Chapter 10

Small Changes

After the Reel finished, I rushed to my computer to leave a message on the biggest AoA forum, I titled it ‘Final Protectors Mission Statement’ and posted it as Black Juggernaut. I waited there for the next half hour as random people responded with questions like ‘what is this?’ or other inane comments until I got a response. Someone calling themselves Icefist replied, ‘Protect the weak and kill the bastards before they get ya, if ya can’t then take em down with you.’. I sent them a private message instantly.

“A toast to the mighty GloryHole, may he rest in peace. Santa what the fuck happened, I was just minding my business and woke up the night before release day. How about you? Where the fuck are you anyway? Oh, and give me your message app ID so I can make a room.”

I got a response very quickly. “Laz you fucking asshole it’s good to hear from ya, I thought I would end up with the featured spot. Did you see Violet? Of course, you did, her coming back too has got to sting. Sorry man. Sounds like you had the same as me, I woke up changing my niece’s diaper, I blew most of my savings to get my sis and brother-in-law copies of the set and game. It should arrive tomorrow, gonna be a bitch to make them play and let a sitter take care of Lily but I’ll make it work. Can’t be worse than the Co’Rem Gauntlet, right? Nice thinking using Glory’s motto, no one not there would get it. Here is an attachment with my info. When you talk to Violet, well try to keep things civil, if I hear about new craters, I’ll look for you. By the way, that fight was awesome, what were you doing fighting a damned Blood Phantom variant though? I’m in the Broken Tundra by the way, where are you? Oh yeah, who are the new guys, the girl with the mop is cute, how old is she?”

Yup, that’s Santa all right. Even in a message he talks a mile a minute and can’t sit still. Good to hear about his family though, they died early on last time. With Santa training them there was no way that would happen. He was right about the Gauntlet; it was a challenge Quest that you could only try once. It was an acrobatic and dexterity nightmare, and no skills were allowed, damn thing was a legend and I only heard about maybe 100 people passing it. Santa was one of them. While a great guy and a good friend Santa was also a terrible flirt, both in that he was constantly doing it and he was very bad at it.

“Hey! My apprentice is off-limits, she’s 17 for gods sake, and no not the one we killed he was a dick. That’s why we killed him remember? I took in some noobs and started training them, I’m in Cloudburn and I got Caelus to send out a call to wake the Undying, so heads up, in a couple years when they start to wake our foreknowledge is shot. On the other hand, we might actually get to see them in action. I released an info packet that should go live in about twenty minutes, basic stuff I can explain as a top player having figured shit out, I’m going to be releasing more every week so people won't suck and die this time. Do your best to spread the packet as far as you can, I’ll attach a link. If there isn’t anything you need to do in the tundra see if you can make your way to Embervale. I’m planning on taking out the Shadow King at the end of the month I don’t want him leaking through again. I’m gathering money to create a guild, a version of the Protectors but preemptive instead of reactive. You know how much I hate the leadership role, want to take it off my hands? I know the answer to that already, you ran like hell when they were gonna try to stick you with the lead of the Protectors, training trip my ass. Have your family do all the training quests before taking a class, I found a hidden class with 8 free stats at tier 1, it even gives another class slot so it's just an exp drain, totally worth it. They also need to ‘seek knowledge of classes’ so have them ask you questions. Sadly, I didn’t get it myself, but my apprentice did. If you tell them about the time accel you should have less trouble getting them to play, even if it's just to rest they will want to. I’ll let you know when I get a contact from Violet.”

“Alright, I’ll hop in-game after I start a stream up, gonna need money to pay for that sitter. I’ll head towards the Vale don’t worry, it’s a better starter area than this anyway unless you like ice. Might be a bit of a trek thought, I doubt I’ll get there for at least a week and a half, might be longer if the draknoids are about. Keep in touch.”

With that, I kept waiting for a while until my info packet went out, and then I helped spread it around to many sites. Since Violet hadn’t left a message my bet was, she skipped the Reel and was in-game, we may have our problems but there is no way that would keep her from contacting me or Santa.

