The Knight was not wasting any time, fairness was the last thing on its mind, considering that both were currently the weakest beings in the dungeon, the monster at 130, and the Knight at 105, nothing about this whole affair was fair to begin with. That is why the Knight continued marching aiming to debilitate it before the battle starts earnestly, or at the very least assess some of its capabilities. The Knight used the knife to stab the skin of the colossus, even with the mighty skill, battle monger, and the added sharpness due to the medallion and soul craft, even the poison, none of it phased the monster. The knife did not shatter, but it was made from a monster way weaker, so the Knight did not have high of hopes for it. One thing though it did manage to do was remove the dust from the sleeping monster, revealing the lustre of silver steel beneath. This monster was wearing armour somehow.
The Knight grinned inside the helmet, because unlike the Knight who is mostly armour, the insides were in no way close to a functioning anatomy, the Knight might look human, even slightly alive, but just like the rest of the void beings their existences were mostly symbolic, thus everything seen is their being. The monster, however, is alive, and armour protects the valuable lumps of flesh inside. It is true that destroying the armour will not injure the monster as it would if the Knights armour was, but the Knight did not need to destroy the armour, just find the interlocking bits and start from there.
After hours of clashing with the monster, it finally awoke, standing fully upright. There was one thing bothering the Knight thought, something that has been happening since it was made, it was once again wrong. More like partly, the interlocking parts of the armour had armour inside, somehow the giants armour was complex, having no joints to expose, but an armour inside to cover them up. That was when the Knight realised the monster inside was also made of the same type of metal, the armour was just extra. It was a 10-meter steel goliath, wearing the same, if not harder, skin as full armour. Sending the knife to the inventory, the Knight held the hammer and the shield, and when the monster punched the shield it and sent the Knight flying, it would have been crushed if not for the shields normal ability to send some of the damage sent to the wielder to the surrounding, thus the ground beneath the Knight, when it finally came to a halt was decimated.
'Timing was off, how did that beetle manage it, holding the immobility for even a second, starts to rip the soul apart.'
The Knight was feverishly struggling to time the immobility of the shield with the precise moment it got struck. The hammer was giving the monster a couple of miniscule dents; they were at least distracting the monster from unleashing its full might. It seems its abilities are centred around using the huge sword. It must hack at the surroundings and transfer the damage. The ability is only restricted in the sense that the damage can only be transferred once both targets have been damaged to similar proportions.
An example would be someone destroys a boulder, then they break one of your bones, once your bone has been destroyed, it can transfer the damage dealt to the boulder to somewhere on your body, like your heart. The Knight is alive because the destroyed heart, sadly it does not need, the destroyed bones are a secondary thought, the huge cut on the neck is merely there to make the head lean one way. The monster was starting to get confused too, it has been destroying the cavern, and transferring the damage, effectively restoring it and doing the scaled damage to the Knight.
If its knowledge stats were higher, it would have realised, the only way to kill the Knight is to completely destroy its vessel, crush the armour to dust and decimate the almost human looking pile of flesh inside. The Knight spoke too soon, cause then the monster turned its attention to the cave, and started accumulate damage by going berserk on the entire cave, it almost looked like it was going to bury them both, the Knight knew better, because if nothing happens the cave would be healed, and it might be the one lying on the floor, dead.
The battle with the Sygiligon was getting hectic. The cave was about to collapse from the beating it was taking, all of it meant for the Knight in due course. The monster turned around facing the Knight with a vicious glee permeating the air, the Knight could not see the monster beyond the visor view, only small clues from the two dark eyes, but the Knight could feel the impending doom. They have been fighting for a couple of days now, and the Knight was starting to think that these tremors might call the other dangers, and neither of them were growing tired of the fighting, since one was a void being with no need for rest, and the other a monster that had been in slumber for the past hundred years. For the last couple of days of fighting, the damage the monster had piled up was truly daunting. Today there were noises coming from further below, sounding like more monsters, the Knight was not ready to make this losing battle a party of more than two.
It was time, the Knight had not used the visage of terror the whole battle, it was planning to keep fighting for a week more, even with the danger of adding to the final damage strike from the monster to the Knight. The problem was that the monsters further down, were getting funny ideas of joining the Knight fight above, so the Knight had to end it here.
