“I never thought I’d see one, but that was a shadowreaver. It must have a lair nearby. It’s the only reason to leave us alive. It wants to keep our meat fresh to feed its spawn. They can only eat live prey or newly severed flesh. It won’t be gone long.”
In that moment, Edge knew he was dead. That he would either expire from blood loss now or live long enough for the monster to drag him back to its nest and serve him to its young.
Slipping into shock, the warmth fled his limbs. His thoughts grew dim as his lifeblood painted the floor in drips, dribbles, and gobs. The reaver isn’t as clever as it thinks. It cut too deep. I’ll be dead long before it returns.
Edge knew there was something he still needed to do. Something that kept the embers of hope burning in the depths of midnight hell. But what was it? It was so hard to fight through the pain and think through the haze.
When he’d realized he was dying, all other thoughts had left his head. But just before he grew too weak to stand, he remembered the reliquary. It will open any second. I don’t know what’s in there, but it’s the only chance I have. Get up, Edge. Hurry up and fucking move.
Rising back to his feet was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Walking across the room was the second. He started staggering toward the altar, dragging his guts behind him like a string of sausages. Twenty feet to go. Fifteen.
When Edge was ten feet away from the altar stone, his legs gave out from under him, and he hit the ground hard. His vision flashed white when his head struck the floor, almost knocking him out again.
He gritted his teeth and started to crawl, heading for the opening in the marble, through which light had begun to shine.
By now, his vision was growing dim along the periphery. The world looked like it was at the other end of a long, dark tunnel. His body felt frozen, and he couldn’t stop shaking. It was a battle to keep himself moving—each inch more difficult than the last.
Edge realized he was drifting off, and not into a dream. About to step into oblivion’s embrace. A sleep from which there would be no waking.
No. Not like this. Not without fighting until my last breath. Too weak to crawl, he began wriggling forward on his stomach, hands reaching toward the reliquary as he painted the floor in steaming gore.
What must have only taken a couple of seconds felt like hours. Days. A lifetime. Each millimeter drove molten daggers into his shredded guts, while the rest of him felt like it was encased in ice and lead.
It was so hard to move. To think. To find the will to drag his body those final few feet. But at last Edge found himself drawing near the concealed cavity, where something was glowing with a bright purple light.
He thought he heard the sound of chains rattling together—an endless clatter of link sliding along link, like all the chains in the world were contained within the space below.
He’d reached the alcove leading under the altar. All that was left was to get down there. As he peered into the opening, the voice of the System rang out. Not coming from his Guide, but from the reliquary itself.
“The containment field has been deactivated. You may forge a pact and claim your core.”
The word core resounded across Edge’s mind like a pair of dice rolling across the table. While a Basic core wouldn’t be enough to save him anymore, there was a chance, however fleeting, that the reliquary held a rarer variant. One that possessed an ultimate ability.
He didn’t know much about ultimates, since the details of their powers were fiercely guarded by the people who wielded them. But there was a possibility the right ultimate could save him from his wound and then help him escape the reaver’s territory.
There’s only one way to find out, Edge. What have you got to lose?
He didn’t have any more energy to drag himself forward. Instead, he tipped himself over the ledge and let himself fall, rolling down the steep incline in a boneless tumble. He had just enough willpower to reach out after hitting the bottom, raising one hand with the last scrap of his strength.
Just as Edge’s heart beat for the final time, his fingertips brushed against something he had no words to describe. It felt incandescent and electric. Solid and intangible. Chaotic and ordered, all at the same time.
A prompt from his Guide appeared in front of his eyes, just as his vision faded to black.
You have found an unbound power core.
Core Information
Name: Skill-Eater
Rarity: Unique
Category: Unique
Attribute points per cycle: 2
Ultimate Ability
[Extraction]
Uses per day: 3
Cooldown period: 24 hours
Steal the skills of monsters, men, and beasts and claim them for your own.
Core Trait
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Collector (Unique)
You can no longer acquire or rank up skills through normal means. You may slot twice as many skills as before. Additionally, you will gain an extra skill slot with every new stage.
Would you like to forge a contract with Skill-Eater and bind the core within you?
Warning: You will no longer be able to acquire skills by normal means.
Edge had never heard of a Unique core before, or a core that came with strings attached. But there wasn’t time to worry about that now.
“Yes,” he tried to say. But all that escaped his lips was a bloody bubble, and the darkness rose to swallow him whole.
The System must have sensed his intentions and taken that for consent. Because just before his neurons stopped firing, Edge heard a voice that reverberated throughout every fiber of his being. Shook him to the very depths of his soul.
“The cage is open.
The price has been paid, and the seal has been transferred.
A blood pact with Skill-Eater has been forged.
Stand by for core ignition.”
***
Edge snapped back into his body and opened his eyes.
For a second, he had been standing somewhere else, talking to something… strange. He’d had a vision of his heart burning to ash, replaced by an incandescent organ wrapped in living chains.
I must be hallucinating from the pain… That was when the realization of what had happened washed over him, driving all other thoughts from his head.
The core! The System said I claimed it. But how do I use it? And what was that about ignition?
In that same moment, Edge’s world erupted into flame. Searing pain engulfed his body, setting every nerve alight. There was a bonfire raging behind his ribs, burning him to embers. No, not a bonfire, a furnace.
