The Pinnacle Warrior

Astrid took the time to reread the descriptions for Necromantic Blow and Gravity Surge. Once she was fairly certain that she understood the Skills, she grunted and settled back on her heels. She’d noticed that over the course of gaining seven levels that the cost for using Spectre Burst had fallen from Moderate for both mana and stamina to Minor stamina. It still required more mana, at least comparatively, but she could feel that she was getting close to moving to the threshold of being able to use Spectre Burst ten times in a row without exhausting any uses of Body. Sure, that would leave her nearly crippled from the pain of mana exhaustion combined with the intense agony of stamina deprivation.

Comparatively, Gravity Surge would require one third of her stamina and mana for a single use. Going off of that alone, she could tell how much more magically straining Gravity Surge was. Then, between those two in terms of resource consumption was Necromantic Blow.

Astrid realized that, if she’d had a lower understanding of mana or lower mental attributes, she might only have been able to use Gravity Surge a single time, which was just another testament to how grateful she needed to be to her father. Years of patient teaching a mostly uninterested Astrid were paying off in the surprising mana sensitivity she now had. That wasn’t to think about, though, and instead, she turned her attention to thinking about which of the Skills she wanted to take.

Astrid couldn’t help but laugh a little at herself as she pushed Warrior’s Awakening away as a potential option. Despite her previous attachment to the Skill, even a few days of experimenting with her mana let her realize that, though the Skill was powerful, it was far from worth filling one of her five limited Skill slots with it. On the other hand, Armor Mastery and Immovable Stance, which she had almost dismissed out of hand when they were offered before, both appealed to her now.

Armor Mastery would help reduce her mana expenditure throughout a fight, to say nothing of the immediate boost to her Attributes it would provide through boosting what her armor did. Yes, she was unlikely to see any more boosts to her attributes throughout the rest of Iron, which shouldn’t be forgotten, but that shouldn’t be a real worry for her. The armor she wore already was so transcendent that the new Skill would provide a huge boost, if chosen. Beyond that, there were two more huge things that Armor Mastery had going for it: it was already Iron tier, and it would almost certainly get rolled into her equipment Skill when she evolved. If she took this Skill, she was guaranteed two boons in Iron as well as an additional aspect to a Skill that would continue to develop as she continued to evolve without demanding any Skill selections.

On the other hand, Immovable Stance would pair well with Steady Load, letting Astrid directly have access to greater attributes while she was standing on the ground. Since she wasn’t like Muti, she wasn’t going to be jumping into the air to try to track down her enemies, so she would very easily get an additional 10% to her Power and Fortitude while she was fighting. Felix hadn’t been offered the Iron version of the Skill, so Astrid couldn’t know what the percent bonus would be at Iron, but she guessed it would be 20% to both attributes, making the overall bonus to her Status similar to that Sturdy Load, just divided between two attributes. Beyond that, Immovable Stance would also allow her to change her greaves’ enchantment, even if it was changed just to provide more attributes. Finally, though less likely, Immovable Stance could also be rolled into her equipment Skill upon evolution.

She groaned and held her hand in her hands as she hesitated to make a decision.

“Have you been provided two choices, both too impressive to neglect to choose?” Muti’s question pulled Astrid from continuing to evaluate the other two Skills’ ability to influence her future.

“Not two options,” Astrid replied with a wry grin, “but otherwise, yes.”

“Yeah, just rub it in, why don’t you,” Benedict scoffed as he spoke. “We’re just peons, we get it.”

Astrid waved him off with a chuckle as Muti shook her head in mock disappointment. As soon as Astrid let her guard down, the Barbarian disappeared as she used Shadow Leap to appear behind Astrid. Knowing what was coming, Astrid dropped her chin to her chest and twisted quickly to keep Muti from getting a strong grapple in on her. Seeing that, despite her distraction, Astrid wasn’t off of her guard, Muti bared her teeth and bowed her head in admission of her loss. 

“You can give the rest of us an opportunity to see what options are plaguing you,” Muti continued as if she hadn’t just attacked, “or you can simply take general advice. Which would you prefer?”

Astrid sighed as she shrugged. “There’s two facets to what I’m struggling with. On one hand, I have a Skill that’s good and will make me more efficient on the battlefield while being less flashy. There is the fact that it’s probably a half step lower in quality than the other options if they were all at the same tier. However, it’s the only one offered at Iron. Therefore, the question that arises for this part is if I should choose it to get an additional boon or do I choose a more powerful Skill that might be better? After all, every one of these Skills will probably merge with another whenever I get to the point of evolution, though this Iron tier Skill is effectively guaranteed to get rolled into my equipment Skill.

“That’s the first aspect, if I go for the additional boon or the better Skills. The second is if I choose one of the two more active Skills or from the two more passive ones. The active Skills are focused on battlefield control and furthering my ability to finish off enemies quickly while the passives are focused on strengthening me, so I’m not sure what I want from the Skills.”

