“Those little red spires are moving again,” Chilly remarked, his feet hanging off the edge of the ledge as he munched on a piece of hard tack.

“Thanks for the chapter!”

“Thank you for the chapter!” Chilly nodded with a twinkle in his eye, then leaned back into the warm folds of his cape. “This is actually kinda relaxing.”

He had taken a quick nap to clear his Exhaustion stacks and had woken up to a couple industrious Pistol Shrimp appearing in his domain after the dungeon reset. He had shot awake, but the low level mobs had died before he had even properly registered the attack. On top of that, he hadn’t been woken during the night by the Named Wendigo, which meant that he was completely free from any timed based debuffs.

It had left him in a great mood.

“I’m thinking Aegis Aurora.” Chilly hummed, kicking his feet in the wind.

“The land shall be cleansed with flame.”

“See, I agree with you, but I think I am more than capable of that at the moment. As far as I see it, this is really a choice of immediate strength versus long term power.”

“Yes, Sleep is for the weak.”

Chilly pointed at the penguin with a piece of jerky. “Exactly! Wait, no! If I take Genesis Core then I will get an immediate power boost to Smoldering Embers. The primary effect of no sleep isn’t all that amazing now that Mr. Undead Deer isn’t bothering me during the night, and I have food and water covered for now.”

“Thanks for the chapter.” Mr. Rayzel nodded, a contemplative flipper on its beak.

“Yeah, I could then just rely on the Telurians for all the amenities in the future. So far it’s seemed pretty easy to make money here. I could just take a stroll every morning to the base of Mount Teluria and be like a hundred essences richer. I should really ask, but based on how many essences there were in Rahlin’s till, I suspect that a Steel is probably around a couple bucks in equivalent value.”

Mr. Rayzel transformed Realm Walker into a perfect - albeit with wood grain running along its length - three piece suit. “Is the wonderful utility and quality of life from Genesis Core really worth the raw survivability that boosted defenses would bring?”

“Hold your penguin, I’m getting there.” Chilly tossed his bit of jerky at the penguin and grabbed another. “Aegis Aurora is kinda not that amazing right now, but as we’ve seen, I’m more than capable of surviving in this zone with just my current skill set. So if I take Aegis, then I have a very clear upgrade path in the future.”

The penguins collectively shrugged in agreement.

“It’s also worrying me that we are starting to encounter tri-element monsters.” Chilly said, pulling up his menu and selecting Aegis Aurora. “If monsters at level twenty five and above deal damage of all five elements then I won’t be able to gear properly no matter how many essences I throw at the problem.”

The menu disappeared, and a refreshing weightlessness lifted him up. He breathed deep and couldn’t help but grin as he inspected the faint rainbow patterns of light playing over the surface of his skin. After a brief inspection, Chilly brought up the skill description to see how it had changed between level one and seventeen.

Aegis Aurora :

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

Replenishes Life by 12.2% of armor when you are hit by enemy attacks

Ok, nice. The skill improved with levels. It wasn’t as much as he had thought it would, but it was still an improvement of more than 20%. Now it was time to see what augments that skill had.

Choose an Augment for Aegis Aurora. Costs 1 skill point.

Maximum 4 Augments.

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

Resplendent Languor

Spread the beauty of the aurora such that even the impatient can appreciate.

Inflict Torpor on melee enemies that hit you

[Torpor: 50% increased skill cooldown]

Spectacular Constitution

Become as ever changing as the aurora. Shucking off restraints as you dance in the heavens.

Stacking debuffs on you have 10% less maximum stacks

Glorious Raiments

Further meld with the northern lights and empower your vestments with their majesty.

20% increased armor

Dazzling Display

To strike something beautiful is to incite the ire of the stars.

25% increased fire damage if you have been hit recently

Stunning Witness

To view the aurora is to be seen in turn.

Melee hits inflicted on you trigger your main hand weapon's attack at 40% effectiveness

Imposing Presence

The sky bows for no one.

150 knockback resistance

There wasn’t an augment that increased the amount of life replenished. Slightly problematic, but at least the other options were interesting. Notably, Resplendent Languor and Stunning Witness were very odd augments. Torpor was likely good in a nebulous sort of way. Presumably the attacks the monsters had been throwing at him had cooldowns, but without knowing more details it was hard to tell how useful Torpor would be. It would definitely be great against people, but Chilly had no plans on becoming a PKer so it was a moot point.

Stunning Witness was only stunning in how useless it was at the moment. While dual wielding shields, the augment would do literally nothing for him, as his shields didn’t have damage values. On the other hand, depending on how good of a weapon he could get in the future, the augment might be better than the reflect portion of Starfire Aegis’ ability.

