Chapter 460 - 460. Mana Manipulation
"Wh… Who is that old man?" Someone asked.
"His name is Domon Fei, anyone knows him?"
"I don't. I think his name just comes up under the guild member list not long ago. He is a new recruit."
"We still get a new recruit during our conflict with the coalition? I thought everyone was scared off already.."
"Look at him, do you think that's the kind of guy who gets afraid?"
Domon stood in the same place after decimating the zombies. This undead had no fear nor care for their fallen comrades, though. More continued to pour forward. Domon continued to plow them down with his cyclone move.
"Damn! He can take care of those zombies all by himself."
As they said those words, a large figure stormed out of the sea of zombies. It was another Skeletal Abomination, a level 37 special elite. As waves after waves continued, the undead appearing from the black fog also increased in level.
The Skeletal Abomination made a slap at Domon, to which Domon used his glaive to redirect the monster's assault. Its massive hand smashed into the zombies next to it instead, crushing them with one slap.
Domon used the chance when the monster was unbalanced to spin around and use the rear end of his glaive to whack the abomination's head, causing it to lose more balance.
As it stumbled, Domon lowered his stance in a striking pose. The white aura on his weapon blazed even more. This white aura was from the Weapon Master's standard skill, Ki Weapon. This skill infused a melee weapon with mana. At skill level 1, it caused the weapon's damage to increase by 20%, its melee reach by 0.5 meters, while the weapon's durability would not go down during the time Ki Weapon was active. The duration of this skill was 1 minute, and its cooldown was 20 minutes.
On the day that Jack met his grandfather, he had thought him about skills. At that time, he had expected that his grandfather had not allocated any of his battle skills, and he was right. After he thought his grandfather about the allocation process, he also gave him pointers as to which skills to add the skill points to.
His grandfather only added the points to a few selected skills that Jack proposed. Parry, Natural Body Recovery, and Superior Body Recovery. Jack proposed passive skills to be leveled up because he knew his grandfather would not be depending on active battle skills much.
But since his grandfather had such a large reserve of skills that he hadn't allocated, Jack proposed for him to keep 20 free points. So he could immediately level up his Elite skill to the max once he became an elite class.
When Domon became a Weapon Master, he had acquired two skills. One was a standard Weapon Master's skill after becoming one, while the other was for passing the trial on the first try.
The bonus skill for passing the trial on the first try was Ki Strike. This skill unleashed a blast of energy directly forward, dealing 300% physical damage in a small cone with a two-meters range. The skill also ignored 30% of its target defense.
The other skill, which was the standard Weapon Master's skill, was the Ki Weapon that Domon was using at the moment. Although it was also an active skill, it was only activated once and then it acted as more of a passive skill which boosted his normal attacks. Hence, Domon who preferred to use martial arts instead of battle skills, chose to use his saved up twenty skill points to level up this skill to the max.
Each level of the skill increased its duration. At max level, this Ki Weapon could last 5 minutes. Peniel had explained to Domon that if he used this skill often and upgraded its star, each of its stars would increase both the skill's damage and range by an additional 1%.
However, at the moment when Domon readied his attack pose. The white aura flared intensively, the reach which was originally 0.5 meters, increased to almost double despite it being still without any star upgrade.
If Peniel and Jack were here, they would understand how Domon had achieved such a feat. It was the same principle as to how Domon had managed to cause damage to Red Death without using a weapon.
During their training under the Valley of Tempus, there was more than one occasion where during Domon's fight with the Living Shadows, he struck at the Living Shadows using his punches and kicks. The Living Shadows were damaged from those unarmed strikes. Peniel and Jack were shocked by what they saw at the time.
Once the Living Shadows were routed, the two bombarded Domon with questions about it. Domon was confused as to how to explain at first, since he only fought as he always did. After some discussion, Peniel drew a conclusion. Domon possessed a highly advanced technique that was called mana manipulation, or in Domon's words, chi application. Peniel informed them usually only Special class adventurers displayed such a technique.
The mana manipulation allowed its user to control the mana in its surroundings and used it following his will. That's how Domon's unarmed strike using mana manipulation produced an effect as if it was done by a weapon. Such a technique also allowed its user to manipulate the existing skill, which was what Domon was now doing with his Ki Weapon skill. He accumulated the mana to enhance this skill, empowering them, turning it more deadly.
The accumulation only took a breath, the abomination was still off-balance in front of him. He uttered a few soft words as he readied his attack, "One-word slash."
The other players who were watching him, did not feel that his arm movement was fast. However, despite the feeling that Domon was moving slowly, they could not catch the swing of his glaive. At one moment the sharp end of the glaive was still positioned at Domon's back in his ready stance. In the next, the blade was already on the other side, at the ending of its swing motion.
The energy light from the Ki Weapon skill accompanying the swing, formed a straight line across the Skeletal Abomination's body. Time seemed to stop for a moment, before the Skeletal Abomination's body slowly split apart in two, and turned to ash.
"Holy f*ck…! Did I see an illusion? Anyone saw that as well?" One of the players who watched the scene exclaimed.
"Hot damn… Even Storm needed some time to take one of those down. This old man did it with just one slash."
"Where the hell did that geezer come from?"
Jeanny, who had received a message from John about Domon, went up to greet him. "That was incredible, master Domon. With you here, we might still win through this."
Domon was silent as he looked at his arm which was gripping the shaft of his glaive. It was slightly trembling.
"If you expect me to do the move just now again, I'm sorry I have to disappoint you. I probably can't do it a second time for quite some time," Domon said. "The chi in this world is very dense, so it allowed me to manipulate it much more easily compared to our original world. But at the same time, my body can't bear such a huge burden. I will collapse if I try that move again. I can only fight conventionally for the rest of this battle."
Domon thought back to what he had always taught, without sufficient strength and speed, all techniques were useless. 'Probably if my body becomes stronger, I should be able to control the chi of this world more conveniently.' He never put much importance on leveling up like what his grandson motivated him to. But after experiencing the limit that his body held, he had that small flame building up inside him, urging him to become stronger by leveling up.
Domon grinned. 'Hmph… Perhaps this feeling in gaming is what enthralls my grandson so,' he thought.
Jeanny, who had heard Domon's words, had a grim face. She was looking at the swarm. There were another thirty of those Skeletal Abominations coming out of the black fog. Even the weakest zombies were now level 33. Even with help of the native soldiers trained from the barrack, she doubted they would last much longer. Some of those soldiers had already fallen, including their guild members.
Jeanny couldn't help but look back in direction of the Guild Headquarters. 'How long are you going to make us wait, Storm?'
At the same time as Jeanny was asking the question, she received a message in the guild chat from the man, "I'm back!"
Those that read the message looked back in the direction of Heavenly Citadel. When they expected a man running out brandishing two swords, instead they saw a man rushing out on top of a horse on fire. The horse was so fast that by the time the scene registered in their mind and they were about to give way to the flaming horse in a panic, it had already jumped high into the air, bypassing both the Guild Wall and their defensive formation.