Dokkis, Bruises, and Truth

Neto was glad Charlotte had poor taste in men.

Every time she bit down, a dokki was crushed into a bloody pulp. Even her tail cracked them with enough pressure to shatter bone.

Dokki were strange creatures. Unlike ichorwicks, these were flesh and blood, they also seemed to be more intelligent and higher level. Unfortunately for them, a veritable monster entered their home.

Their appearance reminded Neto of dog-sized rats with light armor and weapons made of bone. They'd come from holes in the path Rakshasa called a 'branch'. Every few paces, this branch would split into smaller paths, or twigs. Apparently, each twig spawned a portal at its tip, and she was silently focusing on finding the one they needed to enter.

In the meantime...

"Ouch!" Neto gasped. He was standing by the first portal's entrance, working on his new skill while Charlotte massacred the Dokki's

He'd activated his new skill, creating a mana-bridge in the palm of his hand. When the skill took effect, his legs and arm locked into place, fully extended. An unfamiliar muscle tensed. Neto tried pulling it back a bit, but it immediately slingshot forward with a stygian spear!

Wrrr!

Black mana shot from Netos palm towards a Dokki on Charlotte's back. It was desperately trying to pierce her scales with a sharpened femur.

"AIIK!' It shrieked, collapsing where it stood. Convulsions rippled through its fur as it tumbled to the ground. Blood poured from its eyes.

Neto wasn't expecting such brutality from this skill... Already the weird muscle in his arm was sore.

[XP +18]

'Not bad.'

This skill was powerful, but inconvenient. He couldn't move while casting, likely because of the tsunami of unbound mana, which somehow fit through his tiny gate. He'd have to lessen the burden on his body.

Neto tightened the gate in his palm, releasing another blast.

"TCHA!" A dokki yelled, smacking against the cavern's wall. It was alive!

Before the beast could recover, Charlotte crushed it with her hind legs, likely by accident. Neto had tightened his gate a bit too much. A gang of Dokki's coordinating strikes from her front. Neto noticed one of her scales chipping.

'So that's their plan.'

These monsters were intelligent, but Neto wasn't completely useless now. He could afford to put a bit more oomph into his next cast. This skill required precision...

"AIIK!"

Neto expected to miss that shot, but his onyx spear curved to find its target. The Dokki gang spead out, but the slowest one collapsed.

[XP +23]

Neto couldn't see any wounds, and blood wasn't seeping from its eyes, but there was some type of internal wound that rendered it motionless. Now that Neto calibrated his skill for precision, he tried out how fast he could cast it.

Wrr! Wrr! Wrrr!

Three Spears shot from Neto's hand. He was planning on shooting more, but the muscle that directed these shots cramped, and a deathly sharp pain pinched every nerve in his arm.

[XP+23]

"AAAH! Fuck!!! I shouldn't have done that.." he cursed at himself. Neto's arm went limp at his side.

Only the first spear was lethal. The other two simply knocked the Dokkis to the ground, where Charlotte could easily finish them.

Thankfully, the battle was all but over when Neto overused his skill. With some difficulty, he climbed onto Charlotte's back one-handed. She'd started eating the dead Dokkis. He could see a few dozen survivors escape into their holes. They'd underestimated his dragon.

"Good work, Charlotte!" Neto rubbed the rock-hard scales on her head. 'Well, I wish you wouldn't eat their bodies before I check for loot...'

One look at his lifeless arm made Neto wince. Bruises blackened it from his shoulder to his fingertips. Some large vein had burst.

{Ok, I've found where we need to go, but this branch is rather long so- What!? you've already messed up your arm?}

Neto grimaced, holding his limb in place. There were no broken bones, but this pain was similar. Thankfully, by now he'd experienced much worse, so he'd be able to deal with this.

[Hidden Stat: PT (Pain Tolerance)]-{Threshold unlocked for stat visibility!}-{35%}

'A hidden stat? Pain tolerance relates to vitality, no? Maybe substats are represented as 'hidden' until 35%. If that's the case, this world is way more complex than I thought. Just how many hidden stats are there?"

Dokki corpses were an all-you can eat buffet for Charlotte. No wonder the others ran for it. Neto couldn't look at the grizzly scene, so he tried to see if he could speed up his arms' recovery. By creating a gate adjacent to that large bruise, He allowed unbound mana to fill the wound.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Neto spat as he watched his bruise fade in real time. Unbound mana was like a shittier version of a health-potion for him. This would've been incredibly useful earlier.

{That wound wasn't anything special. Even an idiot can patch up a scrape, I suppose. Plus, pain tolerance is a useful skill to level up...}

Neto was speechless. He'd been trusting this demon way too much. This fucker really kept useful information from him to upgrade his pain tolerance? Even if it helped Neto in the long run, this was too much to brush off.

Before long, Neto's arm made a full recovery, and Charlotte was ready to go. He felt bad for any enemies they would run into.

Charlotte was still hungry, and Neto needed to blow off some steam.