The Nights in Nightmare pass, one death at a time...

Binder/3.

Binder/4.

Expert/8. +1 to Int, Mirrored to +1 Dex. Int 24, Dex 26. +8 Skill points, plus 8 more for Int increase. 2 to Shipwright (8), 6 to Pilot (6). Default Expert Knowledges.

Alchemist/5. +1 SA, now totaling 7d6, 3-8 per die. +1 Bonus Alchemist Feats. +4 Poison Resistance. Most importantly, could now make up to 5 Potions per day, subject to the 1k limit. I was making very sure that damn Alc Golem had no opportunities to destroy that lab, every day.

That meant up to 5 Growth Potions/day… or a Giant Growth, if I cared to make one, which I didn’t.

This day, I got past the Gugs.

There was an infestation of Moits riding civilian humans behind them.

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Artificer/5. Bonus Artificer Feats. 4 skill points. I could retain magic on magic items without using a formation now. Effectively, I could punch Tremble into a magical Weapon used by anything, and she could munch it down within two minutes. Could still only Apply 1k gpv a day, but I could at least store the stuff in the assortment of gemstones off dead giants’ jewelry… or pass it off to other Named Weapons…

I finished melting the pieces of the Duke’s Sword down, and making myself a Buckler. Tremble dumped all his current defensive enhancement into it, calmly starting to regain it all just to toughen himself up, if nothing else.

Stand had always been the name of my Shield in game, and Tremble immediately started adding new stanzas to our Song of ‘Stand and Tremble, She Comes!’ I made it as a buckler, then a small shield, large shield, and even a tower shield. Its first Slot was Soulbound, so it was tied to me, and freed up room in the Hilt Chamber for more shards of metal to be added to it.

I had an effective Strength of 28 at the moment, so a Buckler with a Compressed boss on it weighing thirty pounds was nothing.

Stand wasn’t intelligent yet, and I wasn’t going to make it so without more thought. It was there to enhance my defensive benefits, no more, no less.

It had the same limit on QL as Tremble, and so 7 Slots tops. As I could and did take my time with this crafting, I drove it all the way to 12k worth of Value Crafting, on top of what Tremble ceded to it. Most of that went into Bane variants on the Weapon side of things, because Shields were the biggest value sinks in the game.

You didn’t need a special Feat to make a Shield a Weapon, like I had done on the inverse with Tremble as a moving shield.

A +III Fortified Greater Soulbound Defiant Shield. +1 base Shield AC, plus double Shield Focus, equaled +12 to AC from Shield, costing me 4 Essence. 100% crit immunity when stacked with my Alchemical changes to my physique.

It was ALSO a Heavy +I Greater Soulbound Bane Enmity Defender/Guardian Bashing/Bane of Legends/Energized Shield, with Morphing and all the Impervious/Indestructible things going for it. It was set permanently to Defender, unless Guardian might be needed, which was in Arsenal.

A continuous +IX Defender bonus to AC. To get the same on Tremble, I had to lose his primary offensive power. I needed the AC with all the cheaty Teamwork Feats everything suddenly had.

With Shield as part of my Profound Primary Weapon Group, it was a Profound Weapon and I could wield it without losing my Monkish Wis bonus to AC.

Add in a Missile Warding Augment Stone that used to be a ruby on a giant’s finger providing another +5 to my Ranged AC, plus a free missile deflect every six seconds, and my defensive side got another nice shot in the arm.

No chance at crits, near immunity to ranged attacks, improved AC, and greater reach for the bigger combatants equaled more staying power. As long as I kept the number in combat range who could attack me to three or less, I would mostly be fine.

I hoped.

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Of course, Gugs had five attacks and Moits the same, and were not so easy compared to giants. It looked like the Curse had stumbled on a winning formula and wanted to exploit it.

Naturally enough, following the Moits were Uterrioz, four-armed reptilian warriors with snake lower bodies, who normally existed underground in time-lost caverns and stuff, having themselves a good ol’ time hacking everything in sight, and then me.

After them were the gargorians, the extremely powerful four-armed lords of the gargoyles. They learned not to fly around me quickly enough, but four claws, two horns, a bite, and a tail swipe was a lot to deal with. Just two of them could turn into a nightmare of one making me totally vulnerable to the other, and I didn’t get past them for some time.

But that was okay. I had Advanced Classes to raise to Three, I had to finish out Archer, Scout, Minstrel, Artificer, Monk, Vizard, and Soulshaper to Five.

Key points: Scout added another d6 to my SA, bringing it to a full +8d6, the max for my level. Monk, along with Enlightened Master, gave me +1 Ki and improved Lightfoot, plus immunity to disease; with Sohei, Improved Two Weapon Fighting on a flurry attack, which I rarely used since it required standing still. From Minstrel, my Inspire Courage went to +2, so with Song of the Heart it was at +3, doubling with Wardancer to +6 to myself, and then heaping +3 to +5 on top of that in morale bonuses to hit and damage from Courage… Soulshaper opened my Waist and Throat Chakras when combined with Soulblade, which meant very little since I hadn’t Tatted them up… although that was another project to work on.