Glorious Raiments, Dazzling Display, and Imposing Presence were far simpler in comparison. They didn’t provide any ground breaking boosts to stats, and even seemed a little low in some cases, but if he ever managed to accrue an abundance of skill points then they would make for decent augments.

Speaking of skill points he had one extra that he could spend. None of Aegis Aurora’s augments really spoke to him at the moment. Glorious Raiments would be better once he actually upgraded his gear, and Dazzling Display was a little boring for now.

A quick glance through his augments didn’t reveal anything incredible. He did see Aura of Rekindling, one of Smoldering Ember’s augments, that granted 10% increased life to each of his ground effects. With both Irradiated Earth and Consecrated Ground, it would grant 20% increased life, which was a relatively boring but powerful improvement. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take it just yet because he already had four augments allocated to Smoldering Embers.

Deciding to keep the skill point for now, Chilly pulled up his character sheet to see what the level up had given him.

Gregory “Chilly” Morhuil

Level

Exp

Skill Points

Spec

17

5/17

1

Baelfire

Life

Life Regeneration

5411/5411

1579.49

Armor

Fire

Cold

Lightning

Chaos

303

75.19%

159

61.39%

203

67.00%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

Aegis Aurora

Helmet:

Living Steel Helmet

Vitality

Body Armor:

Aredrite Plate Vest

Pious Path

Pants:

Living Steel Tassets

Starfire Aegis

Boots:

Living Steel Greaves

Flame Dash

Gloves:

Steel Gauntlets

Chains of Subjugation

Jewelry:

Iron Ring

Smoldering Embers

Mainhand:

Living Steel Kite Shield

Mutagenic Engine

Offhand:

Living Steel Buckler

His life and regeneration had both increased slightly from the flat life gained per level but mostly due to Vitality improving incrementally. His resistances had also increased by a tiny amount since the last time he had checked, but that was due to him having allocated Thermal Accumulator which made Irradiated Earth slightly more effective at granting him resistances.

Lastly, his gaze was drawn to his experience. Only a couple more and he would finish Rahlin’s quest. With two whole resets left to finish up, he was well within schedule to get to level nineteen and return to Teluria victorious.

With a grin and a genial nod to the penguins, Chilly leaped down into the raging sea below.

At first, the Leviathans had acted as if they had lost all of their intelligence; charging him with all of their numbers as if they had learned nothing from yesterday. As he killed them they learned, which made him think that they lost their memories between resets. It made sense in a way but only reinforced how strange He Who Walks Behind really was. The Named Wendigo had somehow split from the dungeon and forged its own path. Luckily, that also probably meant that it wouldn’t respawn if it was killed. When. When it was killed.

The Leviathans worked hard to take him down. They summoned the whirlpool again, threw rocks at him, and tried to drown him, but nothing worked. At level seventeen, he was simply too tanky, and with the constant use of Flame Dash, too slippery for them to pin him down long enough to overwhelm his regeneration.

He didn’t have Incinerate this time around, but it didn’t matter. Aegis Aurora helped him tank the numerous blows just a little better and Star Fuel was more than enough to finish off any Leviathans already weakened by Smoldering Embers.

With over fifteen hundred life regenerated per second, the Leviathans needed to hit him over four times per second to even have a hope of having their damage stick. Every three seconds, he would vanish and gain another second or two of relative safety before the Leviathans descended on him again.

It was not enough.

Leviathans fell in droves. Burning up in the salt water to purple and black flames as little sparkling essences fell to the sea floor.

After every engagement, the Leviathans would retreat for a time only to return with some other concocted strategy that he would dismantle through virtue of raw stats. During these breaks, Chilly swam to the ocean floor and toppled spire after spire, using the time spent underwater to collect a couple more Regrets that he wedged tightly into his armor for safe keeping.

As he traveled deeper into the Spires, the little crystal spires in the distance continued their incessant dance, but Chilly put it out of his mind. He would get there soon and figure out what was going on in due time.

Annoyingly, the closer he got, the weaker the Atlassian Crabs became. In a strange turn of fate, the level eighteen crabs resided closest to the Frozen Wastes, while level seventeen and even a single level sixteen crab held up the later spires. In addition, he noticed that the depth of the ocean grew shallower the farther he traveled.

This, in combination with how most of the Leviathans were level sixteen, made leveling significantly slower than the previous day. Still, there were enough level seventeen and eighteen monsters that he hit level eighteen right around the time when the smaller red crystal spires in the distance stopped waving around wildly.

