Second World Novel

"Then no need to sweat the small stuff," Jack uttered as he took the Lightning God Sphere in his hand. He didn't get shocked by the tiny electricity that occasionally shot out from the thing, but the hair on his body did feel all raised up.

"You like to take things too easy, you know," Peniel said.

"Thank you for your compliment."

"That's not a compli… wait! Don't link with it!!"

Jack was startled by Peniel's shout. An interface had appeared when he took the sphere into his hand, asking if he wanted to soul-link with the treasure. He had clicked Yes just now.

"What? Why?" Jack was taken aback by the panic in Peniel's voice. A loading bar had appeared, he could felt the tickling feeling on his entire body intensified after confirming the link, and it was still gradually getting stronger.

"Why are you so hasty?" Peniel complained, she was gritting her teeth with displeasure.

"Lady, don't get so angry. I will cancel the process," Jack offered.

"No, stop! Can you quit just doing things immediately? If you cancel it now, the backlash will most likely kill you," Peniel said. "Even with that Immortal Soul of yours, I doubt you will come out unscathed."

"Uh, so what do you propose me to do?"

"Now you bother to ask my opinion?!"

Jack kept his mouth shut while displaying an apologetic expression. Looking at the situation, whatever he said will just anger his fairy friend more.

Peniel sighed after Jack was silent for a while. "Just continue with the linking. I don't see any other choice now."

"Will something bad happen due to the link?"

"Just complete it first. Do your best! If you fail, you will still get the backlash that might kill you."

"Yes, mam!"

Peniel rolled her eyes at him. At this time the space around them collapsed, they were back to the interior of the temple dungeon, but in a different room than the main hall where they were before.

Jack heard a notification voice, "congratulations on completing the dungeon, receiving 80,000 experience points and 10 gold coins. As the person who had defeated the boss of the dungeon, you are awarded a Gold treasure chest. You can exit this dungeon anytime by going out the door."

"Treasure chest?" Jack exclaimed. He could see the door the notification had informed, but where is the treasure chest? He turned back and saw it, a gleaming large treasure chest of golden color. The sight of it mesmerized him.

"Hey, concentrate!" Peniel yelled. The shout snapped Jack back to focus on the linking. The electrifying pressure was increasing in intensity. "Don't go failing just because you get distracted!" She added.

"Yes, mam," Jack said again, with a little bit grumbling tone this time.

As time passed, several sparks of electricity started to appear around the room. Looking at the phenomenon, Jack had a bad feeling. Not long after, as he had slightly expected it, one of these sparks shot a lightning bolt at him, causing him to spasm. 100 damage appeared above him.

"Endure it! It is part of the process," Peniel informed.

Holy crap! This is starting to feel like when he was absorbing the runestone with the lightning element. The difference was, the torture caused by those runestones was only mentally, the whole process occurred only within his mind. This time though, it had taken place in real space, and the lightning affected him physically. Heck, he even got damage from it. Luckily, he was considered out of combat, so his two body recovery skills were in full effect, quickly filling back his missing HP.

The frequency of lightning strikes increased. He hardly had the chance to breathe properly with all the electrocution. He somehow felt lucky that he had experienced the lightning torture twice from the Runestone of Probability and Runestone of Luck. He could say that he was trained already in enduring the agony from these lightning strikes, but still, it was truly tormenting. No matter how many times he had experienced it before, he could be sure that he would never get used to it.

While his willpower had been trained to endure the pain, his body though, did not. As time passed and the intensity of the lightning increased, his HP decreased at a rapid rate, his body recovery skills were having trouble keeping up. He started drinking recovery potions.

He did not know how long the process had been going. One hour? Two hours? His vision was starting to blur. He was just busy trying to keep his HP at a safe threshold amongst the unending pain. He had even used the remaining Heal scroll and Regeneration scroll in his bag when the potions were no longer sufficient.

He felt truly lucky that he had a huge HP pool compared to others. If it was normal players experiencing this, they would have succumbed long ago.

When he was panicking as he ran out of his recovery magic scrolls while the basic healing potion and healing potion usage were still in cooldown, the Lightning God Sphere in front of him suddenly broke apart into pieces.

Jack was terrified when it happened, thinking that he might have failed the linking and thus the phenomenon. But then the broken pieces transformed into small bolts of lightning and stabbed into his body. He cringed from the pain, it was as if he was jabbed by a countless number of needles. The pain slowly subsided as his blurry vision turned clear. His body was drenched by cold sweats. He then realized that his blur vision was caused by tears from his eyes.

Shit! The pain caused my eyes to cry? Such a disgrace! Luckily no one was around, he thought as he quickly wiped the tear in his eyes. He then noticed that Peniel was staring at him.

"Uh, Um... Sand got into my eyes," Jack said to her.

Ignoring his pitiful excuse, Peniel asked, "did you succeed?"

Jack looked around, he didn't hear any notification voice, the Lightning God Sphere was also nowhere to be seen. "I think so?" He said.

"Look inside your status window, genius!" Peniel said.

Feeling sheepish, he opened the status window, while inside he grumbled, 'try getting electrocuted for hours, see if you can still think straight.'

"You do know I can sense your dissatisfaction, right? Project your thoughts directly at me, if you dare," Peniel taunted.

"No, mam," Jack replied.

He looked into his status window. He assumed that whatever effect the Lightning God Sphere gave should be under the Inherent Skills section, just like the Immortal Soul.

Lightning God Blessing, Level 1/3

Lightning resistance +50 (passive skill)

Every attack +10% lightning damage and 1% chance to cause Paralyze for 2 seconds (passive skill)

Lightning God Barrage (Active skill)

Shoot 20 balls of lightning that explode dealing 300% lightning damage each in a 5-meters diameter area, 30% chance of causing Paralyze for 10 seconds.

Range: 20 meters

Cooldown: 5 hours

Upgrade to next level require: 1 Divine Gem, 10 Magic Crystal, exp: 0/3,000,000

Jack stared at the description for a long time. Wasn't this a little bit too overpowered? This active skill when activated, would cause a total of 6000% if all 20 balls were concentrated on a single target. The amount of damage would be astronomical! And anyone who was caught within a five meters area around the target would also be blown to smithereens. He had truly gotten a boon this time.

As he was getting elated for this boon, he suddenly realized something. Eh? Why was Peniel getting so troubled when he soul-linked with this Lightning God Sphere? He turned to the fairy and reported, "I got this inherent skill called Lightning God Blessing. It gives me lots of wonderful passive skills and one kick-ass active skill."

"That's all well and good," Peniel said with a blank face. "It has levels, doesn't it? Does it show what is needed for level up?"

"Yes, it said here, I will need one divine gem, ten magic crystals, and three million exp. I'm not sure this exp…"

"Three million?" Peniel blurted out, interrupting him, "only three million? Are you sure?"

"Didn't you say you can look at my stats after we linked, right? Why don't you take a look for yourself if you don't believe me?"

Peniel did just that. Kind of making Jack felt slightly offended as it suggested that she really didn't believe him.

"It really is only three million…" She muttered.

"Now, why did you go all panicking when I soul-link with that divine treasure. Doesn't it give me such a wonderful ability?" Jack asked.

Peniel gave him a side glance, irritation returned to her eyes. "Although you have dodged the big bullet this time, doesn't mean you come out clean. Three million exp points are still a lot. It will be roughly the same amount if you level up your current level ten times! How long do you think you will need to accumulate that amount?"