Still, despite my resolution to gain ‘substantial strength and a kickass blessing,’ deciding to enter the tombyard was ... a big step. A worrisome step. And part of me didn’t want to face the fact that I’d already made the decision. I was definitely going to brave the tombyard, even if I wasn’t a hundred percent sure why.
So I lazed around while I healed. I sharpened my blades against the veranda floor. I explored the rest of the now-cleared courtyard. The spider corpses didn’t last long, I wasn’t sure why. They dissolved into nothing after four or five hours. The cocooned wolves were still there, but I couldn’t loot anything from them. Maybe because they weren’t magical?
No idea.
When my health ticked to 32/35, I realized I should experiment a little.
***
Alex Levin
Anomaly
Level 3, Wax Tier
Archmage Status
Boons:
Domain (1/5)
Intuit (1/5)
Support (1/5)
Treasure (1/5)
Gems:
Smoke
Aptitudes:
Spear
Fighting Hatchets (speciality: dual-wielding)
Attributes
Strength: 8
Agility: 12
Fortitude: 9
Dexterity: 15
Alertness: 10
Speed: 9
Spirit: 9
Design: 14
Derived
Health: 32/35
Mana: 19
Craft: 14
Movement: 9
Available points: 4
***
Okay, had I lost track of my points again? Where had that fourth point come from? Hm. Maybe I didn’t get notifications every time I earned one, for some reason? Maybe the system sometimes muted itself during combat? Or maybe it was just screwing with me. It clearly wasn’t an objective, impersonal interface. Calling me ‘hoss.’
Well, whatever. Four points.
I definitely needed more Alertness, because I’d been surprised way too many times. And after struggling to puncture that Level 4 spider’s exoskeleton, my Strength definitely felt too low.
I wondered if Treasure would net me more healing beads. And what Support would do. Also, I had the sense that my gem was pretty much an untapped resource at the moment, but it didn’t have a range, like ’Smoke 1/5’ so I probably couldn’t add points to it.
The same was true with Hatchets. Plus, the word ‘Aptitude’ made me think that I’d purchased a sort of improvable gift for those skills. Like now that I had the basic knowledge and aptitude, I could improve via practice.
“Then there’s the attribute I depend on most,” I said aloud, heading from the orchard toward the Hole.
I felt silly adding more points to Fortitude, but my priority remained the same: not dying. And sure, everything helped with that. (Except fucking Design. Well, and maybe Spirit.) Still, Fortitude absolutely did the most to keep me alive.
It was so boring, though. On the other hand, screw it. Give me boring life over exciting death any day. Plus, I needed as much protection as possible before I entered the hellish landscape of the Hole.
So I added one point to Fortitude, bringing it to 10--and a sensation of clean, superheated steam expanded in my chest and ...
Health 38/38
Whoa. Hot damn. My health had immediately maxed out? Yeah. Damn. Apparently adding a point to Fortitude automatically gave me a complete and instantaneous heal.
That was way better than a pearl bead. Hell, that was better than gold bead.
“A cheat!” I laughed as I followed the stone path toward the fence. “Damn, I’m going to abuse the hell out of that.”
I’d keep one available point in reserve at all times. That way, I could always add it to Fortitude for a sneaky emergency heal. In fact ... I’d keep all three extra points in reserve for emergency heals, because the Hole scared me.
I stopped ten feet from it and squinted through the shadowy portal at the dark, shadowy tombyard beyond.
“What’s wrong with calling it a graveyard like a normal person?” I asked.
I faced the smoky circle, a hatchet in each hand. I cracked my neck, stepped forward ... then stopped. I wasn’t ready for this. Some deep, visceral instinct told me that I was not ready.
Leaving through the gate to find civilization and a hot meal suddenly sounded like a much better idea than risking my life in the tombyard. Still, I stood there for a while, trying to gather my courage ... and a new idea occurred to me.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Cheating the system by using Fortitude points as golden health beads made me think about other ways to cheat. Such as, for example, staying the hell out of the tombyard until I was good and ready. Until I’d extracted every ounce of training power from the courtyard.
