After almost a week of sitting still and alone, focusing only on his death node and getting it open, Eli was starting to get lonely and if not for the intense focus it takes to open a node he would probably be a certified crazy person by now. He decided to take a break before trying for his chaos node and he tried focusing on making a skill for his death node. He could make a skill for his light node but he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with that one yet, making a skill for the flash thing he always did with it seemed redundant. So first things first he wanted to know what his death node felt like, so he sat and meditated as relaxed as he could to just feel its flavor of magic.
His death node felt like a graveyard, as cold as tombstones and as final as the inevitable pile of bones that we all end up as. That didn't quite feel right though so he stayed in his meditation trance just letting it occupy his mind and something clicked in his head. It was the cold hard truth of the inevitable eternity of death. While he felt this was right he had no idea how to use that as a skill so he stayed deeply focused on the node and just let his mind wander. His bone mace kept crawling in and out of his mind as well as his weapon skill, there was something there he just needed to let his mind get to it.
Several hours of just having his mind float freely around was getting disorienting but he felt he was on to something and kept himself sane by returning his thoughts to past life, bouncing around terrible orphanages filled with violence and his military training. Not even sure how much time had passed he finally felt his mind settle and he knew how to use this energy from his death node. He combined it with the slightest amount of magic from his earth node and conjured a stone and bone mace into his hands using his death node to give it flavor and his earth node to give it physical form and solidity. He opened his eyes and looked at it, the handle was a bone and the head was stone, heavy stone, heavier than its size would let you think possible. He had no idea how he had done it but the flavor of magic from it was definitely his and it was dense, holding the weight of death itself.
"Node Skills:"
"Death node: Bone cudgel level 1. Open death node fills head of cudgel with the weight of inevitable death"
"Node Skill - Death - Rare - Conjuring"
"Conjure a bone cudgel, form depends on image when conjuring"
"Mana cost: High"
So now with a weapon he can conjure he didn't need his bone mace as much anymore and just put it in inventory. He practiced conjuring it and going through some swings with it, then he would conjure it again and practice with it a bit. He did this until he was able to conjure it quickly and with a shape that he felt was most useful. Finally he practiced his balance with it for as long as it took until he was sure he was used to the extra weight since his preferred version was about four times as heavy as his previous bone mace. He could just finish the dungeon but that would level him and he really wanted supreme rarity for his next class upgrade, so back to the grind it was and he was going to try his chaos node next. If he could improve his blink his combat efficacy would be much higher.
First, he stretched from all the practice with his new mace, then he sat and focused on his chaos node, letting his mind fall into it. He immediately flinched back as it was pure chaos in there and his mind was having a hard time understanding it. He felt like he might have even taken some kind of mental damage or trauma just with the touch he had, but it did feel ready to be jam packed with dense magic. This would not be easy and may take longer than the week that the other one took, but he was ready for the challenge and didn't have anything else going on. So he began slow deep breaths and focused on collecting the most dense magic in his body and pushing it into his chaos node on the back of his neck.
The node was taking the magic but it just didn't seem like it was dense enough for it so he began taking what he could collect from the dense parts of his magic and compressing them. With his will, they were easily double the density of what he could manage before, then he started pushing that into the node. It wasn't long before he was tired, but he knew this was going to take twice as long as the last node so he kept his focus on the task by letting part of his mind wander around the people in his life before all this crazy end of the world magic stuff. He thought about his foster sister who followed him around when they were in the same foster homes, she called every Saturday just to talk. Even when he was deployed she would leave a voicemail so he could catch up on her life when he got back. He didn't mind how clingy she was towards him, the world was crazy and he got the feeling she used him as a shelter from that crazy.
Sweat was pouring down his face and his body was shaking from the amount of focus and energy he was using to maintain holding the magic in the node while gathering more. It was like he needed two minds to get it done, however, he was half way finished and he gritted his teeth and pushed on with as much determination as he could muster, not able to let his focus loose as much as before now he just let his mind wander through people and feelings. His high school girlfriend from junior and senior year, she broke up with him since he was going military and she was going to college. Letting his emotions wander was really giving him insight to himself, he never really understood how much it had felt like a rejection when she dumped him saying all of his military ambitions were a dead end.