Before logging in I noticed an auto-generated email from MythArc asking if I would be free for an interview on the weekend. Perfect, I sent them a confirmation and dove into the game.

I spent the next few hours unlocking professions, just the basics like Apprentice Tailor, Novice Woodcarver, Dancer, Builder, Novice Alchemist, and Singer. This also unlocked Tradesman for having more than five trades. While I was singing in the plaza to unlock Singer, I was interrupted by a cultured voice.

“Dahling, I hate to be the one to tell you, but you should abandon the vocal arts, you have no talent for it at all.”

I finished my verse and got the popup for Singer and turned to reply. “Oh, I know I’m bad, I was just singing to unlock the profession. It was easier than getting an instrument and getting the musician profession. I might not use sound in my build, but it never hurts to have a sound profession unlocked, it might influence things in interesting ways down the road.” I reply to the woman. My critic looked to be about 18, although her voice suggested she had messed with her age, with red hair, and vibrant green eyes. Her slim, well-endowed figure stood at about 5’9’’ and she wore very nice clothes. From her clothes I guessed she got a job at a clothing shop as a model, it was fairly common for good-looking women to do that to get some coin at the start of the game. In fact, the most common starting professions at the beginning were models, waiters, laborers, performers, and prostitutes, since none of them needed any special equipment or skills. Prospective adventurers needed coin, and part-time work or busking was a quick way to get enough to start with if you didn’t have confidence in doing adventurer work right off the bat.

“Oh, is that right? I haven’t picked up a class yet, but I do love music, lets see how this benefits me.” She proceeded to sing a couple lines of ‘Angel of Music’ from Phantom of the Opera, which I only just noticed matched her name, AngelOfMusic. “Oh yes that did unlock Singer, oh and I even got a class out of it, Pop Idol.” She looked at me with consideration. “Young man you do seem to know what you are doing in this game. Might I ask your advice?” With my acceptance, she continued, “I have unlocked the rogue classes but none of them appeal to me, I am no thief in the night or lowly bard, I am a star. This new class seems interesting but what would you recommend for a second one?”

I think about it, Pop Idol is actually not a bad class, for a tank or charmer type role, that is. It lets you draw attention to yourself, a variant of the typical warrior taunt skills. It could also be turned into a sound-based damage class, but I didn’t get the feeling that would fit this woman, she likes music not damaging sound waves like my singing. Something from the cultist magics might be good.

“I think I would go to the cultists and try to learn some curse magic, with Pop Idol you can have enemies focus on you and be buffed from it, if you throw your free points in dexterity then you should be able to avoid them while a curse takes them down. Down the road, you could incorporate your music as well, to buff allies or confuse enemies or something. Try out some cultist magics and see if you get something interesting as an option, that’s my advice at least.”

She thanked me and when on her way. Thinking about it more it was an interesting skill set she might end up with. Hopefully, I would run into her in the future and could ask how it went.

I logged off for a bit to check the news and see if Violet contacted me. It turns out she had, but she was pretty much halfway around the world and had no idea how the time travel happened either. With her contact info, I made a chatroom for Violet, Santa, and I and left a plea to write down every important event they remembered from this time so we could make as complete a timeline as possible. I linked the document I had already started. Checking the forums, I saw that my info packet was starting to get attention, especially since it was put out by one of the three most impressive players from the Reel. People were already starting discussions about classes that no longer sounded idiotic and trying to plot out how to make a decent build. Satisfied for now I dove back into the game.

I was thinking it might be good to try to evolve my class now, and I might be able to see how good Kate’s Class Act skills were in the process. When the three of us met for lunch I asked her to use her skills to analyze me and what I should do to evolve. Bronze light formed into the shape of glasses in front of her eyes and unreadable text flashed across them, after a minute she hesitantly offered, “Well your main class seems to be focused on the warrior of elements idea, some connection to ancient powers or something, and the natural world, it’s a bit ill-defined really. Your other class is pretty cut and dry, it focuses on the life cycle, growth and decay, life and death. I can feel you already have some connection to life, decay, and growth, but you don’t seem to have a connection to death, so I think you need that to complete the cycle and add it to the natural world part of your other class?” She finished her analysis as a question, obviously seeking my approval. That was a damned impressive analysis and I told her so.