As Astrid settled on her heels, she looked at her party to see what they all thought. Skandr seemed to be finishing whatever spell he was casting, or, perhaps more correctly, Skill, and wasn’t paying attention. Benedict, Felix, and Muti, though, all were listening. Muti was the first to speak. 

“I do not think that you need a passive Skill. Your equipment Skill has already merged from three Skills, and Immortal Warrior’s Body and Aura both do not serve your purposes as a finisher. While we are fighting weak enemies, you do not currently struggle to keep the monsters close enough to kill them. When the monsters are as strong as we are, such as the drakes, rocs, and feathered serpents that we will encounter, you will need more flexibility than mere survivability.”

“I think I disagree,” Benedict said, “but everything she’s saying makes sense. I think part of what makes you an ‘Immortal Warrior’ is that you can just keep going. With Body, you are basically unstoppable, and I think a Skill that leans into that ‘immortality’ will be better for you in the long run.” He scratched his chin for a moment, and then said, “I don’t know if that will make you a better finisher in the long run, though, so that’s a consideration to have, I guess.”

“I don’t know about choosing an active or a passive Skill,” Felix entered the conversation, “but here’s what I think: a boon probably won’t be as good as a Skill for you until you hit Steel. At level 50, I’d say the choice might be easier. However, right now, we’re fighting to get boons. As far as we can tell, we are pretty close to the front of the pack, but for now, we’re only a third of the way into the Trials. Do you want to choose a Skill that’ll better help you better to get the Trial’s boon? Or a Skill that might not help as much in order to get a guaranteed boon later?”

“A good thought,” Muti agreed. “Do you have trust in yourself in being able to claim victory here in the Trials, if you take one Skill over the other?”

Astrid frowned as she settled down onto her haunches and thought a little more about it. As an example that was closer than she’d thought, the thirty-fifth floor with the feathered serpents was coming soon. They could fly, and were, anecdotally, nearly impossible to kill. Spectre Burst was a great step in the direction of being able to kill the monsters, but Astrid also suspected that Gravity Surge would be a much better Skill in terms of keeping the massive serpents grounded and thus killing them with the party working together. On floors where the monsters were too plentiful, a deadly Necromantic Blow creating an ally or two to take the heat off of the delvers could be life-saving as well.

The choice wasn’t obvious, and Astrid found herself just sitting there, thinking about which option would work best for her and her party. In terms of how her Skills would look once she evolved to Steel, she figured she could sort out which Skills might get compounded. If she took Necromantic Blow, it would absolutely merge with Spectre Burst. For Gravity Surge, she didn’t know how that might combine with her other Skills. If she focused on consistently choosing the end of her hammer as the location where the surge of gravity was located, then it might end up combining with Spectre Burst. If she took Gravity Surge, though, she didn’t want it to lose its versatility and instead become a lame “hit things harder” Skill. After all, Muti was already showing the results of her new Skill’s versatility, and though Astrid wasn’t ever going to be a Rogue-like Class, she’d like to be able to do more than just hit things good.

“Are there any vampires nearby?” She asked Muti. When the Barbarian shook her head, Astrid dismissed her armor and stood in her loose shorts and light shirt. Looking down, she was covered in blood, absolutely coated. She frowned, feeling more disgusted than anything else. Due to the vampires’ blood magic, there was nothing under her armor that could escape the filth. As a liquid, of course, it could get through her armor’s cracks, and though she knew that her gambeson was sure to be dripping with liters of the blood, it could at least clean itself.

Reaching into her spatial pouch, Astrid pulled out a bucket of water and started getting the worst of the blood off of herself. She knew it was wasteful since there would be at least a few more fights on this floor, but couldn’t help herself now that she’d looked at what she’d known was under her armor. If she went back into battle knowing that that was what was all over her, she couldn’t bring herself to focus, she was sure.

Going through the ritual of cleaning herself, Astrid stopped thinking quite as much about which of the four Skills was the “optimal” choice to make. Maybe there was a “perfect” Skill to take, but of the four that she was still considering, there wasn’t a bad option. As such, she simply needed to choose what she wanted.

The first to get cut was Immovable Stance. There wasn’t much of a reason for that, other than simply that she didn’t want it. With her options narrowed down to three, Astrid hemmed and hawed as she scrubbed the coagulating blood from her left arm. By the time the rust colored liquid was dripping from her fingertips, she decided she didn’t want Armor Mastery. Yes, it was a good Skill and would guarantee her an additional boon, but since she was being honest with herself, she just thought it was boring. She’d gone for years in Bronze without exciting Skills to use, and she wanted a fun Skill instead of a safe, boring one. Maybe that was childish of her, but she refused to lie to herself and take a Skill that might be optimal that would also make her miserable.

In a more realistic point, she also knew that, from now on, she wouldn’t have armor that was as comparatively amazing as what she had now. In Steel, she wouldn’t have the finances to buy armor that could even remotely compare to her outstanding armor now. Maybe when she reached Mithril she could afford to buy amazing armor, but she didn’t want to choose a Skill right now that would take that long to be impactful once again.

