Chilly tread water as a titanic wave crested from the fallen spire’s passing. Instead of trying to swim over it, he opted to let his body sink. Beneath the waves, the water was still turbulent, but the worst that happened was a couple of rolling eddies flipping him around as the majority of the wave’s power was expended on the surface. When his breath ran out, and he was at risk of gaining a stack of Asphyxiation, he teleported to the surface.

The waves still raged, their anger unchanged by the sinking of one of the grand pillars. Chilly kicked hard to combat the inexorable drag of his weighty armor. The ocean was eerily quiet. No Leviathans poked their ugly tentacles out of the water and the miniature tsunami had carried him out of range of the other pillars and their Hyperion Walkers.

A particularly tall swell lifted him high and he glimpsed a large, damaged crab shell floating some ways away. Its carapace had numerous cracks, and it was missing several limbs, but when he shot an identify its way he received nothing in return.

Hope it's not dead, Chilly thought as he began to make his way over to the floating crab. It was level 19 if he recalled correctly and in its damaged state it would be simple to kill for experience. Unfortunately, as soon as the shell entered his domain, Smoldering Embers in the air latched onto the dead exoskeleton and within moments reduced it to less than ash. A transient glimmer of an essence fell into the waves.

Shame, Chilly thought. Four experience points would have been nice.

A subsonic shell crashed into his shoulder. In his approach to dead Walker, he had approached within range of two large red Spires and their respective Walkers. He ignored the bullets. At worst they were annoyances and even if he had half his regeneration and resistances their rate of fire and damage wasn’t enough to kill him. Especially since they missed one in every three shots due to his movement and the distance.

Chilly floated in the water, periodically getting a splash of water in the face before deciding to just get on with it. The missing Leviathans were worrying. He had only killed three of them, and he knew that there were easily ten times that many in the waters. Just waiting around wasn’t really an option though, so without worrying too much about it he began the swim towards the next spire. With the Leviathans missing and the Walkers unreachable he was rather lacking in enemies to fight, but at the very least he could farm the Atlassian Crabs for experience. As a bonus, it would be relatively safe experience.

He arrived at the pillar under steady - if rather ineffectual - fire, and rested a bit on the ledge. The ledge was narrower than the previous one he had occupied, but Chilly managed to rest his upper body for what was to come next.

The cliff face of the Frozen Wastes watched ominously as waves crashed against it. Red crystal spires rose from the waves with the same implacable stubbornness, almost daring the waves to knock them down. The farther away from the cliffs, however, the smaller the spires became until they cumulated in a set of moving red crystals in the distance that barely crested the waves.

Wait.

Moving?

Chilly squinted into the spray and did his best to disperse the steady plume of steam that Starfire Aegis was generating around him. Yes. In the distance, there were a set of crystal spikes that were shifting. Rather aggressively, if the sharp, sudden changes in direction were any judge.

“Hope there isn’t an Atlassian Crab up there practicing swordplay,” Chilly joked. The penguins giggled but stayed silent in response.

Whatever was causing the weird sight in the distance was too far to do anything about, so Chilly hopped down from the narrow ledge and slipped into the water. His domain informed him of the continued lack of Leviathans, and he quickly descended until he found another Atlassian Crab holding up the pillar.

Chilly surfaced after dodging the large wave left in the fallen pillar’s wake and pulled up his experience.

He grinned and turned towards the next pillar. Even with just the Atlassian Crabs, getting to level 17, and therefore his next skill would happen in no time.

He began to swim towards the next pillar, using Flame Dash liberally to make the process easier. Even with his teleport going off rapidly the waves were brutal. Exhaustion pulled at his limbs as he struggled to make progress. The closer he got, the worse the waves became until a particularly bad current grabbed him and pulled him under with merciless force.

He grunted, water filling his lungs as he was forced to use a cast of Flame Dash just to crest the waves and get a breath of fresh air. He appeared in a burst of fire several meters above the surface of the water and froze in surprise as gravity reclaimed its hold.

The increased difficulty of swimming in the waters had not just been his imagination. A massive whirlpool nearly the size of his domain spread out beneath him. It pushed a depression into the stormy seas, swallowing up building-sized undulations as if they were peanuts.

Chilly barely had time to process the new development when he disappeared once more beneath the waves. Bubbles and seafoam obscured his sight, and his domain didn’t reveal any hostile entities that could have caused the whirlpool. Chilly consciously refrained from Flame Dashing away in order to wait the full four seconds for Second Wind to come off cooldown. The whirlpool was large. It would take more than one teleport to escape its clutches.

