His plan worked better than expected, and Tormacc spent the next few weeks jumping from plateau to plateau, knocking off the climbing rats and then switching locations once he started to get overwhelmed. The Essence gain was actually decent, as the rats seemed to grow more and more enraged with every battle, their baritone squeaks echoing with hate at his actions. They never gave up, continuing to assault him until he was forced to run away, his stamina the only thing holding him back from continuing the slaughter.

He got into a pattern, each morning and afternoon fighting the rats before retreating to rest. It was monotonous work, but watching his Essence slowly creep up was satisfying. He could only earn a couple hundred Essence a day, but since the rats were practically endless, that quickly added up over time. The only downside about his method was his inability to collect loot. He tried to avoid looking into the crevices for fear of seeing crystals and spheres shining back at him, taunting him with inability to descend below and pick them up.

That would hopefully change though. Even if the rats were endless, he was steadily gaining Essence, Essence he could invest in his Fate Wheel to unlock new abilities to grow stronger, hopefully strong enough to overpower the rats and go down and collect his loot. That was his plan at least, and he had been keeping that in mind as he invested his Essence.

The first thing he did was save enough Essence to unlock the tier seven ability Crush for 1,000 Essence. There was utility to be gained from unlocking a bunch of lower tier abilities, but he needed power, and higher tier skills were his best bet to achieve that. He still remembered Stella telling him that tier eight and nine were where he wanted to be to really be comfortable in the Shard. He knew there were still many lower tier abilities he wanted, but for pure destructive potential he needed higher tier skills. Synergy could only take him so far.

The two tier eight abilities revealed by Crush were Strengthened Blows and Sledgehammer. Strengthened Blows did as the name suggested, giving him a passive strength boost for his attacks. Sledgehammer was a singular powerful attack, likely with a long cooldown time. It also had the requirement of being a downward blow from above, which somewhat limited its usefulness. Tormacc had his sights set on Strengthened Blows, and after saving his Essence, he finally unlocked it.

Glancing ahead on his Fate Wheel, the two tier nine abilities revealed were Giant’s Strength and Giant’s Weapon. The first was similar to Strengthened Blows, just another passive power boost, but the second was interesting, although perhaps not what he needed. Giant’s Weapon allowed him to wield a large weapon as though it were smaller. Without unlocking the ability he couldn’t be sure exactly what that meant, but he suspected it was a reality breaking effect, allowing to ignore the inertia and weight from a weapon much too large for him to properly wield in normal circumstances.

As he got farther into his Fate Wheel Tormacc was starting to realize he would have to specialize his combat style at some point. Abilities like Giant’s Weapon were too powerful to ignore, especially when combined with each other. He could only imagine the destruction he could deliver if his hammer was three times the size, his blows able to crash down with more than double the force, easily decimating his enemies and smashing them to a pulp. The downside was if he chose to unlock abilities like that he would be forced to give up on finesse, Giant’s Weapon a useless unlock unless he was attacking with pure force.

He also realized that his ability to specialize would also depend on his foresight. He hadn’t quite understood just how many abilities his Fate Wheel contained, but as he got into higher tiers, he was confronted with the fact that there would be large sections of his Fate Wheel that remained in shadow, the abilities forever a mystery to him. For example, the tier nine abilities cost 5,000 Essence to unlock, and looking at his Fate Wheel, there had to be hundreds of them. Calculations had never been his strong point, but even he realized that with the number of abilities for each tier doubling and the cost more than doubling it would cost an astronomical amount to unlock even a fraction of the abilities available to him. And that wasn’t even taking into account the other three sections.

He had been mostly focused on the right section of his Fate Wheel, which was focused on physical might, but he was sure there were an equal number of people who chose the left side for magic power, not to mention what the top and bottom sections had to offer. It was mind-boggling how many choices there were, and truthfully he felt a little overwhelmed thinking about them. But he had confidence in himself. Even if he failed to unlock the best abilities, he only had to unlock more than other people. If he had twice the abilities as other people he was bound to unlock at least some synergy even if he missed out on the optimal unlocks.

The sheer number and variance of abilities was also a message to be careful of others. Because the abilities of each person’s Fate Wheel differed, he would have no clue what abilities someone had access to without them revealing their skills in battle. Some of the skills were outside his realm of comprehension, and judging others by their looks could be the last mistake he made if he were to offend an archmage who looked like a beggar. Stella had told him to be careful of those he met in the Shard, and with good reason. He could already tell gauging other’s strength would be a nightmare should he ever be forced into a conflict with a stranger.

He hadn’t run into anyone yet, but bowing his head and slinking away would leave a sour taste in his mouth. It would sully his name, and without his name he was nothing. He needed to get stronger until he could proudly hold his head up high, and the first step was defeating the horde of rats.

The tier eight Strengthened Blows was a good first step, but that’s all it was, a first step. He could already tell he would need more to descend down below the plateaus. With Strengthened Blows he was actually able to kill the rats, but only when using all of his skills in tandem. His regular strikes still had a hard time breaking through the rat’s ability to communally absorb his strikes. And he knew that their defensive ability only got stronger the greater their numbers, so if he was having trouble with the few that made it to the top of the plateau he would have no chance down in the crevices.