And he even managed to collect a little bit more experience on top.

Chilly paused on a ledge of the latest spire. He didn’t bother killing the low leveled Atlassian Crab holding up the pillar, as it wouldn’t provide any experience and he wasn’t really collecting essences at the moment.

The stillness of the smallest of the spires gave him pause. Their motion had formed a beacon of sorts. Guiding his travel towards, what he hoped was, a location with higher leveled mobs, that he could abuse to further increase his leveling speed.

He also suspected that if he continued in his current direction he would eventually run into the boss of the zone. A milestone that would signal his return to the Wastes and the end of the day of farming. He wasn’t worried about actually engaging the boss. All the bosses so far had been locked behind doors of some kind, so reaching the end of the Spires was a relatively clean checkpoint to mark the end of the day. Tomorrow, he would clear the Spires again and hit level nineteen.

Once he did that he would retreat back to Teluria and conscript Rahlin’s help with all of the bosses that he still had to fight. He distinctly remembered the blessing that the Priest of Purity had given upon its death. It had been a small boost to movement speed, but getting another two or three would surely be a welcome boost in power.

“Welp!” Chilly slapped his thighs and stood. He had mostly tapped out this zone. A few more level eighteen Leviathans remained, but they were crafty buggers that refused to engage him directly. For now, he would figure out what the spires in the distance were then head back to rest.

Chilly plunged into the water and swam towards the motionless spires. The ocean floor steadily neared until he was able to reach the bottom with his feet. He waded to shore and stepped out onto a quaint little beach with a line of obliterated trees marking the boundary between the beach and the greener mainland.

The narrow crystal spires poked out from behind the few remaining trees. The base was still mostly obscured, but from this distance, Chilly could see that they originated from a huge, gnarly boulder.

Widespread devastation wrecked the beach and mainland. Deep furrows ripped apart the sand, and barely any trees were still left standing. The few that did, sported heavy physical damage, burns, or disturbing signs of rot.

It was basically a war zone.

Chilly kicked the water out of his armor as he contemplated the wreckage. Exploring further was probably safe? Maybe. From experience, the awe-inspiring carnage didn’t necessarily reflect the power of the creature that caused it. The Wyrms in the Wyrm Tunnels, for example, were capable of causing massive devastation, but were relatively weak in comparison. He was pretty confident in his own abilities and worst case, he had two skill points that could go to empower Flame Dash for a hasty retreat. The biggest lesson he had learned in this zone was how unreasonably difficult it was to pin down an enemy that could properly teleport.

Decision made, he stalked into the forest. His domain spread out in a large sphere, giving him complete confidence that there were no enemies in the immediate vicinity. He passed over broken trunks, charred ferns, and a disturbing amount of shredded rotting flesh until he saw a clearing of even greater devastation up ahead.

He slowed, and sneaked up to the edge to peer in.

The Jaws theme began to play.

Chilly flinched hard, jumping a foot into the air at the unexpected - and unwelcome - tune.

The huge rock Chilly had seen from the beach dominated the clearing. The surface was dark and craggy. Various pits, and cavities covered the exterior, some age-old, while others were undeniably new. Its exceptional size was only made larger by the multitude of red crystals jutting out of the top.

On the side of the rock, He Who Walks Behind, the Named Wendigo hung; its claws jammed into the hard surface as it ripped and tore into a hunk of pale white meat in its other hand. Dim purple miasma rolled off of it. An endless wake of Desecrated Ground that steadily spread in a large circle about the Wendigo’s position.

Chilly blanched, taking an involuntary step back as he read and reread what the system was telling him. The Wendigo had nearly five times his life.

He must have made a noise, because the Wendigo froze on top of the boulder and turned its antlered skull towards him. Two hateful orbs studied him across the distance. A faint shiver of anticipation ran down his spine.

The monster ripped its claw out from the side of the boulder. A spurt of pale liquid coming free, as it fell to the ground. It landed in a divot. One of the many, massive gouges that scarred the battle torn landscape. Then it straightened and ambled around a large pincer-shaped stone jutting out of the base of the larger boulder.

Wait.

Not a boulder.

A crab.

A really.

Really.

Really big crab.

Chilly took another step back, as the Wendigo let out a blood curdling chuckle.

“I’ve been waiting for you...”

Goosebumps rose along Chilly’s entire body as his eyes opened wide. The Wendigo’s voice was garbled. Warped and twisted by its oblong jaw and misshapen teeth. Despite all that, the words it spoke were clearly recognizable.

“Y-you can...talk?” Chilly stammered out.

