One With The Abyss

My current way of thinking was that to unlock [Formless] I would have to fully abandon the physical form I have, any and all attatchments must be forgotten and thrown away; unfortunately that would take a long time spent meditating and in introspective thought.

All that boring jazz.

"You just don't want to do it because all of your emotional trauma stems from your physical appearance and attempting to abandon it will force you to deal with that." Abby weighed in her opinion.

"Obviously." I responded, "I feel that was a pretty clear and defined part of who I am as a person."

"If that's your issue, formless will solve it." Abby really wanted me to do it, as usual, "You can't remove the mark, that and your purple eyes, but you can change it."

"... I'll think of it."

I began descending past the 40th floor.

41 was something I've been expecting for a while, with a slight twist:

[High Orc]

[Paragon of strength and muscles. Mass of muscles in the form of a swine]

It was essentially a fat, pig-beastfolk, monster. Though it still lived up to the description, despite its large belly it really was incredivbly strong. Still, the only talents I got from the mobs were [Muscle Reinforcement], in reality the best part of the floor was the most consistent drop item.

While there were the occasional weapon what I got most often was [Orc Meat].

Literally just pork and it was exceptionally rich; not that I had ever tried good pork. The best I had ever had was when I stole some out of the trash from the family mansion. It was definately worth the beating I got, even if it was cold and only a moutful of meat.

"Your life is so sad." Abby had said when that memory came to mind after eating a bit of the meat.

"Yeah, but I'm pretty over it." I shrugged.

"Enough to not want to deal with all those memories and activate formless." She said.

I respectfully chose not to respond and made my way to the boss.

[Tusklian]

[Highest form an orc can ever hope to achieve. Muscles like metal and intelligence like a rock]

It was giant and covered in body hair and muscles with large tusks extending from its lower jaw. Worst of all was that is stank, it was disgusting; even more so when I realised I had to get up close due to its anti-magic quality, forcing me into a clash of strength.

Thanks to [King of Ruin] my ability to control aura improved rapidly, and as the aura became more refine, the strenght increased by leaps and bounds; but even with all that I could barely hold the monster back.

While only slightly, I was pushed back with every clash between the 2 showing this creatures immense physical power.

I obviously won, making use of my intelligence as despite being strong it really was idiotic, still the talent was quite good.

[Muscle Armour]

[Tighten your muscles to the point they become as hard as metal, allowing your body to be its own armour]

It seemed the monster's anti-magic abilities were something to do with its skin, I checked, and it didn't seem that way.

The only logical solution I could come up with was [Muscle Armour] acting to resist any effects of magic. I didn't think much further on it and fused [Muscle Armour] into [Shapeshifting].

Again I got oodles of delicious pork, almost as much as when I had killed the Drake; the chest was fairly underwhelming, just a set of gauntlets, like from the werewolf, that was fused into my soul weapon.

Gauntlets were a weird weapon, as the weapon itself kind of already was a gauntlet. But no, instead it coated the arm in the glove and created a second one that automatically covered my flesh hand.

The 42nd floor was one I was happy to see, just from a aesthetic perspective: Dark Elves, well to be specific Savage Dark Elves

Chocolate skin and silver hair, all while trying to kill me from the shadows; it really was just like how stereotypical anime's depicted them to be.

Even the talents were good. All being some kind of dark magic related ability, the most common beings:

[Shadow Affinity]

[Attune yourself to the hidden world of shadows, have it bend to your will]

Abby explained that this and [Fire Affinity] were slightly different. [Fire Affinity] increased my proficiency and control over any and all fire related magics, on the other hand [Shadow Affinity] was more similar to a lesser [Dark Affinity] talent.

It only worked for shadow magic, a derived version of dark magic, and any elements that derived from the shadow element. The talent did give me some more control over darkness in general, but I could also feel a significant guiding force before I fused it into my [Elementalist] talent.

I did find myself practising dark magic avidly on this floor, deciding that if they were so insistent in giving me dark magic talents, then I would use them. Between actively using dark magic, the [Shadow Affinity] talent and finally the many other dark related talents I acquired on the floor, I quickly awakend shadow magic.

It was quite a fun element to use.

I could change the shape and properties of shadows to use them as attacks or restraining moves; other than that I managed to copy the dark elves method of using the magic as a movement skill. They would sink into the shadow and move around at incredibly speeds, being very hard to detect as they gave off no indications of their position. The opnly way to spot them was to watch the shadows, seeing which of them moved abnormally as they would likely have dark elves inside, all I had to do then was blast it with light magic. This being shadow magic's largest weakness, it was incredibly weak against light, of any kind.

I still found myself using the talent a lot.

The boss of the floor was an exceptionally beautiful dark elf, I honestly felt kind of bad about killing her, but I knew I had no choice. 

