Mason woke with a start, sitting up and taking in his surroundings. He was in one of the resting rooms that he had passed earlier on his way to see Grammach. He also noticed that all of his armor had been removed, he was just wearing his ratty clothing. His shirt still had a hole in it from when he got impaled.
Shaking off that memory, he stood up and walked out of the room. As soon as he rounded the corner, he saw Grammach standing there. He instinctively reached for his sword, but then he remembered that it had broken on his last strike.
Grammach turned to him and spoke. "How are you feeling human?" Remembering their last conversation, Mason replied, "Why am I still alive? I mean I definitely appreciate it, but I thought we were fighting to the death?"
"Look around you, do you see all of these empty rooms? Grammach said nodding towards where Mason had come from. My kind is being culled by Mirstra." Grammach seemed to almost spit out her name when he spoke. "She has been killing us for years, and we dwindle in numbers. She is too strong for me to take on alone, but you impressed me in our fight. I believe that with the two of us we can defeat her." Grammach said, staring into my eyes to gauge my reaction.
"I don't have much of a choice. If I don't accept you will probably just kill me." Mason said staring back at grammach. "True, but if you help me kill Mirstra I will let you go. At least then you will have a chance to live." Grammach replied and started walking towards his throne room.
"Alright so when are we going to do this thing, I lost my only weapon in our fight." Mason asked and followed behind him. "As you are now, you will not be able to help me stand up to Mirstra. I will help you grow stronger so we can take her down together."
As Grammach finished his sentence they arrived at a door carved into the wall to the left of his throne. They were they same type of doors as those at the entrance. But unlike Mason, Grammach barely struggled to push the giant doors open. Walking inside, they appeared to be in some sort of loot room. Grammach walked over to one of the walls and grabbed a sword and a book and handed them to Mason.
Mason looked at the sword first. It appeared to be the exact same type as the one he started with for his class, they must be mass generated. As for the book, he didn't really know what to make of it.
[Body Reinforcement Manual (Uncommon): Stone Body
This is the body reinforcement style used by Grammach and his troop. It allows you to harden your skin and uses one's weight to become stronger.
]
"This isn't going to make me grow stone over my skin will it?" Mason asked semi-jokingly. "No, that is something specific to our species only." Grammach responded, snickering at Mason's question. "I will train you to improve your body reinforcement." Grammach said.
"Alright, when do we start?" Mason asked.
"We will start right away. Grammach said, eyeing the book in Mason's hands. Taking the hint, Mason focused on the manual.
[Would you like to choose Stone Body as your body reinforcement style? Y/N]. Not having much of a choice, Mason selected yes. There was a bright glow, then the book dissapeared.
[You have achieved basic rank in Stone Body style
This style is based around increasing your physical defense and weight. Then using that weight to increase your strength.
At basic rank, Stone Body style increases your weight by 2 pounds for every point of Resistance you have, your skin becomes more durable, and It also provides +5 Resistance.
Finally, your strength stat is increased by 5% of your total weight rounded down.
However, no armor can be worn while using this style. If any is equipped, all bonuses will be lost.
At every rank, you will have quests to level up your mastery of Stone Body style.
These are your current quests:
Get hit 50 times in fights from enemies your level or higher: 34/50
Survive a hit from 3 different enemies that are at least 5 levels higher than you: 3/3
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Weigh at least 300 pounds: 300/300
]
Mason felt like a wave of energy ran into him from the sudden influx of stats. he could also feel his skin growing and contracting, tightening over his frame. Then, after a moment it passed. He ran a hand over his skin, and it felt more like leather than normal skin now.
Before he could admire himself for too long, Grammach interrupted him. "We will start with the quest to survive a hit from higher level enemies, follow me." he said and turned around, heading out of the armory.
"Actually I already have that one completed." Mason said interrrupting Grammach before he could leave. Grammach turned around in surprise. "Well, that should make things a lot easier. You may be able to reach apprentice rank before we have to fight Mirstra. I estimate we have a month at most to prepare before she figures out what’s going on." He turned back around and kept walking and Mason hurried to follow him.
Grammach brought him to a room hidden behind his throne that he hadn't noticed before. Inside their was a large cage with dozens of rock spiders in it. Directly outside of that cage was a slightly smaller one that was blocked off.