“Damn, well done, you have some serious insight to classes now. You must have been practicing that skill a lot. That is exactly correct, the common link is the natural world and to merge them I need to fully make the link. Nice job kid.”

Dave pipes up now, “Ooh nice! Do me now kid. Do me now.” He then grimaces when he realizes how that could be interpreted, but before he can speak Kate has already started her skill, although her face is a bit red.

When she finishes, she says, “Well your first class is based on your size and the size of your weapons, along with the idea of being an unmoving shield. Your second class is from the iron you ate and the will it took to push past the pain for the sake of being able to protect others with your shield. You could evolve either class, or you could merge them, to merge them you would have to focus on protection, your new armor might help with that, the unmoving part of the first class seems like it might be the core idea, but if you combine it with your willpower you might be able to turn it into unrelenting instead. You seem to be missing attacking as a component of your classes, it might be better to evolve the second one into a class that boosts attack before combining them in an evolution. If you evolve the first one into something with a metal theme it would then be easier to combine later.”

Damn… that’s as good as a 5-year veteran could do with a look at his classes, and it has only been three real days. How many people could have avoided dead ends, or been able to progress farther, if we had access to someone with this class before?

“Damn kid, that puts things in perspective. Tae a gander at these evos folks.” He shares two class evolution options with us.

Steelbound Wall

A bastion of steel and flesh. The Steelbound Wall pairs great defense with a large blade to punish those that would try to tear it down. The strength of steel will not waver.

+10 Str, +10 Con, +6 Dex per Level

Steelblood Assaulter

With steel flowing through your veins, you have a will to match. The next step on the road of metal and blood. The Steelblood Assaulter engraves their might in the broken bodies of their foes, drenched in blood they do not yield or flinch from pain.

+9 Str, +11 Con, +5 Dex, +5 Will Per Level

Well shit….. Kate nailed it. Those two would only take maybe a week to combine into a tier 4 or 5, and if he combines them, he will likely have a great option to pick as a second class. He could also just keep improving both, that Steelblood Assaulter class was really good, and a peak tier 3 to boot. The fact that they both had steel in the name was a good indicator that they would meld easily.

“Well Dave, looks like you got some good ones there, are you gonna evolve or try to combine them?” I asked.

“I think I’m gona take the evos. I haven eaten tha mace yet and I want ta add more metal to me classes.” Dave drawled, odd accent making a raging comeback.

As he took the classes I felt something from my nascent druid senses, the crash of steel on steel, the clang of a hammer, the weight of a wrecking ball, all focused on Dave for just a second before dissipating, leaving him a bit more metallic than before.

We split up again and I headed for the graveyard, I found an old grave seeped in death and sat on it to meditate. I tried to connect to the death energy around me, and at the same time, I summoned some basic death magic in a sphere. Death magic in pure form looks like a ball of black with stains of green and purple constantly shifting through it. Manifesting it takes a strong mind to use mana to access the force of death, and it takes a certain fatalistic mindset. I was a master of death magic in the past, along with the magics of blood, bone, darkness, and corruption.

Forming a connection to death was easy, too easy. I accidentally drew in the death energy from around me, an old habit from when death strengthened my body and soul. Since I no longer had that constitution or ties to death the energy ravaged my body, my health plummeted as I cast my meager healing spells and tried to manifest life energy through the pain. I sat there wracked by convulsions and letting out pulses of death for hours, I could have just let myself die and respawned but 20 years of avoiding death at all costs is not a habit that gets broken in a few days. I don’t know if anyone approached me but if they did they would have taken damage just by being close. When I purged the last of the death energy I could feel my increased connection to death, my affinity for death had jumped to 30 in one go. I had also gained the blessing of death at level 15. Then this fucking thing popped up.

Title gained: Death-Touched

Baptized in the energies of death, you have gained resistance and favor with them through your struggle.

Sure enough, I had class options such as [Death’s Acolyte], [Scholar of the Grave], and [That Which Culls]. I also had basics like Death Mage or Warrior of Death. Shit, I was trying to get a balance of energies to evolve not give myself a death-tinged blood transfusion.