***
In the smaller copse of trees where I’d fought the newborn spiders, I kicked a trunk. Above me, a ‘burl’ unfolded into a thornspider.
Leg stretched and the newborn spider dropped at me.
I killed it.
I kicked another trunk.
That time, I restrained myself and didn’t try for an immediate kill. Instead, I fought that spider with one hatchet instead of two.
I fought three more newborns that way, then I only used my off-hand hatchet.
Took me five spiders until I felt comfortable fighting that way.
I killed two spiders only the rear-facing blades of my hatchets. I killed one bare-handed and one with a rock. My extra point in Fortitude toughened my skin, and I only took a handful of scratches.
I sharpened my blades then woke another spider and practiced turning to smoke during combat. Which worked beautifully, until I returned to my body too soon, woozy from the effort, unable to maintain my smoke-form, and the spider clawed my nose in half.
I stomped the little fucker to death in a panic and combined the foam beads I’d gathered into a pearl bead. I gulped the bead then checked my status.
* * *
Health 33/38
Mana: 2/19
Craft: 14
Movement: 9
* * *
“So I’d only been down to thirty-one?” I asked myself.
Damn, I’d wasted that pearl. I should’ve waited until I really needed healing. Except ... almost losing my nose had freaked me out. I’d never thought of myself as particularly attached to my nose, except literally, but damn. That scared me.
I grabbed a needle and thread and did a little mending while I waited for my health to tick higher ... then something occurred to me, and I looked back at my status.
Mana: 3/19
Oh! That’s how mana worked! Turning to smoke cost mana. Of course. That made sense. And I must’ve lost my foggy form when I’d run out of mana in the middle of that fight.
So apparently Spirit was useful. It must’ve had some relationship with mana, though looking at the numbers I couldn’t tell what, exactly. Didn’t matter. As I rested, I watched my mana tick up a little faster than my health.
I spent that evening testing my hypothesis and yeah, turning to smoke cost mana. A couple of points to initially transform, then a point every second or two to maintain.
Good to know. I’d need to work on that, at some point. Although frankly, turning to smoke for just two seconds, two or three times during a fight, was already a massive edge.
And it would be an ever bigger one, once I trained the power a little more.
I slept well that night, then spent the next morning testing myself against newborn spiders. Two at once, but taking things slow. Practicing integrating my fighting style with my smoke. Practicing keeping an eye on my mana. Some of the spiders lasted half an hour, as I worked to pace myself.
When I was satisfied with that, and a little bored, I fought three at once.
I did that ten or fifteen times.
I felt my skill with my hatchets improving until I knew exactly where they both were without looking, like my bodily proprioception applied to my weapons, too.
Then I fought four newborn thornspiders at once, which felt like battling an endless number of slashing legs, coming from every direction at once. I mean, I knew how to basic math: four spiders meant thirty-two legs. Still, that was an overwhelming number of claws and thorns jabbing and slashing. Add in all the leaping and silken-thread dangling, and yeah: I was completely surrounded by a storm of spiders.
An arachnado.
Fortunately, my armor and hardened skin blunted the impact of the newborns. A dozen hits slipped through my defenses, but only a few of them left more than a deep scratch.
After a lunch of fountain water and jerky, I retreated to the boulders then spent an hour training against four spiders again. After a while, I figured I should work on my skills in different environments, so I dodged behind boulders, jumped from one to another, the whole nine yards.
Then I led them to a wide intersection of two pebbled paths, and fought in the relative open. Everything went smoothly until I killed two of the four--and one suddenly fled across the treetops.
“Wait,” I called, like an idiot. “No!”
I chased that fucker for fifteen minutes, while the other newborn chased me. I ended my pursuer with a backhanded stroke but the first one vanished. Just ... gone. Even after I spent hours prowling the temple courtyard from one end to the other.
Hm.
The next morning, three adult thornspiders--level 2--ambushed me. That afternoon, after taking a pearl bead to heal, I killed two more. The day after that I fought a level 4 spider and then two level 2s and--
SUCCESS! You cleared the courtyard.
REWARD: 2 points.
