October 23, 2022
Day 4
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30 minutes after Rahul started meditating, he got a notification.
Your intelligence has increased by 1 point, its new value is 24
Then, time passed, and Rahul sat unmoving, slipping deeper and deeper into meditation. He emptied his mind of all thought, limiting his senses to only the mana in the air. Slowly, he identified the various elements - air, heat, fire, life, death, and much more. He focused on them, observed them, noticed their behaviour, and continued to meditate. But no new notification came.
He isolated them until he could focus on heat and fire. Those two were hard to separate, but he did separate them. Still, no notification came. Rahul lost all track of time, and hours passed. He felt nothing except his own consciousness surrounded by pure unadulterated flame, until finally, his patience was rewarded.
Your intelligence has increased by 1 point, its new value is now 25
Rahul's eyes shot open and a smile covered his face. But that smile was quickly replaced by confusion as he looked around, realising it was just him and Anand meditating in the recovery area. Looking up, he saw that the sun was well up in the sky, it was probably noon.
“How long?” He tersely asked Anand.
“5 hours, give or take. You reached 25 intelligence? “, Anand asked in return.
“Yes, I did. What about everyone else?” Rahul asked.
With some hesitation, Anand replied. “Everyone who was within reach of 25 had gotten there in the first few hours. Overall, 16 mages and 2 non-mages have unlocked weak fireballs. You are the third. 10 more mages with intelligence stats barely above 20 are accumulating kills to get to the 6th level, as that’s a much more practical way to get 5 intelligence in a short time. They should be here soon. But enough of that, let me help you with the spell first.“
Rahul got a few moments to lament the fact that he had lost 6 hours of grinding time and fallen behind his peers who were now at or close to level 6.
Then, he set those thoughts aside, and paid full attention as Anand guided him through the process of gaining the weak fireball spell. First he asked Rahul to close his eyes and meditate again, focusing on the fire mana in the air. As Rahul focused on it, he was surprised to notice that the mana was actually denser now compared to when he had started meditating. Then Anand asked Rahul to raise one hand in the air, and imagine the fire mana condensing in a small ball above his hand.
Rahul did as he was asked, and felt not just the concentrated mana in his mind, but also the sensation of heat on his hand. Then, Anand asked him to carefully project the ball of mana vertically up into the sky. Rahul did as asked, and was rewarded with the sound of a small explosion, a weak gust of hot air, and the sweet chime of a notification.
You have gained a skill
Weak Fireball I - Summon a weak fireball and launch it towards your enemy. It will explode on impact or upon reaching maximum projectile range, dealing AOE damage. Damage and range can be improved with better mana control.
Afflictions : Has a small chance to set the target on fire.
That was fast, Rahul thought.
Almost as if reading his thoughts, Anand spoke again. “I got a trainer skill for this spell. Since you had already meditated with dense fire mana around you for hours, I just had to walk you through the motions of condensing that power. Try what you did again, but this time, with your eyes open. “
Rahul stood up and raised his hands again, and this time, as he was condensing the mana around his hand, he didn’t just feel the mana and the heat, he saw a literal ball of fire. This was also the first time he had been able to sense mana without meditation. Focusing on the ball, he kept pouring mana into it until it felt solid, and released it into the air. It flew up for nearly a 100 feet and then exploded. Rahul could once again only feel a weak gust of warm air on his skin and Rahul knew that the explosion was weak, only a little more powerful compared to the last one.
As if reading his thoughts again, Anand continued speaking “The spell’s damage is fairly weak, and the area of effect is quite small, at most a sphere of 2 feet diameter. What’s more, the range is pretty limited too, and we can’t hit any target beyond the outer wall from any position on the roof.”
He paused, then continued “On the other hand, the spell has fairly limited drain on mana, between 3 to 5 points per fireball, depending on how long you charge it. No matter how you look at it, the fireball as it is now, is less deadly than an arrow. A single fireball is not enough to kill a frog, even if it gets hit on the face. “
“At least it’s appropriately named.”, Rahul said with a sigh.
“That it is. But this weak fireball spell has one very potent effect. Come, I’ll show you.”
As Rahul turned to follow him, he said, “Before I forget, thank you for all your help with the skill, and for sticking around while I was meditating. Your intelligence trainer skill must have saved me at least an hour or two of meditation.”
“No problem at all”, Anand said, as he led Rahul to a squad of 5 mages on one corner of the roof. They were charging up their fireballs, and firing them at the same vague spot on the outer wall. Rahul saw a barrage of 5 fireballs catching about a dozen frogs in its AOE, but only one frog died instantly. 3 of them caught fire though, and started jumping around in panic. But even with the fire affliction, only 4 kills came out of a coordinated attack involving 5 mages.
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Rahul found the whole attack rather underwhelming. As the mages continued firing again and again at the same spot, more and more frogs were dying. But it was no more efficient than using a bow and arrow. Perhaps it wasn’t quite the breakthrough that he thought it was.
Over time, the barrages got monotonous and Rahul lost interest. He instead surveyed the battlefield. With the endless slaughter that had been going on within the outer walls of the courtyard for the last 6 hours, the accumulating corpses of the frogs were adding up. The outer walls and the courtyard were now covered in layers upon layers of dead frog bodies. The situation was so bad that if Rahul were to walk out into the courtyard now, he would find himself elbow deep in dead frogs.
The sea of their own dead didn’t seem to deter the frogs at all, who found as sure a footing on their dead kin as they did on solid ground. There was no immediate risk for the defenders either. High as the piles of dead bodies may be, it would never rise enough to form a ramp to the roof of the castle. They would be out of arrows and long dead of exhaustion before they could kill that many frogs. But the sea of dead did mean that the defenders could no longer rally out of the castle.
