Chapter 5

Rotten Welcome

The statue had a hidden door in the back, it needed a trick to open as well. To get in you needed to feed it Dark aligned mana, I didn’t particularly want to start down that route again at the moment, I didn’t want to muddy the path my class was taking. Luckily if you know what you are doing you can cheat a simple system like this. I picked up some of the grave dirt and focused on the minor blessing of rot I had gained, feeding rot-tinged mana into the dirt I smeared it on the invisible door. The rot broke down the dirt and released the dark and death mana in it and the door popped open with a soft click.

I scurried down the small ladder into the anteroom for the dungeon. Dungeons are locations so saturated in mana that they spawn creatures continuously, they are great places to farm and find treasure as well. Luckily the dungeon-born monsters can’t actually leave the dungeon. If that wasn’t the case they would be a nightmare.

The anteroom was a small empty room full of cobwebs and broken stone, anterooms can tell you a lot about dungeons or new areas, the décor can hint at what you will face. In this case though, I already knew. I exit into the first hall of the dungeon and find a zombie already running flat out at me.

I threw a bolt of lava at the deadhead and dived to the side. The zombie stumbled and then reoriented on me even as it started to catch fire. I slapped the ground and formed a stone cage around it. Getting up I tossed some more Lavabolts at it as it started breaking the bars. I finished it with a bolt to the head and then snuffed out the fire.

Level 25 Minor Zombie Killed!

+1500 EXP

If that thing had gotten a hand on me, I would have been in deep shit, but the exp is so much better that it’s worth the risk. I form a stone blade around my right hand and line it with lava mana, this might actually be a workout. I can see three more wandering dead in the hall and I toss eruption disks at each of them, it barely does a thing other than getting their attention. I stomp the ground and open a hole in front of them as they converge on me, they are moving too quickly to slow down and end up tumbling into the 5-foot pit on top of each other. I stand at the edge and blast them till they die. My mana at this point is down to 120. Shit, that really stings being so limited, on the plus side, I got to level 5. Just as I was celebrating that a fist crashed into my spine and sent me flying into the wall. Fuck, there was a fifth one.

That one hit took out half my health. I pry myself up from the floor just in time to have to dodge another haymaker. I formed my ice blades and started dancing around the zombie, slicing it at every opportunity. It took me a full minute to whittle down its health, the monstrosity finally dropped, and I could take a breather.

I scanned the room more carefully this time, finding nothing I started searching the corpses. I managed to find a total of 3 gold and 54 silver hidden amongst the rags. This was the second reason I came down here, it was dangerous, but enemies of this level would actually have cash on them. If I really wanted to make a difference, I would need to make a Guild of my own, become a local power, and all that crap. The problem with that is starting a guild requires a charter, and buying one costs a lot. 500 gold doesn’t just fall out of the sky usually.

I had to rest for a few minutes before taking on the next room to get my HP and MP back. I also needed to rethink my strategy, I can’t just alter the landscape at the moment, it takes too much mana. Taking out my new sword I focus my mind….and cut. A distortion spreads out from my sword a good 10 feet.

Will Stat Unlocked!

Focused Cut level 6 Learned!

Oh, I should look at what I got for level 5, hmm an active skill.

Primal Form

For a brief time, all known affinities and blessings are wrought upon your flesh. Transform into the sum of your knowledge and power. Length of transformation based on skill level. Stats boosted based on affinity levels and blessing levels. Cooldown based on skill level, at level 1 cooldown is 24 hours.

Okay, that has the potential to be amazing, I will have to use it once a day to get that skill level up and that cooldown lowered. If I raised my affinities then this could be my trump card for a long time.

Lazarus

Level 6

Classes

Hand of the Primordial [5] (2750/7000)

-

Professions

Teacher [19] (361/2000)

Novice Enchanter [3] (123/400)

HP:500

MP:1300 (130/min)

KI: 5

Strength

20

Constitution

25

Dexterity

20

Intellect

65

Wisdom

65

Charisma

6

Will

5

Free

24

Not bad at all, might be time to take a second class. I look through my affinities list.

AFFINITIES

TIME

5

FIRE

8

WIND

7

EARTH

10

WATER

7

ICE

3

BLOOD

2

LAVA

3

DEATH

2

Now let's look at my Blessings.

