The Pinnacle Warrior

Astrid’s hammer pulverized the crimson shrike, but her focus was instead on the rest of the flock that swarmed her as she mentally released her Skill. Gravity Surge washed over them and the flock of monsters smashed to the ground. Each of the meter long creatures smashed to the ground, their wings crumpling and snapping under their weight as eight times regular gravity smashed into them.

Astrid stomped twice, each one being a separate Spectre Burst that washed over the prostrate, suffering monsters. They wailed in pain but none died from the broader area of effect attacks. She quickly used two charges of Body and stomped two more times, Spectre Bursts washing over the half dozen creatures with each stomp. With that, six kill notifications flashed in her eyes, and Astrid smiled as she rolled her shoulders. The quick flushing of mana through her body, going from full to nearly empty to full again and again was strange, leaving her feeling drained and uncomfortable, but also satisfied.

She stepped over the shrike corpses, their twitching bodies being nothing more than a reminder of her progress. Each one was something like a winged worm with two pairs of wings helping them to fly remarkably quickly while a twenty centimeter long horn from their heads was more than sharp enough to punch through most armor and begin draining mana and blood from their prey. From experience, Astrid knew that her own armor was strong enough to stand up to the attacks, unless they managed to hit a weak joint.

Though she knew what it would display, she mentally called up the numbers for her evolution quest progression.

Class evolution quest: 

Defeat 10 Bosses of at least level 45 in single combat. Each kill must be completed with a strike empowered by Immortal Warrior’s Body. Progress: 7/10 Successfully use Gravity Surge and Spectre Burst to eliminate 100 monsters of at least level 44. Progress: 73/100Only five days had passed since Muti evolved, and the rest of the party had focused on ensuring that they all progressed as quickly as they could manage. Skandr had made his piece of equipment, a shield for Felix. Finding materials for him to experiment with had been annoying, to say the least. The other two primary goals that the Wanderers were working on right now were Astrid’s and Felix’s, and those were best done on basically the weakest monsters that still fell under the requirements of the quest. In Astrid’s case, these shrikes were the perfect target, given that they swarmed and most of their attributes were focused on speed and penetrating power, not strength or longevity. A part of her couldn’t help but laugh as she mentally compared these swarming monsters to the swarming gnolls from so long ago. Looking at them, the gnolls would have appeared much more dangerous, but they wouldn’t be able to catch a single one of the shrikes. Then, the weakest monster they could come across was a good target for Felix, because he was protecting the monsters, not the Wanderers.

Thus, the party wasn’t getting many valuable materials to work with, except for from the Bosses that Astrid was hunting. Even so, those Bosses didn’t provide materials that could compare to the dragon turtle, and they all felt the materials left behind that they were working with were pretty unremarkable. Then, the armor or weapons that were left behind by the Bosses typically had the remnants of some enchantments on them anyways, as any humanoid monster weapons tended to. As such, Skandr was left largely unable to find materials to experiment on.

Finally, desperate, Astrid spoke to one of the Groves they came across.

“Are there any materials around here that we would be able to harvest and use for an evolution quest? I think Skandr is hoping to try to make a shield, and we aren’t Smiths or crafters of any kind, so creating one from scratch isn’t really a possibility. If there’s any material that can withstand really strong Iron tier enchantments, even if it wouldn’t work as a shield, would you let us know where we might be able to find them? Of course, we can pay.”

Silence was the first answer she received. The Warden hadn’t answered for several minutes, but that wasn’t at all a surprise. Astrid had long since gotten used to the tree people’s willingness to be ponderous and deliberate before speaking. Finally, the Grove creaked and leaned towards her as they spoke.

Your payment will be a delve into a different Dungeon branch. It is shorter and lower level, but you must exterminate all of the variants found on every one of the five floors.

The party quickly agreed to do as they were told, and found the Dungeon to be a low Iron tier one. Benedict both got a large amount of practice and progress in their while Skandr largely disengaged from the delve itself. There was no challenge in what they did, but evidently, the Grove Warden wanted all of the monsters that had been mutated within. Those monsters, originally scaled elk, became acidic and almost sluglike in appearance when changed by the mana from the Dungeon proper.