Equipped with a better understanding of their situation, when Rahul now looked at the continuous barrage of fireballs, he understood their purpose. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long before the first few corpses in the barrage's blast radius caught fire. As time went on, the fire slowly expanded, and Rahul knew that’s what Anand had meant by the potent effect. This also explained the presence of such dense fire mana in the atmosphere. There was only so much time before the entire courtyard will be ablaze again.
Motioning with his hands to cover the entirety of the roof, Anand said. “As you can see, we are now maintaining only a token force on the rooftop, just enough to keep the pressure on, and ensure that the frogs don’t manage to climb the castle. Everyone else is resting and recovering, readying themselves for the next step of the plan.”
Rahul could guess what that next step would be.
Having said everything he wanted to, Anand motioned for Rahul to follow him as they climbed up to one of the towers. At the top, the entire council and all the trainers were present.
Mark greeted him, “Welcome back Rahul, I hope your meditation was successful. Sorry about setting up the council in this cramped space. All our throats are sore from speaking loudly over all the croaking noises, and this tower is the least noisy place we could find. Our thoughts too are quite a bit clearer due to the small measure of peace and quiet this tower affords us“.
Rahul courteously replied, “I seem to have missed out on a lot of action, but yes, I managed to get the fireball spell. And no worries about the cramped space, I myself have gone half deaf from all the croaking and welcome the relative quiet.”
Mark nodded, and it was Daniel who spoke next, “Congratulations on the fireball. Don’t focus too much on missing out on the action and experience points, I’m sure you’ll catch up in no time. I will quickly bring you up to speed on what the council has been up to, and then we can take any inputs you have“.
While Rahul still wasn’t sure he deserved his position on the council, he had gotten used to it by now, and focused on the summary he got, hoping to contribute in any way he could.
Daniel chronologically walked Rahul through the events of the day from the perspective of the council. He started with his own discussion with Mark after they had succeeded in setting the courtyard alight. He explained how the two realised that while the fire had bought them time, that time wouldn’t matter if the status quo didn’t change.
As the council assembled, everyone agreed that something needed to change, otherwise they would be worn down even if they could hold the castle. They debated for a long time, and the plan they eventually all agreed on was simple. Since what they needed was something to tip the scales in their favor, they decided to pull out all the stops to get a new skill - any new skill, as long as it helped in their current situation.
To that end, in addition to all the trainers that were already assembled, they also gathered any other promising individuals in every discipline. Then they requested the entire group to forget about the needs of the current active combat, and invest all their free stat points into the stats which were most useful in the pursuit of their discipline, and focus their energy on breaking through. With a diverse group focused on breaking through on everything between a magic spell to a pugilist martial art, they had at least one person focusing on every stat, even vitality.
The decision eventually paid off, and there were two breakthroughs.
First was Anand, who, alongside Daniel and Mark, had invested all his points into intelligence and meditated. All three of them had the same goal in mind, to unlock a spell with AOE damage. As Rahul already knew, Anand was the first who made it across the line, gaining the weak fireball spell for his efforts.
Second was Jeanette, who along with Claudie, put her focus on improving archery. Claudie distributed her points evenly between strength and dexterity and focused on firing her arrows with more power. She wanted her arrows to pierce straight through one frog and then kill the one behind it as well, getting 2 kills per shot.
Jeanette instead put all her points into endurance, and focused on being more efficient with stamina consumption while firing arrows. Both of them practiced their techniques on the frogs below, and it was Jeanette who had a breakthrough. She gained a skill Stamina Control 1 , which allowed her to visualise her stamina the same way that mages visualised mana. The skill allowed her to reduce the amount of energy she put into pulling and releasing the bow. This allowed her to fire arrows at the cost of just one stamina, but the arrows had a much smaller range, and packed much less of a punch. Despite that, due to the high ground and great positioning, she was able to one shot frogs even with the weaker arrow.
Similar to Weak Fireball 1, Stamina Control 1 also required a minimum of 25 endurance. Anyone who met the bar was then trained by Jeanette, who received a trainer skill for stamina control as soon as she trained the first archer in the skill.
While the archers and mages were being trained by Anand and Jeanette, the rest of the council factored in these two new advantages and started planning their next steps.
With everyone’s consensus, the main objective was to rally out of the castle and regain control of the outer walls. They also wanted to make sure that once they got into that position, they could hold it. To that end, they decided to wait till almost everyone was at level 6, and as many as possible were trained in either fireball or stamina control. It would only be a matter of time before that would be done. The real problem, as Rahul had guessed correctly, were the corpses.
To solve that problem, Daniel, after learning the weak fireball spell, did a small experiment. He went to the hall where about a dozen frog corpses were strewn about. They had been a reminder of his near death experience this morning, but now, they would serve as the test subjects for his fireball. He collected them all in a pile, and barraged them with fireballs until they caught fire.
Then he waited. Almost an hour later, there was nothing left of the frogs but a few tiny bones and ashes. His grisly work done, Daniel was satisfied with the result and went back to report to Mark. The next step of the plan took shape, the solution to the piles of frog corpses. Set the entire courtyard and the walls on fire again, and then march out.
With that, Daniel finished his explanation to Rahul.
Now all caught up, Rahul thanked Daniel, “Thanks for bringing me up to speed. I like the plan, and really don’t have anything to add. On the other hand, I have a long way to go till level 6, and I’d best get on with it.”
With that, Rahul took his leave, looking at his completely filled his mana and stamina bars, already imagining the notification chime of level 6.