His legs thrashed, and his arms pumped as he worked to remain above the waterline as the whirlpool’s strength only intensified. Even in just the several seconds that he waited, it had nearly doubled in size to the point where the walls of the whirlpool were almost at a sixty-degree slant with the surface.

Finally ready, Chilly vanished in a flare of bright fire directly away from the eye of the whirlpool, then immediately cast Flame Dash again to make even more distance. He appeared underwater and had a brief second to appreciate the relative calm before his domain lit up like a Christmas tree with nearly two dozen hostile Leviathans no more than a couple of meters away.

Subsonic growls shook the waters, and before he knew it, a massive tentacle slithered closer and bashed him in the chest.

Chilly grunted as he was once more subsumed by the cataclysmic forces of the whirlpool. The damage he had taken from the tentacle was an afterthought, healed before he had even noticed his health bar dip, but a more immediate problem surfaced. He was yanked to the side as powerful currents threw him around like a ragdoll. In a second, his head poked out of the inner wall of the whirlpool and he noticed with a growing sense of dread that the whirlpool was continuing to grow.

He spun around the inner radius, ironically not needing to work so hard as the swift currents carried him, falling closer to the seafloor with each rotation like a marble in a funnel.

Well, I guess I figured out where the Leviathans went. Chilly palmed his last remaining regret as he looked through his augments for a way to escape this situation. With the whirlpool only growing he would soon not be able to escape even with two uses of Flame Dash. Annoyingly, the moment he left the radius, there was a brief period where he was utterly helpless without movement skills where the Leviathans could kick him back to the center with their long tentacles. All that really did was trap him, without dealing damage so it wasn’t so—

A shard of ice in the water shot past him, leaving a thin red line that healed instantly. With wide eyes, Chilly noticed thousands of small bits of ice forming in the rapidly cooling saltwater and getting accelerated to ungodly speeds by the whirlpool.

Another shard crashed into Chilly, this time shattering into a dozen smaller pieces that rapidly became seed crystals for more icy projectiles. His life had barely budged, but it was only a matter of time before they grew large enough to actually harm him in a meaningful way.

Got to hand it to ‘em, Chilly snorted, accidentally getting water up his nose in his mirth. He sputtered, but couldn’t help a wry grin spread. This is what the Telurians had meant when they said the monsters would grow smarter. It was a valiant effort, but unfortunately, they had underestimated his strength.

Without another thought, Chilly released his pent-up breath then didn’t take another. He curiously surveyed the whirlpool which had grown even larger with awe. It really was a pretty massive undertaking to kill little ol’ him.

Unfortunately for the Leviathans, he was pretty well suited to hunting their kind.

>

The fearsome waves lost much of their pull on him, and he began to sink down. Before he moved too much, he vanished in a flare of bright fire directly away from the center then used another usage to appear right on the cusp of the frothing whirlpool. Leviathans entered his domain, and one immediately spun towards him with an extended tentacle.

A predatory grin split his face as his eyes narrowed in excitement. The tentacle smashed into him, dealing minor damage, but failed to significantly launch him back into the current. He reached out and grabbed the rubbery end as two red chains of glowing steel whipped out to ensnare the beast.

Gotcha! Chilly thought as the tentacle bucked in his grasp. It was no more able to pull him closer than it was able to push him back. Still, the slick, rubbery skin of the tentacle was impossible to restrain for long and after only a second it managed to escape away with a subsonic screech from the main body. Chilly gurgled with glee, salty water filling his mouth as the cooldown for Flame Dash hit zero and he vanished in another flare of purple fire.

He appeared deep within the mass of tentacles and Star Fuel ripped out, leaving deep cauterized contusions with merciless streamers of plasma. The Chains of Subjugations pulsed and suddenly all the black fire burning deep within the ocean intensified.

>

In a desperate bid, the Leviathan turned on him, bashing him with its tentacles but that only made Starfire Aegis erupt in conflagrations of enraged plasma that punished the beast for every hit it landed.

Chilly kicked forwards, lunging and grabbing a grotesque sucker in his gauntlet and latching on to the overgrown squid once more. The moment his grip firmed, a ray of fire burst out and scalded the main body of the Leviathan with superheated black and purple steam.

It screeched, the call mirrored by several dozen rapidly approaching Leviathans in the distance.