Down to two different options, Astrid made herself think. Necromantic Blow would work well with Spectre Burst, obviously. Already, she could see how the two would compound once she reached Steel, how the resultant Skill could even become an area of effect that would maybe even raise corpses from the dead.

And she didn’t want to be a Necromancer.

It was that simple. Astrid was happy to be an Immortal Warrior, but she didn’t want to be a Death Knight or something like that. The synergies between Spectre Burst and Necromantic Blow would’ve been better than probably every other Skill, but Astrid couldn’t bring herself to put synergies before her own hopes and desires. Maybe it was foolish. If she was honest with herself, Astrid thought that Gravity Surge was the most interesting of the Skills, and that was one of the main reasons why she was considering it. It just sounded like a lot of fun. If she’d had it when fighting the Ursine Kin, she could have pulled him back when he tried to escape, or, way back in Kznietch, pulled the gnoll that mutilated Skandr back before it could flay the skin from his face.

Beyond all that, Astrid could also recognize that Gravity Surge, though not the same as much of what made a Spellblade such a unique Class, brought her some measure of that same feeling that she’d always wanted as a little girl—being a person who could appear and turn the tables all by themself.

If it was only that, Astrid could and would have forced herself to select a better, more effective Skill, but it wasn’t only a childish satisfaction that made her select it. Her own vision of what she would be at Mithril and beyond was a person who could go into the depths of the Dungeon or the reaches of Humanity’s lands and save people. If she was just hard to kill, all she would be able to do would be to go places and watch people die. Guinevere’s suffering when she’d watched her husband die in her arms was something Astrid wanted to never be forced to witness again. More than being a finisher, she wanted to be a hero. A part of her felt that Gravity Surge would help her to embody that long-dreamed-for aspiration.

Inside, a part of her screamed that taking Armor Mastery would be the superior option, that it would integrate with her equipment Skill and since it was Iron tier it would be guaranteeing another boon. Still, she just wanted to take Gravity Surge.

Once she made the decision and selection, the understanding of how to activate Gravity Surge washed through her. Astrid wiped the worst of the filth from her arms and legs, waiting until she was mostly dry before resummoning her armor. The muddy ground underneath her, she imagined, was colored crimson with the blood from her body. Mostly clean and ready to get back into the fight, she left behind the Skill selection with the remnants of battle. She looked at Skandr. It appeared that he’d long since finished his Skill’s activation, but Astrid didn’t see anything different. With a few seconds of evaluation, she realized that the summoned cloud that he had accompany him into battle remained. Something about the cloud had changed, becoming more substantial. Beyond that, instead of feeling like a ball of potential magic, the cloud seemed to writhe somewhat of its own accord. 

“What is this?” Astrid asked as she poked the cloud. It seemed to pull back the slightest amount before she touched it. Skandr chuckled as he gestured with a hand at the cloud. As soon as he gave his apparent instruction, the cloud flowed back over him, starting at his right hand and only stopping once it sat like a thick, fluffy scarf around his neck. Tendrils of mist teased at his face as he finally explained.

“I don’t need to spend mana to keep this pocket cloud around now. Instead, it’s more like a pet cloud that I can spend mana and stamina to summon. Once I’ve done that, it’s here until I either dismiss it or it gets too damaged. But it functions the same as the cloud spell.”

Astrid whistled low as the cloud seemed to discharge a happy spark of electricity. A part of her wondered why she thought it seemed happy, but didn’t think too deeply about it. Instead, she watched as the cloud whirled and seemed to manipulate small winds around itself to keep itself in a coiling state.

“So,” she tore her attention away and looked at her party, “the question is if we want to stick around for a while longer to get more experience before pushing to the thirtieth floor. I think we should. What do you all say?”

“This floor represents the possibility to make great strides quickly,” Muti, as usual, was the first to chime in. “We will be forced to fight to make progress no matter what, and gaining additional thousands of experience now that we have crossed the threshold to the second watershed will be valuable. Progress will slow as we are forced to spend more time fighting each individual monster.”

“Yes, you want to fight more,” Astrid laughed. “But do you want to go to more challenging fights instead?”

“My thoughts are not so simple. Instead, I prefer to make greater progress that will allow us to achieve the victory overall.”

Astrid raised her hands in surrender, looking to the rest for their opinions. To her surprise, Felix spoke next, and in opposition to Muti’s opinion.

“I want to frontline against stronger monsters. I haven’t had an individual challenge like the trolls initially were in Purcell since we came here. Not really. Once we cross the thirtieth floor, things’ll change and I’ll be able to get more practice that way.”

“I don’t mind sticking around here for another couple hours,” Benedict weighed in. “The experience’s good and we have another half dozen kilometers to cross anyways. Might as well focus on getting most of the way to level 29 while we have the chance.”

Skandr pointed at Benedict in agreement, and Astrid nodded slowly. 

“Then we’ll focus on getting used to the new Skills and killing tons of vampires for the rest of the day, and tomorrow, we’ll tackle the thirtieth floor as fast as we can manage.”

The rest of the party voiced their agreement, and Astrid felt her heart rate accelerate. After all, she was about to be able to experiment with her new Skill.