Natural Blessings

Hawk

2

Mole

2

Tortoise

2

Firefly

3

Tree

3

Rot

2

Spiritual Blessings

Holy

3

Hmm, now proficiencies.

Weapon Proficiencies

Sword

13

Spear

5

Dagger

4

Axe

4

Hand-to-Hand

8

Looking through my class list only a few stood out as possibilities. There were a couple that came from my Teacher profession but they mostly sucked, except for Teacher of Blood which was a creepy torture class so it was out as well. The couple cultist ones were mostly junk except for Blood Enchanter, which really didn’t fit my current style. The priest classes were no better, the only one that was decent was Cleric of the Sword, again it clashed with my current path. Rogue yielded one interesting class, Earthbound Ranger, but it wasn’t that good. For druid classes the Cycle one was still the best. The only really interesting new classes were among the many new warrior and mage ones.

Iceblade Dervish

Novice Volcanist

Bladesoul

Swordsman of the Clock

Blood of the Stone

Blade of the Tide

Mage of Burning Mud

This was another of the traps in AoA, since you could see all these interesting classes that you had access to people would screw up their builds because another class seemed cool. Swordsman of the Clock for example seems great, but I really don’t want to add time magic into my build at the moment, I know jack shit about it and that’s enough to make me cautious. The class could be really useful in the future though. That actually goes for all the blade classes, I may want to add warrior elements into my class but I was thinking more in the heavy tank direction, these classes are straight-up damage dealers. The only ones that might be useful to me at the moment are Mage of Burning Mud, Blood of the Stone, or Novice Volcanist. Well, the Initiate of the Cycle might be good too, even though it seems pure druid, if I can fold it into my Primordial class it would stick to the theme.

Mage of Burning Mud

Water and earth bind your foes, the flames hidden inside set them alight.

+12 Int, +6 Wis per Level

Blood of the Stone

The stone is your kin, its blood is yours. Lava and Oil heed your call. Blood calls to blood…

+2 Str, +4 Con, +8 Int, +4 Wis per Level

Novice Volcanist

The start of mastering the magics of the volcano. Lava, pressure, ash, and fumes.

+6 Int, +3 Wis per Level

Initiate of the Cycle

A druid that has learned the importance of the struggle for survival. Life and death are equally important in nature and balance is the key. This path grants the ability to tip the scales where it is needed.

+2 Con, +6 Int, + 10 Wis, +2 Cha per Level

The best fits are Blood of the Stone and Initiate of the Cycle, the other two could be merged into my existing class but don’t really add to it that much. As much as I hate to say it Initiate might be better to start with, I’ll be coming back for you Blood of the Stone, we’ll be good friends.

I took Initiate of the Cycle, it only needed 200 experience to level so I should be able to get some quick benefits from it. I turn to look at the door to the next room, well here goes nothing. I won’t be relying on my new Ki skill though since I didn’t take a class that works with it. I threw open the door and ran inside. I found myself in a large circular room with three other doors and a single crumbling column in the middle.

I feel out my mana and call on the Rot, feeding it into a ball of water tints it grey. I toss it at one of the 3 zombies I can see nearby, it splashes over them and the flesh starts to erode as the rot spreads. The zombies charge me and I toss disks at them to stun them and summon a burning stone blade, time to kite these motherfuckers. I leave smoldering slashes on them as I dance out of their reach, every few steps I make a block of stone erupt in front of a zombie's foot as it tries to catch me, causing it to stumble. I manage to take out the accelerated rotting one first, after a minute several bones were showing all along its left side, I targeted those and eventually, it fell. The fire on my blade stopped the spread of the rot but it did a number on the dead flesh, so it was an even trade. Fire works well on most undead. Unfortunately, these things were really solid. Each slice I made was like trying to cut a tree with a knife. When the last of the three finally fell I kept my guard up, no way that was all of them.

My caution was rewarded when I heard a noise behind me and rolled forward, just barely evading the massive fist aiming to take my head off. Getting up I had a chance to look over my attacker, shit, a variant already. The thing was 8 feet tall and slender, the skin so taut it looked like the damn thing was vacuum packed. It also had one big beefy arm covered in bony nubs, the fucking fist was bigger than my head. Thankfully it only had one arm. I ran like hell around the room to get some distance and draw out any more hidden zombies.

