Luke hefted Fenn with a grunt, idly smashing the blunt head into the face of a shambling zombie. The undead abomination’s skull caved in with a sickening crunch, copper coins spilling from the ruined flesh as it crumpled to the ground. The lack of shine to the copper coins made him sad, but it was better than nothing.

This was pest control, not some grand hunt.

A slowly advancing horde of mindless husks swarmed the street ahead, and their decaying bodies emitted a stench worse than the sewers beneath the city. Unlike the fresh zombies he killed on the train, these ancient dwarves all lumbered along at a sedate pace.

In his soul space garage, Luke reached beneath a pile of giant sea shells and took out an apple. After taking a step back from the horde, he took a bite of the fruit. It was another [Eve’s Apple] he had purchased from Jonas on the marketplace.

Luke’s rival had practically flooded the market with the [Intellect] resource a few hours ago, for very reasonable prices. The lucky guy must have stumbled on a trove of them. While Luke wasn’t actively cultivating [Intellect] the trickle of aspected aether into his soul helped him think.

With a flick of his wrist, Luke launched the fruit high into the air once more.

Luke’s eyes tracked the apple’s arc. When it reached the apex of its flight, Luke clenched his [Will] and the apple immediately reversed direction, plummeting back towards his awaiting hand like a missile.

He snatched it effortlessly from the air, using [Brace] to stop it from exploding into mush in his hand. The rush of residue [Gravity] tingled through his fingers, but not yet enough to earn that elusive silver core rank.

Cultivating the gravitational domain was proving far more challenging without an experienced [Gravity] mentor guiding the process. Rurik made [Fire] cultivation seem easy. It had only taken an hour of guided meditation, with the purchase of a [Fire Petal] to bring his [Fire] up to bronze.

[Concept Ranked Up: Fire - Bronze rank, for deeper understanding. +2 Empathy. Like moths drawn to a flame.]

He had received the notification shortly before setting out into the city again. By spending some of his precious time learning about [Fire] with Rurik, Luke had hoped to gain some insight into how to grow [Gravity].

Luke was stuck.

Killing ghouls with Frank acting as a spotter and backup had gone well initially, pushing him to level twelve in only a few hours. It was only when he got the notification about level thirteen a few hours afterward that things took a turn for the worse.

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 13. Unable to progress until Gravity reaches Bronze Rank.]

The widest river meanders the most, Luke thought, paraphrasing something that Rurik had said about the myriad paths of cultivation. The [Initiate] stage of cultivation was where [Mortal] souls became more than themselves, and they did that by integrating larger concepts.

Luke was coming up on twenty hours without sleep, but he refused to rest until he levelled up. From Frank’s scouting trips, Luke knew the warband was slowly respawning, but he had time.

Or did he?

The second wave of invaders would arrive in three days, and Luke hadn’t even got one of the golden tickets he needed to escape the dungeon. The three-headed rat was almost certainly the easiest anchor to take down, and he wasn’t sure if he could beat Maruk in a one-on-one fight.

Maybe in a few more levels, Luke would be more confident. After Maruk threw him around like a plaything at their first encounter, it was a bit of a struggle to remain optimistic. If Luke remained stuck at level twelve he was going to get beat down again, or worse.

The gap between them wasn’t insurmountable, or as wide as the one between Luke and the horde of zombies. To prove this point, he threw the apple up in the air again, and when it came back down again he punctuated its landing by smashing a zombie head. Over the crowd he saw that a few stragglers were filtering in from nearby streets.

The horde had an almost gravitational pull of its own.

What is gravity? Luke wondered.

In school Luke had been a mediocre student at best. He had actually enjoyed learning, but the bullying soured the experience. In his old physics classes he remembered Roy Mckinley’s favourite joke about Luke being the ninth planet. Apparently, he had been so fat he had his own gravitational pull, now that was actually true.

It made [Epicentre] annoyingly ironic.

The memory dug up some of Luke’s buried resentment. He found it deeply therapeutic to be able to take it out on the undead; he could smash their faces in without getting suspended. Between every fourth hammer blow, Luke threw the apple back up in the air.

Crimson copper coins splashed over cracked cobblestones.

Luke found it interesting that the undead bled, even if it often came out in coagulated chunks. They didn’t need their organs, but short of catastrophic damage they continued to function. In the interest of learning more about his enemy he had done a few experiments, and gleaned some insights.

He also remembered inhabiting the body of the undead dreadnought in his path vision; it had a heartbeat. It had been a slow thump that pumped icy blood through its veins. That beat hadn’t changed in the slightest when freefalling from outer orbit.

Like a cold meteor plunging down.

With the memory replaying in Luke’s mind he tore through the rest of the horde. Being twice as tall as the dwarves made it easy to crush skulls with downward strokes.

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As the last zombie crumpled to the ground, Luke reached out to catch the apple, only to come back empty handed. He looked around, but couldn’t see it amongst the carnage. With his [Agility] he had been able to catch the falling fruit without paying it too much attention, but now he had lost a valuable resource due to his lack of focus.

Luke had a thought.

He looked up.

In the air above the half-eaten apple was suspended in the air, as if floating through space.

[Concept ranked up: Gravity - Bronze. Awarded for unstructured manifestation of this concept. +2 Empathy. You have enough affinity with this concept to create an Ability. What goes up must go down.]

I guess not everything has to go down, Luke thought, just as he lost control of the apple. Distracted by the sensation of his soul expanding, he fumbled his catch and the apple fell on top of a pile of slimy viscera.

There was a brief moment where Luke considered cleaning off the apple, but it had already served its purpose.

