“Fucking hell. That monkey-wolf had an arm on it.” Dominick rubs his stomach. “Almost killed me outright.”

We sit outside the big tent, waiting for our health and mana to regenerate. The crowd still ignores us with practiced ease, though I notice a few people glancing at us surreptitiously. It makes me wonder if there’s some kind of notoriety mechanic. I make a mental note to look into that later.

Andy wiggles his foot, pointing to the tear in his pant leg. “That alpha tit-raptor was no joke, either.”

I nod in agreement and nod at Justin. “Looks like you’ll need to see the Blacksmith.”

Getting hit with the treant’s Slam ability essentially ruined the Paladin’s armor. It saved his life, though.

“And I was saving up for a new helmet, too.” Justin rotates the crumpled breastplate in his hands. “Oh well…”

Jennifer, Sarah, and Lewis all look at their damaged armor. The looks on their faces say they know how much it’s going to cost them.

Brian pokes a finger through one of the three holes in his leather breastplate, then examines the bite marks on his left bracer. “Fuck.”

We all chuckle at the Barbarian’s misfortune. It’s his own fault for bringing elaborately designed equipment to a fight.

“All right, people, how are we doing on levels?”

The fight was quite profitable, experience point wise. Brian, Dominick, Doctave, and I all hit seventeen, while Jennifer, Sarah, and Justin make it just past sixteen. Andy, the most experienced of us all, gets to eighteen. Lewis and Jamie both almost make fifteen.

“Hell yes.” I nod with a big smile. “A few more rounds of this and we’ll be sitting pretty, level wise.”

Jennifer smirks. “I’ve got my level fifteen Class Ability: Engage.”

Andy tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. “What’s that do?”

“I’ll read directly from the entry: With this ability, a Fighter can successfully engage a numerically superior force with ease. Once activated, enemies within thirty feet will direct their attention to the Fighter, ignoring anyone not attacking them.”

Head nods all agree with the ability’s usefulness.

I pull out the ten tickets we received for making it five rounds. “So, yeah, they awarded the tickets to the team, not to each individual in said team.”

The group looks rather defeated by the single ticket I put in each of their hands.

Sarah turns the ticket over. It looks like any generic raffle ticket. “It’s an exponential increase in rewards. If we would have gone two more rounds, we’d be getting two tickets each. Guess I’ll be running the singles battle as well.”

Andy sticks his ticket into his inventory. “Now that we know the monster lineup, it’ll be a lot easier to deal with them. Especially those three at the end.”

Doctave speaks as he looks through his menu. “I’ll have to pick up a few spells to better deal with flyers and that fucking tree.”

The other mages mumble to themselves about altering their spell lists. Brian, Justin, and Jennifer discuss team tactics, while the two Rogues wonder what specialist arrows they could get to deal with speedsters like the micro-titraptor. I ponder what I can do besides being a damage sponge.

I’m going for the never die build, which is great until you need to kill something. Though I have Talents to increase the damage of my hand axes, I’m not really a damage dealer. Nor am I a spell slinger. My two spell slots and ten mana is quite pathetic.

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To be honest, I’ve been considering spending the last five ability points in the Magic tree. Magic is too versatile for me to completely ignore. Spell wise, there are far too many options to consider, though my limiting factor will be my mana pool. If I stick four points into Increased Mana and the fifth into Additional Spell Slots, that’ll give me ninety mana and four spell slots. Far less than a dedicated mage, but that’ll put me on par with someone like Justin.

Jennifer clears her throat. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to get back home and buy a new Talent.”

Smiles cross everyone’s face.

*****

Back in Carcosa, I wait patiently in line for everyone to get done buying their Talents and Spells. I could big time it and go first, but that’s not conducive to being a good leader. If being an officer in the military taught me anything, you let your subordinates have the fun before you do.

What Talent to get is a tricky one. I could modify my Animal Form, but I really haven’t used that ability much. It is useful, though, especially for traveling around. It’ll be almost twenty levels until I can change into a medium-sized creature. Ugh. There’s so many cool Talents to get once I do!

Specializing my magic is an option. That’ll give me access to certain schools I’d otherwise never get: Shadow, Fae, Elemental, Light, etc. Right now I have access to Nature magic, which is useful, but it’s more for crowd control, healing, and farming. I’m not eager to farm.

I’ve been thinking of taking the Animal Companion ability. As I increase in Tiers, I can increase the size and stats of the bonded animal, but I’ll need to spend Talent slots to make the creature truly useful. Some build guides I’ve read have crazy companion focuses: flying snakes that spit acid, hordes of rodents that multiply as they consume your enemies, or even enormous hulking things that soak damage like a sponge, growing larger and larger with each hit point lost.

Though, in the end, I decide not to spend my points. There are too many options, and I’m still worked up after that big fight. A good night’s sleep is what I need before deciding.

Taking my turn in line, I walk up to Chugg. “Afternoon.”

“What can I do ya fer?” Chugg’s Texas whistle goes well with his straw hat.

“As my companions were saying, we snagged some good XP from the Grand Carnivale. I’m needing a Talent.”

“Of course! I’ll be more than happy to take the Credits ya all won.”

“Sorry, we only got tickets. It’s a tournament style dungeon.”

Chugg’s wrinkled face scrunches up in displeasure as he spits out the piece of straw he was chewing on. “That’s a damn crime, if I say so myself.”

“Can’t argue there.”

“What Talent are ya lookin’ to get?”

“Can you list the Talents for melee combat?”

With a wave of his hand, Chugg sends a list to me. After a minute of consultation, I narrowed it down to three.

Increase Slashing Damage (Basic Talent)

Prerequisites - None

Effect - Increases all slashing damage by 5%.

Arrow Catch (Basic Talent)

Prerequisites - None

Effect - You can catch an arrow. Note: you must be able to both see and reach the arrow, and have an empty hand to catch it.

Sure Grip (Basic Talent)

Prerequisites - None

Effect - So long as you are conscious, you will not drop an item held in your hand unless you want to.

Increased Slashing Damage is a flat damage increase, which is great, but the ability to snatch an arrow out of the air? That’s awesome. There’s only been a handful of times I’ve dropped my weapon, and it hasn’t been a problem so far, but having Sure Grip would be nice.

While the other two are useful, having more damage is what I need right now. I transfer the funds to Chugg and watch as my overall damage increases. Yay!

“Needin’ anythin’ else?”

I take a minute to peruse Chugg’s inventory. Nothing piques my interest. I was never one for material things, so I pass on any random trinkets. In the end, I decide to save my money. Better weapons are in my future, and I’ll need a lot more Credits than I have now to get them.

Carcosa doesn’t really need anything at the moment. The defensive walls have been keeping the random monsters at bay. Offensive weapons emplacements would be nice, but our guard rotations are more than enough for now.

“Doesn’t seem so. Sorry, Chugg.”

“Ain’t no problem, I assure ya.” The Shop keep takes out the hunk of wood he’s been whittling on since he arrived. “Plenty of others buy my wares.”

“That they do. Anything in particular?”

“Oh, the usual: alcohol, potions, craftin’ materials, and the like.”

“Tell me, Chugg, is that some kind of special wood you’ve got? No matter how much you carve off that thing, it doesn’t seem to get any smaller.”

Chugg examines the block for a moment, then slices off a sliver of material in a smooth stroke. “Someone once said all they do is remove the material that don’t belong, leavin’ what was there all along. Only problem is, I can’t figure out what’s supposed to be inside.”

I shake my head. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Until yer an artist like me, I don’t think ye’d understand.”