Given how exhausted all of us were, with Luna and Alex still out cold, the three of us who were still standing decided that moving any sort of distance would be foolish. The streets were quite dangerous right now, thanks to the Withered that were now running wild and I wanted to check out the park as soon as possible, so we’d have to return anyway. Though, as soon as possible meant it would be the next night, maybe if the weather was exceptionally cloudy the next day. For now, my only plans were to check out the notifications and make sure that Luna came through alright.
Just a quick glance at her, using Observe, was enough to drive home just how big of a boost she had received. Before the ritual, she had been at level eleven and even that only barely. Now, after the ritual and the destruction of the Withered, she had jumped to level thirty-one, a jump just as extreme as the one I had when wiping out the Snowbolds on Mundus, though I had done that by myself. Granted, she had that Mother’s Guidance trait, obviously making up for that, but it also made me realise something.
Little Luna needed to put some serious, serious work into her skills, or she’d be utterly behind by the time she reached the first divide. And while she’d get across the divide, Lady Hecate willing, I had no doubt that letting one’s skills lag behind would be costly in the long run. A weaker future class, with lesser attribute gains and weaker skills, was the least I’d expect and with a deity like Hecate, who had at least some focus on learning, especially magic, neglecting that focus might see one punished. Not something I wanted for my daughter, so once we were certain the primary group of Withered had been dealt with, we might want to take a step back from gaining levels and have Luna work on her skills first.
Maybe moving to the farm, or returning to the brewery we had used as a lair for a while, a place where we can completely focus on our abilities while waiting out the long days of summer. Even now, just a few hours after the sun had set, I could feel it beginning to rise across the horizon. We hadn’t even reached the longest days of the year and yet, there were only a few sparse hours of blessed darkness each night. No, waiting for the summer to pass, waiting for the long, dark nights of winter, and using those long nights to move north or something like that.
Moving north had two major advantages for me, the almost limitless availability of Ice and Snow in the far north was a massive boost to my Ice Magic, and the high latitude came with long nights in winter but also long days in the summer, to the point that there were places with only one night and one day per year. Maybe I could, at some point, make like the Arctic Tern, wintering in the far north before spending the summer in the extreme south, catching two endless nights each year. Sure, the birds did the opposite, but they were living, flying proof that it was possible. It might take a lot of effort but perpetual night sounded like such a wonderful world. Might be hard on the farmers I needed for my food, but there was always some sort of drawback.
Letting out a sigh, I pushed the idyllic images of a world covered in endless darkness away from me and focused on my munchkin. We had moved two stories down from the roof, taking over one of the many apartments in the building and making ourselves comfortable but the munchkin had yet to wake up again. But that gave me time to take a look at my own notifications, there were quite a few of them.
The first notifications I came across were an insanely long list of kills, telling me that I had taken out this Withered or that Withering Fungus. Those Withering Fungi were fairly interesting, the levels were all incredibly high, multiple getting into the sixties and the highest reaching the low seventies. Luckily, those were the only really impressive enemies, the rest of the Withered were troublesome, but nothing beyond the high thirties and mid-forties, as if they hadn’t progressed at all while Lia, Silva and I had been busy training up Luna.
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After the fairly interesting kill-notifications came the real meat of the meal I just had. Namely, the level-up notifications, of which there were multiple. It wasn’t as extreme as some of the mass killings I had managed on Mundus, but getting a whole eight level as once was quite the achievement, bringing me to fifty-eight. To make things even better, it looked like the improvement of my Dragon’s Touched Trait meant that I didn’t get it every ten levels but that I got it every five. Either that or level fifty-five was some sort of anomaly, because I received the plus one to every attribute in addition to the two Intelligence and one Intuition I got from my class. And that was on top of the two freely assignable attribute points, driving home just how incredibly powerful that trait actually was.
A quick glance at my attributes caused an involuntary grumble to escape my throat. I had to make a decision, I could either push my Intelligence to fifty or I could push my Intuition to forty but I couldn’t get both. If I got the Intuition, I could also push my courage to thirty, likely getting another trait but if I got the Intelligence, I could push it to fifty-five when I reached level sixty while gaining the Intuition forty at the same time. Hel, if I solely focused on Intelligence, I’d get five Intelligence every five levels which was an incredibly insane notion, though also a dangerous one. Sure, I’d have massive magical power but Intuition was quite important to control that power, to feel and direct it.
For now, I decided against taking either advance, I’d think about it for a bit and make the decision before reaching level sixty.
In addition to the straight levels, I also got a few points in my magical abilities, bringing Ice Rune Mastery to level thirty-seven, Wind Rune Mastery to fifteen, Ice Magic to thirty-six, Blood Magic to thirty-five, Death Magic to seventeen and, finally, Astral Meditation jumped to thirty-four. Overall, those were wonderful gains and I even got a new title and a trait to round things out. Both were old favourites of mine, a combination I had received on Mundus when wiping out the Snowbolds.
The title, Magician of Annihilation, marked me as somebody who had come up with a new way to wipe out large groups of enemies. I wasn’t sure if it was simply because I was the first to conjure up a snowstorm or if it was the attempt to twist the destruction I had wrought to cause even more damage. Either way, I had gained it and from now on, I’d get extra EXP when magically destroying large groups of enemies.
However, I was fairly certain it would also add another of those little black marks to my aura, warning people that I wasn’t somebody to be trifled with. Not that I was completely unhappy with that perception but my inability to control it didn’t make me happy. The only measure I had to contain it was to completely hide myself, at least for now. Maybe I should try looking into something similar to the Twilight Cloak I had constantly worn on Mundus, after gaining the Mortal Hubris trait. It had been good enough to keep me from standing out, so I’d think it would work here, too. But getting to that point would require a lot of training in Darkness Magic and Rune Mastery, making it more of a long-term project.
The only alternative would be to push my Charisma high enough to control my aura, so I could conceal it that way. Sadly, that wasn’t really feasible, sure, I had a higher Charisma now than I ever had on Mundus, but it was still fairly low in comparison to my level. No, unless I invested a serious amount of attribute points into an attribute that I had little use for, I’d have to find another way.
The trait, almost like a companion to the Magician of Annihilation, was called Magician of Massacre, sounding just as cheerful. It was, unsurprisingly, given to those who could magically massacre large groups and increased both the damage such magic dealt and the skill gains one received from doing so. Useful, but nothing one wanted to be well known, simply because it sounded rather murderous.
Maybe it was a good thing that the people at Apple Gate Farm were already cautious and somewhat scared of me, going from ‘scary’ to ‘a little scarier’ wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows but going from ‘normal person’ to ‘my instincts scream that I’m faced with a predator’ would force a lot of people into action.
As the saying went, you boil frogs by slowly raising the temperature, or in this case, you avoid scaring people too badly by being scary from the start. Or maybe I should just train my munchkin to act as Voice for the group, she was far too adorable to be scary… Right?