Chapter Thirty-Six

Elysia watched as her former team disappeared into the woods, then looked down at Ione. “Well, that went much easier than I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t think of things in human terms. I’m not a human, no need to act like one. At least within reason.”

A happy chirp greeted her as images of hunting flooded her mind but Elysia shoot her head. “First, I should spend some more attribute points. We want to be the best we can be before hunting.”

Ione’s tail drooped as she laid on the ground with an inviting look, which Elysia complied. She ran her hands over Ione’s luxuriously soft fur as she dumped five points into intelligence. A slight headache sparked but calmed within seconds, prompting her to spend another five earning her a stronger headache, which fortunately soon calmed.

It made sense the side effects wouldn’t be as harsh as she raised her attributes higher. Her body was stronger, after all. At least she hoped that was the case.

Feeling bold, she dumped a full ten points into perception, causing her senses to only blink out nothing else. Ten points in dexterity followed, sending her vision spinning for a moment, but soon corrected itself.

She looked at her remaining points, tempted to dump some more, but heeding Thrazk’s advice, she held off for now. Instead, she pulled up the notifications she had ignored from before, not wanting to deal with the system’s snark.

Achievement! Tier 2

“Congratulations! You finally entered adulthood, took you long enough.”

Reward: Five Attribute Points

Whatever.

Achievement! Synergy

“Good job! Best to have one good skill over multiple mediocre skills. I’m sure you will need it soon.”

Reward: Five Attribute Points

And here she thought the system would be nice. It had her until the end ruined it. Though it probably wasn’t wrong. She hoped she didn’t need it, but it was bound to happen.

Achievement! Full Tier 2

“Really? Why waste the attribute points?”

Reward: It’s inadvisable to reward wasteful spending, but you did earn enough points to do it, so here are ten more.

Sometimes she wondered if the system was tsundere. It insulted her but still gave her ten attribute points. Though with the side effects and her hoard of unspent points, she supposed it was still a punishment. Why couldn’t it give her something other than attribute points? Not that she was complaining too much. She was sure there would come a time where she couldn’t earn as many attribute points or each point barely gave her a boost. She was already noticing some diminishing returns, or maybe she was getting used to the jump.

After sitting for a while longer, she looked at her remaining attribute points again. She had 112 left. She could push an attribute to Tier 3 but with how connected they were she would rather keep her primary three similar while sprinkling extra into strength and endurance, not that there was much chance to squeeze much strength out of her noodle arms. Ione would be her strength while she would zap things to death.

Things sure have changed. At the beginning, she needed all the endurance she could get, though strength was never her focus. She knew her limits. She would never be a buff, strong woman, nor did she want to be. Still, it would be nice to grow a little. Soon Ione would tower over her.

Enough about her delusions. She had 112 points to spend. Should she risk spending them all now? She didn’t have the Chrotile to guard her, but Ione would warn her well before anything approached, and she was probably in as safe of a space as she would get for a while. At least until she beat another dungeon.

Thirty in Intelligence, perception and dexterity, then the remaining points split among strength and endurance should work. The question was if her body could handle a spending spree like that. She dumped over 100 in strength and endurance in a short period, so it should be doable. No risk, no reward. She needed all the boosts she could get, especially if she ran into changed teams. Though her armor was pretty well suited to magic combat.

A Chrotile could probably squash her if they moved fast enough, but her armor should help against magic. At least she hoped it would. She hadn’t tested it yet. Like her new skill, she would rather avoid it, but it would happen eventually.

Decision made, she relaxed into Ione and dumped thirty points into intelligence, hoping to get her spending spree over as soon as possible over a prolonged spending.

Instantly a fire poker jabbed her skull, eliciting a whimper, but held on with clenched fists as it receded at a glacial pace.

After several minutes that felt like an eternity, only a mild throbbing remained, but with it came an uptick in her processing speed. Nothing like her last few dumps, but it was noticeable. She ran through several quick math calculations as a test, finding she would crush any speed math tests, at least the ones she had to do in school.

Though she had no doubt those who were invested in math had a bunch of skills to blow her away, and that was before their likely high intelligence attribute. She would never beat someone in their specialty, but she hoped her set up gave her an edge with her lightning. Even if she had 500 strength, she knew Thauzo could crush her, but if she could react and process the attack soon enough, a lightning strike might work.

Not wanting to play with fire, she relaxed against Ione until the headache disappeared before performing her next dump going against Thrazk’s advice, though based on what Thauzo said, she was abnormal. Probably because of her being an elemental.

She closed her eyes and dumped 30 points into perception, prepared for the sensory deprivation which came near instantly. Fortunately, before she knew it, the world returned brighter than ever, though without any wildlife in her surroundings she couldn’t tell much of a difference besides a little stronger smell and better sight.

