Warlock of War: My Ares System

"Everybody… check your status… quick,"

Everybody had the same confused look that I did, so I spoke up once again, asking,

"Do you have a strange new passive skill? Also, did you unlock one of the runes for your rune path?"

And just like that, everybody began to sweat as their head slowly turned toward me, their confused and unnatural attentions apparent.

"Lemme take a look at your back," Luna announced, and I didn't have any qualms, so I quickly stripped my upper half and turned around.

"Geez… What the hell is that?" Cy muttered to himself, almost disgusted by the sight.

"What? What do you see?"

"Well, there are two brandings going along your spine. One of them is a bit smaller than the other, though…." Luna explained, but this still wasn't enough information for me to comprehend just what was going on.

"So what are you trying to say? The rune path will create runes on our back?" I quickly inferred only to be shot down by Bella.

"I'd say no… but it could be a possibility. Maybe it's just branding for coming down here. I mean, this is practically hell, and hell is like a prison… it wouldn't be strange if there was some kind of shackle to identify one,"

We all brainstormed for a minute before Aisa's stomach;xcvn'.BKLM

<rumbled so loud that it echoed through the forest, causing her to blush profusely.

After seeing how everybody else was hungry, we decided to go further into the forest to try and scout out some edible food, only just realizing a few minutes later the massive cannonball we dodged.

"Holy shit…" Findir muttered in awe as the entire corpse of the one-eyed troll had disappeared from plain sight.

The only thing that was left was the massive blood stain that engraved itself into the black and ashy grass.

"Something definitely came through here," I muttered to myself, and my pupils traced the small imprints that had set into the grass from various smaller monsters.

"Hey, everybody, don't move. They're here, and they're gonna beat our ass if we move," Cy announced as a chilling sensation ran down our backs, filling us with a sensation that we hadn't felt in such a long time.

Fear…. It was definitely due to a skill, but the foreign feeling wasn't pleasant in the slightest.

"How do you know so much about these monsters? Are you from here or something?" Aisa quickly questioned as a pair of nearly blind jackal-like monsters came crawling out from behind the tree line.

"I read up on demonology, and everything has matched so far… now shut the hell up before they find us,"

"Whatever," Aisa groaned before disappearing into a flash of lightning.

SHING

Both jackals had their heads cut off, and Aisa stood above them, breathing heavily and wearily smiling to herself as she glanced down at her blood-stained hands.

"Geez… This new skill is insane," She chuckled a bit before chopping our next meal into sizable cubes that Bella instinctually began to cook.

And, of course, we gave her the first bite as she so kindly cooked everything for us, and the chef should be rewarded for their exquisite skill.

"It's dry as fuck," She instantly muttered, causing all of us to chuckle under our breath before digging in.

It was as dry as Bella blatantly explained, but the flavor wasn't too bad. Though, we also began to discuss various topics that needed a desperate explanation.

"What skill did you use?" I asked Aisa as she shoved the food into her mouth.

"It was something called [Flash of Lightning]. I thought it would be a long ranged spell, but as soon as I activated it, knowledge on how to use the skill flowed through my mind… and there you saw the true purpose of it. It's practically short distance teleportation," Aisa bragged, but none of us were impressed.

"Huh… then what does it mine do?" I muttered to myself before activating the skill.

Everybody saw me slightly drift off into a trance-like state where it felt like I was flying through the cosmos and obtaining information that I should've never known.

"Huff… huff… huff… This skill is broken," I chuckled with a weary smile and was already itching to try it out in battle.

So, everybody else did the same, some even disappearing for a moment but then quickly reappearing where they had been sitting.

Everybody else came back with the same weary smile as if they knew just how overpowered these skills were… and our test quickly came as yet another troll appeared.

"Demi meat," It muttered in a low grunt before swinging a large black club made from the same wood around us.

We quickly dodged to the side, with Luna needing to be dragged out of the radius of the insanely powerful and fast swing.

"Let's try this out," I muttered before everybody began to test out their new skills.

[Influence of Battle]

All of a sudden, it felt as if my vision had shifted to an aerial view and then a side view, and then a bottom view, granting me so much information that I could see each muscle of the troll twitch with power.

"Everyone! Remember to get the horns!" Cy shouted, but Findir had already appeared atop the troll, the previous horns in his hands.

Though, it seemed like the troll didn't even realize he was there, even after he landed on its head and charged up a massive swing.

FWOOSH… Ksh.

"RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The troll shouted in agony, but its swing towards the top of its head was useless as Findir had returned to my side.

"You good?" He asked before tossing the horns to Aisa, who disappeared in a flash of lightning, slicing the vulnerable eyes of the troll.

"Yeah… it's just… my brain can't handle this much information. I think I'm gonna- oomf,"

I threw up onto the ground, Findir taking a few steps away from the splash zone as I emptied my stomach, only to see the fallen corpse of the troll lie next to me.

"I didn't even get a chance to attack," Cy grumbled.