I feel like crap… but I should at least have a combo evolution option now.

Fist of the Primordial

Manipulation of the elements gained through study, bond, and the gaze of the Ancients, the Fist walks the path of the warrior and protector. With no code but his own honor the Fist is the first to rise against the darkness. Touched by ages past the Fist has begun to learn of the strength of the Primordials and has taken the first steps toward understanding. The Fist knows both life and death, and their place in nature. This is the path of power unfettered, nature unleashed, the wrath of powers from a lost era, though it is but the beginning of the path.

+3 Str, +4 Con, +5 Dex, +10 Int, +11 Wis, +3 Free Points per Level

This was a bit of an upgrade, not a lot but the added lines made me think it was heading in the right direction. The stats are pretty much the same, just a bit more dex and wis, but I think it should be worth it to evolve into this and free up the other class slot. I got all I needed out of Initiate.

With the click of a mental button, I folded the cycle of life and death into my main class, and felt exactly the same. The odd thing was that the experience needed to get to the first level was still what I needed to reach the next level of Hand. Normally an evolution adds the base level up exp amount to your current amount needed for the next level, and then just keeps increasing by its base amount from there. That’s how it worked for the previous evolution from Hand of the Elements to Hand of the Primordial, what made this new class different?

This compounding experience threshold is why the most evolved class became known as your main class; it levels up a lot slower than a new secondary one but tends to provide greater benefits. A lot of people would think they should just combine as many classes as they can to get those fast levels from a new class, but once you hit certain overall level thresholds experience from lower-leveled enemies drops. Once I hit level 50 anything lower than me by more than 20 levels will give half exp. So, you really want to get the most out of the levels you get, or you will be stuck down the road too weak to face the creatures that give decent experience. Without the massive windfall of experience from that shit in the mine, I would never have combined so early.

My next class would be a hard choice though, there was the Blood of the Stone class I wanted before, but I also had some other good options.

Blood of the Stone

Landspeaker

Volcanic Reaper

Grave of the Forest

Nature’s Bloom

Deadflesh Monk

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

Landspeaker

Communing with land and tree the speaker can change a battlefield with but a few words, a friend to the land it will rise up to defend its speaker.

+8 Int, +8 Wis, +4 Cha per Level

Volcanic Reaper

Using the magics of the volcano, Death sweeps across the field. Lava, pressure, ash, and fumes all herald its touch. Dancing through battle with the explosive power of the earth, you bring the gift of the final sleep to all who stand in your way. Your soul yearns for flame and death.

+12 Str, +11 Int, +7 Wis per Level

Grave of the Forest

The forest does not bow, those that trespass pay the ultimate price. The unyielding strength of wood beats the bodies of your fallen foes into the soft earth. The rot and decay born of death give rise to more trees, and so the forest spreads.

+4 Con, +15 Int, +6 Wis per Level

Nature’s Bloom

Life flourishes in the woods. From flower field to fungal bloom the spread continues. Life finds a way, no matter what it has to tear down in the process. Unfettered growth, the path of life and flora stretches far and wide, consuming all in its path.

+14 Int, +13 Wis per Level

Deadflesh Monk

A combatant bathed in death, the energies strengthen skin and bone, and lend power to his blows. The monk suffuses his body with death and revels in it, taking on aspects of its victims. A devotee of the dead, mimicking their form, and granting them company.

+8 Str, +10 Con, +8 Dex, +4 Wis per Level

No way was I touching Deadflesh Monk, I do not want to be some half-dead thing, and while Landspeaker was actually good, it was just a large-scale effects class for earth and trees, and not what I wanted right now. I really wanted to take Reaper, so much potential in that one, and I could see myself using it in really interesting ways. Bloom was also fantastic, a growth spreading class with plants and fungus would be powerful, and if I combined some of the magics I had learned with it, it could be very deadly. Grave was decent but didn’t interest me, and then there was Blood of the Stone.