I picked up two more of the normal type in my run but the lumbering giant was having trouble following, thank god the damn thing was slower than the normal ones. I tossed rot balls at the two adds and tripped them with a low wall, they broke it but still fell down. The big guy I peppered with lavabolts. It took refreshing the rot 3 times over as many minutes to kill the regular ones, and the big one still didn’t really seem to care that it had melted patches and small craters blown out of it. I even nailed it in an eye and took off a chunk of its skull and it just kept chasing me.

Now that I had a bit of breathing room, I used a full 100 mana to send a stone spike from the floor into the giant’s stomach, pinning it to the wall. It took most of my remaining mana but I managed to summon enough lava to completely engulf its head, I held it there until the thing died.

Level 32 Patchwork Ambusher Killed

+3200 EXP

Well shit, that escalated fast. I was completely exhausted. If I had stamina unlocked, I’m sure it would be in the single digits. I only had 17 mana left as well. Searching the bodies netted me a nice 5 gold and 23 silver putting me at a total of 8 gold and 87 silver. That was some very nice coin, if fact I’m probably the richest player in the game right now barring someone finding or stealing a chest full of gold.

Because it was a lower-tier class I only got 2 skills out of my new class, one at level 1 and one at level 5. The higher the tier, the more skills you tend to get in the early levels. I didn’t get a skill for reaching level 6 in Hand of the Primordial.

Lifesense

You can feel the life around you, range and sensitivity increase with Wisdom.

Growth and Decay

The two parts of the cycle of the forest, constantly at war but both essential.

Being in a graveyard, and a dungeon at that the new sense did absolutely nothing for me. Growth and Decay on the other hand gave me access to those mana types and set the affinities to 5. That was really good because I was trying to move away from druid magic and use mage casting to get similar results. Thinking about my connection to Rot as I cast spells was annoying.

I may have overestimated myself with this dungeon or underestimated the dungeon itself. I mean I only barely remembered it was here, I don’t think I actually went through it before. Could I do this, well yes, would I get more benefit out of training in the first room? Probably.

I collected what I could from the corpses, the more intact bones, large chunks of flesh from the big guy, and as much of the black blood slowly oozing out as I could collect in self-made stone jars. I tossed the most intact zombie into my inventory whole.

After my looting, I went back to the first room and rested for a bit, while meditating on my elements. Training your mana affinities is particularly important, they drastically affect the power of spells, almost as much as the Int stat. I focused mostly on my new ones and earth since it had somehow become my main element.

I stayed there for a while, managed to decay all the way up to 10 before I had to get going if I was going to meet Dave on time. When I exited the dungeon I could feel my new sense kick in, I could feel life anywhere within about 20 feet. It was an indistinct sense and I mostly just felt what I assumed was large amounts of maggots in the nearby graves as vague blobs of life. I shook off the weirdness of the feeling and stopped by the embalmers to sell some bones and body parts. I got another 3 gold out of what I sold, I kept a couple of the biggest bones and some of the blood for myself. If I decided to go down that path again, I would need some quality materials.

I got to the place we were training a few minutes before Dave appeared in a flash of yellow light.

“I’m back baby!” Dave posed….

Yeah, I didn’t really need to see that.

When he saw me, he gave me a hug, it took a lot to keep myself from stabbing him by reflex. “Thanks again man for all the info, during dinner I passed it on to my sis, she started in Fanghold on the other side of the mountains. She wants to be some sort of rune mage, even named herself RuneAngel, if she crosses the pass we might run into her.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen soon, that pass is hell. Unless she gets the coin together for a spot in a guarded caravan she is stuck in that frozen waste for a while.” Okay, Fanghold wasn’t that bad, but I lost a friend there not long after the merge, so it always pissed me off. If Dave’s sister succeeded, she would grow into a force to be reckoned with. Rune Mages were versatile and powerful if they were any good. The bad ones tended to blow themselves up.

“Right. Well now that you are back how about we nab you a profession, I think miner or smith would be good starting picks, what do you say?” I ask.

“Hmm both would get me a good workout, and mining would give me more metal to eat, sounds like a plan.” I cringe at the mention of eating more metal, at least with a few levels under him it won’t hurt as much. You can increase affinity several ways, throw yourself into a fucking volcano and you should manage to get a decent lava one if you can survive it. The way you increase your affinities can have a big impact on the classes you unlock though.