It was easy enough to find the mutated monsters, since they left trails of acidic goo everywhere they went. All that they needed to do was follow each trail to the sludge monster’s origin. Because they belched acid at whoever was nearby, the party quickly came to the conclusion not to even try having Felix protect them to progress his quest. When one spat a huge gobbet of hissing liquid onto his back, they’d thought it wasn’t noteworthy. As his dusksteel armor puffed into mist, though, an acrid green smoke melded with the dusksteel mist and slowed the armor’s recovery. Felix himself turned and whipped his axe through the monster’s head at that, immediately killing it, and the decision not to try again was made like that.

Rushing through the Dungeon to find these monsters that posed no threat to them was a strange experience. Astrid couldn’t help but think of the Iron tiers that’d been called to Schteldt to assist in the surge she’d experienced, and how they must have felt like this. After just a few minutes of exploring all together, they looked at each other and came to the decision to split up to finish the assignment quickly. Felix ran to one side while Muti darted to the next floor. Astrid first tried to help on the same floor, but after thinking about it for a little while, came to the same decision and moved to the next floor to finish their task sooner rather than later.

The slug trails were easy paths to follow, and within a few hours, their task was done, except for the final floor. 

“I’m glad that Kznietch’s branch was connected to a part with drakes in it, not whatever sludge is on the other side here,” Benedict grumbled as they made their way to the final staircase.

“Yeah, tougher monsters wasn’t so bad,” Astrid agreed. “If we’d been dealing with something like this, we would have had to stay out of the Dungeon.”

“Like it would have actually driven you away,” Skandr laughed as he looked at Astrid. She chuckled and led the way down the stairs. There, it only took Astrid a single frostbite enchanted stone to kill the Boss, a large bear with bulging pustules sprouting all over its body. It exploded into acid that ate through the surrounding ground, and Muti’s nose curled as she turned away from the body.

“They are a blight,” she said as she turned on her heel and led the party out.

“I can see why they don’t want these getting out onto the surface though,” Astrid thought aloud as they exited the branch.

“I’m sure that acid in general is harder to deal with as Verdant Walkers as well,” Skandr said, as he walked, still scribbling in one of his notebooks. “The acid they had was a lot stronger than their levels would have indicated, and we know that the Verdant Walkers need more time to recover from many injuries than we do, so I’d guess that acid that ruins the soil as well is doubly bad for them.”

It wasn’t long before the party had returned to the Grove that had given them the assignment, and there, something that Astrid wouldn’t have expected to ever receive from one of the Verdant Walkers was waiting for them. A section of tree trunk, maybe a meter across and half as tall, lay on the ground in front of the trunk. The wood was dark, darker than any wood Astrid had ever seen, like the color of wet soil, so dark a brown as to nearly be black. When she stepped closer to it, a root sprouted from underfoot and touched her ankle.

This should be sufficient for your needs.

The voice that spoke in her mind seemed tired, and the root immediately fell away after delivering its message. Instead of trying to press for more information, Astrid thanked them aloud and leaned down to heft the log. She grunted, surprised at its immense weight, and chuckled at Skandr.

“What?”

“Good luck working with this,” she said. “I’m pretty sure this thing weighs at least two hundred kilos.”

Skandr blinked a couple times and looked up at her. She nodded and confirmed, “I mean it. I think you’ll be able to move it, but it’s not going to be easy.”

He sighed but accepted it, and the party resumed their training.

Felix was the second to finish his evolutionary quest while the others were making their progress, and he and Muti seemed to take an annoying amount of pleasure in having been the first to evolve. Unlike Muti, he conferred with the others, but it wasn’t hard for Felix to choose his new Skill as soon as he evolved. 

Impenetrable Fortress (Iron): Grants a passive resistance to any harmful effects. Any mental or magical attack of a lower tier than this Skill is automatically resisted. Grants an immediate understanding of any mental or magical attacks affecting the Skill holder, which can be resisted by spending mana or stamina. The stronger and higher tier the effect, the greater the mana or stamina cost. 

“Stepping into the same role that you’d already chosen,” Astrid confirmed. “And the way it specifies, it would be able to resist even attacks from higher tiers, if you’ve got enough mana to keep up the defense.”

Felix nodded and said, “When it upgrades, I’m sure it’ll resist up to Iron without spending anything.”

“Can you feel what that means if it’s a regular attack, like just a punch or whatever, from someone who has an Iron tier Skill?”

“Hit me,” he offered, and Astrid jabbed his gut. Her fist sunk solidly into him, but no more than a centimeter or two before the bulk of her momentum faded.

“I felt it, but it wasn’t much,” he said with a shrug, and Astrid gave him a thumbs up.

