Chapter 18: Chapter 18. Braver Come Forth!
She gave me the option to choose from the total of four different types of personification. The more correct term should be classes. Those four names of the classes were floating in my mind, looking very enticing and intimidating at the same time.
They're nothing short of miracle. The information about the four classes entered my mind.
The first was Braver. A Braver was someone who specialized in charging and attacking with direct physical contact using nature and elemental weaponry.
The second was Lifesaver. A Lifesaver was someone with the proficiency to manipulate and redirect natural and elemental energy to tend to injuries and provide health regeneration.
The third was Breaker. Simply said, a Breaker was capable to borrow the power of nature and elements and channeled them to protect him/herself and others.
And last but not least was Soulstealer. A Soulstealer was someone who used the power of nature and elements to attack his/her opponent from distance away.
What should I choose? It didn't take long for me to make my mind up. I chose something that I liked.
"Granted! Braver, come forth!" the female god touched my chest again and, this time, a flow of energy was swirling from outside of my body and condensing in my chest. A very faint greenish aura started to emanated from me.
"You have additional status now," she pointed at my chest. I immediately understood what she meant as the information came to my head. On my chest right now appeared a symbol of one of the four creatures I saw on the platform. It was very faint, even fainter than the status lines on my wrist. And unlike a tattoo, the symbol was like emerging from inside of me, it's like it existed in my flesh and I could peek at it through my skin. It was both eery and, at the same time, looked absolutely amazing. The creature's symbol was moving in circular motion until it finally stopped. It became my Spirit status.
"Choose your first art," she again said to me.
With the information flowing in my head, I started scrolling through. There was not overly abundance choices, like the time when I chose Titan Armor, but it's still a lot. I became greedy, everything seemed useful, it made me confused about what to choose.
"Because you are the first mortal to come to me, I will grant you one extra art," with a proud tone she said to me.
'These gods really like having it their way, don't they? In an instant they could decide to give another gift easily. The way I see it, our lives meant nothing to them. But who was I to question their method? I could only accept the gift obediently.
Another interesting thing popped up in my mind. Why did she call them 'art'? Based on the names, I felt it's more proper to call them 'skill'.
"Just choose, less commenting," the female god chided. I meekly stopped my train of thoughts.
It took me some time to choose. I believed time didn't matter for this god as well. She didn't say anything when I was perusing the 'arts'. It wasn't as easy as choosing the class since there were so many to choose from. After some time passed, I made up my mind.
The first art I chose was called Fiery Sword. The second was called Earth Breaker. Both of these arts relied on my Spirit status. The higher my spirit the stronger my arts will be. I got the information about how strong my Fiery Sword and Earth Breaker from the moment when I chose them. As a start, the Fiery Sword was said to be capable of cutting through wood while the Earth Breaker was capable of paralysing nearby enemies for a tiny bit of time.
How cool was these skills? Oh, I meant arts! It's enough to make me totally forgot that I was mad at the god just now, because of the existence of this magical circle.
"Now leave, mortal," the female god commanded. Without waiting for my respond, not like she ever waited anyway, the female god moved. Her silhouette was flying away, getting smaller and smaller. Until the light vanished and I floated down the platform.
I looked at my legs as I was standing. Carefully, I tried to move them. Just as I thought, my legs were healed! If it were not for the fact there was a camp of purgers at some distance from here, I would scream my heart out.
I contained my excitement, not wanting to get ahead of myself. Despite the fact that I was now getting new capabilities, my physical strength was still the same. I was still an Acolyte. I still had three yellowish status lines on my wrist. Only now I had additional status called Spirit on my chest.
Having skills, or arts as the god put them, such as Fiery Sword and Earth Breaker was a big deal to me. Their effect was a game changer.
My best weapon was the military knife, which now I got two of them. The knife was strong and durable. It fared better when fighting the ordinary purger, considering I was much stronger than them, but it wasn't the same when facing the yellow-eyed purger. It took more effort just to cut the yellow-eyed's thick skin.
Fiery Sword's sharpness, according to the description entered into my mind by the female god, was capable of cutting through a block of wood. Yup, that's all. I hoped it was a more measured information like, for example, able to cut through one meter or ten cm thick block of wood, but that was it.
Still, there was no way a military knife capable of cutting through a block of wood just based on sharpness alone. It's ridiculous to think of how much strength needed to achieve that with the knife. With Fiery Sword, I could just imagine how easy it would be for me to cut through the purgers, including the yellow-eyed. Even if those yellow-eyed purgers had consumed hearts and upgraded their power, it should be a comparably easier fight than my previous one on one with one yellow-eyed.
Of course, comparing a block of wood and the flesh of purgers was not apple to apple. Some real life testing was needed to know the extend of its power.
The next art, the Earth Breaker was ready to very briefly paralyzed a small surrounding enemies. Its importance couldn't be underestimated.
After getting excited by all those benefits, now came the bad news. The bad news was that both Fiery Sword and Earth Breaker used my stamina, just like Titan Armor. The even worse news was that while Titan Armor grew with me, meaning that Titan Armor would level up as long as I did, these two arts would not. Their level depended on my Spirit's level, which I didn't even know how to upgrade.
Since the female god didn't tell me the Spirit's level name, I'd just call it first level.
How good would it be if Fiery Sword and Earth Breaker didn't cost any stamina. Oh, what a dream! Alright, I knew it's silly to have such wish. Because if it's true, then this event wouldn't be called Doom, it'd be called Practical Joke on the Purger.