Hopefully, she didn’t get overwhelmed when she returned to the outside world. She was nearly 100 points higher in perception since then. Five to ten point differences used to shut her down. She didn’t want to find out what 100 would do. Too late now, she would have to deal with it when it came time.

Despite feeling fine, she held off dumping the last 30 into dexterity even though it gave the least potent side effects.

Should she try to practice her whip? No, not until after she improved her dexterity. She needed all the help she could get. Now that she didn’t have a team of Chrotile protecting her, she might need to use it. Not that she had any delusions that she was competent enough to use it effectively.

She should have ordered a spear. A spear was at least usable for a novice like her, but again, her strength would fail her. She was getting pretty good with throwing knives at least. Unlike a whip, she had some practice with them and they were pretty easy to use for her.

It helped that she didn’t need to be too accurate, as they were only anchor points for her lightning. She doubted her knives had enough force behind them to do any damage directly, especially on the larger dinosaurs. What was the point of a whip if she could deliver a shock with a throwing knife from range? They worked as daggers too, though if she needed them as daggers, she was already screwed.

After a deep unneeded breath, she closed her eyes and dumped 30 points into dexterity. Vertigo hit her but as she expected it passed quickly but just in case she held off moving guessing she might be a bit uncoordinated for a little while. Instead, she glanced at her remaining points.

Masochism hit as she dumped 11 in both strength and endurance at the same time and braced herself. Her muscles locked up as her core pulsed wildly but compared to when she pushed into tier 2 it was nothing.

She breathed out a sigh of relief as her body returned to normal. A flex of her muscles made her feel a little stronger but having not lifted anything it was hard to know for sure.

A smile formed as she saw her free attribute points at 0 finally ending her spending spree at least for now.

With a fast and fluid motion she sprung to her feet and took off in a jog around the clearing. Her body moved far faster than she ever thought possible easily reaching her pre system max sprint in a few strides. As an experiment she sprinted down the hill weaving around trees at the last second without breaking stride showing just how inhuman she was now.

At the bottom of the hill she pivoted on her right foot and shot back up the hill, again, weaving around trees this time even faster despite the incline. A giggle escaped her as she reached the top, her core pulsing slightly faster than normal.

She found Ione sitting at the top, guarding her backpack while radiating pride. When her eyes landed on Ione a temptation of racing her bond formed, but she squashed it a moment later, knowing the outcome would only ruin her mood. She was fast, well beyond a human pre system and maybe even post system, but she had no doubt Ione was much faster.

Still, she was proud of her body’s capabilities. If she was this fast and agile, there was no way the zombies would have caught her. Though the dungeon scaled to her level, so they would probably be faster now.

Maybe someday she would return. She still needed to reclaim her family’s home. Hopefully, with her sister and father. They could hide out there and hunt inland, though there likely wasn’t any dungeons nearby aside from the zombie one. Their little town was in the middle of nowhere. No one would have known it existed if it wasn’t on the ocean.

The isolation would make for a nice home base, though. Maybe she could find a way to destroy the zombie dungeon to reclaim the town.

Well, what was left of it. It was possible, whatever that lightning strike was, it destroyed China Creek dungeon. Even if they reclaimed their home, she couldn’t see herself settling down long term. Now that she had powers, she wanted to adventure. She just needed to reunite with her family and get some elementals and humans off their asses.

First, she needed to milk Mezo for all it had to grow stronger. She wouldn’t ensure her freedom unless she had the strength to defend it. Hopefully she could at least get her second evolution here or the very peak of it if the dungeon island didn’t allow her to take the final step.

With determined strides, previous excitement gone, Elysia strapped her backpack on. She ensured it was secure in case she had to fight with it and glanced at Ione only to see her already standing ear’s alert, staring down the hill hackle’s raised.

Not wanting to alert whatever was near, Elysia sent a mental prod asking what was down there only to receive disgust before Ione took off down the hill in a silent sprint.

Elysia followed as stealthily as she could, but she soon lost sight of Ione.

Predicting what came, Elysia told Ione to scout but don’t attack. She wanted to know more about why they came instead of a mindless slaughter. Though the last time she encountered them, they were much stronger. She had made significant progress since then, but she was sure their training methods were effective.

Just as she predicted, a group of camouflaged humanoids became visible through the trees. Knowing her armor wasn’t the stealthiest, she hid behind a tree and surveyed the group with Ione doing the same from the opposite side, reminiscent of their first raptor ambush. Like that time, she had the element of surprise, hence she had control of the situation.

Instead of simply attacking, she perked her ears and listened.