Purchased!
Man, the number of skills I have is really climbing. Now that my skills are starting to reach the third tier, it’s becoming harder to train them, meaning I have to upgrade them less, causing my current Skill Points to build up.
I shouldn’t go too crazy picking up new skills… perhaps only one or two more.
I’ve already picked up some skills on the mental side. Is there anything on the physical side worth a consideration? I start to hone in on skill names that seem to focus on physical prowess, but most don’t seem that useful.
There has to be something that could be interesting… I need to remember not to judge a skill on exactly what it says at the first stage. After reaching Level five and then Level ten, the skills become much more useful. Look at Dash, for example. I ignored it initially since charging forward when I was just born would be little more than charging into my own death. After witnessing the awesome movement skills of the humans, it became clear that once upgraded, Dash was almost essential for physical combat.
Ooooo, how about this?
[Precise Shooting: The user will become better able to target objects with ranged attacks.]
This should work for my Acid Shot as well as my magic. Purchased!
All right then, there has to be something else… something less passive.
One more skill…
Something catches my eye. Even then… it sounds a bit nasty…
[Ripping Bite: Increases the user’s ability to make Bite attacks aimed at tearing away parts of the target’s body.]
That… is badass.
Purchased!
With the warm trickling sensation of new skill knowledge flooding my brain, I feel pleased with my new purchases. New skills to Level! New horizons to explore! Who knows what exactly these skills will turn into in the future.
One thing I do know, I need to start training them up quickly. My current options aren’t nearly enough to handle the sort of conflicts we’re going to start getting into, so I need to lift my game.
Content with my spending for the moment, I turn to check in on my pets. Crinis is still bobbling away in the corner and Tiny remains seated, eyes glazed as he contemplates the upgrade menu.
Good luck, guys, I wish you well!
Since I don’t have much to do, I may as well start grinding my skills.
Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be able to unlock something interesting if I can get some of my skills to evolve.
I settle in to wait for my pets to complete their spending and try to activate my Meditation skill. It takes a little while but I gradually feel a calm sensation begin to pervade my mind, my thoughts growing still and placid, my emotions fading into the background.
With the proper mood established, I call on my Mana and begin to practice. There’s a lot of work to do.
88. The World Below, Part 1
Mirryn awoke with a start.
Wide-eyed and alert, she turned her head to look around. She was immediately struck by the austere white room in which she lay. She was lying on a clean bed in a small white chamber. On the ceiling, a glowing crystal provided illumination, a clean white light that filled the space warmly. Just looking at that light nearly brought Mirryn to tears. She’d feared she would die surrounded by the blue light of the Dungeon, seeping into her body and killing her slowly.
She couldn’t remember much of her arrival to the Legion base in the Dungeon. The descent down the carved spiral staircase the commander referred to as Periclasus’ stair, was long. That journey had tested the trainees to their limits. It had taken many days of endless marching to reach the bottom, spiralling ever downward into the depths. And the lower they got, the sicker they became.
None of the trainees had been down in the Dungeon this deep, for this long. Without proper acclimation, the lower part of the first strata would normally be the first place a Dungeon delver would need to worry about saturation sickness, or ‘the blues’ as it was colloquially known.
During this wave, which didn’t seem to want to end, the Mana had risen to ridiculous levels. The first strata was currently reading much the same as the second and the trainees were unable to cope. Every one of them was struck with the blues, quite literally turning a light shade of blue as the raw Mana of the Dungeon began to pervade their bodies. Mana saturation sickness was an insidious killer and a truly messy death. Delvers, mercs and every being who entered the Dungeon lived in fear of it, their bodies literally breaking apart cell by cell as the excess energy ravaged their bodies.
The trainees got their taste of it as they walked the endless stairs. They began to stumble, their legs no longer responding as they should. The farther they got the more pronounced the symptoms became. Their vision was overtaken by a blue haze that made it difficult to see, their hands started shaking, then the whole body. The young, strong trainees began to experience the fear that was normally reserved for the aged, the fear of having their own body betray them and begin to fall out of their control.
Through it all, they felt no pain, only a giddy, inexhaustible nervous energy. The blues didn’t make people feel tired, as the name might suggest. Rather, the Mana suffusing their body and brain numbed them and gave them the jitters, as if they’d been drinking five cups of coffee every hour. They couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, couldn’t think clearly, they were both more exhausted than they’d ever been in their lives and completely unable to rest.
With the encouragement and support of their fellow Legionaries and officers, they’d barely made it. The only other members of the party struggling as much as them were the prisoners the Legion mysteriously brought with them on this expedition.
Less capable than the trainees, many of them had to be carried toward the end, the soldiers taking turns to hoist the murderers on their backs as they battled the long march.
The last Mirryn could remember was arriving before a large stone door. She could barely see by that point, the door itself was nothing but a blur. The commander had stepped forward and done… something, and the door swung open. Vague figures had rushed out, gathering the sick members of the party and bringing them inside. She’d collapsed into the arms of the person rushing toward her and then… she woke up here.
Looking around the room some more she noticed a strange arrangement on the side of the bed. A tube had been inserted in her arm, surrounded by a glowing enchantment drawn directly onto her skin. Nervously following the tube with her eyes, it was attached to another enchantment drawn on a nearby flat table. The centre of the table held four softly glowing cores.
Mirryn stared at the strange setup, puzzled. Closing her eyes, she tried to feel if anything was different. Her saturation sickness was significantly better. If she focused hard, she was able to feel the flow of Mana in her body, slowly inching down her arm before being leeched out through the tubes and being fed to the cores on the table.
She was stunned. She’d never even heard of this kind of treatment before. Such fine manipulation of the Mana in another person’s body via an enchantment… how had they done it?
“I haven’t heard anything, Alberton, but as soon as I do, you’ll be the first to know!” the commander’s voice penetrated through the door.
Soon after, the tread of heavy feet thunked as the Loremaster and commander continued to argue.
“I just can’t understand why we didn’t make more of an effort to prevent Garralosh from reaching the surface. You know what will happen up there. That’s my family, dammit!”