You have defeated: Bloated Deathflame Fly (Basic) — Level 12
500 XP and 1 Common Core awarded.
Level Up!
You are now Level 8
5 stat points available
XP to next level: 5,000
I started wagging my tail at the messages, but no sooner had I dismissed them than another blotted out my vision.
Skill Upgrade complete! Your skill: Claw Slash has increased to Rank 1, decreasing its cooldown time: 1m > 45s
Please also choose from one of the following improvements:
1. Paralyzing — You might not be able to freeze your enemies with a glance, but a little nick from your claws will do the trick. All successful attacks now include the following effect: Stun (30s).
2. Piercing — The upgrade for any dog that’s ever stared at an oncoming truck and thought, ‘yeah, I could take that’. Well, now you can. Slashing attacks include an armor piercing component that is effective against all opponents below Rank 1.
3. Fierce — In a dangerous world, be what the dangerous things fear. Your claws may not be any sharper, but they can do far more damage now. Increase your skill’s base damage — 3x > 6x.
Oh, was that it? Was a level up required for my skill upgrade to take effect? Or maybe the system just had really bad timing.
Either way, I finally had my choices. And what choices they were! I settled onto my haunches to consider what I wanted.
Short answer? All of them.
Longer... well, I didn’t need to add stun to my attacks, since I could already do that with my wands. And as I’d seen from my last fight, not everything was affected by it. Heck, I was no longer affected by it, and I doubted my case was unique. So I figured I could rule that one out, at least for the moment.
Honestly, piercing sounded like a winner. Against this overgrown fly it would have ended this battle much quicker, and against the rubble golems I might have even been able to attack them more directly, rather than being forced to play the system’s mind games.
Still, before I decided, I considered the last option.
Additional damage... I’d never fully grasped what the system’s damage multipliers were about. Was it taking the amount of damage it thought I would be able to do in a normal situation, or was it based on the attack itself? If that was true, my Claw Slash should have been able to do significantly more base damage than something like Crunch’s bashing attack, yet I didn’t get the impression that was true. But I also didn’t like the idea of the system making a bunch of assumptions about my combat prowess.
Either way, this was a rather straightforward upgrade. Double the damage I’d been doing before, plus it was something that would surely continue improving at an accelerated rate as I leveled up the skill.
But was it better than armor piercing capabilities? I didn’t think so.
My decision made, I selected the second option, and watched as the window winked away. I waited to see if I’d sense any change, but nothing. Not that I had noticed one when I picked Claw Slash in the first place, either.
Oh well.
That matter finally attended to, I pulled up my interface and applied my new stat points, dumping them all immediately into Speed. I had no idea what would happen with my rat rot in the future, but helping to shore up my weakest area was never a bad idea.
After that, I reviewed over my entire stat sheet. And immediately noticed something unusual.
Name: Bubba
Race: Canid (Advanced)
Class: Wildling
Level: 8
XP: 400/5,000
-Equipment-
Collar: Indomitable Choke Chain (lv 13) (G)
Left Front Leg: Minor Skill Bracelet (lv 12) (+2)
Right Front Leg: Static Field Generator (lv 12) (+2)
Left Back Leg: Bracelet of Minor Replication (lv 10) (+5)
Right Back Leg: Bandana of Cleverness (lv 9) (+5)
-Racial Skills-
Skill 1: Night Vision
Skill 2: Enhanced Smell
Skill 3: Song of the Night
Skill 4: Pack Loyalty
-Class Skills-
Skill 1: Piercing Claw Slash (Rank 1) 1 (0%)
-Stats-
Power: 49 (+26)
Speed: 10 (-5)
Agility: 15
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Presence: 8 (+5)
Mind: 28 (+18) (+5)
Points Available: 0
What in the name of dog? My Power bonus had gone up by two points. That came from the choke chain I’d inherited from Crunch, but I certainly hadn’t upgraded it. In fact, the description specifically said that it couldn’t be upgraded.
Though it also mentioned something about being a ‘growth item’. Is this what it meant? Would the collar continue improving, without any effort on my part?
The collar did say it was level thirteen now, so that seemed likely. Did it have an upper limit? If not, that made it an incredibly valuable piece of gear, one I’d be benefiting from for some time to come.
I guess I’d have to keep an eye on it as I leveled further.
In the distance, the moon had begun to set. While morning was still some ways away, it was time I headed back to the others and got a bit of sleep. Much as I wanted to keep exploring and experimenting, we had quite the journey planned for tomorrow.
So I carefully made my way off the roof and back into the store.
----------------------------------------
In the morning, we set out for downtown. Zapper led the way, zipping ahead to scout us the safest route before coming back to report, then dashing off once again. Riley zipped about almost as much, though mostly to poke at broken stones or peer through cracked windows.
And finally, me bringing up the rear, trying to keep watch everywhere at once even as my mind wandered.
