Chapter 21

The plan unfolded as he initiated the armour change, internal haste and battle wraith all simultaneously before launching into Ambusher’s Steps. His sensory domain went from passive to active, making everything clearer. Of course, the moment he did, the monster knew he was here.

He chained steps.

There was an explosion. Chips exploded from behind as in a blink of an eye he travelled over a hundred metres. A human may not have even noticed him move, but a class three creature was on a different scale. Its limb almost hit him as it flashed by, and then its body crashed through the space he had just left.

Adrian changed the angle he was travelling just in case it was trying to predict his movement. Spears of crystal erupted through the line that he had been running. Damn magic to go along with the physical power.

Step.

It was his sixth, and he was within range of the mage and could see beyond it into a larger cave.

It was huge and his enhanced vision could not see the roof or the other side, but the army of occupants was visible. More of the zxeatra shells. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. All green. From that, Adrian concluded they were all mages and at least three were even larger than the guard in the corridor. They were almost certainly class two? Or maybe class one?

There was also a portal, not like the imps ones, but more resembling what the portal mage had created under Albury to save Tony. He could see through and it was huge, maybe a hundred metres across and beyond that, he could see a shell that was too large to fit through the portal.

Fuck!

Reversing direction and taking a step back the way he came, the guard zipped past him

It was an invasion.

He had to live to get the message out.

Chaining the steps together. His sensory domain felt the guard get near multiple times, but not close enough to squish him. He hit twenty steps within the time of two blinks and landed dead centre on the teleport plate.

It flared, and he was amongst the branches of uooTalica.

Adrian collapsed to the ground. His chest was heaving. Apparently, chaining steps was bad news. A thought and his camouflage armour switched into place, and he concentrated on his breathing.

Lying there, he tried to comprehend what he had seen.

Then howling started right outside the dense grove he lay in. They must have sensed the teleporter magic. With another thought, the decoys went off and other similarly intense howling erupted further away from him as the monsters found his tail. Despite that minor victory, the octopods near him were cutting into the grove. He had a minute to rest… at most.

There was nothing to do but suck in his breaths and hope that he would recover in time. An unfamiliar noise joined the howling, a deep reverberating horn coming from the centre of the restricted areas.

The intensity of the surrounding octopods increased in response. They were burrowing into the uooTalica in an absolute frenzy and from all sides too. Based on their progress he definitely had less than a minute.

In and out.

His muscles were trembling in exhaustion but were feeling useable at least. There was no need to rehearse options. Once they got too close, he would use wind blades to break out of the restricting vegetation and then run. It was not that far to safety just seven hundred metres, and that distance would go fast. After all, he would not be sneaking this time, and the ground had fewer crests with wider valleys at the edges. The creature on his left trembled as the octopod pack started tearing into it.

It was time. Adrian looked up.

The plant next to him vanished, torn away.

A wind blade scythed out from his hand to tear the three closest octopods to bits, and he stepped into the tangled mess of tentacles.

Spear lunge.

It took him forward five metres, sneaking through a thin gap, while he impaled the octopod he was aiming for. It was clearly some sort of leader, as it alone had been staying outside the pack. Then he ran once more.

If Adrian was good at anything it was running from things that could kill him. It was all he ever really seemed to do and if a movie or a book or play was made about his adventures he knew they would probably work it in as comic relief.

In reality, it was anything but. One of the dying leaders’ tentacles got him as he broke away, but it was a shallow cut and he was already downing both a healing and a mana potion.

Then he was free and running through the crystal metallic landscape once more. Up slopes, then down, but this time it was mostly downwards.

It was chaotic, and he used his spear to club away grasping tentacles. His wind gusts were on his back constantly to propel himself forward. The octopods were everywhere and not even evasion could hold them off. Cuts opened on his legs, arms, chest and buttocks. He kept running forward.

He stopped using his magic for anything but healing.

