of the monster, exploding with ridiculous power befitting of a proper bomb and releasing Aki from it’s hold.

More importantly, as a newborn creature without mortal feelings, it was simply not well suited for dealing with any kind of pain since it was never possible for it to feel any, causing it to roar and be stunned for a moment as it learned this horrible feeling like a newborn baby being stabbed in the gut. Unfortunately for the young mage who’d devised a replica of the devious creation he’d just triggered through damaging the device further, the sense of pain was his, so he was going to feel everything the creature did.

The explosion was muffled by the amount of flesh on the way and the small amount of space for it to act on, but that was exactly how the device was made to work best, meaning all of the hundreds small blades attached to it were successful in perforating and shreddings a lot of the monster’s insides, their form destroying or damaging as they passed only for the vitality charged dragon blood coating them to cause a regeneration effect, forcing the wounds to close around the metal and contracting around the hundreds of metal pieces with new nerves.

Soon the monster stopped screaming and moving, the result similar to what would happen to a human without 299, 300, three hundred and one levels in pain resistance. The state of shock did not stop it’s bodily functions, meaning it was still a mass or regenerating flesh and appendages, but it did allow Aki more than enough time to kill the thing through a more conventional way, like picking it’s very soul apart without any resistance and making the lump of meat into an actual corpse, shoving it into a storage artifact and limping back inside the closing spatial rift.

He had lucked out, not having gone far from the thing, as the moment the would-be shoggoth perished it became exactly what his three dimensional senses could perceive and nothing more, riding it’s mucus of the ability to keep the rift open. Still, the dungeon was so fast to repair the thing that he had to strain his already failing magical prowess to blast himself inside as his mind forced him to keep a completely cold and emotionless reaction or simply be lost gods know where, loosing both feet as he was unable to perform a perfect arc with the diminishing hole.

His mind didn’t work for even a second more though, as his eyes soon registered the well endowed asiatic female wearing an armored robe and pacing around the place where the rift had been on the dungeon, allowing him to relax enough that he lost consciousness even as he fell and she realised he had crossed over again after thirty three hours and a half.

………...

Staring at the pod of dragon blood, she watched as again a whole team of doctors cut off the extra flesh and eyes trying to grow on his body.

From the ravings of that very same young man she knew this to not be a simple infection, but another being trying to taint his soul. The growths would stop, the system would help with that much, but that would be it. Said corruption would still be in his soul however.

She did not know how that would be fixed or even if it could. She could only hope that he had a solution for this. She also had to hope she did not end up killing this arrogant bitch before he decided what to make of her however.

"Try to use those skills one more time and I will show you what it means to have your reality burnt away. Now, tell me about your experiments again, slowly and pretending you do not think of me as an idiot." Damned politicians.

"As I was saying." Coughed the prime minister. "We were trying to create several products out of the anomaly and it’s ooze, one of them being the creation of suits capable of granting partial resistance to its influence."

"But?"

"The suit will need constant attention and a connection to an expert technician so that it may function properly due to his lack of several implants, including connection ports and interactive routines which every citizen from the Domain has installed at birth and expanded upon during their lifetime." The elf explained with a bit more confidence.

"And you can't just implant those things on his body and make the connection?" Lea questioned, which made the woman give her a look.

"We don't have the materials nor the equipment to guarantee a successful procedure, nevermind that human and alfar biology are not the same." She slowly explained.

"He will not die that easily, especially in this safe zone while being fed vitality." Scoffed the older woman. "As for materials?" She grinned. "Take your pick, I have a small mountain of these." *Splat* As the elf corpses started to appear from thin air, the threats previously made started to seem more and more genuine to the politician despite the initial cordiality of their captors.