Perusing his Fate Wheel, there were quite a few paths for Tormacc to take. While in the previous Shard he had gone for a more strength-focused build, for the Sealine Shard it might be wise to fully switch to an elemental build. Elemental builds seemed to be a popular choice, and if he was going to unlock elemental abilities anyway he might as well go all in.

With the 37,000 Essence or so to spend he had a few goals, with the first being to unlock a tier eleven ability before he used his spheres. Tier eleven abilities cost 20,000 Essence to unlock, meaning he would gain another 40,000 Essence from his two White Spheres and his Blue Sphere if he was able to reach that ability tier before using the spheres. It was unfortunate that no matter how he sliced it he couldn’t gain the 50,000 Essence needed for a tier twelve ability, but at that point he might want to invest in more lower tier abilities than spend all that Essence on a single ability anyway. Higher tier abilities were more powerful than lower tier ones, but there were still quite a few low tier ones that were useful to him, so unless he had more spheres to use it might be better hold off on a tier twelve ability for the moment.

The tier eleven ability might not even be a good unlock were it not for the Essence gained from spheres, but he was beginning to realize that spheres were the main Essence gain later on in The Tower. He had been a bit suspicious of Stella telling him to specialize, as unlocking one higher tier ability didn’t really seem that much better than unlocking five lower tier ones. But as he got father into his Fate Wheel he was starting to realize that no matter how many monsters he killed he would never gain as much Essence as a single sphere would give him.

That all being said, with tier twelve abilities costing 50,000 Essence he could afford to spend a few thousand on unlocking some other early abilities before he unlocked a tier twelve skill. In particular, he was thinking about branching into the bottom section of his Fate Wheel. He had brought up the Party function to Stella and found out that it was likely one of Athra’s abilities, probably from the bottom section of her Fate Wheel. It was a very useful ability, especially the auto loot function that came with it, but not one that everyone was able to unlock. He didn’t want to waste Essence needlessly searching for it but if he could unlock it with only a few thousand Essence it was definitely worth it.

Glancing over his Fate Wheel, the first order of business was to unlock a tier eleven ability and then use his spheres, and to do that he needed to figure out which tier eleven ability to unlock. Doing some quick math, with his 37,000 Essence or so he could unlock a tier eleven, a tier ten, a tier nine, and a tier eight ability before he ran out of Essence. That meant that he couldn’t start with unlocking elemental abilities, as the highest tier he could start with was unlocking one of the two tier five abilities, and even before that he had to unlock Attunement in the left side of his Fate Wheel, although that was only a tier two ability, so almost free at this point.

Taking a look at his options for tier eight abilities there were a few that seemed interesting, but if he wanted to go down the elemental path he would be wasting a lot of Essence on other abilities. It wasn’t a waste per-se, but while an ability like the tier ten Giant Growth would have been powerful in the last Shard he wasn’t sure how useful it would be in the Sealine Shard.

He did have another option, as after scouring his Fate Wheel he realized there actually was a way he could still invest in an elemental tier eleven ability: using the tier four Discount in the bottom section of his Fate Wheel. Discount made the next ability he unlocked half-off, so instead of a tier eleven ability costing 20,000 Essence it would only cost 10,000. But Discount was a one-time use ability, so if he used it now he couldn’t use it later, and using it now only saved him 10,000 Essence, while saving it for later would save him a lot more.

It was a hard choice, but Tormacc eventually made up his mind: he would use Discount and go down the elemental path. Maybe it was a waste to use Discount now, but he thought he was getting a fair power boost from it and unlocking Discount would also give him more options in the bottom section of his Fate Wheel. He wasn’t super hopeful about unlocking something amazing, but he did want to unlock a few more lower tier abilities now that his Essence gain was in the thousands.

The first ability he unlocked was Attunement, selecting water as the element he was attuning to. Now he had four boosts to the water element: Attunement, his Ring of High Water Attunement, the Water Attunement Potion, and the ritual from Kaz Ehen. Out of the four, the ritual provided the biggest boost. There was some debate saving it for something else, but along with a whole pile of other valuable reagents Tormacc had even invested his Sparkle Stone in the ritual, super powering it beyond its normal capacity.

There were some rough levels for elemental attunement, with the first four being dabbler, novice, adept, and channeler. There were more above that, but even making it to channeler was an impressive feat. There was no hard rule for each of the levels, but Stella estimated that after taking in all the bonuses he would be firmly in adept, which was an impressive feat for someone so new to The Tower. Of course, it couldn’t compare to someone like Athra with her innate advantages, but it was sufficient for his purposes.