Copper taste filled his mouth after one creature got a lucky strike on his chin. A tentacle tripped him and he used an Ambusher’s Step to right himself so he could keep going.

Notifications flashed, but he ignored them.

Pushing forward stubbornly.

Something slammed into his side and he swung the spear tiredly, driving the octopod away. That one had not been fully committed to killing him like some others.

Step.

There was a blur of movement behind him.

Looking back, the octopod that had just missed him had been crushed under a zxeatra attack. They had obviously left their safety. This was the smallest of the ones he had seen, a stage four guard.

Adrian stood spear ready. The octopods scattered at the presence of the monster, irrationally scared or perhaps rationally, as the guard had just casually destroyed one of their numbers.

He was tired and bloody, but he still had a bit of mana. Every second was a bonus, and the creature had dispersed the octopods that had been causing him so many problems.

The shell did not move.

Adrian started backing away. It watched him, letting him recover both more of his magic and Ambusher’s Step capability.

For some reason, they were in a standoff as Adrian slowly retreated and expanded the gap by an extra seven metres before it abruptly accelerated forward straight at him.

Rather than running or dodging Adrian stepped forward even while pushing a wind blade out the tip of the spear. The guard was surprised by the fact he was not running and for a critical moment stopped before starting back up again. The air blade was released, and then before he was struck he used a shadow step to move two metres to the side, having been struck once he didn’t want it to happen again.

In his domain, he saw the wind blade hit the arm right at the base of the shell and sheer through it. The creature stopped in pain, shock or confusion. To Adrian, it did not matter.

Step.

He was abruptly standing on the stationary shell and bringing his spear straight down into the gaping wound.

Flesh parted under the momentum of the spear. Triple blade forming on the tip of the spear was released beneath the shell. The weapon had plunged almost two feet into the shell, but the magic did worse. Each blade cutting through and ricocheting around, tearing, burning and freezing the internals.

He yanked the weapon out and started running. The guard was dead.

With the boss monster taken care of octopods came at him again but their density was lessoning. Coming over a crest, magic struck him from below. He flinched but then felt his wounds closing. Suddenly Jules was next to him with lightning arcing out.

“Protect the healers,” she shouted and Adrian nodded, dropping his battle wraith form to join the two casters.

They retreated with Jules running loops around the three of them to keep the bulk of creatures at bay. No more zxeatra emerged and only the occasional octopod got through Jules's vigorously offence-oriented defence. She seemed to enjoy both frying the octopods or turning them into a paste.

After a few minutes, it was clear, and they slowed to a walk. They were five hundred metres beyond the boundary point where the crystal upthrusts of rock started.

“Bah, too easy,” Jules complained, looking over herself critically. “They didn’t land a blow. We should get back to town so we can select our upgrades.”

“What?”

“I take it you haven’t looked at your notifications.”

“No, I was sort of,” he gestured at all the blood that covered him, “trying to stay alive.”

“Well, you are going to enjoy this. Lots of head bashing is coming.”

‎

Chapter 22

Now that there were no enemies trying to slow them, Jules broke into a jog and Adrian delayed looking at his notifications.

“Was what I saw important?”

“Yes,” Omala told him.

“Oh, yeah,” Jules agreed. “It has spawned a mandatory local event.”

“A what?”

“You will understand better when you read your notifications.”

“I can’t do it while running,” he admitted. When Jaracol was available, he had been able to, but now he knew if he tried he would end up face planting within a couple of strides. The non-assisted interface he got to replace Jaracol was an exercise in frustration to use. After the trader’s attitude, Adrian suspected that was deliberate.

Jules elbowed him. “You know you can customise the interface so you can do basic things while using it.”

“I haven’t done that,” Adrian admitted.

“Why not?” Omala asked innocently.

They knew about Jaracol, but not really. “I wasn’t found a need to do it till now. Jules, what did you mean by mandatory?”

“Mandatory usually means you have to do it.”

