The penguins broke into cheers.

“Well done, Bearer of Flame!”

“Well done, brave warrior. One down, a few more to go!”

Chilly smiled at the penguins. Their adulations flowed over him and were somehow rejuvenating despite his exhaustion. Then, a penguin stepped out from the ranks of penguins with an elegant gentleman’s cane rather than the typical wooden sword.

“One has been released, yet two are still bound by chain and death.” The penguin said.

“Sooty and ghost dude, right?” Chilly scratched the back of his head.

Mr. Chaos appeared behind Mr. Nalhcal and bopped the other penguin with an enlarged wooden mallet. Nalhcal flattened then bounced back like a rubber ball then gave the other penguin a dirty look. Mr. Chaos just shrugged and then transformed the wooden mallet into a wooden cake with a candle shaped like a number four on top.

Chilly watched the display, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. As far as he could tell he was aware of two more guardians, but there were four more to free before he would be done. Kellington’s Boughs definitely had a guardian maintaining the illusion, and perhaps there was another one around that town that Rahlin had mentioned earlier. Cankerton was it?

Suddenly, the ranks of penguins split and let through a platoon of wood-armored penguins in spartan gear. The leader had a little helmet with a plume of feathers sticking up in a fuzzy mohawk.

The penguin slashed a flipper down in a quick motion and the platoon of penguins lifted their little dinnerplate-sized shields and formed a cordon around Chilly. Mr. Wyrm took the front and scanned the forest as if waiting for an attack that would materialize at any moment.

“Uh, Mr. Wyrm? Everything all right?” Chilly asked, kind of worried at the sudden protection.

The penguin shot chilly a glance, its eyes narrowed dangerously as it continued to scan the environment.

“Consequences,” it replied.

Chilly blinked, a shiver running up his back.

Another penguin stepped forward and giggled. “Chilly, you're cool. Take a moment and appreciate yourself.”

“Right,” Chilly replied, taking a deep breath to steady his now pounding heart. “Right. Going to bed.”

The penguins parted to let him make his way up the ladder to his bed, though the dozen armored penguins continued to guard him as if their lives depended on it. Chilly didn’t think too hard about it. He didn’t think much at all really. So focused on getting to bed, that he didn’t notice Rahlin giving him a strange look as he retreated.

The next day dawned, and a quick breakfast later found Chilly, Chaeli, and an amused Rahlin traveling across the Wastes. Chilly didn’t mind helping Chaeli level and would have done it even if he hadn’t promised.

They fought monsters, although at this point it wasn’t so much a battle as a ‘get in range and let Chaeli assassinate them after the Smoldering Embers burned them a bit’. Rahlin stayed back, letting them fight as he watched and occasionally made comments on how Chaeli could improve.

They quickly ran out of Wendigos and Shrimp to kill of sufficient level and dove into the cold waters of the Spires. The Leviathans swarmed them, but with Aegis Aurora flickering in scintillating patterns over his skin, Chilly was practically immune to their attacks. As before he fought them and in the corner of his eye a black rend in space would rip apart the main bodies of the underwater titans.

Chaeli leveled fast. Obscenely fast, and it reminded Chilly of the power leveling the Warforged had given him with the Leviathans back in Mirror Lake. There was an amusing symmetry there. She helped him, then he helped her, though he couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of level hopping between each other for the rest of their time together.

Chaeli broke level seventeen, then eighteen, and was on the way to nineteen when she allowed a few high-leveled squid to get burned down by the embers and plasma.

Chilly instantly gasped as he felt the skill leave him and he hurriedly waved Chaeli up to the surface where they rested on one of the crystal spires while he took care of the notification.

Chilly stared at his stats in horror. He had lost a thousand life, and almost a thousand regeneration. Percentage-wise, he had only lost about half his regeneration - about 15% - but because he had lost so much life as well the raw effect was magnified. Just as he was about to swipe open his interface to see his skills a penguin appeared on his hand and gently stopped his hand.

