So, new ability selected, I activated Sustained Faith. It didn’t have a little chant, but it did take more than a moment of focus and contemplation -- meditation, if you will. And the cost was ….
“Yeesh! Fifty of my Faith Points greyed out as being ‘reserved,’” I exclaimed. “And that counts as a sustained power of my own, so it ties up one of the two SP I have.” Which meant I could maintain the noncombat regen of Prayer of Evergreen Embrace or one of my two spells from Natural Protection, but not both of them. Well, neither cold nor nature resistances seemed important for the current fights, so Prayer of Evergreen Embrace it was.
I wonder if SP can be increased with a development point at a later level, or if I was going to have to find an ability or merit that granted additional SP. Some of it seemed like it had to be tied to class. I had two, Noa had one, and Ace, apparently, had five.
“Half of them!?” Ace gasped.
“Well, I have 125, um 126 now that I leveled. This little ring,” I pointed to the simple metal band on my right ring finger, “gives me a bonus to max faith. The trade-off is … it’s a locked item. I can’t ever replace it with something stronger.”
“How’d you get that?” Ka’Moni asked.
“Character creation.” I shrugged. “The same way I got wings and this figure.” Although, given that the ring was named Favor of Yama Destina, it probably wasn’t quite part of the random race/class combo I got. But given that it was a very powerful boost -- a percentage increase rather than a flat amount -- I wasn’t complaining about the locked status of the ring. Trade-offs.
Still, fifty faith tied up was a pretty big cost. It meant I had to be a bit more judicious with my spells to ensure that I had enough to heal with and had enough for an emergency Barbed Roots. That meant … Bramble Shield was probably out of my rotation and it certainly meant I didn’t need an ability like Daughter of Nature with attack spells in it any time soon.
The next two encounters played out pretty much the same way (with one more little wooden golem). That is, we approached the Big Bad Rat and got into position, the golems attacked once the rat was surrounded and we were ready, Ka’moni jumped in and started kicking -- usually a jump-kick to engage and a back-flip to disengage and re-position -- and I kept Wyld Regrowth applied to whichever golem -- or Ka’Moni -- got hit by the rat’s attacks.
The problem was, without a true shieldwall to keep the rat’s attention focused on one target, it hit whichever golem it wanted whenever it wanted. Usually it was one of the three golems in the front arc, but the rat’s tail whipped around and hit the targets behind it, too. As well, the rat would sometimes kick out with its back feet, hitting one of the golems. It kept me on my toes, trying to ensure that each golem was kept healed.
Proverbial toes. Since I was flying, I wasn’t exactly on my toes to begin with.
The third fight, however, we had problems.
It started normally enough, surrounding and engaging another Big Bad Rat, albeit a level two little monster. Unfortunately, however, this rat had friends. A linked spawn, perhaps, or just a nearby rat that took issue with us fighting in its field of view. It shrieked a mousy warcry and charged toward Ace.
“We’ve got an add!” I shouted as I sent Daybreak Gleaming on an intercept charge of her own. But the mousy warcry was repeated as a third rat followed the second in. Bad news, both adds were level two as well. “Two of them! Red in tooth and claw ….” While Daybreak Gleaming was charging the first new rat, I activated Barbed Roots to target the second.
“Ace, you might want to scoot further away, and can you break off two, three of your golems to help Daybreak Gleaming? And if you’ve got anything else to burn through, you might want to.” Ace, so far, hadn’t done anything beyond directing their golems. Granted, providing direction to a squad of six little wooden fighters was close on to a full-time job of its own. “Ka’Moni, now might be the time to use some of those cheerleader buffs?”
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“On it!” she exclaimed as she backflipped away from the first rat. From her first two strikes and the golems, the little monster was already down nearly a quarter of its health. But that meant it was still several kicks away from kicking the bucket.
Ace shook their head, “I don’t have any other skills I can use. You back three golems -- Delta, Cinco, Sixy -- back off and head over there. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, spread out a little wider.”
We were going to have problems with multiple attackers dealing out damage to at least two separate groups of our defenders. Targeting my unicorn, I reached for a bigger spell: “The Wyld Harvest awaits, ⸢Wyld Berry Aura⸥!”