She was a very adept dark magician, forcing me to use light magic in order to beat her. Her talent was just about what I had expected though:

[Dark Affinity]

[Attune yourself to the inky void of darkness, have it bend to your will]

Very useful and helped guide me to another deviated dark magic, but I didn't quite have the understanding so it remained untouched for the time being.

Floor 43 was something I had been hoping for, for a long time: Elementals.

[Water Elemental]

[When mana comes together and unites an elemental is born. Water shall answer it's call, from the deepest depths to the highest clouds, no water is beyond its reach]

There were versions of this for every type of elemental for the 6 basic elements.

They all had a vague human shape, though it tended to vary depending on the element. Earth, as the most physical element, presented as very humanoid, similar to the floor full of golems, just lacking a core. On the other end of the spectrum were the dark and light spirits; dark spirits were just blobs of black and if light elementals were humanoid I wouldn't have been able to tell behind the amount of light they emitted.

Killing the elementals was an irritating endeaver, using the element they were made from made them stronger and using other elements was incredibly weak. Their lack of physicality meant melee did very little, even with aura it didn't do too much.

The best manner of killing them was to use the element they were weak against, water for fire, light for dark, etc.

Using trial and era was quite useful as I quickly learnt to empower my aura with elements.

I found wind elementals were the most annoying as they were all but invisible, even with [All-Sight] I struggled to fully grasp their locations.

It also took me a while to figure out how to copy their talents. I would coat my arm in whatever element they were made of and this would allow me to touch them and copy the talent, it did leave me with the occasionaly injury, but nothing I couldn't heal

The talents were exactly what I wanted and the reason I wanted a floor like this - even if every enemy, including the boss, gave basically the same talent.

[Corpus Aqua/Ignis/Ventus/Terra/Lux/Nox]

[Changes the form of the true body into an elemental core: water/fire/wind/earth/light/dark. Projected body is now a manifestation of mana that can be freely shaped and controlled; made of water/fire/wind/earth/light/dark elemental mana]

(A/N: FYI this is supposed to indicate 6 talents, I just didn't want to write it out 6 times)

I went out of my way to absorb all of these talents twice as well, despite all the pain.

I quickly put each of the talents into [Shapeshifting], as seemed obvious, and no longer wanted to gain anymore talents of this nature due to the pain they caused. It wasn't really all that bad, but still an uncomfortable experience.

I was content with this for a while, until I remembered where else they could be useful: [Elementalist].

These body talents would massively improve my ability to control each element and so I forced myself through the discomfort in order to gain an improved ability with magic. And it worked.

My magic talent improved by leaps and bounds after that, making all the pain I suffered worth it.

The next floor, 44, was another underwater floor, but one that seemed to awaken a new phobia in me.

Unlike 37 that was full of coral and sea-life, 44 was a endless void of an ocean. It was completely dark and I could barely see for more than 10 metres.

As such it came as quite a surprise when I found myself inside the mouth of some kind of monster.

"Huh?" I muttered, stabbing into a tongue after growing them out of my forearms.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Abby burst out laughing, taking joy in me being entirely devoured in one go, "You survived this long in the dungeon, only to be eaten by a big fish."

I clicked my tongue and finished absorbing the talent; then I used magic to rip the creature I was inside of to pieces.

When I was finally out I could see what had tried to swallow me.

It was some kind of giant barracuda, and by massive I mean... Building sized.

And judging by the 3 other barracuda's coming towards me, they seemed to be the basic mob within this dungeon.

I cut them in half in an instant by using a basic slash of water magic, finishing the fight in an instant. They weren't difficult but I'm sure the floor will still be impossibly difficult; not only was it looking like all the monsters would be massive, but the floor was also incredibly large and gave no indication of where to go.

So, I just started proppelling myself through the water, fighting giant sea monsters as they came.

The barracudas were the most common but there were plenty more.

I fought [Megladons], [Sea Serpents], [Krakens] there was even a [Scylla] waiting for me; each of them absolutely massive, such that I couldn't even see their entire bodies as I fought them.

All the talents were somewhat useful. Megladons were all about teeth and biting enhancement; sea serpents were essentially just water dragons and granted [Water Affinity]; the krakens had a strange ability called [Ink Manipulation] that allowed me to create and manipulate ink.; finally the scylla gave me [Hyper Regeneration], massively boosting all the abilities [Healing Factor] had.

A very lucrative floor. More so when I realised that [Ink Manipulation] went towards one of the composite elements of dark and water.

The final boss was taken straight from Greek myth:

[Charybdis]

[Lord of whirlpools and destroyer of ships]

The fight was tough, especially as the water around me tried to pull me apart thanks to the monster's talent: [Whirlpool Manipulation], another water magic ability; but I eventually finished it as I took the form of a kraken I had fought and wrapped my tentacles along the long body of the charybdis to crush it.

It was only possible thanks to the talent I had gotten from the tusklian, improving my control over shaping my musculature as weaponry - and of course my aura.

