The Elixir of Lucidity I got from Jass, Sam, Esme, and Bonehead participating in the fight granted me a permanent buff of +5 Int, +4 Wis, +3 Will, Deacon thought as he scratched under his nose with one knuckle, his other hand snapping up to catch the flickering parchment sheet that fluttered out of the campfire like an ember. The sheet hummed against his palm with the familiar pulse of System text.
So, two Free Points into Perception and two into Intelligence –sharpen my awareness, push my spell damage higher, he thought as he assigned the four points.
After assigning his Free Points, his gaze traveled to the glowing and flickering tab at the top of his Status Page; the Changes and Updates Tab.
"Holy…" Deacon muttered under his breath as he opened the tab and saw just how many changes occurred to his Status Page.
Spell Learned: [Cleanse (Initiate)]
Skill Upgrade: [Basic One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Uncommon -> Rare)]
Skill Evolution: [Basic One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Rare) -> One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Uncommon)]
Skill Upgrade: [Light Shield Mastery (Common -> Uncommon)]
Skill Evolution: [Light Shield Mastery (Uncommon) -> Shield Mastery (Common)]
Skill Upgrade: [Academy of Beginnings Sword Style (Uncommon -> Rare)]
Skill Upgrade: [Blistering Flames (Uncommon -> Rare)]
New Affinity Gained: [Blood (High)]
Spell Learned: [Ignis Sanguinis: BloodFlame Armament (Epic)]
Deacon Surtr Hayes
Race: Jötunn Lv 13
Class: Warrior Lv 13
Health: 1000/1000
Mana: 260/260
Stamina: 924/924
Stats:
Vitality: 96 +4 (Lesser Heart-Fire Ritual)
Strength: 105 (110)
Endurance: 83 (87) +5 (Lesser Heart-Fire Ritual)
Agility: 59
Intelligence: 27
Wisdom: 30
Willpower: 44
Perception: 23
Free Points: 0
Racial Traits:
General Skills: Identify (Initiate), Meditation (Initiate)
Class Skills: [One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Uncommon)], Shield Mastery (Common), Academy of Beginnings Sword Style (Rare), Blistering Flames (Rare)
Spell Masteries: Fire [Spark (Initiate), Ignis (Uncommon), Flame Armament (Uncommon), Flame Mine (Common)], Water [Water Ball (Initiate), Cleanse (Initiate)], Earth [Gouge Ground (Initiate)], BloodFlame: [Ignis Sanguinis: BloodFlame Armament (Epic)]
Affinity: Fire (High) – Innate skill: Undying Flame, Blood (High) – Innate skill: Locked
Achievements: Finder of the Hidden II [+10 All Stats]
"Fucking finally," Deacon muttered as he saw that Basic One-Handed Mastery had evolved to One-Handed Mastery. While the rarity had dropped, from Rare to Uncommon, the overall quality of the skill had improved by leaps and bounds, as in addition to getting a minor boost to stamina efficiency, he also gained a minor boost in Strength.
One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Uncommon):
Mastery begins with a single blade. Unlocks baseline proficiency with most one-handed weaponry. Provides a minor bonus to stamina efficiency and a minor boost to Strength when attacking with a one-handed melee weapon in hand.
As he continued to read through the changes that occurred to his Status Page, he was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had upgraded Shield Mastery, Academy of Beginnings Sword Style, and Blistering Flames – three of his most used skills in the past couple of Floors.
Academy of Beginnings Sword Style (Rare):
The Academy of Beginnings Sword Style is a structured and widely taught technique within the Academy of Beginnings that focuses on clean strikes, defensive posture, and balanced footwork. This style emphasizes fundamentals over flair, as it has proven time and time again to be a balanced base. While using the Academy of Beginnings Sword Style, you will receive a low increase to your Strength and Dexterity stats.
Shield Mastery (Common):
A shield turns defense into opportunity. Unlocks baseline proficiency with most shields. When wielding a shield, your stability when blocking is minorly enhanced and minorly enhances your Endurance.
Blistering Flames (Rare):
Your flame not only scorches your foes, it festers within them. When you deal damage with fire-based attacks onto your foes, they are afflicted with Blister – a stacking burn that deals low damage over time. Blister can stack up to 4 times, refreshing duration on re-application after a period of time.
After reading through each of their eyes flicking down the improvements, Deacon's previously sour mood began to lighten.
However, upon reaching the end of the changes, the Status Page in his hand slipped through his fingers as he read the last two updates to his Status Page.
Deacon stared in disbelief as the parchment tumbled through the air and smacked into the mud at his feet. Even as mud began to stain the thin parchment, he didn't move; rather, he couldn't, as he felt as though his mind had just short-circuited.
Coming to his senses, Deacon scrambled to snatch his Status Page out of the mud, hoping the text hadn't been ruined. Jass gave him a raised brow as she saw his expression and the parchment falling from his hand, but said nothing.
His eyes locked onto the last few changes.
New Affinity: [Blood (High)]
New Spell: [Ignis Sanguinis: BloodFlame Armament (Epic)]
Deacon blinked hard, half-expecting the words to vanish, but they didn't.
Flipping back to the main tab, he read and reread them, his stomach tightening. Not only had he gained another High Affinity, something most people would sell their souls for, but he'd been given a new spell. And not just any spell, but the very same spell that improved his flames and gave him the boost he needed to reach Bonehead; Ignis Sanguinis: BloodFlame Armament.
Then his eyes fell lower and saw something that had truly left him speechless.
"I… got another Innate Skill?" Deacon muttered, disbelief cracking through his voice. His grip tightened on the parchment, crinkling it. "…How?"
