Aster Loka
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Chapter 34
🕑 Added 2021-12-16 18:08:00 +0000 UTCHeya! Aster here. Just a quick heads up: there will be a VIP poll posted in the next few minutes to determine the choices made after this chapter, and tomorrow's chapter will be delayed until Monday so I can collect the results and integrate them into the story. That means that chapters 35 and 36 will both be posted on Monday. Thanks for your patience! On with the story.
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Finally! Levi hardly noticed the treasure room’s contents as he stepped inside to consider his options.
And boy, were there a lot of options to choose from.
‘Abilities’ included everything from innate skills to category bonuses to specific attacks. Class-related abilities cost 1 point to gain or increase, while non-class abilities cost double that. There were countless abilities to choose from, if you knew how to find them. They weren’t all together in one big convenient list, but buried in sub-sub menus in a hundred different places.
He had a third minion slot now, and new options for upgrading his class. Tamer class options were the easiest to find. They could be located with only a few minutes of jumping through connected concepts while focusing on his class.
Tamer Abilities:
Pack Leader: Add an additional minion slot every 5th level
Empower: Your minion is granted a 10% boost to all attributes for 1 minute (Must be touching minion to activate)
Dismay: Decrease a creature’s resistance to mental or subjugation abilities by 5% (Can only be used on creatures with less than 5% health remaining. Target also regains 10% of its maximum health.)
Revive: Restore one [Dead] minion to life at 10% of its maximum health (Can only be used once every 24 hours)
Levi almost laughed. Here he'd been searching all over the system for the Revive unlock, and it was a class ability all along. He selected it without hesitating. The other options would still be there next threshold, and he was tired of having a minion slot tied up with a dead minion unable to gain experience.
He unstrapped his backpack, opened the pocket where he'd stashed Skarm, and gently laid his first minion out on the floor.
Skarm: Level 2
(Horned Gremlin)
Dead
Revive
Unbind
Leve selected Revive.
Skarm coughed and gasped, then sat up and blinked at them. He squeaked uncertainly, patting his hands across his body, then caught sight of Gremlin Two. He jumped up and crouched into a fighting stance, then hesitated and looked up to Levi uncertainly.
Gremlin Two was glowering at the interloper, clearly unhappy at having to share Levi with another gremlin.
"Skarm, this is Two. Two, Skarm has seniority."
Gremlin Two grinned, showing all his pointy teeth, and patted the dagger at his side.
"Yes, you should probably give that to Skarm too."
Gremlin Two squeaked in protest, looking up at Levi pleadingly.
Skarm crossed his arms and looked away, dismissively.
"So... you don't want the dagger?" Levi asked.
Skarm shook his head firmly, flexing his claws as if to say 'this is all the weapon I need'.
Gremlin Two looked torn, glancing down at his own claws, then at the dagger.
"You're going to have to get along," Levi ordered. "If you want to... measure your horns against each other or something, do it when we're not in a dungeon. And don't maim each other."
They both looked at him askance, then at each other, then shook their heads in unison.
"Don't give me that 'of course we won't maim each other' bilge. You know you were planning to scrap it out the moment my back was turned."
"This is so weird," mumbled Gordon, shaking his head.
"I know, you'd think they could get along. We're all here to save the world, after all." He glanced back at the gremlins, who were squinting at each other intently. He could almost feel the intensity of their scrutiny. “Go ahead and get to know each other, but remember: no maiming.”
He returned his attention to wrangling every drop of available info on abilities out of the stubbornly incomprehensible system.
Next up were the upgrade abilities available for anything that he’d already unlocked.
Tame: Threshold Increase (0/5) - Tame ability can be used on creatures whose health is 1% higher
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Tame: Second Chance (0/5) - Subsequent Tame attempts require 10% less mana and stamina to cast
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
He’d looked at those before, and they still didn’t impress him that much. 1% could be a lot on a more powerful creature, but so far he'd had no indication that taming more powerful creatures was going to be doable anyway. It didn't seem commensurate with the investment.
Revive: Cooldown Reduction (0/5) - Decreases the time between uses of Revive to 12 hours
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Revive: Recovery Increase (0/5) - Revived minions recover an additional 10% health
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
The change from 24 hours to 12 on revive was tempting, more so if he could bring it down to 6 with another point. Still, Revive wouldn't end up being useful in short term conflicts, and if he was losing people that regularly that he needed it more often than once a day then he'd probably be better off rethinking his strategies.
Some abilities could be learned without spending a point - the Mana Ping he used to locate dungeons was one such spell, as was his accidental Mana Push. The system unlocks were a shortcut, not an unsurpassable gate.
Mana Ping: Distance (0/5) - Increases the range of Mana Ping by 50%
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Mana Ping: Strength (0/5) - Increases the sensitivity of Mana Ping by 20%
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Levi couldn’t deny it was tempting to put his points into increasing his ping’s distance - he wasted hours searching for the exact location of each dungeon that could be spent on the move or fighting to level up - but he felt that would be a shortsighted decision.
Once he settled on his dungeon loop, he’d be going through the same handful of dungeons over and over while they leveled alongside him to present a sufficient challenge. Searching for them now was a temporary irritation, and he’d forgotten just how slow ability points were to accumulate at early thresholds.
Mana Push: Intensity (0/5) - Increases the intensity of Mana Push by 100%
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Mana Push: Multi-target (0/5) - Allows an additional target to be impacted by Mana Push
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Mana Push… he hadn’t even realized it counted as a proper ability, but it was far too weak and situational to be worth investing in for the long term. Sure, throwing a few points into it could turn it into something useful, but why do that when he could put the points into an actual Air spell that would have much more impact?