Not that I was too worried about this section of the journey. Zapper and I had cleared out every nest for a half-mile in any given direction, so the only real threat at the moment was potentially falling in the giant rift that still ran jagged and deep through the entire neighborhood. We had to go three streets to the east before we could finally start working our way north again.
Because of this, I let myself get a little more distracted than I should have for the rest of the journey. Even with everything I’d learned last night, I’d still only gotten through about half of what I’d hoped to accomplish before sleep claimed me. After all, I hadn’t even made a single attempt with one of those rare cores yet.
But that would have to wait until this evening. For now, the best I could manage was getting to the bottom of another mystery.
As my gaze swiveled in either direction, and Zapper let out a bark in the distance to signal the way was clear, I sifted through my interface and pulled up one of my inventory screens. Specifically for the piece of equipment that was currently causing me such conflict.
Static Field Generator
Level 12 (+2)
Have you ever met a dog before that you just immediately knew was trouble? Where the very air around you seemed to tingle with potential danger? Probably it was just your overactive imagination, BUT, had the dog been wearing this bracelet, then consider yourself lucky that you escaped with your life.
Allows the user to place up to (5) electric fields within ten feet of themselves. Any CGI generated entity that comes into contact with one of these fields will suffer continuous damage and have their movement speed reduced by 35%. Damage scales based on your Power stat.
Note: May be worn on either fore or hind legs.
Pre-Requisite: 30 Power. (Requirement met)
I read over the description several times. No matter how often I looked though, it still wasn’t there: a mention of a cooldown. How had I not noticed the first time I’d looked at this?
Perhaps I’d simply become too used to seeing such message. The absence of one was something my brain simply didn’t know how to compute, so it had just ignored it. And that mistake had almost cost me dearly.
In addition, I had completely misinterpreted how the weapon worked. Remember how I was able to step inside one of the fields last night without getting harmed? It turned out the answer was a simple one—the static generator only affected CGI entities, or monsters.
An image came to me of how badly my situation might have gone had I attempted to use this bracelet on Crunch. It seemed that there were some tools that for whatever reason, the system didn’t want us turning on our fellow users.
Those mysteries finally answered, I resolved to be more careful about reading over item descriptions in the future. Which left me with my next dilemma.
Should I even bother keeping the bracelet?
After all, what had sounded like a powerful piece of equipment had proven to be anything but once its limitations became apparent. If I was stuck waiting potentially hours for these fields to wear out before I could move on to new opponents, then I’d rather just not use them at all. Still, I hesitated turning it into a core.
It might not be the tool in my proverbial collar I’d been hoping for, but it was still a tool. I just needed to learn how to utilize it properly.
So I left it equipped for now, resolving to get some further practice with it later that night. At the very least, figuring out how long the fields stuck around seemed crucial.
After that matter was resolved, or at least tabled until later, I turned my attention fully back to keeping Riley out of trouble. Which, as we moved into previously unexplored territory, became more and more of a full-time job. The human pup seemed determined to explore every nook and cranny along our journey. Even if most of those were no longer bristling with monsters, I didn’t relish wasting the time it would take when we still had miles to go to reach downtown.
If it had been as simple as a straight shot, we likely could have made it today, even with Riley’s constant distractions. Unfortunately, the Foodmaxx rift wasn’t the only change the city was undergoing. Several times we were forced to detour due to collapsed buildings, and once because of enormous crystalline spikes erupting from the earth. I refused to let Riley get anywhere near those, no matter how pretty she thought they were.
In the end, we finally found ourselves on a quiet street still some ways from the lake and downtown, with the sun setting in the distance. I barked to signal a halt and call Zapper back.
[We’ve pushed far enough for today,] I told him, once he’d done a quick circle to make sure the area was clear. [I think it’s better to hole up for the night, even if it means using another safe zone.]
[Alright, Boss! Want me to find us a secure location?]
[No, that’s okay.] I glanced around, and spotted a small, dark-paneled building. The name out front caught my eye. [How about there?]
[Okay!] Zapper dashed ahead, disappearing inside the door. There was a loud crash from inside, and then, [I’m okay, Boss! This wall came out of nowhere!]
Shaking my head, I moved over to where Riley was squatting down, inspecting some flowers growing through a gap in the cement, and took her arm gently in my mouth. She let out a little squeak of fright before realizing it was me.
“Hey, doggy. Time to go already?” She gave the world’s smallest, saddest pout. “My legs hurt. Can I sit down first?”
[We’re almost there, kid,] I tried to communicate to her through my eyes alone. Curse the limitations of the system’s language! Careful so as not to break the skin, I gave her arm a slight tug. She climbed to her feet and followed after me.
I stopped in the doorway of the shop, taking in the name again. Now, I wasn’t the sort of pooch that believed in divine providence or miracles or holy figures appearing in bowls of kibble, but if I was, I’d have taken this particular location to be a sign we were on the right path.
But I wasn’t that kind of dog, so instead, I led my young human charge inside the Xochi the Dog, Café to find a decent corner to bed down for the night.