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 13. Requirements met. Level up initiating. You can choose your first step as a Dreadnought.]

Luke smiled, a couple more levels and he might be able to stand against Maruk. He looked at his new attributes.

Attributes

Will: 33

Empathy: 19

Wisdom: 15

Intellect: 16

Agility: 19

Strength: 39

Endurance: 32

Recovery: 23

Free points: 6

With six free points, Luke needed to start thinking about what his actual strategy was. Keeping points in reserve was a trick that had served him well, but was less effective the stronger he became. He would have to hoard more and more points to have a similar impact, and spend them haphazardly.

Though Luke considered investing points into [Intellect] and [Empathy] so that he could do more impressive things with his [Gravity] domain, he opted not to. That wasn’t his path. Fancy magic was cool and all, but he had to play to his strengths.

Luke was a tank.

With that in mind, Luke set about evening out his primary attributes, [Will], [Strength] and [Endurance]. Between his [Murderhobo] domain, and lopsided cultivation, his [Strength] was too far ahead. One point went into [Will] and four went into [Endurance].

He then had a look at the abilities he had unlocked. Unlike when manifesting his [Brace], and his [Kinetic Strike], the abilities came prepackaged for his class, much like [Epicentre], part and parcel of the path he walked.

First Step of the Ironclad: A style developed by Felstrong Ulrich in 16,042 of the 2nd Era in response to the rapid growth of industry amongst the Ursvär, or ‘Iron Dwarves’ of Tyanon Secondus. Emphasises heavy armour and heavy weaponry.

[Metal Body - (Passive) - Reinforces your flesh with your Bulwark.]

[Siege Breaker - (Active) - Amplifies your mass the further you move in a straight line.]

First Step of the Colossus: A style developed by Io in 1,092 of the 1st Era as a way to fight alongside her thralls without crushing them underfoot. Emphasises large scale warfare.

[Shockwaves - (Passive) - Creates concussive waves of force when you hit with your Warhammer.]

[Aegis - (Active) - This skill manifests Bulwark aether in a defensive shell barrier.]

More

After reading through the top listed options he wasn’t entirely sure which to go for. His understanding was that steps were points of psionic resonance within a path, and while the destination remained the same, the journey taken would vary. The top two as recommended by the [System] were solid options, but neither really excited him.

Luke’s stomach growled as he walked back towards the forge. His physique demanded large volumes of food, and his soul was hungry for aether. Luke could actually feel the decrease in the ambient aether back in the street where he had hit levelled up.

It was like a dark patch in the air; the space was dull and lacked vibrancy.

On his way back home Luke encountered a pair of ghouls, and found great satisfaction in testing his attribute gains against them. [Endurance] was hard to quantify, because with his armour on it was already almost impossible for the Draugsvär to harm him. They might be the same level numerically, but that didn’t make them equals.

Luke smashed one ghoul so hard that it went through a wall, and crumpled the other’s breastplate like it was nothing. Certainly the craftsmanship was nowhere near Rurik’s level. Though the black metal was infused with ivory [Bone], it didn’t seem to do much to actually improve the armour.

Gold was the only metal Luke was interested in as he picked up the coins scattered in the streets.

Not for the first time, Luke wondered what anchored the Draugsvär in the dungeon. He was going to have to hunt out a second golden ticket, and assuming he survived his rematch with Maruk, he couldn’t rest on his laurels.

If Luke had been a betting man, he would have put good gold on the Gothic cathedral to the east housing an anchor. The collapsed city to the west was where the undead invasion originated from, so was likely where the last anchor lay.

There’s always Rurik, Luke thought darkly.

He had no intentions of fighting the dwarf, but he had considered just asking outright. It would get him halfway towards his goal of escaping the dungeon, but he was unsure how to ask his only friend such a thing.

“Hey buddy, can you stand still for a moment while I smash your face in?” Luke said aloud, and chuckled.

With no more coins in sight, Luke resumed his trek back to the forge. As he walked he kept one eye on his surroundings, and the other on the [System] blue boxes.

Looking again through the options his level up gave, Luke didn’t immediately find any one Step that called to him. The list was still useful though, as it gave him plenty of ideas for what might be possible with unstructured manifestations.

While he wasn’t going the mage route, it didn’t hurt to have inspiration; perhaps at some point he would invest in the mental attributes necessary to pull off a few tricks.

After looking at a few more options, Luke found one that caught his eye.

First Step of the Monolith: A style developed by Prisoner Thirteen in 946 of the 1st Era. Deployed against the Hyanshi demonic incursion. Emphasises unconventional use of overwhelming force.

[Singularity - (Passive) - Increases the mass of all objects and creatures in your aura.]

[Null - (Active) - Nullifies the effects of gravitational fields within your aura.]

He assumed that the reason the Monolith wasn’t recommended was because it focused on [Gravity], or perhaps the ‘unconventional abilities’ were in some way suboptimal. The other two steps were certainly more straightforward sounding, but he was drawn to this step for one specific reason.

If he was reading it right, [Null] could give him the ability to fly.

Luke smiled when he envisioned the chaos such an ability would cause on a battlefield.

The problem with it was that unless Luke started investing in [Empathy], any attempts at affecting other people through pure manifestation would fail. He would also be hamstrung by his relatively low mental attributes. [Wisdom] was supposed to affect the speed of manifesting aether, and [Intellect] the complexity of what he could pull off.

[Monolith] was more of a mage or utility type of tank, [Bastion] was more tactical, and would be great for dealing with lots of enemies, and [Ironclad] was best suited for the kind of guy who tends to run head first into trouble without overthinking things.

Which one do I want to be?