“I forgot to ask earlier,” Astrid said, a thought occurring to her, “Muti, and you as well, Felix, did you have any Steel tier skills offered?”

“No,” Muti shook her head, “three Iron and two Bronze.”

Felix nodded in agreement, and Astrid sighed. “I guess the dream of getting more boons isn’t going to be a possibility, huh?”

“Maybe it’ll be possible,” Benedict shrugged. “However, you’ve never hidden that you chose to take Quick Recovery instead of a less flashy but still Bronze Skill to get a second boom in Bronze. It’s better to have good Skills that complement what you want to do and to be than to just focus on the ranks of Skills.”

“Do you have any more stories about Sillypants about that for us? I wouldn’t mind having some new tale to be regaled with to know just how foolish it would be to focus on Skill ranks,” Astrid grinned at him. 

Benedict thought for a moment then shrugged. “I can come up with one, but Sillypants only got to the top of Iron and then failed to go any further, last I heard. I don’t think that he’ll ever be relevant again, since he’s just an idiot who refused to accept that he was a Warrior.”

“Wait, he was really a real guy?” Astrid asked, disbelieving. “I thought you made up the story.”

“No, I called him ‘Sillypants’ because saying that his name was Georg Warrior in front of a bunch of other people who might somehow end up near my hometown was a pretty dumb idea.”

“Wait, you lived and were raised in a farming village,” Skandr said, looking up from the shield of wood he had carved from the trunk. “How was there somebody rich enough to hire a bunch of Irons and Steels for this guy?”

“Some Merchant thing,” Benedict shrugged, dismissing the question. “I never paid much attention, I didn’t like the family. Nobody really did.”

The rest of the party didn’t argue with him, and Astrid turned to Felix, “Show us your Status!”

He did so, without further comment.

Status

Name: Felix

Class: Steadfast Guardian (Steel)

Total Level: 51

Attributes

Current

Per level growth

Power

425 (+47) [+170]

+17

Alacrity

337 (+41)

+9

Fortitude

540 (+70) [+216]

+22

Magical Potency

121 (+25)

+5

Self-Mastery

269 (+25) [+108]

+13

Acumen

92 (+12)

+7

Skill List

Raging Guardian (Steel)

Guardian’s Amplification (Steel)

Guardian’s Equipment (Steel)

Defender’s Mandate (Steel)

Impenetrable Fortress (Iron)

Boon of the Protector

None

None

Locked

“Those bonuses from Raging Guardian are crazy,” Astrid said, looking at his attributes. “You’re only two levels away from crossing 100 in every attribute. Does 500 still feel different in Fortitude?”

“A little. Just more of what it was before,” he answered with a shrug, and Astrid couldn’t help but agree with him.

The rest of the party congratulated him, and it was only later that same day that Skandr presented him with the results from his experimentation with his enchantment.

“This shield will repair itself,” Skandr explained, handing over the shield with a grunt of effort. “That’s got nothing to do with the enchantments, it’s just, somehow, still alive. None of the Walkers said anything about how that works, but I think it’s a part of them? Anyways. If you give it mana and leave it out in the sun, it just… grows back. Don’t ask me how, just take care of it that way, and it’ll be fine.

“Now, about the enchantments. I probably could have just focused on boosting your attributes, but I realize that my strength with enchantment isn’t going to be crafting equipment and bestowing it with attributes. Instead, it’s bestowing effects on what I make. I’m not a crafter, but I believe there is an underexplored niche within enchantment, at least with regards to those who aren’t crafters by Class. The function of a Tailor, a Smith, or…” He trailed off as he looked at the rest of the party who waited with varying levels of frustration.

“I’m happy for you to continue to explain things,” Astrid said with a shrug. “I just think that maybe right now isn’t the best time to do that, but I leave it up to you.”

He grumbled and waved a hand through the air as he stopped his more specific explanations. Instead of continuing on his previous train of thought, he explained more simply, “I’ve spent a fair amount of time on creating ammunition for Astrid. Those are one time use items, but beyond that, most of my experience in enchantment is on things like my dagger, my boots, and the ammunition I’ve made for Astrid. All of these are objects that have an effect that can be activated by spending mana or by using the item. Beyond strengthening the shield and filling it with at least enough attributes to serve as a success for my evolution, I’ve focused on creating a valuable effect for your shield.”