With my body recovered and hunger subsided, I decided to went back to the cliff. I didn't do this because I want to fight the monsters up there. I did this because I needed to know what happened to the people up there. Plus, I was very curious about the reason Choi Dowon and Min Songhee did what they do to me. I was petty that way.
I ran up to the cliff. Looking up, I saw many primitive tools made of either wood or stone embedded into the tough wall of the cliff. I used those primitive tools left by the purgers to climb up. Even though I was never a professional, or even amateur, climber but my strength was comparable to yellow-eyed purgers, so if ordinary purgers were able to climb this cliff, with or without tools, then I should be able too.
At this time, with my health maxed out, just basing on me being an Acolyte, my strength level could be said to be the same with the yellow-eyed purger, while my agility was better and my vitality was lower. I surmissed that the difference was because of our innate as a being. Me being human, them being purger.
There could also be differences between us human. For example, when comparing between the time Davi first become an evolved and me when I first evolved. By common sense, people like him, who was originally a trained fighter, should have better attributes than me. Meaning that at the same level he was more powerful than me. Of course, all of that was only my personal deduction since I had no proper means to investigate it. I made an assumption based on common sense, regardless the fact that common sense had little meaning in the eyes of the gods.
When I arrived at the top, I scouted the surrounding carefully. Although my body was healed but my clothes were ruined. My backpack suffered the same fate. I managed to salvage several things like my identity card and passport since they were inside plastic bag, they were crumpled but overall safe. The clothes, however, were very dirty and the rations were crushed. The water container were dented and spoiled.
Under this bright sun and green grassy land, the red soil on my thethered clothes was like a beacon for attention.
The runways were empty. The windows of the terminals facing the runways were also devoid of any movement. I saw neither purgers nor human, which was disconcerting. Since this was a large empty space it was better for me if I could run as fast as I could toward the airport buildings. Thus, I sprinted.
When I entered, the eerieness of silence immediatelly surrounded me. No sound was heard, not even the hum of the air-conditioner. I saw blood at many places. The walls, the glass, the floors, the chairs and the elevators, none of them were free from blood stain. However, there was no bodies. The purgers had the habit of eating every single thing part of us. Knowing the fact about the purger made this scenery looked more and more vomit-inducing.
I saw a well-known brand clothing store inside the building. I charged inside of it, avoiding any blood on the floor, and hurriedly took a set of clothes. I went inside the fitting room to change into the new and clean clothings. It wasn't due of decency that I still changed inside a closed room, it's mainly because I didn't want to be caught with my pants down by a purger.
The store sold small bags too, I took one and moved my salvaged things from the backpack. I grabbed a couple pairs of new clothings my size and then put it in the small bag. It was full right away. This won't do, I should find a bigger bag but at the moment this would have to suffice. I left the store carefully.
Like an answer to my wish, I passed a store selling bags. From here I changed the small bag to a medium size backpack. Now I had space for other stuff too. I was able to fill it with bottled water and some dried food i found along my way. Later, I had the chance to change my ruined cross training shoes with a new one as well. I hoped this one lasted longer.
Too bad I didn't find stores that sold watches to replace my broken one. The reason I couldn't tell the precise time was because my watch broke during the fall and my phone was broken during my first fight with the purger at the hotel. Reality really sucks, it wasn't like movies where people could get into heated fight and still had their phones in perfect condition afterward.
I left the airport building without seeing anyone at all. It was previously packed with people, but now it was thoroughly empty. Only pools of blood stayed as proof that there were human here before. Based on the digital clock that could be found at many places in the airport, it's true that I had passed out for more than an hour.
It made me very anxious and jittery. I was scared for the lives of the people here. They had no protection at this part of camp. All the troops were focused on defending the front line, the bridge, which was a logical tactical plan. There should be a few guards stationed at certain part of the airport, however their number could be very small. They didn't think that it's easy to climb the hundreds of meters tall cliff, and that the few guards were enough to gun down any rouge purger that managed to climb it.
As I was enroute toward the refugee camp I saw several group of purgers. The group consisted of five to ten purgers. They scattered all along the road. That meant I have to take care of them if I want to reach the camp. There was no other road.
I sneaked closer to one of the furthest group of seven purgers. I saw that they have no yellow eyes among them, which was good. I throw a small stone to a slightly hidden bent. The noise the stone made when hitting the ground was minimal, but it's enough to attract their attention. This group of purgers moved to investigate, almost instinctively. When all of them have made it to the bent, out of sight from the other groups, I jumped out. Time to use my new arts.
Earth Breaker!
I landed near the middle of the purgers. When my feet landed, earthen mirage were visualized with my feet as the center. Within the radius of about two meter from me, the ground those purgers were standing on was immediately shaken. They were losing balance, unable to stand straight and could not make any meaningful action. While me myself was in perfect balance. This was the effect of my new ability, the Earth Breaker.
Fiery Sword!
From my right hand sprouted a luminous translucent sword about two inches wide and slightly more than half a meter long. The sword was emiting greenish aura. This greenish aura mesmerized even me, it was so pretty. If I didn't remember that using Fiery Sword costed my stamina, I would've used it more often.
I immediately swung my right hand, right at the next of the nearest ordinary purger.
Shiiing!
The sword went through its neck. I didn't feel much resistance. This sword was awesome! It's very sharp, a lot sharper than any weapons I had ever used. I didn't even have to use a lot of power. After the first purger went down, I went on to slash the others. The other purgers were losing balance, they couldn't react to my attack in time, and my sword was moving faster now as I familiarized myself more and more.
One by one the purgers fell down until none left. What could've been a risky fight had been reduced to this.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone