Chilly stood over the corpse of the Juggernaut in disbelief. The fight had begun as he had expected; the Juggernaut charged at him and then got stuck in the wall as Chilly vanished from underneath its nose. The difference this time was Chaeli running in and dealing damage while it struggled to get free.

“How much damage do you do?” Chilly asked incredulously, as he stared at the mess of limbs littering the floor. At first, he had been aghast to see Chaeli lop off the Juggernaut's arm with several well-timed swings of her short sword. The fight had only gotten more ridiculous as the Juggernaut began regenerating limbs only for Chaeli to rip them off again. By the end, a half dozen body parts littered the floor in a macabre display of biology.

“Hmm? Not that much. Around 1000 physical damage per hit, more if I can stab ‘em in the back.” she said as she poked and prodded at the corpse and various separated limbs in search of loot.

Chilly opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. He pulled up the blue box displaying Incinerate’s damage, then closed it quietly. She dealt almost five times as much damage as him.

“Uh, ahem. Well, I leveled. Going to choose my skill. Be just a second.”

Chaeli nodded and kept poking at the corpse. Chilly shook his head and pulled up his notifications.

Congratulations! You have leveled up!

You are now Level 11

Will your status screen open to allocate your points.

Endless Hunger:

Become one with the endlessly hungry flame. Consuming all, and evolving with every challenge thrown your way.

You gain 1% increased life per stack of a debuff affecting you

You gain 1% increased life regeneration per stack of a debuff affecting you

You gain 1% increased fire damage per stack of a debuff affecting you

Chilly’s brows lifted as he read the skill description. This skill would allow him to get stronger the more he was afflicted with debuffs. A shame that he had just purged his hunger and thirst. With ten stacks of each, he would gain 20% increased life, regeneration, and fire damage. It wasn’t entirely clear if the increased regeneration would compensate for the damage he would take from the debuffs, but the other two buffs might be worth it. Also there was a chance that the 1% would increase to 1.5% or even 2% as he leveled up, since what he was seeing was just the quality of the skill at level one.

Of course, the augments here were hidden, as all the skills he had been shown before, so all he could do was guess for now. Still, the augments were probably fairly predictable. There was likely to be an augment that increased the amount of benefit that he gained per debuff, and another augment that might provide some other bonus based on debuffs. Say, resistances? Who could say?

Of course, without going out of his way to acquire some debuffs the skill would currently provide him with diddly squat. Chilly mused idly as he searched through the menus until he brought up one of the scarier blue boxes he had been presented with in the past.

Asphyxiating:

Debuff

—Lose 1% of max life per second as Chaos damage per stack of Asphyxiation.

—Gain 1 stack of Asphyxiation every 9 seconds up to a maximum of 21.

—You gain Rock Solid at 1 stack of Asphyxiation

—You are Hindered at 3 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You gain Inner Peace at 5 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Weakened at 6 stacks of Asphyxiation

—Lose an additional 0.5% of max life per second as Chaos damage per stack of Asphyxiation at 7 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Brittle at 9 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You gain Pain Attunement at 10 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Blind at 12 stacks of Asphyxiation

—Lose an additional 0.5% of max life per second as Chaos damage per stack of Asphyxiation at 14 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Silenced at 15 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You Hear the Whispers at 15 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Sapped at 17 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You are Drained at 20 stacks of Asphyxiation

—You gain Visions of Madness at 20 stacks of Asphyxiation

—Lose an additional 0.5% of max life per second as Chaos damage per stack of Asphyxiation at 21 stacks of Asphyxiation

He shuddered as he reread the old notification. Memories of choking on the dismembered claw of a putrid ghoul resurfacing unpleasantly. He shook his head and refocused.

Assuming he could survive the damage over time, the question was how beneficial were the buffs that asphyxiation granted. Namely, Rock Solid, Inner peace, and Pain Attunement. There were two others but Hear the Whispers and Visions of Madness seemed more like debuffs than buffs. Unfortunately, he had only ever gotten two stacks of Asphyxiation so he only knew what Rock Solid did.

He scrolled through the old notifications and brought up the relevant blue box:

Rock Solid:

—450 knockback resistance

Four hundred and fifty was...80-ish percent mitigation. Or in other words, if he got hit by a blow that would push him back ten meters, he would only get pushed back two. That was good, great even, but not insane. It would grant him some utility, and stability against large foes that could push him around but it didn’t provide a direct bonus that would make actually fighting such enemies easier. It certainly didn’t make up for the damage he took from the ailment. Presumably the next buffs would be better.

He could try to figure out what they do now. In fact. He should figure it out now. If he held his breath he could just breathe in whenever he saw his life begin to dip. Considering that he was basically in a safe environment, there was no better time to figure this out.

Chilly let out a deep sigh. When his lungs were empty he winced but stopped himself from taking another breath. Immediately he felt his lungs rebel, bucking and demanding that he breathe.

>

Chilly’s eyes began to water as he felt himself gain Rock Solid. The damage was small, entirely too little to overcome his natural regeneration, but enough to twinge painfully in his chest as his lungs complained loudly.

>

The twinge of pain rose to a stinging.

>

He felt the air around him thicken as the hinder status ailment settled over his bones.

>

His lungs burned, He wanted nothing more than to stop this silly experiment and take a breath. It hurt. It was unnatural. Only...only one more, and then he would stop. Just knowing what Inner Peace did was probably enough to figure out if this was worth it. He shoved the feeling down and persevered.

>

A sense of calm settled over him as it suddenly became so much easier to ignore the pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel his lungs burn, demand, beg to be filled. All that was still there. They were simply relegated to the background. Made small by the resounding sense of quiet in his mind.

Inner Peace:

450 emotion resistance

25% increased armor, elemental, and chaos resistance

Calmly, Chilly noticed that his life was still full. The damage over time was noticeable, but hardly a match for his regeneration. He grinned as he recalled that last time he had been asphyxiated he had only had a couple dozen points of regeneration, not the hundreds he currently sported. He closed his eyes, enjoying the odd feeling of being both overwhelmed by the need to breathe, while simultaneously having utter control over his body.

>

The pain once more intensified slightly, a faint niggling at his chest, but still his life didn’t budge. He raised a hand before his eyes and curiously noticed the lethargy in his motions.

>

A spike of pain jammed into his lungs, as Asphyxiation reached a threshold and the damage over time suddenly grew far worse. He winced, but a glance at his life revealed it remained steady.

>

>

Chilly felt himself sag. It wasn’t...so bad. Just. His skin felt sensitive. Fragile. As if the slightest blow would be able to make him crack like a porcelain bowl. Still, his life stayed rock steady, unmoving like a mountain in a storm.

>

Everything cleared up. The pain which had been buffetting the obdurate walls of Inner Peace vanished. Instead of fighting him. Distracting him. The pain slithered into the calm of his inner sanctum and solidified over his will. Assisting him. Strengthening him.

Pain Attunement:

30% more damage while taking damage

450 curse resistance

>

The pain grew, and so did Chilly’s resolve. It still hurt, but faintly. Locked behind the walls of Inner Peace and the focusing clarity that Pain Attunement brought around, it became an empowering sensation. Like overdosing on caffeine, simultaneously unpleasant while feeling like he had all the energy in the world.

>

The pain intensified, and Chilly couldn’t help but smile. It felt on top of the world. Like he had just run a marathon. His limbs burning with exertion but tempered by the runner’s high. Unstoppable. He blinked gaily and noticed the world had dimmed to a blurry haze. What was once bright became dim. What was dark became imperceptible.

So only mostly blind. He thought analytically. That was good. Though the debuff was pretty nasty. Luckily, it seemed like the penguins were unaffected by it. They stood around him, cheerfully bright compared to the gloom surrounding them.

>

Chilly groaned and leaned back. There was something peaceful about being so still. None of the troublesome rise and fall of his chest. The only sound was the beat of his heart.

Pounding in his ears.

Disturbing the stillness.

Irritating.

>

The pain spiked, and for a second Chilly’s thoughts scattered. An involuntary shiver chased up his spine as Asphyxiation reached another threshold. After a moment, he settled in, becoming used to the intensification, and feeling as Pain Attunement and Inner Peace worked together to transmute the agony that wracked his limbs into useful intent. He smiled. This wasn’t so bad. It was almost like Asphyxiation had built in methods to survive it.

He blinked languidly. The dark room flickered with vague shadows. Chaeli’s outline moved in the corner, still poking the dead Juggernaut. He raised a hand, only to see that it was trembling. Vibrating like an addict hours into withdrawal. His smile faded as he tried to stop the shivering.

He failed.

>

The world slowed. The stifling molasses of being Hindered fled, and suddenly he was free. Chilly gasped as everything became apparent. Chaeli moved through molasses. The flickering plasma of his cape shifted at a snail’s pace. It was so...slow. Curiously he brought up the little notification.

Hear the Whispers:

50% reduced cooldown of all skills.

Damage over time effects tick 100% faster

450 slow resistance

Well well well... a breathy whisper reached him from the void.

Chilly jerked up as the blue box dispersed.

Aww, look at him!

Chilly squinted. The dark was disorienting, and his eyes were drawn naturally to the bright penguins that refused to match their environment. The penguins turned to stare at the darkness, anger coloring their faces, as several ghostly flickers of light hovered malevolently beyond.

He’s all scared.

Scared? That didn’t seem right. Maybe they were talking about the penguins?

He’s so cute!

They were pretty cute, weren’t they. Wait a second. They looked angry.

Chilly you need to get up!

That did seem like a good idea. Doing things was easier when standing. But...wait. What were the penguins doing? Was that a pistol?

Chaeli will betray you! You must get up! Take her when her back is turned!

Chilly ignored the breathy voice for now. The penguins were acting weird. Was that a...bazooka?

Go Chilly! You must defeat her before she no—

Chilly eyed the penguin’s as they leveled dozens of pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and one particularly aggressive-looking bazooka towards the floating wisps at the edge of his vision, then opened fire with impunity. The high-caliber weaponry shredded through the ghosts ranks, tearing apart the wisps like a hot knife through butter. Faint screams rose up before they were cut off like so much noise.

A deafening silence filled the space.

His heart pumped frantically in his chest.

>

The penguins turned to him. Mr. Xenix gave him an appraising look, then transformed his wooden assault rifle into a sword, then into a set of hand-operated forge bellows. Chilly giggled, the voices earlier were right. The penguins sure were funny!

From the side, Mr. Stupid, and Mr. Nobody dragged a struggling Mr. Poidude in between them. Mr. Poidude looked high as a kite. His eyes rolled in their sockets and a blissful expression on his face. On the penguin’s forehead, a name was scrawled in a barely legible script: Chilly.

Chilly frowned as Mr. Xenix stuck the forge bellows into Mr. Poidue’s beak and pumped. Mr. Poidude inflated like a balloon, then deflated like a whoopie cushion. The process repeated four times, then the four penguins separated and bowed to Chilly.

Chilly blinked. Not comprehending what or why or what...He tried to tell them this, but couldn’t. He didn’t have any air. Irritating.

Mr. Xenix stepped forwards and transformed the forge bellows back into a sword. Then he impaled Mr. Poidude dramatically, then pointed at Chilly insistently.

That...hmm. Killing Poidude? Or wait. Killing Chilly? Himself? That seemed extreme. How was he killi—

Chilly froze as he glanced at his life.

It was falling fast. As he started as another chunk of life drained away. In a panic, Chilly took in a desperate breath.

>

The world shifted, and Chilly hurled as the pain hit him like a truck. Light blinded him, as his body firmed. Rejecting the debuffs that had weakened it. His life recovered rapidly as much of the damage over time left him.

He sucked in another hacking breath.

>

Chilly shuddered as somehow, inconceivably, the pain grew even harder to bear. He felt himself tilt forwards as he vainly struggled to take another breath.

>

And another.

>

And another.

The penguins cheered, as he slumped back, fully and completely exhausted after the ordeal.

“Hey, you good back there?” Chaeli called.

“Y-yeah. All good here,” Chilly said after a moment, still taking in deep breath after deep breath, relishing the sweet ambrosia of stale, ashy, and smoky cave air. Briefly, he lamented the razor sharp focus granted by Pain Attunement, before viciously shoving the thought out of his mind. It was like nothing he had ever experienced, but it had contributed to the lack of focus that had nearly gotten him killed.

“You know,” Chaeli said, turning back to her work, “You’re gonna have to tell me what it’s like to breathe after you’re done choosing your next skill. It looks like you’re really enjoying it.”

Chilly let out a vague ahuh. That was close. So unnecessarily close. Why was everything so damn dangerous, he had just been experimenting. One thing, however, was clear. Asphyxiation took a brutal toll on his body. It made sense. The human body was never meant to exist without air. He was able to outregenerate fourteen out of twenty-one stacks. That was pretty good, and the buffs it granted were powerful. But he would need far more regeneration to make the strategy viable. His body still suffered without air, and the effects were debilitating at the higher stack counts.

He was sure that once he was able to survive all twenty-one stacks of Asphyxiation for an extended period of time, he would get used to the emotional distance of Inner Peace and the hyper focus of Pain Attunement. Also the amount of damage he was consistently dealing to his body was massive. It was almost like his body had gone into shock after 14 stacks. Hopefully, with more regeneration and some practice, he would be able to get used to it. The strange whispers, on the other hand, had further estranged his state of mind, to the point where he was deeply uncomfortable with the buff. Luckily, the penguins taken care of it. Thinking back, the voices had been suggesting some pretty nasty things. Rock Solid had no bearing on his mental state as far as he could tell.

That didn’t mean that he had to start asphyxiating the moment that he took Endless Hunger. If he took Endless Hunger. There was no reason why he couldn’t just grab the easier to get debuffs and call it a day until he got a little more regeneration and chaos resistance. Even a modest amount would allow him to sustain Asphyxiation significantly easier. Assuming he wouldn’t use asphyxiation until he acquired his next skill, that still meant that he could reliably get 30 stacks of debuffs from Exhaustion, Starvation, and Dehydration. The damage over time would be bad, but it should mostly be countered by the 30% increased life regeneration.

It was a slight shame that Inner Peace required getting five stacks of Asphyxiation. With the buff, it would be far more sustainable to stay at 10 stacks of any of the three debuffs. Unfortunately, since every breath he took halved the number of Asphyxiation stacks he received, it wasn’t really feasible to juggle the stacks. He would have to go all the way up to 10 stacks before taking a breath and that was just too much concentration to maintain during a fight.

Hopefully, there would be an augment for Endless Hunger that could alleviate some of that difficulty.

He looked at the penguins, who smiled up at him happily.

“Thanks, guys,” he said. “Thanks for the chapter. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

A penguin stepped up and gestured impatiently.

Impatient as always, Chilly let out a chuckle but pulled up the next skill description.

Forged in Fire:

The bonds of friendship are forged through trial and tempered through tribulation. Through your selfless action, you may now ease the burden your allies must contend with.

30% of damage allies would take is redirected to you at 120% of its value.

That was...so different from Endless Hunger. 30% seemed low, and 120% seemed too high. It looked bad on the surface, but upon further scrutiny it improved. Both numbers probably scaled with levels. So instead of 30% of damage redirected, it was possible that it would actually by 40% or 50%. With increased skill effect on gear, it might even be possible to raise it past 100%, theoretically making his allies immortal as long as he was alive. The 120% was worrying since it meant that he was effectively increasing the amount of damage his team took, but that was also probably alleviated through levels. If it reduced to 110% or even 100% as it leveled then that would removed the downside as he leveled. With skill effect, he might even be able to reduce it further, getting a flat percent damage reduction on all damage his allies took.

So, it was good...conditionally. Mostly on how it scaled and what augments it offered.

As a pure support skill. It would allow him to stand in the back of fights and absorb the damage that his allies took. Alternatively, he could stand in the front and simply rely on Forged in Fire to protect his allies from glancing blows that got through his guard. With Chaeli on his team, it was actually fairly reasonable that this skill would get some fairly heavy use, and it didn’t have any of the unpleasantness associated with accruing debuffs.

She spent much of her time dodging, but as the Chrain had shown, some attacks couldn’t be dodged. Also there was something to be said about letting his allies focus on damage.

Chaeli had said that his current skill set was pretty good for a support. He had actually enjoyed backing her up with his regeneration. Choosing Forged in Fire would solidify his role in a party as the primary tank, and considering how civilization was just around the corner, there were bound to be others willing to join his party. He was no longer alone in the dungeon.

Well, he looked at the penguins fondly. Mostly alone.

The potential augments here were more obscure. They could range from just increasing the amount of damage redirected or decreasing the amount he took, to increasing his movement speed when running towards allies, or something equally obscure. Maybe even allowing some of his regeneration to heal his allies? Regardless, this skill would allow him to invest heavily in tank attributes and skills at the complete loss of damage, which was far more efficient since he could multiplicatively scale the numbers until he was untouchable.

Certainly appealing, but what about the last option?

Chains of Subjugation:

You have challenged an untenable foe in a battle of attrition, where your only desire was to subjugate the beast. You may now crystallize your frustration to better tackle such battles.

Summon an ethereal chain to subdue an enemy

Chained enemies take 6% increased fire damage per 10 seconds affected by the chain

5m maximum range

1 Maximum chain

1.0s cast time

Ahh, convenient. This was the perfect skill for battles like the Juggernaut. Given that he could outmatch and outlast his opponents, Chains of Subjugation would allow him to eventually overwhelm even the toughest foe. It ramped slowly, however, which meant that it only really provided much after a battle had been going on for several minutes.

Ironically it was similar to Endless Hunger in that sense. Both skills provided nothing unless he put more into them. Endless Hunger required intentionally accruing debuffs, while Chains of Subjugation required time.

It was, in effect, a boss skill. Against enemies that had vast pools of life and regeneration to draw upon, he either required a party with a dedicated damage dealer at his side, or a skill like this to allow him to punch up. The issue that came to mind is what if he couldn’t outlast the enemy. The Priest of Purity was tough. When it had enraged, it had shown that it was more than capable of turning him to a pulp.

It was possible that eventually, he would have access to two or three chains which would dramatically increase the rate that the skill scaled, assuming that he could attach all three chains to a single enemy. Other augments could increase the range, or make the ramp-up time quicker. Perhaps even an augment that made him take less damage from chained enemies?

Chilly arranged the three skills next to each other and considered his options. Then he turned to the penguins eagerly.

“Looks like we got a skill to take advantage of debuffs, another to focus on party play, and the last to kill bosses. What do you say?”