章 64: Just a Lark

Finally, Michael looks down at the Spirit Slot that'd appeared beneath Shadow Shaman and gives it a prod. He already had a vague idea of which hero he wanted, but the revelation that he could talk to and learn from maxed level heroes was another factor to consider.

Shadow Shaman, or rather, Rhasta, was great in that he was fairly laid back and willing to teach him. The man should possess a great knowledge of magic and spirits, so there was much he could learn from him.

Compared to someone like Ogre Magi, for instance, there would be literally nothing to learn from them. Ogre Magi was one of the dumbest heroes in Dota... He was a Two-Headed Ogre that relied almost entirely on luck and his physical strength. There was no techniques, abilities, knowledge, or even wisdom to gain from them. Meaning that the only thing he'd gain from picking them was their provided spells and that's it.

He had wanted to pick between Riki and Slark, mainly because their abilities would synergize amazingly. The Agility based damage and Permanent Invisibility provided by Riki would be ridiculously powerful when combined with Slark's ability to rapidly heal while unseen and steal agility from each attack.

Now that he could learn from the Heroes though, he had a new list to consider. After a couple minutes of consideration, the potential heroes were :

Alchemist : The ability to learn from a master alchemist would be incredibly useful. Though, the lack of ingredients the hero would be familiar with might prove to be a massive obstacle.

Pangolier : From what Michael remembered, Pangolier was considered a master swordsman, meaning he could learn his arts and not be so reliant on his Gandalfr runes to survive. That said, his spells and abilities were pretty useless...

Riki : Michael's knowledge of Riki wasn't too in-depth, but from the heroes' abilities, they had some knowledge of stealth and assassination. While this might not be too valuable to Michael currently, his spells and abilities more than made up for it. Plus, Riki might be able to teach him how to better use daggers, or other 'stealth' weapons.

Slark : Yeah... Not too much to say about this hero either. All he knew is that Slark had been locked up in an incredibly secure underwater prison called Dark Reef. Michael wasn't too sure what he could learn from a criminal escapee, but again, his spells and abilities more than made up for any lack of knowledge he might have.

Michael releases a sigh and runs a hand through his hair. This was tough, his choice now would decide his potential options from here on. Still, he needed to remember his primary goal... Survival. Knowledge wouldn't help him yet, all he needed was power and the ability to escape any shitty situations he found himself in.

"Then it's still between Riki and Slark... But what's more important right now?", Riki's Stealth would help a lot, but there were likely many ways for Mages to detect invisible targets. Meaning it wouldn't be as useful as he might think.

And if he was focussing on survival, that'd mean that Slark was the one the pick. Just the passive health regen would've been enough, but Slark's entire kit was designed on being difficult to kill or catch.

"Fuck it... Go hard or go home, right?" he mutters to himself as he finally picks Slark. As soon as he selects the Hero the pages of the book begin rapidly flipping before finally landing on Slark's page.

Like Shadow Shaman's, it had all of Slark's abilities on the right page, with a picture depicting Slark on the left. If Michael thought that Shadow Shaman was unsightly before, Slark was like his worst nightmare...

Slark was a short hunched over fish-creature, with bulbous orange eyes that had slitted pupils, blue skin, and a large mouth filled with many needle-like teeth. His hands only had two fingers and a thumb, but they didn't seem to have a problem gripping the large knife he was holding.

Slark's skin resembled that of a shark but had tiger-like strips that went all the way down to his relatively short tail. His body wasn't the worst thing about his however, that would be his current clothes.

He wore a rather 'small' loincloth and had many sea creatures covering his body. Were they still alive? Were they just shells? Were they meant as camouflage? Michael didn't know the answer to any of these questions, and honestly, he hoped he never found out.

Michael shakes the disgusting looking hero from his mind and focuses on the status page :

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Spirit : Slark

Level : 3

Abilities :

Slithereen Strokes (Rank 0) : Allows user to swim with the same proficiency of the Slithereen race.

Dark Pact (Rank 0) : After a short delay, user purges most negative debuffs and deals damage to enemies around him, while also dealing damage to user. (User takes half damage)

Pounce (Rank 0) : User leaps a large distance while leashing any enemies he lands on. Leashed enemies will be unable to escape user for the duration of the ability.

Essence Shift (Rank 0) : User steals the life essence of enemies with each melee attack, draining each of their attributes and converting them to temporary bonus agility for the user. If user kills a target under this skill's effect, user will gain 0.1 Permanent Agility.

Shadow Dance (Rank 0) : Active effect : User is able to shroud themself in a cloud of shadows that render enemies unable to target or detect them for the duration. Passive effect : User gains bonus movement speed and health regen while unseen.

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Huh, again, there's another ability Michael didn't recognise from the game, Slithereen Strokes... It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that great either... He was surprised to find that he had reached level three instantly, this was probably due to how much EXP he'd gathered yesterday.

Michael didn't have to think much on what abilities to actually level. He points one point into Dark Pact, Pounce, and Essence Shift. He was a bit wary of actually using Dark Pact, as it could potentially kill him, so he'd leave actually testing it until he had Shadow Dance...