Chilly ignored the calls, savagely aiming his only active skill at the most delicate portions of the invertebrate. The Leviathan bucked, shuddering as its soft folds ripped Chilly off of it. Then with a titanic effort, it completely encased Chilly in tentacles then dove head first into the whirlpool.

Purple fire enfolded him as ice shards pelted him, and he was once more pulled by the current. It was significantly weaker than before due to Rock Solid massively boosting his knockback resistance but it still managed to sluggishly pull him inwards.

A dozen Leviathans entered his domain. The water shook with their enraged calls and Chilly made a snap decision. He Flame Dashed into the eye of the whirlpool and took a deep breath.

The water immediately grabbed him and nearly knocked his newfound breath out of him, but the loss of Rock Solid would be worth it. The Leviathans had committed by entering his domain and he would need every scrap of life regeneration he could muster for what came next.

The Leviathans crashed into him en masse.

Everything became thrashing blubbery limbs, and greedy suckers as Chilly calmly closed his eyes and surrendered to the rough browbeating. Every movement and blow was exquisitely clear within his domain, so with chilling accuracy, he aimed Incinerate to pierce as many bodies as possible.

His life plummeted, hits coming in from every angle, as he hunched his shoulders and curled into a fetal position to minimize his surface area.

Just as his life was reduced below a thousand, Second Wind came off cooldown and he vanished in a flare of bright fire. Shrieks of agony shook the water as burning ground intensified the Smoldering Embers in the water, and Chilly vanished once again, gaining a brief moment of respite.

His life shot up like a bullet, reaching over 70% before the first of the Leviathans found him again with their tentacles. His life continued to rise for a brief second, before it fell as more and more Leviathans pummeled him with unbound rage.

He teleported again, gaining another brief intermission to recover before once again he was swarmed.

Then the first Leviathan died.

The tides turned. More and more fell, and the water-filled with near blinding black and purple flames that consumed the blubbery flesh with eager hunger. Essences materialized in sparkling bursts before being promptly sucked away by the whirlpool.

His life held steady, then began to recover as the overgrown squid fell in droves

...

The Leviathans retreated. Their tentacles thrashed in the water and accelerated their significant masses away from the demon that had entered their domain. They fled screaming and cradling deep burns. Within a minute, all that was left around Chilly was a few smoldering shards of ice and a rapidly dissipating whirlpool.

Chilly floated serenely for a moment, letting the exhaustion in his muscles come to the fore.

>

Then his aching lungs reminded him of their existence, and he kicked to the surface.

A shell smashed him in the dome and he let out an annoyed curse. Too tired to deal with more monsters, Chilly turned towards the Frozen Wastes and used a combination of Flame Dash and halfhearted kicks to make his way to a narrow ledge just out of range of the crashing waves.

He crawled over the lip to a group of excited penguins hopping up and down and shooting him impatient glances.

“Just a...” Chilly huffed, flopping onto his back and letting Starfire Aegis warm him. “...second.”

He gathered his energy and then opened up the list of notifications waiting for him.

“Open? Didn’t I have eight already...” Chilly frowned, then started as his gaze passed over the previous notification.

“Oh, no, no. No.” Chilly muttered, pulling up his new skill choice. If he had to replace all his skills then his entire build could be in jeopardy.

Sanguine Incinerate:

Unleash a beam of fire that burns enemies that it touches.

Deals 10% of maximum life as Fire damage per second

5m range

Channeling

Chilly sighed in relief.

The new skill was surprisingly similar to his old Incinerate. It even had a similar name. Instead of dealing flat fire damage, Sanguine Incinerate’s damage now scaled off of his maximum life. If he recalled correctly, his old Incinerate was dealing around 500 fire damage per second after he had accounted for all of his bonuses to fire damage. Sanguine Incinerate, on the other hand, would deal 534 fire damage as a base. With all of his increases to fire damage, it would only get higher.

The skill was also - annoyingly - showing him the power at level one, which meant that the 10% of his maximum life as fire damage would increase along with the range. It was possible that at level 17 the skill would have 12 or even 13% which would mean it would deal about 700 damage before accounting for his other modifiers. If he actually took some effort in allocating the skills augments it would become a seriously viable skill.

Chilly still wouldn’t take it. It was...slightly more fitting to his current playstyle, but his experience so far was that Channeling was too limiting to be worth it. The presence of the skill itself was reassuring, though. It meant that when he hit level 19 and Vitality was ‘lost’, he was likely to receive an even better, or altered version of the skill as his first option.

His build wasn’t screwed, in other words.

