Monkey Wine

Rowan made his way to the next room, unaware that his stats had now reached a point that his very steps caused the entire underground fortress to shake with every step. He walked with the weight of a giant, but he did not care about that. He actually could not even fathom thinking about it at this time. Rowan walked into the second room where a tall man with short brown hair that thickly coated his arms and exposed legs.

The hair on his head was cut short to his head, while his sideburns were longer than the hair on the top of his head. He looked at Rowan with a somewhat primal look in his eyes as he whispered something that caused his Astra to begin to form on his hands. He was suddenly wearing a pair of claws that shined with silver runes on their golden blades.

They extended 2 feet past where his fingers were but a shake of his wrist and the claws retracted and he made a grabbing motion as a bottle appeared in each of his hands. He used one hand to pop the cork on either bottle and then poured the contents of both bottles down his throat. Rowan could smell the booze but he was unaware of a reason, but his mind was addled enough that he could not care either. Rowan charged with no words. He was nothing more than a blur, but the primal feeling he got intensified as a second later his body shook and exuded a powerful alcohol scent before vanishing as a brown blur.

He appeared behind the charging Rowan and stabbed forward with his claws now fully extended. Rowan smashed a foot into the ground and pivoted in order to dodge the attack. The claw brushed past him but instead of retreating like Rowan expected; the monkey smashed his head into Rowan's, tossing him backwards. Rowan stabbed the weathervane into the ground and caught himself right as Monkey rushed up to him. He was a speed-based fighter, something Rowan was now acutely aware of thanks to this first interaction.

He smiled and pierced towards Rowan with the claws at the exact same moment that Rowan remembered that, thanks to his ridiculous stats, he had absolutely no reason to adhere to a method of fighting that relied on speed. Rowan kept the weathervane in bolt form and brought it slashing upwards to meet the claw, the force of the blow sending Monkey reeling backwards before he closed the gap. He had to step inside of Rowan's range to fight with him, but Monkey certainly did not mind.

He dodged Rowan's attacks with a weird swaying motion that allowed him to continuously dodge all of Rowan's active attack skills. He slashed at Rowan but the wounds weren't deep enough for him to immediately start healing from, especially after it had to also cut through Rowan's storm armament, which would retaliate and attack him in the process. Monkey knew that without a powerful mana technique there was no stopping Rowan raid and he would fall just like his siblings did. He stepped back and blew outwards and a mass of gas came out of his mouth and flew towards Rowan. Rowan froze on the spot as the world began to spin. He then jumped back and pulled out more bottles and proceeded to down all of them. His swaying got more pronounced, and he began to leave afterimages in his wake and as he moved.

"How did you like that taste of monkey wine? I brewed it myself." Rowan did not answer, so Monkey continued to speak as he moved in a snake pattern and made his way towards Rowan. "I brew my monkey wine with special fruit from boss Azure, fruit that I have certainly never seen before, but I enjoyed making booze before the apocalypse, so using mana enhanced fruit while challenging was still a breeze. It enhances me in almost every aspect, but on top of that, it works really well as a means of attack. It is poison, after all."

Rowan's vision was blurry, so he was only able to feel it as the claws started piercing into his chest, which caused him to jump backwards and slam into the wall. Rowan had dodged backwards, but not fast enough. Monkey had spit more of the wine into his face and at this point he was so delirious that he was swaying on his feet and had dropped the weathervane.

Rowan was trying to fight the feeling and failing as Monkey rushed in and began stabbing into Rowan over and over again. Rowan not advancing his mana cultivation was what made it possible for these people to wound him. The souls increased his stats, giving him more mana and the ability to absorb it quicker, but it did not raise the quality. This also affected his berserker's mana body as it made it so that without his mana space evolving, his body was not either, leaving his technique in only the first stage after all this time.

He began to accumulate wounds that, even with his rapid healing, caused him massive pain and blood loss. Rowan was one-sidedly beaten when he noticed something, his soul counter which at the start of the fight had read 7600, now read 7602 which made even the addled him pause for a moment where he had gotten two more souls and how was it only two. Rowan punched forward, and a boom echoed out and he heard someone skid across the floor. His vision was not clear enough to see anything.

Monkey wiped blood from the corner of his mouth he had never expected Rowan to suddenly fight back again and Rowan's punch had caught him in the ribs and shattered most of them causing to spit blood as he flew through the air, he stood up with somewhat shaky steps. "What type of monster are you that after all of that you are still standing, I think I understand why boss Azure told us that our only chance was to tire you out, don't worry though, a little more monkey wine and you will die comfortably, won't even know how it happened."

He appeared before Rowan once more and spit the monkey wine into his face before continuing his onslaught. His mind was fuzzy from all the monkey wine, stopping him from being defensive or calling weathervane to him while the mist seeped into his wounds and accelerated the process. He puked blood while this continued, when once again he noticed that his soul counter had increased by one, which caused him to utter words as he did all he could to protect his vitals while his blood splashed around the room. "Souls… In… Wine…?"

Monkey stepped back and grinned proudly and laughed loudly "HA so you have managed to find out my secret ingredient, right? Boss Azure taught me a minor technique that allows me to fuse the power of people's souls into my wine. It sucks that I have to shred their souls before the process but it's fitting, not like I can use the fruit after it has been used to make my wine." [Rage, intensified, partial clarity returned.] Rowan was now conscious enough to roar in Monkey's face right as he closed the gap. Rowan reached out seemingly slowly and caught him by the wrists right as he was aiming for his throat. "Enough!"

He tore downwards, pulling the arms directly off of Monkey's body as his body recovered even from the strength of the monkey wine. He had absorbed so many souls that their pain and resentment were fueling his rage and had given him back his clarity as the souls channeled their rage through him. He grabbed Monkey by the leg and began slamming him into the ground over and over. He had been stunned when his arms were pulled off, but the screams of terror and pain only continued as he was hammered into the ground with sickening thuds. The thing is being a level of existence and a fake tier zero. He was certainly capable of surviving this, there was even a chance that he could survive this moment, but Rowan had unlocked another new trait of his fairy bloodline that proved to be his saving grace here and was the real reason he had regained clarity.

[Soul Emulation unlocked.] Rowan ignored the message and kept slamming Monkey into the ground as he felt something give and the force of the slams caused his leg to tear from his body with a wet squelch followed by a pop. Rowan didn't let up his rage and the rage of the soul would not allow it. He stood over Monkey's body and began to throw his fists with the force of a bullet train and the speed no slower than Monkey moved earlier.

He rained his fists down until there was nothing left but a bloody crater as he roared towards the ceiling. He turned towards the door that was opening and stalked forward as he looked at the explanation of his skill. [Soul Emulation] Channel the emotions of the gatherer souls to affect self and or those around the user. Rowan actively began to use the skill and realized that since the souls died with so much resentment at the hands of the necromancer that he was only able to channel negative emotions, no matter how hard he looked through the souls for the others.

He used [call of the fairy king] as he stepped out of the room and towards the second to last room as his souls went up by another 2000, Rowan suspected that Monkey had indeed used much much more than that but they had been used for wine. A soul shaped like a monkey flowed out of the ground and towards Rowan's back. It mutated in some way, just like the others. Its arms were covered in mouths that all were grinning. Rowan felt strength surge into him once more and shuddered as the rage came with it. He may have handled the clarity issue, but the excessive anger would be another one entirely lucky for Rowan, one he was more equipped to deal with at this time.