Hector rubbed his hands together, making fresh iron gloves for himself and then connecting them both to the handle of an oversized pickaxe. Wielding it like a sword, he pressed his soul into it for extra oomph, and then slammed it against the wall with all his might.
A huge chunk of stone broke away from the wall and shattered into a hundred pieces. And so did the tool. And so did both of his arms.
‘Hmm. I’m not an expert, but I don’t think you’re doing it right.’
Hector watched his elbows snap back into place and his torn flesh close itself up again. “Might’ve used a little too much force there...”
‘Might’ve. Or maybe next time, you can try to swing it so hard that you break your LEGS. Wouldn’t that be cool?’
He rotated his arms, stretching and flexing. He annihilated the remains of the pickaxe and created it again from scratch. He set to work again, this time with a finer touch.
‘Now might be a good time to bring up the topic of passive soul defenses.’
Hector didn’t stop swinging. “Passive what now?”
‘As your soul power grows, you’ll be able to naturally increase the resilience of your own body. So things like just now, they won’t happen anymore--or at least, they won’t happen quite so easily.’
“Oh. So a stronger soul makes my body tougher?”
‘Yeah. In two separate respects. First, there’s “resilience,” which is basically the same as how you strengthen your metal. You just apply it to your body instead, and as you get stronger, it begins to happen on its own, constantly applying that extra strength to your body--albeit not as powerfully as when you apply it yourself.’
“Huh...”
‘Passive resilience becomes a really big deal, eventually. Powerful enough servants can even deflect bullets with their bare skin.’
He stopped picking to throw a look at Garovel. “A-are you serious?”
‘Oh yes. Not that bullets would even give them a hard time in the first place, but you get the idea, right?’
“Eh, y-yeah...”
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
You just apply to your body instead,
ReplyDeleteFixed now, thank you.
ReplyDeleteIs that why everyone is afraid of dozer? Not because he's ungodly powerful, just because he's nigh-invincible?
ReplyDeleteSo hector is going to flood the bottom level of the tower with magma, melting the stone and filling the rest of it with toxic gasses? That does not seem so smart to me.
ReplyDeleteWell gotta remember every servant has the big weakness of their reaper. No matter how invincible he is there's always the one hit KO of killing their reaper. Assuming Dozer doesn't have his on the moon or something. I wanna meet a reaper who tried to go to the moon.
ReplyDelete[A
ReplyDeletehuge chunk of stone broke away from the wall and shattered into a
hundred pieces. And so did the tool. And so did both of his arms.]
Haha, that was great.
what about when the reaper latches on to the servants soul. then the servant is really like a tank, passenger and all.
ReplyDeleteThat's when you kill yourself and hope your reaper gets away. Also it's not certain that every servant can and chooses to learn to do it. It might have more side affects other than hard to control. But yeah that does make things more difficult.
ReplyDeleteI remember Zeff mentioning passive resistance and I briefly wondered what it was - before forgetting it completely. Good to hear about it now, it indeed seems to be important.
ReplyDeleteWell, major servants like Dozer probably never fight without a hyper state, so that's probably not an option.
ReplyDeleteNot if you ambush him.
ReplyDeleteThat same scene had caught me as well. I just figured it was a term I didn't remember. I'm glad as I was wrong. It shows I at least have a passable understanding of the terms
ReplyDeleteNice. I was really hoping somehow Hector would get over destroying his own body with his strength. Glad to see that it'll happen naturally anyway
ReplyDelete