Chilly dismissed the box and pulled up the next one.

Genesis Core:

While the forest abhors the flame, it still requires it to refresh the land.

While moving or stationary, create Fertile Soil beneath your feet.

[Fertile Soil reduces the tick rate of time-based debuffs by 100%]

2m radius

30s duration

Chilly read the skill description again. Then again.

“What?” He muttered, taking off his helmet and scratching at his stubble.

This was the first skill that he genuinely didn’t really understand at face value. On the surface, the skill was identical to Pious Path and Mutagenic Engine. It spawned a ground effect around his feet and likely had augments that allowed its spread. It would synergize well with Smoldering Embers and would complement his build quite nicely.

The active effect of Fertile Soil, however, was confusing. Chains of Subjugation was - at least probably - a time-based debuff. It ticked every ten seconds then applied a stacking increased fire damage debuff. So Fertile Soil would...counter Chains of Subjugation? Make it apply its increased damage only every 20 seconds instead? It seemed a little odd. He hadn’t really encountered any time-based—

A penguin poked him, then grasped its throat, tottered, then fell over with its tongue lolling out.

Comprehension dawned.

Asphyxiation was a time based debuff.

A wide, almost incredulous, smile bloomed

If he followed that train of logic, so were Starvation and Dehydration. If he took this skill, he wouldn’t have to eat and drink as often. If he got enough increased skill effect in conjunction with the skill’s augments, he likely could make it so that he could only eat one meal a day, or even less. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to abuse Rock Solid as often, but with no other debuffs on him and three ground effect auras would he even need to?

Wait...

Exhaustion was also a time based debuff.

He could stay awake for days.

“Wow,” Chilly leaned back, rubbing the back of his neck as he realized just how useful this new skill would be. It basically meant that he wouldn’t ever hit a wall with resources again. Whether they be food, water, sleep or otherwise. He would be able to pack light, rest rarely and still have the energy for anything.

Fertile Soil would make him a machine that could continue for days at a time.

Genesis Core was a utility skill that provided some defense against the nebulous threat of an enemy using a skill like Chains of Subjugation on him, however, due to Smoldering Embers, it had significant offensive potential as well.

Shaking his head, Chilly brought up the next skill.

Aegis Aurora:

Born from the marriage of starlight and sky, the aurora evokes both awe and power.

Replenishes Life by 10% of armor when you are hit by enemy attacks

A star aligned skill. He hadn’t gotten one of those in a while.

This one focused on pure defense it seemed. If he did some quick maths, then 10% of his armor was 29.9, or rounded up to 30 for convenience. A regular Leviathan was regularly dealing around 200 physical with an additional 200 cold damage per hit. Perhaps some more fire damage or otherwise if they happened to be ‘of the Inferno’. That would mean that Aegis Aurora would reduce the damage taken by about...7%? 8%? Less than 10% but not much less.

Put in other words, it was equivalent to having nearly 10% increase to all resistances. Except, not really. It protected him from 30 chaos damage just as effectively as 30 physical damage despite the fact that he didn’t have any chaos resistance. So in that sense, it was strictly better than having 10% increased all resistance.

That was nice. Really nice, because it would vastly streamline his future gearing. If he got new gear that was level appropriate he had no doubt that he could get around 50 armor on each piece. Combined that with another 50 or so armor from using Steel base types and another 15-20% increased armor as another mod would result in...100 times 8 was 800 and 20% times 8 was 160%, so 800 times 2.6 was around...2000 armor. 10% of that would be 200 which would cut an average leviathan’s hit by 50%. Except...it would be more than that because they wouldn’t be dealing 200 physical damage, they would be dealing closer to 50 or even less damage. Presumably, he wouldn’t have as much cold resistance but as a rough estimate, he could theoretically reduce all hits - including chaos hits - in half.

Also considering that basically, every monster dealt physical damage at least partially, then it wouldn’t be all that bad of a strategy to stack copious quantities of armor.

The one downside was that he would have to stop using Living Steel gear. If he tallied up his current gear, he was getting roughly 800 flat life just from the implicits. Given he was roughly doubling the effectiveness of flat life, he would lose a minimum of 1600 life if he enacted the change. Not a complete deal breaker but it would cut slightly into his damage with Smoldering Embers and Starfire Aegis.

Of course, he could just stick with what he had right now or just be a hybrid in some way. Instead of having 2,000 armor, he would get about 1,000 or 1,500 and keep his high life pool. He could also get rid of the few pieces of gear that are giving him cold resistance so overall his life would still increase even if he went all-in on armor.