“Synergistic management solutions are the core of every business!” Mr. Macleod nodded sagely. “Remember, synergy is efficiency! Efficiency is strength!”

Chilly nodded, then with trembling hands he brought up the skill options.

Endless Vitality:

Your body thrums with endless vitality vastly increasing your life regeneration.

Regenerate 4.8% of maximum life as life per second

Chilly sagged in relief. The skill had changed. It gained the Endless suffix and completely lost the bonus life that it had provided for him. In exchange, the amount of life regenerated per second increased. He didn’t precisely remember what it had been before, but it was closer to two or three percent not five.

So around double the power, except lacking the additional life. Regular Vitality had given him about 15% of his maximum life as life regeneration after accounting for everything, so after accounting for the lost life he would expect perhaps 20-25% of his life regenerated per second or somewhere in the range of 1800-2000 life regenerated per second.

So it was more regeneration, but it was a loss in life. That wasn’t amazing as it removed the skill’s synergy with Smoldering Embers. On the other hand, Star Fuel would only get stronger as his regeneration spiked. Also, there was a soft synergy with Aegis Aurora as the less life he had the greater of an effect the healing would, relatively speaking, have. That last one was a stretch by any margin, but it wasn’t as if the skill didn’t synergize with his build at all.

It wasn’t as pure an upgrade as he hoped but it was still pretty great.

Chaos Inoculation:

You have touched the abyss and drawn within yourself the entropy inherent to the void, thereby becoming comfortable with the corrosive energies of the beyond.

50 chaos resistance

100% of chaos damage is taken as physical damage

Chilly studied the next ability with trepidation. There wasn’t all that much that he could think of that would be better than reacquiring Endless Vitality, but he shook his head and approached the skill with an open mind.

If he was reading it correctly, the skill would make him effectively immune to chaos damage. By converting it to physical damage he would be able to stack armor - which he was already planning on doing because of Aegis Aurora - and massively mitigate any chaos damage that was coming his way.

What confused him though, was the 50 chaos resistance that the skill offered. If the ability only converted the damage to physical then it wouldn’t make any sense to also grant a useless stat. That meant that the ability first reduced the chaos damage based on his chaos mitigation, then transferred it over to physical.

Which was...powerful. It was a multiplicative reduction. If he had 100 armor and 100 chaos resistance that would mean a 50% reduction to both damage types, but a 75% effective reduction to chaos damage. Except, to get 75% mitigation normally he would need 300 chaos resistance which was three times the base amount of resistance in this scenario, or fifty percent more if he summed armor and chaos resistance.

This effect would only get stronger the more resistance he got. If he had 900 of both resistances or 90% mitigation then the effect would be 99% less damage or...ugh...9900 raw chaos resistance. The question then was, would he need that much protection from chaos damage in the future?

“Hey, Chaeli?” He asked his companion. She was kicking at the water and fiddling with her interface. She had her own skills to choose after all. “Do you know what enemies we will find in the future?”

“Hmm,” She replied, adopting a cute thinking pose. “The lightning zone will probably be our next location, though according to Gar-Khan there are a bunch of different damage types there.”

“Will there be chaos damage?”

“Not up Kellington’s Boughs.” Chaeli shook her head. “That place has mostly elemental. You know. Fire, cold, lightning. That kind of thing. After that though, we will need to cross the Valley of Horrors and that place is a nasty mix of physical and chaos. I heard that it can be really hard to gear properly for since chaos-res bases are so rare. Oh, I can’t wait to start farming for them.”

Chaeli got a dreamy look in her eyes, and Chilly chuckled returning to his own skills.

There will be chaos damage in the future. A lot of it mixed with physical in the final zone. This skill would single-handedly make going through that zone trivial, in a similar vein to how Starfire Aegis made conquering the fire biome easy.

The problem was, he would have to give up half his regeneration for this, which was arguably a more important defensive layer since it helped him survive through all sorts of damage, not only chaos.