"This is where you will do your training. You will go inside the cage with no weapons but your fists and you will fight rock spiders in there or die trying. In order to speed this up, you will have multiple in there with you at a time, you will start with three." After saying that, Grammach walked into the bigger cage and grabbed three rock spiders. They tried to attack him but clearly weren't doing any damage.
Grammach threw them into the smaller cage then motioned for Mason to come over. He analyzed the spiders in the cage in the meantime. [Cave Spider (Level: 12)], [Cave Spider (Level: 13)], [Cave Spider (Level: 13)]. Mason smirked slightly, he'd had trouble with two of them before even with a sneak attack, but he was much stronger now. His power-ups since the last time he fought them should hopefully be enough to make up the numbers disadvantage.
Mason set his sword down outside the cage and took his shirt off, it was tattered enough already. He opened the door and walked inside. He heard Grammach locking it behind him, it was do or die now.
Mason walked to the center of the cage, as soon as he did all three of the rock spider's launched themselves at him. Mason ducked under the first while grabbing the second by one of its legs and slammed it towards the ground.
Before he could smash it, the third spider rammed into his back and grabbed on, causing him to lose his grip on the second one. Mason quickly backpedaled towards the wall of the cage. Before he could reach the edge, he got some unintentional assistance. One of the spiders slammed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him and slamming him into the edge of the cage.
The impact caused the legs of the spider on his back to dig into him even further. Before the one the slammed into him could scurry away, he grabbed it by its right set of legs, two legs in each hand and pulled. *CRACK* With a sickening crunch, he ripped the legs off the spider and threw them aside. He started reaching for the one on his back when the last spider slammed into his left shin knocking him to one leg.
Trying to stand up, the spider that just smacked into him lunged at him trying to shove its pincers into his chest. Mason grabbed on to the pincers holding the spider back momentarily. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in his foot. Looking down, the spider that he ripped the legs off of before had dug some of its remaining legs into his foot.
As if it couldn't get any worse, the one on his back was starting to wake up. It slowly pulled itself out of his back and climbed up to his neck. *RAAAGHHHH* Needing to break out of this, Mason let out a loud shout and ripped his foot into the air, taking the spider with it and smacked it into its friend. With his hand free he grabbed the spider on his back and whipped it in front of him.
Grabbing its pincers, he stretched them until they fight around two of the bars on the cage. [Power Strike] Then he slammed his fit into the back of its rocky shell causing its pincers and legs to rip off and the body to be sent sailing out of the cage.
[Rock Spider (Level 12) defeated]
[Level Up!]
Grinning at the level up Mason slowly walked over to the two spiders. The one with all of its legs remaining launched itself at his head in a last ditch attempt, Mason just smiled. He activated [Inner Grit] and simply let the spider smack him in the forehead. He felt it, but with all the adrenaline running through him it didn't hurt, he felt more pleasure from the fight than the pain that it brought him.
Grabbing the spider by the shell with both hands, Mason tried something, he crouched down onto his knees and used [Power Strike]. *BOOOM* With a loud slam and crunch, Mason slammed the spider down pincers first into the ground, he hadn't been sure it would be able to work that way but he was glad it did. [Power Strike], [Power Strike], [Power Strike]. With a last slam, the spiders shell cracked open and it stopped moving.
[Rock Spider (Level 13) defeated]
Standing up, Mason walked over to the last spider pitifully trying to crawl over to him with one set of legs. He crushed its remaining legs under his heel with a [Power Strike] infused kick to finish it off.
[Rock Spider (Level 13) defeated]
[Level Up!]
Letting out a long breath, Mason calmed himself and walked back to the door which he found was already unlocked and went outside the cage. "You fight well, brutally for a human. Maybe we will have a better chance against Mirstra than I thought." Grammach said, some begrudging respect in his tone. "You will rest until you recover your health and then we will continue. You will not rest tonight until you reach initiate rank."
Nodding, Mason used his tattered shirt as a rag to clean the blood off of him. He would definitely need to get some new clothes when he got out of here. Leaning back against the cage, he could feel his heart thumping from excitement. This is gonna be a fun night.