“Right… well let’s see about getting you some training from a smith in the Steel District then.” Hell, I might even join him, unlocking professions was never a bad idea.

We returned to the city and found a smith willing to teach us, so long as we paid for the lesson and materials, I handed him a gold piece to cover the both of us and buy us each a good mining pick. I managed to unlock smith within 20 minutes, I had of course done this before. EpicDave took the full hour of the lesson to hammer out a crude blade and sharpen it, but he was earnest in wanting to learn, and that impressed the old smith. Impressed him enough that he gave Dave a box of metal scraps to practice with. I had a feeling he would probably eat them.

I did things the less painful way and got some iron powder to add to my water. With that Blood of the Stone class, a bit of body-aligned metal affinity might be useful. It was only a few minutes later that our communicator disks buzzed.

“Ah the little lady is back from fighting the evils of inorganic chemistry, and dinner I guess.” Dave proclaimed. “Time to collect our wayward maid.”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask him, but I swore to myself I would figure out what the hell was up with Dave’s speech patterns. Well actually I didn’t care that much, meh I’ll ignore it.

“Yeah, can’t leave the kid alone too long.” I sighed.

We walked over to the plaza and found a crowd surrounding Katenip. She was sitting on the edge of the fountain and controlling six soap bubbles orbiting around her in a pattern. Not bad, practicing at every moment is a good habit to get into. The crowd all wanted to know how she got so good so fast, and she had crunched in on herself to try not to confront them. I was impressed that she kept the bubbles in formation really.

“Oi you lot, leave the kid alone. If you want to learn magic ask the damn mage guild, now shoo.” That seemed to get through to them, or maybe it was the frost covering my body and slowly spreading across the ground in jagged spikes. Either way, the crowd dispersed quickly.

“Sorry we took so long to get here, but really good job keeping your bubbles going through all that.” I told Kate as I patted her head.

“Hey get off Laz you’ll ruin my hair!” Kate shoved my hand away and stood up in a huff, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

I grinned at EpicDave, “5 gold she has an older brother.”

He smirked back, “No deal, sucker’s bet.” He replied. “Don’t have 5g anyway, how the hell do you have that much man?”

I ignored him and let the ice fade as she whined while fixing her hair, “Damnit Mark does the same thing.”

“Well, now that she’s back to normal we have a mine to explore. Ore is a good way to get money, and we might find some cool stuff in the process. Kate you did make a non-explosive spell, right?”

“Yeah, it’s a small sharp bubble called Bubble Dart.”

“That will be perfect. Do you want to try mining? Or some other profession while we mine?” I ask.

“I was actually thinking of taking a priest class so I could get some healing… I didn’t like seeing Mr.Dave get hurt like that. I was thinking about it over dinner and I think bubbles and holy magic could combine well together, what do you think?” She asked.

“Hey drop the mister, gonna make me feel old.” Dave interjected.

“That should be a fine combo, what class were you thinking of taking?” I ask.

Kate flicks a screen over to me.

Shrine Maiden

The caretaker of a temple or spiritual site, the Shrine Maiden learns holy magic to both fight and heal. Beholden to no god the path of the holy caretaker is oft overlooked, a quiet strength supports those that walk it.

+7 Int, +6 Wis, +3 Cha per Level

“As long as you drop another 10 points into Con and Dex you should be fine for now. The class looks like it would fit you. If that’s what you want go ahead.”

I think it suits her, a holy bubble mage. Yup definitely fits a kind kid like her. Wash away the evils of the world kid, just wash them away and keep yourself safe.

After she accepted the class we made a small detour to the cathedral to pick up two books for her, one on healing and another on holy magic. Then we ventured into the woods to where we found the old mine.

“What happened here?” Dave asked, as he tried to chew a piece of scrap iron. His strength and constitution weren’t quite up to it, but he was doing his best.

“This is where we fought the goblins, but back then we left the bodies, and the camp wasn’t this empty.” I may have left the camp smoldering but now almost every single thing the goblins had was gone. All that was left was some burnt fabric and craters in the ground.

“Be careful, there are probably creatures living in the mine.” I warned, before conjuring a ball of flame for light and walking in.