Lips pulled back to reveal blooded teeth with bits of pale crab flesh still stuck in the gums. Between them, the Consecrated and Desecrated grounds fought for control. Hissing and popping as miasma was consumed and crucifixes cracked.

The Wendigo lifted a clawed hand and felt at the edge of Chilly’s domain.

“Oh, yes,” the undead gurgled, yellow, slimy pus oozing from between its jaws with every word.

Chilly instantly felt the monster. Every disgusting inch of it entered his awareness as Quantum Connection informed him of the threat. Green mist enveloped the undead, seeping into its bones as embers of black and purple ignited all over its skin.

“You’ve grown,” it sighed, bubbles of liquid burbling and popping in its throat. “Gooood.”

Little embers slowly caught on the Wendigo, damaging the undead flesh just a hair faster than it could regenerate.

I can do this, Chilly psyched himself up. He can still be hurt.

“You here to fight, or are you just going to run away like last time?” Chilly taunted, his heart pounding as he prepared for the fight of his life.

“Fight?” The Wendigo paused, taken aback. “No, why would I fight you.”

Chilly blinked, “So you...don’t want to kill me?”

“Kill you,” the Wendigo chuckled. “Why would I want that? You push me to the...” a shiver wracked its frame. “...juiciest prey.”

Chilly’s gaze snapped up to the fallen crab. The boss of the zone. The Wendigo’s battle with it had caused the untold devastation around them.

“That crab?” Chilly gestured. “Back there?”

“Oh yeess. It was incredible. I can’t wait for what other...prey, you lead me to. Perhaps...that town. It has some...tasty treats, yeesss?”

Bloody hell, how do you reason with a monster, Chilly thought. “That town is mine.” He said instead, “You can’t eat any of them.”

The Wendigo tilted its head, a gruesome smile splitting its lip. A drop of yellowed blood leaked out of a puss-filled cavity in its gums. “Oh? And who's going to stop me? You?”

It laughed, slow and mocking.

“My ability is already killing you,” Chilly pointed out, “It’s only a matter of time before it kills you.”

“Oh?” The Wendigo looked down, inspecting itself with feigned curiosity. “I suppose. Though...you are not the only one with abilities...Father.”

The Wendigo’s eyes flashed scarlet. For but a brief second, every light around them dimmed. The glowing crucifixes faded, and the green mist dwindled as Chilly’s entire perception became laser-focused on the Wendigo’s gaze.

The moment ended, and an overwhelming sense of wrongness enveloped him.

Chilly gasped, his hands clenching mulched earth as he suddenly found himself on his knees.

Weakness boughed his back, as the light of every Smoldering Ember in the air diminished.

“Ahhh, haha,” the Wendigo chuckled, its rotten flesh visibly repairing despite the black and purple embers attacking its body. “Muuchh...better.”

I can’t fight this, Chilly thought, a growing sense of realization forming a cold pit in his stomach. He surged to his feet, ready to dump both his skill points into Flame Dash and make his escape, but froze as a fetid claw tickled the base of his neck.

He had blinked and the monster had closed the distance between them.

“Where to next?” the beast whispered, leaning in close. Its rotten breath slithered past the grills of his helmet, stinging his eyes and burning his nose as it found a new home. “That little town? Telurriiaa, was it?”

Chilly gulped, tears budding in his eyes as he struggled not to gag. “Ahh, no. Y-you...hrngg...won’t find anything great there.”

“I remember a juicy...little...maiden,” the monster hissed, drawing its long claw along Chilly’s jaw line. “Her heart was especially...scrumptious. Though...it was....missing something.”

“Y-yeah, no more people like that. Ha ha. Uhm, what about...” Chilly wracked his mind for something, anything, that could divert the monster. “What about the Wyrm Tunnels? That would be far better than Teluria. Definitely.”

The Wendigo huffed, more fetid liquid burbling out of the cracks in its fur. “And what...delicious prey...will I find within?”

“There should...should be a boss inside.” Chilly coughed, forcefully stopping himself from flinching back as a stomach turning wave of noxious air washed over him.

For a moment the Wendigo stood still and silent. Its inscrutable red eyes flashing as it considered. Then as suddenly, as it had frozen, it reanimated, pulling its claw back and straightening to its full height.

“Do be a...lamb,” it chuckled. “Find me something...tasty to eat when I return. I do grow so...hungry.”

Chilly gulped, not daring to move as the Wendigo stepped past him. Silver streamers manifested around its hooves, and in several strides it vanished into the broken forest.

A chilling chuckle echoed in its wake.