beddedO
patreon
Chapter 42 - Song of the Crimson Death
🕑 Added 2023-09-01 21:24:18 +0000 UTCChapter 42
Song of the Crimson Death
Ethan escorted Elijah with a strange gaze as the boy sped out of the tent and down the tunnel. In some ways, he was being somewhat impatient with the kids. A few words of reassurance would cost him nothing, but he still held back from committing to them. In part, it was because of Elijah, because he'd already designated the boy into that role, but in part, it was because some further distance had to be curated, for everyone's sake.
He looked back through the day’s worth of rewards once more–beyond the five levels worth of base stats, he unlocked three more abilities–two passives and an active–four more titles, at least one of which he never expected, and another system function–Interdimensional Market. As of right now, it was useless to him as the name was actually quite misleading. It didn’t work as some cross-realm shop where elves from another world could put up their fancy wines and he could then buy them through some sort of a universal currency.
The Interdimensional Market was a… combination of things–a currency exchange office, an auction house, an authentication house, a trading guarantee… if it could be bought, sold, or leveraged in any capacity, it had its place in it. The reason why it was useless to him was that, at its most basic function–which is the only one he’ll have access to until Level 50–he could only trade with other Awakened of Earth. And even then it was… convoluted, to say the least.
While the function didn’t impress or excite him, other things did: such as the three abilities that he unlocked, one at Level 8 and two at Level 10.
[Blood World – Level 1] – can only be activated if there are 15 or more corpses (friendly or hostile) within 200 yards of the caster. Upon activation, cause blood of the dead to stir and awaken, shooting towards you as its overlord, increasing all base stats by 250%, range of abilities by 30%, restoring Blood to its max value, and giving all damage-based abilities 50% Leech. Rapidly consume Blood at the rate of 20% of max Blood Pool per second; Blood restoration is lowered by 80% during this window. Cooldown: 10 minutes.
It was a similar tier of ability to what all other classes get at Level 8. It wasn’t an ultimate, per se, but it was a kickstarter that sort of foretold the future of every Class and how the Classes function at their core. Blood World simply further reinforced the notion of a drain tank, only with some additional perks to bolster the baseline of the Class past just being a damage sponge.
The most interesting part of the ability was that it did not have a finite duration–while, at the moment, it would last 5 seconds and not a second more, that was only at the moment. While consuming 20% of max Blood Pool would scale no matter how high his resource got, the ability to restore it rapidly wasn't tied into just passive restoration. There would likely be further abilities as well as items that could increase the ability's duration beyond that. The biggest issue, though, was that casting abilities during it would, similarly, lower its duration further.
It was a fine, intricate dance that he'd have to learn to dance in the future. For now, though, he simply considered it a 'speed up the process of killing everything' sort of ability rather than the quintessential element of his Class.
[Heartlock – Level 1] – reduces the effects of all Bleed-related statuses on you by 35%. If your death is imminent due to bleeding out, gain 3h immunity period. Can only occur once every 7 days.
[Vital Hex – Level 1] – every 3rd instance of the same spell deals 20% more damage and has a 1% chance to be multicast.
The two passive abilities weren't exactly game-changers but were simple stat-effects. Heartlock, in particular, was quite decent, if rather niche. Very, very, very few Awakened ever die due to blood loss, especially to monsters. However, there were still instances where the Bleed statuses were major headaches–namely inside the Tunnels whose story bit was an assassination organisation. Vital Hex, on the other end, was just a straight-up damage boost that also introduced a rather important element of spell casting that would permeate the desires of virtually every caster in the future–Multicast. Casting once for the spell to be cast 2, 3 times at no additional cost.
A very particular war would eventually be fought over a bow of a very simple name: Scryer. While most of the stats were on the lower end of its level, one in particular stood out: 15% multicast chance on all projectile abilities. Everyone–including Ethan–went after it, though it naturally went to one member of the Ten Beasts by the end.
As for the four titles, three were rather simple: Savanna Hunter, which increased damage done to monsters in savanna regions by 15%; Lion Tamer, which increased damage he did to lion-type monsters by 10%, Enduring Tapestry, a semi-unexpected title which boosted his resistance to Fire, Heat, and Molten spells by 5% and statuses by 20%.
It was, however, the fourth one that he unlocked which surprised him: Untamed, a title he unlocked after he got to Level 10.
[Untamed – Unique] – for the next 10 Levels, gain 20% bonus XP, 15% bonus damage, 10% cooldown reduction, and 30% movement speed. After reaching Level 20, the Title turns into Common variety which increases XP by 5% and damage by 2%.