“I know what mandatory means, but how does a system make something mandatory?”

“If you don’t join the fight, you immediately lose access to all interface capabilities.”

“What?”

“As I said mandatory. The system wasn’t mucking around.”

“I didn’t know it could do that?”

“There was more,” Jules said knowingly.

“What?”

“You will see.”

Joanne giggled at that.

Wangaratta, when it came into sight was a beehive of activity despite it still being an hour till dawn. The whole place glowed almost like a town pre-event.

“Wow.” Adrian pulled to a stop. “It’s like someone poked a beehive.”

“Keep going,” Jules urged. “We all need to get somewhere safe to go over the notifications in more detail.”

“You too?”

“All of us,” Jules confirmed.

When they reached the gates, there were four guards who registered at a level between thirty-three and seven.

“Big guns,” he whispered.

“Who goes there?” one of them challenged, a large but not oversized sword drawn with a flourish.

“We are returning from observing the octopods.”

“They are good, Tony.” Kiyoko appeared on top of the fence.

“Let them in,” Tony yelled upwards and the enormous gates swung open.

They entered, and there were lots of people on the street. Jules immediately ducked to the right and pulled out a camp stone. There was a small amount of space between the wall and someone’s house. From the flowers, someone still lived in the house and maintained the surroundings. Jules sat down with her back against the wall right on top of the flower bed.

She caught his look. “What? They’ll grow back and there is no time.” She closed her eyes and was clearly studying her interface.

Making a point to not crush any flowers Adrian sat down and pulled up the notifications.

Global Threat Identified in your local area.

Protocol 31298 initiated…

Mandatory Quest to destroy the Zxeatra Italraca portal has been issued.

Quest issued to everyone within two hours travel. Assault to be launched at 10:00 a.m.

Consequences of refusal of quest under Protocol 311298 have been applied.

Failure to take part in the raid will cause an immediate and permanent suspension of all interface functions, including but not limited to (magic support, body supplements, access to global information libraries, purchased knowledge not already incorporated into biological memory.)

Adrian opened his eyes to think about what that meant. You would not be propelled back to pre-event levels of uselessness, especially if you had a physical class, but if you focused on magic, you were screwed. If you were mage and refused to fight, you would lose access to all of your powers as the interface would support none of them.

“Those penalties.”

“Keep reading,” Jules told him without opening her eyes. Omala agreed with a grunt and Joanne ignored him totally focusing inwards.

Mandatory quest.

Destroy the Zxeatra Italraca portal

A portal has been identified to a broken world. Based on intelligence recovered, this portal is intended to bring through a class 0 creature which will terraform the planet Earth to meet its needs. This will be an extinction level event for all native life.

Prerequisites.

 None

Rewards.

 30,000 to 150,000 experience depending upon contribution and body’s ability to accept the experience surge.

The request accepted itself the moment he finished reading.

Mandatory quest… Automatically accepted.

Adrian moved on to the next notification.

Population strengthening, as per protocol 31298 initiated…

Everyone within the target area of the global threat has been immediately promoted to the highest power level that their bodies can currently support.

Existing level 5…

Maximum level 7.49…

Available upgrade levels 2.47…

Recalculating.

Temporary upgrades available for selection

Attribute upgrades: Three

Full path knowledge: One

Half path: Three

Would you like to select your upgrades? Time available is three hours.

“No.” He opened his eyes and looked around, wanting to at least get a better understanding of what was available before doing anything. “Is this real?”

“Yes,” Omala answered.

Adrian glanced at Jules and she had ticked up from level forty-one to fifty while they had been sitting there. He guessed he didn’t have a choice, and those upgrades were equivalent to over two levels through a higher focus on attributes than he would prefer.