Absolute silence once fell upon the world, and the monster staggered back but did not fall. The Knight struck the shield on the floor, no sound, and the dirt beneath parted, so it would be more accurate to say that the shield was hovering where the ground level once was. Then sound returned, this was the first time the Knight did not finish a monster after activating visage of terror, so the reaction was quite interesting. The monster was probably sure of its victory in this battle if not for what happened; the few seconds of silence, the dreaded fear it felt then was real, and still coursing through its veins, fresh, ringing with truth in its mind, now the prey, the challenger really, was an imminent threat that had to be eradicated, and just like the rabid monster it is, it was about to unleash all of its might in an attempt to remove the danger.
'I'm impressed; it didn't run.'
Then with a massive slice of its sword, the sword struck the shield true, the cave, in a wonderful and mysterious aura of darkness, it repaired itself fully, as the damage was being transferred to the Knight...?
Not this time though, since the Knight had timed the strike perfectly with the immobility added to the shield. The strike was countered at the precise moment it hit the shield; this was the moment the Knight had been waiting for, finally timing the immobility to send the attack from the Sygiligon back at it, including the damage it was about to transfer. This was still not enough though, it only crimpled the hands, and that's why a second before all of it happened the black feather shattered, allowing the Knight to borrow the ability of the monster. The hands of the monster were almost shattered completely, with the fingers hanging loosely, huge cracks that used to run across the cave, were now marring its hands.
The fingertips were almost non-existent, and the view inside was still nothing but the mysterious metal. The Knight was not done though, as this did take the monsters ability to wield the sword it did not end it, so the Knight used this damage to activate the ability of the monster that had been copied by the feather, and the Knight transferred all the damage it had dealt to the hands, to the monsters chest, and it exploded in a fury of metal chunks, shattering like a marble slate. And then it fell to its knees before toppling forward, the echo ringing in the cave was disturbed by the grain of darkness asking what to do with the soul.
The Knight was facing up, when the chest of the monster imploded, it instantly restored the hands, the ability went even further and restored the form of the Knight, including some of the damage delt by the monster. Now all it was thinking about was the level 130 soul, and the approaching monsters. Before the battle that would rage, the Knight focused on what the grain of darkness had said.
You have slain a level 130 Sygiligon. Soul acquired. Craft a scythe, armour, scroll or store?
The Knight did not have that much time to consider its options, being swarmed by powerful monsters was not on its to-do list. So, the knight rode of the scythe due to it not being practical currently since it does not possess a secondary ability, which is hard to craft. The armour could not be equipped, the Knight learned that a while back, it could not equip armour or sword, being that they were permanently bound to the Knight, it had a useless set of such armour in its inventory currently as a reminder.
'The scroll sounds interesting for one purpose; it is the first thing resembling knowledge.'
The Knight as considering just storing the soul because, if there happens to be more monsters like this, then it could store that ability in the shield, so that it can absorb damage. The scythe had the ability to continuously get bigger when fighting bigger opponents, the armour could transfer damage to a specific part of the body, the scroll… well it did not possess information of which the Knight could use, it did write down what the Knight was thinking aloud, not enough to become a journal, but enough to become a note book… note scroll, to write down noteworthy things. Wishing not to be rash the Knight just chose to store the soul and seek refuge and then work on a plan to handle each monster that will be showing up soon.
The Knight had had to wait for a week for the monsters to disperse, seeing that they had lost their prey. Some did come close to finding the Knight, possessing extraordinary tracking skill, to allude those the Knight would use its void territory in a crafty way, by slowly spreading it out, it seemed like nothing existed there, and a slight use of visage, to discourage those with curiosity. When that did not work and they came looking anyway, the Knight would make a distraction by shooting an arrow that could bend direction, thus to confuse the hunter of its origin, and the bow's ability allowed its projectiles to emanate a set of fake arrows around it to trick the target to dodge towards it, this as useful because the presence of the fake arrows is so powerful, it is hard to ignore. While the hunters were distracted, the Knight would then shift to an area, that has been searched and absorb the void territory back inside, in this pitch darkness, it would only go noticed by the monsters with night vision.
Some left and only three remained roaming, wishing not to waste time, the Knight decided to ambush one. It was a wolf like monster, towering at three and a half meters, it did not have night vision, which made it a target, it relied on its sense of smell, and its fur glowed, thus illuminating a fair amount of area around it.
The Knight stood right on the edge of this illuminated area and shot three arrows, the first one took out the eye, the other struck the skull, and shattered on impact, and the third hit space between its claws, to make it harder to move precisely. These arrows were hard to dodge, as they tricked the monster using its senses and instinct, but they were not too powerful, the bow was a level 115 weapon, and the arrows were from a level 121 quiver. They were hardly able to dodge the…