Huh.
I wasn’t sure why that counted as ‘cleared’ again, especially considering there were still dozens of burls. Or cocoons, or whatever those were. Maybe because there were currently no hatched thornspiders?
Still, I didn’t really care why, I just added those two points to Fortitude, giving me 11.
Health 41/41
Available Points: 3
That time, I barely noticed the warmth flowing through my body. Maybe because I hadn’t used the Fortitude point to heal? Or maybe I was just getting used to either. Either way, as planned, I kept three points available for an emergency Fortitude healing.
I spent another day killing newborns, usually four at a time. By that point, they rarely even scratched me, but I wasn’t training to battle a threat. I was training to control the battlespace, focusing on keeping them from running.
Then I did the same with five spiders ... yet during my third fight, another one got away from me. It was annoying that I’d failed to contain them, but I didn’t chase the escaped spiderling. I let it skitter off to wake others, because I needed more of a challenge.
I spent the next two days hunting spiders that were mostly level 2. Everything went smoothly until a level 3 and a level 4 dropped on me from silent threads while I’d almost finished fighting a bunch of level 2s.
I leaned pretty heavily on my gem to win that fight, turning to smoke three times in the space of a minute. I would’ve applied a point to Fortitude after the level 3 opened an artery in my thigh, but I marshaled all my willpower and held off.
No, that was bullshit. I didn’t marshal anything. In the heat of the moment, I’d completely forgotten about that plan to use Fortitude heals.
But after almost bleeding to death, I wouldn’t forget again.
The next afternoon, I wiped out a nest of juvenile spiders.
SUCCESS! You cleared the courtyard.
REWARD: 2 points.
REWARD: Yet another level, you spider slaying soldier.
I vacillated for a few minutes between adding a point to Speed and adding one to Strength, then decided on the former.
Finally, I added two more points to Fortitude--the last two I’d add for a while, I figured, unless I got curb-stomped by something. Then I looked at notifications for just the updated stats.
* * *
Level 4, Wax Tier
Fortitude: 13
Health: 47/47
* * *
Hm. Getting points seemed to be the only benefit of leveling. One point per level. Not that I was complaining, but I got more points from completing those quests.
Well, maybe I’d discover the real benefits of leveling later?
At least, with a thirteen Fortitude, my skin felt as tough as rawhide. Like a layer of leather armor covering my entire body. Plus, the cold didn’t bother me at all, and my rock-hard bed was as comfortable as a mattress. I even enjoyed bathing in the cold fountain. Just lazing there, sleepy in the sunlight, wondering if I was ready to risk the Hole.
Instead of venturing into the tombyard, I re-read the little book I’d found in Oksar’s pack. My reading had improved over the past few days, and I easily understood the words. At least enough to know that they were poetry, mostly love poems.
The spiny leaves
of the alboa tree in my garden
casts shade as
deep and blue and fragrant
as your lips whispering
against my throat.
A few of the poems were longer. One took five pages to describe a woman who woke in the night feeling a ‘restless longing’ then wandered the empty streets of a sleeping town, looking at the moonlight in the well, pausing at the cool forge and the quiet bakery before gazing at her lover’s house.
The sense of tranquility in the poem helped me decide to stay away from the Hole a little longer. To take things slow and easy. Why not? That voice in my head hadn’t urged me to hurry or threatened me with dire consequences if I dawdled.
Plus, I was still learning. Still honing my skills.
On the other hand, I’d run out of jerky, and wasn’t loving living on rahico fruit alone. Maybe that’s why I was almost relived, after four more days of Spidery Carnage, to receive a new notification:
HIDDEN QUEST: Eradicate every invasive element from the Temple Courtyard, allowing the Billowing Ones to settle into ash and memory.
SUCCESS! A little obsessive, a little genocidal, but also lovely. No unhatched spiders remain. Well done.
REWARD: Choose one gift.
The Gift of Reach: + 1 Domain, +2 Speed
The Gift of Heart: +1 Domain, +2 Spirit
The Gift of Victory: + 1 Treasure, +1 Strength, +1 Alertness