Which reminded him, there were a few air spells he’d tagged for later consideration.
Drift: Glide through the air or descend at a safe velocity.
(Unlock: 2 ability points)
Air Blade: Fire a focused slash of superdense wind to slice a distant target.
(Unlock: 2 ability points)
Gust: Fire a short-range wide area burst of sharpened wind, dealing area damage.
(Unlock: 2 ability points)
Those were tucked away beneath a help menu about the different types of elemental wizards, as examples. Examples were not provided for non-Wind spells. He knew there were similar sections somewhere for at least fire and lightning, but his Swordsman incarnation had little use for spells so he’d never memorized the labyrinthine path through the system to their location, only hearing about them secondhand.
Air Blade would do much the same as Mana Push, but with actual damage included instead of only tiny force. If he’d had Air Blade when facing the Soul-Searer, he could have done a lot more damage very quickly.
Drift was a very helpful utility spell in a few specific situations, but once he had enough stamina things like falling wouldn’t be such a problem. He’d never used it himself, but he’d seen air mages drifting around the city in the past. And he couldn’t deny a little bit of envy at the thought. Being able to survey a battlefield from above would be an undeniable advantage. But while it could be very helpful in the future, right now he was mostly facing indoor dungeons. The demon attacks wouldn’t happen for months still, plenty of time to decide if it was worth the investment at a later threshold.
Gust would be very handy against swarm-type creatures, which he knew would start showing up once he got into higher leveled dungeons. Destruction dungeons in particular loved their clouds of corrosive scarabs, and he’d need some plan in place for them soon. In the original future, he’d used a sword with a shield mode, but he doubted he’d be fortunate enough to get a two-mode sword any time soon. Those usually didn’t show up until dungeons at least level 20. Speaking of swords, though…
Manablade Expertise (0/5): Increases damage dealt when using manablades by 4%
(Upgrade: 2 ability points)
Manablade Finesse (0/5): Decreases mana cost when using manablades by 5%
(Upgrade: 2 ability points)
These ones only showed up when he focused on his manablade dagger. They were familiar skills: he’d maxed both in his past life. Damage with percentile scaling could be incredibly powerful. If he planned to continue acting in direct combat, they’d be good to invest in. But the fact that they were non-class abilities made him hesitate. His ultimate plan was to direct armies of minions from a distance, but it couldn’t be denied that he did already have exceptional close-combat experience and abilities. He’d have to think about it.
Horned Gremlin: Experience Increase (0/5) - Horned Gremlin minions will level at a 20% increased rate
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Horned Gremlin: Stat Boost (0/5) - Horned Gremlin minions will gain 1 extra stat point on level up
(Upgrade: 1 ability point)
Those appeared when he focused on his individual minions through the minion control panel, and gave him significant pause. They were class skills, and looked far more promising than those for Tame. If he maxed the abilities, that experience increase would grant his minions double experience, and how strong could they be if they gained six times as many stat points per level? If this was the kind of power he could offer his minions now, how strong would they be once he became a Summoner?
He didn’t want to over-commit to any one minion type just yet, maxing the abilities on his first and weakest minions didn’t seem wise in the long run, but it was incredibly tempting. Unfortunately, he couldn’t check out the available options for any other minion type without having one in front of him. The system was frustrating that way. He continued searching.
Stunning Wave: Caster becomes the epicenter of an expanding wave of stunning energy
(Unlock: 1 ability point)
Well, that spell was infamous. It failed to mention that it also had a chance of stunning the caster. So while you'd imagine it to be an excellent last-resort defense... it really wasn't. It was best used by a tank who would survive being stunned in place in the middle of enemies, preferably supported by ranged casters and maybe a cavalry charge.
Once unlocked, it would have sub-abilities like Tame did, allowing the radius and stun strength to be increased, but Levi wasn’t sure it would fit his build. He wasn’t planning to be a stun tank. But it was very interesting that it apparently qualified as a class skill. He’d seen it available cheaply as a Fighter as well, so perhaps it was a universal class skill? Or some kind of joke by the system. He didn’t actually know the criteria for making a skill a class ability or not, there was some overlap and some that were unique to a given class.
There were one or two more that he could recall, and it took only a few moments to bring their details up.
Split Arrow: Clones a projectile as it nears its target. All clones deal equal damage as the original missile.
(Unlock: 2 ability points)
Split Arrow would be almost useless, he didn’t have a manabow or any expertise in its use even if one showed up.
Lightning Trap: An electrical orb hovers in place, discharging when approached by an enemy.
(Unlock: 2 ability points)
Lightning Trap was something he’d seen used a great deal in the constant-retreat battles of the later years of Earth’s slow destruction, and had some very powerful eventual options. But it was a high-mana spell, and until he had better regens it might be an inefficient use of resources.
He looked back at the class abilities.
Pack Leader, Empower, and Dismay would all be excellent options. Each could have major impacts on his strategies, allowing different tactics and improvements in future. Deciding on his selections wasn’t something he should rush.
He had two ability points at the moment, enough to either unlock or upgrade a single cross-class ability, or two class abilities.
“This is something I need to think over carefully,” Levi finally said. “And I can do that while we’re on the way.” He grabbed the dungeon’s loot - another mana potion, a Destruction token, a blank orb, and a lens with power tracings but nothing to power it with - and shoved them into his backpack. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to waste any more time than necessary.”