Chilly chewed his lip and continued reading.

Ashes of the Stars:

Stardust gathers in your bones and acts as a catalyst to empower every other skill in your arsenal.

1 level

Chilly blinked in surprise. The last skill was basic. It only had a single effect, though the power of that effect was hard to understand. If it straight up granted one additional level then would that mean that he could choose his next skill when he hits level twenty? Would he receive the minor but noticeable boost to flat life that he gains from each level up? Would all his skills get stronger?

Chilly chewed his lip. He would have to assume that all those questions would be true.

“Hey, Chaeli?” He turned to Chaeli again. “What’s the max level you can get?”

“Thirty, silly,” Chaeli replied. “How can you not know that?”

“Just double-checking,” Chilly said. “It’s really impossible to level higher?”

“Yeah, I mean. There’s a couple of legends that got higher. My favorite is Galbrinna the Titan. She was an awesome Warfoged that managed to get to level thirty-six and smashed all her foes with her big warhammer.”

“So it is possible.”

“Eh,” Chaeli shrugged. “She is a legend, but Gar-Khan did say that there are some theoretical skills that can increase the maximum level you can achieve.”

“Ah,” Chilly replied, “Would those skills be worth it?”

“Oh definitely!” Chaeli nodded. “But it depends a lot on your current skills. For me, it would be awesome, since all my damaging skills scale exponentially with level. But if you have a bunch of passives or skills that just spawn the ground effect beneath your feet, for example, then it wouldn’t do all that much.”

“Huh,” Chilly grunted, turning back to his interface.

Ashes of the Stars wasn’t as insane as it could be but it would still be strong if he took it. An additional level to all his skills would marginally buff seven skills. It wouldn’t be groundbreaking or even particularly interesting, but you didn’t get something with more synergy than that.

The choice was annoyingly difficult as usual. It was as if the system was able to read his mind and provide him with three skills that would all appeal to him.

He was leaning towards Endless Vitality as the boring safe option that he knew worked. It wasn’t exactly what he had before, but it would provide the same niche; keeping him alive. The issue was that he would lose a little bit of the synergy that he had from it. Since he didn’t get any more life from it anymore, then some of the power behind Smoldering Embers would diminish. That was troubling as he was already slightly starved for damage against super high-leveled enemies, but that was irrelevant if he couldn’t tank them long enough to deal his damage.

The second option was specializing against chaos damage. He knew for a fact that the last - and highest leveled zone - was primarily chaos. Considering the rarity of chaos gear it would be prudent to get a dedicated skill against the high-powered enemies in that zone. This, combined with his plan of stacking armor to power up Aegis Aurora would make the last zone trivial regardless of the power of the enemies. He may struggle slightly in the lightning zone, but honestly, planning against elemental damage was far simpler than chaos damage. He could - and would - adapt.

Lastly, he could simply power up all his skills. This was the sketchiest of the options if he was being honest with himself. That being said, it was likely the best long-term option. The great equalizer in all the MMOs that he had played was the level cap. Seventy, or one hundred, or whatever. The moment you hit that level in an MMO the playing field equalized, and PvP usually became a thing. When he hit that vaunted ceiling in this world if he had Ashes of the Stars, he wouldn’t have to worry about fighting higher-leveled enemies. Everything would be lower leveled than him and would have to fight against his level thirty-plus skills that benefit from the exponential scaling. A level thirty-five Aegis Aurora combined with increased effect on gear would make him recover more than 100% of his life with every hit. It wouldn’t matter if his life wasn’t super high if a super-powered Smoldering Embers dealt 50% of his maximum life per second because he was nearly level forty.

He was guessing as to how high he could take Ashes of the Stars, but between three and five levels were reasonable as he was seeing the level one version and he wasn’t seeing any of the augments. That didn’t even mention how much it would scale with increased skill effect.

“Welp!” Chilly slapped his thighs and stood, indicating for Chaeli to join him. “I’m going to think about this for a bit. Are you good to stay here on your own? I’m not really up to tanking level nineteens without most of my regeneration.”