On the way to floor 45 Abby talked to me about magic..

"You should try using some composite elements." She said as I made my way down the stairs, "You've already got excellent control over the basic elements and their derivatives, if you pushed yourself you could easily gain more derived elements."

"I'll try I suppose." I responded.

As I made my way onto the floor I was blasted by heat, a stark contrast to the previous floor; this one was a giant volcanic island.

I fought through the floor, gaining many [Heat Resistance] talents that I found fused well into [Cold Resistance] to create [Temperature Regulation] which kept me comfortable in any climate.

There weren't any intersting monsters for a while until I arrived at the volcano itself where I was attacked by very interesting creature:

[Lava Golem]

[Golem formed from molten rocks. It's tough and it burns?]

It raised its giant arm up to crush me under its lava fist, but as I was about to be burnt to death the lava split, keeping me out of any harm. 

The floor was a perfect opportunity to practise lava and magma magic, and I became exceptionally good at it since I had so much of the element to work with.

Also, with my new [Temperature Regulation] talent I was able to learn to use the heat and cold elements as derived from fire and water respectively. They had very little combat ability, basically just doing what [Temperature Regulation] did, along with affecting my environment like some kind of domain spells; with both of those I decided to fuse the talent with [Shapeshifting] as well, no point in having both.

The final element I had achieved on this floor was metal, finding that its defensive ability held very well against the fire spewing monsters that attacked.

When faced with lava golems I simple commanded the lava to seperate from around the core and shattered it in an instant with my aura.

Of course I took the chance to learn its talent, gaining, as expected:

[Corpus Igneus]

[Changes the form of the true body into an elemental core: lava. Projected body is now a manifestation of mana that can be freely shaped and controlled; made of lava elemental mana]

I placed this talent into both my shapeshifting and magic abilities, killing any and all lava golems as they came until I reached the boss room, the coolest one by far.

I had to jump from the top of the volcano all the way into the lava pool at the bottom, with only a small bit of land at the bottom to fight on. Of course with [Corpus Igneus] this meant nothing as I could just change my body to lava, but still. It was cool.

The boss was an interesting one too:

[Magma Wyrm]

[True Draconian Beast with burning hot magma raging within it]

(A/N: This is going to be very confusing but I'm going to explain dragon type monsters:

Drakes are lesser draconian beasts, they evolve into Wyrms then into Western-type dragons - large winged reptile monsters

Wyversn are also lesser draconian beasts who evolve into Wyrms then into Eastern-type dragons - long serpentine monsters

Wyrms are not true dragons, they are true draconian beasts. The primary difference is their ability, dragons are always stronger than draconians hold authority over any lesser dragons

Dragons also have internal ranks between them, but I'll explain that when dragons become relevant)

I was happy to see another dragon type monster, and it really fit in with the setting. 

I mean, who doesn't love a good dragon guarding a volcano?

The fight was not as tedious as I had expected, my fire affinity seemed to be way higher than his allowing me to manipulate the magma it spewed at me, preventing me from taking any damage; it seemed it did not have an affinity talent like the drake had, something I confirmed after wrapping it in the magma that was currently my body.

[Molten Domain]

[Grants power to freely manipulate magma and lava. Become empowered when surrounded by high amounts of magma and lava elemental mana]

The talent obviously went to improve my magic talent but seeing it did force me to reconsider my approach to this monster.

I clearly needed to change how I fought the wyrm as by being in the lava form I was empowering it; but this meant leaving myself vulnerable to the lava pool that the giant wyrm was currently trying to dive into.

Sure my [Shapeshifting] could protect me from the heat, but [Temperature Regulation] only worked up to a certain point. It would not help me with a dip into actual lava.

Sure I could turn into some kind of monster with lava resisting properties, but that likely either gave off lava and magma mana or cost more than just maintaining my lava form, it wasn't worth it.

I had to lower the amount of magma and lava mana in the area, but I would still be burnt if I did not have my lava form active. However, using both that and wide-range cold magic was extremely draining, putting me in a difficult situation.

Due to me having to limit my lava form I had to rely a lot on my future sight and probability control to avoid magma shots coming towards me, increasing the energy cost further as I now had to maintain 3 abilities, even if 2 of them were being used intermittenly as they both required a lot of energy.

I managed to take down the monster, but also used most of my energy, something I had not felt in a long while.

Abby was silent but I could feel her judgmental stare without the eyes.

"I know." I mutter as I layed on the volcanic rocks that was once a pool of lava, "I'll do it in the safe room."

It seemed I was going to have to face my demons sooner than I wanted to.

I walked past the snake-like creature that was now beging to dissolve, taking what I expected would be a delicious meal as it became meat as well as the chest loot.

Inside the safe room I began to meditate.

"Time to become formless..." I mutter.

Ready for yet another gate to open.