Ella trudged through the sand, her boots sinking half an inch with every damn step. One sun was enough to roast a person out here. But this desert had two.
Sweat streamed off her chin and hissed as it hit the burning sand below. Her gaze locked on the shadow of the jagged rock now zooming toward her.
Her mind was on edge as she put herself in a defensive position even while walking. That's what helped her evade the hand that shot up from the ground.
Ella jerked backward, landing hard in the sand as something clawed its way out of the earth. The figure that emerged had a humanoid shape, but that was about where the similarities ended.
Not human.
Not quite undead either.
And it was very naked.
"Ugh, gods." Ella scrambled back, face twisted in disgust. She wasn't sure what was worse- the sand clinging to her clothes or the flabby, dirt-covered flesh crawling toward her.
Anyway, she chose the sand.
A glowing prompt flickered just above its twitching head.
[Sand Goblin – Lvl 2]
Her lips curled in disgust. "So you're a goblin."
Without another word, she snapped her fingers, and the Aura of Death bloomed like a shadow peeling off her skin.
The goblin stopped. Its glowing, sand-coloured eyes bulged as veins popped like threads. It opened its mouth to scream, but only blood came out.
It collapsed a second later, convulsing. And then, it stopped moving altogether.
[You have slain Sand Goblin.]
[For killing an adversary of a higher level, bonus experience granted.]
[Congratulations! You have reached level 1. You have obtained a free stat point.]
[Death energy: 135/140]
Ella wiped a drop of sweat from her temple, eyes still locked on the corpse.
"Could've at least worn pants."
After experiencing the power of 'Endless Death', Ella was sure the other skills under her bloodline should be the same as it. Extraordinary.
And now it proved her right. She then frowned at her death energy. She had calculated it took her half an hour to fill 10 points of death energy. With a single use of her bloodline skill, it dropped 5.
The energy consumption was higher than she expected, but its regeneration speed was lower.
'System, is there any way to increase my death energy regeneration?,' she asked mentally.
[…Query acknowledged.]
[..Error: Insufficient authority.]
[Bloodline classification: Undetermined.]
[Warning: Active bloodline skill usage accelerates collapse of death energy in host. You have to follow precautions.]
Well, it didn't help. Ella shrugged. The system wasn't omnipotent.
Sure, it had knowledge about almost everything in the known dimensions. That's because these data were uploaded into it through users across the entire universes.
Since her bloodline was classified as Undetermined by the system, that meant she was the only one currently with the same bloodline in all known dimensions and universes.
Something she should be proud of. But it also meant the system would also be in a blank state, just like her.
Which made her own decisions become important. After all, the system couldn't give her suggestions. That's one of the perks of being a magic being.
'Currently I can't increase my death energy regeneration,' Ella thought, looking at her death energy after half an hour. The regeneration was the same as before, now it had filled her capacity.
'Also, except my bloodline skills, other skills use mana, and my mana regeneration is pretty high.'
She had activated Cracked Awakening and checked the mana consumption and regeneration after each skill usage.
It took the same ten points for a single use, which lasted three minutes. And it only took ten minutes to fill the lost mana.
After she applied her free stat point to INT, both her death energy capacity and mana capacity increased by ten points, together with the mana regeneration.
The difference was just a fraction of a second, but there was a clear way to increase it, which she was more than glad for.
Cracked Awakening even stacked damages she suffered from sunburns, making her cells store power to unleash minor earthquakes.
In half an hour, she had already stored enough power to unleash minor earthquakes ten times, each with varying powers depending on the damage she had suffered by walking through the desert as she moved across some shades without stopping.
And this fucking desert damaged her just by existing in it. She looked down at her own HP, which had gone below 10%, then instantly regenerated to 100% with a sigh.
'I think I found the reason why monsters are so rare in the desert,' Ella nodded to herself. Either most of the monsters here were killed by that boss, or they died because of this climate.
She had no idea what would've happened to her if she didn't have a skill like Cracked Awakening. Perhaps she should've died multiple times already. Hell, she might've even lost all her death energy and died for real.
Suddenly, Ella was glad the boss welcomed her with crushing. Still, that would never make her spare it. After all, the trauma of becoming a meat paste was still fresh in her mind.
She had also thought about intentionally dying in the climate and obtaining legacies, if any were there.
However, she decided against it. The main reason was the symbol floating in the right corner of her eyes and the number on it.
She shuddered again. God knows how many times she had done the same action. It was literally in the millions, double digit millions that almost touched triple digits.
She was sure what happened to her had already gone viral in the Space Net. Not only on Earth, but even in Solaris. Hell, even other worlds might already have intel about her now.
Ella had no idea how they'd react to it. Awakening a bloodline was already rare. She knew many top organisations in the dimensions had probably started watching her.
But rebirth after death might have triggered something she never wanted to know. No other explanation could account for such a viewer count for a Classless Magical Girl like her.
'Maybe they think I have an undead bloodline or something…' Ella suddenly loved her purple streaks since it was the universal symbol for undead and necromancers, all while forgetting her first action of trying to pull it off.