He had just received a mandatory quest. Did his badge work? A flood of information hit him about his enemy. Unfortunately, there was no organisation, so it was mostly useless and he had to shut it down before it gave him a migraine. The system knew very little about their true enemy the zxeatra italraca and while it knew a lot about the mana octopods what it gave him was disorganised and just a duplicate of the knowledge Kiyoko had already gifted him in a vastly inferior form.

“Are the levels really temporary?”

“Yes,” Omala answered. “Just till after the battle.”

That meant he should focus on skills that would let him help fight the zxeatra italraca.

“Not quite true,” Joanne said, opening her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“There is no free lunch,” she explained. “Did you see the words about available upgrades that are basically your body, interface pieces and your brain’s ability to accept additional levels? For some people, it might be ten levels but others could have thirty, and while these are temporary, they use some of that capacity. If you use twenty levels on strength and after the battle you want to switch to agility, then you will only have fifteen levels available. Basically, if you decide to veer away from your temporary limits when they expire your ability to level up will be reduced for a while and then the quest will award you fewer experience points.”

“I think I understand.”

“Of course, that is only a problem if you think you will get awarded experience to go up the maximum levels in the short term.”

Adrian knew he would get the peak quest reward. Even if he did nothing further, he suspected he had already earnt the top-tier reward. “Damn it.”

She laughed at that. “I think it is better to align with your long-term approach unless you believe a different strategy will help materially in the battle.”

Adrian nodded, thinking. The quest was capped at a hundred thirty thousand levels that would be two whole levels, as he was on the cusp and he had 2.47 levels of progression. Wrongly assigning temporary limits might eat up his capacity, but it would not eat up all of it. There was no hard bottleneck that he needed to worry about.

That made it easy. He could concentrate on upgrades, which would help him win the coming fight.

What that looked like was a completely different question.

With an approach determined, he closed his eyes.

‎

Chapter 23

He clicked on the major pathway options. All the ones he had previously been offered were there, but they were discarded just on seeing the titles of the full pathway upgrade available.

 Battle Spectre

 Qui vident omnia (he who sees all)

 Master Alchemist

 Mind Crusher

 Blue Ice and Flame Domain

The first three were just upgrades to his existing skill sets, battle wraith, his sensing abilities, and his alchemy, respectively. If this was an ordinary level up, Adrian would be torn between the Qui vident omnia and alchemy route. He could just imagine sitting in a house and being able to watch over his kids playing half a kilometre away and knowing they were safe because nothing could move anywhere within a kilometre of him without him seeing it. The skill was not necessarily sexy, but to him, it would be beyond precious. The world was dangerous. If he could shield his family, it was worth taking it.

As for the alchemist skill, it would bump his abilities to the master level and not just skill but also knowledge. After that upgrade with his heating, cooling and telekinesis tricks there would not be a recipe he could not duplicate and grandmaster would just be a matter of years at the most.

However, that was not a decision for now because neither of them were battle abilities.

Battle Spectre.

This is an upgrade of the battle wraith form with the following improvements.

Permanent Benefits:

 Physical resistance improved by two standard points.

 Agility and strength both increased by 5 standard attribute points.

When transformed:

 Form can be maintained for two hours.

 Temporary agility boost when in spectre form increased to 25 from the previous level of 20 standard attribute points.

 Temporary strength boost when in spectre form of 10 standard attribute points.

 A boost of mind projections and a change so they will automatically adjust to opponents. If the enemy is weaker, there will be more frequent attacks and for stronger enemies the attacks will build for longer before firing.

 Grants force projection.

Adrian scanned the words once and then went over it carefully. It was hard to work out which of the upgrades were the most powerful. Not the temporary boost to strength or agility that was for sure, that was the weakest of the upgrade benefits.

Adrian marvelled at that for a moment. Once a boost of fifteen attributes points would have had him screaming in joy and now, he dismissed it as irrelevant.

