It had been so long since Lorelei had been able to access her whole skillset that it took her a moment to remember what it had felt like. Despite knowing that she was going to be needed back in the fray up front, she couldn’t help but take a couple of seconds just to enjoy the experience of a) no longer being crushingly heavy, b) being able to speak normally, and c) actually having abilities to bring to the party. Or the life or death struggle.

She knew what she meant.

***Help Message***

Now, it’s been a while, tinsel draws, so don’t get carried away here. Maybe ease yourself into it all a touch. You know, you don’t want to throw your back out by . . .

Lorelei ran, checking out her newly undebuffed stats as she did so.

Lorelei Norton: Fortuna's Herald

Level 14

Experience 0/2500

Health 540/540

Mana 480/480

Primary Stats

Strength 18

Agility 36 (+3 Gloves of the Seer, +10% Veil of Vindication)

Stamina 25 (+2 Cloak of the Wanderer)

Intellect 24 (+5 Whispering Gloves of the Seer)

Spirit 31 (+5% Vigilante, + 3 Earrings of the Lucky Gambler)

Secondary Stats

Critical Strike 13.5% (+2% Whispering Gloves of the Seer + 2% Earrings of the Lucky Gambler)

Haste 11.5% (+1 Earrings of the Lucky Gambler%)

Mastery 7.5% (+0.5%)

Versatility 5%

Skills

Lucky Strike Lvl 3 (Passive) Sometimes, you just have to trust a certain Old One is on your side. With an improved knack for hitting the mark, Lorelei’s luck seems almost... deliberate. Just don’t get too cocky. - Increases the chance of positive outcomes by 15% (up from 5%) and reduces the chance of negative outcomes by 10%. Lorelei’s attacks have a 10% chance to ignore enemy defences.

Coin Toss Conundrum Lv3 (Active)- Why leave things to chance? With an enhanced coin toss, even your enemies might start rooting for tails. Either way, it’s a win-win... mostly. The devastating attack on heads now deals an additional 75% damage, and the heal on tails has a 75% chance to heal Lorelei instead of the enemy. Additionally, there is now a 10% chance for both effects to occur simultaneously. Mana Cost: 50 Cooldown: 2 minutes

Random Resilience Lv2 (Active)- You might shrug off a dragon's breath or trip over a pebble. Life's a lottery! But now, the odds are more in your favour. When taking damage, there’s a 50% chance to negate it entirely. If not negated, the damage is reduced by 40%. The cooldown is reduced to 18 hours. Mana Cost: 100% of available pool. Cooldown: 18 hours

Charmed Life Lv4 (Active): Life's full of ups and downs, but with a charmed life, the downs aren’t quite so bad. Maybe you’ll even get a boost from the chaos! The random status effect lasts for 30 seconds (down from 2 minutes) and has a 75% chance to grant a positive buff instead of a negative one. Healing amounts are increased by 25%. Mana Cost: 30 MP Cooldown: No cooldown

The Old Swapperoonie (Active)Lvl2 : Wah! Why is all my luck bad? Wah! For someone with a luck-based Class, you don’t half moan a lot about random outcomes... But now, you can make someone else take the fall. Once per day, you can offload all the negative consequences of your abilities onto someone else. The cooldown resets if your target dies within 5 minutes of the swap. Additionally, the transferred effects are now 25% more severe on the target. Mana Cost: 200 MP Cooldown: 24 hours

Rogue is the Best of the X-Men (Active) Lv3 Sometimes, borrowing is better than owning. And when you can take someone else's powers for a spin, why not? Just watch out for that backfire… You channel your inner Rogue to temporarily steal the abilities of someone within range. The stolen ability lasts for 20 minutes and has a 20% chance to backfire. The cooldown is reduced to 45 minutes. Mana Cost: 100 MP Cooldown: 45 minutes

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Inventory

Cloak of the Wanderer (+ 2 Stamina)

Whispering Gloves of the Seer (+5 Intellect, +3, +2% Critical Strike)

Veil of Vindication (+10% Agility, conceals identity)

Earrings of the Lucky Gambler: +3 Spirit, Increases Critical Strike chance by 2%, and Haste by 1%

Skinning Knife

2x[20 Leather Offcut]

8 [Charred Steak]

7 [Charred Steak - poisoned]. Poisoned status is hidden.

25 Gold. 87 Silver. 8 Bronze

Professions

Jack of All Trades

* Skinning - Lvl 23

* Cooking (Life in Your Own Hands) – Lvl 9

* Leatherworking – Lvl 10 (upgrade available)

* Campfire – Novice

* Tailoring – Level 4

Talents

Spoilsport: Increases the chance of a positive by 5%.

