The second day of our flight had been brutal. We had to contend with hunters multiple times and each time the other horns got closer. We managed to evade them during the short day and found shelter under an overhang that night. I patched up Sigmir with magic, partially to prevent the malediction she was under to continue to damage her substance and partially to revert said damage. But I knew, what I was doing was just a stop-gap measure. One positive thing was that the pressure and continued spell-casting to heal Sigmir and to conceal our tracks had pushed my Rune-Masteries to the point that I was able to infer new runes in all three skills and maybe, just maybe those would help us escape.
When I opened my status-screen I realized I hadn't distributed the two attribute-points I'd gotten with level 30, so I decided to do just that. I had gotten something incredible when reaching 20 Intelligence so reaching 20 Intuition should give something similar. So I placed one into Intelligence and one into Intuition to bring them to 24 and 20 respectively.
Special Ability gained You gained a Special Ability: Parallel Processing For having 20 Intuition or higher you gained an ability, based on you play-style. The ability Parallel Processing allows you to truly multitask, holding fully separate tasks in mind, your body is still limited though. A higher Intuition allows more parallel processes to run at the same time. Currently possible parallel processes: 2
When I felt my thoughts expand, I knew my gamble had greatly paid off. My first idea was to use four objects with my Ice Magic and soon my Frozen Shuttle and three Icicles were flying around in the cave, I had to group them mentally two by two but still, it doubled my power but sadly halved my combat duration as it took quite a bit of Astral Power to keep everything aloft. I guess, I'd better try to use one or two objects to support and use the second process to cast rune-spells or do something else.
However multiple Frozen Shuttles would be good so I used a channelled rune-triangle made out of Ice-Runes and my Ice-Magic in order to create four smaller, made to order-shuttles that could still link together with Freeze-Runes between them, allowing me to make the four smaller shuttles into one large shuttle with a thought and a small amount of Astral Power.
The result was rather impressive:
Frozen Multi Shuttle Rarity Rare Type Special Base Damage 3 Damage Piercing Base Damage 6 Damage Slashing Strength Modifier none Special Effect Coordination. This weapon is a multi-part weapon. When all four pieces are used in concert, they deal bonus damage. This set of four shuttles is made to work in concert. They can link together to create a single, larger shuttle, increasing it's mass and thus the power of its strikes.
With my success fresh on my mind and Sigmir standing guard I let myself fall into a trance, letting my mind clear in order to gain new runes. I focused on my Ice-Runes, first and got in the right state of mind, then I let my mind roam free. The first thing that got to my mind was the incredible skyfire we had seen last night. My mind zeroed in on that and suddenly I felt like my mind was split in two and I lost my focus. It was as if I had inferred all runes possible, only a lot worse and I was sure I hadn't inferred all the Ice-Runes I could. Maybe that skyfire was something I could not wrap my head around in this world, something governed under different runes and rules.
If I hadn't been sitting down, I'd have collapsed so I just sagged and felt a wetness on my face, both from tears due to the pain and blood escaping my nose. I was trying to gather my mind back together when I became aware of the moon. It was full and instead of it's usual silver-white colour, today it was blood red. When Sigmir became aware that I was looking spellbound at the moon, she said “Blood will be shed during a red moon.” Then I became aware that there was a buff in my list that hadn't been there before.
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Under the Blood Moon The light of the Blood Moon shines upon you. All Darkness and Blood related magic is greatly strengthened.
“Let's go and make sure it's not our blood that's shed tonight.” I told Sigmir with a bloodthirsty grin. Meditating with a splitting headache was out anyway and killing a couple of hunters off was just what the doctor ordered. Together, we stalked into the night, looking for the telltale flickering of fire that the Jonari would need in such a cold night, their strongly diluted Jötun-Blood was granting them a lot less resistance to the cold than Sigmir and I enjoyed. I felt alive in the darkness, in a way I had never really felt. The stalking, the hunting, it made me tingle inside, knowing that there was prey out there, the hunters that had harried us were now our prey. We wouldn't be able to kill them all, they probably had one main camp and a couple of smaller groups as scouts and attacking the main-camp would be suicidal. The scouts however were fair game and I'd happily rip the blood from their bodies.
However we were not the only hunters, stalking the night and one of those other stalkers wanted to contest with us before we got to our prey. It started with an almost silent rustle of pine-needles but during a dark and silent night, I was hyper aware. An Ibris hadn't got the memo that tonight, we were not prey, we were the hunters and was jumping my way. I turned and with a flourish of my hands, all four of my shuttles flashed forward, two miss-directing the striking cat, the other two going for it's flank, ripping bleeding gashes into it's hide. A swift observe told me that it was a level 28 Snow-leopard and my strikes had taken about twenty percent of it's health. I used my hands and body to guide my shuttles, as it was a lot easier to do so with the aid of gestures and wide, sweeping motions. The cat kept dodging and retreating until it got pinned down and a strike of Sigmirs weapon ended the fight.
There were some EXP but nothing earth-shattering. “Say, I never asked, what do you call that thing?” I asked Sigmir, pointing to her monstrous weapon, still dripping with blood. “In my tribe it's called a Lok'nar, a mountain-cleaver. It's sad that we can't take our time and skin this cat, we both could do with some new clothes, mine are in tatters due to my flight and yours are rather cheaply made. But we just don't have the time.” With that I became aware that yes, my clothes were still the junk I started with, I was just unable to process my kills beyond getting some fur-scraps and ragged chunks of meat. But now was not the time to discuss the different ways to skin a cat.
We moved on and soon we saw the first fire. Sigmir sneaked close to the fire and I brought two of my Shuttles silently behind the single guard. I dropped the other two and used my hand to cast a pentagon of Darkness and devouring to kill another guard. Then, with a concentrated effort, I made a scissor-motion with my shuttles, taking the guards head clean off. At the same time, dark tendrils sprung up around one of the sleeping guards, holding him down and choking the life out of him. When Sigmir heard the chunk my blades made on impact, she moved swiftly and killed one of the sleeping scouts. The last scout managed to stand and scream before my shuttles struck his back and the Lok'nar struck his skull, making it as close to overkill as you can get. Then we got to the last, the one my tendrils held down and I used my blood-runes to create a nice, crimson tar-like substance, brimming with magic to use at a later time. When looting their bodies, I used one of the water-skins to collect the magically enriched blood, it would serve as a Astral Power-battery at a later point.
We struck two more camps, killing nine further Hunters and collecting the life-magic of three of them, but the night grew short and we should both take a rest before dawn came. So we retreated from the scouts and the direction we guessed their main-camp in and took a rest. Sigmir slept and I took a short break outside the capsule. Somehow, I don't know how one would manage with a real job, luckily my boss, aka me, had given me an extended vacation.
Back in the game, I snuggled up to Sigmir and thought about what had happened before, during my meditation. The closest I got was that while the Skyfire was related to Ice-Runes, either I was not skilled enough or there was something else that governed that aspect of magic. Trying to get back into a trance failed, I guess there was still a bit of backlash.
Far too soon, the false dawn came and Sigmir and I had to move on. Maybe the killing we had done under the light of the blood-moon would deter them a bit.