The other lines of the new skill were just more powerful. The increase physical resistance was significant and would more than double his resistance and based on what he had seen so far, improving his physical defence was the hardest of his starting visible attributes to bump up. That increase would make it harder to hurt him. Things that would have previously cut him would now bounce off, hell with physical resistance having been amped up, he was no longer convinced that non-magical weapons would be able to cut him anymore. That did not make him invulnerable by a long stretch. If Steve whacked him with a sword, even if it did not cut him, that power would get transferred and he would expect it to hurt and maybe break bones. However, not worrying about external bleeding would at least be fun.

Then the mind projections meant if he was fighting vulnerable creatures he would fire hundreds of Mind Spikes per second but then if he ran into someone like Joanne’s sister with her strong Mind abilities then the spikes would only be released when they could damage her. Force projection was another beauty. That was him turning a single spear thrust into a dozen. He would create a forest of shadow spear strikes that could hit and wound an opponent up to ten metres away.

The question was, of course, which of the combat options were the best for the coming fight?

 Battle Spectre

 Mind Crusher

 Blue Ice and Flame Domain

The opponents were the mana octopods plus the different levels of the shells. For allies, he would have his normal team boosted up ten to thirty standard levels and thirty thousand plus fighters from Wangaratta and surrounding levels. While half of them were non-combat classes, they would not be useless cannon fodder. They would also be boosted anywhere from thirty to sixty. That made each and every one of them potentially deadly.

Against that force, even though there were probably more mana octopods they would just be chaff. Those monsters would disintegrate against the elevated levels of the human army.

Battle Spectre while a fun class felt like it was built for fighting swarms. Force projection was an example of that. It would let him slaughter octopods but would have just bounced off the scales of a healthy wyrm.

Rather than focusing on abilities that could destroy swarms, he should concentrate on those that were most suitable to fighting the zxeatra italraca, because they were the true enemy.

Even though, while fleeing, Adrian had killed one of them, he knew it was an almost meaningless victory. It had been stage four and the weakest of all the zxeatra that Adrian had seen so far. How it had fought had also been moronic. He could not rely on that level of stupidity in the future.

The combat paths presented to him had three flavours. Physical, Mind or Fire and Ice. The real question was which of those would be best against the true enemy they were facing?

When he was scouting and had first seen the zxeatra, regional knowledge had nothing to help him but the system was clearly adjusting in real time. Now, when he thought about them a lot of information was available, and Adrian suspected everyone had the same level of access.

The shells were a species that flourished in numerous broken worlds mainly because they barely needed to eat. Stages two to five were non-sapient but directed by a higher stage sapient version they became dangerous. They were basically a cross between a well-trained dog and the edicts of ridiculous military precision. They were not as brutally disciplined as shintopurs, but they were far stronger, having access to both deadly physical attacks and magic types that varied across individuals.

While the social structure was fascinating, it was not what Adrian was after. He wanted a clue regarding which upgrade path was the best.

Nothing happened. He knew if Jaracol was available he would be looking at a nice table of information that would present the exact facts that he needed to decide in the right direction. With the dumb non-interface information, he got nothing.

Are zxeatra italraca susceptible to physical attacks?

There was a rush of information. Scout and mage shells could be cracked. The more defensive-oriented guard and melee classes had shells that Adrian would struggle to break. For those versions, it was best to attack their weak points. A bit of extra strength would not help him and nor was force projection useful. You did not fight them with blunt force, instead it was better to rely on precision. Precise cuts to disable their limbs and lightning-fast strikes through one of the shell joints.

Are they susceptible to cold or heat?

Another flood of images. He saw a dozen of the shells, including stage two get encompassed in an inferno of flames that was hotter than what Adhava had managed. When the flames cleared, they had popcorned. Then another image of immense ice. A storm froze them solid and then what looked like a normal level thirty mole person swung their mace, the frozen shells cracked like sun-bleached plastic.

Heat and cold were useful, but only intense versions of it.

Are they susceptible to mind magic?

