The Pinnacle Warrior

“Benedict! Are you ready to give me a lesson?“ Astrid asked as she followed Greely. “We should have some functioning prototypes.”

The Bard stood up from where he was humming to himself and walked over to Astrid. “I don’t mind having an opportunity to clear my mind a little,” he answered with a grumble. “I don’t care how many other good things you have to say about the woman, but ‘you just push the mana for your Skill to be more flexible’ is some pretty terrible advice for completely changing the fundamental way in which a Skill works. I mean, Silvertongue is made to amplify a verbal Skill. It can’t interface with my boon so simply!”

“It may be that the way in which Isana can adjust her Skills is impossible for you,” Brighid spoke up. “I wouldn’t just out and assume that it’s impossible, because she knows better than we do, but there’s a good chance that her abilities as a Dungeoneer allow her to do things that people with other Classes simply can’t.”

Benedict started to relax, thinking to give in, but then shook his head. “In essence, I get what she’s saying I need to do. She helped me enough to begin to feel what it is. I don’t think this shifting is impossible, it just doesn’t make any damn sense. Maybe it’s just something that will impact the way my Skills are offered at steel, but for now, I’ll keep working on it, because conceptually, it feels like it should work. I’ll get back to it after we teach you how a sling works.”

At that, Benedict stepped forward and fell in step beside Astrid and Greely. After giving her advice, Brighid stayed back and settled into a sitting position nearby. 

“Honestly, when it comes to outright skill with the sling,“ Benedict said, “you’re better off talking with any one of my other family members. Well, except for Ulrich. But they’ve all used a sling more and more recently than I have.”

“Then the more the merrier, because I want to learn how to use it quickly,” Astrid answered.

“I’m sure that Blunt Weapons Mastery will more than carry its weight in that respect,” Benedict answered. “Of course, if you’re wanting to ask more people for additional help, that’s an option as well, but it’s a simple enough weapon, even if learning to make your shots hit takes a lot of practice.”

Almost before he’d finished saying it, both of his parents stepped up nearby. “I hear you’re learning to use a sling,” Sarah spoke with a broad smile. “My son knows what he’s doing, but he’s at least a couple years out of practice, so we’d love to be able to help you.”

Benedict‘s father was a broadshouldered man, but he smiled with genuine kindness as he offered his assistance. When Astrid gestured for him to give what advice he wanted to, he smiled and gave thanks before jogging off to set up a target. About a minute later, he returned and said, “Whatever you’ll be using is going to be different than mine, but here, take a look at this.”

His proffered sling was a simple one, made of braided hair with a leather thong for the ammunition it was throwing. It showed signs of years of use, the wax-treated pocket worn from the sign of hundreds, if not thousands of stones.

“This is the general shape of a sling, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them,” he trailed off as he spoke, seeming to become somewhat embarrassed by his words.

“I’ve seen them, never used them,” Astrid answered. “I would test this out, but I’m afraid of accidentally breaking it.”

“Probably for the best,“ Greely said. “Here’s yours. If you end up liking it and wanting to continue using it, we’ll treat the cords and leather to better suit your purpose. As it is, the cords are made from the tendons in the dragon turtle’s neck and the pouch is made from some of the leather from its neck as well.”

“That’s totally fine, thank you so much!“ Astrid felt her pulse accelerate a little at the thought of getting a new weapon, and she laughed a little at her own love for strange things. 

“There might be a bit of a learning curve with this,” Orrin, Benedict’s father, cautioned her as she looked the sling up and down. “Tendons have a bit more flex in them than what would usually be used  as sling materials. The cord ideally doesn’t stretch much to ensure you have greater reliability and consistency with your throws.”

“If we end up converting these materials to a sling,” Greely comforted Astrid, “then I can make sure that they have less flex to them. Until  then, make do and see if you want to do that.”

Astrid nodded her thanks and turned back to Orrin. He slipped his finger through a loop and grasped the other side in the same hand as he explained, “With your finger in the loop, you can be sure that the cords don’t fly free when you release the stone. You hold it in your hand just like this, then you give it a couple twirls.”

Every word he said was accompanied with a slow, deliberate movement to show her what he was explaining. “I don’t know if you’ll fall into this same trap that many kids do, but you don’t need to spin the sling around a hundred times to make it go fast. It’s better to just give it maybe four to six spins at most to make sure you’ve got a good feel for its movement before release. Then, with your target in mind, you twist your shoulder like this along with your wrist and let the other end go.”

Right as he said “release”, he loosed the small stone and it flew forward towards the target. The small bag stuffed with dirt let a puff of dust as the missile struck home, and he turned and smiled encouragingly at Astrid.

“See?”