Now that he was talking a language that the rest of them spoke, they all perked up and listened. He continued, “After thinking about it for a while, and in combination with the constraints of my quest being that its final effect needs to be entirely unrelated to storm magic, I came up with this. Astrid, stand just there, in front of Felix. Draw your hammer. Yes. Now, when I say so, swing your hammer towards me while Felix pushes mana into the shield.”

Astrid and Felix looked at each other, he shrugged subtly, and they decided to do it. Only swinging at maybe a quarter of her power, Astrid tried to hit Skandr. As her hammer fell in an arc, though, her weapon suddenly lurched to the side and into Felix’s shield. The wood thumped, but didn’t crack. Astrid could feel the moment when Felix stopped channeling mana into his shield as her hammer started falling down instead of towards the shield, and Skandr grinned widely.

“This is largely thanks to you, Astrid,” Skandr said, and it suddenly made sense.

“It’s like a mini Gravity Surge?” She asked, feeling a hint of envy.

“Precisely,” he answered. “I’ll spare you the details, since you don’t want them anyways, but it was pretty tricky. I’m glad I got my spell figured out before this, because it helped me with half of the inscriptions.”

As he said that, the cloud that always remained nearby him seemed to crackle in some sort of emotion, one that Astrid couldn’t understand. Skandr laughed as he interacted with the little pet, and then Astrid blinked several times.

“That means that you’re done with your requirements. Did you evolve last night?”

Instead of saying anything, Skandr grinned and shared his own Status with the party.

Status

Name: Skandr

Class: Storm Archwizard (Steel)

Total Level: 51

Attributes

Current

Per level growth

Power

135 (+10)

+5

Alacrity

167 (+22)

+7

Fortitude

218 (+37) [+87]

+8

Magical Potency

537 (+65)

+26

Self-Mastery

336 (+18) [+134]

+17

Acumen

307 (+12)

+13

Skill List

Storm Wizardry (Steel)

Storm Companionship (Steel)

Enchantment (Steel)

Warlock’s Constitution (Steel)

Mental Bastion (Iron)

Boon of Fortification

None

None

Locked

“Another member of the party who didn’t want to talk to the rest of us about their Skill, huh?” Astrid asked, feeling a little hurt.

“Well, I didn’t feel like it was necessary,” Skandr shrugged. “I got a couple options that appealed to me, but only one of them was Iron, Mental Bastion. I figured I could practice on the others when there was a single obvious choice.”

Astrid nodded knowingly then asked, “What does it do?”

“Well,” he shrugged, “you can see part of the Skill’s intent, but the rest is—”

“Yes, it gives a bonus to Fortitude and Self-Mastery,” Astrid cut him off, laughing, “but I want to see the Skill description.”

Skandr laughed. “You don’t blame me for teasing you a little, do you?” he asked.

“Share. It.” Astrid narrowed her eyes.

Mental Bastion (Iron): While maintaining control over a spell, grants a 40% bonus to Fortitude and Self-Mastery. Grants a 50% bonus to all effects regarding control over any resisting conscience.

“That second part’s pretty insidious,” Astrid remarked, looking at Skandr with a bit of accusation in her voice. 

“I can see why you’d think that,” he answered evenly. “It’s in service to Storm Companionship. As soon as I evolved to have Storm Wizardry, I recognized some of what this new Class is for.” 

Astrid went quiet and looked at him, waiting for the explanation, though feeling somewhat mollified.

“I mentioned that I could feel that this Class will change things fundamentally about what storms are. As the storms I create and control grow larger and stronger, they have stronger wills and resistance to my control. This Skill doesn’t grant me any abilities to control people, and none of my others do either. As it is, it’s a Class that makes me tougher and helps me maintain control over my spells, even this one,” he finished saying as he poked the cloud.

“Makes sense to me,” Benedict was the first to speak. “Just don’t go going ‘noble’ on us, okay?”

“Yeah, hell no,” he answered, and Astrid nodded at him in agreement.

“So that just leaves us, huh?” Benedict asked Astrid.

“I appreciate shifting the topic,” she answered with a little smile. “I think two more days for me.”

“I… hope I can be done that fast,” he said, sighing. “I’m getting there.”

“Well, then let’s get moving,” Astrid said, laughing.

“Wait, it’s night,” Benedict trailed off, seeing the determined look on Astrid’s face. “Well, I guess I can go without sleep tonight.”

The rest of the party didn’t seem to mind her hurry, and they followed her out of the camp they still hadn’t quite set up. With three Bosses to kill, Astrid had a plan of how to finish her evolution quickly.