While it was the lowest tier of the ones I was considering it had some really interesting points, the elemental focus of lava, stone, oil, and blood, was useful, oil could be used for interesting things and if I could figure out spell forms for it there was even more potential. The biggest draws though were the bits in the description about stone being kin and sharing blood, and the part that said blood calls to blood… I have only seen or heard of a few classes that leave open descriptions like that, and they all have a lot of potential, they evolve as they level naturally until they have a full description. In the future, we called them growth classes. I looked at its requirements, blessing of earth, earth affinity, lava affinity, and a decent affinity for blood ….. well that’s gonna be real hard for anyone else to follow this early in the game. Might still post the requirements in my next packet along with some other classes, who knows who might benefit from it. I think I remember the requirements for a nasty blood knight class that should be easy to get, I’ll put that up too.

Oh fuck it, I take Blood of the Stone, the growth and synergy with my Primal Form skill was too good to pass up. Damn it, I want volcano powers, but I’ll just have to wait for that or learn on my own outside of a class. Yeah, I like that option better. The new class takes a full 500 exp to get to level 1, for a tier 2 that’s nuts, considering it’s a growth class….. it's probably about average. I’m going to need to push deeper into the zombie dungeon to level this. I look around at the dark cemetery, maybe I should spend the night in a place with more life instead.

I book an inn for the night, I still have too much death energy clinging to me to go to the druid tree, I need to wait for it to dissipate. I pull up the document compiler and start transferring class descriptions and requirements into it. I have unlocked a ton of classes that I have no interest in but would be nice for others like the fire warrior class Burning Blade, or the stone tank class Shroud of Earth. I even have some priest options that might interest people like Priest of the Forge or Acolyte of Sacred Frost. My warrior classes like Tidal Blade and Earthpounder, and some fun mage classes like Rune Mage and Mudslinger, would be easy enough for others to get as well. I didn’t have a lot of druid classes others could easily emulate to add to the list but I tossed in a few like, Earthfriend and Mushmancer. I didn’t have much in the way of interesting rogue classes, and most of my cultist ones required a high death affinity so I had much less to add for them. I forwarded the doc to my inbox and decided to sleep for once.

I woke up in a cold sweat and shaking minutes after I nodded off, being in the game and sleeping brought back dreams, dreams of things I would rather forget, of people I couldn’t save. I logged out.

I poured myself a drink of something harsh and strong, I didn’t even really taste it. Pouring myself another I got to work moving my doc over to the shared chat for time travelers and left another message to add in any classes they thought people could get. I finished my second drink and took a nap.

‘Fuck that really messed me up’ I thought when I woke up the next morning. The rest of the day was a blur as I had to arrange things with the interviewer from MythArc for Saturday, manage online questions and response to my info pack and work on my brainstorming ideas with Violet and Santa, mostly Violet since Santa was spending most of his time traveling in-game. By unspoken agreement we just kept things professional and didn’t talk about our past. If we could do missions with a creepy fucker like ChutneyRod in the future, then we could be civil and work together to save the bulk of humanity.

I also checked on my Oracle post, it was actually getting a bit of attention, I fanned the flames of conspiracy a bit and recommended people read that info packet that was released, it might just be key to their survival. The people ate it up.

I had gotten the contact info for Kate and Dave last time we met up and I sent them invites to another chatroom I created. Once that was done I plotted out everything I remembered about the Shadow King and his decimation of the Vale. I remembered his general location, and I knew I should be able to train myself up to kill him in time, but I would need to head far out into the Shiverwoods to scout out the area before I could kill him. Last time he only emerged once he had created an army of shades powerful enough to nearly overrun Cloudburn, a few of the players that died to them logged off afterward, and the shades hitched a ride. If I kill him before he wakes, then everyone is a lot safer. Well.... better get to it.

Loading in I contacted Kate and Dave, when they got to the plaza Kate was fuming. She looked like an angry hamster or something.

“Where were you mister!? I tried to contact you and you never showed up. I realized that we couldn’t tell if someone was offline with the current system so I made us a code that we can use for basic communication, here’s a copy for you to learn.” She wilted and murmured, “I thought you might have left us or something. I know it was silly of me but it was still scary.”

