Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (beach books .txt) 📗

chance to activate ‘Vampiric Feeding’, allowing you to paralyze, then siphon their health and mana for so long as your fangs are embedded in their flesh… you gain 5points of health and mana from your target per second, rising by 50% with every second that passes…

Cost: 5MP+5HP per second.

I read through them at speed, dismissing the Drider out of hand, and after a few seconds, the Beholder Core as well. As much as I’d love to gain the abilities, I just couldn’t afford the side effects. I pulled up the Air Elemental Essence Core and reconsidered the bonuses and negatives, quickly followed by the Fire Elemental.

This Air Elemental Essence Core can be located in one of the following Nodes for the corresponding bonus:

Head: (Alongside Primary Node): Increase in mana regeneration by 50%, self-control decrease of 5%.

Eyes: (Alongside Secondary Node): ‘Eagle Eyes’ ability gained, allowing you to sharpen your vision, zooming in by up to twenty five times your regular capacity, but you gain a 50% reduction in DarkVision’s range.

Ears: You can hear sounds over a greater distance, but you cannot focus in on such sounds as easily, transforming the world into a confusing cacophony of sounds until you learn to parse it out.

Nose: You lose all sense of smell

Mouth: Your voice will travel further, carried on the winds of fate to reach those you desire, 5mile maximum range added to your whispering voice, but ‘shouting’ over such a distance has its issues, after using this ability, you will be unable to speak again for six hours

Heart: Your heart grows stronger, increasing your HP by 5 points per point invested, but at lower elevations your health regeneration is halved

Lungs: You gain increased Stamina regeneration at a rate of 50% when in clear air, minus 50% when in unclean air.

Stomach: Digestion will be quicker and easier, but less pleasant for those around you, due to… emissions…

Legs: you gain a 20% speed boost at higher elevations but at lower elevations your speed is decreased by 20%

Feet: You gain ‘Astounding Balance’ and are much harder to knock down, but easier to injure.

Arms: You gain a 20% increase in speed of attacks and defense, but a 10% reduction in carry weight and damage dealt with Melee weapons.

Hands: You gain the ability to guide the air, increasing your accuracy with ranged weapons by 25%, but when using this skill become hyper focused and may lose awareness of your surroundings…

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This Fire Elemental Essence Core can be located in one of the following Nodes for the corresponding bonus:

Head: (Alongside Primary Node): Increase in skill gain of 15%, but more easily distracted.

Eyes: (Alongside Secondary Node): Increased reading and comprehension speed by 20%, important passages will be highlighted to your eyes, but concepts that bore you become far harder to focus on.

Ears: You can locate heat in all its forms by sound alone, increasing your hearing range by a factor of 3, but the sounds of fire are magnified to overwhelming levels.

Nose: You can identify flammable ingredients and substances at an almost instinctual  level.

Mouth: Your latent Draconic ability is augmented, bringing it to the fore far earlier than should be possible, but using such an ability will injure you almost as much as your foes… 10-10,000 damage per second

Heart: Your heart is filled with fire, both figuratively and literally, doubling your health gained per level, but shortening your lifespan to that of a normal human.

Lungs: You can breathe in any temperature, but lower levels of heat result in lower energy and reactions.

Stomach: You can now feed on flammable substances, gaining boosts to your metabolism, but this may have distressing side effects, depending on the substance consumed.

Legs: You gain short term boosts to speed when needed, but will suffer later for invoking this, with damaged muscles that require healing to reach their full capacity again.

Feet: You can absorb heat to reduce pain throughout the body, by standing in flames, but the damage incurred to your equipment will be normal.

Arms: You gain a 5% increase to damage dealt due to flames that are permanently in motion across your skin, but can expect this to injure those who are too close, be they friend or foe.

Hands: You increase your crafting skills at an increased rate of 10% per hour, but increased heat causes its own issues with certain crafts.

I read and reread them quickly, seeing the positives and negatives of both, and I knew what I had to do. It would be both cool as fuck, and a royal pain in the ass, but I didn’t see any realistic way I could choose anything else, not with the way things were going right now. However, I did resolve to look into the ‘Draconic Ability’ later.

I made my choice, accepting the Air Elemental Essence Core, and selecting the location as my head. The tiny filaments that had burrowed out of my flesh, worming their way through the chinks and links of my gauntlet to interface with the Essence Core, began to consume it, tearing the essence from the Core and drawing it into me, and I shuddered at the alien feeling.

I could feel the foreign essence sliding along inside of me, heading for my brain, and I gritted my teeth, pulling my character sheet up again and slamming points in, knowing that I had only seconds before I probably lost consciousness, and I was determined to get it all done as quickly as possible.

Doing this right before a battle was a hell of a risk, I knew, but it had to be done. Plus, I’d been thinking a lot of late, and with the massive increase to my mana regeneration, literally jumping from one point seven recently to nearly six point five points a minute, it meant that I could afford to actually build myself the way I should for the life I now led.

I took the forty-one points and put eight points into Endurance, jumping it from thirty-two to forty, and making my Stamina level out at eight hundred. Seven points went into