Astrid nodded, surprised that, despite the man’s much lower level and attributes, the stone had actually been moving so quickly that she had struggled to chart its path. If she’d been using Acumen-aligned mana to strengthen her perception, it would have been no problem, but with just her regular attributes, her Acumen at 114, she hadn’t been able to watch it easily. With that in mind, she grew even more excited to use her own sling.

“Now,” Orrin cautioned her, “it takes a lot of practice to make your stones land accurately every time. Before you learn how to throw powerfully enough to kill or break bones, you need to make sure that your stones are going where you want them to. Otherwise, you could even hit yourself in the back of the head while you’re trying to throw it harder.”

Astrid tempered her own expectations with that and nodded severely as she stuck her right index finger into the finger loop of her sling. It was a mostly comfortable feeling, but as she settled a stone into the pocket, she immediately felt it slip out of the right spot where it was supposed to sit. She adjusted it into the pocket, glaring at the center that’d allowed the ammunition to slip out. There, an armored scale made what could have been a better pocket with a little bit of effort, but she understood why it hadn’t had work put into moulding the leather into a perfect material when it was just a prototype..

With a whip of her wrist, she sent the sling twirling in a circle several times before letting its payload loose towards the target with what she estimated to be about 30% of her strength. The stone fell out of the sling much too late, and she glared at it as she adjusted her expectations even further down and the stone flew into the forest to her left. The cracking sound of it striking a trunk sounded out, and she put her second stone in the sling’s pocket as Orrin spoke. 

“You’ve got the right idea of it, but you need to release it even earlier.”

This time, now that she’d done it once, there was something in Astrid that felt that this was different. She quickly recognized the influence of her Skill, and swung the sling with greater familiarity. After four rotations, she let it fly, and it went just above the padded target.

“Yes, exactly that!“ The farmer said with obvious excitement in his tone. “You just need to repeat that and then hit the target, but don’t be too confident. Take your time.”

“Dad,” Benedict cautioned, “I’m pretty sure she’s about to show why she’s the leader.”

Orrin shot a glance at his son, but Astrid wasn’t paying attention to them. Instead, she focused on the feeling as her Skill guided her even further and, without thinking very much about it, put a bit more strength into her wrist as she whirled the weapon over her head. The low thrum of the tendons whipping through the air became more of a piercing screech as she whipped her wrist and released the end of the sling. The stone, even thrown at about half of her capability, screamed through the air and smashed into the target. What was once a flour sack full of dirt exploded and dirt flew everywhere, leaving only a small crater in its wake

Astrid turned with a grin to her instructor who blinked several times. He licked his lips as he seemed to try to fight the nervousness that obviously overcame him at seeing that. For her part, Astrid felt a faint hint of shame as she realized she had forgotten herself.

“I’m sorry, I should have been more mindful. Thank you for your instruction, and I’m glad to receive anything else,” she said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Orrin said with a faint smile. “It is very easy to forget that, although you are Benedict‘s friend, you are also somebody many times stronger than me.“

With that said, the farmer shrugged as he seemed to show that there wasn’t anything else he could do for her, so Astrid bit her lip a little and looked down at the sling in her hand. Meanwhile, Orrin stepped away and towards his family.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,“ Greely said as Astrid played with the sling, “and I would like to request that you not continue with your throwing practice at this time. Continuing to familiarize yourself with the weapon will be necessary, and I will ensure that you have a location where you can, but you’ve used the weapon twice and have already done this damage. If you lose control and the stone smashes into a tree, I do not know if I would even be able to preserve its life, which will not be to our advantage.”

Astrid felt her face fall a little in disappointment, but she didn’t argue. In truth, she was lucky that her Skill had assisted her to be so accurate that time, even if it also instilled a foolhardy confidence in her. When she started to stretch her figurative and literal muscles with the sling, the missiles needed to be deadly to high Iron tier monsters, and that would destroy regular trees if struck. She allowed her shoulders to slump a little as she pulled the finger loop free and offered the dragon tendon sling to Greely.

“Go ahead and do whatever it was you were going to do to make this a real weapon instead of a proof of concept. Already, I can think of how helpful this will be in the future. Skandr can get some enchantment practice with different stones I use to attack. What kind of effects do you think you’ll be able to imbue in them?”

“You can think about those things and counsel with him when you so desire,” Greely answered. “For now, I do not think there is any reason for me to give any ideas when your own experimentation will lead you to a better result.”

Astrid nodded her agreement and thanked the old man as he walked away. The brief experiment had confirmed for her that this was a good option for her, and she looked at Muti, experimenting with her mana manipulation to create simple blades of shadow maybe twenty centimeters long. The tattoos decorating the Barbarian’s forearms pulsed with mana as she struggled to create even moderately physical weapons with her boon.