As he had no information on most of the Unique titles, especially for the early levels, he imagined that he’d be surprised quite frequently, and Untamed was certainly a surprise. It all but guaranteed he’d also be the first one to hit Level 20 so long as he didn’t die. It was as though the system worked to propel those with a headstart as quickly as possible, which did make sense considering all that would come to transpire soon. The system worked desperately to create an army of early Awakened that could hold the dam. In the end, though, it failed. Or, rather, it didn’t fail–just failed to account for the nature of man
Name: Ethan Flynn
Age: 32
Race: Human
Level: 12
Variant: N/A
Titles: Explorer, Slayer, Arbitrator, Trailblazer, Savanna Hunter, Lion Tamer, Enduring Tapestry, Untamed
Items: [Tar-Tipped Waeul’s Dagger]
Relics: N/A
Class: Blood Inheritor [Prime]
_________________________
Vitality: 35
Strength: 18
Intellect: 11
Agility: 21
Wisdom: 5
Health: 350
Blood Pool: 13
Damage: 58 + 10% (temp)
Cooldown Reduction: 10% (temp)
Physical Defence: 0 [Reduces physical damage intake by the amount]
Magical Defence: 10 [Reduces magical damage intake by the amount]
____________________________
Abilities:
Active:
Sanguine Touch, Blood Mania, Crimson Blade, Blood World
Passive:
Bloodbound, Vampiric Touch, Bleeding Agony, Vorpal Veins, Leeching Touch, Heartlock, Vital Hex
A cursory glance at his status window let him know that he was progressing as planned. One outlier that he didn’t expect to grow as much as it did was his Health; raw Health was, perhaps, the most important stat early on before people could start stacking defensive stats. For reference, in his past life, even with a boost of some early, cheap items, he hit 350 Health only when he reached Level 28. Granted, the two Classes were quite dissimilar in concept, but even when compared to some other tanks, Blood Inheritor had far more Vitality. Which, considering the nature of the Class, did make sense.
He took out one of the last beers he brought and slowly drank it in silence, his mind wandering to the future. He would close the Tunnel tomorrow–there was no need to delay it any further. They only saw one item drop which meant that this was one of the so-called 'cheap' Tunnels that everyone despised. XP gains were also rather atrocious when combined with how many enemies he had hunted down. However, at the very least, he made some decent progress in activating the Daily Quests.
He still worried a decent amount about what was happening outside. While three-four days wasn’t exactly forever, a lot could happen in that timeframe. In his memory, nothing of true import happened during this period of time. There were some internal squabbles in the military that resulted in a sort of dissent that created one of the city’s numerous active gangs in the early days of the post-Descent. It was also around this time that the city would begin experiencing strange disappearances that would last for several months until the culprit was found out, which kickstarted one of the most insanely harrowing stories of the early post-Descent world. The Shrieker’s death, the spontaneous Tunnel, that thing crawling out and nearly ending humanity… just thinking about it caused him to shudder.
There were many things happening around the world as far as some of his scattered memories could recall. Deep in China’s countryside, one of the most famous Tunnels would appear soon–I’wak’s Vengeance. It was one of the few solo Tunnels that the people could leave whenever they wanted. Even Ethan eventually tried completing it, but the Tunnel went uncleared even when he returned. The quest inside was rather simple, actually: hunt down a stranger who ambushed I’wak and avenge the man. The stranger, though, was in all likelihood a Terror who also spawned the Tunnel out of boredom, as it was deemed impossible.
It would match its strength to just barely above whoever it was fighting, and win every single time. It was rather frustrating, but it was a decent training Tunnel where people could push themselves to the limits and see their ceiling without truly risking their lives.
Finishing the beer, Ethan left the tent but didn’t return to the chambers below. Instead, he went on a hunt. There was no point in upholding the pretence any longer–the kids couldn’t help him with the hunt. They might yet be of help for a boss fight, at least, but they were still some ways off from there. And if he got stronger faster and Levelled up at an accelerated rate, it would allow him to carefully guide them elsewhere, in an environment that was under his absolute control.
Ever since entering the Savanna, he had a strange feeling that something was off. No, that feeling stemmed from well before entering; the entire Tunnel was such a massive anomaly that it alone would cause a massive butterfly effect. Its contents thus far only reaffirmed that strange feeling–it was too easy. Well, too easy for him specifically. But the Tunnel almost felt like some underlying system trying to 'balance' the world because of him. But the balance fell way off as this was simply just helping him sharpen himself and Level up faster. But the 'system' was never that generous. Which meant only one thing: the bulk of the difficulty was most likely attached to the boss itself. The faster he got to it, the less exhausted everyone would be, and the less would the environment impact them. Even now, the temperature had climbed closer to 140 than to 130 at the peak, which was beginning to mess even with his senses, let alone the kids'.
One last hunt, adrift in the scorching heat that belted him from all angles, to get the required number of kills for the boss to spawn. He stayed silent and focused as he jumped at the unsuspecting lion who was sunbathing, effectively one-shotting the monster. It would soon end, though his gut was warning him of that end and to take even more precautions than he already was. Something, still, felt off. Quite off.