***
Three nights and three days had passed since the siege began, since the Tower had declared the start of Floor Seven, and barely any progress had been made on either side. The Undead Kingdom still hadn't broken through the seemingly impenetrable walls of Dawn's Breath, and the thought of trying to cut off their supply lines was swiftly tossed aside as Dawn's Breath was the only human settlement remaining according to the various undead leaders of the Undead Kingdom that they had spoken to, and along with that, Dawn's Breath had a sustainable farm that provided for their entire population.
On the Holy Human Kingdom's side, not much had changed – aside from weathering a surge of attacks from cadets and dealing with an ever-growing list of bizarre tactics. Some cadets had gone so far as to rig the trebuchets, climbing into the slings and flinging themselves at the castle. They seemed to forget physics entirely, and that forming a circle of shields like a makeshift tire wasn't going to stop them from splattering into red mush – even if there was a mage or two casting a Gust barrier around them to lighten the fall.
Letting out a long-winded exhale from his nose, Deacon looked up to see the twin full moons hanging above his head and decorated with countless stars. Should I just tell them? He asked himself for the thousandth time.
From afar came the muted thunder of trebuchets hurling stones and compressed balls of oiled shrapnel that were set aflame, the whine of ballista bolts being pulled back and firing, and the building wind up of Flare Towers being charged by 30 mages.
Turning his gaze back to the large boulder in front of him and the tunnel being dug right in front of it, Deacon switched off his manaphone and hopped down it.
Landing at the bottom of the 40-meter drop, Deacon snapped his finger, and a whisp of flame hovered above his head and lit up his run down the tunnel.
Upon reaching the end of the tunnel, Deacon found the entire Ravenlight Party hard at work.
Jass stood at the forefront, missing the upper half of her leather armor and wearing a tied-up shirt that was equally drenched in sweat as the rest of her body, as she constantly shifted the earth away from her using nothing other than her own mana and fists.
With every punch, her knuckles tore through dirt, stone, metal – anything in her path crumbling with ease. She slammed another fist forward, showing no sign of stopping, and the tunnel stretched another meter ahead.
Sam and Esmerelda followed behind her – Sam's staff dragging across the tunnel floor as he muttered incantations under his breath to stabilize the walls of the tunnel, while Esmerelda's hand constantly ran down the sides of the tunnel as she continuously called for the spirits to detect their surroundings. The earth softened with each rune, making Jass's job easier, though sweat still poured down her face.
"Gods, these fumes," Sam muttered in a hushed voice, as his face scrunched up as a visible waft of light green vapor found its way into his nose. "It smells like boiling rat piss back here."
"You'd be lucky if it was just rat piss that I'm working with," Bonehead replied dryly, his voice echoing hollow in the cramped space. He trudged at the rear, pushing forward with his makeshift alchemical workstation that hung from around his shoulders, which he put together several hours ago – a one-meter board of wood lashed together with rope.
On it clattered cracked vials and flasks that were half empty, powders sealed in wax paper, and at the center, a blackened cauldron squatting over a flickering purple flame. The liquid inside bubbled and hissed, thick and oily, belching fumes that coated the air with the stink of burnt copper, herbs, and various innards that belonged to a plethora of creatures.
Deacon, crouched low near the middle, clenched his jaw against the smell. His eyes flicked toward Bonehead. "You had to brew that in here?" he whispered harshly.
"Where the hell else can I brew this?" Bonehead didn't look up, only stirred the bubbling cauldron with a taut thread of mana strung between his skeletal fingers. In his actual hands, he was grinding rat urine with whole centipedes and caterpillar legs into a wet, translucent paste with an ornate-looking dark mahogany mortar and pestle.
"It'll eat through the glass in five-ish hours after I pour it into the vials," he muttered as he pushed the translucent paste into the bubbling cauldron with the pestle and quickly began stirring it. "Which, let me remind you again, means you need to get these into the wells ASAP once you're up there. Large bodies of water are the only thing that can hold it and let the poison spread properly."
"We've cleared the wall… and we're directly beneath a group of people. Could be barracks, or something like it – something with enough space to hold a lot of them together," Esmerelda whispered. At her words, the group stopped what they were doing for a brief and tense couple of seconds before their expressions hardened and they resumed their roles without any fanfare.
Thirty minutes after Esmerelda's announcement, the tunnel stretched forward by three hundred meters, and just as Jass was about to punch the dirt in front of her, Esmerelda lifted her ear off the wall and tapped her shoulder, causing her to stop.
"We're in the perfect place," she said confidently.
The Party went still, save for Bonehead's bubbling cauldron. Its contents hissed, spat, and gave off another wave of sharp fumes that clawed at their noses.
Trusting Esmerelda's word, Jass began to angle upwards – simultaneously, Sam gagged quietly as he was hit with a large fume cloud of the poison Bonehead was brewing, causing him to press the ends of his robe's sleeve tighter over his face. "I swear to the System, Bonehead, if the antidote you gave us doesn't work, I will personally see to it that your head will be the bucket I use to –"
"Quiet," Deacon hissed, eyes narrowing at the ceiling as faint bootsteps thudded just feet above. The group went deathly still, holding their breath until the sound faded.
Only then did Bonehead snuff out the purple flame beneath the cauldron and stop stirring the now translucent liquid.
Bonehead pulled out a reinforced glass dropper and quickly filled the seven rectangular vials hanging from the rack on the edge of his makeshift alchemical station with the translucent poison before sealing each of their tops with a wax cap.
"Here," Bonehead whispered to Deacon as he passed him all seven vials. "And remember, you need to do this fast."