A whole host of numbers appeared in front of him. It was basically type, stage and then mind defence. The footnote below the table spelt out what the numbers meant. His basic Mind Spike would incapacitate anything below stage three and most stage two types with the mage being the notable exception. They were more resistant than the other versions.

Adrian thought about the added information and frowned. No, battle spectre was out, its strength was against numerous enemies. That is not where he would be best used in this coming fight.

Mind crusher would help get them access to the hole in the ground but would be useless against the big guns. It was also the one skill that Adrian did not want to select. There was something psychologically disturbing about crushing someone else’s mind and feeling it fracture and stop working.

Curious, he skipped Mind Crusher and opened the description of the next skill.

Blue Fire and Ice Domain

Through repeated experimentation, you have created a technique that recognises the dynamic difference between ice and fire. If you pull fire from an area, then you will create ice and vice versa, and this is the skill being abused when you use a triple blade.

This domain skill extends the ability to use this property of magic to a distance of forty metres from your body.

Twin attacks of ice and fire can be manifested for five percent of the cost of a single elemental attack anywhere within that forty metre radius.

The skill was as impressive as the battle spectre skill. It increased the power of his Flame Sprout by at least a factor of twenty and possibly forty if he learnt to use the ice half of the equation as effectively as what he knew he could do with the fire.

There was more in the skill’s background. For one, it was expert rated and it would let him seize control of fire and ice spells while they were in his domain. He could pinch other people’s magic. If monsters or an opposing human wizard tried to use fire or ice on him, then Adrian could wrestle that power away from them almost without cost.

It would be a genuine option. Against lesser shells, he could direct the magic to do maximum damage, freezing feet while burning off the attack appendage.

Time to consider the option he considered may be his best choice, even though it wasn’t his first choice personally.

Mind Crusher

This skill expands offensive and defensive mind magic.

 Mind attribute +6.

 The power of the following abilities is approximately doubled. Stun, Confusion, Mind Spike and Psychic Invisibility.

 Number of automatic targeted strikes tripled.

It took him longer to unpack what he was seeing. The increase in the raw attribute by itself increased his Mind abilities by thirty percent. Then the second line meant that the structured skills were all doubled in strength. Better still, it was multiplicative. So if previously, he had an attack value of 1 he now had an attack value of at least 2.6.

The last line, on face value, was only a slight upgrade to the multitasking ability that would let him split his attack into extra components, but there was a lot more to it than that. It would let him unleash more full-strength attacks per second. It was terribly worded, but if previously he could throw one Mind Spike per second with a value of 1 now, he could throw three with a value of 2.6. This upgrade almost increased his Mind’s abilities by a factor of eight when fighting multiple enemies.

And the zxeatra italraca were susceptible.

While the Ice and Fire Domain felt more fun, it would not be the best choice. Not against the shells.

The Mind ability would let him carve a hole through the bloody things at least till they started fighting the higher-ranked monsters.

Before making a final decision, he checked what was available from the half upgrades.

The list of half upgrades was very similar to the full upgrades, just nowhere near as powerful. For example, a half upgrade would upgrade his alchemy from advanced to expert rating. While that was valuable, Adrian already knew he wanted to end up as a grand master alchemist and the half upgrade while taking him up to expert was not actually that strong. Just from his training, he was already close to expert and it would take…

Adrian checked the numbers. It would require a further five half upgrades to take him from expert to master. Using them in that fashion was wasteful.

For the battle spectre class, he could use a half upgrade to get any of the dot points in the description. That once more aligned to seven half upgrades for the full ability. The half of the name was extraordinarily misleading.

He still flicked through what was available. They were there and he would use them.

The upgrade in the scouting got his attention. It was effectively allowing the detection of useful herbs for a kilometre around him. There were so many natural treasures that he would locate using that ability that his current searching methods would miss.

Something for the future, Adrian decided. For now, it wasn’t combat, so he threw it away. Having examined all the available options, including spear fighting related attacks, he settled on his choices.