“It would appear that you are influencing the flow of mana to create shadow weapons. Surely this is due to your existing familiarity with the attribute,” Savraba spoke. “However, as an attribute of mana, shadow is one which excels in transportation, and in bypassing defenses, not manifesting physical phenomena. For a weapon, shadow is a good auxiliary attribute, not a primary one.”

Astrid felt her jaw drop as she looked at her father, scarred and terrified by Barbarians—an aspect she’d only recently come to actually understand—gave advice to Muti. For her part, the Barbarian didn’t disagree with what he said. Instead, she asked, “Should I then limit the capabilities of my magic? This is not something that comes naturally to me and I would appreciate further understanding.”

“Far from it,“ the scarlet haired man spoke. “With your current unfamiliarity, I would recommend that you start with using an attribute similar to shadow to instead amplify something else. In general, that which is created by mana struggles to have a physical weight. Instead, to better familiarize yourself with a way that you can use your mana, you should use mana however you can. Continue to experiment, but find one or two uses that you can start applying more regularly immediately, and thus strengthen your abilities as a whole.”

Muti nodded slowly and pursed her lips. Then, with a sigh, she asked, “Do you understand this?” as she held up her arm. 

The swirling imprints from mana were, as Astrid had already noted, very similar to the talismans that her father created. He nodded and dove into explanations of what individual parts of the imprints meant, and how their order and design would shift their function. As he spoke, Astrid saw as Muti consciously forced herself to not say anything about mages or their general weakness. Instead, the Ambusher squinted as she tried to understand the minute differences that were being presented to her.

Astrid looked around and was relieved to see her mother forcibly keeping herself at a slight distance away from Muti. After their introduction, it was no surprise that the two women kept each other at arm’s length, but Muti was taking special care to not act in the way she usually did. Instead of random ambushes, poking and prodding, and demanding answers from her allies, she was acting much like a Human. A part of Astrid’s heart broke at seeing her friend being forced to do such a thing, and she resolved herself to give Muti an opportunity to relax a little more later that night. Certainly some sparring would go a long way.

For her part, Astrid needed to figure out why her mother had said what she did about Astrid’s Skills. Surely, Gravity Surge and Spectre Burst were active Skills. But Brighid was so sure that they both weren’t that she’d immediately shut down Astrid’s answer. Instead, the Warrior evaluated Spectre Burst first. This was the one that was much more simple, but with her mother’s words, she wondered if it might be an ability bestowed by a Skill. After all, she could adjust the scale of the deadly mana as it burst out of her attack.

But other than the range of the attack, was there anything else she could adjust? That question had a very simple answer. The Skill drew a very set amount of mana and stamina to produce a singular effect. She’d tried to put additional mana and stamina into it before, but to no avail. The Skill drew just enough mana, now that she was level 43, to not to be considered a Minor cost of mana, about 12% of her total reserves, while it drew about 9% of her total stamina reserves. She couldn’t make the Skill do any more than it always did, and she could only change the scale of it. More and more, as she thought of it, she was convinced that Spectre Burst was an active Skill, though she did need to learn more about how to control the mana once it was discharged by her attack.

Then that had to mean that Gravity Surge was an ability bestowed by a Skill. But how? It very specifically delineated what the Skill could do.

Before long, the flexibility of the Skill settled over Astrid and she allowed her creativity to shine. Yes, she could make things heavier around her, which was what she’d artificially restricted herself to. As she’d gained levels, the cost of the Skill had decreased from being able to use it three times from full resources to five, and that was welcome. But even so, she had treated it as just the ability to weigh things down around her, with the singular exception of when she’d pulled an enemy towards her hammer a couple of times. 

Obviously, the Skill could do more than that. She’d never thought about using the Skill to affect something outside of her immediate range, though, and that was an aspect to the Skill she’d always known existed. Also, she’d never tried to make this Skill affect her as well. There’d never been any reason to allow it to affect her when it was just weighing everything down, but with it being up in the air, could she even let herself almost fly with its use? Paired with her insane ability to jump, what would Gravity Surge be able to do with her creating a makeshift Meteor Strike?

As she’d gained levels and attributes, especially from her boon, Gravity Surge now lasted for four seconds instead of just one, and that duration would continue to change, though Astrid was sure that its effect would become less effective without growing ever more potent. After all, though it’d worked on the Bosses on the fortieth and fiftieth floors, that was only because she layered it multiple times and took them by surprise. The Skill would grow ever less impactful the stronger the monsters got, especially if they were smaller. 

So she needed to learn how to better learn the Skill itself. She began muttering to herself with various ideas until a thought crossed her mind, and she stood up and whirled to face her mother.

“Mother! I have something I want to try with you.”