Fortuna's Favor: Allies within a 10-meter radius gain a 5% increase to their Critical Strike chance

If you can Dodge a Wrench: Critical Strike and Haste are increased by an additional 5% when health drops below 50%. Additionally, whenever an attack is successfully evaded, there’s a 20% chance that your next attack will be an automatic critical hit.

Titles

· Kobolds’ Worst Nightmare: 35% damage against Kobolds

· One Cold Bitch: Frost Resistance: +10%

· Vigilante – Spirit 5%

· Chance’s Gambit - Become the very embodiment of luck. However, the universe demands balance. The more you bends fate to her will, the more fate will bend back in the hours to come. Can invoke once per day. While in this state, all luck-based abilities are maximised. Significant debuff post usage

As she closed in on a fight that was looking like the very definition of ‘doomed final stand’, she reached out with and stole the ability from a Level 30 Warrior who was buying himself an ice-cream. The flat 20% boost to all her attributes put a little lead in her pencil as she quickly closed the last of the distance on the Golem kicking hell out of the rest of her team.

Skidding to a halt just before the monster, noting – quelle surprise – the complete absence of any Charm Leach mopping up the damage, she liberally threw out a bunch of instances of on some extremely beat-up teammates.

All but the one that landed on Pete also triggered something randomly positive at the same time, which brought both Zorrobar (who gained twenty seconds of complete invulnerability via ) and Michael (who improbably grew twenty feet tall and changed colour via ) back into the land of the living pretty damn fast.

Lorelei paused and tossed another couple of casts of on Pete until she was happy he wasn’t going to expire while she was occupied elsewhere and then turned her attention to the Golem itself.

***Help Message***

I’m loving this new you - and I don’t want to put a downer on things - but there is absolute no way you’re soloing this thing.

“Yeah, no shit.” Lorelei had already come to that realisation herself.

Even with all the advantages of her ‘stolen’ Skill and having pretty much everything off cooldown, she had nothing that could one-shot this thing. There was a moment when she considered running the roulette again, but the memory of the crushing debuffs was far too fresh in her mind.

No, she wasn’t going to be rushing into that particular nightmare again.

The Golem raised both its fists in the air and then crashed them back down, almost like a Silverback Gorilla. If it was made of clay. And was bigger than Godzilla.

Lorelei threw a out and was gratified to see it take a decent wodge of health out of the monster’s health bar. And even more so that it made the Golem take a little step back. “Everyone group up on me!” she yelled, landing the on it for good measure. Let it eat the bad rolls for a while.

Actually, that was a point . . .

As Lorelei searched in her inventory, the rest of the team ran towards her - Pete and Hel pivoted to take their normal positions on the point, with the Zombie Cheerleaders (oh, so they are back, Lorelei thought) dropping in front of them. Chrissy and Ent flanked either side of the tanks – strange little and large bookends to that front row, whilst Zorrobar, Steffan and CCMD slotted in next Lorelei. Neither Michael nor Michelle were anywhere to be seen, but that was actually pretty normal as they were getting ready to attack.

“Two seconds, guys,” she said, and then lobbed her seven remaining poisoned charred steaks at the thing. The Golem caught most of them in its mouth, with those it missed adding a couple of nasty debuffs to it via .

A flashing, purple skull and crossbones appeared above the creature’s head, and its health began ticking down all on its own. Albeit slowly.

“Right, here’s the plan . . .”

***

Sylvie sneered as the ragtag bunch of low-levelled misfits butchered their way past the Golem that guarded the end of that silly little obstacle course.

She and Rupert had blitzed through the whole thing in less than ten minutes. Not exactly a record time, but certainly better than the shambles unfolding out there now. Moira had warned them about making too much of a splash in the first event, so they’d taken it reasonably easy.

“It’s these she’s worried about?” Syvie said to Rupert, who was paying far more attention to a Elvish Archer than she thought was really appropriate.

“Not worries, per se,” the Temporal Bersker replied. “She just wants them gone.”

“Hardly seems worth the effort,” she said, eyes scanning the crowd for the real reason they’d stepped into the main press.

The crowd opened for them – if asked, no one who scurried away could really have said what it was about these two hooded figures that so disturbed them, but disturb them it did – and they saw their quarry.

The Charm Leech with the interestingly dark aura was watching, white-faced, as the Golem was finally brought to the ground. So he didn’t see the two of them slip in beside him. It wasn’t until Sylvie lowered her hood and leaned forward to whisper in his ear that he responded at all.

“Hello, Leech,” she said, “I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”