For his full upgrade, he chose Mind Crusher. For his half upgrades, he extended battle wraith form to two hours and for his automatic Mind projections in that form to adjust to opponents’ resistance. The last upgrade was to Mind Spike.

Mind Spike Upgrade

Increase the strength of Mind Spike ability by 94% and lethality by three times.

He made the only sensible choice and went all in on Mind ability. The synergy between the four choices was immense. His entire build revolved around those automatic Mind Spikes when in battle wraith form. One he could sustain for the entire battle. Automatic targeting meant the spikes would hurt stronger enemies and finally battle crusher and Mind Spike between them improved his Mind attacks by close to a factor of fifteen times what they were previously.

Best still, the chance of killing something had been increased. He had already used Mind Spikes to kill, and it had been based on the mind gap between him and his opponent. With his new Mind above twenty, it meant that his Mind Spikes now had a five percent chance of executing someone with an average Mind value of 2. For someone below 1.5, that skyrocketed to above fifty percent, and that was with the interface protecting them. Non-humans did not have that protection and if they had a Mind of three, then he had a fifty percent chance of killing them.

Then, for which attributes to boost the choice was easy. Everything into the Mind attribute, which would hopefully push his Mind to above thirty and allow him to disable even a class three mage shell.

A searing pain went through his mind.

Request Rejected.

What?

Request Rejected.

Why?

There was no communication. If Jaracol had been around Adrian knew the reason would have been explained. His head still ached.

Tentatively, he assigned one of the attribute upgrades to Mind and he felt stuff happening in his brain and the headache reduced.

So it was not No . But only No to three attribute upgrades.

Adrian hesitated should he assign an extra point or would it hurt him.

Mind --- 2.4 (+0.4) --- Plus 0.4 from attribute --- Population – 0.207

The upgrade of 0.4 was far better than Adrian had been expecting. He was not sure what was going to happen, but he had been predicting an upgrade that was closer to his starting Mind of 0.2. A twenty percent boost in his Mind abilities was massive, and he had to try for more. If another attribute upgrade increased his Mind effectiveness by an additional twenty percent? That might let him stop a more powerful shell.

Attribute upgrade to Mind.

Searing pain flashed through his brain.

Shit!

Lay of Hands.

Soothing energy flowed through him and eased the symptoms. The bloody interface should be smart enough to warn him about that stuff.

If he couldn’t upgrade Mind. Then what attribute should he bump up?

Definitely not strength. That would not get him any kills. Agility was always useful, and if his plan worked as he imagined, he would avoid enemies while his Mind Spikes cut them down, one after the other. If he went magic, then he should probably do mana pool, but conversely, using an attribute point on mana only increased his reserves by twenty percent, which would not stop him from exhausting it within seconds of the start of the fight, given his track record so far.

Adrian rechecked his attributes, and out of them all agility and vitality were the lowest. He remembered the shell slamming into him. The creatures moved so fast. He doubted he could avoid them once he reached the central area. Extra magic or life? Would boosting vitality make a difference to a strike?

Adrian thought about it and nodded. While the blow that had struck him had only been glancing. He had survived.

Choice made he upgraded both agility and vitality.

Agility --- now 3.24 (+0.76) --- Plus 0.76 from attribute upgrade --- Population 1.27

Vitality --- now 3.98 (+1.1) --- Plus 1.1 from vitality upgrade --- Population - 1.30

His natural inclination towards agility couldn’t be clearer as he was only assigned 0.76 instead of the standard 1 for this type of upgrade. At least vitality gave a little extra to compensate.

Once the selections were made, he could feel his body changing and the information to make use of his new Mind Crusher abilities crashed into him.

When he opened his eyes, the sun had risen.

The first thing he saw was Jules’s face. She was level 57 and was smirking.

“What are you so happy about?”

“Berserker class finished at level fifty.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I had a lot of skill points that I could use to purchase tailored abilities.”