After unlocking Attunement he turned back to the right side of his Fate Wheel. He had two choices to choose from: Elemental Senses and Elemental Boon. While Elemental Senses seemed very powerful, Elemental Boon seemed more likely to lead to more combat skills, so he went with that, unlocking the tier five skill for 200 Essence.

The two choices revealed by Elemental Boon were Elemental Aspect, which gave him an aspect of an element, and Elemental Strike, which seemed like an improved version of the previously unlocked Elemental Blade. Normally he would have leaned towards Elemental Strike, but after thinking about it more Elemental Aspect might be more powerful skill considering the Shard he was heading to. Tier six skills only cost 500 Essence to unlock, so he could afford to unlock both of them if he needed to, so going off a gut instinct he went for Elemental Aspect first.

The two options Elemental Aspect revealed were Elemental Body and Elemental Resistance. Elemental Resistance gave him increased resistance to all elementals with a boost for any he was attuned to, meaning he would have greatly increased water resistance. It was a strange description, as he couldn’t see any amount of elemental resistance granting someone immunity from Athra’s stone spikes for instance, so the skill was likely more suited for defending against spells like the AOE one Zedna used.

Elemental Body on the other hand gave him permanent bonuses from a chosen element. He wasn’t quite sure what that meant, exactly, as it sounded rather similar to a passive skill, but it was what he wanted anyway, so he went ahead and unlocked it.

The changes were immediate; almost as soon as he unlocked the skill he felt an itchy sensation on his neck, and moving his hand to scratch it, he froze, the flaps of skin on his neck opening and closing like a fish out of water. He had gills. It took him a moment to accustom himself to the feeling, but going over that and the rest of his body, he realized he became more adept at surviving underwater. While he could breathe underwater before, it wasn’t quite the same as what he could do now. Before it would tax his body to convert the oxygen in the water into a form he could absorb, but now he suspected he might be able to breath underwater better than he could in air.

In addition to the gills he experienced a few other small changes, like gaining a new organ in his body that he suspected would help him either float or sink as the situation called for. It was a strange feeling, knowing his body was no no longer Humen in the truest sense of the word. Humen was the word in The Tower used for anything that followed a certain baseline of traits, such as two legs and arms, certain facial features, and a penchant for walking upright among other things. Humens certainly did not have gills, which now made him other: his body no longer the same as when he first entered The Tower.

It was a strange idea, and Tormacc knew it would take some time to get used to it. But he had bigger fish to fry at the moment; he could worry about a self-identity crisis later. Right now he had Essence to spend.

The two tier eight abilities he revealed were Elemental Defense and Elemental Recovery. Elemental Defense allowed for defense with an attuned element, meaning he could conjure water to block attacks, while Elemental Recovery gave recovery options using an attuned element. They were both useful abilities, but he was much more excited about Elemental Recovery. Not only did it sound powerful, especially in a Shard dominated by water, but he also suspected it might have been influenced by his healing and recovery skills, meaning it might be more powerful than that ability slot would dictate, so without any hesitation he unlocked Elemental Recovery, eager to see what tier nine options it gave him.

The two tier nine options were different. In fact, they were so different that Tormacc needed to take a minute to make sure he was reading them correctly. Healing Water and Basic Elemental Form Water. Gone were the days of elemental abilities; apparently his Fate Wheel had decided he was getting water abilities now.

It was the kind of thing that Stella wouldn’t talk about, as it was too specific and might influence his Fate Wheel, so the change blindsided him. He had assumed that the abilities he unlocked would always be elemental ones, but the evidence seemed to say otherwise. He wasn’t sure what caused it - if it was sheer amount of elemental abilities he unlocked or the tier - but now his options were water element specific.

All told, it was probably a good thing. Based on what he could figure out, the more specific the ability the more powerful it was, so replacing ‘elemental’ with ‘water’ should make his choices better overall. If he planned to specialize in more than one element he would be missing out, but he wasn’t, so right now the change seemed to be all upside. Or at least he couldn’t see any downsides to it.

Out of the two abilities, both seemed like good options, but in different ways. Healing Water for instance gave him the option of healing not just himself, but also his allies. He wasn’t sure how potent the healing effect was, but it seemed likely the ability would shine in a large group. Basic Elemental Form Water on the other hand was more suited to going solo, as it allowed him to take a partial elemental form. Without unlocking the skill he wasn’t sure what benefits that would bring, but since he was going to be on a water-based Shard unlocking a water form skill seemed like a no-brainer, so that’s what he did.