Dave just gave me a look and then nodded towards Kate, it was pretty easy to interpret as something along the lines of, ‘look at what you did, you broke the kitten’.

“I’m sorry, things in the real world came up and I had to leave suddenly, on the plus side I invited you both to a chatroom so when we are out of game we can leave messages there. Sorry to worry you squirt, and the code was a great idea.” I flicked one of the bubbles she had orbiting above her head and popped it. “Nice to see you keeping up with your training. I need to go out into the Shiverwoods and do some scouting soon you guys want to come when I do?”

Dave speaks up, “Sure, but I think we might want another person, I heard some players around the arena talkin that have gone out there, the monsters are much tougher and smarter than most o’ what we’ve fought. They also come in groups. There were conflicting stories on what the beasties are, I heard reports o’ wolves wit turtle shells and ice slingin monkeys or somthin.”

“You might be right about that, I’ll keep an eye out for anyone interesting today and we can go tomorrow, if either of you find another person feel free to invite them.”

“Um, Laz, I was looking over my affinities list, and it's very different from the ones you said you had, what are the most unusual affinities you know about?” Kate asked.

“Well, that’s a good question. I think the strangest one would be either scissors or cheese, both were gotten by accident and the people who got them refused to tell me what happened. I know time is an affinity but I have no idea how you get it, and there was a disturbing man with a mana affinity for fruit that I met. Other interesting ones are clouds, sand, glass, wax, sun, mirror, and tar. More common but unusual ones are things like lightning, lava, acid, or even steam. There are tons of them out there and I certainly don’t know even close to all of them. I will say the most disgusting one I ever encountered was either the Fat Mage or the Rectumancer. One could light the fat in your cells on fire or conjure blobs of exploding fat, and the other liked to spew magical sewage at people. The fat mage was effective at least, the other one was just messed up.”

The expressions on their faces went from confusion to interest to awe and finished at horror. Yup that fucker had to have something broken in his head to actually pioneer the field of shit magic.

“Moving on to something less disturbing. What are you two training today?” I asked.

“I have been learning warrior skills that use stamina, and practicing my Will, I shall do more of that today.” Dave answered.

“I am working on incorporating healing and holy magic with my bubbles, I now can make tons of them at once, I just have trouble controlling them all or applying magic to them.” Said Kate.

I gave Katenip some tips on applying magic to masses of conjured objects before we split up and I headed for the graveyard and the zombie dungeon.

Walking through the graveyard I encountered AngelOfMusic baiting skeletons. They would try to hit her as she just stepped out of reach again and again, and then they would fall apart. I waited for her to finish with the last skeleton and then called to her. “Hey, Angel how’s it going?”

She turned to me, “Oh Lazarus dahling, how good to see you. Your advice was just wonderful, my adoring fans just fall dead at my feet.”

“Glad it helped, what did you end up getting?” I asked.

“Oh I studied curses for a while and got Curse Mage, then I got the option to evolve it into this.” She flicked a window over to me.

Affliction of Attention

You are the center of attention, and they will die looking at you. Curse those who look upon you as you gain strength from their gaze.

+2 Dex, +6 Int, +4 Wis, +8 Cha per Level

“Nice, that seems like it fits you well. Put the free points in Con and Dex, or make sure to pick a second class that adds to them. If you like the cultist stuff blood mage might give you the Con boost, depending on the variant that is.”

“I have another curse class available; it doesn’t match what you said but what do you think deary?” She showed me another window.

Cursed Idol

The cursed life of an Idol is too much to endure alone. You have learned to make others shoulder your burdens; it may lessen your appeal, but it lets you continue where others would fall. Your foes crumble under the impossible standards placed upon them.

+2 End, +11 Int, +6 Wis, +1 Cha per Level

“Well damn, that’s a good pairing with what you have. In fact, it’s too good to pass up. That Endurance boost will take care of stamina issues, and the potency of your curses will go way up. It won’t give you the survivability that you need yet, but some free points in con with most of them in dex should be fine for now. Once you get some levels in these classes and combine them in an evolution, you can get a class that boosts con.”