All of this was without taking into account any augments that would increase the percentage of healing from 10 to 15% or even higher. There was also no reason why he couldn’t stack increased skill effect and raise it to 20% or even 30% and higher. At that point, he would completely negate normal blows, while actively healing from weak enemies. Against bosses with adds, it would be, literally, a lifesaver.

The spray of the ocean drummed against the cliff face as Chilly pondered.

He hadn’t really taken the locals seriously when they said that level fifteen was the moment when he became an adult. It seemed silly. A local tradition that didn’t apply to him as an offworlder.

Except, now he was starting to realize that becoming an adult was really synonymous for optimizing his build into something truly fierce. He was choosing a direction now. More so than ever before.

If he took Genesis Core, then he was solidifying his build into that of a ground effect spawner of huge range and damage. He would focus exclusively on maximizing his area and his life to deal with threats long before they could harm him. All while this happened his various ground effects would buff him and his team while dramatically debuffing the enemies. As he leveled he could continue replacing skills with those that provided additional ground effects until he had seven such skills with Smoldering Embers as his only source of damage. With a 7x multiplier in damage, even 6% of his maximum life as fire damage would be significant.

He couldn’t really afford to replace all his skills, Flame Dash was critical and Vitality was too useful but leaning into this build would make him a walking fortress that dealt obscene damage to everyone around.

The first weakness he spotted with this build was that it might not be enough. Long-range artillery units like the Hyperion Walkers existed which could and did hit him outside of his range. They shot so far outside of his range that no amount of area would allow his domain to reach them. Currently, they didn’t deal much damage, but he could easily imagine a situation where a veritable swarm of ranged units poked him from a distance until he died. On the other end of the spectrum, there were enemies like the Wall Crawlers who could dash into his range and execute an assassination before Smoldering Embers had the time to take them out. That would always be a problem, and his high life pool was a direct measure to counter that though how effective it was without high resistances was still an open question.

The second weakness he could think of was that his ground effects could be dispelled. The Named Wendigo was able to spawn Desecrated Ground which nullified Pious Path, and there was no reason other such pairings existed. Hell, there was likely a ground effect that prevented other ground effects from spawning where it was placed. Even that wouldn’t be necessary to completely ruin his build. Something as simple as a curse that reduced the duration of his skills by 90% or 100% then he wouldn’t even be able to spawn any ground effects whatsoever.

That being said, it was more of a direct counter to his skills, and there was not much he could do about that other than get a lot of resistances and skill duration. On the other hand, death was most likely to occur against a direct counter. The Leviathans were a great example. Against melee foes, they were truly fearsome creatures. Being completely immortal to damage against their tentacles, a melee combatant would be forced to come fight them on their terms and would therefore need to be significantly more powerful to even hope of winning. His recent success was just due to him having a soft counter against the Leviathans’.

So it was viable but had some definite weaknesses that he would have to patch up with his future skill choices.

The second path he could take was less synergistic but focused on more raw power. With Aegis Aurora he would be able to more properly focus his gear and - if he did it right - be practically immune to small hits, while gaining a not-insignificant tankiness against larger ones. The recent battle with the Leviathans showed that he could still get overwhelmed if enough enemies attacked him, and it was only because he was allowed to retreat with Flame Dash that he survived. What if what happened here, happened in a narrow tunnel, or up on a narrow branch? There was certainly something to be said about just being tanky enough to take the hits.

If he fully streamlined his gear to support armor, then it didn’t matter if Smoldering Embers didn’t deal all that much damage. Mutagenic Engine guaranteed that even the toughest foes would eventually fall to Irradiation’s less regeneration effect. If he was tanky enough that no amount of enemies could kill him then all he had to worry about was one-shot kills.

If that was the case then the solution was simple. If he replaced Starfire Aegis with a skill that granted armor, and Chains of Subjugation with an ability like Shell of the Caldera which he had skipped before but granted a temporary shield, then he would have most of his defensive bases covered. If he couldn’t kill something because it was too agile, then that was fine. He would be gaining a team soon, and they could fill in that gap. For now, and as it has always been, his life was the most important consideration.

As he had done with all of his other skill choices, Chilly asked for the penguins’ opinion. While they mulled over the skill choice and sent their messages across the astral, he would rest. He was exhausted and with the quantity of high leveled enemies in the Spires he was confident that he could get to level 19 in the two remaining cycles.