He had just enough time to scream before the agony shot up by an order of magnitude. Then again, until there was nothing but the limitless blaze roaring inside him. It felt like he had been hurled into the sun, threatening to shatter his sanity beneath the overwhelming intensity of the experience.
It isn’t all pain. A small, dissociated corner of his mind realized. There’s something else too. And the fact I’m hurting means I’m still alive.
Thump. Thump. Blood began pumping through his arteries once more, letting Edge draw a ragged gasp as life returned to his organs and limbs. The cataclysmic inferno receded to a pulsating warmth within his chest, and his thoughts began to clear.
It let him realize that something about binding the core must have healed him a little or was otherwise allowing him to function. But that was the extent of the good news.
His guts were spilled across the floor. Blood was dripping from the ruins of his hand. The monster was coming back at any moment, and he was still fatally injured. Still running out of time.
In short, Edge didn’t have time to consider the implications of what he’d seen or read. While this fleeting moment of clarity gave him enough energy to move for another few seconds, he was well into the process of dying and had far too little blood to sustain him regardless.
He had another minute at most to turn this around, or he was dead despite his lucky break. That was when he felt his core flickering inside him, whispering that there was a way. That he still had a chance of living to see tomorrow.
He could smell something wonderful in the air, stronger than the stench of sweat, fear, and blood. With no reason to resist, he listened to the voice telling him to get up and move. To fight for his life with everything he had.
Holding on to that last glimmer of hope, Edge rose to his feet and staggered out of the alcove. Back toward where the pair of prisoners were experiencing their own version of hell.
When his gaze landed upon the jailbirds, he felt a strange longing he’d never known before. Electric desire welling up from the space behind his ribs.
He knew in that moment his life had reached a crossroads. He could either give into the craving and become something new, or he could die. I want to live. Show me the way. He made his choice, and within Edge Vasher, a ravenous beast awoke.
It was a hunger. A call. A need to consume something exquisitely delicious that he had no words to describe. Acting on instinct, he staggered across the room and stopped in front of the wounded convicts.
The man with no arms was barely conscious. He seemed to be in the final stages of deciding whether he wanted to end his own life, although his arms had finally stopped bleeding.
The beast inside Edge ignored the tall man for now, although he felt a surge of gluttony at the sight. What it wanted to devour was coming from the man who’d been cut in half. Who was clearly in shock but unable to die, thanks to his own skill. Not while there was still mana flowing out from his core.
The newly born instincts stirring within Edge knew the big man had something he needed. Something that could save his life and would satisfy him in a way nothing ever had before. A delicacy that could only be taken from the willing… or from those unable to resist.
Half-maddened by pain and tormented by desire, he reached out toward the man and surrendered to the beast howling inside him. Granting it permission to emerge and to feed.
Activating ultimate ability: Extraction.
The moment he gave it leave, something deep inside his chest began to stir, dwelling in the core where his heart had been only moments before. Once more, heat was rising inside him, and Edge began to burn.
The rattle of a thousand chains thundered in his ears, just as the energy reached a crescendo.
He reached out, fingers stretching toward the big man as something went sliding beneath the skin of his arms. From the ends of both wrists emerged a pair of glossy black chains, moving by their own will. Edge couldn’t tell if they were solid or ethereal. Metal, magic, or just a shape projected by his subconscious to help him process what was happening.
In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter.
Fast as thought, the twin chains surged forth like a pair of vipers, writhing and twisting through the air. Predators going in for the kill. Their ends reared back and then shot down… plunging into the prisoner’s chest with no appreciable resistance. Edge realized he could sense them, like they were extensions of his own body.
For just a second, he could feel the living links passing through flesh. Then they went diving into the core burning within the big man’s chest, searching for something Skill-Eater wanted so badly it made his whole body shudder with need.
In that instant, he was granted a vision of the convict’s core.
Edge found himself standing in a cozy living room with a fire crackling in the hearth. He could smell something savory cooking in the kitchen. Hear the patter of rain falling outside. It was a comfortable home. A dwelling for something… tasty. Because inside this strange space, whatever it was, were the big man’s skills.
There were several scattered across the room, but only one his core wanted. He looked around with wide eyes, trying to understand what was happening. It all became clear a few seconds later, when the chains found what they were looking for.
They went surging for something squirming in the far corner, hiding behind an overstuffed armchair. Something that desperately wanted to evade their pursuit. But with two chains working together, it couldn’t get away. I think they’re hunting… his skill!
The snaking links circled their prey, cutting off all avenues of retreat as they wound tighter and tighter. They continued weaving back and forth until the skill had been completely encircled by the chains linking Edge’s core to the prisoner’s.
With blinding speed, they struck, wrapping tight around the pulsing mass, accompanied by a chorus of ghostly clinks. Before he could make sense of what was happening, the twin chains yanked hard. They ripped the skill free from the jailbird’s core and began drawing it toward Edge, bringing the vision to an end.
He found himself back inside his body, where less than a second had passed in the outside world.
At this point, he expected the chains to withdraw with the prize they had stolen. Instead, the chains deposited the squirming skill into Edge’s mouth before retreating through his wrists into the space behind his ribs.
With that act, it all became clear. Skill-Eater wasn’t just the name of the Unique core—it was how its bearer claimed them. Eating skills was a literal description of the process rather than a turn of phrase.
In that moment, he knew with complete and utter certainty that just holding the skill in his mouth wasn’t going to cut it.
If he wanted to eat the skill, Edge was going to have to chew.