“Oh is that what End stands for, one of the reasons I passed over it was the unknown status. I don’t see it on my sheet, what does it do?” She asked.

I spend the next few minutes giving her a brief rundown on extra stats and invited her to my little expedition the next day. While we already had a tank he was more a single target blocker and warrior, AngelOfMusic was a dodge-tank and area afflictionist. I also took an hour and taught her the basic rogue movement skill Quick Step to unlock her stamina on her status screen. This had the side effect of unlocking my own Endurance stat while I demonstrated it.

We parted ways as she went off to train and grind exp and I headed for the dungeon. Pulling up my stat sheet made me smile.

Lazarus

Level 35

Classes

Fist of the Primordial [0] (11750/13000)

Blood of the Stone [0]

(0/500)

Professions

Teacher [21] (873/2200)

Miner [8] (321/900)

HP:2020

Stamina: 580

MP:5620 (770/min)

KI: 5

Strength

38

Constitution

101

Endurance

5

Dexterity

38

Intellect

281

Wisdom

385

Charisma

52

Will

5

Free

62

I was so much stronger than I had any right to be at this point, although I was running out of quick gains I could make, from now on it would be the regular grind of combat and farming dungeons. I could fight above my level but, to consolidate my skills, it wouldn’t be the best idea.

The zombies in the first room were easy now, I trapped four of them in Grasp of the Rotten Tree and they were taken care of with my new stats. The last one I dodged as I used my newest element for the first time. I soaked the raging corpse with oil and tossed a lavabolt at it, it burst into flames and burnt to a crisp as it continued trying to attack me. Huh, interesting, my oil was fairly weak at the moment, but it still set up a nice barbeque. I collected the coins and moved on to the next room.

I blanketed the room in a fine mist of oil and blessed myself with Strength of the Earth, one of the spells I learned from the druids. I turned and launched myself at the hiding patchwork zombie, casting spells as I flew. I hit it with a Creeping Rot and Sapping Shrooms spell, before casting Swiftness on myself and latching onto the thing like a monkey. I scurried onto its back and put my fist through the back of its skull, then I conjured lava. It went down with a thud and I rolled off it to dodge an approaching zombie, I tossed some fire at it and the whole room went up from the oil mist catching.

To work on my weapon proficiencies I created some stone axes and chopped the flaming corpses to bits. It was easy, my fire was hotter, my strength and speed boosted, and my conjured stone tougher. I hardly broke a sweat.

Since I hadn’t explored the third room yet I had to take this one cautiously. I took the door on my right and dashed into it, sending out a destabilizing wave of earth as I ran. I managed to take in my surroundings before the first fucker got to me, a medium-sized room with 4 large stone coffins and 8 armored undead soldiers standing around them as a guard. Of course, when I burst in, the guards charged me.

I managed to trap 4 of them in Grasp of the Rotten Tree, sadly my skill level with it wouldn’t let me do more yet, and I tripped two of them with a quickly raised ledge of stone. That left two tins of rotting spam closing in fast, I hit both with a Creeping Rot spell and Sapping Shrooms, then cast Speed Growth. The zombies were losing bits by the time they got to me and I had to form a stone axe for close combat. The armor they wore would have resisted my fists, it fared less well against a stone axe with an edge of glowing lava. As I slashed ducked and spun away from the zombies, I created an oil slick in front of the two guards just getting to their feet. As they fell again, I stomped the ground and growled out “Stone Tomb” one of my newly created spells. The stone around them rose up and crushed them from all sides, and then I hit it with a weak fireball, the oil soaking the stone caught and ensured the end of the trapped guards. I finished the rotting ones with my axe and checked on the 4 caught by Grasp, they were still struggling but the time spent connecting with the trees had strengthened the wood to a level they couldn’t break. As they finally fell apart, I looked at the kill notifications.

Level 41 Dead Guard Killed!

+4225 EXP

Good exp, but my ability to take half of them out with Grasp was the only reason I could fight them without problems. Just as I was thinking that a metal grate fell down and blocked the door with a clang, and the lids of the coffins started to slide off.