It was a game of power creep, where crazy demands on damage and hurting me were scaling wildly, and I was slowly slogging my way through dealing with them.

And then… I got Healing Edge active, and oh, did everything start to change...

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It was effectively a Katar I mounted on the side of my shield, turning it into a sort of klar. It had no Name, because I didn’t want the Curse to know it was coming, and it had only one function… to heal me.

Healing Edge was a +Drei Effect that did a d8 in Force damage to things struck, twice that to incorporeal creatures and undead… and healed the Wielder of a d8 in Health damage at the same time.

As a +Drei Effect, it required Greater Arsenal, and thus an absolute minimum of seven Slots active to use, eight for me since I wanted Bane on Tremble. That was a QL 36 req, and so impossible for the metal I had, steel topping at 35.

But nothing said I couldn’t use something with it in my off hand, now, did it?

It was only a d8, nothing to write home about by itself… but it never ran out, each and every attack was a surge of new Health coming in, if I chose to use it… which I did, because the Shield itself was for defense, not offense, and provided all its protection by itself.

Even if I only finished off a dying creature with it, that was enough. Suddenly, I had a constant stream of healing energy coming in to deal with damage, and it changed how I allocated hits to my Health and Soak.

Then I stumbled on Battle Soul of Vigor to complement it.

The Soul Essence system was versatile in its own way, able to enhance many different kinds of abilities, especially other Feats and some Class Features. Smiting, Sneak Attacks, Power Attack, Dodge, Expertise… it was a long list.

Battle Soul of Vigor enhanced Battle Vigor, just like Blood and Soul did Healing Soul and Alchemical Blood Healing. Each point of Essence meant +1 point of healing per six seconds, and +1 round of duration. Also, my natural regaining of Soak and subdual damage increased by +1 per cycle.

4 points per round for twelve rounds before cooling down for a minute could now be 7 points for fifteen rounds, a jump from 48 to 105 total, and at a faster speed. Likewise, subdual damage could be regained at 4 per minute, instead of 1… and that would rise to per round at Melee Ten.

Very abruptly, the combination of the two took my staying power to new heights.

It got worse when I did the same Soul buffing to Vigor uses, and Soul of Vigor gave me three additional Vigor uses per day. With Healing Edge doing double duty if I had to blow a Vigor, this was a massive increase in my healing potential.

My current Damage Reduction was 8/-, 4/- from Way of Iron, 4/- and Roll With It x2. Since my enemies were hitting me regardless, I went with Improved Stalwart, turning my 4-point Expertise AC buff into 8 more points of DR, getting me to DR 16/-, at a cost of -4 to hit.

Defiant from my Bracers, if correctly aligned, improved this by 2/-, to 18/-.

It took me more than thirty deaths to finish out my Bracers, as +I Greater Soulbound Defiant/Ward Invulnerability/Bulwark.

Invulnerability/Bulwark gave DR 5/x. Bulwark meant spending gold or Karma to allow you to vary what that /x was. The default was magic, but you could change it to silver, adamant, Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, cold iron, or other types, if you ran into creatures with them. For instance, Annis had DR 5/bludgeoning, as did skeletons, while zombies were DR 5/slashing.

I defaulted to DR 5/Good… because there wasn’t anything the Curse could cook up that would ever have holy power, by its very nature.

Way of Iron, by its nature, stacked with all other forms of DR!

DR 23/Good, 18/- was a huge amount of Damage Reduction, even in this scenario. I was an Elusive Target, and Power Attack didn’t affect me. It was basic brute damage, or go home!

Giants weren’t much affected, because they were One Striking me regardless with 70-80 point hits. But the other creatures were relying on multiple attacks that were being ‘helped out’ by their friends, overwhelming me with quantity instead of pure power.

Removing 23 points of damage from their multiple smaller attacks basically neutered them. Twenty-point attacks that could formerly rapidly whittle me down were suddenly things I was ignoring entirely, and there were no lucky crits to accelerate the process with my 100% Fortification.

Dual Attacks of Opportunity, and Improved Whirlwinds let me attack with both Weapons, combined with finishing blows, and the two standard attacks meant I was getting four to sometimes ten or more d8’s of healing per round, enough to keep up with the nickles and dimes at my own pace.

Of course, the Katar had a problem in that it was only Soulbound, and so didn’t land a hit as often as it could have. Since I didn’t care about the damage from it as much, I slowly improved it over time to first an Ocean School Weapon, then a Fire School, making it an Ocean of Fire Weapon with an additional +6 to hit if being used in both Ocean and Fire Style. Since that’s exactly the sword style I was using while dual-wielding, it took care of the problem.

Adding in Invigorating on Tremble if I actually got tired, which was very difficult to do given my Con score, and I was now an Energizer bunny.

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I got past the gargorians.