Some time later he was getting close to done and was having real trouble, his magic isn't regenerating fast enough to keep things going the normal way so he was having to compress large amounts of his own magic to make up the difference. He thought he would have enough to finish it but it was looking like it was going to be close, it was taking everything he had and he felt like he was slipping. He kept putting everything he had into it over and over trying to maintain pressure and control and focus was driving his mind into starting to fracture and slip apart. He wasn't mad yet, but he was knocking on that door and he knew stopping wasn't in the cards so he dug deep for that emotional motivation he needed to pull this off and it came in flashes of his squad, especially Lambert.
In addition to this the rapidly changing images settled on a woman, he couldn't see her face but somehow he knew she was smiling. Eli did not know this woman but she felt like someone who loved him, maybe a relative from before he lost his memory, but he couldn't be sure. In his mind she reached down and covered her hands over his chaos node to hold it steady as he quickly finished stuffing it full of magic and it finally opened and he fell over and started to black out, just before his head hit the ground he would swear he felt her kiss his forehead.
He woke up quickly and realized that he had finally done it. He opened his chaos node, the only node in his body that felt more difficult was his order node but that one just felt like it would be last and after he is much stronger. He needed rest, a full on nap, so he laid back down and slept. He woke up and felt hungry and thirsty, but did not have anything, even if it would only be as a comfort, he still wanted something. Now he could check his skills and see how his blink skill had changed.
"Chaos node - Chaos Blink"
"Spell - Epic - Chaos magic - instant cast - level 1"
"Picture yourself where you want to be and blink"
"Open Chaos node allows non-line-of-sight casting."
"Now that's an upgrade," he said to no one.
He gave it some practice, and it cost triple magic to use in succession, which was no joke, after the first cast, then the second for triple magic cost him a third of his magic. The line of sight delay in casting was no joke either, just trying to blink 10 feet behind himself without looking felt like it took 6 or 7 seconds maybe and on top of that he physically could not open his eyes while it was casting. But that would all get better with some skill upgrades that he would hopefully get as he chain cleared this place. He could go back to clearing it after he got another skill so he could get the best upgrade.
He got curious and checked his timer for the tutorial, his only source of time measurement in the dungeon, and was surprised. Between the first dungeon clear and this work on his nodes and skills it has been 30 days since the system showed up, 30 more days until everyone returns and he tries to find his people. That thought made him pause, he didn't have plans to find his squad before, but now it just felt like the thing to do so it slipped into his thoughts. It would be nice to have a few people around him that he could trust, help with information gathering and such. It made sense when he laid it all out like this, but it made the same sense before didn't it? Maybe his reach for emotional answers changed something in him, but he couldn't be sure and there wasn't any way he would be able to figure it out. His best move was to get this skill then go on a rampage in this place for a few days leveling skills and hopefully get another chance or 2 at loot.
The quickest and obvious answer for his next skill was to just figure out the flavor of his light node and see what he could make with that. So after some stretching, he sat down and started letting his mind slip into his light node. The first thing he noticed was how easily he slipped into it, the second thing was just how singular the flavor was, it was pure light, just a whole lot of emphasis on the purity of it. It wasn't warm light, or revealing light, it was just pure light. He kept himself there in the node for a long time even though he thought he had an idea on how to make it work. He reveled in its pure singular flavor, then he pushed that feeling into the rest of his body and his nodes making each of them a more pure version of their own magic.
"Node Skill"
"Light node - Lights pure boost"
"Spell - Uncommon - light magic - instant cast - level 1"
"Flood your magic, nodes, and body with purifying light increasing its efficacy."
"This can cleanse your body and magic of ailments"
That skill ended up being even better than he thought, the purity effect was great for his worry about illusions, poisons, and curses, but a boost to magic is good too. Maybe he could upgrade it so he can use it on other people, which would be a nice way to help his team be stronger. He didn't know if they would even want to still follow him, it's not like the military was going to still exist after all this. They would not be under any obligation, but he hoped some of them would want to join him.
Enough emotions, Eli thought while shaking his head trying to get back on task. Time to push on and see how fast he can crush this place while practicing skills on the bosses.