The tier eight ability did allow him to farm Essence more efficiently though, with a noticeable increase each of twenty to sixty Essence on top of what he was earning before. It might not have been much, but it quickly added up, giving him a decent boost to how much he could earn each day. As it turned out though, that wasn’t his biggest gain. Two days after he gained he unlocked his new skill his ability to actually kill the rats payed off in a way he couldn’t have even dreamed of.

Despite his newly gained strength he still kept to his routine of knocking the rats off the cliff and down into the crevices below. Not only was it safer, but it was faster too, as he only had to put in enough strength to knock the rats off as opposed to crushing their skulls. But because of how Cleave worked, the rat he hit directly always received the brunt of the blow, that one often dying while the others around it were left to gravity as they fell squeaking into the abyss. He knew there had to be some amount of loot down there from the dead rats, but he tried not to think about it, the idea of crystals and spheres left to rot under piles of rat corpses too much to bear.

But out of sight out of mind, and since he couldn’t actually see the loot he was missing, for the most part he was able to ignore it. That all changed when he had to watch his loot fall from his grasp.

It happened as he was routinely killing rats, knocking them off as quickly as he was able to before he had to switch plateaus. He had just cleared the cliff of the most recent bunch with a particularly satisfying thwack when one of the corpses imploded midair, and since he was constantly looking down, he had a clear view of it. One moment the corpse was falling to earth along with three screaming vermin and the next he saw a flash of blue sparkling among the falling bodies.

Tormacc jumped. He would like to say he thought about it first, considered the pros and cons, but that would be a lie. He saw the blue sparkle and instinct took over, the allure of a rare drop too good to pass up. He rocketed through the air, eyes desperately searching, straining to make sure he didn’t lose that flash of blue. As he crashed into the flailing rats he saw it, and, reaching out with his left hand, he grabbed the blue sparkle, only stopping to consider his situation once he could feel the gem in his hand.

It was the fact the he didn’t hesitate that saved him. If he had paused to think about what he was doing he never would have made it, the gem too far down the crevice for him to safely grab. But because he had reacted on instinct he wasn’t actually that far down, and by using skills like Dash he was able to reach the side of the far plateau, activating sudden strike to use his hammer to find purchase on the cliff face and slow his descent.

He was far enough up the side of the plateau that he was easily able to make it safely to the top, the rats still in the middle of their pursuit by the time he reached flat ground. A wide smile adorned his face as he opened his tightly clenched first to observe his booty. Then he laughed, doubling over from the cackling tremors coursing through him. He was eventually forced to retreat, fleeing from the rat horde, unable to get his guffaws under control in time to fight back and continue to farm Essence. He had expected a Blue Crystal, but instead, lying innocently in his palm, was a Blue Sphere.

It was beautiful, a miniature sky encapsulated perfectly in the clear orb. He could feel himself falling into the depths of the sphere the longer he stared, its brilliance hinting at untold secrets. And it was his: his first Blue Sphere.

Both crystals and spheres were divided into three types, white, blue, and purple. Purple ones were rare, most people not seeing one for years, sometimes ever unless they were able to somehow trade for one. Because of that, blue crystals and spheres were often used as premium currency, always valuable no matter the circumstances. The differences between crystals and spheres lay in how they were valuable and to who.

Blue Crystals gave two options. Sometimes both were bad, but the more valuable options were powerful, sometimes incredibly so. Still, the primary beneficiaries of Blue Crystals were those who hadn’t invested a huge amount into their Fate Wheel. The theory was that the more abilities someone had that weren’t related to Essence the higher the chance they would unlock more powerful variants in their Fate Wheel. Because of this, Blue Crystals tended to be more valuable to weaker people, while Blue Spheres were more valuable to those who were stronger and had more Essence.

The reason for this was because spheres scaled. White Spheres gave someone half the Essence of their highest unlocked ability, while Blue Spheres gave Essence equal to that ability. As an example, right now Tormacc had unlocked a tier eight ability, costing 2,000 Essence. If he used a White Sphere, he would gain 1,000 Essence, while a Blue Sphere would net him the full 2,000. Purple Spheres gave double the Essence of the highest unlocked tier, but they also gave that for each ability of that tier. So if he were to have two tier eight abilities unlocked and use a Purple Sphere he would gain 8,000 Essence, not 4,000.

Truthfully, crystals and spheres weren’t all that valuable all things considered, but the main thing was they were always useful, which was what maintained their value. There were few people who wanted to sell them, even if they could gain more from waiting until they were back in the First City to exchange them for other things more valuable to them. The Blue Sphere Tormacc just earned was much more useful to someone who had a tier fourteen ability unlocked, but it didn’t matter, as he wasn’t going to sell it. Spheres and crystals, except for maybe White Crystals, were just that useful.

It was similar to an investment. He could save the sphere to trade later, but in the meantime he would be down power he could be using to farm for more Essence, and that was exactly how he planned to use the sphere. The gain from selling the sphere had to be worth more than the cumulative effect of using it immediately, and it often wasn’t. He hadn’t been sure what to spend his Essence on next, but now he had a clear goal. He would save until he could unlock a tier nine ability and then use the Blue Sphere, gaining another 5,000 Essence.

After calming down he gently stored the Blue Sphere into his Storage Bracelet before turning back to fight more rats. After all, the day was still young, and he had Essence to grind.