“I...should be fine,” Chaeli said, not at all looking sure of herself. Battling these Leviathans was a vastly different beast than the ones in Mirror Lake. For one, the surf was violent and made running on the water difficult. That wasn’t even mentioning the advanced tactics that they developed after every encounter.

“Ok, then let's go back to the cliff and get Rahlin,” Chilly said.

They dove into the water and climbed the sheer cliff with their movement skills. At the top, they found Rahlin relaxing on the ledge with a mug of ale and the roasted leg of a Pistol Shrimp in his red-scaled claws.

“Yo,” he burped, releasing a gout of flame and the powerful smell of alcohol. “You leveled.”

Chilly nodded, “Yeah. but I lost one of my powerful defensive skills so I was wondering if you could take over for now.”

“You haven’t just chosen a new one?” Rahlin raised a reptilian brow.

“Nah, I want to get some opinions first,” Chilly said.

“Sure, what skills did ya get access to?”

“Oh, uh, sure. I didn’t really mean you.” Chilly felt his ears heat. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

Rahlin’s other brow raised as his eyes scanned the area around them. He chuckled, “Eh, no harm no foul. Most adventurers don’t like sharing their exact skills.” He got up and dusted off his trousers. “I’ll help Chaeli here finish up, and you can...discuss your skills.”

Chilly nodded, “thanks.”

Chilly kicked away the Juggernaut’s cracked and broken limbs with almost contemptuous ease. The colossal golem had practically vaporized the moment he had stepped into the room even with his reduced stats. Chilly took a moment to reminisce and studied the vault door with its inscription and five empty squares beneath.

“He lost our trust, his soul did fall, and now he keeps us in his thrall.” Chilly read off the last bit of the poem. It was starting to make more sense now. Teluria and Sooty were clearly two of the five. Neither had been particularly trusting, which made sense if they were betrayed in the past. He would have to ask them one day.

On a whim, he approached the vault door and brought Teluria’s Horn of Equivalent Exchange out of his pack. Suddenly, the second burning square began to glow with a dim light. Chilly raised his brow and brought the horn closer. He touched the tip of the horn to the silvered steel and felt the metal part seamlessly around the edges of the Horn as if it was water and not hardened steel.

Chilly sunk the horn into the vault until the tips of his fingers were stopped by the metal which didn’t let his hand pass. He felt a gentle suction on the horn. If he let go then the horn would fall into the door instead of out and onto the ground.

With a shrug, he pulled the horn back out and the faintly glowing square faded as he put the item into his pack.

The vault reacted to Teluria’s Horn and even looked like it would eat the item as part of the combination to enter the vault. For now, however, he wouldn’t put the horn in there. He likely wouldn’t be able to retrieve it, and he had yet to abuse it to make some epic items.

Chilly smiled, one riddle slightly solved, and made his way back to Sooty’s hell. He stepped into the large chamber filled with lava and soot and found Rahlin, and Chaeli, facing off with Sooty and Teluria before the great skull-adorned door to the Hellbringer’s chambers.

“Yer friend here’s jigglin’ ‘is fingies.” Rahlin called, his arms crossed across his broad chest.

“Yeah,” Chilly smiled, gesturing towards the Hellbringer’s chambers. “His head’s in there, so he uses his fingers to talk.”

“You get him?” Chaeli said, slapping a stray flake of ash away from her pristine armor. How she had managed to stay clean of ash here was a mystery.

“In a way,” Chilly replied, then changed the subject. “You guys slay the phoenix and the tentacle ball?”

“Mhmm,” Rahlin nodded. “You picked your skill yet?”

Chilly shook his head, “Give me a second.”

He stepped away from the three and sat in a relatively soot-free spot beside a lava pool. The penguins gathered around him and he looked at them in anticipation.

“Alright, bois. I’ve slept on it. Thought about. You might even say I’ve ruminated. Before I choose, what do you think?”