In Dream...

Feeling rats eating my insides and face while I was still alive was one of those experiences I could have lived without, right there with being burned alive and groped by monster spiders.

Ah, well, needs must.

Soulshaper/2! Tough Soul! Vajra Mastery/1! Vajra Resistance/1!

Fuck you! +1 Essence for Level, +1 for Tough Soul.

I grabbed Tremble and got to my feet as energy began to swirl inside me.

Tough Soul, for every point of Essence, gain 1 Soak.

10 points of Ki, 10 of Essence, qualify for Vajra!

Vajra Mastery/1, unlock basic Vajra benefits. Hours of sleep needed reduced by 1 per Vajra Mastery. Energy requirements supplied by the soul, amount of food and water needed divided by 1 + Vajra, time between endurance checks increased by the inverse. Hypertrophy active, no more dystrophy of physique. Begin transformation of physique based on external energy source. Ki and Essence flood through all cells, full body awareness begins. Use Ki or Essence to power ki or Essence-based Feats, Class abilities, or Items interchangeably.

Vajra Resistance/1, FIRE. Pick a damn elemental attack, gain Resistance = to Vajra (half of combined ki/Essence).

10 Essence, +10 Soak. Should be around 72 Soak and 19 Health.

Yeah, I’m a Three, I am!..., I snarled happily to myself as I looked at Tremble, whose Rune was glowing stronger as it expanded and began to fracture.

2k goldweight for Einz, 8k for Drei. In three more days my next Slot would be available, and I could start planning to really hurt this Curse.

I could temper the Sword and slowly get it to QL 26, especially now that I could handle it when hot without problem. That would give me three Slots to work with.

Soulbound was a given. The next would be a default of Final Rest, which I would then bind to Arsenal. Slot Drei would go to Bane.

Arsenal was the Swiss Army Knife of magical sword effects. Mages change their spells, Arsenal changed a Weapon. It was a Forsaken-only effect for an Item, as a Powered would disrupt the nature of Arsenal with their own innate magic trying to form it, forcing them to have a steady and powerful effect to defy their own power. Forsaken could direct the power back and forth, and since the energy didn’t have any competition with an aura we didn’t have, it could manifest in multiple different forms.

There were literally dozens of effects which could be put into a Sword, but of course they were limited by the QL. A QL of 26 meant six effects, naturally enough.

Bane was the #1 damage effect out there. If you had a Weapon Bane to a foe, it was basically equal to a four-Slot damage effect, which normally averaged either +1/+1 TH/Dmg, or +d6 damage. +2/+2 and +2d6 was a truly devastating use of a Slot. The only problem was, it was totally wasted unless you were fighting something the Weapon was Bane to!

Enter Slaughter, which was the Arsenal equivalent for Bane. Kill a creature with the weapon, pay 2k goldweight equiv over two days, and it became an alternate Bane for the Weapon. It might take a few seconds to transfer the Bane effect over, but the Slot need not ever be useless… as long as you had killed enough different creatures to cover all your bases, of course.

I was going to be covered for Vermin, Beasts, Constructs, and Evil-born, just this far. It was going to take a few deaths to get it all done, but it wasn’t like I was going to get out of here soon.

I was now harder to kill, that damn dog’s breath was going to get less and less effective against me, and I could kill it ever faster.

Now I just had to work on my AC, Null, and damage reduction. The tools were all there, I just had to get to them. But I was patient, still grabbing my Two’s, and if I thought about it, there were literally dozens of Masteries I could get, and should get.

It would all take time, and dying. I could do both, anything to make the Curse pay more.

C’mere, Fido!

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Fido wasn’t happy to find out I was now fire-resistant. I sat down on his shoulder while he glared at me in mixed anger and fear, working the red-hot metal of my blade, my clothes barely seared this time.

I could quench it by just sharing my Vajra with it, basically instantly removing the heat from it. I had only my fingers to work with the metal, but my fingers were like pliers, files, and impromptu hammers, all by themselves. With my soul literally streaming through Tremble, I could feel everything about it that had to change.

The scissor-metal was actually pretty good, fine steel, good enough for QL 30. All that remained was balance, edge, and proper form and structure.

I wasn’t going to get a lot of time to work on it, as only a couple minutes went by between Fido going down, and the rats starting to arrive. I’d tried to be clever and drop him by where they popped up, but the skittering was happening at another corner, so my cleverness at trying to get them as they came out of the hole before they could form a proper swarm didn’t help.