“And you got something broken?”

“I don’t think it is broken. It is just that every level after fifty is significant.”

“Did you get better at whacking or sparking?”

She pouted at that terminology, then frowned. “Sparking, sort of, but don’t worry I still like whacking things.”

“What did you get?”

“I got three levels of lightning specialisation that makes my spells twice as deadly at half the cost, increased mana regeneration and finally blood magic.”

“What?”

“I got three spells in blood magic,” she rushed on. “They all use my blood to carry an attack to an enemy. The first is just force, think bullets, the sort of impact that you would get from a large calibre sniper rifle.” Adrian’s eyebrows twitched despite himself. A large calibre sniper rifle packed a lot of power. What was that equivalent to… a two times earth infused arrow at twenty metres? And Jules just dismissed it. “The second wasn’t as fast but allows the blood to hold an electric charge. It’s good for getting through shields. The third turns the blood into a nasty poison that kills and stops anyone infected from healing themselves.”

“Wait, you’ll need to use your blood.”

“Have you seen how I fight? I bleed a lot. It was going to waste, and now.” She smiled. “If something makes me bleed, I can return it with interest.”

“You could always try not getting hurt.”

Jules grinned at that. “Have you met me?”

“Good point.” Adrian checked the time. “You were watching over me?”

“Only for ten minutes.”

“Do you know what the plans are?”

“Not really, but the quest has updated twice.”

“Really?”

“As far as I can tell Mike and Kiyoko have planned the assault. We are to depart here at nine.”

“Seventy minutes.”

“Yep.”

“And has everyone been upgraded like us?”

“From what I’ve heard it has varied. Higher-level people generally got more experience, but some lower levels skyrocketed. There are examples of level 30s upgrading to only 40 and then there is a level 11 who is now 51.”

“Really?”

“It was all about body capacity.”

“And are you at the highest level?”

Jules beamed. “You bet. It is going to be so sad to lose these levels.” She pouted. She clicked her fingers and there was a clap of thunder.

“Really?”

“If you can.” Another click and more thunder. “So cool. I don’t know which of the skills I’ll give up. It really depends how the blood magic goes. If it is as good as I am expecting then I will probably just drop my lightning skills till I get the permanent levels back.”

“We should find out what the game plan is.

“What did you get?”

“Temporary skills for this fight.”

“Really?”

“Mainly mental magic. The zxeatra italraca are dangerous.”

“Yeah, I studied the knowledge the system made available.”

“I don’t think that package captures the danger. Even you will struggle to hurt them.”

“My plan is lightning to slow them and then a poison bullet.”

“Is your blood magic that strong?”

“It’s three levels above fifty, so yes, it is strong. I have also tailored it to fight the zxeatra.”

“I assume the stronger they are the better you can fight against them.”

“Yep. It will take me a similar time to kill any size. Bang for buck, I’ll be better at fighting the big ones.”

“We should stick together. I think I’m the other way. The little ones will die instantly, and I’m not sure I can touch the bigger ones.”

“This is going to be so fun.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Why? It’ll be glorious. We’re going to save the world.”

Adrian smiled. “So, begins the Legend of the Bloody Berserker.”

“I like that. The Bloody Berserker and The Billionaire.”

“Really,” Adrian said in mock outrage. “That’s the name you want to stick. I thought you were going to call me the Shadowman.”

“Shadowman is so boring.” Jules stood up. “Come on, we’ve been summoned.”

“What?” Then he noticed his notification flashing. Curiously, he had a look.

You have been assigned to the Alpha warrior squad. Please report to the front gate for debriefing.

“You in the Alpha Warriors squad?” he asked Jules unable to find any more information.

“You can’t see?”

“No.”

“Interesting. Yes I am, but it looks like there are four crack squads. We have Joanne, you, me and two others. A threat paladin level 53 and an earth adept level 49. The rest of our group is split over the other elite squads.”

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