I hadn’t used it in the earlier fights, since there was no one golem getting hit more than others, but hopefully Daybreak Gleaming could hold the attention of the first add since she had scored a pretty deep gash with her spiraled horn. The rat had to be angry even if its health had only dropped by about ten percent.
“Defense! Defense, hold tight! Defense! Defense, let’s fight! Hold the line, Fairy Queen Spirit, Fairy Queen Might! ⸢Defense!⸥ That was Ka’Moni, of course. I saw the cheer and spell activation of the corner of my eye while I immediately followed the Wyld Berry Aura with a Wyld Regrowth on one of the golems fighting the first rat. Her hands glowed blue and gold, almost as if she were holding phantasmal pom poms. Then the blue and gold light streamed out to spiral around each of us -- three players, six golems, and a wooden unicorn. I saw a flash of a new icon appear next to my health bar, but I didn’t have time to pay any attention to it.
Ka’Moni followed up with another flying kick and backflip, helping the golems whittle down the first rat, but when she landed, she struck another pose and started another cheer. “Bump, set, spike the ball! Fairy Queen Spirit standing tall! ⸢Offense!⸥” This time, the illusory pom poms dissolved into blue and gold sparkles that surrounded the three golems that had joined Daybreak Gleaming.
Rather than leap back in with another kick, Ka’Moni began a third spell, cheer, whatever. “You can fight, you can win, we believe in you! You can fight, you can win, we believe in you! ⸢Inspire Attack!⸥” Daybreak Gleaming received the spiral of blue and gold light from the cheer, but rather than surround her as a buff, it narrowed its focus from the whole unicorn down to just her horn.
I had to apply Wyld Regrowth to another golem, but as I did so, I directed Daybreak Gleaming to slash with her horn, rather than try and kick and stomp with her hooves. Might as well use the part of her natural weaponry that was glowing with Ka’Moni’s spell.
A quick check showed the third rat was still held by my Barbed Roots, but it was being smart about it. Rather than try to struggle against the spell, it had stopped and was biding its time -- not taking damage from the barbs. The Big Bad Rat was also intently focused on me, ignoring the much closer three golems and unicorn fighting its friend. I was on the top of its hatelist, and wasn’t likely to get off. But as long as I could keep it immobilized long enough for at least one of the other two rats to fall, we had a decent chance.
“I’m going to have to go all in, aren’t I?” Ka’Moni asked, probably rhetorically, as she didn’t wait for an answer. She did a double backflip to give herself room, then dashed forward. Halfway to the rat, she leaped into the air, but rather than a “simple” flying kick, it was a forward leap. Planting her hands on the ground, she flipped forward and up, looking more like an olympic gymnast than a high school cheerleader (well, the move at least -- as an orc, she didn’t particularly look like either), and then … somehow … transferred that motion into a spinning, drilling kick as she landed on the rat, slamming its head into the ground with her heels.
The Big Bad Rat went from half-alive to all-the-way dead just as Ka’Moni tucked her knees in and went into a tumble that unfortunately bowled over one of Ace’s golems. “Popped a cooldown,” she called out, “Can’t do that again for a while!”
She also took a decent amount of damage from the impact, with nearly a quarter of her health depleted. I hastily sent a Wyld Regrowth winging her way.
But that spiraling kick of hers changed the tide of the battle. With all six golems and Daybreak Gleaming on the second rat, and the third being kept immobile by another application of Barbed Roots, it was a matter of finishing them off and taking a breather. Every three kicks or so, Ka’Moni renewed her Offense and Defense cheers, but even so, by the time the third rat dropped, I was running on empty. In fact, three of Ace’s golems had paid the price of my faith expenditure, and the rest were only half alive (well, half not dead) themselves. Even Daybreak Gleaming was looking a bit worse for wear once I started having to ensure that Ka’Moni didn’t get hurt too badly after she pulled the hate of the third rat off me. She wasn’t exactly a dodge tank, but she was doing a pretty good imitation of one. The problem was, when she got hit, her health took a significant blow each time.