I didn’t know if he remembered me killing him so much, or we might have come to terms after I slapped him around a bit. But for now, him understanding that rats were coming was enough.

My being resistant to his fire was going to be important for this understanding.

I didn’t have long to work, but something was better than nothing. I smirked as the rats began to come toward me, quenched Tremble, and nudged his head so he better faced the oncoming rats.

He breathed hellfire, and the fight began.

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An abrupt death later...

Hah, wha, ugh, what a fucking headache...

Two-headed psychic rat boss. The hell. I was fucking going to enjoy taking off both those heads, after it bit off mine and I lived long enough to hear it cracking my skull open…

Obviously, my Null not high enough, nor the Will save to deal with the psychic whammy. Fucking rat kings, what ass did the Curse pull that thing out of?

Whatever. I had hacked my way through a lot of rats, and today I was going to hack through more of them.

Monk/2!

+1 Ki, +4 skill points, Evasion! Fido was really going to get frustrated, once I could really get my Reflex save up…

+1 Ki meant Ki 11.

Bonus Martial Feat. Fire Dragon Mastery/1, +1 Ki, opens the Fire Chain, serves as TWF for Fire House Weapons… of which the longsword was one, although they preferred the short wingblades. I’d basically just be using UA in my off hand, or kicking. Erratic, savage style, unpredictable, all about attacking, corralling, get faster as the opponent did, impossible to dodge. Not about damage, but bleeding them down with overwhelming numbers of attacks.

Fire was the style about numbers of attacks and AoO, after all.

Martial Feat Forsaken, Way of Fire, Power Feat: +2 TH vs Dodge and Dex bonuses. Required 1 ki. Hey, look at that…

Advance to Way Mastery/1. Use Ocean and Fire Together, so I could use both Way Masteries at the same time, and really cut into shit. Basically +20 to hit now, exclusive of Foe Hunter, Wardance, and Big Game Hunter.

That psychic whammy was still going to put me on my ass, but oh well. It was already a monster I wasn’t supposed to be able to beat, and I was slowly closing in on ignoring it. Just a matter of dying a few more times…

---------------

One death later...

Mwah hah hah hah hah!

I sneered as I got back to my feet.

It turns out that getting a thrown Sword into your throat is a nice way to lose control of your brain-frying psychic blast, and get a Sama in your face instead!

The swarms had gone crazy, the two-headed rat had nipped away… and I had cut both of the fucker’s heads off before its minions could drag me down and finish me off…

Mwah hah hah hah hah!

Its psychic Mickey was going to be effective against me for a time, but it was useless if I just got close enough to stick it, and once it was in melee, I wasn’t afraid of it at all. Sure, it could bite through steel, but if I got close enough to hit it while in a Wardance, it was just meat.

“Scout/2!”

Talents were the order of the day. Scouts were naturals at certain things, better than Feats. It was a different kind of feeling than the training Melees went through for Feats, more like picking up the knack for something easily than mastering it.

And as a Forsaken, I naturally got two!

“Wolfpack Flanker! Vexing Flanker! Cunning Mastery/2!”

It’s like I was thinking about this stuff, or something.

Wolfpack Flanker allowed you to designate any space where someone attacking the same target was your flanking partner, regardless of your position. They didn’t need to be on the opposite side.

Vexing Flanker allowed me to count any space I currently threatened as the space I was threatening from.

Combined, the two allowed me to flank with myself, by designating the adjoining space next to me as my flanking partner, and shifting my attack vectors between the two.

Sneak attack damage against any single foe I was fighting, what was not to love?

I could only have one Stance active at a time, but that was fine, constant damage was worth it.

Cunning Mastery/2 gave me Sneak Attack damage on an Attack of Opportunity. I was all over that junk. Just had to alternate back and forth between Thorned Stance triggering AoO’s on moves or the Wolfpack Flanker, that was all.

And I couldn’t SA a swarm of rats. Their boss, however, was something different!

“Skill points to Open Locks, two; Sleight of Hand, three; Escape Artist, three, Linguist one, Mabrahoring.” Me and Fido were going to have a real discussion sometime soon in the language of devils, I think…

And I was freaking going to go OFF on that damn rat!

Tomorrow I’d add Swarmbane to my Sword, and then we’d see what those rats could do…

I just had to make sure I killed the two-headed white rat before it Mickey’d me. I had the tools, I could kill it better, stronger, faster…